Jaws of Darkness

What had the Kuusamans done? The first fellow he’d talked to, the one who’d spoken classical Kaunian really well, had worn a mage’s badge. Had he had something to do with whatever had just happened? How should I know? Talsu wondered. It didn’t really matter, anyhow. What mattered was that the redheads’ magic had failed them.

Did the Kuusamans here even know what their sorcerers had done? Talsu doubted it. That didn’t really matter, either. The redheads in these parts hadn’t been able to stop their foes through force of magecraft. Now they would have to try through force of arms. And I don’t think they’ve got the force of arms to do it, not when their flank s been turned.

He wasn’t, he didn’t have to be, part of the battle for Skrunda and the surrounding territory. Watching it unfold without risk to him was a rare luxury, like expensive wine or extra-soft wool for a pair of trousers. A steady stream of Kuusaman soldiers slogged past him, heading into the fight. He waved to the men of each company. They were doing his kingdom an enormous favor. He wondered if they thought of it that way, or whether they were as resigned to doing as they were told as he had been during his army days. The latter, he would have bet.

Dragons flew low overhead, dragons hard to spot because they were painted in Kuusaman sky blue and sea green. No Algarvian dragons that he saw rose to challenge them. He hadn’t seen many Algarvian dragons here in Jelgava, not at any time and especially not the past year or so. Where are they? he thought. Defending Algarve itself, I suppose, and trying to hold back the Unkerlanters. But Mezentio’s soldiers in these parts are paying a big price because the redheads don’t have enough. That left him something less than brokenhearted.

He trudged forward, sticking to the fields by the side of the track so the advancing Kuusamans would get the benefit of the best ground. Before he’d gone very far, he passed a crater in the ground and a corpse with nastily mangled legs. He gulped. Even if the Algarvians didn’t have soldiers covering this route, they’d buried eggs in the ground to slow up an enemy advance. Haifa mile farther on lay a dead behemoth with its right hind leg only a bloody mess. Talsu gulped again.

Here came some kilted Algarvians back toward him. They weren’t part of a counterattack. None of them carried a stick, and all of them held their hands high over their heads. They were captives, herded along by a couple of bowlegged little Kuusamans. When Jelgava fell, a handful of Algarvians had taken a battalion’s worth of Talsu’s countrymen into captivity. Now they were tasting the humiliation they’d dished out. Some of them looked weary. More had that beaten-dog grin of relief at being alive.

Going down onto lower ground meant Talsu couldn’t see Skrunda anymore. But he knew where it lay, and made for it without hesitation. He kept peering northwest, for fear he’d see a great column of greasy black smoke rising into the sky. That would mean the redheads were fighting there, or else that they’d fired the town to help cover their retreat. He hoped they would do no such thing, but knew he couldn’t be sure what they might try.

To the Kuusamans, he was just one more civilian now. He did his best to stay out of their way, too. Some of them were liable to blaze first and ask questions later.

Then the road rose and let him see his home town again. He felt like cheering-it looked more or less intact. He hurried toward it with the eagerness of a lover rushing toward his beloved. And he was rushing toward his beloved, too, for Gailisa was there-or he hoped with all his heart she was.

He trudged into Skrunda an hour or so later. The first thing he saw was two Jelgavan bodies hanging from lampposts. The placards tied round their necks said, they fought against algarve. Neither of them was anybody Talsu knew well. He let out a silent sigh of relief at that.

He made for the grocer’s shop his father-in-law ran. Maybe Gailisa would be there. If she wasn’t, her father would surely know where she was-and he would know about Talsu’s mother and father and sister, too.

But the grocer’s shop wasn’t there anymore. Talsu stared in startled dismay. He’d been away from Skrunda for a couple of months now. How many times had dragons come over the town and dropped eggs on it? In one of those visits, the grocer’s shop had gone up in flames, as his own family’s tailor’s shop had earlier. Now he had to hurry toward the tent city on the west side of town, where refugees like his family had been staying. Maybe he could find Gailisa’s father there, too.

Maybe Gailisa’s father and Gailisa herself had been in the grocer’s shop when eggs fell on and around it. Talsu tried not to think about that.

A couple of people who knew him nodded cautiously as he hurried past them. A couple of others turned their backs. Some folk in Skrunda still thought the Algarvians had let him out of their dungeon because he’d betrayed his countrymen for them. There was very little truth in that, but how could he prove it?

He was about the plunge into the tent city and make for the tent where he’d been sheltering before he had to flee when someone called his name: “Talsu!”

“Ausra!” he said, whirling toward his sister, recognizing her voice even before he saw her. She threw herself into his arms. He squeezed the breath out of her and kissed her on the cheek. “Are you all right? Is Gailisa? Are Father and Mother?”

“Aye, we’re all fine,” she answered, and he kissed her again, harder this time. But she went on, “Gailisa’s father…”

“Oh, powers above!” Talsu said. “I saw the shop on the way here. He didn’t get out?”

Ausra shook her head. “I’m afraid not. Gailisa’s taken it pretty hard.”

“I believe that,” Talsu said, though he’d always thought of his father-in-law as a plump, not particularly good-natured nonentity, one of the least interesting people he’d ever known. “When did it happen? The ruins looked pretty fresh.”

“Just last week,” his sister told him. He ground his teeth. Ausra took his arm. “But come on. I don’t think the redheads are looking for you anymore.”

“I didn’t see any Algarvians in town,” Talsu said, “and I think Skrunda is as good as free, because the Kuusamans have broken through beyond the town, and the redheads will have to pull back or be trapped.”

“How do you know that?” Ausra asked.

“Because I showed the Kuusamans the route they could use to break through,” Talsu answered proudly. This time, Ausra kissed him.

That was nice, but the looks on the faces of Traku and Laitsina and, best of all, Gailisa were finer still a couple of minutes later. And kissing his wife was ever so much finer than kissing his sister. “You’re home!” Gailisa said. “You’re safe!” She started to laugh and cry at the same time.

“I’m home. I’m safe,” he agreed. “And we’re free. We’re rid of the redheads for good.”

“Here you go, Sergeant,” Kun said as he and Istvan cut wood together in the captives’ camp on Obuda. “You might want these.” He took a few sickly-green leaves from his pocket and held them out to Istvan.

“Oh, I might, might I?” Istvan didn’t take the rather wilted leaves. “Stars above, why?”

Kun leaned closer and spoke in a hissing whisper: “Because they’ll give you a good two-day dose of the galloping shits, that’s why.”

Istvan gaped at him. “Are you out of your mind? Why would I want a dose of the shits? They’re too stinking easy to get here anyway, the kind of slop the slanteyes feed us.”

“Will you take the accursed weeds before the guards start giving us the fishy stares?” Kun snapped. Startled- Kun didn’t usually sound so vehement-Istvan did stick the leaves in his own pocket and go back to chopping. Kun started swinging his axe again, too. Nodding, he said, “That’s more like it.”