Harry Turtledove - Jaws of Darkness

“So they don’t speak our language, eh?” Istvan said. Just asKun enjoyed making Szonyi look like a fool, Istvan enjoyed turning the tables on cleverKun. He got fewer chances than he would have liked, but made the most of the ones he did find.

Kun, as usual, looked furious at getting caught in a mistake. Doing his best to discover how such a disaster might have happened, he asked the Algarvian, “Where did you learn to speak Gyongyosian?”

“My father was on the staff of the minister to Gyongyos years ago,” the redheaded man answered, “and I was born in Gyorvar. So you could say I learned your language in your capital.”

That was more than Istvan could say himself. His own upcountry accent sometimes made him feel self-conscious when he spoke to officers or others who had a more elegant turn of phrase-sometimes even toKun, who sprang from Gyorvar. But Istvan knew what he wanted to find out: “Why are you here, so far from Algarve?” Asking the question that way let him disguise his own geographical shortcomings, too.

With a wave to his comrades, the Algarvian said, “We crewed two leviathans that were bringing… oh, one thing and another from Algarve to Gyongyos. We would have brought other things back from Gyongyos to Algarve: the kinds of things you have more of than we do, and that we could use in the war.”

Istvan started to ask what sorts of things those were, but decided not to. Some of the Kuusaman guards were bound to speak his language, and he didn’t want to give them the chance to learn anything interesting. Instead, he said, “And something went wrong, did it?”

“You might say so,” the redheaded man replied. “Aye, you just might say so. Some Kuusaman dragons were flying east to drop eggs on some island or other that belongs to you, and they saw our leviathans and dropped their eggs-or enough of their eggs-on them instead. They hurt the animals too badly to let them go on. After that, it was either surrender or try to swim home by ourselves.” He shrugged. “We surrendered.”

Istvan tried to imagine guiding a leviathan-no, a couple of leviathans- from Algarve all the way to Gyongyos. From one side of the world to the other. He couldn’t very well tell the foreigners that they should have fought to the death, not when he’d wound up in a captives’ camp, too.

Eyeing the barracks and the yard with something less than delight, the Algarvian asked, “What do you people do for fun around here?”

“What do we do for fun?” Istvan returned. “Why, we chop wood. We dig latrines. When we’re very lucky and we haven’t got anything else to do, we sit around and watch the trees out beyond the stockade grow.”

The Algarvian had a marvelously expressive face. Hearing Istvan’s reply, he looked as if he’d just heard his father and mother had died. “And what do you do for excitement?” he inquired.

“If you want excitement, you can try to escape,” Istvan answered. “Maybe you can get out of the camp. Then maybe you can steal a ship. Then maybe you wouldn’t have to swim home.”

“I am always glad to meet a funny man,” the redhead said. Istvan started to puff out his chest, till the Algarvian added, “Too bad I am not so glad to meet you.” His smile took away most of the sting; it might have taken away all of it hadKun not sniggered. Istvan gave him a dirty look, which only made him snigger again, louder this time.

Even when he’d commanded a company as a sergeant, Leudast hadn’t been allowed to attend officers’ conferences. He was still commanding a company, but, thanks to luck andMarshalRathar, he was a lieutenant these days. That entitled him to know what would happen before it happened to him.

Here, he and Captain Recared and a couple of dozen officers commanding units much larger than their ranks properly entitled them to lead sat in a barn that still stank of cow and listened to a colonel who was probably doing a lieutenant general’s job explaining the details of what the Unkerlanter army would try next in the south. “And so,” the colonel was saying, “if we succeed, if all goes as planned, we shall finally drive the cursed Algarvians from the soil of the Duchy of Grelz, exactly as our glorious comrades in arms have driven them out of northern Unkerlant. High time, I say-high time indeed.”

A low-voiced rumble rose from the officers: “Aye.” Leudast joined it, but had other things on his mind. So they’ve driven the redheads out of the north altogether, have they? That means my home village belongs to Unkerlant again. The thought would have cheered him more had he not paused to wonder if any of it was still standing. It would have been fought over at least twice, and, for all he knew, more often than that.

“Have you any questions?” the colonel asked. A couple of majors did, and even a brash captain. Leudast kept his mouth shut. He was without a doubt the most junior officer in the barn, and didn’t want to remind anyone else that he was there at all. The colonel efficiently disposed of the queries; unlike a good many commanders Leudast had known, he actually had some notion of what he was talking about. He finished, “We’ve wanted to pay those whoresons back for years. Now we put them in a sack and then pound the sack to pieces.”

Somebody said, “We’ll find all sorts of strange things in the sack, too.”

“So we will,” the colonel agreed. “Algarvians, Yaninans, Forthwegians, even blonds from out of the far east.” He shrugged. “So what? It only shows the redheads are scraping up everything they can to try to hold us back. But it won’t work. Glory toKingSwemmel! Glory to Unkerlant!”

“Glory to Swemmel! Glory to Unkerlant!” the officers chorused. The meeting broke up.

Leudast and Captain Recared walked back to their position together. Leudast pointed. “Look at all the egg-tossers we’ve got waiting for the redheads.”

“Egg-tossers and behemoths and dragons and men,” Recared said. “The river is running our way now. They’ll try to dam it up-they always fight hard-but we should have our way with them.”

“Aye.” Leudast nodded. “They threw everything they had at the Durrwangen bulge last year. They haven’t done any throwing since. They’ve been catching instead.”

Recared nodded, too. “That’s right. And they’ll catch it good and proper come tomorrow morning.”

And Leudast and Recared passed a stockade. Guards stood stolidly around the perimeter. The stink of long-unwashed bodies wafted over the wall. “Is that what they’re doing with the soldiers they court-martial these days?” Leudast asked. “I thought they just put them in punishment battalions and threw them at the redheads first.”

“They do,” Recared answered. “Those aren’t soldiers in there. Come on.” He walked faster, plainly wanting to get away from the stockade as soon as he could.

“They aren’t soldiers?” Leudast said. “Then who…? Oh.” He walked faster, too. “I wish we didn’t have to do that.” How had the wretches behind the stockade ended up where they were? By being desperate criminals? Maybe. By being in the wrong place at the wrong time? That struck Leudast as much more likely. He said no more. Those who complained about such things might end up behind a stockade themselves.

When he got back to his own encampment, he feigned cheeriness, whether he really felt it or not. “We’ve got a good plan and plenty of what we need to make it work,” he told his company. Every word of that was true, too. If it wasn’t the whole truth, the soldiers didn’t need to know it. “Tomorrow morning, we’re going to make the Algarvians sorry they ever set foot in Unkerlant.”

His men cheered. SergeantHagen, who’d replaced Kiun, said, “We’ll do better than that. We’ll make the cursed Algarvians sorry they were ever born-isn’t that right, Lieutenant?”Hagen was very young, and had a youngster’s terrifying enthusiasm.