Out of the Darkness

“They could have had mages in the bowels of the very ship you rode, casting these fearsome spells,” the Eye and Ear said. “Or, for that matter, what they said was destruction could have been nothing but illusion. Either of those is easier to believe than that they really have these powers they claim.”

He doesn‘t believe because he doesn‘t want to believe, and because he didn‘t see with his own eyes, Istvan thought. He said, “Sir, anybody who’s fought the slanteyes-or who’s been in one of their captives’ camps-knows they’re stronger mages than we are. By the stars, they really did this thing.”

“So speaks a sergeant from back in the Ilszung Mountains,” Balazs said. “Do you claim to know everything of what is possible and what is not when it comes to sorcery?”

“No, sir,” Istvan answered. “All I claim is, I know what happened right in front of my own eyes. If you don’t believe me-if none of you people believe the captives the Kuusamans set free-our land will be sorry on account of it.”

“You should know, Sergeant,” Balazs said, his voice growing cold, “that the laws against treasonous talk and defeatism have been tightened up lately, as they should have been. You would be wise to have a care in what you say.”

Captain Petofi spoke up: “And you, wretch, you would be wise to listen to the underofficer. He spoke with a warrior’s courage, telling nothing but the truth, and you mock him and scorn him and answer him with threats. By the stars, with goatheads like you set over us, it’s no wonder we’re losing the war.”

Like most Gyongyosian men, Balazs let his shaggy, tawny beard grow high on his cheeks. It didn’t grow high enough to hide his flush of anger, though. “You have no business talking to me that way, Captain. I tell you what Ekrekek Arpad has told the land: we shall win this fight against the stars-detested savages of Kuusamo. If the Ekrekek of Gyongyos says a thing is so, how can a couple of ragged captives say otherwise?”

Istvan gulped. If Arpad said something was so, then it was bound to be so. Everything he’d ever learned proclaimed the truth of that. The stars spoke to Arpad, and Arpad spoke to Gyongyos. So it had ever been; so it would ever be.

But Petofi said, “If Ekrekek Arpad had been on that Kuusaman cruiser, he would have known the truth, the same as we did. And if we’re winning the war, how did the slanteyes ravage an island that used to belong to us?”

“I give you one last warning, Captain,” the Ekrekek’s Eye and Ear said. “We have places where we send defeatists, to keep them out of the way so their cowardice can’t infect the true warriors of Gyongyos.”

Petofi bowed. “By all means, send me to one of those places. The company and the wit are bound to be better there than here.”

“You’ll get your wish,” Balazs promised. He rounded on Istvan. “What about you, Sergeant? I trust you have better sense?”

That could only mean, Say what I want you to say, and things will go easy for you. Istvan gulped again. I just got out of a captives’ camp, he thought with something not far from despair. Petofi eyed him without saying a word. Sell yourself, wretch, his eyes seemed to say. Sighing, Istvan said, “How can you ask me to lie when the stars looking down on me know I tell the truth?”

“Another fool, eh?” Balazs scribbled a note on a leaf of paper in front of him. “Well, I already told you-we have places for fools.”

Ilmarinen was not a hunter. He had no qualms about eating game or meat. He just saw no sport in killing beasts. Men were supposed to be smarter than animals, so where was the contest? (The way men had behaved during the Derlavaian War did make him wonder about his assumption, but he’d still never heard of a deer or a wolf picking up a stick and blazing back at a hunter.) Still and all, though, one hunting phrase he’d heard stuck in his mind: in at the death. With Trapani fallen, he wanted to be in at the death of Algarve.

If that meant leaving Torgavi, he wasn’t altogether sorry to go. He hadn’t had much fun there anyhow, not since the Unkerlanters figured out he was a mage and ordered him to stay on his own kingdom’s side of the Albi. He went instead to Scansano, where Mainardo, once King of Jelgava and now King of Algarve, headed what passed for his kingdom’s government these days.

Kuusaman and Lagoan soldiers-and a few Jelgavans-patrolled the streets of Scansano these days. Mainardo had ordered the Algarvian soldiers fighting in the northeast of his kingdom to lay down their sticks even before his brother, King Mezentio, died in the fall of Trapani. All that was left now was for Mainardo to order all the Algarvians still fighting to do the same.