Harry Turtledove - Jaws of Darkness

Rathar held up a hand. When the Marshal of Unkerlant gave even an informal order, his mean leaped to obey. “Column halt!” the guards screamed, some in their own language, others in fragments of Algarvian.

“Who here speaks Unkerlanter?” Rathar asked. He had a little Algarvian himself, but only a little, and knew no classical Kaunian, the language that tied together educated men of all kingdoms in the east of Derlavai and on the island Kuusamo and Lagoas shared.

A redhead stepped toward him: one of the ones who’d kept his spirit in spite of captivity. “I being in your kingdom three years,” he said, trilling his words in a way no Unkerlanter would. “I learning your speech, some. What you wanting?”

“Your head on a plate,” Gurmun growled.

But Rathar waved him to silence. “What do you think of things now that we have beaten Algarve in the summer as well as the winter?”

The redhead’s shrug was a masterpiece of its kind. “I being in your kingdom three years,” he repeated. “No Unkerlanters in Algarve. No Unkerlanters ever in Algarve. Sooner or later, we winning war.”

Gurmun wasn’t the only one who growled then. So did all the guards who heard the Algarvian. Rathar waved for quiet again. He got it, but he suspected the captive would have a hard time once out of his sight. “How can you say that,” he demanded, “when we’ve driven your countrymen out of most of what they held here in the north in just a few weeks?”

With another shrug, the Algarvian replied, “We having secret sorceries. We using them soon. Turning Unkerlant upsydown, insyout. You seeing.” He sounded like a man who knew exactly what he was talking about.

And Unkerlant had already known too much horror from Algarvian sorceries. Some of the guards muttered among themselves. A couple made signs the peasants used to turn aside evil omens. And now, instead of growling, Gurmun barked: “What kind of sorceries?”

“Not knowing.” The captive shrugged yet again. “If likes of me knowing”- he had a corporal’s pips on his shoulder boards-”not being secret, eh?”

“I think you’re lying,” Gurmun said in a deadly voice.

“Thinking how you liking.” The Algarvian’s voice made it plain he didn’t care what an Unkerlanter, even an Unkerlanter general, thought. “KingMezentiosaying these things so. I believing he.”

Marshal Rathar gestured once more, waving the captives on. The guards screamed at them. They got moving. Before long, the arrogant redhead was lost in the throng. Not soon enough, though, Rathar thought.

“Do you believe the son of a whore?” Gurmun asked, sounding unwontedly nervous.

“I believe he believes himself,” Rathar answered. “Whether Mezentio is telling lies… That’s a different question.”

“It’s not the first we’ve heard of these secret sorceries.” Aye, Gurmun was unhappy. “A lot of the captives we’ve taken lately go on about them. Where there’s smoke, there’s liable to be fire.”

“Where there are Algarvians, there’s liable to be trouble,” Rathar said, and his general of behemoths nodded vigorously. He went on, “Reports have gone back to Cottbus, though, andKingSwemmel doesn’t seem to worried about this.”

“Good,” Gurmun said.

Although Marshal Rathar nodded, he wondered whether it was good. True, Swemmel saw plots behind ever chair and under every rug. If he didn’t think these worrisome reports true, it was a good sign he judged them an Algarvian bluff. That was fine-if he proved right. Every once in a while, though, his instinct let him down badly, as when he’d judged that the Algarvians wouldn’t expect an Unkerlanter attack three years before. Maybe the redheads hadn’t expected such an attack, but if not, it was only because they’d been so far along with plans for their own, which had gone in first. No mistake now could cost as much as that one had-or so Rathar devoutly hoped- but he didn’t want to have to deal with the king’s mistakes under any circumstances.

A crystallomancer burst out of the hut next to the one in which Rathar made his headquarters. “Lord Marshal!” the young man shouted. “We’ve got men inside Forthweg, sir!”

“Told you so.” General Gurmun went from anxious to smug in a heartbeat.

“This is even faster than you thought it would happen,” Rathar said, and Gurmun nodded. The marshal went on: “We have to move east, we truly do.

We’re getting too far behind the line again.” Gurmun nodded once more. Rathar laughed. “Plenty of worse problems to have, by the powers above.” Gurmun chuckled, too. To the men in charge of an advancing army, life looked good.

Talsu set silver on the grocery counter. Since Gailisa’s father was in the shop, she put the money in the cash box before sliding the jar of green olives in a brine flavored with garlic and fennel across the counter. He spoke in a low voice, so her father wouldn’t hear: “With luck, we won’t have to look at Mainardo’s pointy-nosed Algarvian face too much longer.”

“That would be good,” she agreed, also quietly. Then she raised her voice to tell her father, “I’m going home with Talsu now, Papa.”

“All right,” he answered. “I’ll shut the place up myself. You don’t need to worry about that.” He’d stopped trying to persuade her and Talsu to spend their nights there instead of in the tent on the outskirts of Skrunda.

Gailisa took Talsu’s hand as she emerged from behind the counter. They walked out of the grocer’s shop and into the warm twilight of a Jelgavan summer evening. A couple of news-sheet vendors were still waving leaves of paper and shouting their news: “Invaders thrown back before Balvi! King Mainardo’s heroic Algarvian allies triumph in savage righting!”

When one of the vendors waved his sheet at Talsu, he shook his head and kept walking. To Gailisa, he said, “The redheads keep right on telling lies.”

“I know.” She nodded. “You’ll never believe what I heard from one of the women who came into the shop today, though.”

“Will I want to believe it, though?” Talsu asked. When Gailisa nodded again, he said, “Then tell me!”

“Well, what she said was…” Gailisa paused, either for dramatic effect or just to take a breath. “What she said was, either Mainardo’s already run away from Balvi or he’s just about to. He doesn’t want to end up like what’s-his-name, his cousin, did over there in Unkerlant.”

“Boiled alive, you mean,” Talsu said. The news sheets had screamed of Unkerlanter barbarism when that happened. His wife nodded once more. He scratched his head. That was a rumor he wanted to believe. But no matter what he wanted, he saw certain basic difficulties. “How did this woman here in Skrunda know what was going on with the Algarvians way over in Balvi?”

“I don’t know,” Gailisa answered. “I’m telling you what she told me, that’s all. I hope it’s true, don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” Talsu said with a nod of his own. “The only thing better would be having the Lagoans or the Kuusamans catch him and give him to King Donalitu. He’d envy his cousin by the time Donalitu was through with him.”

“He would, wouldn’t he?” Gailisa smiled, but then shook her head. “The things I’m imagining, the things I’m hoping for-even thinking about them would have made me sick a few years ago.”

“It’s the war.” Talsu had seen things and done things and had things happen to him that he never would have imagined before the war, either. One of the things that had happened to him was only too obvious right now. Pointing to the ruins past which he and Gailisa were walking, he said, “Aye, it’s the cursed war. We used to live here.”

Gailisa squeezed his hand. “Your father will find a way to rebuild. He would have already if it were an ordinary fire and not eggs from the sky. We can’t go on living in a tent too much longer.” She sounded more hopeful than sure of that, but Talsu didn’t argue with her. He thought the same thing.