Darkness Descending (74 page)

“Why do you know better?” Rathar asked, genuinely puzzled. “They’ve done plenty of counterattacking this winter.”

“If they were going to counterattack, I expect they’d already be killing Kaunians,” the sergeant answered. “We’d have to get out of this hole, too. It’d be a death trap.”

“Ah.” The marshal inclined his head. “I should have thought of that. But you have more experience in the field against them than I do.”

“More than I want, sir—I’ll tell you that,” Wimar said.

Before the marshal could reply, cries rang out from the front: “The redheads!” “The Algarvians!” And another shout, more alarmed and more alarming than the rest: “Behemoths!”

Maybe Mezentio’s men hadn’t been able to bring any Kaunians to this part of the line. No matter what Wimar had expected, they were throwing themselves into the fight without much magic to back them up. And—Rathar looked around—there were no Unkerlanter behemoths anywhere close by.

All through the long, hard winter in Unkerlant, the Algarvians had lost a great many behemoths. Without snowshoes, the beasts had trouble in deep snow. Some the redheads had killed when they couldn’t keep up with the retreating footsoldiers to keep the Unkerlanters from capturing them. Others had frozen. Still others had been lost in action. Mezentio’s men couldn’t have very many more left down here in Grelz.

Because of all that, Rathar would have thought the Algarvians would use the behemoths they had left with caution. But doing things by halves was not the Algarvian way. When the redheads attacked, they still came at their foes with as much panache as they had when the war was new.

Peering out of the hole, Rathar saw half a dozen behemoths—animals that must have already broken through the Unkerlanters first line—bearing down on the company Sergeant Wimar commanded. In the style they’d perfected, Algarvian footsoldiers followed the great beasts, advancing through the hole they’d created. “Mezentio!” the Algarvians yelled, as cheerful as if they were breaking into Cottbus after all. Most of them wore white; they were learning.

And Algarvian dragons dove out of the sky, dropping eggs ahead of the behemoths and spreading more chaos among the Unkerlanters. Wimar turned to Rathar. “Sir, if we don’t fall back, they’re going to trample us.”

One of the things of which coming into the field reminded Rathar was how fast everything could turn upside down. “You have my leave, Sergeant,” he said. “And if you think I’m ashamed to retreat with you, you’re daft.”

He scrambled back from one hole in the snow to another. Several times, spurts of steam rose from the snow not far away: the Algarvians were blazing at him. He blazed back whenever he got the chance. He thought he knocked down a redhead or two, but he wasn’t the only Unkerlanter with a stick.

Just when he was wondering whether the powers below were going to eat this whole stretch of line, Unkerlanter dragons came flying up in force. They drove away the Algarvian dragons and began to drop eggs on the enemy’s behemoths. Where nothing else had, that made the big beasts slow down and let the Unkerlanters bring up enough men to stop Mezentio’s soldiers.

“Well, we only lost a couple of miles here,” Wimar said as twilight deepened. “Could have been worse, but it could have been better, too, if our dragons had got here sooner.”

“Aye,” Rathar agreed mournfully. Over and over, he’d seen how much more flexible and responsive than his own forces the Algarvians were. “We need more crystals. We need more of everything. And we need it all yesterday, too.” He’d been saying that since the beginning of the war against Algarve. He wondered how long he’d have to keep saying it, and how much finding out would cost.

“Come on,” Ealstan urged Vanai. “If you wear a hooded tunic instead of your Kaunian clothes, no one at the performance will pay you any mind.”

“I don’t want to wear Forthwegian clothes,” she said, and he could tell she was getting angry. “They’re fine for you, but I’m not a Forthwegian.” She stuck out her chin and looked stubborn.

I’m not a barbarian,
lingered under the surface of the words. Ealstan felt irritated, too. There were, he was discovering, all sorts of reasons why matches between Forthwegians and Kaunians had trouble. But he was stubborn, too, and he had some notion why her thoughts traveled the ley line they did. Switching from his own language to Kaunian, he said, “I am certain your grandfather would agree with you.”

“That’s not fair,” Vanai snapped, also speaking Kaunian. But then she paused, as if trying to figure out how to put into words why it wasn’t fair.

Sensing his advantage, Ealstan pressed ahead: “Besides, you will enjoy yourself. My brother would hold his breath till he turned blue to get into one of Ethelhelm’s performances, and this one will not even cost us anything.”

Vanai’s shrug told him he not only hadn’t gained any ground, he’d lost some. “Forthwegian music isn’t really to my taste,” she answered. He thought she was trying to sound polite, but condescending came closer.

“He’s very good, and he’s sharp, too,” Ealstan said, returning to Forthwegian. “He’d been casting his own accounts for a while till he hired me, and he could have kept on doing it, too—he has the skill. He just couldn’t find enough hours in the day.”

“I’d be about as interested in watching him do that as I would in listening to his band play music,” Vanai said.

Ealstan really did want her to come along. He had one card left to play. He’d hoped he wouldn’t have to play it, but he did: “Did you know Ethelhelm is supposed to have a Kaunian grandmother?”

He’d done some fishing in the Mereflod, the river that ran past Gromheort, and he could tell when he got a nibble. He had one now. “No,” Vanai answered. “Does he really?”

“Aye, I think he does,” Ealstan said with a solemn nod. “You can’t tell it by his coloring, but he’s put together more the way a Kaunian would be: he’s a little taller, a little skinnier, than most Forthwegians.”

He watched Vanai. She was intrigued, all right. “Do you think I could get out every once in a while if I wore Forthwegian clothes?”

‘“Every once in a while’ is probably about right,” Ealstan answered, “but people will be paying more attention to the music at Ethelhelm’s performance than to anything else. I can get you a tunic, if you like.” He didn’t have to worry about precise size; Forthwegian women’s tunics were always cut on the baggy side. That was one reason Forthwegian men leered at Kaunian women in their close-fitting trousers.

“All right, then,” Vanai said abruptly. “I’ll go. I’m so sick of staring at these walls. And”—her eyes twinkled—”my grandfather
would
fall over dead if he ever heard I’d got out of my trousers—and no, I don’t mean like
that.”
Having headed him off—she was learning how his mind worked, too—she added, “I still don’t think I’ll like the music very much.”

“You may be surprised,” Ealstan told her. Then he had to speak quickly, before she could tell him it wasn’t likely: “And you’ll be out and about in Eoforwic.” She couldn’t help but nod there.

On the way home the next evening, he bought a plain green hooded tunic of medium weight. Vanai tried it on in the bedchamber. When she came out into the front room, she asked, “What do I look like? We don’t have a mirror big enough to let me get a good look at myself.”

Ealstan studied her. Even with her bright hair pulled back inside the hood and her face shadowed, she didn’t really look too much like a Forthwegian woman. But she wasn’t so obviously a Kaunian as she was in her own people’s clothing. Ealstan said, “I like your shape more when I can see it better.”

“Of course you do—you’re a man,” Vanai said with a snort. “But will I do?”

“Aye, I think so,” he answered. “We’ll be out at night, after all, and that will help.” Just for a moment, he let himself think about the dreadful things that could happen if someone recognized Vanai for what she was. Were those things worth, could they be worth, risking all on an evening of music? He wondered how foolish he’d been in suggesting it to her.

Even as he was worrying, Vanai said, “All right, then, I’ll go. I’d do anything to get out of here for a while, even wear this drafty tunic.” The second thoughts Ealstan might have voiced flew out the window. Vanai went on, “And if going to a concert of Forthwegian music doesn’t count as
anything,
I don’t know what does.”

They left for the performance later than Ealstan would have done had Ethelhelm not assured him of a couple of good seats.
The advantages of connections,
he thought. Back in Gromheort, his father had a lifetime’s worth. But he used them only sparingly, so they’d be more reliable when he really needed them.

Ealstan was glad to find the night cool. Lots of people wore their hoods up, so Vanai didn’t stand out because of that. She kept looking around; she hadn’t seen much of Eoforwic before she started hiding in their flat. There wasn’t much to see. No street lamps glowed. No buildings had light streaming out through their windows. Unkerlanter dragons sometimes sneaked this far west. The redheads didn’t care to offer them nighttime targets.

At the hall—only an angular shape in the darkness—he and Vanai had to pass through two black curtains before coming into the light. When he finally did, what seemed a sudden harsh glare made his eyes momentarily fill with tears. He gave his name at the entrance, Vanai hanging back while he talked to the fellow there.

After checking a list, the gatekeeper shouted for a flunky. “Take these people down front,” he said. “They’re friends of the band.” Ealstan preened. He wished he could let the whole world see what a pretty girl he had with him. Unfortunately, that would have let the whole world see Vanai was a Kaunian. He took her hand and hurried after the impatient youth who led them to where they were supposed to sit.

“Here you go, buddy,” the kid said to him, and waited expectantly. As soon as Ealstan tipped him, he hustled away.

“The seats couldn’t be better,” Vanai said. Ealstan nodded. Two steps and they could have scrambled up onto the stage. Some of the halls where Ethelhelm played allowed dancing; this one, with permanent seats fixed to the floor, didn’t. Ealstan waited for Vanai to add something like,
Now if only I wanted to see the show,
but she didn’t.

A lot of people filling up the first row had more money than Ealstan had dreamt of even when he was living back in Gromheort, where his family had been prosperous.

Men wore fur-trimmed cloaks; jewels glittered on women. Some of those people gave him and Vanai curious looks, as if wondering how they’d managed to get the seats they had. Vanai kept tugging at her hood, to show as little of her features as she could.

And then, to Ealstan’s relief, the house lamps faded, leaving only the stage awash in light. The roar of the crowd packing the hall behind him washed forward. When Ethelhelm and his band stepped into the light, the noise redoubled again.

One by one, the men on trumpet and flute, on viol and double viol, began tuning up. When the piper added his instrument’s whining drone, Vanai nodded; bagpipes were part of the classical Kaunian tradition, too. Crouched behind his drums, Ethelhelm seemed shorter and more solid than he had striding out onto the stage.

But then he stood up again, and used to good advantage the height his Kaunian ancestry gave him. Stretching out his hands to the crowd, he asked, “Are you ready?”

“Aye!” The shout—in which Ealstan joined—was deafening. But Ealstan noticed that Vanai sat quiet beside him.

Ethelhelm nodded to the rest of the band, once, twice, three times. He brought his drumsticks down hard as they went into their first song. Forthwegian music didn’t have the thumping beat that characterized Kaunian tunes. Neither was it one aimless tootling and tinkling noise after another, which was how Algarvian music struck Ealstan’s ears. Strong and sinuous, it had a power all its own—at least, as far as he was concerned.

He couldn’t see much of Vanai’s face: she still kept the hood pulled forward.

But the way she sat told him she was anything but entranced with the music. He sighed. He wanted her to enjoy what he enjoyed.

The first several songs the band played were old favorites. One of them, King Plegmund’s Quickstep, went back four hundred years, back to the days when Forthweg was mightier than either Unkerlant or Algarve. Hearing it made Ealstan proud and worried at the same time: this was the Plegmund after whom the Algarvians had named their puppet brigade. Now Ealstan didn’t want to know what Vanai was thinking.

But after the Quickstep was done, Ethelhelm grinned and called, “Enough of the stuff they put your granddad to sleep with. Do you want to hear something new now?”

“Aye!” This time, the crowd roared even louder than it had when asking the band to begin. Again, though, Vanai sat on her hands.

She stayed indifferent through the first couple of new tunes, even though they were the ones that had put the band on the map. But then, as Ethelhelm flailed away at his drums, his voice went low and raspy as he broke into a brand-new song, one so new Ealstan had never heard it before:

“Doesn’t matter, the color of your hair.

Doesn’t matter, the kind of clothes you wear.
Doesn’t matter—believe me, they don’t care.
They’re gonna grab you, and they’ll send you over there.”

The beat was strong and insistent, about as close to a Kaunian style as Forthwegian music came. People who wanted to could lose themselves in that beat and pay no attention to the words Ethelhelm was singing. Ealstan almost did, but only almost. And Vanai... Vanai leaned forward as if drawn by a lodestone.

She turned to Ealstan. “He can’t say that!” she exclaimed. “What’s going to happen to him if he says things like that? Doesn’t he think the Algarvians are listening? Doesn’t he think some of the people in here will tell them every word he sings? He’s mad!” But she was smiling. For the first time in the performance, she was smiling. “He’s mad, aye, but, oh, he’s brave.”

“I hadn’t thought of it like that,” Ealstan said. But then, he wasn’t a Kaunian or even part Kaunian. To Vanai, a song that said whether you were blond or dark didn’t matter had to hit with the force of a bursting egg. And such a song had to hit hard in Eoforwic, too: Forthwegians and Kaunians had both rioted against the redheads here.