Darkness Descending

The smell of the sea was always strong in Tirgoviste town. But once Cornelu drew near the piers, he caught the reek of old fish from the boats the Algarvians still permitted to sail, an odor that didn’t travel so far inland as the salt tang pervading all the Sibian islands, the main five and their smaller outliers. Through the damp, deadening fog, he caught the familiar slap of waves against the wooden pilings that supported the harbor piers.

He knew exactly where he was by the way the waves sounded. Discovering where his feet had brought him, he also discovered they’d had a better notion of where they were going than he’d imagined: he was within a stone’s throw of the great wire pens where the Sibian navy had held its leviathans--and where the Algarvian occupiers held theirs these days.

Cornelu had come to look at the leviathans in an earlier visit to Tirgoviste. An Algarvian guard had cursed him and sent him away in a hurry. He snorted. What would the guard have done if he’d come up in his sea-green Sibian commander’s uniform? Nothing so pleasant as cursing and running him off--of that Cornelu was sure.

Somewhere not far away, an Algarvian guard--maybe even the same Algarvian guard--was pacing through the fog. If he was like every other guard Cornelu had ever known, he would be cursing his luck at drawing duty on a night when the only way he could find a foe would be to trip over his feet.

As if thinking of the guard had conjured him into being, his footsteps sounded on the walk not far away. Like frost forming on a window, decision crystallized within Cornelu. The Algarvian didn’t even bother trying to move quietly. He seemed sure he was the only man up and walking for miles around. Had the fellow been a Sibian, Cornelu would have reported him to his superior officer. As things were, he killed him instead.

It was almost absurdly easy. All he had to do was keep from stomping his feet on the stone of the walkway as he followed the Algarvian’s footfalls. Mezentio’s man hadn’t the faintest notion Cornelu was coming up behind him. As soon as the guard became something more than the sound of booted feet, as soon as he became a dim shape ahead, Cornelu raised his stick and blazed him down.

His beam was a brief, bright line of light in the mist. That mist attenuated the beam, which was not all that strong to begin with. But, at a range of three or four feet, it was strong enough. It caught the Algarvian in the back of the head. He let out a startled grunt, as if Cornelu had tapped him on the shoulder. Then he quietly toppled. His own stick clattered as it slipped from his nerveless fingers.

Cornelu dragged his body off the walk, so it wouldn’t be found at once. He picked up the stick and dropped it into the water in one of the leviathan pens. It made only a tiny splash.

But that splash, as he’d hoped, was enough to draw the leviathan to the surface to find out what had made it. Leviathans were even more curious than their squat cousins, the whales. Because of the fog, Cornelu couldn’t see this one, but it was plain in his mind’s eye: lean and long, about six times a man’s length, with a beaky mouth full of sharp teeth. Wild leviathans were wolves of the sea. Tamed and trained, they turned into hunting dogs.

Moving quickly, Cornelu got out of his jacket and tunic, his kilt and his shoes. Naked, he jumped into the water of the leviathan pen. It was cold, but the chill did not pierce him to the core. He let out a long exhalation of relief: his sorcerous protection against the ice waters of the southern seas still held good. Had that not been so, he would have frozen to death before long.

He swam toward the leviathan. By everything Sibian spies knew, Mezentio’s men guided their leviathans with pokes and prods almost identical to those Sibian riders used. He was betting his life the spies had it right. A man made a good mouthful for a leviathan, no more.

The great beast let him climb onto its back. His hand found the harness secured by its fins. The leviathan quivered expectantly, as if waiting for him to show what he was. He tapped it with the signal that, in the Sibian navy, would have ordered it to leap out of the pen. If the spies were wrong, he wouldn’t last long and would pass his final moments most unpleasantly.

The leviathan gathered itself. After a dizzying rush, it hurled itself through the air, then splashed down again. Cornelu let out a whoop of joy drowned in that titanic splash. He could go to Lagoas, which, while not home--he had no home, not anymore--was not Mezentio’s to do with as he would.

And, if he decided to drown himself halfway there, Costache would never know.

“We are a warrior race,” Sergeant Istvan declared, and all the Gyongyosians in his squad solemnly nodded.

“Aye, indeed we are a warrior race,” said Kun, who was less inclined to argue with his sergeant now that he had reached the exalted rank of corporal.