Darkness Descending (70 page)

Elishamma’s face helped him: It was almost impossible to read. His beard grew up to just under his eyes; his thick, grizzled mustache covered his lips. His hairline started low on his forehead, so low that his eyebrows were only thicker tufts at the bottom of it. That left next to no bare skin from which Fernao and Junqueiro could gauge his expression.

But he was not a great bargainer. And he made a mistake: he got greedy. When he solemnly declared the Yaninans had offered him a hundred thousand gold pieces to assail the Lagoan army, both that army’s commander and its highest-ranking mage laughed in his face. “All of Yanina put together isn’t worth a hundred thousand gold pieces,” Junqueiro said. Fernao enjoyed translating that. It wasn’t true, not literally, but it matched his feeling about the kingdom.

Elishamma yielded ground without visible embarrassment. Even had he been bare-faced, Fernao doubted he would have shown embarrassment. He had as much effrontery as any Yaninan ever born. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it was but fifty thousand.”

Fernao responded to that without wasting time translating for Junqueiro: “All of Yanina put together isn’t worth fifty thousand gold pieces, either.”

When Elishamma lowered the proposed bribe again without loudly declaring he’d been telling the truth all along, Fernao smiled to himself and brought his commander back into the discussion. Junqueiro knew how much the army could afford to pay out, which Fernao didn’t. He beat the chieftain from the Ice People down to just over a tenth of what he’d originally tried to get.

“Is it agreed, then?” Elishamma said at last.

Junqueiro nodded and started to speak. Before he could, Fernao said, “Aye, with one exception: What hostages will you give us? These fellows you brought here with you may do.” He turned the words into Lagoan so his superior could understand. Junqueiro looked startled, and probably had to work hard not to look horrified, for taking hostages had gone out of style in civilized countries—though rumor said the Algarvians were reviving it in the lands they occupied.

But Elishamma only sat still and then slowly nodded. “I did not know if you would think of this,” he said. “You mangy ones are often absentminded when it comes to such things. Had you not spoken, I would not have reminded you.”

“I believe that,” Fernao said. “But I have come to this land before, and I know something—not everything, but something—of its ways. What is your fetish animal?”

Again, Elishamma paused. Finally, he said, “I do not think I will tell you. You are a shaman, after all. Foreign magic is not strong here, but I do not care to take a chance with you.”

“You flatter me,” Fernao said. In fact, odds were Elishamma did flatter him. But his tone suggested he might be able to harm Elishamma if he learned to which animal the chieftain was mystically bound.

“What are you two saying?” Junqueiro asked. Fernao explained. Junqueiro surprised him by finding exacdy the right thing to do: he leaned over and patted Fernao on the back, as if to say he was certain the mage could indeed put paid to Elishamma if he found out what his fetish animal was. The chieftain noted that, too. He looked unhappy enough for Fernao to recognize the expression.

Now Junqueiro asked, “Is it agreed?”

“It is agreed,” Elishamma said. “You have here Machir and Hepher and Abinadab and Eliphelet and Gereb.” He proceeded to give all their genealogies, too. “Their heads shall answer for my good faith.” He spoke to his followers in their own guttural language. They bowed to him in acquiescence.

“Do any of you speak the Yaninans’ language?” Fernao asked in that tongue. None of the men of the Ice People answered. Fernao shifted to Lagoan: “Do any of you speak this language?” Again, the hostages kept silent. Were they concealing what they knew? How much would it cost to find out? Fernao knew no sorcerous way of learning. He headed into the future as blind as any other man.

Bembo paced through the streets of Gromheort. He was glad to be walking a regular constables beat today, not going after Kaunians to ship them west—or even east, though he still didn’t understand why that one caravanload of blonds had headed off in the wrong direction.

When he remarked on that, Oraste grunted and gave him three words’ worth of what was undoubtedly good advice: “Don’t ask questions.”

Not asking was easier—Bembo had no trouble seeing that. He had nothing against doing things the easy way; he’d always preferred it. And so, instead of asking another question, the plump constable said, “Don’t hardly see any Kaunians on the streets these days.”

“I don’t miss ‘em, either,” Oraste answered. Like a lot of what he said, that not only didn’t need a reply but practically precluded one.

“Here we go.” Bembo strode into an eatery. The Forthwegian proprietor greeted Oraste and him with a broad smile that was bound to be false but was welcome anyhow. Then he handed them lengths of spicy sausage and cups of wine. They tossed back the wine and left the eatery tearing bites off the sausage.

“Not too bad.” Oraste finished the last of the meat, licked his fingers, and wiped them on his kilt.

“No,” Bembo agreed. “They know they have to keep their constables happy, or else the constables will keep them unhappy.” That was how things worked back in Tricarico. And the Forthwegians were a conquered people. If they didn’t keep Bembo and his comrades happy, the Algarvians could be a lot tougher on them than ever they could back in their own kingdom.

Oraste jerked a thumb at a broadsheet as he and Bembo marched past it. “What do you think of that?” he asked.

The broadsheet showed bearded Forthwegians in long tunics marching side by side with uniformed Algarvians sporting imperials or waxed mustaches or side whiskers or no facial hair at all. Bembo couldn’t read Forthwegian to save his life, but he knew about Plegmund’s Brigade. With a shrug, he answered, “If these buggers want to blaze Unkerlanters, that’s fine by me. And if the Unkerlanters blaze them instead of hurting our boys, that’s fine by me, too.”

“Suppose the Forthwegians decide to up and blaze us instead?” Oraste said: practically a speech, from him.

“Then we smash ‘em,” Bembo answered; he liked problems with simple answers. After a moment, he added, “Not too much risk of that, I don’t think. The Forthwegians don’t love us, but they don’t love Swemmel, either. Of course, I can’t think of anybody who does love Swemmel—can you?”

“Nobody in his right mind, anyhow,” Oraste said, and laughed, more likely at his own joke than at Bembo’s. They marched on for another couple of strides. Then Oraste grunted. “Besides, we’re cleaning out the Kaunians here. Aye, that’ll keep these whoresons happy.”

A troop of unicorn cavalry trotted west past the two constables, heading toward the distant front. Some, though not all, of the Algarvians on the unicorns wore white smocks over their tan tunics. Back when the fight against Unkerlant began, no one in Algarve had dreamt it would last into the winter, let alone almost through it. The unicorns’ white coats—whiter by far than the concealing smocks—were splotched with gray and brown paint, to make the animals stand out less against a background of melting snow.

One of the cavalry troopers jeered at Bembo and Oraste: “You boys have the soft jobs. Want to trade with me?”

Bembo shook his head. “Not me,” he said. “I may be a horse’s arse, but I know better than to be a unicorn’s, by the powers above.” That won a snort from Oraste and another from the Algarvian cavalryman, who went on riding, his unicorn’s harness jingling at every stride.

Oraste said, “I wouldn’t mind getting rid of the Unkerlanters.” Bembo shrugged again. The trouble with going off to fight in the west was that the Unkerlanters were altogether too likely to get rid of him. He didn’t point that out; if Oraste couldn’t see it for himself, the burly constable was a lot dumber than Bembo thought he was.

Besides which .. . “Be careful what you wish for because you may get it,” Bembo said. “They’re sending a whole great whacking lot of men off to the west.” That most likely meant a whole great whacking lot of men off to the west were getting killed or maimed, something on which Bembo would have preferred not to dwell.

And he didn’t have to dwell on it, either, for a plump, middle-aged Forthwegian woman burst out the front door of a block of flats and ran toward him and Oraste, shouting, “Constables! Constables!” The Forthwegian word was similar to its Algarvian equivalent; the Forthwegians had never heard of constables till the Algarvians introduced them to the western part of Forthweg, which had been ruled from Trapani for a century and a half before the Six Years’ War.

“What’s this?” Oraste asked suspiciously. Bembo didn’t know, either, and was just as suspicious. His experience had been that Forthwegians didn’t look for constables—they looked out for them. The woman spewed forth a stream of gibberish: the handful of Forthwegian words Bembo know were vile.

“Wait!” he said, and threw up his hands as if stopping an oncoming wagon. “Do you speak any Algarvian?” The woman shook her head. Her massive bosom shook too. Bembo found the spectacle anything but entrancing. He sighed, then shifted languages and asked a question that obscurely embarrassed him: “You speaking Kaunian?”

“Yes, I speak some Kaunian,” the woman answered—she had more of the tongue than he did, which wasn’t saying much. “Live next to those nasty people long enough and some rubs off.”

Bembo tried to follow her and at the same time to dredge up vocabulary he hadn’t had to worry about since the last time a schoolmaster beat it into his back with a switch. “You wanting to telling me what?” he asked. He gave up on grammar and syntax; if he could make himself understood, he was ahead of the game.

And the woman did understand him. Pointing back toward her building, she said, “A wicked wizard has cheated me out of a week’s pay. I wait on tables. I am not rich. I will never be rich. I cannot afford to have a miserable mage take away my money.”

“What’s she yattering about?” asked Oraste, who either had never learned Kaunian or didn’t remember so much as a word. Bembo explained. Oraste’s long face got longer. “A wizard? Oh, aye, that’s just what you love to do when you’re a constable: go after a wizard. Have to blaze the whoreson if he tries to give you trouble. Otherwise, he doesn’t just try—he cursed well does it.”

“I know, I know. Don’t remind me.” Bembo turned back to the Forthwegian woman. “Wizard doing was what?”

“What was he doing?” Her bosom heaved once more. Sparks flashed in her dark eyes. “He was cheating me. I told you that. Did you not listen?”

Constabulary work could be exasperating in Tricarico, too. Every kingdom had its share of fools. Bembo remained convinced he met more than his share. He pointed at the woman. “You taking toward he we.”

Into the block of flats they went. It was more battered and more crowded than any equivalent back in Algarve. The stairway stank of stale olive oil and staler piss. Bembo wrinkled his nose. The Forthwegian woman took the smell for granted, which suggested it had been there before the Algarvians overran Gromheort.

On the third floor, the woman pointed to the doorway farthest from the stairs. “There!” she said loudly. “The thief lives there.”

“Kick it in?” Oraste asked.

“Not yet,” Bembo answered. “We’ve only got this gal’s side of it. For all we know, this fellow in there may be right. For all we know, he may not be a wizard at all. Powers above, he may never have set eyes on her before.” The woman listened to him in impatient incomprehension. With an unhappy mutter, he started toward the door. “Cover me,” he told Oraste.

“Oh, aye,” his comrade said, and drew his stick. “Just in case the dingleberry
is
a mage.”

Bembo was thinking the same thing. The thought made him carefully calibrate his knock. He was aiming for being firm without being overbearing. He didn’t draw his stick, but had his hand on it. When he heard someone moving inside the flat, he didn’t know whether to be relieved or alarmed.

After a click of the latch, the door swung open. The fellow who stood in the doorway staring at Bembo through thick spectacles might have been a mage. As easily, he might have been an out-of-work clerk. Comprehension filled his face when he saw the heavy woman behind the constables. He muttered something in Forthwegian that had to mean, “I might have known.”

“You speak Algarvian?” Bembo barked at him.

To his relief, the fellow answered, “Aye, somewhat. I should have guessed Eanfled would summon the constables.” He looked past Bembo and Oraste and said something to the woman. Bembo didn’t know what she answered, but it sounded hotter than anything he’d learned.

He pointed to the woman. “Did you work magic for her?”

“Aye, I did,” the man answered.

“What does he say?” the woman—Eanfled—demanded in Kaunian. Bembo, feeling harassed, did his best to answer. The man took over; he spoke Kaunian, too.

“Ask him what sort of magic he did,” Oraste suggested—in Algarvian, of course. Again, Bembo tried to translate.

“She wanted to lose weight,” the man said—in Kaunian. “I made a spell to take the edge off her appetite. I had to be careful. Too much and she would starve herself to death. No great loss,” he added, “but people would talk.”

Eanfled let out a furious screech that made doors open all along the hallway. “You cheated me, you whoreson!” she shouted. “Look at me!” There was certainly plenty of her at which to look.

“You were fatter before,” the fellow with the spectacles answered calmly.

“Liar!” she yelled at him.

Oraste nudged Bembo. “All right, smart boy, what are they saying?” he asked. After Bembo told him, he grunted, “That’s about what I thought. What are we going to do about it?”

“Shake ‘em both down,” Bembo answered. He turned to the low-ranking, or more likely amateur, mage, with whom he could converse more readily. “Tell this walking pork chop here that we’re going to haul the both of you up in front of the military governor, and we’ll see if there’s anything left of either one of you when he’s through.”

Looking very unhappy, the bespectacled man translated that into Forthwegian. The fat woman looked even more appalled. Bembo wondered if she was part Kaunian and feared that would come out. She didn’t look it, but you never could tell.