Out of the Darkness

Kun sighed. “I suppose I’d waste my time asking you how much good that’s done us or who’s winning the war, and so I won’t.”

By “not asking” in that particular way, of course, he put the question all the more effectively. Istvan chewed on it for some little while. He liked the flavors of none of the answers he found. To keep from showing how little he liked them, he peered out the porthole. To his surprise, Obuda was already receding in the distance. “We’re moving!” he exclaimed.

“Well, what if we are?” Kun seemed determined to stay contrary. “Stars above, this is a ley-line ship. Did you expect to hear sails flutter and the wind howl in the rigging? Use your head before you use your mouth.”

“Oh, go bugger a goat,” Istvan said. Coming from a valley far back in the mountains, he knew little about ships, ley-line or otherwise. The only times he’d been aboard them were on journeys across the Bothnian Ocean during the war. He’d never been in a two-man cabin then, but down in the hold with a lot of other soldiers, most of whom were just as ignorant of the sea and its ways as he was.

He did remember the meal gong. Either the Kuusamans had the same signal or they’d got a gong so they could use something with which their Gyongyosian passengers were familiar. Armed Kuusamans directed Istvan and Kun and the other Gyongyosians who emerged from cabins along the corridor to the iron chamber where they would eat. A large sign on the wall declared, WE DO NOT SERVE GOAT ABOARD THIS SHIP. YOU MAY EAT FREELY, WITH NO FEAR OF POLLUTION. Istvan hoped the slanteyes were telling the truth. If they weren’t. . The scar on his hand throbbed. He’d already learned more about ritual pollution and the way it ate at a man than he’d ever wanted to know.

Perhaps three dozen Gyongyosians queued up to take trays and utensils and bowls of the stew a couple of bored-looking Kuusaman cooks served up. The food was better than he’d got in the captives’ camp, but not so good as the guards’ rations he’d eaten since being extracted from among the rest of the captured Gyongyosians. The cooks gave each man one mug of ale and as much tea as he wanted.

Most of the other captives aboard the ley-line cruiser were officers. Istvan saw one man in a brigadier’s uniform, a couple of colonels, and a lot of majors and captains. One of those captains turned to him and asked, “Well, Sergeant, why did they pick you for this charade?”

“I have no real idea, sir,” Istvan answered cautiously. “Maybe because I fought on Becsehely.”

With a laugh, the officer said, “Well, that makes some sense. I don’t know why they chose me, I’ll tell you that. My guess is, the slanteyes drew my name out of a hat or a pot or whatever they use for such things.”

Corporal Kun asked, “Sir, do you have any idea what they’re going to show us when we get there?”

“Not the slightest clue.” The captain shook his head. “I speak some Kuusaman, and I’ve asked, but the slanteyes won’t say. They haven’t talked out of turn where I could hear ‘em, either, worse luck. Stars above be dark for them forever, they’re keeping their mouths shut tight.”

The ley-line cruiser stopped at another island east of Obuda and picked up four men from a captives’ camp there. Istvan wondered just how many Gyongyosian captives the Kuusamans held. Too many was the first answer that occurred to him.

When the cruiser stopped a couple of miles off the beaches of Becsehely, the Kuusamans summoned all their Gyongyosian passengers to the deck. The island looked as flat and unlovely as Istvan remembered it. It also looked extraordinarily battered, as if it had been fought over only the other day, not some months before. A Kuusaman officer spoke in Istvan’s language: “Watch what we do here. When we give you back to your own people, tell the truth about it.”

Back on Obuda, Lammi had said almost exactly the same thing. By the looks on the faces of the men who hadn’t come from Obuda, they’d heard the speech before, too. Kun raised an eyebrow and murmured, “The same old song.”

But then the Kuusaman added a new verse: “Remember, this could be Gyorvar, or any other place we choose.”

As if his words were a cue, a lash of fire fell on Becsehely from a clear blue sky. It wasn’t lightning; it was flame, as if from a dragon a mile long. But there was no dragon, nothing at all in the sky over Becsehely but air. The lash fell again and again and again. Even across a broad stretch of sea, it was too brilliant to look at directly; Istvan had to squint and hold a hand up to his face to protect his eyes. Even across that stretch of sea, he could feel the heat, too. And, where the flame slid off the battered land and into the Bothnian Ocean, great clouds of steam rose up.

“Stars preserve us,” muttered the captain with whom he’d spoken at supper. “That could be Gyorvar.” Despite the heat coming from the tormented island, a chill seized Istvan and wouldn’t let him go.