Harry Turtledove - Through the Darkness

“If we take the sure thing,” Rathar said slowly, “we clear the Algarvians from a big chunk of the south.” Vatran nodded. Rathar went on, “As long as we make sure they never get to the Mamming Hills, we go a long way toward winning the war.” Vatran nodded again. Rathar continued, “We can’t take any chances about that. We can’t let them get into a position of driving deep into the south again. We’ll take the sure thing, and then we’ll bang heads with them farther north. I hate that, but I don’t see that we can do anything else.”

“For whatever it’s worth to you, lord Marshal, I think you’re right,” Vatran said. “And after Sulingen goes down, then we can throw everything we’ve got at Durrwangen. And when we do that, I don’t think the Algarvians can hold it.”

“No, not in the wintertime,” Rathar agreed. “They’re better at that game than they were last year, but they’re not good enough.”

“I wonder when we’ll be able to go forward in summer.” Vatran sounded wistful. “Hardly seems fair, the things the Algarvians do to us when the weather’s good.”

“It isn’t fair,” Rathar said. “But we’re getting better, too. They still have more skill than we do, but we’re gaining. And we’re throwing more men into the fight than they can. We’re throwing more of everything into the fight than they can. Sooner or later, that’s bound to pay off.”

“Sooner or later,” Vatran echoed gloomily. But then he brightened. “I think you’re right. Their big hope was to knock us out of the fight that first summer. When they didn’t do it, they found themselves with a problem on their hands.” He pointed at Rathar. “How does it feel to be a problem, lord Marshal?”

“A lot better than not being a problem would.” Rathar eyed the map once more. Now that he’d made up his mind, he wasted no time on half measures. In that, he was much like his sovereign. “If we’re going to take out Sulingen, let’s throw everything we have at it. The sooner the redheads yield-”

“Or the sooner they die,” Vatran broke in.

“Aye. Or the sooner they die. The sooner they stop fighting down there, anyhow, the sooner we can shift men to the north again.” Rathar drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “And they know it, too, curse them. Otherwise, they would have surrendered. They won’t get terms that good again.”

“They don’t deserve ‘em,” Vatran said. “And I’m amazed the king didn’t pitch a fit when you offered them.”

“Truth to tell, I didn’t ask him,” Rathar said, which made Vatran’s bushy white eyebrows fly upward. “But if they had surrendered, he’d have gone along. That would have gone a long way toward winning the war, too, and winning the war is what he wants.”

“One of the things he wants,” Vatran said. “The other thing is, he wants to grind Mezentio’s pointy nose in the dirt. You’d better not try to take that away from him.”

“I wasn’t,” Rathar said, but he did wonder if Swemmel would see things the same way.

These days, Bembo had a hard time swaggering through the streets of Gromheort. Even Oraste, as stolid and unflinching as any Algarvian ever born-he might almost have been an Unkerlanter, as far as temper went-had trouble swaggering through the streets of the occupied Forthwegian town. Too many walls had a single word scrawled on them: SULINGEN.

“It’s still ours,” Bembo said stubbornly. “As long as it’s still ours, these stinking Forthwegians have no business mocking us, and they ought to know it.” He kicked at the slates of the sidewalk. He didn’t even convince himself, let alone Oraste, let alone the Forthwegians.

Oraste said, “We’re going to lose it. We couldn’t push soldiers down there, and the ones who were down there couldn’t get out.” He spat. “It’s not an easy war.”

That was a sizable understatement. Bembo said, “I wonder what they’ll do when they run out of Kaunians here in Forthweg.”

“Good question.” Oraste shrugged. “Probably start hauling ‘em out of Jelgava and Valmiera. Plenty of the blond buggers in those places.” His chuckle was nasty. “And they can’t get away with magicking their looks or dyeing their hair black there, either. Nothing but blonds in the far east.”

“Well, that’s so.” Bembo tried swinging his truncheon, but even that couldn’t give him the panache he wanted. “But who’ll get ‘em on the caravan cars and send ‘em west? Do we have enough men in the east to do the job?”

Oraste spat again. “We can have the constables-the blond constables, I mean-do it for us. Why not? They’d be glad to, I bet-and glad nobody was shipping them off instead of the whoresons they’re catching.”

“You think even a Kaunian would stoop so low?” Bembo asked.

“Kaunians are Kaunians.” Oraste sounded very sure-but then, Oraste always sounded very sure about everything. “Their hair may be blond, but their hearts are black.”

“For that matter, their hair may be black, too, at least in Gromheort,” Bembo said. “I’d like to get my hands on the bastard who thought of that. Wouldn’t he squeal when I was done with him! What we need are mages to nail the ones using those spells.”

“Army needs ‘em more than we do,” Oraste said. “Army gets what it needs. We get what’s left-if there’s anything left. Usually we just get hind tit.”

Somebody behind the two Algarvian constables shouted, “Sulingen!” Bembo and Oraste both whirled. Bembo raised his truncheon as if to break a head. Oraste grabbed for his stick. Both gestures were useless. The Forthwegians they saw were all just walking along the street. No way to tell which one of them had shouted. And they were all smiling, enjoying the occupiers’ discomfiture.

“Ought to blaze a couple of ‘em just for fun,” Oraste growled. “That’d teach ‘em not to get gay.”

“It’d probably touch off a riot, too,” Bembo pointed out. “And if the bigwigs ever found out who did that, they’d throw us in the army and ship us off to Unkerlant. All they want is for things to stay quiet here.”

He sighed with relief when Oraste reluctantly nodded. Of course the occupiers wanted peace and quiet in Forthweg. Anything but peace and quiet would have required more men. Algarve had no men to spare. Anybody who wasn’t doing something vitally important somewhere else was off in the freezing, trackless west, fighting King Swemmel’s men.

“I bet it was a Kaunian who shouted that,” Oraste said.

“Maybe,” Bembo answered. “Of course, the Forthwegians love us, too. They just don’t love us quite as much.”

As Bembo had used “love” to mean something else, so Oraste said something that could have meant, “Love the Forthwegians.” The burly, bad-tempered constable went on, “Those whoresons didn’t have the balls to get rid of their own Kaunians, but do they thank us for doing it for ‘em? Fat chance!”

Bembo said, “When does anybody ever thank a constable?” Part of that was his usual self-pity, part a cynical understanding of the way the world worked.

Then, around a corner, he heard a cacophony of shouts and screams. He and Oraste looked at each other. They both yanked their sticks off their belts and started running.

By the time Bembo turned that corner, he was puffing. He’d always been happier about sitting in a tavern eating and drinking than about any other part of constabulary work. And his girth-especially now that the constables weren’t marching out to the villages around Gromheort to bring back Kaunians-reflected that.

All the yelling was in Forthwegian, which he didn’t understand. But pointing fingers were obvious enough. So were the three men running down the street as fast as they could go, knocking over anybody who got in their way.