Darkness Descending (64 page)

Trasone would sooner have been laying a pretty blonde than lying in wait for some ugly Unkerlanters, too. Nobody’d given Spinello a choice, and nobody was giving him one, either. He found cover behind a waist-high wall that was all that remained of a house or shop and settled in. Looking around, he spied a couple of other places to which he could withdraw in a hurry if he had to.

Unkerlanter eggs fell closer and closer to the town, then began bursting around him and his comrades. He kept his head down and huddled close to the wall. Before long, the storm of sorcerous energy moved deeper into Aspang. Trasone knew what Swemmel’s men were doing: they were going after the Algarvian egg-tossers. He also knew that meant the attack was on its way.

He looked out over the ruined wall and steadied his stick on it. Sure enough, the Unkerlanters were forming up just out of stick range: row upon close-ranked row of blocky men in white smocks over rock-gray tunics. It was, in its way, an awe-inspiring sight.

To his surprise, he could hear the command the Unkerlanter officer shouted. The enemy soldiers stormed forward, some of them arm in arm. “Urra!” they shouted: a deafening roar. “Urra! Swemmel! Urra!”

Almost at once, eggs began bursting among them, tearing holes in their neat ranks—they hadn’t succeeded in knocking out the Algarvian tossers after all. Still shouting, more Unkerlanters hurried up to fill the gaps. Along with his comrades, Trasone started blazing at them. Soldiers went down as if scythed. The ones who didn’t go down, though, kept on coming, roaring like demons.

Trasone’s mouth went dry. If that human wave broke over his battalion . . . He looked around at his lines of retreat again. Would he have time to use them?

He wished Algarvian mages back of the front would slaughter some Kaunians to get the sorcerous energy for a spell to stop the Unkerlanters in their tracks.

No spell came. But King Swemmel’s men didn’t break into Aspang, either. Some prices were higher than flesh and blood could bear. Just outside the edge of town, the Unkerlanters broke and fled back across the snowy fields, leaving even more dead behind. Major Spinello did not order a pursuit. Trasone nodded somber approval. The major might be raw, but he wasn’t stupid.

Fourteen

F
ernao had seen the land of the Ice People in summer, when the sun shone in the sky nearly the whole day through and the weather, sometimes, got warmer than cool. The Lagoan mage had seen it in fall, which put him in mind of a hard winter in Setubal. Now he was seeing it in winter. He’d expected it would be appalling. He was finding out he hadn’t known what
appalling
meant.

Outside the tent he shared with a second-rank mage named Affonso, the wind howled like a live thing, a malevolent wild thing. The tent fabric was waterproofed and windproofed, but the gale sucked heat out of the tent in spite of the brazier by which the two sorcerers huddled.

“I won’t believe it,” Affonso said. “Nobody could want to live in this miserable country the whole year round.”

“It’s no accident the Ice People are hairy all over, men and women both,” Fernao answered. “And they like the austral continent fine. They think we’re the crazy ones for wanting to live anywhere else.”

“They’re mad, every cursed one of them.” Affonso picked up another chunk of dried camel dung—the most common fuel hereabouts—and put it on the brazier. Then he wiped his hands on his kilt. Under the kilt, he wore thick wooden leggings that came up far enough to meet his thick woolen drawers coming down. He might as well have had on trousers, but no kingdom of Algarvic stock took kindly to those Kaunian-style garments.

“No doubt, but they do live here, and we’re having a miserable time managing that for ourselves,” Fernao said.

The camel dung hissed and popped as it burned, and shed only a sullen red light. Across the brazier from Fernao, his colleague might have been a polished bronze statue, tall and skinny. Affonso had the long face typical of Lagoans, Sibians, and Algarvians, but a wide, flat nose told of Kuusamans somewhere down toward the roots of his family tree. In the same way, Fernao himself had narrow eyes set on a slant.

Only a minority of Lagoans thought such things worth fussing about. They were a mixed lot and knew it. Some few of his countrymen took pride in pure Algarvic blood, but Fernao thought they were fooling themselves.

Even with the brazier, Affonso’s breath smoked inside the tent. He must have seen it, too, for he said, “When I went out last night to make water, the wind had died down. It was so calm and quiet, I could hear my breath freeze around me every time I let it out.”

“I’ve never heard that, but I’ve heard of it.” Fernao didn’t know if the convulsive movement of his shoulders was shiver or shudder or something of both. “The Ice People call it ‘the whisper of stars.’ “

“They would have a name for it,” Affonso said darkly. He moved away from the brazier, but only to wrap himself in blankets and furs. “How far away from Mizpah are we?”

“A couple of days, unless we have another blizzard,” Fernao told him. “I’ve seen Mizpah, you know. If you had, too, you wouldn’t be so cursed eager to get there, believe you me you wouldn’t.”

Only a snore answered him. Affonso had a knack for falling asleep at once. That wasn’t a trick the Guild of Mages had ever investigated, or Fernao, himself a first-rank mage, would have known how to do it. He swaddled himself, too, and eventually dropped off.

He woke in darkness. The brazier had gone out. He fed it more camel dung and got the fire going with flint and steel. Most places, sorcery would have been easier. On the austral continent, sorcery imported from Derlavai or Lagoas or Kuusamo failed more often than it worked. The rules were different here, and few not born to them ever learned them.

Affonso also woke quickly and completely, something else for which Fernao envied him. “Another day’s slog,” he said.

“Aye,” Fernao agreed in a hollow voice. He got up and wrapped a heavy hooded cloak over his tunic. “If we march hard enough, I’ll almost be able to imagine I’m warm. Almost.”

“That’s a powerful imagination you have,” Affonso remarked.

“Comes with my rank,” Fernao said, and snorted to show he didn’t intend to be taken seriously. After the snort, he had to inhale. Burning camel dung wasn’t the only stink in the tent. “If I had a really powerful imagination, I could imagine myself bathing. Of course, then I’d have to imagine myself freezing to death the next instant.”

“They say the Ice People never, ever bathe,” Affonso said.

“They say it because it’s true.” Fernao held his nose. “Powers above, they stink. And we’re on our way to matching them.” He crawled toward the opening of the tent, a complicated arrangement with double flaps, designed to hold in as much heat as possible. “As for me, I’m on my way to breakfast.” Affonso nodded and followed him out.

The sun hadn’t climbed above the northeastern horizon yet but wasn’t too far below it; there was enough light by which to see. The cold struck savagely at Fernao as he got to his feet. Every inhalation felt like breathing knives. Every exhalation brought forth a new fogbank. He cocked his head to one side, listening, but couldn’t hear the whisper of stars. That horrified him all over again, for it meant the weather could get colder still.

Snow didn’t cover every inch of the local landscape. Parts of it were bare rock and frozen ground. That had perplexed Fernao till he realized the air down here was so cold, it held less moisture than it could farther north, and the endless ravening wind helped sweep the landscape clear.

Lagoan soldiers were emerging from their tents, all of them as muffled against the chill as Fernao and Affonso. Like Fernao’s, the fog from their breath hung around their heads. They stumbled toward the smoking cook fires, shivering and loudly cursing their fate.

Off in the distance, Ice People on shaggy, two-humped camels watched the Lagoan army. They’d been shadowing the force ever since it landed at the edge of the ice shelf that formed around the edge of the austral continent every winter. The nomads of the frozen waste had laughed then to see King Vitor’s men struggling over the ice. They weren’t laughing anymore. Fernao hoped they weren’t passing the army’s movements on to the Yaninans. If they were, the Lagoans couldn’t do anything about it; the Ice People could have run rings around them.

Man by man, the lines at the cook fires moved forward. A cook who looked not only cold but also bored slapped a glob of mush and a strip of fried camel meat—mostly fat—into Fernao’s tin. “Eat fast,” the fellow advised. “Otherwise you’ll break teeth on it after it freezes up again.”

He wasn’t joking. Fernao had seen that. The mage was also ravenous. In this weather, a man needed far more food than he would have in a better climate. Affonso ate with the same dedication. Only after their tins were empty did Affonso remark, “I wish this cursed country didn’t hold any cinnabar. Then we could let the Yaninans have it.”

“Then King Tsavellas wouldn’t want it,” Fernao answered. “Nobody would ever come to visit the Ice People, except once in a while to buy pelts from them.”

“Dragons.” Affonso turned the word into a curse. Fernao nodded. Quicksilver came from cinnabar. Without it, dragons couldn’t flame so hot or so far. Algarve, Yanina’s ally
{Yaninds master was
nearer the truth these days), had only small stocks of the vital mineral. If Lagoas could take the land of the Ice People away from King Tsavellas’ men, King Mezentio’s dragons would have to do without. That would make Algarve’s war harder.

Taking the cinnabar away from Algarve was making Fernao’s life harder. The army trudged toward Mizpah. The town had been a Lagoan outpost till the Yaninans seized it after Lagoas went to war with Algarve. Fernao had been in it then. He counted himself lucky to have escaped and something less than lucky to have returned to the austral continent.

Grudgingly, as if resenting the necessity, the sun rose. Fernao’s shadow, far longer than he was tall, stretched off to his left. Because the sun couldn’t get far above the horizon, its light remained red as blood. It was about to set when a couple of Ice People rode toward the Lagoan column on camelback, shouting at the tops of their lungs.

Lieutenant General Junqueiro, who commanded the Lagoan force, hurried over to Fernao. He was a big, bluff fellow with a bushy red mustache streaked with white. “What in blazes are they saying?” he asked the mage. “You speak their language.”

“Not a word of it,” Fernao answered, which made Junqueiro’s eyes open very wide. “If you listen closely, though, you’ll discover they’re speaking Lagoan, after a fashion.”

Junqueiro cocked his head to one side. “Why, so they are.” He sounded astonished. Then his expression changed. “Is what they’re saying true? Are the Yaninans really moving against us?”

Fernao eyed him in some exasperation. “I don’t know—this country isn’t friendly to magecraft, except the sort the shamans of the Ice People use. But don’t you think you’d better get ready to receive them, on the chance those nomads aren’t lying?”

“It’s almost night again,” Junqueiro said. “Not even the Yaninans would be mad enough to attack in the darkness ... I don’t think.” But he began shouting orders, and the army shook itself out from column into line of battle.

And, sure enough, the enemy did attack. Eggs started bursting not far from the Lagoan forces—releasing energy like that was sorcery so basic, it worked all over the world. The Yaninans swarmed forward, howling like mountain apes. Beams from their sticks pierced the darkness. Junqueiro held back response as long as he could. Then all the light egg-tossers the Lagoans had brought with them began flinging eggs back at the Yaninans. The Lagoan footsoldiers, waiting behind cover, blazed away at the men who followed King Tsavellas.

To Fernao’s delighted astonishment, the Yaninans broke in wild disorder. They must have thought they would be able to steal the battle by night, catching the Lagoans by surprise. When that didn’t happen, some fled, some threw down their sticks and surrendered, and only a stubborn rear guard kept Junqueiro’s army from bagging them all.

Even before twilight began to gray the northern horizon the next morning, the Lagoan commander declared, “The way to Mizpah is open!”

“You wouldn’t sound so happy if you’d ever seen the place,” Fernao said, yawning. Junqueiro paid him no attention. He hadn’t really expected anything different.

Talsu had got used to Algarvians swaggering through the streets of Skrunda. He felt less embittered toward the redheads than did a lot of Jelgavans, not least because he’d done more against them in the war than had most of his countrymen. His regiment had invaded Algarve, even if it never had succeeded in breaking out of the foothills of the Bratanu Mountains and seizing Tricarico. And he hadn’t thrown down his stick till Jelgava was truly beaten. Beaten his kingdom remained, but he didn’t blame himself for it.

His father had other ideas. Looking up from the tunic he was sewing for an Algarvian officer, Traku sighed and said, “If only we’d fought harder, I wouldn’t have to be doing this kind of work.”