Harry Turtledove - Into the Darkness

But even a brief glimpse reminded her that Algarvians were made rather differently—or made themselves rather differently. She’d known of their ritual mutilation, a custom that had persisted since ancient days. Till now, she’d never imagined it would matter to her.

“Lie down,” Spinello said, and Vanai obeyed. He lay beside her. “It gives a man more pleasure if a woman takes pleasure, too,” he remarked, and did his best with hands and mouth to give her some. When he told her to do something, she did it, and tried not to think about what she did. Otherwise, as she had in the hall, she endured.

When his tongue began to probe her secrets, she twisted away toward the wall. “Come back,” he said. “If you will not kindle, you will not. But the wetter you are, the less it will hurt.”

“A considerate ravisher,” Vanai said through clenched teeth.

Spinello laughed. “But of course.” Presently, he went into her. “Ah,” he murmured a moment later, discovering no one had been there before him. “It will hurt, some.” He pushed forward. It did hurt. Vanai bit down on the inside of her lip. She tasted blood: blood to match the blood the Algarvian was drawing down below. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore his weight on her.

He grunted and quivered and pulled out. That hurt, too. Vanai tolerated it, though, because it meant this was finally over. “My grandfather—” she began.

Major Spinello laughed again. “You know what you did this for, don’t you?” he said. “Aye, a bargain: the wordy old bugger can come home and stay home—for as long as you keep giving me what I want, too. Do we understand each other, my dear?”

Vanai twisted toward the wall once more. “Aye,” she said, huddling into a ball. Of course once would not be enough to suit him. She should have known that. She supposed she had known it, even if she’d hoped… But what good was hope? She listened to him dress. She listened to him leave. Whore for the redheads, the Kaunian woman had called her. It hadn’t been true then. It was now. Vanai wept, not that weeping helped.

Winter on the island of Obuda brought endless driving rainstorms roaring off the Bothnian Ocean. Istvan hadn’t cared for them when he could take shelter in his barracks. He honestly preferred blizzards. He knew how to get around on snow. Anyone who grew up in a Gyongyosian valley knew everything he needed to know about snow.

Rain was a different business. Bad enough in the barracks—far worse when the only shelter he had was a hole in the ground. His cape still shed some water. That meant he was only soaked, not drenched. He slept very little, and that badly. Being soaked was only part of it. The other part was a healthy fear that some sneaking Kuusaman would get through the lines and slit his throat so he’d die without ever waking. It wasn’t an idle fear. Those little bastards could slip through cracks in the defenses a weasel couldn’t use.

He peered down the side of Mt. Sorong toward the Kuusaman trenches and holes. He couldn’t see very far through the trees and rain, but that didn’t stop him from being wary. He kept his stick close by him every moment, awake or asleep. He also had a stout knife on his belt. In weather like this, the knife might do him more good than the stick. Beams couldn’t carry far through driving rain.

Squelching noises behind him made him whirl—no telling from what direction a Kuusaman might come. But that big, tawny-bearded trooper was no Kaunian. “What now, Szonyi?” Istvan asked.

“Still here,” Szonyi said.

“Oh, aye, still here,” Istvan agreed. “The stars must hate us, don’t you think? If they didn’t, we’d be somewhere else. Of course”—he paused meditatively—“they might choose to send us somewhere worse.”

“And how would they do that?” the younger soldier demanded. “I don’t think there is a worse place than this.”

“Put it that way and you may be right,” Istvan said. “But you may be wrong, too.” He wasn’t sure how, but he’d seen enough bad to have a strong suspicion worse always waited around the corner. His stomach growled, reminding him bad was still bad. “What have you got in the way of food?” he asked Szonyi.

“Not much, I’m afraid,” Szonyi answered, so regretfully that Istvan suspected he had more than he was admitting. The youngster was turning into a veteran, all right. But, short of searching his pockets and pack, Istvan couldn’t make a liar of him. He wasn’t desperate enough to do that, not yet. And maybe Szonyi wasn’t lying, too, for he said, “Maybe we ought to raid the slanteyes again.”

“Aye, maybe we should,” Istvan said. “They aren’t a proper warrior race, not even close—they think soldiers have to have full bellies to fight well. If we spent a quarter of the trouble on provisioning our men as they do, we’d be too fat to fight at all.” Rain dripped from the hood of his cape down on to his nose. “Go ahead, tell me I’m wrong.”

“Can’t do it,” Szonyi said. “Here’s one, though: if they aren’t a warrior race and we are, how come we haven’t kicked ’em off Obuda once and for all?”

Istvan opened his mouth, then abruptly closed it again. That was a good question, such a good question that a man could break teeth on it if he was unwary enough to bite down hard. At last, Istvan said, “The stars know,” which was undoubtedly true and which also undoubtedly did not come close to answering the question. He took the talk back in the direction it had gone before: “What do you say we slide down the hill and see if we can knock over a couple of Kuusamans? They’ll have more food than we do—you can bet on that.”

“Aye,” Szonyi said. “They couldn’t very well have less, could they?”

“I hope not, for their sake,” Istvan said. “Come to think of it, I hope not for our sake, too.” He slung his stick on his back and pulled his knife from its sheath. “Come on.” I am going to risk my life for no better reason than filling my belly, he thought as he crawled out of his shelter and down the mountainside. Then he wondered if there could ever be any better reason than filling his belly.

He moved as silently as he could. The drumming rain helped muffle any sounds he did make. It also helped hide him from the Kuusamans’ narrow eyes. At the same time, though, it muffled their noises and helped conceal them from him. He hadn’t stayed alive as long as he had by being careless. Szonyi might have been a shadow behind him. If bad luck didn’t kill the youngster, he would make a fine soldier.

The rain came down harder and harder, so that Istvan could see only a few yards in front of him. Spring wasn’t that far away; before long, the storms would ease. Istvan had seen it happen before. He knew it would happen again. But it hadn’t happened yet, and the storm didn’t seem to think it ever would.

He crawled past the stinking, sodden corpse of a Gyongyosian trooper—no Kuusaman born had ever had hair that shade of yellow. The corpse warned him he was nearing the Kuusaman line. It also warned him he might not come back.

No sooner had that unpleasant thought crossed his mind than eggs started dropping out of the sky on and around the Kuusaman position. He looked up, but of course the low, thick gray clouds hid the dragons that carried the eggs. He hoped they were Gyongyosian, but they might almost as readily have had Kuusamans riding them. Gyongyosian dragons had dropped eggs on their own footsoldiers before; he did not think the enemy immune from such mischances.

He flattened himself out on the ground. Bursts of energy near him tried to pick him up and throw him away. He clung to the bushes for all he was worth.

A Kuusaman, either wild with panic or more likely caught away from shelter and running in search of some, tripped over one of his legs and crashed to the ground. That was the first either of them knew of the other’s presence. They both cried out. Istvan’s knife rose and fell. The Kuusaman cried out again, this time in anguish. Istvan drove the knife into his throat. His cries cut off. He thrashed for a couple of minutes, ever more weakly, they lay still.