Harry Turtledove - Jaws of Darkness

Kundidn’t shy away from logic. Kun would know the choice perfectly well-would know it and know what to make of it. Either you let your throat be cut-or, if you were lucky, your friends’ throats-or you let the Kuusamans know what was brewing. Istvan saw no middle ground.

He’d talked about such matters. Talking about them, he discovered, was one thing. Actually nerving himself to speak to a guard? That was something else again. If I do it, I can never go back. If I do it, I can probably never set eyes on another Gyongyosian as long as I live.

But that wasn’t it, or wasn’t the biggest part of it, anyway. If I do it, will the stars still shine on me? Or will they cast me into eternal blackness once I die?

Then Borsos said something loud enough for him-and for the whole barracks-to hear: “No, by the stars! I’ll have no part of it!” The dowser sprang to his feet and hurried out of the building.

Istvan let out a loud, long sigh of relief. He didn’t care who heard him, not right then he didn’t. The stars be praised! blazed through his mind. They’ve arranged things so I don’t have to betray my countrymen. Truly they are as kindly as people say. Even his cot all at once felt more comfortable than it had.

But he soon discovered the stars intended other things than keeping him happy. CaptainFrigyes called, “Come over here a moment, SergeantIstvan.”

“Sir?” Istvan said, his heart sinking. He would sooner have gone into battle again in the trackless forests of western Unkerlant than climb to his feet and walk over to the corner of the barracks hall where Frigyes and Norandino the Algarvian sat.

CaptainFrigyesnodded to him in a friendly way, which only worried him more. “Now, Sergeant,” the company commander said, “I’ve been telling Norandino here that you’re a man with good sense.”

“He has indeed. His praise of you would make the stars blush in the sky,” Norandino said. That praise made Istvan blush. So did the redhead’s whole manner of speaking. Gyongyosian was a language in which a man said what he meant and had done. The Algarvian turned it into something that sounded flowery and unnatural.

When Istvan merely stood mute, Frigyes pressed ahead: “You’ve said you knowMajorBorsos, haven’t you?”

He knew perfectly well Istvan had said that. Istvan couldn’t deny it now, however much he wanted to. “Aye, sir,” he said unhappily, and said no more.

CaptainFrigyesbeamed at him. “Splendid!” He sounded almost as flowery as Norandino. “Then you won’t mind talking him into seeing what’s good sense, will you?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Istvan answered, more unhappily still. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.” That was a great thumping lie, but how he wished it were the truth!

“We want to do to Kuusamo all we can-is that not true?” Norandino said. “And we see only one way of doing anything at all to Kuusamo on this miserable little island. Is that not also true?” He made everything he said seem not only true but obvious.

Istvan had his doubts about what was true. To him, nothing seemed obvious except that Frigyes was daft. Daft or not, Frigyes was also his superior. And so, instead of saying what he thought, he just shrugged.

Norandino looked disappointed. “Oh, my dear fellow,” he began, as if he were Istvan’s close kin.

“I’ll handle this,” Frigyes broke in. He aimed a forefinger at Istvan as if it were a stick. “You swore an oath. Are you ready to live up to it, or not? Answer me straight out, Sergeant.”

“Sir, I wasn’t a captive then, stowed away where I couldn’t doEkrekekArpad or Gyongyos any good,” Istvan said.

Frigyes eyed him with cold contempt. “Begone, oathbreaker. Believe me, I can find someone else to make Borsos see what needs seeing, do what needs doing. And as for you, Sergeant, as for you… May the stars forget you as you have forgotten them.” Istvan stumbled away, shame and joy warring in his heart.

A sharp, peremptory knock on the bedchamber door woke Krasta in the middle of the night. “Who is it?” she asked muzzily, though only one person was likely to presume on her so. And even he had his nerve, waking her out of a sound sleep.

Sure enough, ColonelLurcanio spoke from the hallway: “I am a commercial traveler, milady. Can I interest you in a new laundry soap?”

With a snort, Krasta got out of bed and walked to the door. The waistband of her pyjama trousers was getting tight. Her belly had finally started to bulge. Before long, she would have to start wearing a larger size-and then do it again and again, until I finally have this baby, she thought with more than a little annoyance.

She’d opened the door before she realized she could have told Lurcanio to go to the powers below. If he suddenly took it into his head to want her at whatever ghastly hour this was, she was ready to give herself to him, no matter how much she might resent it later. Till she knew him, she’d never imagined a man could intimidate her so. No one else had ever come close.

There he stood in full uniform, from boots to jaunty hat complete with jaunty plume. Instead of taking her in his arms, he swept off the hat and bowed. “Good-bye, my sweet, and as much good fortune to you as you deserve, or perhaps even a little over that. Because of you, I have enjoyed Priekule a good deal more than I thought I would.” He bowed again.

Krasta swallowed a yawn instead of yielding to it: another measure of how much of an edge Lurcanio had on her. Her wits were still working slower than they might have, whether she showed the yawn or not. “What do you mean, good-bye?” she asked.

Lurcanio smiled. “What most people mean when they use the word. ‘Farewell’ is a synonym, I believe.” But his amusement slipped then, and he defined himself more precisely: “I mean that I am leaving Priekule. I mean that Algarve is leaving Priekule. Perhaps I will come back one day, if the fortunes of war permit.”

“You’re… leaving?” Krasta said. “Algarve is… leaving?” He’d warned her that might happen, but she hadn’t believed it, not down deep.

“I said so. It is the truth,” Lurcanio answered. “Long before the sun rises, I shall be gone.”

“But what am I going to do?” Krasta exclaimed-as usual, she came first in her own thoughts.

Her Algarvian lover shrugged. “I expect you will manage. You have a knack for it-and you are pretty enough to let you get away with a lot that would be intolerable from some other woman.” He stepped forward and slid his hand under the waistband of her trousers. Instead of fondling her as he’d done so many times, though, he let his palm rest on her belly. “If by some accident the baby does turn out to be mine, try not to hate it on that account.” He brushed his lips across hers, then hurried down the stairs without a backward glance.

Krasta took a step after him, but only one. She recognized futility when it hit her in the face. Lurcanio wouldn’t stop for her or for anyone else. She turned around and went to the bedchamber window. A small swarm of carriages waited there. Lurcanio came out and said something in his own language as he got into one. The Algarvian drivers flicked their reins. The carriages rattled away. Krasta watched till the last one vanished into predawn darkness.

How many Algarvians were leaving Priekule now, by carriage and on horse- and unicornback and aboard ley-line caravans gliding west? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Krasta couldn’t begin to guess. The question nonetheless had an answer. All of them. Lurcanio had said so.

What would Priekule be like without redheads strutting through it?

Krasta could hardly imagine. It had been too long. More than four years, she thought with sleepy wonder. She lay down again. Of itself, her own hand went where Lurcanio’s had lain only moments before.