Darkness Descending

Heading to Cottbus, he passed a troop of behemoths trotting east, toward the battle lines. They kicked up a great cloud of dust. Because they were still far from the fighting, they did not wear their heavy mail, but carried it in carts they pulled behind them. Whatever color their long, shaggy hair had been before, it was dust-brown now. A couple of the soldiers mounted on them waved to Rathar. Coughing, he waved back. His tunic was scarcely fancier than theirs; they more likely thought him just another soldier than the highest-ranking officer in the Unkerlanter army.

He rode past a dead Algarvian dragon. An old man--too old to go to the front--was stripping the harness from it. Rathar nodded. Anything his kingdom could steal from the redheads was one thing fewer its artisans would have to make.

Few people, and most of them women, were on the streets of Cottbus. As he trotted through a market square, he saw a long queue to buy pears and plums, and an even longer one in front of a stern-faced woman with a basket of eggs. There looked to be plenty of fruit; the eggs were going fast, and the people at the end of that line would have to do without.

When Rathar strode into his office, his adjutant hurried up to him with a worried look on his face. “Lord Marshal, his Majesty urgently requires your presence,” Major Merovec told him.

“Of course the king shall have what he requires,” Rathar replied. “Do you know why he requires me?” Merovec shook his head. Rathar let out a silent sigh. He wouldn’t know whether King Swemmel intended merely to confer with him or to sack him or to take his head till he got to the audience chamber. “I shall go see him at once then.”

Swemmel’s guardsmen in the antechamber were as meticulous as ever, but did not seem hostile to Rathar. The marshal took that as a good sign. No more guards awaited him in the audience chamber. He took that as a better sign.

“Arise, arise,” King Swemmel said after Rathar completed the ritual prostrations and acclamations before his sovereign. Swemmel sounded impatient and angry, but not angry at the marshal. “Do you know what that swaggering popinjay of a Mezentio has done?” he demanded.

King Mezentio had done any number of things to Unkerlant’s detriment. Evidently, he’d just done one more. Rathar answered with simple truth: “No, your Majesty.”

“Curse him, he has raised up a false King of Grelz down in Herborn,” Swemmel snarled.

Ice ran through Rathar. That was one of the nastier things Mezentio might have done. A good many people in the Duchy of Grelz still resented the Union of Crowns that had bound them to Unkerlant even though it was almost three hundred years old. If Algarve restored the old Kingdom of Grelz under a pliant local noble, the Grelzers might well acquiesce in Algarvian control. “Which of the counts or dukes did the redheads pick as their pretender?” Rathar asked.

“Duke Raniero, who has the dishonor to be Mezentio’s first cousin,” King Swemmel answered.

Rathar stared. “King Mezentio named an Algarvian noble to be King of Grelz?”

“Aye, he did,” Swemmel said. “None of the local lickspittles seemed to suit him.”

“Powers above be praised,” Rathar said softly. “He could have struck a harder blow against us with a Grelzer than with a man the folk down there will see as ... a foreign usurper.” He’d almost said another foreign usurper. Swemmel would not have been grateful for that, not even a little.

“You may be right.” Swemmel sounded almost indifferent to what was in Rathar’s eyes a blunder big as the world. A moment later, the king explained why: “But the insult is no less here. If anything, the insult is greater, for Mezentio to presume to set an Algarvian as king on Unkerlanter soil.”

“He did the same thing in Jelgava, when he made his brother Mainardo king there,” Rathar said. “The Algarvians have always been an arrogant lot.”

“Aye,” King Swemmel agreed. “If the Jelgavans are spineless enough to take Mezentio’s worthless brother as their sovereign, they deserve him. Unkerlanters will never accept an Algarvian for a king.” He looked sly; Rathar knew from long experience that he was never more dangerous--to his foes or sometimes to himself--than when he wore that expression. “We shall make certain that Unkerlanters do not accept an Algarvian for a king.”

“May it be so, your Majesty.” Rathar thought the course of the fighting itself more urgent than any political machinations. He pointed to a large map in the audience chamber. “We had better make sure Mezentio has no chance to proclaim a redheaded King of Unkerlant in Cottbus.”

“Even if he does, we will fight on from the west,” Swemmel said.