Harry Turtledove - Jaws of Darkness

Pekka didn’t. She stood there in the middle of the floor like a nervous bird that would fly away the instant it saw the slightest motion. The comparison, Fernao feared, was liable to be all too apt.

“What is it?” Pekka asked in tones as brittle as her stance. “What did you need to bring me here to say? Should we have anything to say to each other that we can’t say where everyone can hear?”

“I don’t know. By the powers above, I don’t.” But Fernao remembered how they’d clung after the Algarvian egg burst by the hostel, when each had feared the other dead. He took a deep breath and went on in a rush: “By the powers above, though, I do know that I love you. I’ve never felt like this about any other woman before, and I’m not interested in feeling like this about any other woman ever again. There. That’s all.”

Pekka turned and took a long step toward the door. Fernao thought she was going to flee on the instant. If she did… What would he do if she did? Get drunk and stay drunk for a week was the first thing that came to mind.

But she stopped and turned back so suddenly, it was more like a whirl.

Her face was as pale as he’d ever seen it. “Why did you have to go and say a thing like that?” she demanded, and she sounded furious.

“Because it’s the truth, curse it,” Fernao answered stubbornly, hopelessly. “Because I didn’t care whether I lived when that egg came down till I saw you were all right. If that isn’t reason enough, what is?” He sounded angry, too, and he was-angry at the world that wouldn’t let him have what he wanted most.

Pekka stared at him. She’d gone even whiter, and he hadn’t thought she could. Tears glistened in her eyes, as they had after she’d made love with him that first-and only-time. In a tiny voice, hardly more than a whisper, she said, “If I told you I felt the same way, what would you do?”

Fernao’s cane almost slipped from his fingers. Having hoped for words like those, he had trouble believing he’d really heard them. He also had trouble coming up with an answer. Almost too late, he realized words weren’t what he needed. He did let the cane fall, but only because he’d taken Pekka in his arms. He bent down to her at the same time as she was tilting her face up to him.

Not very much later, and without another word between them, they lay down close together on his bed. They had to lie close together; the bed was too narrow for anything else. Pekka sighed as Fernao went into her. But her eyes were shut. Then, though, with what Fernao thought a deliberate act of will, she opened them and looked up at him from a distance of only a couple of inches. And then, for a little while, Fernao stopped thinking at all.

Afterwards, he wondered if she would bolt from his chamber as she had the first time. They’d surprised themselves by becoming lovers then. This time, they’d known what they were doing. And Pekka understood as much, for she asked, “What are we going to do now?” It was a serious question, not the dismay-filled one she’d asked after they joined before.

“Whatever you like,” he answered. “I know you’re the one with the hard choices to make. You need to know I’d be glad to marry you and live with you in Kajaani or Setubal or wherever you please, if that’s what you want to do. I hope it is.”

“I don’t know,” Pekka said. “Right now, I have no idea what I’m going to do. I have to th-”

Fernao knew what he was going to do right then, and he did it: he kissed her. That not only kept her from talking, it kept her-and him-from thinking for some time longer. He hadn’t known he could make love twice in such quick succession, not in his mid-thirties and not after the battering his body had taken.

But, no matter how pleasantly worn he and Pekka were after gasping their way to delight for a second time, Pekka asked her question over again: “What are we going to do now?”

“We’ll just have to see,” Fernao said. Pekka frowned thoughtfully, then nodded.

ColonelSabrinohad never been in Yanina before. When the war against Unkerlant began, he’d been stationed in the north, flying out of Forthweg. He wished with all his heart he weren’t in Yanina now. Had the Algarvians and Yaninans and Grelzers and the soldiers from Plegmund’s Brigade and the Phalanx of Valmiera been able to haltKingSwemmel ’s latest bludgeon of an assault, he wouldn’t have been in Yanina. As things were…

As things were, the tattered remnants of his wing of dragonfliers and the equally ragged remains of MajorScoufas ’ were flying out of a makeshift dragon farm on the outskirts of the town of Kastritsi, north and west of Patras, KingTsavellas ’ capital. The Unkerlanters had paused only a couple of miles outside of Kastritsi; the people there fled east as fast as they could go, on foot or in wagons or on unicorns and horses and donkeys. They clogged the roads, making it harder for the soldiers trying to hold back Swemmel’s men to get where they needed to go.

Some of the men fleeing Kastritsi should have been in Tsavellas’ army. Some of them, almost without a doubt, were in Tsavellas’ army, but had somehow got their hands on civilian clothes.

When Sabrino remarked on that, CaptainOrosio nodded. “Next thing’ll be, they’ll start running without bothering to take their uniforms off first.” He spat. “It won’t be long, I bet.”

“I wish I thought you were wrong,” Sabrino said.

“So what in blazes are we going to do about it?” the squadron commander asked.

Before answering, Sabrino looked toward the center of Kastritsi. The taller buildings-those still standing, anyway-sported strangely painted onion domes that reminded him he was in a foreign kingdom. He sighed. “I don’t think wecan do anything about it except to go on fighting the Unkerlanters as hard as we can for as long as we can. Have you got any better ideas?”

Orosio sighed, too, and spat again. “I was hoping you did, sir. You’ve been right a lot of times before.”

“What if I have?” Sabrino said. “How much good has it done me? How much good has it done Algarve?”

Orosio had no reply for that. Since Sabrino didn’t, either, he didn’t see how he could blame the younger man. From over by the tents where the dragonfliers slept-when they slept-a Yaninan waved to him. He waved back, polite as usual. Then the Yaninan waved again, more urgently this time. CaptainOrosio said, “Sir, I think he wants you.”

“I think he does, too,” Sabrino said with another sigh of his own. “I was hoping he didn’t.”

“MajorScoufas, he want to see you,” the fellow said when Sabrino went over to him.

“Does he?” Sabrino said, and the Yaninan dipped his head in his kingdom’s gesture of agreement. Sabrino headed for Scoufas’ tent. He had nothing against the Yaninan officer. Scoufas made a good dragonflier and a good wing commander. It wasn’t his fault that most of his kingdom’s fighting men were unenthusiastic and that the kingdom lacked many of the tools it needed to do a proper job of fighting.

As often happened with commanders, Scoufas was busy with paperwork whenCountSabrino ducked into his tent. Scoufas shoved the leaves of paper aside with every sign of relief. “I propose that we fly forth and attack the Unkerlanters threatening Kastritsi,” he said.

“You do?” Sabrino said in some surprise. In all the time he’d been associated with the Yaninans over in the Duchy of Grelz, he’d never heard such words from any of them. Scoufas flew more than bravely enough, but he hadn’t been aggressive in seeking out missions.

But now the Yaninan dipped his head. “Aye. We must drive the barbarous invaders from the soil of my kingdom.”

If your countrymen had fought harder in Unkerlant, those barbarous invaders might not be on the soil of your kingdom now. But what point to saying that to Scoufas? He couldn’t change what had already happened, any more than Sabrino himself could.