Harry Turtledove - Jaws of Darkness

“How now, your Excellency?” Balastro asked once he and Hajjaj had put a little distance between themselves and the other folk who’d come out to see the Algarvian dragons fly into the dragon farm.

“If you have a grievance with my kingdom, please come out with it,” Hajjaj replied. “Your little hints and gives do nothing but make me nervous.”

“All right, that’s fair enough; I will,” Balastro said. “Here’s the grievance, in a nutshell: you expect Algarve to make you a perfect ally and come to your aid whenever you need something from her, and yet you refuse to return the favor.”

“Zuwayza is a free and independent kingdom,” Hajjaj said stiffly. “You sometimes seem to forget that.”

“And you sometimes seem to remember it altogether too well,” Marquis Balastro said. “I tell you frankly, your Excellency, those Kaunian exiles you harbor have sneaked back to Forthweg and done us a good deal of harm there.”

“And I tell you frankly, I have trouble blaming them when I consider what you Algarvians have done to the Kaunians in Forthweg,” Hajjaj answered.

“When you consider what Kaunians have done to Algarve down through the centuries, you might well say they have it coming,” Balastro said.

Hajjaj shook his head. “No, your Excellency, I would never say that. Nor wouldKingShazli. I have made my views, and his, quite clear to you.”

“So you have,” Balastro agreed. “Now I am going to make something quite clear to you, and I am sure you will have no trouble making it quite clear to your king: if the Kaunians keep hurting us in Forthweg, they make it likelier that we lose the war against Unkerlant. If we lose the war against Unkerlant, you will also lose the war against Unkerlant. It is as simple as that. The more you want to deal withKingSwemmel afterwards, the more you should look the other way when the blonds climb into their boats and sail east to Forthweg.”

“We do not look the other way,” Hajjaj insisted. “Our navy is far from large, but we have turned back or sunk several of their boats.”

Balastro snorted. “Enough to show us a few: no more than that.”

The trouble was, he was right. Hajjaj’s sympathies, and those of his king, lay with the blonds who’d escaped from Algarvian occupation, and from the massacres the redheads inflicted on those blonds. As far as he was concerned, wars had no business being fought that way. Not even Swemmel of Unkerlant had fought that way till the Algarvians forced it on him. Waging war on the same side as the redheads made Hajjaj want to go sweat himself clean in the baths.

But when the choice was having Unkerlanters overrun Zuwayza…

Hajjaj shook his head. When he and Ikhshid were young, an Unkerlanter governor had ruled in Bishah. If the Algarvians lost, if Zuwayza lost, that could happen again. Algarve, however monstrous its warmaking, didn’t threaten Zuwayza’s freedom. Unkerlant did, and always would.

Bitterly, Hajjaj said, “I wish we were an island in the Great Northern Sea, so we would not have to make choices such as these.”

“Wish for the moon while you’re at it,” Balastro answered. “The world is as it is, not as you wish it were. But do you wonder that we hesitate to give you more help against Swemmel when we see how you repay us?”

“Knives have two edges,” Hajjaj said. “If you want to keep us in the fight against Unkerlant, we need the tools and the beasts to go on fighting. If we go out of the war, how much likelier is it that Algarve will lose?”

Balastro looked as if he’d bitten down hard on a lemon. Hajjaj had turned his argument around on him. At last, the Algarvian minister said, “The marriage in which we’re trapped may be loveless, but it is a marriage, and we’d both be hurt if we divorced. Whether we love you or not, your Excellency, we have sent you a present that costs us dear, for our own substance these days is not so large as we would wish, and we have, do believe me, no dragons to spare. We have nothing at all to spare.”

Hajjaj bowed. “Is it so bad as that?”

“It is bad, and it does not get better,” Balastro replied.

“That is not good news,” the Zuwayzi foreign minister said.

“Did I tell you it would be?” Balastro said. “Now, sir, you may not love us, but you are wed to us no less than we are wed to you. Even if you do not think us as fresh and lovely as you did when you first went to bed with us, will you not give us a present for a present, to keep us from quarreling and throwing dishes at each other after supper?”

With some amusement, Hajjaj said, “You sound like an old husband, sure enough. And what present would you have from us, as if I don’t know?”

Balastro nodded. “Aye, that one, sure enough. No gauds, no jewels-just do as you say you’ve been doing all along. I am not even asking that you give over harboring Kaunians here. If you will harbor them, you will. But, your Excellency, harbor themhere. If they want to go back to Forthweg, stop turning a blind eye to them. Youcan stop them, and I hope you will not do me the discourtesy of claiming otherwise.”

“I shall take your words toKingShazli,” Hajjaj said. Hating himself, hating what the war made him do for the sake of his kingdom, he added, “I shall take them to him with the recommendation that he follow your suggestion.”

Balastro bowed. “I can ask no more.” When Hajjaj recommended something to the king, whatever it was had a way of happening. Here, Hajjaj wished that were not so. Zuwayza’s marriage to Algarve was indeed loveless. But, as the Algarvian minister had pointed out, it was indeed a marriage, too. Both sides would be worse off if it fell apart. And so, to keep it going, Zuwayza needed to give Algarve a present in return for the present she’d got. Almost, Hajjaj wished the Algarvian dragons had not come. Almost.

SergeantIstvanand some of the Gyongyosian soldiers in his squad squatted in a muddy trench on the miserable little island called Becsehely, whiling away the time shooting dice. Istvan sent the bone cubes rolling across the flat board the big, tawny-bearded men used for a playing surface. When he saw a pair of one’s staring at him, he cursed.

Szonyi laughed. “Only two stars in your sky there, Sergeant. I can beat that easy enough.” He scooped up the dice and proved it-a throw of five wasn’t anything much, but plenty to take care of a two. Szonyi gathered up all the coins on the board.

Still cursing his luck, Istvan leaned back and let the next trooper in the game take his place. Lajos hadn’t been with him as long as Szonyi had. Istvan and Szonyi andCorporalKun had been together since the fighting on Obuda, an island in the Bothnian Ocean some distance west of Becsehely. They’d fought the Kuusamans there, then gone back to the Derlavaian mainland to battle the Unkerlanters in the Ilszung Mountains on the border between Gyongyos and Swemmel’s kingdom and in the trackless forests of western Unkerlant. That was where Lajos had joined the squad. Now, with the stars not shining on the Gyongyosian cause in the fight against Kuusamo, they’d come back to island duty again.

Szonyi set a stake on the board. Lajos, young and eager, matched it. Szonyi threw first: a six. Lajos took the dice and threw another six. They each put down more coins, doubling the stake. Szonyi threw a nine.

Before Lajos picked up the dice, CorporalKun nudged Szonyi and held out a silver coin in the palm of his hand-a side bet. “This that he’ll beat Lajos by two or better.”

“No, thanks.” Istvan shook his head, and then had to brush curly, dark yellow hair out of his face. “Betting on the side is how you make your money. I’ve seen that.”

Lajos threw an eight. Szonyi collected the twofold bets. Behind his gold-framed spectacles, Kun assumed an injured expression. “There,” he said. “You see? You would have won.”