Through the Darkness

He hadn’t got more than halfway across when a glad cry rang out: “They’re ours, sir.” The Algarvian kept running. A moment later, he too shouted happily.

Staring through the fog, Sidroc saw several great shapes moving toward him on the bridge. Sure enough, the lead behemoth wore Algarvian-style chainmail and was draped in banners of green, red, and white. So was the second. The third . . .

With sunrise, the breeze picked up. The mist swirled and billowed. When Sidroc got a good look at the third behemoth, he froze for a moment in horror worse than any he’d ever imagined. Then he shouted, as loud as he could: “It’s a trick! They’re Unkerlanters!”

He was right. It did him no good whatever. By then, the first behemoth, which wore captured armor and false colors, had almost reached his end of the bridge. Its crew--who, he saw, had even dyed their hair to make the imposture better--started tossing eggs into Presseck. Those bursts woke men Sidroc’s shout hadn’t: woke them, too often, to terror and torment.

Sidroc blazed at the Unkerlanters. But they, like their behemoths, were well armored. The beast thundered forward, onto the north bank of the Presseck. Then the one behind it, also disguised, gained the northern bank. After them came a long column of behemoths honestly Unkerlanter. A heavy stick started a fire in one of the huts in Presseck.

The men of Plegmund’s Brigade fought the Unkerlanters as hard as they could. They slew a good many of the men aboard the behemoths, and even a couple of the massive animals themselves. But they had no hope of holding the bridge or driving the foe back over the Presseck. Along with his comrades, Sidroc battled on till hope, and a good many of the men, died. And at the last, he and the rest of the troopers still alive did what they had to do: they fled.

Cornelu patted his leviathan: not a command, a gesture of affection. “Do you see how lucky we are?” he said to the beast. “We get to go north for the winter.”

Back in the lost and distant days of peacetime, many people from Lagoas and Kuusamo--aye, and from Sibiu, too--had gone on winter holiday to the subtropic beaches of northern Jelgava, to lie on the sand burdened by a minimum of clothing if by any at all and to drink the citrus-flavored wines for which the kingdom was famous. Love affairs in Jelgava had filled the pages of trashy romances. But if anyone went on holiday there these days, it was Algarvian soldiers recuperating from the dreadful cold of Unkerlant.

As far as the leviathan was concerned, cold wasn’t dreadful. It preferred the waters of the Narrow Sea to those off the coast of Jelgava. Why not? Plenty of blubber kept it warm. And the Narrow Sea swarmed with fish and squid. Pickings were thinner in these parts.

But the leviathan didn’t go hungry here. When a fat tunny swam past, it gave chase and ran the fish down. It was a big tunny; the leviathan had to make two bites of it. The water turned red. That might draw sharks, but they would be sorry if they came.

At Cornelu’s signal, the leviathan stood on its tail so he could see farther. Two mountains were visible to his right, one to his left. One of the mountains to his right had a notch in its slope. He nodded and signaled that the leviathan might relax back into the water.

“We are where we’re supposed to be,” he said, urging his mount closer to the shore. Before long, he could hear waves slapping the beach.

He halted the leviathan at that point, not wanting to get so close as to risk stranding it. He hadn’t come all the way to the far north; with luck, the beach would be deserted--except for the man he was supposed to pick up.

After inflating a small rubber raft, he told the leviathan, “Stay,” and used the taps on the animal’s smooth, slick hide that turned the order into something it could grasp. Such a command wouldn’t hold it there indefinitely, but he didn’t intend to be gone long. Then he struck out for the shore.

At first, he thought the beach altogether empty. That wasn’t the way things were supposed to be. He wondered if something had gone wrong. If the Algarvians had nabbed the man he was supposed to get, they were liable to be lying in wait for him, too. He wished his line of work had no risks attached, but things didn’t work that way. He kept on pushing the raft toward the beach.

Some of the waves were bigger than they’d looked from out to sea. Riding them on the raft gave him some hint of what a leviathan felt like when gliding effortlessly through the water. Certain savages on the islands of the Great Northern Sea, he’d read, rode the waves upright, standing on boards. He’d thought that barbaric foolishness when he saw it in print. Now he realized it might be fun.

Then a wave curled over him and plunged him into the water, knocking away the raft. Had he not been fortified with a leviathan-rider’s spells, he might have drowned. He clawed his way to the surface and recaptured the raft. Maybe those wave-riding savages weren’t so smart after all.