Darkness Descending

He pulled a brass spyglass off his belt. A minor magic kept its lenses dry so he could peer through it right away. The ship seemed to leap toward him. He gasped. For a moment, he thought it was a floating fortress. Then he realized it was the next class down, a ley-line cruiser. His lips skinned back from his teeth in a savage smile. “It will have to do,” he said.

Through the spyglass, he saw sailors on the deck of the cruiser. A jack of green, white, and red snapped in the breeze. Cornelu nodded. He wouldn’t be attacking a Lagoan ship by mistake. That would be biting the hand that fed him.

Those sailors would be on the lookout for leviathans. If they spied him, he would never get close enough to plant his egg against the cruiser’s flank. He fought the Algarvians, ironically, by keeping his mount at the surface. Mezentio’s men would be watching for the big plumes of vapor that rose when a leviathan came up from the depths. So long as his beast kept breathing steadily, it wouldn’t give itself away too soon.

Cornelu had to gauge when to dive for his attack. If he waited too long, Mezentio’s men would spot him. If he dove too soon, his leviathan wouldn’t be able to come alongside the cruiser. He would have to surface before it got there, and then he would really be in trouble.

When he judged the moment ripe, he tapped the leviathan, which slipped beneath the waves and sped toward the ley-line cruiser. It knew it had to swim alongside or under the ship long enough to let him attach the egg. He’d sometimes wondered if leviathans had any true notion why men did such things. The beasts fought among themselves, over mates and sometimes over food. Did they know their masters fought, too?

And then Cornelu had no more time to wonder, for the leviathan brought him up right below the cruiser. His lost Eforiel could not have done a finer job. All he had to do was pick the moment to signal the leviathan to swim belly-up beneath the Algarvian warship, so he could slide along the harness and release an egg. The egg clung to the hull of the ley-line cruiser. As soon as its shell touched the ship, a spell began to bring it to life.

Cornelu regained his position near the leviathan’s blowhole. Urgently now, he ordered his mount away from the ship. The egg would burst whether he was close or far. He didn’t want to have to endure a burst close by: this egg was far heavier and more potent than any a dragon could haul into the air. He also wanted to get far enough from the ley-line cruiser to let the leviathan surface safely.

He didn’t quite manage that. The leviathan had to spout a little sooner than he’d expected. The Algarvians flashed mirrors in his direction. They weren’t sure to which side he belonged. He took a mirror from his belt pouch and flashed back. His signal would be wrong, but, as long as they kept playing with mirrors, they wouldn’t be lobbing eggs at him. And his leviathan swam farther from the cruiser with every heartbeat.

Before long, the Algarvians realized he wasn’t one of their own. Eggs began flying through the air toward the leviathan. The first couple fell short, but the enemy’s aim was liable to improve in a hurry.

Then the egg he’d planted burst. The ley-line cruiser staggered in the water, as if it had collided with an invisible wall. The Algarvians forgot all about him as they tried to save their ship. They couldn’t. Its back broken, it plunged beneath the sea. Cornelu’s bellow of triumph might have burst from the throat of a warrior from five hundred years before: “For King Burebistu! For Sibiu!” This time, he’d struck the enemies of his kingdom a heavy blow.

About every other Algarvian officer who came into the tailor’s shop Traku ran took one look at Talsu working beside his father and told him, “You are lucky to be alive.” Each time, he had to nod politely and say something like, “Aye, I know it.” However polite he acted, he wasn’t always sure it was a good thing that he was alive. The wound in his left side still pained him. When he walked, he wanted to bend his body to favor it as much as he could. When he sat, he kept twisting to find the position where it hurt least. He couldn’t find a position where it didn’t hurt at all. By what the healer said, that would be awhile yet, if it ever came.

What made it hard to stay polite, though, was that the Algarvians didn’t mean he was lucky to be alive after the redheaded soldier stabbed him. They meant he was lucky the occupying authorities hadn’t seized him, tied him to a post, put a blindfold on him, and blazed him.

One of Mezentio’s officers wagged a forefinger under Talsu’s nose. “You are a fortunate fellow in that the military governor for this district is an easygoing old man who would sooner swive his pretty young mistress than do his job. With most of his kind ...” And the fellow drew that finger across his own throat.

“Oh, aye, I’m about the luckiest man in the world,” Talsu agreed. By then, he’d said it so often, he managed to sound as if he believed it. The Algarvian captain shut up and left him alone.

But what right did the redheads have to take any woman who struck their fancy? What right did they have to pick a fight with someone who happened to be a Jelgavan woman’s friend? What right did they have to stab someone who didn’t care for their lewdness?

The right of the conqueror. That was what they would answer. That Algarvian had proved his answer with the point of his knife and had got off