Into the Darkness (14 page)

As more Forthwegian footsoldiers came forward to add their numbers to those of the cavalry, the Algarvian horsemen and unicorn riders began to fall back. Leofsig grunted in somber satisfaction as he advanced toward a large grove of orange trees. This skirmish, though bigger than most, fit the pattern of the fights that had followed Forthweg’s invasion of Algarve. The Algarvians might have won the battle in the air, but they kept on yielding ground even so.

Under the shiny, dark green leaves of the orange trees, something stirred. Leofsig was too far away to blaze at the motion, too far away even to identify what caused it till a great force of behemoths came lumbering out of the grove. Their armor glittered in the sun. Each great beast bore several riders. Some behemoths had sticks larger and heavier and stronger than a man could carry strapped on to their backs. Others carried egg-tossers instead.

Forthweg used behemoths to help break into positions infantry could not take unaided, parceling the animals out along the whole broad fighting line. Leofsig had never seen so many all gathered together before. He did not like the look of them. He liked that look even less when they lowered their heads, pointing their great horns toward the Forthwegian force, and lumbered forward. They moved slowly at first, but soon built up speed.

They smashed through the Forthwegian cavalry as if it hadn’t been there, trampling down horses and unicorns. As they charged, the crews of soldiers on their backs blazed and flung eggs, spreading havoc far and wide. The behemoths were hard to bring down. Their armor warded them against most blazes, and, while they -were moving, the men on their backs—who, Leofsig saw, were also armored—were next to impossible to pick off.

The cavalry, or as much of it as could, fled before them, as the Forthwegian dragons had fled before those of Algarve. The Algarvian dragons now redoubled their attacks against the Forthwegians on the ground as the behemoths broke in among them. Leofsig blazed at the warriors aboard the closest one—blazed and missed. An egg burst close by him, knocking him off his feet and scraping his face against the dirt.

He scrambled up again. Algarvian footsoldiers were advancing now, rushing toward the great hole the behemoths had torn in the Forthwegian line. He saw an officer close by—not a man he knew, but an officer. “What do we do, sir?”

“What do we do?” the captain echoed. He looked and sounded stunned, bewildered. “We fall back—what else can we do? They’ve beaten us here, the bastards. We have to be able to try to fight them again, though how we’re supposed to fight this—” Shaking his head, he stumbled off toward the west, toward Forthweg. Numbly, Leofsig followed.

Without false modesty, Marshal Rathar knew he was the second most powerful personage in Unkerlant. None of the dukes and barons and counts could come close to matching the authority of the man who headed King Swemmel’s armies. None of the courtiers at Cottbus was his equal, either, and none of them had made the king believe Rathar a traitor, though many had tried.

Aye, below Swemmel he was supreme. Envy filled men’s eyes as he marched through the fortresslike palace on the high ground at the heart of the capital. The green sash stretching diagonally across his rock-gray tunic proclaimed his rank to any who did not recognize his hard, stern features. Women the world called beautiful called those features handsome. He could have had many of them, including some whose courtier husbands sought to bring him down. Had he been able to judge with certainty which of them wanted him for himself, as opposed to for his rank, he might have enjoyed himself more.

Or he might not have. Enjoyment, as most men understood it, he did not find particularly enjoyable. And he knew a secret no one else did, though some of his own chief underlings and some of King Swemmel’s other ministers might have suspected. He could have told the secret without danger. But he knew no one would believe him, and so kept silent. Silence suited his nature anyhow.

Before he went in to confer with his sovereign, he unbuckled his sword and set it in a rack in the anteroom outside the audience chamber. King Swemmel’s guards then searched him, as thoroughly and intimately as if he’d been taken captive. Had he been a woman, matrons would have done the same.

He felt no humiliation. The guards were doing their duty. He would have been angry—and King Swemmel angrier—had they let him go through unchallenged. “Pass on, sir,” one of them said at length.

Rathar spent another moment adjusting his tunic, then strode into the audience chamber. In the presence of the king of Unkerlant, his stern reserve crumbled. “Your Majesty!” he cried. “I rejoice to be allowed to come into your presence!” He cast himself down on his hands and knees, knocking his forehead against the strip of green carpet that led to the throne on which King Swemmel sat.

Any chair on which Swemmel sat was by definition a throne, since it contained the king’s fundament. This one, while gilded, was far less spectacular than the bejeweled magnificence of the one of the Grand Hall of Kings (Rathar reckoned that one insufferably gaudy, another secret he held close).

“Rise, Marshal,” Swemmel said. His voice was rather high and thin. Rathar got to his feet and honored the king yet again, this time with a low bow. Swemmel was in his late forties, a few years younger than his marshal. For an Unkerlanter’s, his features were long and lean and angular; his hairline, which retreated toward the crown of his head, accentuated that impression.

What hair he had left was dark—these days, probably dyed to stay so. But for that, he looked more like an Algarvian than a typical Unkerlanter. The first kings in Unkerlant, down in what was now the Duchy of Grelz, had been of Algarvic blood.
Algarvic bandits, most likely,
the marshal thought. But those dynasties were long extinct, often at one another’s hands. And Swemmel was an Unkerlanter through and through—he just didn’t look like one.

Rathar shook his head, clearing away irrelevancies. He couldn’t afford them, not dealing with his sovereign. “How may I serve you, your Majesty?” he asked.

Swemmel folded his arms across his chest. His robe was gorgeous with cloth-of-gold. Pearls and emeralds and rubies caught the light and winked at Rathar one after another as the king moved. “You know we have concluded a truce with Arpad of Gyongyos,” Swemmel said. The
we
was purely royal—the king had done it on his own.

“Aye, your Majesty, I know that,” Rathar said. Swemmel had fought a savage little war with the Gongs over territory that, in the marshal’s view, wasn’t worth having in the first place. He’d fought it with great determination, as if the rocks and ice in the far west, land only a mountain ape could love, were stuffed to bursting with rich farms and quicksilver mines. And then, after all the lives and treasure spent, he’d thrown over the war with no gains to speak of. Swemmel was a law unto himself.

He said, “We have found another employment for our soldiers, one that suits us better.”

“And that is, your Majesty?” Rathar asked cautiously. It might have been anything from starting another war to helping with the harvest to gathering seashells by the shore. With Swemmel, there was no way to tell beforehand.

“Gyongyos is far from the only realm that wronged us during our recent difficulties,” Swemmel said, adding with a scowl, “Had the nursemaids been efficient, Kyot would have known from birth
we
were the one destined for greatness.
His
destiny would have been the headsman’s axe either way, but he would have spared the kingdom much turmoil had he recognized it sooner.”

“Aye, your Majesty,” Rathar said. He had no way of knowing whether Swemmel or Kyot was the elder of the twins born to their mother. He’d joined the one army rather than the other because Swemmel’s impressers passed through his village before Kyot’s could get to it. He’d been an officer within months, and a colonel by the time the Twinkings War ended.

What would he be now, had Kyot dragged him into the fight instead? Dead, most likely, in one unpleasant way or another.

Again, he cleared might-have-beens from his mind. Dealing with what was gave him trouble aplenty. “Is it now your will, your Majesty, to turn our might against Zuwayza? The provocations along the border they have offered”—he knew perfectly well that Unkerlant had offered them, but saying so was not done—“give us every reason for punishing them, and—”

Swemmel made a sharp, chopping gesture. Rathar fell silent and bowed his head. He had misread the king, always dangerous to do. Swemmel said, “We can punish the Zuwayzin whenever we like, as we can resume the war with Gyongyos whenever we like. More efficient to strike where the opportunity will not come round again so soon. We aim to lay Forthweg low.”

“Ahh,” Rathar said, and nodded. No one could tell what Swemmel would come up with next. A lot of people had guessed wrong over the years. Not many of them were still breathing. Most of those who did survive were refugees. Anywhere within Unkerlant, Swemmel could—and did—reach.

Not all the king’s notions were good. That was Rathar’s private opinion. He remained safe because it remained private. But when Swemmel’s notions were good, they could be very good indeed.

Rathar’s smile had a predatory edge to it, as it often did. “What pretext shall we offer for stabbing the Forthwegians in the back?”

“Do you really think we need one? We hadn’t intended to bother,” Swemmel said indifferently. “Forthweg, or most of Forthweg, is our domain by right, and stolen away by rebels and traitors.”

Rathar said nothing. He raised an eyebrow and waited. Even such small disagreement with the king might mean his ruin. No one could tell what Swemmel would come up with—in anything.

In a testy voice, Swemmel said, “Oh, very well—if you like. You can dress up a couple of our men in Forthwegian frontier guards’ uniforms and have them blaze a couple of soldiers or inspectors in a border town. We don’t think it even remotely necessary, but if.you will, you may.”

“Thank you, your Majesty,” Rathar said. “Advancing a reason for war is customary, and the one you’ve given will do the job splendidly.” Rathar doubted he would have thought of anything so devious himself. Swemmel did have a gift for double-dealing. His marshal asked, “As we move forward against the Forthwegians”—Rathar had no doubt the Unkerlanters would move forward, not when they were hitting their new foes from behind and by surprise—“shall we move into land that belonged to Algarve before the Six Years’ War?”

“No.” Swemmel shook his head. “In no way do we intend to do that. We expect the Algarvians to take back their old dominions, and we do not wish to give them any excuse to attack our kingdom.”

“Very well, your Majesty,” Rathar said, not showing how relieved he was. This truly did look to be one of Swemmel’s good days, when the king was taking everything into account. Having fought the Algarvians in the Six Years’ War before his regiment had mutinied and he’d gone home, Rathar was less than eager to face the redheads again. He went on, “By the accounts of the battle outside Gozzo, the Algarvians are liable to be invading Forthweg any day themselves.”

“Even so,” King Swemmel said. “Nor do we judge that King Mezentio would halt his forces at the old frontier. Thus, if Unkerlant is to take back what is ours, we must move swiftly. King Mezentio, in our view, will not halt at anything, save where he is compelled.”

“Even by ley-line caravan, transferring our forces from the far western frontier to the border with Gyongyos will take some little while, your Majesty,” Rathar warned. He did not disagree with Swemmel about Mezentio—on the contrary—but did not believe his own sovereign knew where to stop, either: another opinion he held close. “Your Majesty’s wide domains prove your might, but they also make movement slower than it would be otherwise.”

“Waste not a moment.” Anticipation filled Swemmel’s laugh. “Curse us, but we wish we could be a mosquito in Penda’s throne room in Eoforwic, to see his face when he hears Forthweg is invaded from the west. They will have to clean a stain off the throne under him.”

“I obey, your Majesty.” Rathar bowed. “Also, by your leave, I shall send some troops into the desert in the direction of Zuwayza, both to frighten the naked brown men and to mislead the Forthwegians.”

“Aye, you may do that,” King Swemmel said. “We shall be in closest touch with you, ensuring that all motions are carried out with the utmost celerity. In this matter, we shall brook no delay. Do you understand, Marshal?”

“Your Majesty, I do.” Rathar bowed very low. “I obey.”

“Of course you obey,” Swemmel said. “Unfortunate things happen to people who disobey me. Even more unfortunate things happen to their families. Obedience, then, is efficient.” He waved a hand, a brusque Unkerlanter gesture rather than an airy Algarvian one. “Go, and see to it.”

Rathar went down on his hands and knees and knocked his head on the green carpet again. He could feel the fear-sweat on his skin as he did so Swemmel commanded fear both by virtue of his office and by virtue of his person. Swemmel commanded fear—and fear obeyed.

After escaping the audience chamber, Rathar reclaimed his sword from the bowing attendants in the anteroom. His spirit strengthened with every step away from his sovereign he took.

His own aides bowed low and called him
lord
when he returned to his offices. They hurried to obey the orders he issued, and exclaimed in excitement as they worked. He took a quiet pride in his own competence. But all the while, the secret stayed in the back of his mind: being the second most powerful man in Unkerlant was exactly like being the next greatest whole number before
one.
Zero he was, and zero he would remain.

Cornelu stood on the pier in Tirgoviste harbor, listening to last-minute orders. Commodore Delfinu sounded serious, even somber: “Do as much damage to the wharves at Feltre as you can, Commander. Do as much as you can, but come home safe. Sibiu has not got so many men that we can afford to spend them lavishly.”

“I understand.” Cornelu bowed to Delfinu, who was not only commodore but also count. “I will do what needs doing, that’s all. The mission is important, else you would not send me on it.”