Harry Turtledove - Darkness Descending

“No. They just caught me in the street and set me hauling broken rock--one of their sorcerers wrecked the old arch past the market square.” Talsu scowled. “Hard work, and then they cheated me at the end of it. About what you’d expect from the cursed redheads. I didn’t even bother taking their lousy coppers.” He didn’t bother telling his mother how he’d rejected the coins, either.

His father slammed a pair of shears down on the counter beside which he was working. “They wrecked the imperial arch?” Traku said. At Talsu’s nod, the older man muttered something pungent under his breath.

“That must have been the crash we heard this morning,” Laitsina said. “I wondered what it was. If business were better, somebody who knew about it would have come in before this and told us.”

“If the Algarvians weren’t here, business would be better,” Traku said. By the look he sent his son, he still blamed Talsu for the collapse of the Jelgavan armies. “And if the Algarvians weren’t here, they wouldn’t have been able to knock down the arch, either. Curse them, it’s stood since imperial times. They’ve got no business wrecking things that have stood for so long.”

“They won the war,” Talsu said. At the moment, he regretted that more than he had at any time since he’d marched off to oppose the redheads. “That lets them do as they please. And they’re turning out to be a worse bargain than our own nobles. Who would have thought anyone could be?”

Laitsina and Traku both glanced around nervously, though they were the only ones who could have heard what Talsu said. His sister chose that moment to come downstairs. “Who would have thought anyone could be worse than what?” Ausra asked.

“Worse than our nobles,” Talsu answered defiantly. “The Algarvians are.” He repeated the story of what they’d done to him and to the monument.

“That’s terrible!” Ausra said. “Are they doing the same thing all over the kingdom? If they are, there won’t be an arch or a column standing before long.”

“They’re jealous of us, that’s what it is,” Traku said. “We Kaunians were civilized while they still chased each other through the woods. They don’t want to be reminded of that, and they don’t want us reminded of it, either.”

“Some people may think more about things that are missing than they ever did about things that were there.” Talsu looked down at his battered, filthy, bloody hands. “I know I will.”

Garivald didn’t know why the impressers hadn’t marched him out of Zossen as part of the draft they took for King Swemmel’s army. Maybe they’d intended to scoop him and the other men they left behind into their net later. If so, they miscalculated, for the Algarvians overran the village before they could return.

Waddo kept reporting good news coming in over the crystal: Swemmel’s forces advancing, the Algarvians and Yaninans and Zuwayzin falling back in disorder. The firstman even brought the crystal out into the village square several more times so the peasants of Zossen could hear the news for themselves. He hadn’t misrepresented it; it always sounded good.

But then, one day, dragons painted in green and white and red flew by to the north of the village. They dropped no eggs, they did no harm, but they were there. They spread fear and, worse, they spread doubt as well. “If we’re kicking the Algarvians’ tails, how did those ugly flying things get here?” Dagulf asked Garivald as they were weeding in the fields outside of Zossen.

After looking around to make sure no one but his friend could hear him, Garivald answered, “If you expect the crystal to tell you the truth all the time, you probably think Waddo tells you the truth all the time, too.” Both men laughed, each warily. After a moment, Garivald added, “I wish the king would speak to us again. He pulled no punches. I liked that.”

“Aye.” Dagulf nodded. “Some of these city men with their fancy accents who lie straight-faced, though . . .” He spat into the rich, black soil.

Less than a week later, soldiers in rock-gray tunics started falling back through Zossen. Some of them had fancy city accents, some used the almost Forthwegian dialect of the northwest, and others talked like Garivald and his fellow villagers. However they spoke, they all told tales much different from those the villagers heard on the crystal.

“Aye, Herborn is fallen,” one of them said to Garivald as he gulped water and gnawed on a chunk of black bread Annore had given him. He was skinny and filthy and looked wearier than a peasant near the end of harvest time. “Powers above only know how many men the redheads cut off west of there, too. All I can tell you is, I’m cursed lucky I wasn’t one of them.”

“The crystal said we were still fighting hard there,” Garivald said. Losing Herborn, the capital of Grelz in the days when Grelz was a kingdom and not a subordinate duchy of Unkerlant, was like taking a knife in the chest. He didn’t want to believe it.

But the soldier said, “Bugger the crystal. If we still held Herborn, if the cursed Algarvians hadn’t nipped in behind us like a crayfish nipping with its pincers, you suppose I’d be here now?” He stuffed what was left of the bread into his pack, drained the mug of water, wiped his dirty face on his equally dirty sleeve, and trudged off toward the west. Other Unkerlanter troopers retreated through the fields, careless of the crops they were trampling.

A couple of peasants ran out into the fields to try to preserve those crops. One of them, the soldiers simply ignored. The other, a cousin of Waddo’s, might have thought his connection to the firstman gave him special authority. The soldiers thought otherwise. When he annoyed them--which didn’t take long--they knocked him down and beat him. He got up again sooner than they wanted. They knocked him down again and beat him some more. He lay there for quite a while then before rising and limping back to the village.

“They told me they’d blaze me if I said one more word,” he exclaimed in disbelieving tones.

After getting a good look at his bruised face, Garivald murmured to Dagulf, “You ask me, he’d already said too much by then.” His friend nodded.

Later that afternoon, a company came up the road from the east. They were retreating, too, but in good order. They paid for it. Garivald had seen Algarvian dragons flying by. Now he saw them in action, and wished he hadn’t. They dropped eggs on the Unkerlanter soldiers, then swooped low to flame those the bursts of sorcerous energy hadn’t slain. Shrieks rose. So did the stench of burnt meat.

A stray egg burst on one of the houses at the edge of the village. Nothing much was left of it, nor of the woman and three children who’d been inside.

Waddo stared at the carnage the space of a few minutes had seen. “We ought to bury the poor brave fellows,” he said, pointing out toward the slaughtered soldiers.

“What if they’d been in the village instead of just outside when the dragons came?” Garivald asked. “Who’d bury us then?” Waddo turned that horrified stare on him, then limped off without answering.

About noon the next day, four horse-drawn egg-tossers set up near the edge of the woods outside Zossen and started flinging death at the Algarvians farther east. For a little while, their solid presence cheered Garivald. Then he realized the enemy had drawn within egg-tosser range of the village. And then the Algarvians started tossing eggs back at that detachment.

Earth leapt skyward from the fields. Now Garivald watched in a different sort of horror: those were the crops on which Zossen would get through the winter--if it got through the winter. An older man, a fellow who’d fought in the Six Years’ War, shouted at him and the other gawkers: “Get down, you cursed fools! A burst close by’U pick you up and smash you flat against the closest wall that doesn’t fall over.” He lay on his belly--he believed what he was saying.