Out of the Darkness

She can tell when I lie. To Istvan, that was the most terrifying thought of all. Instead of lying, he said nothing at all. Whatever she chose to do to him would be better than a truthful answer to that question.

“Why?” Lammi asked once more. Istvan still did not answer. The inside of the tent was cool-the island of Obuda never got very warm, especially not in late winter-but sweat ran down his face. He could smell his own fear. He didn’t know if Lammi could, but she could hardly miss the sweat. Still softly, she asked, “Is it a scar of expiation?”

“I don’t know what that word means,” Istvan said.

She could tell when he gave her the truth, too. That didn’t do him much good, though. She simplified: “A scar, a wound, to wash away a sin?” Istvan still sat mute, which looked to be answer enough by itself. Lammi asked, “What sort of sin?”

“One I never meant to commit!” Istvan burst out. The Kuusaman mage just sat there, waiting. Again, he said no more. Again, it didn’t seem to matter. Lammi looked at him, looked through him, looked into his heart. She knows. By the stars, she knows, he thought, and despair overwhelmed even terror. A Kuusaman, a foreigner, knew he’d eaten goat. She knew what it meant, too. She knew altogether too much about Gyongyos and its ways. She owns me, he thought hopelessly.

If Lammi did, she didn’t seem anxious to take possession. “We will find you other housing, safer housing,” she said, and spoke to the guards in Kuusaman. They led Istvan out of the tent.

Likely not by coincidence, Kun came out of the other interrogation tent at just the same time. He walked toward Istvan as Istvan headed toward him. The guards didn’t interfere. Istvan looked at Kun’s battered face, and at the devastated expression on it, the same expression he wore himself. The two men embraced and burst into tears. No matter how bright the night sky might be, Istvan didn’t think the stars would ever shine on him again.

Very cautiously, Leudast stuck his head up from behind a shattered wall and peered across the Scamandro. He had reason for caution. The Algarvians had snipers on the east bank of the river, and they were very alert. A man who wasn’t careful would have a beam go in one ear and out the other.

True, eggs were bursting over there, but that wouldn’t make the redheads quit blazing. Leudast knew what sort of men he faced. They’d driven through Unkerlant to the outskirts of Cottbus. Had the war gone just a little differently..

“It’s a good thing there weren’t more of the whoresons,” he muttered.

“What’s that, Lieutenant?” asked Captain Dagaric, who’d taken over as regimental commander after Captain Drogden hadn’t been careful enough while raping an Algarvian woman. Dagaric had efficiency written all over him. He was a good soldier, in a cold-blooded way. Nobody would love him, but he wouldn’t throw men away out of stupidity, either. Given some of the things Leudast had seen, solid professionalism was nothing to sneeze at.

He repeated himself, adding, “Powers below eat ‘em.”

“They will.” Dagaric spoke with assurance. “We are going to hammer them flat when we cross the river. That will be the last fight, because we will take Trapani once we get rolling.”

“May it be so, sir,” Leudast said. “This war. . We had to win it. If we didn’t, they’d’ve held us down forever.”

“I only wish we could get rid of every last one of the buggers,” Dagaric said. “If we treated them the way they treated the Kaunians up in Forthweg, we really wouldn’t have to worry about Algarve for a long time to come.”

Leudast nodded. He didn’t think even King Swemmel would massacre all the redheads in the lands he was overrunning, but you never could tell with Swemmel. Any Unkerlanter would have said the same. And. . “We’ve had to use our own people the way the Algarvians used the Kaunians from Forthweg. Mezentio’s men deserve something extra to pay for that.”

“You bet they do,” Captain Dagaric said. “I expect they’ll get it, too.”

A weird wailing, laughing, gobbling noise came out of the east. Leudast grabbed for his stick. “What in blazes is that? Does it go with some new Algarvian magic?”

Dagaric pointed out to the Scamandro, where a big bird was swimming, its back checked in black and white, its beak a fish-catching spear. “No, it’s just a loon-and you’re another one, for letting the call spook you.”

“They must be birds of the south,” Leudast said. “They don’t live on any streams up near the village I come from.” More than half to himself, he added, “I wonder if anything’s left of the place these days.” Then he spoke to the regimental commander again: “And I don’t see how you can blame me for being jumpy about the fornicating redheads and their magecraft, sir. With all the weird new spells they’re throwing at us these days. .”