Darkness Descending (10 page)

They could have escaped Sabrino’s wing and fled into the all but limitless plains of Unkerlant. Instead, no matter how outnumbered they were, they flew straight for the Algarvian dragons.

For Sabrino, it wasn’t a question of urging his mount on. It was a question of holding back the dragon, of making the attack part of an organized assault on the Unkerlanters rather than a wild beast’s headlong rush. With the dragon goad in his right hand, he used his stick with his left. Aiming from dragonback was tricky, but he’d had a lot of practice. If he blazed an enemy flier, the fellow’s dragon would be nothing more than a wild beast, as likely to attack friend as foe.

He’d fought Unkerlanters in the air before and had a low opinion of their skill. Seeing six assail sixty or so, he also had a low opinion of their common sense. But, as with their comrades on the ground, he’d never been able to fault their courage. Here they came, as if they outnumbered his dragonfliers ten to one instead of the other way round. They couldn’t have hoped to win, or even to escape. They intended to sell themselves as dearly as possible.

For his part, he wanted to dispose of them as fast as he could. He sent several of his dragons after each of theirs, to give them no chance for heroism. Somebody blazed one of their fliers almost at once. That dragon, suddenly on its own, flew off. Another one plunged to the ground when an Algarvian got in back of it without its flier’s knowing and flamed it from behind.

Inside a couple of minutes, all the Unkerlanter dragons were out of the fight. Sabrino himself blazed the dragonfliers his group of Algarvians attacked. But one of King Swemmel’s men got a measure of revenge. A couple of Algarvian dragons had flamed the one he flew. It was horribly burned, and so, no doubt, was he. Still, he made it obey one last command: he flew it straight against an Algarvian dragon. They smashed together and both tumbled out of the sky.

“That was a brave man,” Sabrino said softly. A moment later, as an afterthought, he added, “Curse him.” Save for the Algarvians, the heavens were empty. Sabrino waved the wing back toward the dragon farm where they and the handlers would tend to their beasts. But now they had one more slot that wanted filling.

Ealstan looked up from the page of bookkeeping questions his father had set him to find his cousin, Sidroc, grinning a most unpleasant grin. “I’m done with
my
work for the night,” Sidroc said. “But then, I only have what the school dishes out. I told you you’d end up stuck with more.”

“Aye, and you’ve
been
telling me, too—telling me and telling me,” Ealstan said. “Why don’t you shut up and let me finish?” He wished Leofsig, his older brother, were around. But Leofsig had gone to hear music with Felgilde, whom he’d been seeing even before he went into King Penda’s levy.

Sidroc went off. He did his best to look insulted, but he was chuckling, too. Ealstan felt like chucking the inkwell after his cousin. Instead, with a sour frown, he buckled down and finished the rest of the problems. After rising, he stretched till his back creaked; he’d been sitting there a long time. It certainly seemed a long time.

He took the problems into the parlor, where his father and Uncle Hengist were sharing a news sheet. His father turned away from the sheet. “All right, son,” he said, “let’s see what you’ve done with this lot.”

“Let’s see what this lot’s done to me,” Ealstan returned. Uncle Hengist—Sidroc’s father—laughed. Ealstan’s father smiled for a moment and started checking the work.

Sidroc must have got his habit of interrupting from Hengist, who set the news sheet on his lap and said, “Looks like the Unkerlanters are finished, eh, Hestan? Algarve’s going to be top dog for a long time to come.”

“What was that?” Hestan asked; his mind had been on the questions. Sidroc’s father repeated himself. Hestan shrugged. “The only news the Algarvians let into Gromheort—into any of Forthweg—is what makes them look good. If anything goes wrong, we’ll never hear about it.”

“Nobody’s said the Unkerlanters are calling the redheads liars, and the Unkerlanters call people liars even when they’re telling the truth,” Hengist replied.

Hestan only shrugged again. He tapped Ealstan’s paper with a fingernail. “Son, you reckoned simple interest here. You should have compounded it. A client would not be happy to find that sort of error in his books.”

“Which one, Father?” Ealstan looked down to see what he’d done wrong. He thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. “I’ll fix it,” he said, “and I’ll remember next time, too.” He hated making mistakes, in which he was very much his fathers son. The only real difference between them was that his dark beard was still thin and wispy, while gray had started to streak Hestan’s. Otherwise, they could have come from the same mold: broad-shouldered, swarthy, hook-nosed, like most Forthwegians and their Unkerlanter cousins.

“Let me explain again when you use simple interest and when you must compound,” Hestan began.

Before he could explain, Hengist interrupted once more: “Looks like the Algarvians and the Zuwayzin are both heading toward Glogau. That’s the biggest port the Unkerlanters have up on the warm side of Derlavai. Cursed near the only port up there, too, except for a couple way out to the west. What do you think of that?” He waved the news sheet at Hestan.

“I think it would matter more if Unkerlant didn’t have such an enormous hinterland,” Ealstan’s father answered. “The Unkerlanters need things from the rest of the world less than other kingdoms do.”

“They need sense, is what they need, though you can’t haul that on ships.” Hengist pointed toward his brother. “And you need some sense yourself. You just hate the idea of Algarve winning, that’s all.”

“Don’t you, Uncle Hengist?” Ealstan spoke before Hestan could.

Now Hengist shrugged. “If we couldn’t beat the redheads, what difference does it make? Things won’t be too bad, I don’t expect. It’s not like we were Kaun-ians, or anything like that.”

“Remember what the Algarvians are letting your son learn,” Hestan answered. “Remember what they aren’t. You’re right, they save the worst for the Kaun-ians—but they do not wish us well.”

“They ruled here when we were boys—have you forgotten?” Hengist said. “If they hadn’t lost the Six Years’ War, if the Unkerlanters hadn’t fought among themselves, we wouldn’t have gotten a king of our own back. The redheads treated Forthwegians better than the Unkerlanters did farther west, that’s certain.”

“But we
should be
free,” Ealstan exclaimed. “Forthweg is a great kingdom. We were a great kingdom when the Algarvians and the Unkerlanters were nothing to speak of. They had no business carving us up like a roast goose, either a hundred years ago or now.”

“Boy has spirit,” Hengist remarked to Hestan. He turned back to Ealstan. “If you want to get right down to it, we aren’t carved up any more. King Mezentio’s men hold all of Forthweg these days.”

Ealstan didn’t want to get right down to it, not like that. Without waiting to hear when he should use simple interest and when compound, he left the parlor. Behind him, Hestan said, “In the old days, a Forthwegian or even a blond Kaun-ian could get ahead in Algarve—not as easily as a redhead, but an able man could make do. I don’t see that happening now.”

“Well, I don’t want a Kaunian getting ahead of me—unless she’s a pretty girl in tight trousers.” Uncle Hengist laughed.

That’s where Sidroc comes by it, all right,
Ealstan thought. Instead of going back to his room, he went into the kitchen, intending to hook a plum. He hesitated when he discovered his older sister Conberge in there kneading dough. Since hard times and the Algarvians came to Gromheort, his sister and even his mother had grown stern about making food disappear like that.

But Conberge looked up from her work and smiled at him. Thus encouraged, he sidled up. Her smile didn’t disappear when he reached toward the bowl of fruit. She didn’t swat him with a floury hand. He took a plum and bit into it. It was very sweet. Juice dribbled down his chin, through the sparse hairs of his sprouting beard.

“What have you got there?” his sister asked, pointing not to the plum but to the paper in his other hand.

“Bookkeeping problems Father set me,” Ealstan answered. With a little effort, he managed a smile. “I’m not wild about doing them, but at least he doesn’t switch me when I make mistakes, the way a master would at school.”

“Let me see,” Conberge said, and Ealstan handed her the sheet. She looked it over, nodded, and gave it back. “You used simple interest once when you should have compounded.

“Aye, so Father told—” Ealstan stopped and stared. “I didn’t know you could cast accounts.” He couldn’t tell whether he sounded indignant or astonished—both at once, probably. “They don’t teach you that in the girls’ academy.”

Conberge’s smile turned sour. “No, they don’t. Maybe they should, but they don’t. Father did, though. He said you never could tell, and I might have to be able to earn my own way one day. This was before the war started, mind you.”

“Oh.” Ealstan glanced back toward the parlor. His father and Uncle Hengist were still going back and forth, back and forth, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. “Father sees a long way ahead.”

His sister nodded. “It was a lot harder than writing bad poetry, which is what my schoolmistresses set me to doing, though they didn’t know it was bad. But I think better because of ii, do you know what I mean? Maybe you don’t, because they will teach boys some worthwhile things.”

“They
would
—till the Algarvians got their hands on the school,” Ealstan said bitterly. But he shook his head. He didn’t want to distract himself. “I didn’t know Father had taught you anything like that, though.”

“And up until not very long ago, I wouldn’t have told you, either.” Conberge’s grimace made Ealstan see the world in a way he hadn’t before. She said, “Men don’t usually want women to know too much or be too bright—or to show they know a lot or they’re bright, anyhow. If you ask me, it’s because most men don’t know that much and aren’t that bright themselves.”

“Don’t look at me like that when you say such things,” Ealstan said, which made his sister laugh. He grabbed another plum.

“All right, you can have that one, but that’s all,” Conberge said. “If you think you’ll get away with any more,
you
aren’t that bright.”

Ealstan laughed then. Perhaps drawn by his amusement and his sister’s, Sidroc came in from the door that opened on the courtyard. Seeing Ealstan with a plum in his hand, he grabbed one himself. Conberge couldn’t do anything about it, not with Ealstan eating one. As she turned back to the bread dough, Sidroc asked, “What’s so funny?” His voice came blurry around a big mouthful of plum. He looked a good deal like Ealstan, save that his nose bore a closer resemblance to a turnip than to a sickle blade.

“Getting stuck with bookkeeping problems,” Ealstan answered.

“Men,” Conberge added.

Sidroc looked from one of them to the other. Then, suspiciously, he looked at the plum. “Has this thing turned into brandy while I wasn’t looking?” he asked. Ealstan and Conberge both shrugged, so solemnly that they started laughing again. Sidroc snorted. “I think the two of you have gone daft, is what I think.”

“You’re probably right,” Ealstan told him. “They do say that too many bookkeeping problems—”

“Compounded quarterly,” his sister broke in.

“Compounded quarterly, aye,” Ealstan agreed. “Bookkeeping problems compounded quarterly cause calcification of the brain.”

“Even you don’t know what that means,” Sidroc said.

“It means my brain is turning into a rock, like yours was to start with,” Ealstan said. “If the Algarvians had let you take stonelore, you would have found out for yourself.”

“Think you’re so smart.” Sidroc kept smiling, but his voice held an edge. “Well, maybe you are. But so what? So what?—that’s what I want to know. What’s it gotten you?” Without waiting for an answer, he pitched his plum pit into the trash basket and stalked out of the kitchen.

Ealstan wished he could ignore the question. It was too much to the point. Since Sidroc hadn’t stayed around, he turned back to Conberge. “What
has
being smart got me? Or you, either? Nothing I can see.”

“Would you rather be stupid? That won’t get you anything, either,” Conberge said. After a moment’s thought, she went on, “If you’re smart, when you grow up you turn into someone like Father. That’s not so bad.”

“No.” But Ealstan remained unhappy. “Even Father, though—what is he? A bookkeeper in a conquered kingdom where the Algarvians don’t want us to know enough to be bookkeepers.”

“But he’s teaching you anyhow, and he taught me, too,” Conberge reminded him. “If that isn’t fighting back against the redheads, what is?”

“You’re right.” Ealstan glanced toward the parlor. His father and Uncle Hestan were still arguing. Then he looked at Conberge, as surprised as he’d been when he discovered she knew how to cast accounts. “Sometimes I think I don’t know you at all.”

“Maybe I should have gone on seeming stupid.” His sister shook her head. “Then I’d sound like Sidroc.”

“He isn’t really stupid, not when he doesn’t want to be,” Ealstan said. “I’ve seen that.”

“No, he’s not,” Conberge agreed. “But he doesn’t care about the way things are right now. He’s happy enough to let the Algarvians run Forthweg. So is Uncle Hengist. All they want to do is get along. I want to fight back, if I can.”

“Me, too,” Ealstan said, realizing his father might have been teaching him more than bookkeeping after all.

“Milady, he is waiting for you downstairs,” Bauska said as Marchioness Krasta dithered between two fur wraps.

“Well, of course he is,” Krasta answered, finally choosing the red fox over the marten.

“But you should have gone down there some little while ago,” the maidservant said. “He is an Algarvian. What will he do to you?”

“He won’t do a thing,” Krasta said with rather more confidence than she felt. Standing straighter and brushing back a stray lock of pale gold hair, she added, “I have him wrapped around my little finger.” That was a lie, and she knew it. With a younger suitor, a more foolish suitor, it might well have been true. Colonel Lurcanio, though, to her sometimes intense annoyance, did not yield himself so readily.