Out of the Darkness

“Well, that’s good, isn’t it, sir?” another lieutenant asked. “If we smashed the place up, that’ll hurt the Gongs, won’t it?”

“Oh, the Gongs are hurting, all right,” Dagaric said. “Ekrekek Arpad’s dead, and so is everybody in his clan, as far as anyone can tell. The whoresons who’re left are all running around like chickens after the axe.”

“Then what’s wrong, sir?” the other junior officer repeated. “If we got rid of Gyorvar, of Arpad-”

“That’s what’s wrong,” Dagaric broke in. “We didn’t do it. We didn’t have anything to do with it. The Kuusamans smashed Gyorvar, with some newfangled sorcery they came up with.”

“Powers below eat them,” Leudast said softly. He remembered how lucky he’d been to come through alive after the Algarvians started murdering Kaunians the first autumn of their war with Unkerlant. The only answer his kingdom had found was killing its own people-a solution, he thought, no one but Swemmel would have imagined.

Another company commander, a sergeant, asked, “Can we match this magic?”

Dagaric shook his head. “No. The slanteyes know how to do it, and we don’t.”

“That’s not good.” Leudast thought he was the first to speak, but three or four company commanders said the same thing at more or less the same time.

“Of course it’s not,” Dagaric said. “Those whoresons ’ll hold it over our head like a club, you see if they don’t. But that hasn’t got anything to do with our job here. Our job here is kicking the stuffing out of the Gongs, and it’s more important than ever that we do it up good and proper.”

“How come, sir?” somebody asked.

The regimental commander made an exasperated noise. “The more we grab now, the better off we’ll be. For now, we’re still officially friends with Kuusamo. How long will that last, though? Anybody’s guess. So we grab with both hands while the grabbing’s good.”

“Makes sense,” Leudast said. “And the Gyongyosians were falling to pieces against us even before this happened. Now that it has, they ought to turn to mush.”

“I hope they do,” Dagaric said. “Other chance is that they might decide to make us pay as much as they can from here on out because everything’s lost. I hope they don’t try to do that, but we’ve got to be alert for it. I want you to let your men know it could happen. Don’t tell them about Gyorvar, not yet. I haven’t got any orders on how we’re supposed to present that to them.”

Leudast felt foolish warning his troopers the Gongs might turn desperate without telling them why. Nobody asked questions, though; curiosity was not encouraged in the Unkerlanter army. He did say, “We’ll know better when we see how things go in the morning.”

Lying there wrapped in a blanket, listening to eggs burst not so far away- but almost all of them off to the west, falling amongst the Gyongyosians-he realized that might not be so. Dagaric had ordered him to keep the news of the destruction of Gyorvar from his men. Would officers on the other side also keep it from the shaggy soldiers they led? He wouldn’t have been surprised.

“Forward!” he shouted when first light came. Forward the men went. The Gongs continued to crumble. Their disintegration was so quick and thorough, in fact, that Leudast couldn’t tell whether they knew some dreadful sorcery had claimed their capital. Unkerlant had been hammering their armies before the news came, and went right on hammering them now.

Three days later, Dagaric’s regiment was well up into the foothills of the Elsung Mountains. Looking east, back in the direction from which he’d come, Leudast saw nothing but a sea of dark green, a sea that stretched out to the horizon and far beyond. Ahead towered the mountain peaks. Even in the summertime, they remained shrouded in snow and mist. He didn’t look forward to climbing higher in them. He’d done that once, all those years before, and found mountain warfare harder work for fewer rewards than any other kind he’d met since.

No help for it, though, he thought, and ordered the men forward once more. But then, as the sun set ahead of him, a Gyongyosian with a white flag came out from behind a lichen-covered boulder. He waited to be recognized for what he was, then called out in musically accented Unkerlanter: “It is over. You and the slanteyes have beaten us. We can fight no more. We admit it, and we surrender.”

“By the powers above,” Leudast whispered. “I lived through it.” Those four words seemed to say everything that needed saying.

Krasta looked from the ornate parchment to the Valmieran official who’d given it to her. “What is this?” she asked in distaste; those seals and stamps meant little to her.

“It is what it says it is, milady,” the flunky replied. “It summons you to appear before his Majesty’s court day after tomorrow to testify as to your dealings during the time of occupation with a certain accused Algarvian, namely one Captain Lurcanio.”

“Why on earth would I want to do that?” Krasta demanded. She didn’t want to do it; she couldn’t think of anything she wanted to do less.

But the official said, “By the laws of the kingdom, your desires here are irrelevant and immaterial. Having been served with this summons, you are required to appear. Failure to do so will-not may, milady, but assuredly will-result in your being fined or imprisoned or both. Good day.”

He turned and strode down the walk, away from Krasta’s mansion. She started to shout an obscenity after him, but ended up whispering it instead. She still hoped for something like a pardon from King Gainibu. Insulting one of his servants wouldn’t help her get it.

She glared down at the summons. She wanted to tear it to pieces. As if it knew what she wanted and were mocking her, a couple of sentences in amongst the legalese leaped out. This document must be presented at your court appearance, she read. It will be counterstamped to document the said appearance. As she’d whispered curses at the man who’d brought the summons, so she aimed more at the document itself.

No help for it, though. She put on the most demure outfit she could find- the trousers were so baggy, they might have done duty for a Forthwegian-style long tunic (or so she imagined, anyhow). Again, her wig was a confection of piled blond curls: it shouted her Kaunianity to the world. The hair underneath that was still growing out shouted something else altogether, but she refused to pay any attention to that.

The last thing she expected when she got to the royal courthouse was a pack of news-sheet scribblers standing outside. They shouted rude questions at her: “How good was the redhead, Marchioness?” “That’s really his baby, isn’t it?” “Will you tell the judges you fell in love with him?”

Nose in the air, she stalked past them as if they didn’t exist. A bailiff led her to the courtroom and had her sit in a row of chairs reserved for witnesses. Lurcanio himself sat not far away. He grinned and blew her a kiss. Her nose went up higher. He laughed, outwardly as brash as ever. To her dismay, more reporters in the courtroom scribbled notes about the byplay.

A panel of judges came in. Two of them wore black tunics and trousers of a cut even baggier than the ones she had on. They were supposed to be dressed as ancient Kaunian judges, she thought. The third was a soldier. His uniform glittered. He had two rows of medals on his chest. He sat in the middle, between the other two.

Everyone rose and bowed when the judges took their places. Krasta was a beat behind most people, because she didn’t know she was supposed to. “Be seated,” the soldier said in a voice that sounded as if he’d used it on the battlefield.

To Krasta’s indignation, she wasn’t the first witness summoned to the box. A weedy little commoner stood there and droned on and on about captured documents. It would have had to be more exciting to rise to dullness. Krasta yawned, buffed her nails, and yawned again. The judges kept on questioning the fellow for what seemed like forever. Then, when they finished, Lurcanio started in on him. She didn’t like that. If he could ask her questions, too. .

At last, the military judge dismissed the boring commoner. “Marchioness Krasta, you will come forward,” he said. “The clerk will administer the oath.”

Forward Krasta came. The clerk took away her summons and stamped it. Then, in a monotone, he said, “Do you swear the testimony you give here today and in any subsequent appearances will be the truth and nothing but the truth, knowing you may be sorcerously monitored and you are subject to the kingdom’s statutes pertaining to perjury?”

“Aye,” Krasta said.

People tittered. One of the judges in old-fashioned black said, “The customary response, milady, is, ‘I