Through the Darkness

He spoke his own tongue, but Hajjaj understood. Any cultured man learned classical Kaunian, but only the Kaunians of Forthweg used it as their milk speech. The accent sounded odd to Hajjaj’s ears, but only a little. “I am glad to see you here and safe,” he replied. He spoke slowly, carefully--though fluent in written Kaunian, he seldom had occasion to use it orally.

“You’ve saved us,” the blond said. “You’ve kept us alive when no one would have cared if you’d killed us.” All the other Kaunians gathered around Hajjaj, even the boys and girls, nodded at that.

Another man said, “We’d join your army and fight your foes for you, if only ...” His voice trailed away; he didn’t know how to go on and be polite at the same time.

A woman filled in the blank, saying what had to be in everyone’s mind: “If only you weren’t friends with the Algarvians. You are a good man, your Excellency. You must be a good man. How can you stand to be friends with the Algarvians?” As she asked the question, bewilderment filled her voice and her face.

“Algarve helps my kingdom right wrongs done against us,” Hajjaj answered. “No one else could--no one else would--give us that help.”

“And you help us when no one else could or would,” the first Kaunian man said. “Doing that might turn your friends into your foes.”

Hajjaj shrugged. “It has not happened. I do not think it will happen. Here in the north, Algarve needs us.”

The Kaunians stirred and muttered among themselves. The woman who’d been forthright before was forthright again: “No one needed us in Forthweg-- not the barbarians we lived among, and not the barbarians who overran the land, either.”

If the blonds in Forthweg hadn’t reckoned their far more numerous Forthwegian neighbors barbarians, the Forthwegians might have been less enthusiastic about watching them get shipped off to destruction. Or, on the other hand, the Forthwegians might not have. From the clan struggles among his own people, Hajjaj knew neighbor did not necessarily love neighbor even when they looked alike.

A young woman asked, “Your Excellency, what will you do with us now?”

Her voice was husky and sweet. Before she’d suffered on the sea voyage to Zuwayza, she might well have been quite a beauty. Even gaunt and drawn as she was, she remained striking. Hajjaj thought of a thing or two he would have liked to do with her, even if age kept him from doing such things as often as he once had. She was hardly in a position to refuse him. And he’d needed a third wife, a wife for amusement, ever since he’d sent greedy Lalla back to her clan-father.

He shook his head, angry at himself, and ashamed, too. If he took advantage of her weakness, how was he any different from an Algarvian? “For now,” he answered, “you will stay here. No one will molest you. You will have food and water. After the war is over, we shall decide your permanent fate.”

“If the redheads win, we can all go and throw ourselves back into the sea,” a man said.

He was probably--in fact, he was almost certainly--right. But Hajjaj countered, “If Unkerlant wins, what will become of us Zuwayzin? Much the same, I fear. We shall protect ourselves, and we shall do our best to protect you as well.”

“We thank you,” the striking young woman said, and the rest of the blonds, three or four dozen of them, solemnly nodded. She went on, “We feared you would sink our boats or give us over to King Mezentio’s men. Anything this side of that seems a miracle of kindness.”

Again, all the Kaunians nodded. If common decency seemed a miracle . . . “What will be left of everything we’ve spent so long building up by the time this cursed war finally ends?” Hajjaj asked. No one answered him. He hadn’t thought anyone would.

The excitement of going up to Yliharma was dead inside Pekka. It had been since the Algarvians, with their brutal sorcery, almost leveled the capital of Kuusamo. But, like it or not, research called her out of the south. She was sure she wasn’t the only nervous passenger on the ley-line caravan.

When the caravan pulled into the depot in Yliharma, Pekka grimaced at the cracked walls patched with pale new cement. She also wondered how well the patches would hold if the Algarvians renewed their sorcerous assault on the city. With all her heart, she hoped she wouldn’t have to find out.

Siuntio stood waiting for her on the platform. “Here, let me take your bag,” the old theoretical sorcerer said, reaching for it.

“I’ll do no such thing, Master,” Pekka said indignantly. “I can carry it myself.” Siuntio had aged visibly since they’d started working together. Maybe the strain of the sorcery was telling on him, or maybe the aftermath of the shock from the attack on Yliharma ... or maybe he was simply drawing toward the end of his time. Wherever the truth lay, he looked as if a strong breeze would blow him off the platform. Pekka knew she was stronger than he.

He had to know it, too; his sigh was wistful, not angry. “Well, come along, then,” he said. “I trust the Principality will suffice?”