Harry Turtledove - Jaws of Darkness

And Borsos hissed, “Shut up, by the stars. The Kuusamans don’t know what I am, and I don’t want them finding out, either, or they’ll send me somewhere worse than this.”

“Oh.” Till then, Istvan hadn’t noticed Borsos wasn’t wearing his sorcerer’s badges along with his emblems of rank. As in most armies, Gyongyosian mages held officer’s rank not so much by virtue of their blood as to give them the privilege of telling common soldiers what to do. Real aristocratic officers-most of them-would look down their noses at Borsos, but they probably wouldn’t tell the Kuusamans what he was. In fact… “It might be nice, having a real wizard in here on our side.”

“I’m hardly even that,” Borsos said. “I’m just a dowser. You ought to remember, if you hauled my gear around for me.”

“Better than nothing,” Istvan said. Better than Kun, he thought. Kun had been an apprentice before going into Ekrekek Arpad’s army. Borsos, at least, was fully trained in one specialty of magic.

From behind Istvan, someone asked, “Is this man bothering you, sir?” Istvan turned. There stood Captain Frigyes, as stiff and erect and formal as if still in command of soldiers in the field. He might have been even more stiff and erect and formal here in the captives’ camp, to try to hold his men together.

Borsos said, “No, Captain. We’ve known each other for a while.”

Frigyes still looked dubious. Leaning toward him, Istvan spoke in a low voice: “He’s a mage, sir.”

“Is he?” Frigyes answered, also quietly. He eyed Borsos’ collar tabs. Unlike Istvan, he didn’t need an explanation from Borsos. “You don’t want the enemy to know your skill, eh?”

He didn’t bother calling Borsossir any more. Officers-real officers- didn’t take seriously mages’ claims to rank. Borsos didn’t get angry; a good many mages didn’t take those claims seriously, either. The dowser replied, “That’s about the size of it, Captain.”

“All right.” Frigyes nodded briskly. “I can understand that. And it might be useful for us to have a sorcerer here. Who knows? Maybe we can find a way to hit back at the Kuusamans yet.”

“Maybe.” But Borsos didn’t sound as if he believed it. “They have strong wards up around the camp, though. They’re the enemy, Captain, but they’re not fools. If they were fools, they wouldn’t be moving forward.”

They wouldn’t be beating us, was what he surely meant, but no Gyongyosian soldier-not even a mage in military uniform-would come right out and say that. The traditions of a warrior race died hard.

“Wards can do only so much,” Captain Frigyes said, and led Major Borsos aside. He spoke to the mage too softly for Istvan to make out what they were saying. Istvan didn’t even bother resenting it. That was how officers were; as best he could tell, the stars had made them that way.

The cry of horror Borsos let out a moment later wasn’t too soft to hear. It made Istvan jump, and he wasn’t the only one. “No!” Borsos said a moment later, and wagged a finger under Captain Frigyes’ nose as if he were a real major and not just an officer by courtesy. That was enough to put Frigyes’ back up; he stalked off like an offended cat.

“What on earth?” Istvan said. He wasn’t really asking Borsos what Frigyes had proposed; it was more an exclamation of astonishment.

“By the sweet, pure, and holy light of the stars, Sergeant, you don’t want to know.” Borsos’ face was pale as milk. A back-country man-a herder, say, from the valley from which Istvan sprang-might have looked that way after seeing a ghost. Borsos didn’t strike Istvan as a man likely to see a ghost, or to panic if he did. But the dowser went off in the direction opposite the one Frigyes had taken. He staggered once, plainly a man shaken to the core.

“What on earth?” Istvan said again.

Again, he got an answer, this time from Kun: “Can’t you figure it out for yourself, Sergeant?”

Istvan whirled. The sorcerer’s apprentice and corporal was right behind him, dirty mess tin in hand. “If I could figure it out, would I be going, ‘What on earth?’ “ Istvan asked in some irritation. “And I know bloody well that you didn’t hear as much of it as I did, so what makes you so fornicating smart?”

“Your friend there is a mage of sorts, aye?” Kun said. He waited for Istvan to nod, then went on, “What was Captain Frigyes doing with us when all the Kuusamans in the world jumped on our company?”

“Huh?” The jump there was too wide for Istvan to follow him across it. “Whatare you talking about?”

Patiently, Kun guided him across: “Our company commander was good and ready to sacrifice us all, to let the mages make the magic that would have thrown the slant-eyes off Becsehely, remember? But they captured us before he got us to wherever the wizards were. And so…” He waited.

He needed to wait a while; Istvan had trouble with the jump even with a guide. At last, though, Istvan’s mouth fell open. “You think he was talking with Borsos about making that same kind of sorcery here!” Once the words were out of his mouth, they made a horrid kind of sense. He wished they hadn’t.

And Kun nodded. “That’s just what I think. Captain Frigyes wants to go on fighting the war. How else can he do it?”

“CouldBorsos make that kind of magic here?” Istvan asked. “He’s a dowser, mostly. Does he even know enough to cast that kind of spell?”

“Ask him,” Kun answered. “I can’t tell you.”

With a shudder, Istvan shook his head. “I don’t think I want to know.”

Kun clicked his tongue between his teeth in sharp disapproval. “You should always want to know. Knowledge is bad, but ignorance is worse.”

“Is that a fact?” Istvan said, and Kun nodded as if it most assuredly were. Istvan put his hands on his hips. “If knowing is such a great thing, how come we both wish the mages had never figured out how to use the magic they get from killing people? Answer me that, O sage of the age.”

“It’s not the same,” Kun said stiffly. “The only reason our mages turned toward that spell was that the Unkerlanters used it against us. We have to be able to fight back.”

Istvan shook his head again. “You’re not really answering me. You’re just pushing it back one step. Don’t you wish the Unkerlanters hadn’t worked out how to use that spell, then? You can’t be real happy about it, or you wouldn’t have been so very thrilled to volunteer to help power the sorcery.”

Now Kun winced. “Volunteer to have my throat cut, you mean. No, may the stars turn their light from me if I was happy about that. And I suppose you’ve made your point. Huzzah for ignorance!” He held his hands in front of his face, as if playing a fanfare on a trumpet.

I got him to admit I was right, Istvan thought proudly. The pride was in proportion to how seldom that happened. But then he wondered what Captain Frigyes would do, and what he could make Major Borsos do. He didn’t know, and wished he did. As soon as the wish crossed his mind, he realized Kun wasn’t entirely wrong. He thought about admitting as much, but in the end did no such thing. He gained such triumphs too seldom not to want to savor them to the fullest.

Leudast had got used to life in the bridgehead on the eastern bank of the Fluss. The Algarvians kept pounding away, trying to drive the Unkerlanters back over the river and seal off the bridgehead. They kept throwing in attacks every so often, too, going at the Unkerlanter regiments on the east side of the Fluss as if the whole war depended on wiping them out.

After Swemmel’s men had beaten back one such assault, a trooper in Leudast’s company said, “Isn’t this the worst fighting you’ve ever seen in all your days, Lieutenant?”