Jaws of Darkness (54 page)

Brusku’s pale stare suddenly sharpened. “No,” he said after a moment. “So it is the same for you, is it? I did what I wanted to do. It is enough.”

Sidroc had done what he wanted to do, too. Was it enough? Whether it was or not, he was stuck with it. He said, “Come back to my camp with me.” He pointed north. “You can meet my pals.”

“All right.” Brusku splashed across the stream, which was no more than ankle deep. As Sidroc led the way, he thought about how strange it was to be fighting alongside a Kaunian. A few years before, though, he would have thought it strange to be fighting alongside Algarvians, too.

“Greetings,” Ceorl called when he walked up to the fire. The ruffian pointed behind him. “Who in blazes is that?”

“His name’s Brusku,” Sidroc answered—in Algarvian, so Brusku could follow. “He’s from the Phalanx of Valmiera—that’s the outfit Brigadier Polinesso said was going in on our left.”

He wondered if Ceorl would make a crack about Kaunians escaping from Algarvian camps. That wouldn’t do anybody any good. Maybe the Valmieran Kaunians didn’t know what happened to their blond brethren from Forthweg. Maybe they knew and tried not to think about it. By the way the ruffian’s lips pursed, he thought about it. But then, visibly, he thought better of it. He said, “Let’s kill some Unkerlanters,” and let it go at that.

“Aye,” Brusku said. “That is what we came for.”

Sergeant Werferth passed the Valmieran his flask. “Here. Try this.”

Brusku drank. He coughed a couple of times. “Unicorn piss and fire,” he said. “Is that what you Forthwegians drink?”

“We drink wine and plum brandy when we’re home,” Werferth answered. “Down here, we drink anything we can get our hands on. I think the Unkerlanters brewed this stuff out of turnips.”

Brusku looked at the flask as if he wanted to throw it away. Instead, he took another pull and handed it back to Werferth. Then he said, “I had better go, or my sergeant will come down on me.” He nodded to Sidroc and headed off in the direction from which he’d come.

Once he was gone, Ceorl spat into the fire. “Fighting side by side with Kaunians? I’ve thought of a lot of strange things, but never any like that.”

“I’ll tell you something, though,” Sidroc said: “I’d rather have them on my left hand than a pack of jumpy Yaninans.” He watched Ceorl weigh that. The ruffian didn’t take long to nod.

Werferth said, “A good thing you boys didn’t talk about what happens to Forthwegian Kaunians. I’m going to tell everybody to keep quiet about that.”

“What happens when the Phalanx of Valmiera—what in blazes is a phalanx, anyway?—finds out about it?” Sidroc asked. “Sooner or later, they will. They’re bound to.”

“Good question,” Werferth said. “We’ll probably see before too long, like you say. And when we do … You know what it’s like when an egg bursts almost close enough for the sorcerous energy to kill you?” He waited. Sidroc nodded. Everybody who’d been in battle for a while knew what that was like. Werferth went on, “When they find out, it’ll be like that, only more so.

Sidroc thought it over. How would he feel if the Algarvians started slaying Forthwegians to make their magic stronger? He could think of some Forthwegians he wouldn’t miss, starting with Ealstan and Hestan. Still… “Aye, you’re likely right.”

Twelve

I
stvan proved less unhappy as a captive on Obuda than he’d expected to. He lived in a barracks no worse than the one where he’d lived while a Gyongyosian soldier on that same island. He was a good deal more comfortable than he’d been in the forests of western Unkerlant or in the trenches on the island of Becsehely. The food his Kuusaman captors fed him and his comrades wasn’t especially good, but it wasn’t especially bad, either, and there was plenty of it. He had no work harder than chopping firewood under the watchful eyes of the Kuusaman guards. It could have been far worse.

When he said as much in line for breakfast one morning, Kun nodded and replied, “Aye, I thought they’d send us off to the mines or some such.

This—it’s as if they’ve made Obuda into a crate, and they’ll keep stowing captives here till it fills up.”

“Nothing to do but sit around and get fat,” Istvan agreed. “I’ve been a soldier for a long time. I don’t much mind being an old soldier for a while, if you know what I mean.”

“I’m with you,” Szonyi said from behind him. “Nobody’s trying to blaze me or drop an egg on my head. Anyone who thinks I’m sorry about that is plumb daft.”

“Well, the two of you get no arguments from me,” Kun said. Watery island sunshine glinted off the gold frames of his spectacles. “I’ve never been what you’d call eager to have people trying to kill me. I leave all that up to you fierce country lads.”

If he hadn’t fought bravely every time he had to, he would have condemned himself out of his own mouth there. Even as things were, Istvan spoke a little stiffly: “We
are
a warrior race.”

Corporal Kun said nothing to that but, “Aye, Sergeant.” Istvan couldn’t possibly call him to account for two unexceptionable words. But then Kun looked around, the sun sparkling off his spectacles once more. His glance took in the captives’ camp, the palisade around it, the brisk, alert Kuusaman guards on the palisade, and the bedraggled Gyongyosians moving forward one at a time to be fed.

Ears burning, Istvan said, “Well, we
are”

“Aye, Sergeant,” Kun repeated, which finished the job of demoralizing Istvan. The one-time mage’s apprentice made as if he didn’t even know what he’d done.
He fights,
Istvan thought.
He just doesn’t fight fair.
He didn’t say that out loud. It would have made Kun unbearably smug.

An Obudan—a medium-sized, dark-haired man with light reddish-brown skin—slapped oatmeal mush into Istvan’s mess tin. “Here you is,” he said in bad Gyongyosian. Gyongyos had held Obuda, been driven off by the Kuusamans, retaken the island, and then been driven off again. The locals had had their chances to learn the languages of both occupiers.

“Thanks.” Istvan turned away and started spooning up the mush. His own people flavored oatmeal with butter and salt. The Kuusamans put in sugar and spices and raisins instead. It wasn’t what he was used to, but it wasn’t too bad.

When he’d finished, he took his tin over to a basin of water to wash it. He was sloshing it around in the basin when another captive came up beside him. He blinked. “Hello, Major Borsos,” he said. “I didn’t know the stars-accursed slanteyes had got you, too.”

He’d fetched and carried for Borsos back in the days when Gyongyos still held Obuda. He’d seen the mage again in the vast forests of Unkerlant. Borsos had had trouble remembering him then, and plainly had trouble remembering him now. After a moment, he said, “Ah, hello, Sergeant. Aye, I’m among the unlucky, too. Gyongyos hasn’t had much luck lately.”

“Couldn’t you use your magecraft to do … something?” Istvan’s voice trailed away. Here on an island now far away from any that Gyongyos held, what could even a true mage do?

And Borsos hissed, “Shut up, by the stars. The Kuusamans don’t know what I am, and I don’t want them finding out, either, or they’ll send me somewhere worse than this.”

“Oh.” Till then, Istvan hadn’t noticed Borsos wasn’t wearing his sorcerer’s badges along with his emblems of rank. As in most armies, Gyongyosian mages held officer’s rank not so much by virtue of their blood as to give them the privilege of telling common soldiers what to do. Real aristocratic officers—most of them—would look down their noses at Borsos, but they probably wouldn’t tell the Kuusamans what he was. In fact… “It might be nice, having a real wizard in here on our side.”

“I’m hardly even that,” Borsos said. “I’m just a dowser. You ought to remember, if you hauled my gear around for me.”

“Better than nothing,” Istvan said.
Better than Kun,
he thought. Kun had been an apprentice before going into Ekrekek Arpad’s army. Borsos, at least, was fully trained in one specialty of magic.

From behind Istvan, someone asked, “Is this man bothering you, sir?” Istvan turned. There stood Captain Frigyes, as stiff and erect and formal as if still in command of soldiers in the field. He might have been even more stiff and erect and formal here in the captives’ camp, to try to hold his men together.

Borsos said, “No, Captain. We’ve known each other for a while.”

Frigyes still looked dubious. Leaning toward him, Istvan spoke in a low voice: “He’s a mage, sir.”

“Is he?” Frigyes answered, also quietly. He eyed Borsos’ collar tabs. Unlike Istvan, he didn’t need an explanation from Borsos. “You don’t want the enemy to know your skill, eh?”

He didn’t bother calling Borsos
sir
any more. Officers—real officers— didn’t take seriously mages’ claims to rank. Borsos didn’t get angry; a good many mages didn’t take those claims seriously, either. The dowser replied, “That’s about the size of it, Captain.”

“All right.” Frigyes nodded briskly. “I can understand that. And it might be useful for us to have a sorcerer here. Who knows? Maybe we can find a way to hit back at the Kuusamans yet.”

“Maybe.” But Borsos didn’t sound as if he believed it. “They have strong wards up around the camp, though. They’re the enemy, Captain, but they’re not fools. If they were fools, they wouldn’t be moving forward.”

They wouldn’t be beating us,
was what he surely meant, but no Gyongyosian soldier—not even a mage in military uniform—would come right out and say that. The traditions of a warrior race died hard.

“Wards can do only so much,” Captain Frigyes said, and led Major Borsos aside. He spoke to the mage too softly for Istvan to make out what they were saying. Istvan didn’t even bother resenting it. That was how officers were; as best he could tell, the stars had made them that way.

The cry of horror Borsos let out a moment later wasn’t too soft to hear. It made Istvan jump, and he wasn’t the only one. “No!” Borsos said a moment later, and wagged a finger under Captain Frigyes’ nose as if he were a real major and not just an officer by courtesy. That was enough to put Frigyes’ back up; he stalked off like an offended cat.

“What on earth?” Istvan said. He wasn’t really asking Borsos what Frigyes had proposed; it was more an exclamation of astonishment.

“By the sweet, pure, and holy light of the stars, Sergeant, you don’t want to know.” Borsos’ face was pale as milk. A back-country man—a herder, say, from the valley from which Istvan sprang—might have looked that way after seeing a ghost. Borsos didn’t strike Istvan as a man likely to see a ghost, or to panic if he did. But the dowser went off in the direction opposite the one Frigyes had taken. He staggered once, plainly a man shaken to the core.

“What on earth?” Istvan said again.

Again, he got an answer, this time from Kun: “Can’t you figure it out for yourself, Sergeant?”

Istvan whirled. The sorcerer’s apprentice and corporal was right behind him, dirty mess tin in hand. “If I could figure it out, would I be going, ‘What on earth?’ “ Istvan asked in some irritation. “And I know bloody well that you didn’t hear as much of it as I did, so what makes you so fornicating smart?”

“Your friend there is a mage of sorts, aye?” Kun said. He waited for Istvan to nod, then went on, “What was Captain Frigyes doing with us when all the Kuusamans in the world jumped on our company?”

“Huh?” The jump there was too wide for Istvan to follow him across it. “What
are
you talking about?”

Patiently, Kun guided him across: “Our company commander was good and ready to sacrifice us all, to let the mages make the magic that would have thrown the slant-eyes off Becsehely, remember? But they captured us before he got us to wherever the wizards were. And so …” He waited.

He needed to wait a while; Istvan had trouble with the jump even with a guide. At last, though, Istvan’s mouth fell open. “You think he was talking with Borsos about making that same kind of sorcery here!” Once the words were out of his mouth, they made a horrid kind of sense. He wished they hadn’t.

And Kun nodded. “That’s just what I think. Captain Frigyes wants to go on fighting the war. How else can he do it?”

“Could
Borsos make that kind of magic here?” Istvan asked. “He’s a dowser, mostly. Does he even know enough to cast that kind of spell?”

“Ask him,” Kun answered. “I can’t tell you.”

With a shudder, Istvan shook his head. “I don’t think I want to know.”

Kun clicked his tongue between his teeth in sharp disapproval. “You should always want to know. Knowledge is bad, but ignorance is worse.”

“Is that a fact?” Istvan said, and Kun nodded as if it most assuredly were. Istvan put his hands on his hips. “If knowing is such a great thing, how come we both wish the mages had never figured out how to use the magic they get from killing people? Answer me that, O sage of the age.”

“It’s not the same,” Kun said stiffly. “The only reason our mages turned toward that spell was that the Unkerlanters used it against us. We have to be able to fight back.”

Istvan shook his head again. “You’re not really answering me. You’re just pushing it back one step. Don’t you wish the Unkerlanters hadn’t worked out how to use that spell, then? You can’t be real happy about it, or you wouldn’t have been so very thrilled to volunteer to help power the sorcery.”