Out of the Darkness

“No,” Mantzaros whispered. He spoke in Yaninan to King Tsavellas, who replied in the same tongue. Mantzaros dipped his head, as Yaninans usually did in place of nodding. Returning to Algarvian, he said, “We obey.”

“Good. That is what is required of you, no more-and no less.” He turned his back on the general and the king and strode out of the map room. The painted Yaninans on the hallway walls stared reproachfully from their big, round, liquid eyes. He ignored them, as he had ignored the king and the general once they gave him what he wanted. He also ignored the anxious Yaninan courtiers who tried to get him to tell them what was going on. After fawning, they cringed.

Rathar’s carriage waited outside the palace. “Take me to our headquarters,” he told the driver. The soldier, a stolid Unkerlanter, nodded and obeyed without a word. That suited Rathar fine.

The headquarters was an appropriated house, quite fine, in a district full of fancy shops-certainly fancier than any in Cottbus. The Yaninans couldn’t fight worth a lick, but they lived well. When Rathar walked in, he smelled a pungent, smoky odor he’d never met before and heard General Vatran coughing. “Powers above, what’s that stink?” he demanded.

“I’m breathing the smoke of these leaves I got from the grocer across the street,” Vatran answered between wheezes. He was stocky and white-haired, almost twenty years older than Rathar: one of the few truly senior officers to have survived a generation of Swemmel’s rages, but a solid soldier nonetheless. “Varvakis says they come from some island in the Great Northern Sea, and the natives there all swear by them.”

“For what?” Rathar asked. “Fumigation?”

“No, no, no. Health,” Vatran said. “None of these natives ever dies before he’s a hundred and fifty years old, if you believe Varvakis. And even if you cut what he says in half, that doesn’t sound too bad to me.” He coughed again.

So did Rathar. “Nasty stench,” he said. “If you have to breathe this cursed smoke all the time, I think I’d sooner die. It’ll probably rot your lungs. And if these natives are so bloody wonderful, why do they belong to some Derlavaian kingdom nowadays? All those islands do, you know.”

“You haven’t got the right attitude,” Vatran said reproachfully.

“I don’t care,” Rathar answered “I’ll tell you this, though: Tsavellas and Mantzaros would agree with you.”

“I’ll bet they would,” Vatran said. “You got what you wanted from them, I expect?”

“Of course I did,” Rathar told him. “It was that or pull this kingdom down around their ears. We’ll throw Yaninans over the Skamandros till they bridge it with their bodies if we have to. Then we’ll clean out the stinking redheads ourselves.” He paused. “They don’t stink any worse than those leaves.”

“Sorry, sir.” Vatran didn’t sound sorry. He was grinning. So was Rathar. Why not, when they were pushing the Algarvians back?

Rain blew out of the west, into Colonel Spinello’s face. It could be worse, the Algarvian officer thought as he peered from his riverfront hole in the ground in Eoforwic across the Twegen toward the Unkerlanter positions on the west bank. When he said that aloud, one of the men in his brigade gave him an odd look. “How could it be worse, sir?” the trooper asked, real curiosity in his voice.

“For one thing, it could be snowing.” Spinello had no trouble coming up with reasons. He’d seen the worst the Unkerlanters and the weather could do. “Down in the south, it would be snowing. It probably is, right this minute. And Swemmel’s whoresons could have us surrounded, the way they did down in Sulingen. They could have snipers as close to us as you are to me. One of those bastards blazed me down there, straight through the chest. I’m lucky I’m here. So you see, things aren’t so bad.”

He was a prancing, handsome little gamecock of a man, one who stayed dapper even when things were at their worst. As always, he spoke with great conviction. He believed what he was saying when he said it, and usually made others believe it, too. That was one of the reasons he had such good luck with women. That and technique, he thought smugly.

Every once in a while, of course, even conviction didn’t pay off. The trooper said, “Oh, aye, some luck, sir. You were so lucky, they got you repaired and sent.you up here to give the Unkerlanters another chance at doing you in. You can call that luck if you want, but it’s the kind of luck you can keep, if you ask me.”

“Well, who did ask you?” Spinello said. But that was a gibe, not a reprimand. Freeborn Algarvians, even common soldiers, would speak their minds. That was part of what made them better soldiers than Unkerlanters, who were liable to end up sacrificed if they talked out of turn.