Darkness Descending

“They say it because it’s true.” Fernao held his nose. “Powers above, they stink. And we’re on our way to matching them.” He crawled toward the opening of the tent, a complicated arrangement with double flaps, designed to hold in as much heat as possible. “As for me, I’m on my way to breakfast.” Affonso nodded and followed him out.

The sun hadn’t climbed above the northeastern horizon yet but wasn’t too far below it; there was enough light by which to see. The cold struck savagely at Fernao as he got to his feet. Every inhalation felt like breathing knives. Every exhalation brought forth a new fogbank. He cocked his head to one side, listening, but couldn’t hear the whisper of stars. That horrified him all over again, for it meant the weather could get colder still.

Snow didn’t cover every inch of the local landscape. Parts of it were bare rock and frozen ground. That had perplexed Fernao till he realized the air down here was so cold, it held less moisture than it could farther north, and the endless ravening wind helped sweep the landscape clear.

Lagoan soldiers were emerging from their tents, all of them as muffled against the chill as Fernao and Affonso. Like Fernao’s, the fog from their breath hung around their heads. They stumbled toward the smoking cook fires, shivering and loudly cursing their fate.

Off in the distance, Ice People on shaggy, two-humped camels watched the Lagoan army. They’d been shadowing the force ever since it landed at the edge of the ice shelf that formed around the edge of the austral continent every winter. The nomads of the frozen waste had laughed then to see King Vitor’s men struggling over the ice. They weren’t laughing anymore. Fernao hoped they weren’t passing the army’s movements on to the Yaninans. If they were, the Lagoans couldn’t do anything about it; the Ice People could have run rings around them.

Man by man, the lines at the cook fires moved forward. A cook who looked not only cold but also bored slapped a glob of mush and a strip of fried camel meat--mostly fat--into Fernao’s tin. “Eat fast,” the fellow advised. “Otherwise you’ll break teeth on it after it freezes up again.”

He wasn’t joking. Fernao had seen that. The mage was also ravenous. In this weather, a man needed far more food than he would have in a better climate. Affonso ate with the same dedication. Only after their tins were empty did Affonso remark, “I wish this cursed country didn’t hold any cinnabar. Then we could let the Yaninans have it.”

“Then King Tsavellas wouldn’t want it,” Fernao answered. “Nobody would ever come to visit the Ice People, except once in a while to buy pelts from them.”

“Dragons.” Affonso turned the word into a curse. Fernao nodded. Quicksilver came from cinnabar. Without it, dragons couldn’t flame so hot or so far. Algarve, Yanina’s ally {Yaninds master was nearer the truth these days), had only small stocks of the vital mineral. If Lagoas could take the land of the Ice People away from King Tsavellas’ men, King Mezentio’s dragons would have to do without. That would make Algarve’s war harder.

Taking the cinnabar away from Algarve was making Fernao’s life harder. The army trudged toward Mizpah. The town had been a Lagoan outpost till the Yaninans seized it after Lagoas went to war with Algarve. Fernao had been in it then. He counted himself lucky to have escaped and something less than lucky to have returned to the austral continent.

Grudgingly, as if resenting the necessity, the sun rose. Fernao’s shadow, far longer than he was tall, stretched off to his left. Because the sun couldn’t get far above the horizon, its light remained red as blood. It was about to set when a couple of Ice People rode toward the Lagoan column on camelback, shouting at the tops of their lungs.

Lieutenant General Junqueiro, who commanded the Lagoan force, hurried over to Fernao. He was a big, bluff fellow with a bushy red mustache streaked with white. “What in blazes are they saying?” he asked the mage. “You speak their language.”

“Not a word of it,” Fernao answered, which made Junqueiro’s eyes open very wide. “If you listen closely, though, you’ll discover they’re speaking Lagoan, after a fashion.”

Junqueiro cocked his head to one side. “Why, so they are.” He sounded astonished. Then his expression changed. “Is what they’re saying true? Are the Yaninans really moving against us?”

Fernao eyed him in some exasperation. “I don’t know--this country isn’t friendly to magecraft, except the sort the shamans of the Ice People use. But don’t you think you’d better get ready to receive them, on the chance those nomads aren’t lying?”

“It’s almost night again,” Junqueiro said. “Not even the Yaninans would be mad enough to attack in the darkness ... I don’t think.” But he began shouting orders, and the army shook itself out from column into line of battle.