Harry Turtledove - Jaws of Darkness

“A bargain,” Pybba said at once. “You’re a stubborn whoreson. You’re almost as stubborn as I am, I think-the only difference is, you’re a fool.”

Ealstan, of course, reckoned Pybba the fool. “Never mind,” he said. “You got in a last insult. Huzzah for you. Now give me my orders, so I can go do them.”

“Right.” Pybba pointed toward the center of the city. “We’ve got a force building in a park, getting ready to cut the Algarvians’ corridor to the palace and to the ley-line terminal. Go make sure they’re ready to move. Tell ‘em the attack is still on. The fellow in charge there already knows what time.”

“Fine. Shall I join it?”

“If you want to.” Pybba spoke with relentless indifference. A moment later, though, he checked himself and shook his head. “No, you know too cursed much. Can’t have the redheads nabbing you and tearing it out of you.”

“Right,” Ealstan said tightly. He turned on his heel and strode-almost stomped-out of Pybba’s office and out of the pottery works that was now the headquarters for the rebellion. As he left, he laughed a little. One thing the uprising had done: it had cost the Algarvians their source of Style Seventeen sugar bowls. They would have to use something else instead of hold their little eggs.

Eoforwic looked like what it was, a city torn by war. Smoke thickened the air. Ealstan hardly noticed; he’d got very used to it. Eggs burst not far away.

He’d got used to that, too. And he’d got used to glassless windows, to buildings with chunks bitten out of them, and to charred beams sticking up like leafless branches from the wreckage. The Forthwegian capital hadn’t suffered too badly when the Unkerlanters seized it, or when the Algarvians took it away fromKingSwemmel ’s men. It was making up for lost time.

He found the park without much trouble. Finding the man in charge of the attack took more work, but he finally did. The fellow nodded brusquely. “Aye, I know what we’re supposed to do,” he said. “We’ll bloody well do it, too. You can go back and tell Pybba he doesn’t need to hold my hand. I’m not a baby.”

“Keep your tunic on.” Ealstan hid a smile. He had that same reaction to the pottery magnate, usually a couple of times an hour. He knew he was here more to get him out of Pybba’s hair than for any other reason. He didn’t care. Right this minute, he couldn’t think of anything he wanted more than to be out of Pybba’s hair.

When he didn’t say anything more, the local commander nodded again, as if he’d passed a test. “All right, kid. We’ll feed the powers below plenty of dead Algarvians. Don’t you worry about a thing.”

Thatkid made Ealstan bristle, but he didn’t show it. When you showed things like that, people just laughed. “Right,” he said again, and walked away, almost as fast as he’d walked away from Pybba.

The park didn’t look like a place where an attack was building. The Forthwegian fighters didn’t gather out in the open. That would have shown them to redheads on dragons overhead or with spyglasses up in tall buildings, and would have invited massacre. Instead they crouched under trees and in the buildings around the park, waiting for the order to go forward. They all wore armbands that said free forthweg, so the Algarvians couldn’t claim they were fighting out of uniform and blaze them on the spot if they caught them.

As Ealstan was going by, one of the Forthwegian fighters under the oaks called his name. He stopped in surprise. He didn’t recognize the other man. But then, after a moment, he did. It was the fellow who’d been playing drums in another park-the fellow who played so much like the famous Ethelhelm. Now that Ealstan heard him speak, he sounded like Ethelhelm, too.

“Hello,” Ealstan said. “The face is familiar”-which wasn’t quite true- “but I can’t place your name.” He didn’t know which name Ethelhelm was using. If Ethelhelm had even a dram of brains, it wouldn’t be his own.

And, sure enough, the musician said, “You can call me Guthfrith.”

“Good to see you again,” Ealstan told him. “Getting your revenge on the Algarvians, are you, Guthfrith?”

“It’s about time, wouldn’t you say?” Ethelhelm answered.

“Probably long past time,” Ealstan said, and the Kaunian half-breed nodded. Ealstan went on, “What have you been doing with yourself lately?”

“Odd jobs, mostly,” said Ethelhelm-no, I should think of him as Guthfrith, went through Ealstan’s mind. “Did you recognize me, there in that other park? I saw you, and I thought you might have.”

“I thought I did,” Ealstan replied, “but I wasn’t sure. You didn’t look just the way I thought I recalled you”-you were sorcerously disguised-”but your hands hadn’t changed at all.”

Ethelhelm-no, Guthfrith-looked down at the hands in question as if they’d betrayed him. And so, in a way, they had. Even now, they looked more as if they should be poised over drums than holding a stick. With a chuckle, he said, “Not everyone has ears as good as yours. I’m not sorry, either. I’d be in trouble if more people did.”

“You would have been in trouble,” Ealstan said. “Not any more. Now you’re getting your own back.”

“No.” Guthfrith shook his head. “The thieving redheads have taken away everything I had. I can’t get it back. The most I can get is a piece of revenge. I wasn’t very brave before. Now…” He shrugged. “I try to do better.”

“That’s all anyone can do,” Ealstan said.

“Took me a long time to figure it out,” Guthfrith said. “How’s your lady? What was her name? Thelberge?”

“That’s right.” Ealstan nodded. “She’s fine, thanks. We’ve got a little girl.”

“Do you?” Guthfrith said, and Ealstan nodded again. Then Guthfrith reminded Ealstan he was also Ethelhelm, for he went on, “You used to go with a blond woman before that, didn’t you? Do you know what happened to her?”

“Uh-no.” Ealstan’s ears heated in dull embarrassment, but he was not about to tell the musician that Vanaiwas Thelberge. He wished he hadn’t had to tell Pybba about his family arrangements. The more people he told, the more Vanai found herself in danger, for there was no guarantee that the Forthwegians would succeed in ousting the Algarvians from Eoforwic. And if Mezentio’s men won this fight, they would surely take the most savage vengeance they could.

“No, eh?” Guthfrith’s voice was toneless as he added, “Too bad.”

Ealstan wanted to explain everything to him. He wanted to, but he didn’t. Aye, the fellow who had been Ethelhelm was a half breed, but he’d got much too cozy with the Algarvians, and stayed that way much too long. If they ever captured him now, he was liable to feed them a genuine, full-blooded Kaunian to save his own neck.

He looked at Ealstan with something like loathing, though they’d been friendly while Ealstan was casting his accounts for him. Ealstan looked at him in much the same way. Neither of them, plainly, would ever trust the other again. When Ealstan said, “I’ve got to go,” he knew he sounded relieved, and Guthfrith looked the same way.

“Take care of yourself. Take care of your little girl, too.” By the way Guthfrith sounded, Ealstan was welcome to walk in front of a ley-line caravan.

“You take care, too.” Ealstan sounded as if he wished the same for Guthfrith. He hurried off toward Pybba’s headquarters, and didn’t look back once. Whatever warmth he’d known for the man who’d been one of the most popular musicians in Forthweg, was dead now.

He needed a while to get back to the pottery magnate’s place. Algarvian dragons appeared overhead and dropped load after load of eggs on Eoforwic, forcing Ealstan into a cellar. No Unkerlanter dragons flew east from over the Twegen to challenge the beasts painted in green, red, and white. The enemy could simply do as he pleased, and he pleased to knock down big chunks of the Forthwegian capital. He doubtless assumed anyone still inside the city opposed him. Had he been wrong in that assumption, the destruction he wrought helped make him right.