Harry Turtledove - Jaws of Darkness

“It’s the same thing, near enough,” the other man said. He was older than Talsu, and leaner, with a scar seaming his left cheek. He looked like a murderer. From what he’d said, he’d been a dyer before the war. The skin of his hands still bore strange mottling.

“Not quite.” Talsu couldn’t let that go unchallenged.

“What’s the difference, then?”

“Well… when I was in the dungeon, the fellow who squeezed me wasn’t an Algarvian. He was as Jelgavan as we are. He’d worked for the king before he worked for the redheads, and I’ll bet he goes back to working for the king once the redheads run away or get beaten. Some of our troubles’ll go with ‘em-some, but not all. People like that interrogator will still be here.”

“You can’t help people like that,” the other Jelgavan said.

“Why not?” Talsu asked.

“Because they’re part of the way things work,” his comrade said. “You can’t get rid of them, any more than you can get rid of the pits in olives.”

“You can do that,” Talsu said. “It just takes work.”

He started to add something to that, but the other irregular gave him a shot in the ribs with an elbow and pointed west, toward Skrunda. Talsu’s head swung that way. A column of Algarvian soldiers-a couple of regiments’ worth-was coming east along the road, along with three or four behemoths and a motley collection of wagons.

“They’re still moving men forward to fight the Lagoans and Kuusamans,” Talsu said.

“They’re trying to,” his companion answered. “Our job is to make sure they don’t have an easy time of it.”

How many men were hidden here and there along these hills? Talsu didn’t know. How had the irregulars’ leaders heard the redheads would move soldiers along this road? He didn’t know that, either, though he could make guesses he thought good. Some Jelgavans sold out their fellows to the Algarvians. Why shouldn’t others sell out the redheads to their countrymen?

Maybe some of the Algarvians there were the ones who’d seized him when he went with Kugu the silversmith for what he’d thought would be his introduction to the underground but turned into his introduction to the dungeon. Talsu knew that was wildly unlikely, but hoped it was true just the same. Do you really need that kind of help to want vengeance? he wondered. A moment later, he shook his head. No, I don’t need it, but it would be nice.

Somewhere on a hilltop not far away, the irregulars had an egg-tosser or two. Talsu didn’t see the first egg fly through the air, but he did watch it burst just in front of the Algarvian column. The next egg, better aimed, landed among the redheads. The burst of sorcerous energy flung men and pieces of men high into the air.

“Let’s see how they likethat, by the powers above!” the Jelgavan next to Talsu said with a fierce whoop of glee.

The Algarvians, of course, liked it not at all. Talsu had been away from real war for close to four years. He’d forgotten how quickly trained men could react-and he wondered if soldiers from the Jelgavan army could ever have reacted so quickly. Mezentio’s men spread out even before the third egg hit. Then they swarmed up the hills on either side of the road, blazing as they came.

Talsu stuck his head out from behind his side of the boulder for a quick blaze at the enemy. A beam zipped past his own head, close enough for him to feel the heat and smell the lightning in the air. He ducked back into cover in a hurry.

Over on the other side of the boulder, the dyer was cursing. “Some of the bastards blaze while the rest run,” he complained. “How are we supposed to blaze at them?”

“You weren’t in the army during the war, were you?” Talsu said with a dry chuckle, which startled a nod from the other Jelgavan. “That’s just one of the chances you take in this business.”

Another quick blaze from Talsu. The Algarvian at whom he aimed went down, but he didn’t know whether he’d hit the man: like the redhead, he dove for the dirt, too, whenever somebody started blazing at him. He turned to his comrade, intending to tell him something on the order of, That’s how it’s done.

Whatever he’d been about to say, he didn’t. The other irregular sprawled bonelessly in the dust, blazed through the head. Blood pooled beneath his body. He was still twitching a little, but Talsu had seen enough men killed to know another one.

He snapped off another blaze. But the Algarvians were coming hard and fast. Before long, they’d be on his flank if he didn’t fall back. Keeping the boulder between himself and most of them, he scurried back over the crest of the hill. He wasn’t the only one in full retreat, either. He didn’t think the irregulars’ leaders had expected Mezentio’s men to hit back so fiercely. He wasn’t particularly surprised himself. The Algarvians had always been aggressive, even back in the days of the Kaunian Empire.

Talsu threw himself down behind a bush and watched the crestline. Aye, I still remember a trick or two, he thought with somber pride. Now if one of those cursed redheads forgets…

And one of Mezentio’s men did. He charged over the top of the hill. He couldn’t have done a better job of exposing himself if he’d tried for a week. Not a smart thing to do, Talsu thought, and blazed him. The redhead wore a look of absurd surprise as he crumpled.

But not all of Mezentio’s men were fools. The Algarvians couldn’t have done nearly so much harm if they had been fools. Many more of them came over the rise with proper care. Talsu fell back again, and then again. He saw more of his comrades who weren’t so lucky.

He got away into the deeper hills where the irregulars had been sheltering for a long time. The Algarvians didn’t pursue so hard as they might have. Some of the raiders were jubilant about that. “They know better than to stick their noses in here too far,” one of them said. “If they tried it, they’d be sorry.”

Although Talsu didn’t argue with those bold spirits, he didn’t think they were right, either. The redheads had been on their way east to fight the Kuusamans and Lagoans. Once they’d broken up this harassing attack, wouldn’t they get back to their chief business as fast as they could? If they had any sense, they would. And anyone who looked at things with an ounce of sense would see the same thing.

Maybe the irregulars didn’t have a whole lot of sense. Maybe they’d been so starved for victories for so long, anything looked bigger than it really was. Maybe… Maybe all sorts of things, Talsu thought, laughing at himself. Whatever the truth was, he couldn’t do anything about it.

Later that evening, the Algarvians did something about it, or tried to.

They sent a few dragons over the hills. A few eggs came hissing down out of the sky. A couple of them burst near the irregulars’ camps. None of them did any harm. That raised the Jelgavans’ spirits, too.

“Hardly even worth being afraid of the stinking Algarvians anymore,” somebody said. Somebody else nodded. Several men clapped their hands. Maybe they’re right, Talsu thought hopefully.

A couple of nights later, the Algarvians showed they still deserved fear.

The night was very black, one of those late-summer nights when the air was so warm, so clear, so still, the stars in the sky hardly twinkled. On sentry-go, Talsu kept staring up at them.

Somewhere between midnight and dawn, not long before a replacement was supposed to come and he was supposed to go back to camp, he felt something wrong. For the first moment or two, he didn’t know what it was. Earthquake? he wondered. Jelgava got them from time to time, though Skrunda’s neighborhood hadn’t been hit hard in his lifetime.

When the ground quivered beneath his feet, he thought at first he was right. But the shaking didn’t build, as an earthquake did; it just went on for a while. Looking back in the direction of the camp, he saw purple flashes, as if lightning were striking close by. But where would lightning come from, out of as clear a sky as he’d ever seen?