Harry Turtledove: Darkness Descending

“Powers above,” Syrivald added around a crust of black bread. Leuba, a toddler chewing on another crust, was too little to care whether Swemmel spoke to Zossen or not.

“I think he’s going to be talking to the whole kingdom,” Garivald said, “or to as many places as have crystals, anyhow.”

“Will we go see him?” Syrivald asked.

“Aye, we will,” his father answered. “I want to find out what the truth is about this miserable war we’ve got ourselves into with Algarve.” After he’d spoken, he paused to wonder how much of the truth King Swemmel was likely to tell.

Annore said, “If we’re going to go, we’d better go now, so we can get up close to the crystal.” Suiting action to word, she scooped up Leuba and carried the toddler out of the house. Garivald and Syrivald followed.

They weren’t the only family with the same idea. The square got as crowded as Garivald ever remembered seeing it, and then a little more crowded than that. Not everyone in Zossen had heard Waddo’s announcement, but no one could miss friends and neighbors and relatives heading for the square. People jockeyed for position, stepped on one another’s toes, and loosed a few judicious elbows. Garivald caught one, but he gave it back with interest.

“I don’t know what we’re squabbling about,” somebody said. “Waddo’s not even here with the crystal yet.” That comment produced a brief, embarrassed pause in the pushing and shoving, but they soon resumed.

“Here he comes!” Three people said it at once. Everybody surged toward Waddo, who carried the crystal on a cushion whose cover his wife had embroidered! “Make way!” That was three different people.

Waddo hadn’t had such an eager, enthusiastic reception since . . . Thinking back on it, Garivald couldn’t remember the firstman ever getting such a reception. But, of course, it wasn’t really for him; it was for the crystal he bore.

“Don’t drop it!” someone told him.

“Set it on a stool,” someone else said. “That way, more of us will have a chance to see.”

Waddo took that suggestion, though he ignored the other one. “It won’t be more than a few minutes before his Majesty speaks to us,” he said. “He will set our minds at rest about the many things that trouble us.”

Garivald doubted whether Swemmel would do any such thing. But he shouldered his way through the crowd till he stood in the second row and could peer at the crystal over the shoulders of the people in front of him. Inactive at the moment, the crystal might as well have been an ordinary ball of glass.

Then, abruptly, it... changed. Garivald had heard stories of crystals in use, of course, but he’d never seen one work till now. First, light suffused it. Then, as the brief glow faded, he saw King Swemmel’s long, pale, narrow face looking at him. But the other villagers’ exclamations, they all saw the king looking at them, too, even though they surrounded the crystal. After the magic that made the crystal work, Garivald supposed the one that let it be viewed from any direction was a small thing by comparison. It impressed him just the same.

Swemmel stared out as if he really could see the peasants gaping at him from one end of the kingdom to the other. After Garivald’s first astonishment and almost involuntary awe faded, he saw how haggard the king looked. Beside him, Annore murmured, “I don’t think he’s slept for days.”

“Probably not since the war started,” Garivald agreed. Then he fell silent, for King Swemmel had begun to speak.

“Brothers and sisters, peasants and townsmen, soldiers and sailors--I am speaking to you, my friends,” Swemmel said, and Garivald was astonished yet again: he had never imagined that the king would address his subjects in such terms. Swemmel went on, now with the first-person plural instead of that astonishing, riveting first-person singular: “We are invaded. The vile hosts of King Mezentio have plunged their dagger deep into us, and Algarve’s dogs, Yanina and Zuwayza, course behind their master. The enemy has stolen much of that part of Forthweg that we reclaimed for our kingdom summer before last. Our own long-held territory farther south also groans under the foe’s heels.”

Swemmel took a very visible breath. “But we must also tell you that only on our territory have the Algarvians, for the first time, met with serious resistance. If a part of that territory has nevertheless been occupied, let that serve as nothing more than a goad to our recovering it. The Algarvians, may the powers below eat them, caught Unkerlant by surprise. Let all Unkerlanters now take the accursed redheads by surprise as well.”

Garivald raised an eyebrow at that. He thought King Swemmel had been getting ready for a war with Algarve. But Swemmel, after sipping from a crystal goblet of water or pale wine, was continuing: “Our kingdom has entered into a life-and-death struggle against its most wicked and perfidious foe. Our soldiers are fighting heroically against heavy odds against an enemy heavily armed with behemoths and dragons. The main force of the Unkerlanter army, with thousands of behemoths and dragons of its own, is now entering the battle. Together with our army, the whole of our people must rise to defend our kingdom.

“The enemy is cruel and ruthless. He aims at grabbing our land, our wheat, our power points, and cinnabar. He wants to restore the exiled followers of Kyot the usurper, and through them to turn the people of Unkerlant into the slaves of Algarvian princes and viscounts.

“There should be no room in our ranks for whimperers and cowards, for deserters and panic-spreaders. Our people must be fearless and fight selflessly for Unkerlant. The whole kingdom now is and must be for the service of the army. We must fight for every inch of Unkerlanter soil, fight to the last drop of blood for our villages and towns. Wherever the army may be forced to retreat, all ley-line caravan cars must be taken away and the lines wrecked. The enemy must be left not a pound of bread nor an ounce of cinnabar. Peasants must drive away their livestock and hand over their grain to our inspectors to keep it out of the Algar-vians’ hands. All valuable property that cannot be moved must be destroyed.

“Friends, our forces are immeasurably large. The insolent enemy must soon become aware of this. Together with our army, our peasants and our laborers must also go to war against the treacherous Mezentio. All the strength of Unkerlant must be used to smash the foe. Victory will be ours. Onward!”

King Swemmel’s image faded from the crystal. Light filled it again for a moment. Then it was, or seemed to be, simply a round lump of glass once more. Garivald shook himself, like a man awakening from a deep, dream-filled sleep. Instead of seeing the whole kingdom, as Swemmel had made him do, he was back in tiny Zossen, filled with the village he’d known all his life.

“That was a great speech,” Waddo said, his eyes shining. “For the king to call us his friends ...”

“Aye, he sounded strong,” Garivald agreed. “He sounded brave.”

“He did indeed.” That was Dagulf, who had no great use for the king.

Neither did Garivald. Neither, so far as he knew, did anyone in the village, save possibly Waddo. Even so, he said, “I may fear Swemmel more than I love him, but I think the redheads will come to fear him, too.”

“He is what the kingdom needs right now,” Annore said.

“We will fight them,” Waddo said, sounding very fierce for a heavy man with a bad ankle. “We will fight them, and we will beat them.”

“And once we have beaten them, we will make songs about it.” That was Annore again. She glanced over toward her husband in confident anticipation.

No song rose up in Garivald right at the moment. He began sifting words in his mind, looking for rhymes, looking for smooth flows from one thought to the next. He frowned. “I don’t know enough yet to make any songs.”