Through the Darkness

Panfilo wasn’t in the line Trasone chose. It snaked forward. With a few drinks in him, he didn’t mind it’s not moving faster. When a drunken soldier started cursing how slowly it moved, two military constables hustled him away. Trasone was glad he hadn’t complained.

After what seemed a very long time, he got inside the brothel. In the downstairs parlor sat six or eight weary-looking women in wide-sleeved long tunics of red or green or yellow silk: almost the uniform of whores down in Forthweg or Unkerlant. About half the women were Unkerlanters, the others Kaunians. Blonds didn’t live in this part of Unkerlant; the Algarvian authorities must have shipped them in for their soldiers’ pleasure. They’d likely get shipped off to a captives’ camp when they wore out, too. Trasone thought most Forthwegian women dumpy and plain. He pointed to a Kaunian. She nodded, slowly rose from her chair, and led him upstairs.

In a little room up there, she pulled off her tunic and lay down naked on the pallet. Trasone quickly got out of his own clothes and lay down beside her. When he began to caress her, she said, “Don’t bother. Just get it over with.” She spoke good Algarvian.

“All right,” he said, and did. She lay still under him. Her eyes were open, but she looked up through him, looked up through the ceiling, to somewhere a million miles away. He had to close his own eyes, because the empty expression on her face put him off his stroke. He didn’t think she’d last much longer. When he grunted and spent himself, the whore pushed at him so she could get up and put her tunic back on.

Trasone went back across the street to the tavern and did some more drinking. After a while, he got back into the line for the whorehouse. This time, he chose a Forthwegian woman. She proved a little livelier; he didn’t feel as if he were coupling with a corpse.

The leave passed that way. He had a dreadful hangover when Major Spinello collected the battalion and started everyone toward the front again. Sergeant Panfilo kept bragging about the havoc he’d wreaked in the brothels of Hagenow. Trasone didn’t mind the boasts; he’d heard their like before. But he kept wishing Panfilo wouldn’t talk so loud.

They were marching west past the labor camp when Trasone said, “Look--they’re taking out a bunch of blonds.”

“What are they going to do with ‘em?” Panfilo asked. “And how do you know they aren’t getting away on their own?”

“They’d be running harder if they were getting away, and they wouldn’t have soldiers standing watch over ‘em.” Trasone’s pounding head made him testy. He pointed again. “And look there--those aren’t just soldiers. They’re mages. They’ve got to be. Nobody in uniform who isn’t a mage stumbles around like that.”

Panfilo chuckled. “Well, I won’t say you’re wrong. And if those are mages ...” His voice dropped. “If those are mages, I think I know what they’re going to do with the Kaunians. So this is how it goes.”

“Aye, this is how it goes,” Trasone agreed. He’d felt the strong lash of Algarvian sorcery passing over him to fall on the Unkerlanters. And he’d been on the receiving end as the Unkerlanters massacred their own people to build a sorcery to strike back at the Algarvians. But he’d never seen how such mage-craft was made. Now he would, unless his squad marched past before the slaughter began.

They didn’t. The Algarvian soldiers in the field lined the Kaunians up in neat rows. Then, at a shouted order Trasone clearly heard, they raised their sticks and started blazing. The blonds who didn’t fall at once tried to run now. That did them no good. The soldiers kept on blazing, and the Kaunians had no place to flee. After a few minutes, they all lay dead or dying.

And the mages got to work. Trasone could hear their chants rising and falling, too, but couldn’t understand a word of them. After a moment, he realized why: they weren’t incanting in Algarvian, but in classical Kaunian. He started to laugh. If that didn’t serve the blonds right, what did?

He felt the power the mages were raising. The soldiers had killed hundreds of Kaunians. How much life energy was that? He couldn’t measure it--he was no wizard. But it was enough and more than enough to make his hair stand on end under his broad-brimmed hat even though he was getting only the tiniest fringe of it as it built.

Then it flashed away. He could tell the very instant the mages launched it at King Swemmel’s men. The feel of the air changed, as it did just after a thunderclap. All that energy would come down on the Unkerlanters’ heads. He turned to Sergeant Panfilo. “Better them than us,” he said. “Powers above, a lot better them than us.” The sergeant didn’t argue with him.

As always, Marshal Rathar was glad to get out of Cottbus. Away from the capital, he was his own man. When he gave an order, everyone leaped to obey. It was almost like being king. Almost. But he’d seen the kind of obedience King Swemmel commanded. He didn’t have that. He didn’t want it, either.