Harry Turtledove - Jaws of Darkness

“Didyou?” She nodded, too, more than half to herself. “All right, then. Maybe you do havesome idea of what you’re up to.” She still didn’t sound as if she thought he had much idea of what he was doing.

He wasn’t altogether sure he did, either, but he knew he had to make the effort. He put some wheat, some barley, and some rye in a little clay pot, then tied a length of twine to the handles and swung it pendulum-fashion. Then, doing his best not to let Obilot fluster him by watching, he began to chant:

“Like calls to like-so magic’s found.

Let like show like, down under ground.

Show me now the grain that’s hidden.

Do it now, as you are bidden…”

On he went. He knew it wasn’t an outrageously good song-he knew it was likely a long way from a good song-but he hoped it would serve. And it did serve, or he thought it did. The direction in which the pot of grain was swinging suddenly changed, and he’d done nothing to change it. Obilot let out a small, surprised exclamation. Garivald felt like doing the same thing. Instead, he moved from one side of the hut to the other. The arc in which the pot swung changed as he moved, so that it kept indicating the same direction.

Garivald went outside into the rain and chanted again. The swinging pot led him away from the hut and off beyond a low swell of ground a furlong or so away. He nodded to himself. The fellow who’d lived here thought like a peasant, all right. He didn’t want to make things easy forKingSwemmel ’s inspectors.

As soon as Garivald started down the other side of the slope, the pot stopped swinging and pointed straight down. He hadn’t found a spade in the hut. He dug in the mucky ground with the edge of an iron pan. If it hadn’t been soaked and soft, he couldn’t have made much progress. As things were…

As things were, the edge of the pan clanked off fired clay before he’d got down much more than a foot. He set down the pan and softly and wonderingly clapped his hands together. “I did it,” he breathed, and breathed in raindrops. Then he dug as if he were digging himself a hole while the Algarvians tossed eggs at him. Grunting with effort, he pulled out the great jar, which weighed more nearly as much as he did. Pitch sealed the lid. He had to hope the seal had stayed good.

He dragged the jar back to the hut. Inside, he scraped away the pitch with a knife and levered up the stopper. “Ahh!” He and Obilot stared down at the golden wheat. “We won’t go hungry,” she said.

“We’ll have something to plant,” he added, and then, “This isn’t likely to be the only hidden jar, either. Maybe I can find more the same way.”

“Maybe you can,” Obilot agreed. “Why not? Youcan work magic.” She sounded awed.

“By the powers above, so I can.” Garivald sounded awed, too. Awed or not, he hedged that, as any canny peasant would: “A little, anyhow.” But a little had proved enough.

ColonelSpinellowas not a happy man as he rode east toward division headquarters to confer with his fellow brigade commanders. The rain that pelted him and his driver did little to improve his spirits. Neither did the fact that even the local wagon, with its curved, boatlike bottom and high wheels, had trouble negotiating the bottomless river of mud badly miscalled a road.

At last, just outside the northern Unkerlanter town called Waldsolms, cobblestones reappeared. The wagon wasn’t really made to cope with them. It rattled and jounced abominably. Spinello didn’t mind that so very much. “Civilization!” he exclaimed, and then, “Well, of sorts, anyhow. Thisis Unkerlant.”

His driver seemed less impressed. “A few miles of this jerking and we’d both be pissing blood,” he said. “Sir.”

Like most towns in Unkerlant that had gone through the fire of war, Waldsolms had seen better days. Brigadier Tampaste, who commanded the division, made his headquarters in what had probably been a merchant’s house; what had been the local governor’s castle was no longer standing.

Tampaste was young for a brigadier, as Spinello was young for a colonel. No: they would have been young for their ranks before the war. Nowadays, a man could rise quickly… if he lived. Like Spinello’s, Tampaste’s wound badge and ribbon showed he’d been hit twice.

“You’re the first one who’s made it here,” he told Spinello. “I’ve set out smoked fish and black bread and spirits. Don’t be bashful.”

“That’s never been one of my vices, sir,” Spinello answered, and helped himself. The smoked fish was tasty, but full of tiny bones. The spirits packed enough punch to make his hair stand on end. “Good,” he wheezed through a charred throat. “Good, but strong. If we’re truly short on cinnabar, we ought to feed the dragons this stuff, to make them flame farther.”

“By what I hear, peopleare talking about doing something along those lines,” Tampaste said, which took Spinello by surprise. “The drawback, of course, is that drunken dragons are even wilder and stupider than they would be otherwise, if such a thing is possible.” He sipped his own spirits without flinching; Spinello wondered if he’d copper-plated his gullet. “How do you view the situation in front of us, Colonel?”

“Sir, I don’t like it,” Spinello said at once. “Swemmel’s men are up to something, but I don’t know what. I don’t like it whenever they try to get cute with us; it means they’ve got something up their sleeves.”

“Do you think we can throw in another spoiling attack and disrupt them?” Tampaste asked.

Spinello shook his head. “Not my brigade, anyway. We’re in no shape for it, not after the attack on Pewsum failed.”

“You handled your men well there, Colonel,” Tampaste said. “No blame to you that the try didn’t succeed. Just… too many Unkerlanters in the neighborhood. We’ve sung that song before.”

“If we sing it again too often, we’ll have too bloody many Unkerlanters in Algarve, sir,” Spinello said.

Tampaste grimaced. “You shouldn’t say such things.”

“Why?” Spinello asked. “Because they’re not true? Or because nobody wants to think about them even if they are true?”

The division commander plainly didn’t want to answer that. At last, he said, “Because saying them makes them more likely to come true. A mage would tell you the same thing.” Spinello thought that held an element of truth, but only an element. Too many things got said all over the world for any one of them to have much chance of swinging things one way or another. Before he could say as much, Tampaste changed the subject, asking, “Where in blazes are the rest of my brigade commanders?”

“Stuck in the mud, unless I miss my guess,” Spinello replied. “Whatever the Unkerlanters are doing, they won’t do it right away.” He took another pull at his spirits, which made it easier for him to sneer at anything and everything Unkerlanter. “It’s not as if they bothered paving their roads so they could move on them all year long.”

Tampaste said, “Captives claim one of the reasons Swemmel didn’t pave more of the roads was for fear we could move on them.”

“I hadn’t heard that,” Spinello admitted. “If it’s true, we must have taught them quite a lesson during the Six Years’ War.”

“Maybe now they’re teaching us some things we’d rather not learn,” the brigadier said, and then, before Spinello could call him on it. “And now who’s speaking words of ill omen?” The gesture Tampaste used to turn aside the omen dated back to the days when the Algarvians skulked through the woods in the far south and the Kaunian Empire bestrode most of eastern Derlavai. Spinello had seen it reproduced on classical Kaunian monuments, and on pottery in the museum at Trapani.