Harry Turtledove - Jaws of Darkness

Pretty women dropped him curtsies as he went by. Had he put forth a little effort, he supposed he could have had a good many of them. His passions didn’t run toward seduction, though. The only woman but his wife with whom he’d lain recently was Ysolt, his headquarters cook. That hadn’t been a seduction: more on the order of a molestation, of him by her. He grimaced. He wasn’t proud of being conquered rather than conqueror.

KingSwemmel’s dining room, like his private audience chamber and the throne room, had an antechamber attached to it. The guards in the antechamber took Rathar’s ceremonial sword from him. Then they patted him more intimately than Ysolt had, though he enjoyed their attentions rather less. Only after satisfying themselves that he carried nothing more lethal than his hands did they let him go on to the king.

In the dining room, he fell to his knees and then to his belly, knocking his forehead against the carpet. He sang Swemmel’s praises, and his own love, awe, and loyalty for his sovereign. Some of the ritual phrases were as old as the Unkerlanter monarchy. Swemmel and his henchmen had devised most of them, though.

At last, the king said, “We give you leave to rise, and to sit at our table.”

“Thank you, your Majesty. Powers above bless you and keep you, your Majesty.” Rathar sat at the foot of the long table, Swemmel at the head. The king had a long, pale face, made longer by a receding hairline. His hair, going gray now, had begun dark; his eyes, of course, still were. Save for that, he looked more like an Algarvian than one of his own people.

But he was an Unkerlanter through and through. “Bring in the spirits!” he shouted to a servitor. Rathar had seen the man before, in bodyguatd’s uniform rather than waiter’s. Once Swemmel andMarshalRathar were served, the king raised his glass. “Death to Algarve!” he cried, and gulped down the potent stuff as if it were water.

“Death to Algarve,” Rathar echoed-KingSwemmelhad chosen a toast he liked. He, too, had to empty his glass, and he did, though his gullet felt as if he’d swallowed a dragon while it was flaming. Impassively, the servitor poured both glasses full again.

“Death to traitors!” Swemmel shouted, and drained the second glass.

“Death to traitors!” Rathar agreed, and matched him. The dining room began to spin a little. When in command out in the field, Rathar couldn’t afford to drink like an Unkerlanter peasant holed up in his hut for the winter. But, when summoned before his sovereign, he couldn’t afford not to drink a toast against traitors-forKingSwemmel saw traitors everywhere, and would surely see one in a marshal’s uniform if he refused to condemn them.

As if to prove that very point, Swemmel muttered, “We are surrounded by traitors. Traitors everywhere.” Two big glasses of potent spirits had put a hectic flush in his cheeks, but his eyes were wild and staring. “Everywhere,” he repeated. To Rathar’s relief, the king was looking up at the ceiling, not right at him.

Bowing his own head, the marshal said, “Thank you, your Majesty, for doing me the honor of inviting me here.”

“Oh, aye,” Swemmel said carelessly. He gestured to the servitor, who filled the glasses yet again. Rathar wondered what outrages the king might commit while drunk, and also whether he himself would be fit for duty in the morning. If an Algarvian mage were somehow keeping track of Swemmel’s drinking bouts… Rathar shook his head. Mezentio’s men could have worked far worse outrages than they had if that were so. The king, meanwhile, leaned toward the servitor and commanded, “Bring on the supper.”

“Aye, your Majesty,” the fellow replied, and went off to the kitchens.

Now KingSwemmel did turn his bloodshot gaze full onMarshalRathar. “Tomorrow or the next day, we shall have somewhat to say to the ministers from Lagoas and Kuusamo. They claim they are Algarve’s foes, but leave to our kingdom the burden of fighting and dying.”

“Theyhave taken Sibiu back from the redheads,” Rathar said, “and their dragons visit Algarve’s towns by day and night.”

Swemmel snapped his fingers. “This for the islands of Sibiu!” He snapped them again. “And this for dragonfliers! If our so-called allies would reckon themselves men before their mothers, let them come forth to fight on the mainland of Derlavai. ‘Soon,’ they say. ‘Before long,’ they say.” He made his voice a piping, mocking falsetto to show what he thought of that.

“Well, all right, then, your Majesty,” Rathar said. KingSwemmel had a point. Had the Algarvians not chosen to grapple with Unkerlant to the death, they could have worked far more mischief in the east than they had. WereKingVitor of Lagoas and Kuusamo’s Seven Princes grateful for the burden Unkerlant had so unwillingly assumed? So far as Rathar could see, only in the sense of being glad they hadn’t had to shoulder it themselves.

The servitor came back from the kitchen with a large iron pot, the lid still on. He had cloths wrapped around the handles so he wouldn’t burn his fingers. Setting the pot down on a trivet in the middle of the table, he bowed to the king. “Supper, your Majesty,” he announced unnecessarily.

Or perhaps not so unnecessarily; Swemmel started as if he’d forgotten all about food. Once reminded, he nodded and said, “As a mark of our favor, you may serveMarshalRathar first.”

“As you say, Your Majesty.” The servitor took the lid off the pot. A great cloud of savory steam rose from it.

“You do me too much honor, your Majesty,” Rathar said, and not for politeness’ sake alone. When the king sobered up tomorrow, would he remember what he’d done, remember and regret it? He might. If I let Rathar eat before I did, he might think, my cursed marshal might decide he deserves first place in the kingdom all the time. Other men, famous in their day, had vanished when such thoughts occurred toKingSwemmel.

But Swemmel seemed unconcerned now. As the servitor spooned meat from the pot, the king said, “We give you what you have earned, Marshal.”

When the first whiff of that savory steam reached Rathar’s redoubtable nose, he recoiled in something worse than mere horror. When Raniero went into the stewpot in Herborn, Rathar had smelled this precise odor of cooked flesh. He was sure of it. Swemmel wouldn’t, couldn’t, serve him… The servitor set the plate in front of him. Just as he was about to push it away and flee the table, heedless of what the king might think, the man murmured, “I hope the stewed pork pleases you, lord Marshal.”

“Stewed… pork,” Rathar said slowly. He looked down the length of the table to his sovereign.

Swemmel rarely laughed. He was laughing now, laughing till tears gleamed in his eyes and slid down his hollow cheeks. “Well, Marshal?” he said, dabbing at his face with a snowy linen napkin. “Well? Did you think we were serving you up a ragout of boiled traitor?” More laughter shook him. It hit him hard, as spirits smote a man who seldom drank.

“Your Majesty, I must say it crossed my mind,” Rathar replied. Most courtiers would have denied the very idea. Rather had found the king could- sometimes-take more truth than most people thought.

Swemmel shook his head. “It may be that we shall eat of Mezentio’s roasted heart, but we would not share that dish with any subject. It isours.’“ Was he still joking? Or did he mean every word of it? For the life of him, Rathar couldn’t tell. Swemmel wagged a forefinger at him. “Before that day comes, though, we needs must drive the redheaded robbers from all our land, not merely from the south. How do you propose doing what we require?”

Rathar sighed with relief at dealing with a purely military matter. “I have some thoughts along those lines, Your Majesty,” he replied, and took a bit of pork. He hoped it was pork, anyhow.