Harry Turtledove - Into the Darkness

Not that the drill sergeant cared. “Powers below eat all of you!” he screamed, in a temper extravagant even by Algarvian standards. “I bite my thumb at you! I bite my thumb at your fathers, if you know who they are!” From a civilian, that would have provoked a flock of challenges. But a soldier in the service of King Mezentio enjoyed even broader immunity from having to defend his honor than did a constable.

The sergeant waved the shambling column to a halt. Bembo had all he could do not to collapse on the grass. His legs felt like overcooked noodles. He could smell himself. Beneath their perfumes, he could smell the men around him.

“We’ll try it again,” the drill sergeant grunted. “I know you’re stupid, but try and work at remembering which is your left foot and which is your right. If those stinking towheads from Jelgava break out of the mountains, you get to go into line to throw ’em back. Maybe you’ll be able to fool them into thinking you’re soldiers, at least for a little while. I doubt it, but maybe. Now… forward, march!”

Along with the rest of the men of Tricarico dragooned into this makeshift militia, Bembo started marching. The Jelgavans hadn’t broken out of the Bradano Mountains yet, though they’d come close a couple of times. Bembo hoped the regulars could hold them. If they couldn’t, if Algarve had to rely on the likes of him to fight, the kingdom was in a lot of trouble.

“Left!” the drill sergeant roared. “Left!… Left-right-left! Sound off!”

“One! Two!” Bembo called, as he’d learned to do.

“Sound off!”

“Three! Four!”

“Left-right-left!” The sergeant gathered himself for the next order: “To the rear, march!” Raggedly, the militiamen obeyed. The drill sergeant clapped a hand to his forehead. “You don’t execute commands better than that, you’ll all get fornicating executed if you have to go up to the line. Aye, the Jelgavans are a pack of trouser-wearing scum, but they know what they’re doing, and you, you milk-fed virgins, you haven’t got a clue. To the left flank, march!”

The fellow puffing along beside Bembo wheezed, “I’d like to see that loudmouthed oaf try to make pastries with no training, that’s all I have to say.”

“That’s your line of work?” Bembo asked, and the pastry chef nodded. With a calculating smile, the constable found another question: “Whereabouts in the city is your shop at?”

Before his comrade could answer, the drill sergeant screamed, “Silence in the ranks! Next man who squeaks out of turn will squeak soprano for the rest of his days, do you hear me?” Bembo was convinced the whole town of Tricarico heard him. The Jelgavans in the western foothills of the Bradano Mountains probably heard him, too. And the pastry chef certainly heard him, for he shut up with a snap.

Bembo sighed. A constable who strolled into a pastry shop would surely come away with dainties full of almond paste and sweet cream and raisins and cherries, and he wouldn’t have to set a copper on the counter to get them, either. And now he wouldn’t be able to find out into which shop he should stroll. Life was full of small tragedies.

At last, after what seemed like forever but couldn’t have been longer than half that, the drill sergeant released his captives. “I’ll see you again day after tomorrow, though,” he threatened, “or maybe sooner, if the enemy does break through. You’d better hope he doesn’t, on account of they haven’t dug enough burial plots to hold all of you lugs yet.”

“Cheerful bugger, isn’t he?” Bembo said, but the pastry chef had already turned away. Bembo sighed again. He’d have to stay ignorant of where the fellow labored, at least till two days hence. With another sigh, he started back toward the constabulary station. He didn’t get time off for the militia drill; it was piled on to everything else he had to do. That struck him as monstrously unfair, but no one had asked his view of the matter. He’d received orders to report to that bellowing fiend in human shape, and he’d had to obey.

A street vendor waved a news sheet. “Black men throw Unkerlanters back again!” he shouted. “Read all about it!”

“Has King Swemmel started killing some of his generals yet, to persuade the rest to fight harder?” Bembo asked. He approved of killing Unkerlanter generals— on general principles, he thought with a grin at his own cleverness. For that matter, he approved of executions on general principles. He had trouble imagining a constable who didn’t.

“Buy my sheet here, and see for yourself,” the vendor answered. Bembo didn’t feel like buying a news sheet. He felt like having the fellow tell him what he wanted to know. He and the vendor traded insults, more good-natured than otherwise, till he rounded a corner.

A couple of men on the next street corner, one of them fair enough to have a good share of Kaunian blood, saw him coming and made themselves scarce. He wasn’t wearing his uniform tunic and kilt. Maybe one of them recognized his face. Maybe, too, both of them smelled him out as a constable even without seeing his uniform, even without recognizing his face. It wasn’t quite sorcery on the part of the bad eggs, but it wasn’t far removed, either.

When he walked up the stairs and into the station, Sergeant Pesaro greeted him with, “Ah, here is another one of our heroes!” No one had thrown Pesaro into the militia. He might have been able to march. On the other hand, he might as readily have fallen over dead from an apoplexy.

“A worn-out hero,” Bembo said mournfully. “If I have to do too much more of this, I’ll be a shadow of my former self.” He looked down at his belly. It wasn’t the size of Pesaro’s, but he still made a pretty substantial shadow.

“You complain so much, you might as well already be in the army, not the constabulary,” Pesaro said.

“Oh, and you’ve never grumbled in all your born days,” Bembo retorted, wagging a forefinger at the fat man behind the desk. Pesaro coughed a couple of times and turned red, perhaps from embarrassment, perhaps just because he was a fat man who sat behind a desk all day: even coughing was an exertion for him. Bembo went on, “I see in the news sheet that Zuwayza’s giving Unkerlant another clout in the head.”

“Efficiency,” Pesaro said with a laugh. “Don’t know how long those naked burnt-skins can keep doing what they’re doing, but it’s pretty funny while it’s going on.”

“So it is.” Bembo hid his disappointment. He’d hoped Pesaro would tell him more than he’d heard from the news-sheet vendor. Maybe the sergeant hadn’t felt like springing for a sheet today, either.

Then Pesaro said, “Only trouble is, I heard on the crystal this morning that we’re not the only ones who think so. Jelgava and Valmiera have sent messages to the Zuwayzi king, whatever his cursed name is, congratulating him on giving King Swemmel a hard time.”

“Can’t say I’m surprised,” Bembo answered. “When Swemmel jumped on Forthweg’s back, that meant we wouldn’t have to worry about our western front any more—or not about the Forthwegians there, anyway.”

“Oh, aye,” Pesaro said. “Not that Unkerlant’s any great neighbor to have. We’ve fought more wars with those bastards than anybody likes to remember, and it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if they were thinking about another one.”

“That wouldn’t surprise me, either,” Bembo said. “Everybody’s always plotting against Algarve. It’s been like that since the days of the Kaunian Empire.”

“A lot you know about the Kaunian Empire,” Pesaro said. Before Bembo could make an irate reply to that, the sergeant went on, “Talk about inefficiency—we might as well be Unkerlanters ourselves, the way we’re using constables for militiamen.”