Harry Turtledove - Through the Darkness

“Tell him what you heard,” the bootmaker said, instead of coming back with a sally of his own.

“I’ll get round to it, never fear.” As Skarnu had been a power round Pavilosta, so the painter was a power in Ventspils. He did things his way, not the way anyone told him to do them. As if to say he wouldn’t be rushed, he finished his drink and waved for another one. Only after he’d got it did he remark, “The redheads will be bringing some captured Lagoan dragonfliers through town tonight, on the way to the captives’ camp outside Priekule.”

Lagoans were redheads, too, but nobody used the word to include them. Skarnu asked, “Can we filch ‘em?”

“We’re going to try,” the painter answered. “I know you can use a stick, so I want you in on it.” Skarnu nodded. The underground knew he’d blazed Count Simanu, Count Enkuru’s even more unsavory son. Unfortunately, that meant the Algarvians were also good bets to know. Traitors everywhere, he thought. But some traitor to the Algarvian cause had let them know the dragonfliers would be coming. It evened out-though even wasn’t good enough to suit Skarnu. The man from Ventspils went on, “We’ll meet behind the clock tower a little before midnight.”

Meeting before midnight sounded romantic. In reality, it was bloody cold. Men straggled in a couple at a time. They got sticks easily concealable down a trouser leg-not the sort of weapon Skarnu would have wanted to take to war, but one with which he could walk through the streets of the town.

“They’re not coming by ley-line caravan?” he asked the painter.

“Not from what I heard,” the local answered. “I don’t know whether they got blazed down someplace where there aren’t any ley lines or Mezentio’s men didn’t feel like laying on a caravan, but they’re not. Just a carriage. If they’re coming up through town, they’ll get in by Duchess Maza Road, up from the southeast.”

Having come into Ventspils from the southwest, Skarnu knew nothing of Duchess Maza Road. He tagged along with the other Valmierans who hadn’t given up on their kingdom. He wondered what they would do if they ran into an Algarvian patrol, but they didn’t. With the war in Unkerlant sucking men west, fewer Algarvians were left to watch the streets.

“Keep an eye out for Valmieran constables, too,” the painter warned. “Too many of them are in bed with the redheads.” That made Skarnu think of Krasta again, but he shook his head. Too many Valmierans of all sorts were in bed with the redheads.

They spied only one pair of constables on the way to the road into town from the southeast, and ducked out of sight before the constables saw them. Then it was on to Duchess Maza Road, into ambush positions behind tree trunks and fences, and wait.

Skarnu wondered how they would know the right carriage, but they had no trouble. Four Algarvian horsemen guarded it, two in front, two behind. But, by the way they rode, they thought they were there to make a fine procession, nothing more. Because they weren’t looking for danger, it found them.

“Now!” the painter said in a low, savage voice. His double handful of followers blazed the redheads off their horses and the driver off his carriage. The Algarvians managed only startled squawks before they went down. The next group of redheads who came through Ventspils with captives would doubtless be more alert, but that did these men no good at all.

Skarnu ran toward the carriage. He paused a moment to finish an Algarvian who still writhed on the cobbles, then seized a horse’s head to keep the beast from bolting. Another man blazed off the stout padlock that held the carriage door closed. As it fell with a clank, he spoke in Lagoan.

The door opened. A couple of men jumped down from the carriage. “Away!” the painter said urgently. The men of the underground scattered. One of them led off the rescued dragonfliers. The rest headed back to their homes. Skarnu moved slowly through the dark streets of Ventspils, not wanting to get lost. Another lick against Algarve, he thought, and wondered what the next one would be.

What was left of Plegmund’s battered Brigade welcomed two new regiments hurried down from Forthweg with all the charm veterans usually showed new fish. Now a veteran himself, Sidroc jeered along with his comrades: “Does your mother know you’re here?” he asked a recruit obviously several years older than he was. “Does your mother know they’re going to bury you here?”

He howled laughter. So did his comrades. They were all a little, or more than a little, drunk, having liberated several jars of spirits from a village the Unkerlanters had abandoned in haste. Had the Unkerlanters abandoned it in something less than haste, they would have taken their popskull with them.

Sergeant Werferth said, “Nobody told him that when he comes down here, the buggers on the other side blaze back.”

That set the survivors of overrun Presseck into fresh gales of laughter. The recruits stared at them as if they’d gone mad. Maybe we have, Sidroc thought. He didn’t much care, one way or the other. He swigged from his canteen. More raw spirits ran hot down his throat.

Those spirits gave him most of the warmth he felt. The tents of Plegmund’s Brigade sat on the vast plains of southern Unkerlant, out in the middle of nowhere, so the frigid wind could get a running start before it blew through them. He said, “One thing-the Algarvians with us are every bit as cold as we are.”

“Serves ‘em right,” Ceorl said.

“Together, we and the Algarvians will drive Swemmel’s barbarians back into the trackless west,” the recruit said stiffly.

Together, Sidroc, Werferth, and Ceorl howled laughter. “We’ll try and stay alive,” Sidroc said. “And we’ll try and kill some Unkerlanters, because that’ll help us stay alive.”

“Don’t waste your time on him,” Werferth said. “He’s a virgin. He’ll find out. And if he lives through it, he’ll be telling the new recruits what they need to know next summer. If he doesn’t-” He shrugged.

Sidroc’s head ached the next morning. Ache or not, he drew himself to attention to listen to an Algarvian officer harangue the men of the Brigade. “We are part of something larger than ourselves,” the officer declared. “We shall rescue our brave Algarvian comrades down in Sulingen, we and this force King Mezentio’s might has gathered.”

He let loose with a typically extravagant, typically expansive Algarvian gesture. Sure enough, the tents of Plegmund’s Brigade weren’t the only ones on the plain. Several brigades of Algarvians had been mustered with them, and troop after troop of behemoths. It was a formidable assemblage. Whether it was formidable enough to punch through the cordon the Unkerlanters had drawn around Sulingen, Sidroc didn’t know. He knew it would do all it could.

“We must do this,” the Algarvian officer said. “We must, and so we can, and so we shall. Where the will is strong, victory follows.”

Redheads were drawn up getting their marching orders, too. “Mezentio!” they shouted, with as much spirit as if they were going on parade through Trapani to show off for pretty girls.

Not to be outdone, the Forthwegians who’d taken service with Algarve shouted, “Plegmund!” as loud as they could, doing their best to outyell the men who’d taught them what they knew of war. The Algarvians yelled back, louder than ever. It was a good-natured contest, nothing like the one that lay ahead.

Snow swirled through the air as Sidroc tramped south. “Loose order!” officers and underofficers called. He knew why: to keep too many of them from getting killed at once if things went wrong. He had a heavy cloak, and a white snow smock over it. He wore a fur hat some Unkerlanter soldier didn’t need any more. The weather was colder than any he’d ever known, but he wouldn’t freeze. He hoped he wouldn’t.