Into the Darkness d-1, page 61
part #1 of Darkness Series
Bembo tipped him, more to get rid of him than for any other reason. Saffa let the constable slip an arm over her shoulder again. This time, he had the sense not to go exploring further. The house lights dimmed. Actors pranced out on stage, declaiming.
“I knew it would be another costume drama,” Bembo whispered.
“They’re all the rage these days,” Saffa whispered back. Her breath was warm and moist in his ear.
Up on the stage, actors and actresses in blond wigs played imperial Kaunians, all of them plotting ways and means to keep the dauntless, virile Algarvians out of the Empire—and the women falling into clinches with the Algarvian chieftains every chance they got. The story might have been taken straight from one of the historical romances Bembo had been devouring lately. Along with the rest of the audience, he whooped when a Kaunian noblewoman’s tunic and trousers came flying over the screen that hid her bed from the spectators.
Afterwards, Saffa asked, “Do you suppose it was really like that?”
“Must have been,” Bembo answered. “If it wasn’t, how would we ever have beaten the cursed Kaunians?”
“I don’t know,” the sketch artist admitted. She yawned, not too theatrically. “You’d better take me home. We both have to work in the morning.”
“Did you have to remind me?” Bembo said, but he knew she was right.
Outside her flat, she let him kiss her—actually, she kissed him. When his hands wandered, she stretched and purred like a cat. Then he tried to get one under her kilt, and she twisted away from him. “Maybe one of these nights,” she said. “Maybe—but not tonight.” She kissed him on the end of the nose, then slipped into her flat and had the door barred before Bembo could make a move to follow her.
He wasn’t so angry as he thought he should have been. Even if he hadn’t bedded her, he’d come closer than he’d expected he—would—and she hadn’t clawed him too badly after all. Not a perfect evening (had it been a perfect evening, she would have reached under his kilt), but not bad, either.
He still looked happy the next morning, so much so that Sergeant Pesaro leered. “What were you doing?” he said, in tones suggesting he already knew the broad outlines but wanted the juicy details. He made a formidable interrogator, whether grilling criminals or constables.
Since Bembo had no juicy details to give him, and since Saffa would kill him or make him wish she had if he invented some, all he said was, “A gentleman goes out of his way to protect the reputation of a lady.”
“Since when are you a gentleman? For that matter, since when is Saffa a lady?” Pesaro wasn’t trying to get her to flip up her kilt, so he could say what he pleased. Bembo just shrugged. Pesaro muttered under his breath, then went on, “All right, if you won’t talk, you won’t. I can’t beat it out of you, the way I can with the ordinary lags. Anyhow, there’s a good job of work ahead for the force today.”
Ah?” Bembo’s ears came to attention. So, rather lackadaisically, did the rest of him. “What’s toward, Sergeant?”
“We’re going to round up all the cursed Kaunians in town.” Pesaro spoke with considerable satisfaction. “Order came in just after midnight by crystal from Trapani, from the Ministry for Protection of the Realm. Everybody’s been having kittens since you caught the blonds dyeing their hair. King Mezentio’s decided we can’t take the chance of letting ’em run around loose any more, so we won’t. They’ll be pulling ’em in all over Algarve.”
“Well, that’s pretty good,” Bembo said. “I bet we got rid of a lot of spies that way. Probably should have done it back at the start of the war, if anybody wants to know what I think. If we had done it back at the start of the war, my guess is the stinking Jelgavans wouldn’t have come half so close to taking Tricarico.”
“Nobody cares what you guess,” Pesaro said. But then he checked himself; after Bembo had discovered the Kaunians dyeing their hair, that might be less true now than a few weeks before. Grimacing at the absurdity of having to take Bembo seriously, the sergeant went on, “No matter when they should have done it, they are doing it now. We’ve got lists of known Kaunians, and we’re going to send constables out in pairs to make sure they don’t give us a tough time. Or if they try that, they’ll be sorry.” He folded a meaty hand into a fist.
Bembo nodded. Inside, he was laughing. Pesaro sounded tough, as if he’d be hauling in Kaunians himself instead of sending out ordinary constables like Bembo to do the job. The sergeant’s comment sparked another thought, an important one: “Who are you pairing with me?”
“Have to check the roster.” Sergeant Pesaro ran a fat finger down it. “I’ve got you with Oraste. Does that suit?”
“Aye,” Bembo said. “He’s not one to back away from trouble. And we’ve worked together before, in a manner of speaking—he helped me bring in that Balozio, remember?”
“I didn’t, no, but I do now that you remind me of it,” Pesaro said. The doors to the station house swung open. In came Oraste, as broad through the shoulders as a Forthwegian. “Just the man I’m looking for!” Pesaro exclaimed happily, and explained to Oraste what he’d just told Bembo.
Oraste listened, scratched his head, nodded, and said, “Give us the list, Sergeant, and we’ll get at it. You ready, Bembo?”
“Aye.” Bembo wasn’t so ready as all that, but didn’t see how he could say anything else. He was glad to have Oraste at his side precisely because Oraste never backed away from anyone or anything. Oraste didn’t back away from duty, either.
The first Kaunians on the list were Falsirone and Evadne. “Those don’t look like Kaunian names,” Oraste said, but then he shrugged. “Doesn’t matter what they call themselves. If they’re Kaunians, they’re gone.”
Falsirone and Evadne stared in dismay when the constables strode into their tonsorial parlor. They stared in horror when Bembo told them why the constables had come. Pointing a finger at him, Evadne shrilled, “You told us we wouldn’t get into trouble, you liar!”
“You’re not in trouble for that,” Bembo said, strangling the guilt that crept out from the dark places at the bottom of his mind. “This is only a precaution, till the war is safely won.” He didn’t know that—no one had said anything of the sort—but it seemed a reasonable guess.
Oraste smacked his club into the palm of his hand. “Get moving,” he said flatly.
“But what about everything here?” Evadne wailed, waving an arm to show off the shop and everything in it.
Bembo glanced at Oraste. Oraste’s face had not the slightest particle of give in it. Bembo decided he had better not show any give, either. “Hazard of war,” he said. “Now come along. We haven’t got all day here.”
Still complaining loudly and bitterly—still acting very much as veritable Algarvians would have done—Evadne and Falsirone came. Bembo and Oraste led them to the park where Bembo had spent his unhappy hours as an emergency militiaman. More constables, and some soldiers as well, took charge of them there. “On to the next,” Oraste said.
The next proved to be a prominent restaurateur. Bembo understood another reason why his superiors had sent constables out in pairs: it made them harder to bribe. With Oraste glaring at him as if looking for the smallest excuse to beat him bloody, the Kaunian didn’t even try, but came along meek as a lamb heading for sacrifice. Bembo let out a silent sigh. He would have been much more reasonable.
When he and Oraste got to the third establishment on their list, they found it empty. Oraste scowled. “Some other bastards beat us to it,” he said.
“I don’t think so,” Bembo answered. “I think word’s out on the street. A lot of blonds will be figuring they ought to disappear.”
“We’ll get ’em,” Oraste said. “Sooner or later, we’ll get ’em.”
By nightfall, the constables had rounded up several hundred Kaunians. Almost an equal number, though, had not been there to round up. Despite that, Captain Sasso said, “Good job, men. The kingdom’s long overdue for a cleanup, and we’re the fellows who can take care of it. When we’re done, when the war is won, Algarve will be a better place.”
“That’s right,” Oraste said, and Bembo nodded, too.
Istvan longed for the days when the worst Sergeant Jokai could do to him was send him off to shovel dragon shit or to serve as a dowser’s beast of burden. Jokai was dead these days, smashed to bits when a Kuusaman egg burst too close to him. For all practical purposes, Istvan was a sergeant himself, though no officer had formally conveyed the rank on him. He was a veteran on Obuda, and the soldiers he led new-come reinforcements. Having stayed alive gave him moral authority even without rank.
“Here,” he said, pointing to a clump of bushes. “These fruits stay good even when they’re dried out and wrinkled like that. Grab as many as you can; stars above only know when we’ll see any proper meals again.”
“What are these fruits called?” asked one of the new men, a thin, bespectacled fellow named Kun.
“Curse me if I know,” Istvan answered. “The Obudans have a name for ’em, but I don’t know what it is. Names don’t matter, anyhow. What matters is, like I said, they’re good to eat. With the supply system all buggered up the way it is, I think I’d eat a goat if one came strolling up the path.”
Some of the men laughed and nodded. Some of them looked revolted. Despite profane bravado, Istvan wasn’t sure if he would really eat goat. Only a starving Gyongyosian would even think of such a thing—a starving Gyongyosian or a depraved one. When he was a boy, four men in the next valley over from his had been caught at a ritual supper of goat stew after they’d murdered—and done worse things to—a pregnant woman. No clan feud had started when they were buried alive. Even their own families thought they deserved it, as much for the goat-eating as for their other crimes.
Kun cleared his throat a couple of times and said, “Names always matter. Names are part of the fabric from which reality is woven. If your name were different, you would not be the man you are, nor I, nor any of us. The same must surely hold true for these fruits.”
He was, as he seldom let anyone forget, a mage’s apprentice. He was also a bumbler, as tales said mages’ apprentices often were. Istvan marveled that he still lived when better men had died around him. Sometimes pretending not to understand him was the best way to stop him from going on and on. Istvan tried it: “If these fruits had a different name, I think I’d still be the man I am.”
“That is not what I meant,” Kun said, giving him an indignant look over the top of those spectacles. “What I meant was—” He paused, looking foolish, as the possibility that Istvan might have been making a joke occurred to him. That took longer than it should have. Istvan was surprised it happened at all.
Before he could finish the job of putting Kun in his place, eggs started falling not far away. The men he led had been on Obuda and in action long enough to know what that meant. Istvan thought he was the first to throw himself flat, but none of the rest was more than a moment behind him.
The ground shuddered under him. Leaves and twigs fell on his back; someone close by cursed as a branch a good deal bigger than a twig came down on his leg. Through the din of bursting eggs and falling trees, Istvan shouted, “Now—is that us trying to kill the Kaunians or them trying to kill us?”
“If you like, I will undertake a divination to find out,” Kun said.
“Never mind.” Istvan shook his head, dislodging the end of a twig from his ear. “If one of those lands on us, we end up dead either way.” Kun couldn’t very well argue with that, and so, for a wonder, he didn’t.
A dragon screeched, just above the treetops. It was, Istvan thought unhappily, more likely to be flown by a Kuusaman than by one of his own countrymen. The Kuusamans were able to bring dragons by the shipload from out of the east, where Gyongyos had to fly them from island to island to get them to Obuda. Because the Gyongyosian dragons inevitably arrived worn, the beasts from Kuusamo had the better of it in the air.
“I wish we could drive the Kuusaman fleet out of these waters,” Istvan muttered, his face still in the dirt. He sighed. “I suppose the little slant-eyed sons of billy goats wish they could drive our fleet out of these waters.”
Sometimes (mostly by night, for looking for a good view by day was asking a Kuusaman sniper to put a beam in one ear and out the other), he would look out at the warships tossing eggs and blazing at one another. Neither side, as yet, was able to keep the other from reinforcing its army on Obuda. A lot of ships had gone to wreckage and twisted metal trying, though. He wondered which side could go on throwing them into the fight longer than the other.
More screeches overhead, and then the noise, like a dozen men all being sick at once, of a dragon flaming. The sound that followed was not a screech but a shriek. More sounds came: the sounds of a large body crashing down through the canopy of leaves and branches above the Gyongyosians and then thrashing about on the ground only a stone’s throw away.
Istvan scrambled to his feet. “Come on,” he called to his men. “Let’s get rid of that cursed thing before it flames half the forest afire. Let’s see what we can do about the flier, too. He might not be dead—he didn’t fall that far.”
“If he’s a Kuusaman, we’ll take care of that,” Szonyi said. He might not have done any fighting till the men from the far east invaded, but he was a veteran now.
“Aye,” Istvan said. “Either we kill him or we send him back so our officers can squeeze him.” Normally, Istvan would have done the latter. As things were, he’d been on his own for a couple of days, and wasn’t sure where to send a captive if he got one.
Getting one, he realized, wouldn’t be easy. That dragon might have been flamed out of the sky, but it was a long way from dead; branches must have done a better job than usual of cushioning its fall. It sounded as if it were trying to knock down every tree it could reach. It didn’t flame, though, which argued it still had a flier on its back: an unrestrained dragon would have vented its fury every way it could.
Kun pointed ahead. “There it is,” he said unnecessarily: that great scaly tail could not have belonged to any other beast. At the moment, it was doing duty for a flail, smashing bushes to bits.
“Surround it,” Istvan said. “Blaze for the eyes or the mouth. Sooner or later we’ll kill it. And watch out for the flier. He’s liable to be blazing at you while you’re blazing at the dragon.”
“I find that highly unlikely,” Kun said. But he did as Istvan told him, so Istvan couldn’t come down on him for talking back. Istvan couldn’t come down hard on him for talking back, anyhow—a disadvantage of lacking formal rank.
Spreading out to surround the dragon made the Gyongyosians cast their net widely indeed. The beast was still doing its best to level the woods. It couldn’t knock over large trees. With that exception, its best was quite good; a stampeding behemoth would have been hard pressed to match it.
Istvan peered through the bushes toward it. Sure enough, it was a Kuusaman dragon, painted in sea green and sky blue. Its right wing and a stretch of the body behind the wing were charred and black. Without a doubt, a Gyongyosian dragon had won that duel in the air. But the Kuusaman still somehow astride it at the base of its neck seemed alert and not badly hurt. He had a stick in his hands and was looking now this way, now that, ready for anything that might happen to him.
For a moment, Istvan wondered why he didn’t get off the dragon and make for the woods. Then he realized the dragon was liable to squash the flier if he dismounted. He raised his own stick to his shoulder and sighted along it. Before he could blaze, the Kuusaman did, but at someone off to the other side. A hoarse cry said the dragonflier hit what he’d blazed at, too.
When Istvan blazed at the Kuusaman, the fellow jerked as if stung. But, even if Istvan’s beam bit, it didn’t knock the foe out of the fight. The fellow used his own stick as a goad, and the dragon, hurt though it was, obeyed the command he gave it. Its head swung toward Istvan. He blazed at it, but it kept turning his way. Its jaws opened enormously, preposterously, wide. Flame shot from those jaws, straight at Istvan.
He thought he was a dead man. Though it was daylight, he looked up toward the heavens, toward the stars where he expected his spirit would go. But the sheet of flame fell short. Trees and bushes between the dragon and him began to burn. He threw his hands up in front of his face to protect himself from the blast of the heat, but the fire did not quite reach him. He stumbled backwards, his lungs feeling seared from the one breath of flame-heated air he’d drawn in.
Coughing, he staggered off to one side of the fire. It would spread, but not quickly; Obuda had had a lot of rain lately, so the plants were full of juice. The dragon was swinging its head away from Istvan now. It flamed again. A shriek of anguish announced that whoever it flamed at this time hadn’t been far enough away to escape the fire.
Istvan blazed at the dragonflier again. His comrades were doing the same now. At last, after what seemed like forever, the Kuusaman slumped down on his dragon’s neck, the stick slipping from his fingers. The dragon, with no one controlling it, began sending bursts of flame in all directions—until it had no flame left to send.
After that, disposing of the great beast was relatively easy, for the Gyongyosians could approach without fear. When it opened its mouth and tried to flame Szonyi, he sent a beam through the soft tissue inside that maw and into its brain. Its head flopped down. The body kept thrashing a while longer, too stupid to realize right away that it was dead.
Kun nodded to Istvan. Istvan nodded back, in some surprise; he thought the dragon had flamed the mage’s apprentice. Kun looked surprised, too. Pointing to the dead Kuusaman flier, he said, “You were right. Those little demons really can fight bravely.”
“Too right they can,” Istvan answered. “If they couldn’t, don’t you think we’d have thrown ’em off this island long since?”
