Darkness Descending (73 page)

Gismonda turned to the kitchen wench. “Fetch us a bottle of sparkling wine and two crystal flutes.” After the girl had gone, Sabrino’s wife looked back at him. “And when did you come to Trapani?”

Have you already gone to your mistress to shame me? was
what she meant. She knew how he thought. He’d been wise to come here first: indeed he had. “Not an hour and a half ago,” he replied. “If you sniff, you can smell the brimstone reek of dragon on me yet. I want to make myself presentable before going to the palace.”

Gismonda did sniff—and nodded, satisfied. “Will you take me to the palace?”

With another bow, Sabrino shook his head. “Would that I could, but I may not. I shall not wait on the king for pleasure, but in connection with these orders I have got.”

“Will he change them for you?” his wife asked.

“I doubt it,” Sabrino answered. “He trusts his generals—and he’d better, for if they aren’t to be trusted, powers above preserve the kingdom. But I hope he will let me see some of the sense behind them, if any there be.” Gismonda raised an eyebrow; that let her know what he thought of things.

Better for a hot soak, Sabrino changed into a fresh uniform, one that didn’t bear the effluvium of dragon. Then, after a last nod to his wife, he caught a ley-line caravan for Palace Square, the power point—in more ways than one—at the heart of Trapani.

Walking into the palace, he felt a curious sense of diminution. Anywhere else in the kingdom and he, a count and a colonel, was a presence of considerable consequence. In the building that housed the king, though ... The servitors gave him precisely measured bows, less than they would have given were he a marquis, much less than they would have given were he a duke.

“His Majesty is not receiving at present,” a gorgeously dressed fellow informed Sabrino. “A reception is planned for later this evening, however. Is your name on the list of invited guests, your Excellency?”

“Not likely, since I was in combat in Unkerlant till day before yesterday, but I’ll be there anyway,” Sabrino answered.

Had the palace official argued with him, Sabrino would have drawn the sword that was for the most part only a ceremonial weapon. But the man nodded, saying, “His Majesty is always pleased to greet members of the nobility who have distinguished themselves in action. If you will please give me your name ...”

Sabrino did, wondering how pleased King Mezentio would be to greet him.

He’d roused the king’s ire by trying to talk him out of slaughtering Kaunian captives to power sorcery against the Unkerlanters. Mezentio had been sure that would win the war. It hadn’t. No king was fond of meeting subjects who could say, “I told you so.”

But there were other things Sabrino wanted to tell Mezentio. And so he nodded his thanks to the splendid flunky and then left the palace to sup and drink a couple of glasses of wine before returning. When he came back, he wondered if the servitor had just been getting rid of him. But no: now his name was on the list of Mezentio’s guests. A serving woman whose kilt barely covered her buttocks led him to the chamber where the king was receiving. He enjoyed following her more than he expected to enjoy talking with his sovereign.

Flutes and viols and a tinkling clavichord wove an intricate net of sound as background to the gathering. Sabrino nodded approval as he headed over to get a glass of wine. No strident thumpings here. However civilized the Kaunians claimed to be, he couldn’t stand their music.

Goblet in hand, he circulated through the building crowd, bowing to and being bowed to by the other men, bowing to and receiving curtsies from the women. He wouldn’t have minded receiving more than a curtsy from some of them, but that would have to wait on events: and besides, he hadn’t called on Fronesia yet.

King Mezentio seemed in good spirits. His smile didn’t falter as Sabrino bowed low before him. “I greet you, my lord Count,” he said with nothing but courtesy in his voice. But then, he was Sabrino’s age or older; he’d had plenty of time to learn to hide what he thought behind a mask of policy.

“I am very pleased to greet you, your Majesty, though only briefly and in passing, as it were,” Sabrino replied, bowing again.

“Briefly, eh?” Mezentio said. He planned Algarve’s grand strategy; he didn’t keep in mind where every colonel commanding a wing of dragons was going.

“Aye,” Sabrino said. “My men and I are ordered across the Narrow Sea to help the Yaninans in their fight with Lagoas. If your Majesty will pardon my frankness, I think we could do better fighting the Unkerlanters.”

“I have pardoned your frankness before,” Mezentio said, now with an edge to his voice—no, he hadn’t forgotten their disagreement in Unkerlant. “But I will also say that, unless we keep the cinnabar that comes from the land of the Ice People, your dragons will have a harder time fighting anyone.”

Stubbornly, Sabrino said, “There’s also cinnabar in the south of Unkerlant, across the Narrow Sea from the austral continent.”

“And I intend to go after it this summer, too,” the king answered. “But I also intend to keep what I already have, and to do that I have to prop up the Yaninans on the other side of the sea.” He sighed. “Since I see none in attendance here this very evening, I can tell you the truth: being allied to them is like being shackled to a corpse.”

Any joke a king made was funny by virtue of his rank. This one actually amused Sabrino. Bowing once more, he said, “Very well, your Majesty. My men and I will do what we can to keep the corpse breathing a little longer.” That, in turn, made Mezentio laugh—and when the king laughed, everyone around him laughed, too.

Sixteen

M
arshal Rathar gnawed on chewy barley bread and knocked back a slug of raw spirits that made his hair try to stand on end under his fur cap. The campfire by which he sat sent a plume of black smoke up into the air. The Unkerlanter soldiers with whom he ate had dug several holes close by in case that plume attracted a marauding Algarvian dragon.

He swigged again from the tin canteen of spirits. “Ah, by the powers above, that takes me back a few years,” he said to the men in rock-gray sitting around the fire. “Does me good to get back in the field, it truly does. I swilled this rotgut all through the Twinkings War. The breath it gives you, you think you’re a dragon yourself.”

None of the youngsters said anything, though a couple did risk smiles. They saw the big stars on his collar tabs and couldn’t imagine him as anything but a marshal. They had no idea what getting older meant, or how it could change a man—they hadn’t done that yet. He’d been young and remembered what it was like.

He emptied the canteen, then belched and thumped himself on the chest with a clenched fist. That made a couple of more soldiers grin. He could feel the spirits snarling inside his head. Getting back into the field felt so good! Getting away from Cottbus, getting away from the palace, getting away from Bang Swemmel, felt even better.

“Are we going to lick these Algarvian whoresons right out of their boots?” he asked.

Now the soldiers spoke: “Aye!” It was as much a growl, a fierce hungry growl, as a word.

“Are we going to run ‘em out of Unkerlant, out of the Duchy of Grelz here, with their tails between their legs?”

“Aye!” the soldiers repeated, as fiercely as before. They’d been pouring down spirits, too. Asking Unkerlanters not to drink was like asking roosters not to crow at daybreak. Officers did have some chance of not letting them drink too much.

“Are we going to show this so-called Bang Raniero that Bang Mezentio stuck on the throne that wasn’t his to give away to begin with that we’d sooner hang him—or better yet, boil him alive—than go down on our bellies before him?” Rathar did his best to keep his tone light, but worried even so. Some Grelzers were perfectly content obeying a foreign oppressor, no doubt because, in the person of King Swemmel, they had been compelled to obey a domestic oppressor.

But the soldiers—several of them Grelzers—shouted, “Aye!” once more. They were dirty and ill-shaven, but they’d been moving forward ever since the weather got bad, and there was nothing like advancing to put a soldier’s pecker up.

Rathar looked for the officer in charge of the unit—looked for him and didn’t find him. Then he looked for a fellow wearing a sergeant’s three brass triangles on each collar tab. Sergeants had had to command companies during the Six Years’ War, and sergeants had been worth their weight in gold in the desperate fight between Swemmel and Kyot. Some who’d started as sergeants had risen high, Rathar highest ofall.

Finding his man, the marshal said, “Tell me your name, Sergeant.”

“Lord Marshal, I’m called Wimar,” the fellow answered. By his accent, he was out of some village in the Duchy of Grelz.

“Well, Wimar, step aside with me,” Rathar said, rising to his feet. “I want to know what you think about things, and I hope you’ll give me straight answers.”

“I’ll do my best, sir,” Wimar said as he also got up. He followed Rathar away from the fire. The eyes of the men he commanded followed them both. Rathar hid a smile. No one would give the sergeant any back talk for a while, not after the marshal of Unkerlant asked for his opinions.

Pointing east toward the front not too far away, Rathar asked, “What sort of shape are the Algarvians in right now?”

“Cold, frostbitten, miserable,” Wimar answered at once. “They never once expected to have to do this kind of fighting. You’ll know about that better than I do, sir. But they don’t break to pieces, powers below eat them. You make the least little mistake against ‘em and they’ll cut off your dick and hand it to you with a ribbon tied around it. Uh, sir.” By his expression, he didn’t think he should have been that frank. By his breath, he’d had enough, he’d had enough spirits to talk before he did a whole lot of thinking.

“I’m not angry,” Rathar said. “They’ve come too cursed close to cutting off the kingdom’s dick, Sergeant, and they may do it yet unless we figure out how to stop them once and for all. Any notions you have, I’ll gladly listen to.”

Wimar needed a moment to believe what he was hearing. At last, he said, “I don’t know how we’ll fare when spring comes.”

“All the more reason to push hard now, while we still hold the advantage, don’t you think?” Rathar asked.

“Oh, aye,” Wimar answered. “We push them back now, then see how far they push us back later.”

King Swemmel had demanded that the Algarvians be pushed out of Unkerlant altogether by the coming of spring. That hadn’t happened. It wouldn’t happen. Not a quarter of it would happen. In the palace, Swemmel could demand whatever he pleased, and it would be his at once. Here in the real world, unfortunately, the redheads also had a good deal to say about the business.

Made bold by Rathar’s forbearance, Wimar said, “Ask you something, sir?” Forbearing still, Rathar nodded. The sergeant licked his lips, then continued, “Sir, can we really beat ‘em?”

“Aye, we can.” The marshal spoke with great conviction. “We
can.
But we have no promise from the powers above that we
will.
The Algarvians may have been too confident when the fighting started.” The dismal way some Unkerlanter armies had performed would have gone a long way toward making them overconfident, but he didn’t mention that. “I think I can guarantee that the redheads won’t be too confident this spring. We’d better not be, either.”

“Anybody who thinks anything against Mezentio’s buggers will ever be easy is a cursed fool, anybody wants to know the way it looks to me,” Wimar said. When he was expressing strong emotion, his Grelzer accent got thicker.

Before Rathar could answer, the Algarvians started tossing eggs into the area, as if they’d decided to underscore the sergeant’s words. Rathar had huddled behind burning rocks when he went up to Zuwayza to get that bungled campaign moving forward once more. Now he dove into a hole with a dusting of snow on the mud at the bottom. He knew a certain amount of pride that he got in there before Wimar could.

The sergeant cursed in disgust. “Their tossers have been short of eggs lately. They must have got a couple of caravans through.”

An egg burst close enough to make the ground shudder under Rathar. “Be glad it was eggs and not Kaunian captives,” he said as dirt rained down on the sergeant and him.

“Oh, aye, there is that,” Wimar answered. “Of course, they might have brought eggs and Kaunians both. Have we got any old folks and convicts ready to slaughter in case they did bring up some of those poor whoresons—or even if they didn’t, come to that? Every little bit helps, is what folks say.”

“Every little bit helps,” Rathar repeated in a hollow voice. Wimar thought of his countrymen the same way Swemmel did: as weapons, or perhaps tools, in the struggle against Algarve, nothing more. Rathar wondered what the people the king’s inspectors routed from their villages thought. Whatever it was, it did them no good. Unkerlanter mages used their life energy as readily as the redheads stole that of the Kaunians.

More eggs fell, a heavier plastering than before. Wimar cursed again. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say the stinking redheads were getting their ducks in a row for a counterattack,” he said.