Darkness Descending (57 page)

By the way the Unkerlanters flew, a lot of them were new aboard their bad-tempered mounts. They didn’t try to keep Sabrino’s men from gaining altitude; they were intent on destroying Olindro’s squadron. Under that waxed mustache—which was icing up again—Sabrino’s lips skinned back from his teeth in a savage grin. Inexperience could and, he vowed, would be an expensive business.

He chose the enemy dragon he wanted, then urged his own beast into a dive. The Unkerlanter dragonflier had no notion he was there. Without the slightest twinge of conscience—the Unkerlanter would have exulted at doing it to him—he blazed the fellow in the back.

The Unkerlanter threw out his hands. His stick flew from one of them. He slumped down onto his dragons neck. The beast, no longer under his control, showed its true nature: it struck out wildly at friend and foe alike, then flew off to prey on the frozen countryside below. The war had left it plenty of carrion on which to feed.

Sabrino blazed at another Unkerlanter dragonflier. He missed again, and cursed again. But his dragon was flying faster than the enemy’s mount. Nearer and nearer he drew. This Unkerlanter was a little more wary than the other one had been, but not wary enough. He’d only started to swing his dragon around to face Sabrino when the count ordered his own dragon to flame.

Again, fire burst from the dragon’s jaws. It caught the Unkerlanter beast in the flank and, more important, in the membranous wing. Bellowing horribly, flaming back with fire falling short, the Unkerlanter dragon fell out of the sky toward the ground far below. Sabrino thought he heard the dragonflier’s fading scream.

More Unkerlanter dragons were plummeting to earth or flying off under no man’s control. So were some of his own. He howled his fury at the losses. Algarve couldn’t afford them—and the men were friends as well as comrades.

But, before long, the Unkerlanters had had enough and fled back toward the west, the direction from which they’d come. Sabrino didn’t order a pursuit. He didn’t care to face the fresh squadrons King Swemmel’s men might send up with his own beasts tired. Instead, he waved back toward the east, toward the Algarvians’ own chilly makeshift of a dragon farm.

When they flew over the front, he quietly thanked the powers above that he wasn’t down there fighting on the ground. One reason he’d started flying dragons—and the best one he’d ever found—was that it beat the stuffing out of the footsoldier’s life.

Bembo wished he were back in Tricarico. Walking a constable’s beat in a provincial town in northeastern Algarve hadn’t been the most exciting job in the world, but now he realized he hadn’t appreciated it enough while he had it. Compared to some of the things he had to do here in Gromheort and in the surrounding villages, that beat seemed like paradise.

The plump constable didn’t mind—well, he didn’t mind too much—being plucked out of his comfortable home and sent west to help keep order in one of the kingdoms Algarve had conquered. Somebody had to do it. And besides, serving as a constable in occupied Forthweg, while harder than doing it in his own home town, was in most ways infinitely preferable to being issued a stick and sent off to the front in Unkerlant.

In most ways, but not in all. Along with the rest of a squad of constables from Tricarico, Bembo led several dozen trousered Kaunians through the streets of Gromheort toward the towns ley-line caravan depot. Some of the blonds walked along as if they had not a care in the world. But most had trouble hiding the fear they surely felt. Husbands comforted wives; mothers comforted children. Even as they did so, though, those husbands and mothers were biting their lips and fighting back tears themselves.

A man turned toward Bembo and stretched out his hands. “Why?” he asked in Algarvian; a fair number of people in Gromheort spoke some of the constable s language. “What did we do to deserve this?”

“Keep moving,” was all Bembo said. “Keep moving, or you’ll be sorry.” He was always sorry to draw this duty, but the Kaunian didn’t have to know.
The people over me know what they’re doing,
Bembo thought.
If we’re going to win the cursed war, we have to do what we have to do. It’s only Kaunians, after all. Can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.
At the thought of an omelette, his stomach rumbled hungrily.

“Aye, you’d better keep moving, you buggers, or you’ll get what for,” Sergeant Pesaro said, also in Algarvian. Pesaro was a good deal plumper than Bembo. Evodio translated the sergeant’s warning into classical Kaunian for the blonds who couldn’t follow Algarvian.

The Kaunians and their guards tramped past a young Forthwegian man in a long tunic coming the other way. Like most Forthwegians, the fellow was blocky and dark, with a big tuber of a nose right in the middle of his face. He would have looked just like his Unkerlanter cousins farther west had he not let his beard grow out. He shouted something in his own language at the Kaunians. Bembo didn’t understand a word of it, but the way the Forthwegian drew a thumb across his throat could mean only one thing. So could his coarse laughter.

Oraste laughed, too. “The Forthwegians are happy as clams that we’re cleaning the Kaunians out of their kingdom for them,” he said, and spat on the cobblestones. “It’s good riddance, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Powers above know I don’t especially love Kaunians, but...” Bembo’s voice trailed away. He watched a pretty young mother—if he was going to watch Kaunians, he preferred to watch their women—keeping a boy of about six walking along. The child seemed happy enough. The mother’s face was set tight against a scream. Bembo ground his teeth. No, parts of this duty weren’t what he would have wanted.

Oraste had no doubts, for which Bembo envied him. Oraste seldom had doubts about anything. Like a hound, like a hawk, the veteran constable brought in whatever his superiors aimed him at. He said, “Weren’t for the cursed Kaunians here and in Valmiera and Jelgava, we wouldn’t have a war now. Far as I’m concerned, the whoresons deserve whatever happens to ‘em. Sneaks and sluts, the lot or em.

“Aye,” Bembo said abstractedly, but he was still watching that nice-looking blond and her little boy.

Another Forthwegian passerby jeered at the Kaunians on the way to the caravan station. Maybe nine out often people in the shattered Kingdom of Forthweg were actually of Forthwegian blood, the tenth being the blonds who’d dwelt in this part of the world since the long-vanished days of the Kaunian Empire. As Oraste had said, most of the Forthwegians had scant use for their trousered neighbors.

“Keep moving,” Sergeant Pesaro called again. “You’d better keep moving, if you know what’s good for you. This isn’t stinking Eoforwic, you know. Not a single bloody soul in these parts believes your lies.” Again, Evodio translated his words into classical Kaunian: the Empire’s language had changed very little here.

Like almost all Algarvians, like almost everyone in the west of Derlavai, Bembo had studied classical Kaunian in school. Like most people, he’d forgotten just about all of it as soon as he didn’t need it any more. Evodio was an exception. He didn’t look scholarly, he looked almost as much like a bruiser as Oraste did.

One of the Kaunians spoke in his own tongue. Evodio translated what he said for Pesaro: “He asks why you say they’re lies. Everyone knows they’re true. You must know it, too, he says.”

“I don’t care what he says,” Pesaro growled. “Anybody who riots on account of a pack of lies is fair game, and
that,
by the powers above, goes for Kaunians and Forthwegians both.”

Only rumors about the riots in Eoforwic had drifted east to Gromheort. Some Kaunians seemed to have escaped—or to have been released by Unkerlanter raiders; the rumors weren’t clear on that—from the labor camps the Algarvians had set up for them near the western front. They claimed their folk were being used not for labor but for their life energy, with the Algarvians slaying them so mages could use that energy to power great sorceries against King Swemmel’s soldiers.

Bembo was pretty sure those claims were true, but most of the time did his resolute best not to think about it. “Even Forthwegians went up in smoke when they heard what we were up to out in the west,” he said—very quietly—to Oraste.

“Always a few hotheads,” Oraste answered with a fine, indifferent Algarvian shrug. “We’re back in the saddle in Eoforwic, and that’s what counts.” No, he didn’t waste time on doubts. Instead, he pointed ahead. “Almost there.”

Gromheort’s ley-line caravan depot, a massive pile of gray stone not far from the count’s palace, had taken considerable damage when the Algarvians seized the city. Nobody’d bothered repairing it since; so long as the ley lines themselves were clear of rubble, everything else could wait till victory finally came. Pesaro said, “Step it up.” Evodio translated for the Kaunians’ benefit—though that wasn’t really the right word.

Inside the depot, Bembo’s boots made echoes kick back from the walls as he strode across the marble floor. No lamps burned, leaving the depot a dank and gloomy place. The roof leaked. It had rained a couple of days before—Gromheort rarely got snow—and little puddles dotted the floor. A cold falling drop got Bembo in the back of the neck. He cursed and wiped it away with his hand.

An Algarvian military policeman carrying a clipboard came up to Pesaro. “How many of these blond whoresons have you got?” he asked.

“Fifty,” the constabulary sergeant answered. “That was the quota they gave me, and I deliver.” He puffed out his chest, but, however much he puffed it, it would never reach out past his protruding belly.

“Fine,” the other Algarvian said, obviously not impressed. He studied his clipboard, then scribbled something on it. “Fifty, eh? All right, take ‘em over to platform twelve and load ‘em onto the caravan there. Twelve, you hear?”

“I’m not deaf,” Pesaro said with dignity. He would have scorched a constable who sassed him, but had to be more careful around soldiers. Since he couldn’t tell the military policeman off, he shouted instead at the Kaunians the squad had rounded up: “Come on, you lousy buggers! Get moving! Platform twelve, the man said!”

“Likes to hear himself make noise, doesn’t he?” Oraste said under his breath.

“You just noticed?” Bembo answered, and the other constable chuckled. But then, more charitably, Bembo added, “Well, who doesn’t?” He knew he did, and knew very few Algarvians who didn’t. The Forthwegians and Kaunians he’d met since coming to Gromheort seemed less given to display. Sometimes, he just thought that made them dull. Others, though, he got suspicious—what were they hiding?

No one could have hidden anything out on platform twelve, which stood open to a chilly breeze blowing out of the west. Once upon a time, the platform had had a wooden roof; the stumps of a few charred support pillars were all that remained of it.

There by the edge of the platform, the cars of the caravan floated a couple of feet above the ley line from which they drew their energy and along which they would travel. Looking at those cars, Bembo said, “Where are we going to fit this lot of blonds? I don’t think there’s room for ‘em.” He didn’t think there was room for about a third—maybe even half—of the Kaunians already jammed in there.

“We’ll shoehorn ‘em in somehow,” Oraste said. “Where there’s a will, there’s a lawyer.” He chuckled nastily. “And we can feel up the broads as we shove ‘em in.”

The blond man who knew Algarvian turned to him and said, “I already knew better than to expect mercy from you. Is the smallest decency too much to ask for?”

“You Kaunians spent years and years and years grinding a foot down on Algarve’s neck, and nobody ever heard a word about mercy or decency from you,” Oraste said. He chuckled again. “Now you’re going to get it in the neck and see how you like it.”

Guards opened doors on some of the cars. They and the constables herded the Kaunians into them. It did take a lot of pushing and shoving. The seat of the trousers was one obvious place to shove. Oraste enjoyed himself. Bembo confined his shovings to the back, though he couldn’t have said why he bothered.

Even before the last of the Kaunians were inside the cars, workmen—Forthwegians with an Algarvian boss—began nailing over the windows wooden grates with only the narrowest of openings between the slats. “What’s that all about?” Bembo asked.

At last, the job was done. The guards forced the caravan-car doors closed, then barred them from the outside. From within, Bembo could still hear the moans and cries of the Kaunians as they sought whatever comfort they could find. He doubted they would find much.

Oraste waved to the cars, though with those grates on the windows the men and women inside could hardly have seen him. “So long,” he called. “You think it’s bad now; it only gets worse later. Off to Unkerlant with the lot of you!” He threw back his head and laughed.

A couple of the Forthwegian carpenters must have understood Algarvian, for they laughed, too. But Sergeant Pesaro rounded on Oraste, growling, “Shut up, curse you! They won’t want trouble on the caravan while it’s going west, so don’t stir up the stinking Kaunians.”

“He’s right,” said Bembo, who as usual on roundup duty wished he were doing anything but. Oraste nodded to Pesaro and gave Bembo a dirty look.

As soon as the carpenters had nailed a grate over the last window, the ley-line caravan silently glided away. For a moment, Bembo simply watched it. Then he gaped. “It’s going east!” he exclaimed. “East, toward Algarve! Why are they sending Kaunians that way?” No one had a good answer for him; all the Algarvians on the platform looked as surprised as he was.

Skarnu laughed softly as he strode through Pavilosta toward the market square. Merkela, who walked beside him, sent him a curious look. “What’s funny?” she asked. “The town hasn’t changed much, not that I can see.”

“No, the town hasn’t changed,” Skarnu agreed, “but I have. I’ve been on your farm so long now, and spent so much of my time there, that Pavilosta’s starting to look like a big city to me.”

“It looks big to me,” she answered, matching him stride for stride. She wasn’t far from his height or from his strength; she’d done farm work all her life, not just over the past year and a half. Looking first to one side of the street and then to the other, she murmured, “Buildings all around, and some of them three, four stories high. Aye, it looks plenty big enough.”