Jaws of Darkness

“Let it be as you say,” Leino replied. “If you are not positive you can, you should not try, not when you would be going into the teeth of the Algarvians’ conjuration.”

“My thought exactly,” Xavega said. “Thank you for seeing things the same way and not reckoning me a coward.”

What an Algarvic notion, Leino thought. We Kuusamans mostly have better sense than to try something we know is beyond us. Aloud, he said, “Anyone would have-everyone does have-good reason to worry about what Mezentio’s mages are doing.”

To his surprise, she kissed him. “Not many Lagoan men would be so understanding,” she said. She was probably right, too. Lagoans, as he’d thought only a little while before, were cousins to the Algarvians, and if any folk in this war had tried something beyond their power, it was the one Mezentio led.

With soft, muffled calls and the clank of armor on behemoths and their crewmen, a good-sized force of Kuusaman soldiers left the camp, heading west. Leino hoped Talsu knew what he was talking about. He also hoped Talsu wasn’t leading his countrymen into a trap. Some few Jelgavans loathed King Donalitu enough to stay loyal to Mezentio no matter what his men did to blonds.

Then Leino stopped caring about politics, for Xavega kissed him again, more emphatically this time. Telling the Kuusaman officer he wouldn’t yield to temptation was one thing. But he and Xavega had both started getting undressed once more when they suddenly froze, him with her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. “Curse the Algarvians!” he said, his reasons now intimate along with the wider-ranging ones of the war. But that heaviness in the air, almost palpable to a sorcerer, meant Mezentio’s mages were murdering more Kaunians.

“Now we find out what we can do,” Xavega said, “aside from that, I mean.” She let her hand rest affectionately on his crotch for a moment, but then grabbed her tunic and started closing it once more.

Probably just as well that she is, Leino thought. I can’t afford to be distracted, not now, not trying an important spell for the first time. Gathering himself, he began the charm he was sure his wife had helped shape. He tasted the irony once more, then set it aside-he had no time for it now. It too was a distraction.

So was Xavega, coming up behind him and setting a hand on his shoulder as he incanted. But she was a necessary distraction. Here with the magecraft, she gave unstintingly of herself, more than she did in bed. He felt power flowing from her into him as he chanted and made his passes. And he felt the powers within both of them building as he shaped the spell, building into a sorcerous lance he could aim at the redheads, could use to oppose the darker power they were unleashing.

Could-and did. With a groan almost like the one he would have made at the end with Xavega, he loosed the force pent up inside him. And he felt it strike home, felt it pierce the enemy’s own potent magecraft. Whatever they’d been doing with their murderous magic, it was ruined now-and so, he thought, were the wizards who’d attempted it.

Xavega felt the same thing. Eyes shining, she turned him toward her and kissed him. “We did it!” she exclaimed. Leino’s answering nod was dizzy for more reasons than one. How much had the conjuration taken out of him. Not too much, he hoped. Xavega dropped to her knees. “Where were we?” she asked, looking up at him with eyes full of mischief. They hadn’t been quite there, but it seemed to Leino as good a place as any, and far better than most. He set a hand on the back of her head, urging her on.

“This way,” Talsu said to one of the Kuusaman officers who spoke about as much classical Kaunian as he did. “Do you to see? No barbarians here. Some on that side of hills, others on this side, but none here. They not to know of way through here.”

“I see,” the dark little slant-eyed man replied. “This is good. If we get through, this is very good. I think now that we get through.” He spoke in his own oddly rhythmic language to his countrymen. A couple of them answered in the same speech. Talsu understood not a word of it, but he still would have guessed the Kuusamans were pleased with the way things were going.

“We give the Algarvians right up the-” The Kuusaman officer used a phrase Talsu hadn’t heard before. He didn’t even know whether the last couple of words were Kuusaman or classical Kaunian. He didn’t care very much, either. Whatever language they were in, he got the message. He laughed out loud. He liked it, too.

He led the Kuusamans on the winding track past Skrunda. The Algarvians probably didn’t even know it was there. They couldn’t find out everything about the kingdom they’d occupied, and they wouldn’t have needed to do any fighting here since the earliest days of their invasion, if then. Plenty of people could have told the Kuusamans and Lagoans about it. Talsu happened to be the one who had.

If the Kuusamans get in behind Skrunda, the redheads will have to pull back, he thought. And if they pull back, they ‘II leave my family alone after that. They ‘II have to, because they won’t be able to reach them. Powers above grant that everyone is still safe. They wouldn ‘t have done anything to them… would they?

I’ll find out. Once the Algarvians are gone, I’ll find out. That’s what the Kuusamans and the Lagoans are good for: driving out Mezentio’s men. We couldn‘t do it for ourselves, but it’s still going to get done.

“There.” He pointed for the Kuusaman officer. “Do you to see? You are gone by Skrunda now. No Algarvian positions here. No barbarians here. Your men can to go ahead.”

“I see,” the foreigner said. Except for Algarvians, he was among the first foreigners Talsu had ever dealt with. He called out to his own men, and to the behemoths with them. Then he slapped Talsu on the back. He had to reach up to do it; he was a head shorter than the Jelgavan, and so were most of his countrymen. He was short beside Algarvians, too. But with a stick in his hands, what size he was didn’t matter much. He gri

“Aye,” Talsu said fiercely.

The Kuusaman called out again in his own language. His men and behemoths went forward without the slightest hesitation. They shared that trait with the Algarvians: when they found an opening, they swarmed to take advantage of it. Talsu didn’t think any part of the Jelgavan army had ever moved so fast during this war. That was a good reason why there was no Jelgavan army any more, unless King Donalitu was reconstituting one in the lands the Lagoan and Kuusaman armies had regained for him.

From where Talsu stood, he could see a long way into the flat country west of Skrunda. He could see where the Algarvians suddenly realized a dagger had been thrust through their defenses. And he could see the Kuusamans rushing past the redheads’ handful of pickets, giving them enough attention to keep them from slowing things down and not a copper more. That was another lesson Mezentio’s men had taught, another lesson the Jelgavans hadn’t learned.

“What are you going to do about that, you stinking whoresons?” Talsu said, almost hugging himself with glee. “How do you like it when it happens to you?”

But then, almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth, the ground quivered under his feet like an animal in pain. He cried out in horror and in fear. The Algarvians wasted no time hitting back, either, and he knew just how they were doing it: with the life blood of Kaunians.

What would, what could, the Kuusamans do about that? He waited for disaster to strike them, as it had struck the band of irregulars of which he’d been a part after they did too good a job of harassing the redheads.

Talsu waited, but that didn’t happen. What did happen was a flash of light somewhere off to the west, almost at the edge of his vision. And after that, he felt no more of the sorcery that had wrecked his comrades in the steeper hills to the south.