Harry Turtledove - Jaws of Darkness

He nodded. “Too big for a dragon to carry, you’d think.” He had to do some shouting of his own to get his partner to understand. “And I still don’t hear any warning bells.” Someone came staggering out of the barracks: an Algarvian, badly burned and bleeding. How anyone could have lived through that blast of sorcerous energy was beyond Bembo, but he ran toward the other constable to give him what help he could.

Before he reached his countryman, the fellow clapped both hands to his chest and toppled. He might almost have been blazed. Then a beam burned the ground by Bembo’s feet, and he realized the other Algarvianhad been blazed.

He wasn’t a soldier. He’d never been a soldier. He had no interest in becoming a soldier. He had a great deal of interest innever becoming a soldier. All of which, when someone started blazing at him, meant exactly nothing. He dove for cover as if he’d been fighting in the west against the Unkerlanters for years.

“Get down!” he shouted to Delminio, who still stood there staring as if he hadn’t the slightest idea what was going on. Maybe Delminio didn’t. A moment later, Bembo’s partner clutched at his shoulder and went down, so he’d got his lesson. Bembo hoped it wouldn’t prove too expensive.

Other shouts started piercing the ringing in Bembo’s ears. They weren’t in his language, but in raucous Forthwegian. He couldn’t understand a word of them. No, that wasn’t true after all. One word he understood very well: Penda.

Stupid buggers have gone and risen up, sure as blazes, he thought, peering out from behind the smoking rubble in back of which he sprawled. They’ll pay for that. Oh, how they‘ll pay.

Someone in a half-shattered building across the street from the barracks moved. Bembo didn’t know exactly what the motion was or just who’d made it. Whoever it was, though, was bound to be a Forthwegian, which meant- which suddenly meant-an enemy. Bembo raised his stick to his shoulder and blazed. He heard a shriek. He heard it very clearly, and shouted in fierce triumph. All at once, he was delighted he had that long, heavy army-issue stick.

“You want us, you’ll have to pay for us!” he yelled. A beam seared the air inches above his head. He smelled thunder and lightning. Exultation trickled out of him as he realized the Forthwegian rebels were liable to be willing to do just that.

Saxburh wailed in her cradle. Vanai hurried to pick up the baby and put her on her breast. That was what Saxburh wanted. Her cries ceased. She sucked and gulped contentedly. Vanai stroked her fine, soft hair. It was dark, as Ealstan’s was, but the baby’s skin was too fair, too pale, for a full-blooded Forthwegian’s. Sure enough, Saxburh showed both sides of her family.

Eggs burst, not far away. The windows rattled. They hadn’t shattered yet; powers above only knew why. Vanai felt like shrieking, too, but who would comfort her if she did? No one she could think of. Not even Ealstan could do that.

Vanai cursed softly, desperately. Was Ealstan here, staying close by her side while she took care of their daughter? She shook her head. “He had to go fight,” she told Saxburh. “He had to try to kick the redheads out of Eoforwic. He thought that was more important.”

Her daughter stared up at her out of eyes darkening from blue toward brown. The baby had just learned how to smile. She tried to smile and nurse at the same time. Milk dribbled down her chin.

“He’s a fool,” Vanai went on in classical Kaunian, dabbing at Saxburh’s face with a rag. “He’s nothing but a fool. He thinks the Algarvians will go away just like that.” She snapped her fingers. The sound startled the baby, who jerked her head-and tried to take Vanai’s breast with it. Vanai yelped. That made Saxburh look back toward her, again without letting go. Her moving that way hurt less.

After a little while, Saxburh grunted and made a mess in her drawers. Vanai changed them, cleaned the baby off and rubbed olive oil on her bottom, and then nursed her some more. Saxburh’s eyes sagged shut. Vanai slid the nipple out of her mouth, hoisted the baby to her shoulder, and got a sleepy belch out of her. A couple of minutes later, she set Saxburh back in the cradle and closed the toggles on her tunic.

She went to the kitchen and poured herself a cup of wine. Nursing always left her thirsty. As she drank, she looked out the window. She wasn’t afraid anyone on the street would recognize her as a Kaunian. For one thing, the Forthwegians held this part of Eoforwic. And, for another, her masking spell worked as well as it always had, now that she wasn’t pregnant any more. She looked like a Forthwegian, and she would for hours yet.

Dark brown bloodstains marred the gray slates of the sidewalk. Vanai couldn’t tell which ones came from Algarvians and which from Forthwegians. No Algarvians were left alive hereabouts, not now.

Smoke’s sharp scent filled the air. So did the nastier dead-meat stench from unburied bodies. Looking west, Vanai saw fresh smoke rising from a dozen fires inside Eoforwic and even more smoke, huge black columns of it, on the far side of the Twegen River. The Unkerlanters were closing in on Eoforwic, moving so fast that not even the news sheets, which had to give forth with Algarvian lies, could cover up the magnitude of the disaster that had befallen Mezentio’s men here in the north.

Vanai’s mouth twisted. If the Unkerlanters hadn’t come so far so fast, the Forthwegian underground wouldn’t have risen up. Vanai didn’t much care whether Forthwegians or Unkerlanters gave orders in these parts-anyone but Algarvians suited her fine.

But Ealstan cared. Though he differed from most of his countrymen in his views about Kaunians, Ealstan was a Forthwegian patriot. He wanted King Penda back. He wanted the Forthwegians to free their own kingdom, or as much of it as they could. And he was willing-no, he was horribly eager- to risk his life to help bring that about.

“He’s an idiot,” Vanai whispered-she didn’t want to disturb Saxburh. But she meant it all the way down to the depths of her soul. The baby was real. The baby was there. Set against Saxburh’s reality, what did the kingdom of Forthweg matter? Nothing, not so far as Vanai could see. But Ealstan thought differently.

Men are stupid, went through Vanai’s mind, not for the first time. She’d done everything she could to keep Ealstan here in the flat. Nothing had worked: not argument, not pleading, not tears. Pybba told him there was going to be a fight, and after that he might as well have been deaf and blind. Vanai had no trouble at all hating the pottery magnate.

More eggs burst, all in one sector of the city north of the flat. Vanai cursed again, in classical Kaunian and in Forthwegian. The Algarvians had far more egg-tossers than Pybba’s ragtag and bobtail. True, Mezentio’s men needed everything they could scrape together against the Unkerlanters, but they also couldn’t afford to lose Eoforwic. They were fighting back hard.

Footsteps in the hallway. Vanai’s heart beat faster. She didn’t have to fear Algarvian constables, not for a while. That thudding heart meant hope. And, at the coded knock, she jumped in the air and squeaked for joy.

Carrying a stick with the Algarvian green-red-and-white shield enameled on near the touch-hole, Ealstan strode into the flat. His tunic was filthy. So was he. He wore an armband, also grimy now, that said free forthweg-as close as the irregulars came to having real uniforms. “Home for a little while,” he said around a yawn. “Then I have to go back.”

Despite the dismay stabbing through her at that, and despite his not having bathed for days, Vanai threw her arms around him and kissed him. Then she said, “There’s hot water on the stove. I can pour some in a basin. If you want to clean up while I get you something to eat. ..”