Darkness Descending

Want to or not, he found out. “I’ll tell you why,” Ortwin said. “The Gongs have stabbed us in the back, that’s why. They’ve started up the war in the far west again.”

Two

After so long on the island of Obuda, the Ilszang Mountains, the borderland between Gyongyos on the one hand and Unkerlant on the other, seemed almost like home to Istvan. As a matter of fact, the valley where he’d been born and raised lay only a couple of hundred miles northwest of the hillside path along which he marched now. He scratched at his long, thick, tawny beard. Stars above! He could even think about going home on leave, something unimaginable out in the middle of the vast Bothnian Ocean.

“Come on, you mangy sons of goats,” he called to the men in his squad. “The stars have never once looked down on such a pack of lazy wastrels as you.”

“Have a heart, Sergeant,” Szonyi said. “Back on Obuda, you were a common soldier yourself, you know.”

Istvan raised a hand to brush its back against the single white hashmark embroidered on his collar tab. Sure enough, on Obuda he’d hated Sergeant Jokai’s petty tyranny. He still wasn’t so harsh as Jokai had been, but now, with rank of his own bestowed on him for good service, he better understood why Jokai had acted as he did. “The boot was on the wrong foot then,” he answered. “It’s on the right one these days--so step lively.”

“I don’t know why you’re worrying, Sergeant.” That was scrawny, bespectacled Kun, still as argumentative, as fussily precise, as he had been back on the island. His wide wave almost knocked Istvan off the path and down the hillside. “I don’t think there are any Unkerlanters for miles around.”

“I’m worrying because worrying is my job,” Istvan told him. “And that’s why we’re moving forward so easy, too: because the lousy goat-eaters have their hands full way off in the east, I mean. Pick up your clumsy feet, like I told Szonyi. Let’s grab with both hands while we can.”

Not even the former mage’s apprentice had a good comeback for that. On he tramped, with Istvan, with the rest of the squad, with the rest of the company, with the rest of the regiment, with the baggage train of horses and mules. Istvan wished there were a ley line anywhere close by. But ley lines were few and far between in this stars-forsaken country, country so little traveled that wizards surely hadn’t yet mapped all the ones there were.

Szonyi grinned at Kun, and at the other troopers in the squad from the coastal lowlands or from the Balaton Islands off the coast. “Even if there aren’t any Unkerlanters around here, you’ve got to look sharp. Otherwise, a mountain ape’ll sneak down, tuck you under his arm, and walk off with you.”

Kun stared at him over the tops of his spectacles. “The only mountain ape I see in these parts is you.”

“Oh, you won’t see them, Kun,” Istvan said, nodding toward Szonyi. “No, you won’t see them. But sure as sure, they’ll see you.”

“Bah!” Kun kicked a pebble. “If they didn’t keep the cursed things in menageries, I wouldn’t even believe in them. And I’ll bet you anything you care to name that nine stories out of every ten the old grannies tell about ‘em are lies. I’m no superstitious fool, not me.” He puffed out his weedy chest and looked wise, or at least supercilious.

“Have it your way,” Istvan answered with a shrug. “One thing the grannies say is that whoever calls someone else a fool names himself, too.”

With an angry grunt, Kun kicked another pebble down the steep hillside. Istvan ignored the little show of pique. His eyes were on the slopes above the path.

Somewhere up there, mountain apes were liable to be staring hungrily down at his companions and him. Years--centuries--had driven them up into the desolate heights and taught them wariness when it came to man. That did not mean they would not sneak down and raid, only that they picked their spots with care.

One of the lowlanders newly attached to the squad, a broad-shouldered fellow named Kanizsai, said, “I heard a savant claim once that mountain apes weren’t really apes at all, not like the apes in the jungles of Siaulia. What this chap said was, we ought to think of them as really stupid people instead.”

That notion kept the next couple of miles light and full of laughter. Everybody had his own candidate for who should be reckoned a mountain ape, starting with childhood rivals and ending up with King Swemmel and most of the population of Unkerlant.

“And what about us?” Szonyi added. “If we had any wits, would we be tramping through these miserable mountains just because somebody told us to?”

“Oh, now wait a bit,” Kanizsai said. “We’re warriors, by the stars. This is what we’re supposed to be doing.” The argument took off from there, like a dragon taking wing. Istvan and Kun sided with Szonyi. Most of the new men, men who hadn’t yet seen action, ranged themselves