Into the Darkness (6 page)

But the Gyongyosians, like the folk of most other realms these days, were sly enough to silver their dragons’ bellies and the undersides of their wings. The beam that would have burned a hole in man was harmlessly reflected away. The dragon belched forth fire again. Another scream arose. No one blazed back at the beast as it flew off to the west. The wind from its great wingbeats blew Leudast’s hair all awry.

Blinking frantically, he scrambled toward the sticks. As he groped for his own, Magnulf and Berthar came crawling up. “Where’s the captain?” Leudast asked.

“Back there, toasted like bread you forget over the fire,” Magnulf answered. Somewhere west of them, someone kicked a rock. Magnulf cursed. “And here come the Gongs. Let’s see how expensive we can make ourselves. Spread out—we don’t want them getting around our flank.”

Leudast scuttled toward a boulder fifteen or twenty feet away. A beam like the one poor Captain Urgan had aimed at the dragon zipped close to him, but did not strike. He dove behind the boulder, almost knocking the wind out of himself. Then, peering out into the night, he tried to find the spot from which the enemy had blazed at him.

The big disadvantage to using a stick at night was that, if you missed, the flash of light could tell the enemy where you were. If you were smart, you didn’t stay there long. If you moved, though, you were liable to expose yourself, or to make some noise.

Leudast heard some noise off to his right: running footsteps. He whirled. Straight at him came a Gyongyosian trooper who must have noted the thud and clatter he’d made diving for cover. With a gasp, Leudast thrust his forefinger into the recess at the base of his stick.

As much by luck as by good aim, his beam caught the Gong square in the chest. Just for a moment, Leudast saw the enemy’s broad, staring face, made animal-like—at least to a clean-shaven Unkerlanter—by a bushy yellow beard. The fellow let out a grunt, more of surprise than of pain, and toppled.

“The stick,” Leudast muttered, and scurried over to grab it. He didn’t know how much power his own had left. This far from a ley line, with no first-rank mage close by, when that power was gone, it was gone. Good to have a second stick handy.

He scowled at the Gyongyosian’s body, from which rose a faint smell of burnt meat along with the latrine odor of suddenly loosed bowels. The bastard was already dead, sure as sure. A mage didn’t have to be of the first rank to draw energy from a sacrifice. Soldiers who gave themselves up to power their comrades’ sticks won the Star of Efficiency—posthumously, of course—but expending a captive was more efficient still.

It didn’t matter, not here. For one thing, he had no captive, only a corpse. For another, no mages, first-rank or otherwise, were around. He crawled back behind his boulder and waited for the Gyongyosians to press the attack.

For several minutes, they didn’t. Maybe they weren’t sure how much damage the dragon attack had done. Or maybe they weren’t any more enthusiastic about the war than Leudast was. He listened to somebody, presumably an officer, haranguing them in their unintelligible twittering language. Knowing what an Unkerlanter officer would say in such a spot, Leudast guessed the fellow was telling them they’d get worse from him than from their foes if they didn’t start moving.

Here they came, the fuzzy bastards, some of them blazing, others darting forward while the rest made the Unkerlanters keep their heads down. Leudast popped up, took a couple of blazes with his beam, and then ducked again before the Gongs could puncture him as he’d punctured their trooper.

When he heard more of them getting around to his right, he fell back. A beam came horrifyingly close to him, lighting up a rock just in front of his face. But then he was in good cover again, and blazing back at the enemy.

And then, rather to his own surprise, more Unkerlanters came moving up from the rear, shouting King Swemmel’s name as they advanced. The Gyongyosians shouted, too, in dismay. Their chance was gone, and they knew it. The reinforcements even had a small portable egg-tosser with them. How the Gongs howled when they were on the receiving end of eggshells full of light and fire!

“Forward, men!” an Unkerlanter officer shouted. “Let’s drive them out of the mountains and into the flat. King Swemmel and efficiency!”

As far as Leudast was concerned, thinking a couple of platoons of soldiers could drive Gyongyos out of the Elsung Mountains wasn’t very efficient. He lay panting behind his heap of rocks. He’d been in the mountains for a while. No overeager fool was going to get him killed, not when he’d just come through a skirmish in one piece. “Staying alive is efficient, too,” he muttered, and sat tight.

Fernao stood at the bow of the
Leopardess
as she bounded north and west across the waves from Setubal, the capital of Lagoas, toward the Algarvian port of Feltre. The mage felt harassed. Not only did he have to bear in mind the pattern of ley lines on the sea—harder to read than they were on land—but he also had to be alert for any trace of Sibian warships, and perhaps for those of Valmiera, too.

Captain Rogelio came up to him. “Anything?” he asked.

“No, sir.” Fernao shook his head, and felt the ponytail flip back and forth on his neck. Like most Lagoans, he was tall and on the lean side. In some lights, his hair was auburn; in others, a rich brown. His narrow eyes, with a fold of skin at the inner corners that made them look set at a slant, told of Kuusaman blood. “All seems as quiet as if we were still at peace.”

Rogelio snorted. “Lagoas
is
at peace, I’ll thank you to remember. It’s all the other fools who’ve thrown the world into the fire.” He twiddled at his mustache: he wore a big waxed swashbuckler, in Algarvian style.

“As if the world were at peace.” Fernao accepted the correction; like any mage worth his salt, he craved precision. After a moment, he went on, “In the Six Years’ War, we chose sides.”

“And a whole great whacking lot of good it did us, too,” the captain of the
Leopardess
said with another snort. “What did we get out of it? Thousands—tens, hundreds of thousands—dead, even more maimed, a war debt we’re just now starting to get out from under, half our shipping sunk—and you want to do it again? Here’s what I think of that.” He spat—carefully, over the leeward rail.

“I never said I wanted to do it again,” Fernao replied. “My older brother died in the woods in front of Priekule. I don’t remember much about him; I was only six or seven. I lost an uncle—my mother’s younger brother—and a cousin, and another cousin came home short a foot.” He shrugged. “I know it’s not anything special. Plenty of families in Lagoas have worse stories to tell. Too many families simply
aren’t,
after the Six Years’ War.”

“That’s
the truth,” Rogelio said with an emphatic nod. Everything he did was emphatic; he aped Algarvian style in more than his mustache. “So why do you sound so cursed glum about staying at peace, then?”

“I’m not glum about our staying at peace,” Fernao said. “I’m glum about the rest of the world going back to war. All the kingdoms of eastern

Derlavai suffered as much as we did.”

“And Unkerlant,” Rogelio put in. “Don’t forget Unkerlant.”

“Unkerlant is a kingdom of eastern Derlavai … in a manner of speaking,” Fernao said with a thin smile. The smile soon slipped. “Thanks to the Twinkings War, they hurt themselves worse than Algarve ever managed, and Algarve hurt them plenty.”

Rogelio’s lip curled scornfully. “They were
efficient
at hurting themselves.”

Fernao’s chuckle had a bitter edge. “King Swemmel will make the Unkerlanters efficient about the time King Gainibu makes the Valmierans shy.”

“But Gainibu has a little sense—as much as you can expect from a Valmieran, anyhow,” Rogelio said. “He doesn’t try to make his people into something they’re not.” The captain waved a hand. “There! You see, my friend? Between us, we’ve solved all the problems in the world.”

“All but one: how to get the world to pay any attention to us,” Fernao said. His sardonic streak made a good counter to Rogelio’s extravagances.

When it came to running the
Leopardess,
though, the captain was all business. “If we are sailing an evasive course, my sorcerous friend, should we not be shifting ley lines soon?”

“If we really wanted an evasive course, we
would
sail, with canvas and masts, as they did in the days of the Kaunian Empire,” Fernao said. “If we did that, we could slip by Sibiu close enough to spit, and we’d never be noticed.”

“Oh, aye, no doubt,” Rogelio said, arching his eyebrows. “And if a storm blew up at the wrong time, it’d fling us on to the Rocks of Cluj, too. No, thank you! They might have been men in those days, but they were madmen, if anybody wants to know what I think. Sailing by wind and by guess, without the earth’s energy matrix to draw on? You’d have to be a madman to try that.”

“No, just an ignorant man—or a yachtsman,” Fernao said. “Not being either of those myself…” He drew from around his neck an amulet of lodestone and amber set in gold. Holding it between the palms of his hands, he felt of the energy flowing through the ley line along which the
Leopardess
cruised. He could not have put into words the sensation that passed through him, but he understood what it meant. “Three minutes, Captain, perhaps four, before our line intersects the next.”

“Time enough for me to get to the wheel myself, then,” Rogelio said. “That chucklehead of a helmsman we’ve got would likely be picking his nose or playing with himself when you signaled, and then we’d just keep barreling along, probably right down the Sibs’ throats.”

Without waiting for an answer, he hurried away. Fernao knew he was maligning the helmsman. He also knew Rogelio knew he was being outrageous, and that the captain always used the fellow with great courtesy when they were together. Extravagant Rogelio was; simple, no.

And then the mage forgot about Rogelio, forgot about everything but the sensation trickling out of the amulet and through him. He was not so much its interpreter as its conduit, in the same way that the ley line was a conduit for the energy the amulet sensed. He leaned a little as the trickle shifted, then thrust his right hand high into the air.

The
Leopardess
swung to starboard, the deck heeling under Fernao’s feet. No mere sailing ship could have turned so sharply; the motion was almost as if a geometer had scribed a right angle. Fernao could not see the crossing of the ley lines, but he did not need to see them. He had other senses.

As soon as he was sure the turn was good and true, he slid the amulet’s chain back over his head, returning the familiar weight to where it normally rested, just above his heart. From the bridge, Rogelio waved to him. He waved back. He took pride in what he did, and in doing it well.

And then, suddenly, he frowned. He yanked out the amulet once more and held it between his hands. He waved to the bridge again, urgently this time. “Captain!” he shouted. “We’re going to have company.”

“What’s toward?” Rogelio shouted back, cupping his hands in front of his mouth to make a megaphone.

“Quiver in the ley line, Captain—no, quivers.” Fernao corrected himself. “Two ships on this line, heading our way. Maybe an hour out from us, maybe a little less.”

Rogelio cursed. “They’ll know we’re here, too?” he demanded.

“Unless their mages are asleep, yes,” Fernao answered.

More curses came from the captain of the
Leopardess.
Then he grasped for a bright side to the unwelcome news. “They wouldn’t by any chance by Algarvian ships come to escort us into port?”

Fernao frowned once more; that hadn’t occurred to him. He concentrated on the amulet. “I don’t
think
they’re Algarvian,” he said at last, “but I can’t be sure. Sibiu and Algarve use about the same ley magic, not much different from ours. They aren’t Valmierans; I’m sure of that. Valmiera and Jelgava have their own style.”

Rogelio came forward, to be able to talk without screaming. “They’re going to be Sibs, all right,” he said. “Now life gets interesting.”

“We’re neutrals,” Fernao said. “Sibiu needs our trade more than Algarve does: those islands don’t come close to raising everything the Sibians want. If they try to block us, they go under embargo. You’d have to be a lackwit to think King Vitor would say something like that without meaning it, and the Sibs aren’t lackwits.”

“They’re in a war,” Rogelio said. “You don’t think straight when you’re in a war. Anyone who doesn’t know that is a lackwit, too, my dear mage.”

“As may be.” Fernao bowed with exquisite courtesy. “I tell you this, though, my dear captain: if Sibiu interferes very much with Lagoan shipping, Vitor won’t just embargo them. He will go to war, and that fight is one Sibiu can’t win.”

“The Sibs against Algarve and us?” Rogelio pursed his lips, then nodded. “Well, you’re right about that, though I’m hanged if I fancy the notion of allying with King Mezentio.”

“We wouldn’t be allies, just people with the same enemies,” Fernao said. “Unkerlant and Kuusamo are both fighting the Gyongyos, but they aren’t allies.”

“Would
you
ally with the Unkerlanters? I’d almost sooner pucker up and kiss Mezentio’s bald head,” Rogelio returned. Then he bared his teeth in a horrible grimace. “If the Sibs could talk Kuusamo into jumping on our backs, though—”

“That won’t happen,” Fernao said, and hoped he was right. He had reason to think so, anyhow: “Kuusamo won’t get into two wars at the same time.”

Rogelio grunted. “Mm, maybe not.
I
wouldn’t want to be in two wars at once. By the king’s beard, I wouldn’t even want to be in one war at once.”

A hail from the crow’s nest made him turn: “Two ships on the western horizon, sir! They look like Sibian frigates.”

Rogelio dashed for the bridge. Fernao peered west. The lean shark shapes swelled rapidly: Sibian frigates sure enough, bristling with sticks and with egg-tossers whose glittering spheroids could disable a ship at a range of several miles. The
Leopardess
could neither fight them nor outrun them.