Out of the Darkness

Whistles shrilled again. Leudast trotted away from the mages without a backwards glance. If the attack was heating up again, he needed to be with his men as they pushed on toward the heart of Trapani. But, as he moved forward, he suddenly discovered that he wasn’t going forward at all: his feet were moving up and down, but each new step left him in the same place as had the one before it.

Cries of alarm said he wasn’t the only Unkerlanter soldier thus afflicted. He didn’t know how the Algarvian mages were doing this, but they plainly were. A glance told him the behemoths were similarly frozen in place. Unkerlanter soldiers started falling as hidden redheads blazed them.

They could still run away from the heart of Trapani. Some of them did. Leudast discovered he could move sideways and, more important, that he could duck. “Get down!” he called to the men closest to danger. “Get into cover! You can do it.” Some people wouldn’t have figured it out for themselves, but would manage to do it once told they could.

Scuttling behind a boulder, Leudast wondered if the entire Unkerlanter assault on Trapani, all the way around the Algarvian capital, had been frozen in its tracks. He wouldn’t have been surprised. Algarvian mages didn’t think small. They never had, not since they started killing Kaunians-and, very likely, not before then, either. Algarvians were flamboyant folk.

Eggs kept on bursting deeper inside Trapani. “They can’t stop everything!” Leudast exclaimed. He’d had the right of it while talking with his own wizards. It was up to the fellows who served the egg-tossers now. If they killed or wounded or at least distracted the sorcerers who made the spell work, the attack could resume again. If not. .

Leudast looked up. A couple of dragons painted Unkerlanter rock-gray hovered like oversized kestrels, unable to go forward no matter how powerfully they beat their great wings. Even as he watched, a beam from an Algarvian heavy stick tumbled one of them from the sky.

He waited, every now and then blazing from behind that boulder. Maybe the eggs the Unkerlanters hurtled into Trapani finally did what they were supposed to. Maybe Mezentio’s mages could hold their spell for only so long. Maybe-though he wouldn’t have bet much on it-their Unkerlanter counterparts at last beat down their wizardry. Whatever the reason, shouts of, “Urra!” rang out when Swemmel’s soldiers discovered they could go forward again.

Why are we cheering? Leudast wondered as he ran towards a house from which a couple of diehards were blazing. Now we’ve got another chance to get killed.

One of the diehards showed himself at a window-only for a moment, but long enough for Leudast’s beam to cut him down. “Urra!” Leudast yelled. “King Swemmel! Revenge!” Maybe that one word said everything that needed saying.

Aye, we might get killed, but we’ll do a lot of killing first. Before long, Trapani was going to fall. He intended to be one of those who helped bring it down. “Urra!” he cried again, and ran on.

Not a lot of mail came to the hostel in the Naantali district. As far as most of the world was concerned, that hostel didn’t exist. Pekka and the other mages who labored there might as well have dropped off the face of the earth. Even relatives who knew the sorcerers were working somewhere didn’t usually know where, and relied on the post office to get letters where they needed to go.

One envelope that got to Pekka did not, at first, look as if it had come to the right place. The printed design on the corner that showed postage fees had been paid was not Kuusaman. After a bit of puzzling, she figured out the letter was from Jelgava. I don’t know anyone in Jelgava, she thought. I certainly don’t know anyone in Jelgava who knows I’m here.

Even the script challenged her. Printed Jelgavan used the same characters as Kuusaman, but the two kingdoms’ handwritings were quite different. Her name wasn’t on the envelope. A chill ran through her when she realized Leino’s was.

She turned the envelope over. There on the back, in red, was a stamp in her own language: military post-deceased, forward to next of kin.

Pekka’s lips skinned back from her teeth. That explained how she’d got the letter-explained it in more detail than she’d wanted. She opened the envelope. The letter inside was in Jelgavan, too. She had only a few words of the language, and could make out next to nothing of what it said.

She found Fernao in the refectory at suppertime. He was demolishing a plate of corned venison and red cabbage. “Do you read Jelgavan?” she asked, sitting down beside him. Pointing to his supper, she added, “That looks good.”