Harry Turtledove - Jaws of Darkness

They didn’t. Along the road, a few men loyal to Tsavellas blazed at Sidroc and his comrades from whatever cover they could find. Methodically, the Algarvians and Forthwegians and Valmierans and the Yaninans who’d stayed with Mezentio’s men hunted them down and killed them.

When they marched through a village, people called out in broken Algarvian: “Save us from Unkerlanters!” They didn’t know their sovereign had chosen the strategic moment to change sides.

“You’d better get the blazes out of here,” Sidroc called back. “Those bastards will come and eat you for breakfast.” Someone translated that into gurgling Yaninan. The villagers exclaimed in horror. Some of them started fleeing east with no more than the clothes on their backs.

“Curse it, keep your fool mouth shut,”SergeantWerferth snapped. “Now those miserable Yaninans will clog the roads for everybody else.”

“Sorry, Sergeant.” But Sidroc wasn’t sorry. He had all he could do to keep from laughing out loud as he left the Yaninan village. He nudged Ceorl. “Didn’t they look like a flock of spooked chickens?”

“Sure did,” Ceorl said. After another few paces, he added, “You’re not such a bad son of a whore after all.”

“Thanks. You, too.” Sidroc grinned. Ceorl grinned back. In Forthweg, he’d been a ruffian, a robber, probably a murderer. Here, he was a comrade. Sidroc didn’t worry about what he did in his spare time. And Ceorl, evidently, had at last forgiven him for not being rough enough.

Just after sunset, they joined up with the Algarvian brigade the crystallomancer had found. Sidroc wasn’t far from the lieutenant who led his group when that worthy asked the colonel in charge of the brigade, “Sir, what are we going to do now? Whatcan we do now?”

“Fall back,” the colonel answered. “There’s higher ground farther east. They won’t have such an easy time pushing us off it. Wehave to hold there- nothing but Algarve behind.” The lieutenant nodded earnestly. Sidroc nodded, too, in a different way. The lieutenant thought everything would be all right once they got to the high ground, wherever it was. Sidroc had done enough retreating by now to doubt whether everything would ever be all right again.

Pekka had had to beg the Seven Princes to get a few days’ leave from the sorcerous project in the Naantali district. She’d put Raahe and Alkio jointly in charge while she was away. They were solid and steady, not given to wild adventurism. She’d also advised them to smack Umarinen over the head with a rock when and as needed.

Getting from the Naantali district back down to Kajaani was an adventure in and of itself. The carriage ride from the hostel to the nearest ley-line terminal was long and bumpy. Then, thanks to the way the earth’s energy grid in that part of the world ran, she had to go around three sides of a rectangle before finally heading south to her home town.

And she did every bit of it with a smile on her face, which wasn’t like her. Small inconveniences didn’t bother her, while larger ones seemed small. This is what falling in love does, she thought. Iremember. I didn‘t think I’d ever feel this way again. But I do.

It wasn’t that she’d stopped loving Leino. That made what she felt for Fernao seem stranger, but didn’t make it go away. Leino was far away, in time and space, while Fernao… Her whole body felt warm when she thought about Fernao, though the Kuusaman landscape outside looked as bleak and chilly as it always did in autumn.

The ley-line caravan glided over the last low hills and down toward the harbor of Kajaani. “Coming up on Kajaani,” the ticket-taker said as he strode through the cars-as if anyone could doubt where this particular caravan was going. “Coming up on Kajaani, the end of the line,” he added-as if anyone seeing the gray, whitecap-flecked ocean ahead could doubt that, either.

Grabbing her carpetbag from the rack above her seat, Pekka was among the first out the door when the caravan halted under the steep roof of the depot. There stood her sister Elimaki, waving. And there beside Elimaki was…

“Uto!” Pekka squealed, and her son ran to her and squeezed the breath out of her. “Powers above, how big you’ve got!” she said.

“Iam big,” he answered. “I’m nine.” He picked up the carpetbag she’d dropped to hug him. “I can carry this,” he said importantly, and he was right.

Nine, Pekka thought, a little dazed. But he was also right about that, of course. He’d been four when the Derlavaian War started. The world had spent more than half his lifetime tearing itself to pieces.

Pekka had thought she would tear herself to pieces, too, with guilt, when she saw her son. But that didn’t happen, either. She still loved him as unreservedly as ever. Aye, seeing him reminded her of Leino. But it wasn’t that she didn’t love Leino. It really isn’t, she though, as if someone had insisted that she didn’t. She felt as if she loved everybody-except the Algarvians. Them she still hated with a hatred whose cold viciousness astonished her whenever she paused to look at it.

She didn’t have to look at it for long, because here came Elimaki behind Uto. “Good to see you again,” Pekka’s sister said as the two of them embraced and kissed each other on the cheek. “It’s been too long. It’s always much too long between your visits.”

“I’m busy.” Pekka mimed exhaustion and falling to pieces to show how busy she was.

Laughing, Elimaki said, “You must be doing something important.” When Pekka didn’t answer right away, her sister nodded to herself. “I know lots of people who don’t talk about what they’re doing these days.”

“Ican’t talk about what I’m doing,” Pekka said.

Elimaki nodded again. “That’s what they all say. Come on, let’s get up to the houses.” They’d lived side by side for years. “It’s getting dark.”

“Of course it is,” Pekka said. Kajaani lay even farther south than the Naantali district, which meant fall and winter here were even darker and gloomier. As they hurried out of the depot, she asked, “How is Olavin?”

It was, she thought, a harmless question. Elimaki’s husband wore uniform, aye, but he’d been a banker before the war and was a paymaster nowadays-he came nowhere closer to battle than Yliharma. Pekka was astonished when her sister stopped in her tracks and spoke in a low, toneless voice: “Oh. You must not have got my last letter yet.”

“I never get them as fast as you think I should,” Pekka answered. “They always read them and scratch things out first. What’s happened?”

Voice still flat, Elimaki said, “He’s taken up with one of his pretty little clerks, that’s what. He wants to leave. Our solicitors are snapping at each other.”

“Oh, no!” Pekka exclaimed.

“Oh, aye.” Elimaki smiled wryly. “I doubt I’ll ever see him again. Right now, I hope I don’t. He always thought he was too big for a provincial town like Kajaani. Now he gets to try his luck in the capital, and on someone else, or maybe on a lot of someone elses. Heis sending me money for the house. He’s always been scrupulous about money. Other things…” Pekka’s sister shrugged. “And how areyou!”

“I don’t know. I think I’m stunned.” Pekka had intended to unburden herself to Elimaki. If she couldn’t talk about men and life and love with her own sister, with whom could she? The answer to that looked to be, no one.

“UncleOlavinis a louse,” Uto said.

Elimaki laughed a harsh laugh. “I’ve called him a lot worse than that, but I try not to do it where Uto can hear. He picks up enough bad language without learning it from me.” Uto looked proud when his aunt said that. Pekka had to stifle a giggle. Uto had always delighted in the mischief he caused.