Rulers of the Darkness

"I need a volunteer," Baiardo said.

Silence fell on the Forthwegians. They had seen plenty to teach them that the war was bad enough when they did what they had to do. Doing more than they had to do only made it worse. Baiardo looked expectantly from one soldier to the next. Maybe he hadn't seen all that much himself. Nobody could tell him no, not straight out. He was an Algarvian, and an officer- well, an officer of sorts- to boot. At last, Sergeant Werferth pointed to Sidroc and said, "He'll do whatever you need, sir."

"Splendid." Baiardo clapped his hands in what looked like real delight.

Sidroc thought it anything but splendid. He glared at Baiardo and Werferth in turn. Glaring, of course, was all he could do. Whatever happened to him would be better than what he'd get for disobeying an order. With a sigh, he asked the Algarvian mage, "What do you need from me, sir?"

If Baiardo noticed his reluctance, he didn't let it show. "Here." He unslung his pack and handed it to Sidroc. "Carry this. Come with me."

He's arrogant enough to make a proper Algarvian, Sidroc thought. The pack might have been stuffed with lead. He carried it and his own pack and his stick and followed Baiardo away from the fire. The mage blithely strode southwest. After a little while, Sidroc said, "Sir, if you keep going, you'll see the Unkerlanters closer than you ever wanted to."

"Their lines are close?" Baiardo sounded as if that hadn't occurred to him.

"You might say so, aye," Sidroc answered dryly. Baiardo clapped his hands again. "Powers above, keep quiet!" Sidroc hissed. "Are you trying to get both of us killed?" As far as he was concerned, Baiardo was welcome to do himself in, but Sidroc resented being included in his suicide.

But the mage shook his head and said, "No. Set down the pack" -an order Sidroc was glad to obey. Baiardo took from the heavy pack a laurel leaf of the sort often used in Forthwegian cookery and a small, dazzlingly bright opal. He wrapped the stone in the leaf and chanted first in Algarvian, then in classical Kaunian. Sidroc stared, for the mage's outline grew hazy, indistinct; at last, Baiardo almost disappeared. "Stay here," he told Sidroc. "Wait for me." Still in that wraithlike state, he started for the Unkerlanters' line.

How long do I wait? Sidroc wondered. Baiardo wasn't fully invisible. If Swemmel's soldiers were alert, they would spot him. If they did, Sidroc was liable to have a very long wait indeed. Muttering a curse under his breath, he started digging a hole. He felt naked on the Unkerlanter plain without one. The dirt he dug up made a breastwork in front of his scrape. It wouldn't protect him if a regiment of Unkerlanters came roaring after Baiardo, but it might keep a sniper from parting his hair with a beam.

He'd just scrambled down into the hole when a voice spoke out of thin air behind him: "We can go back now." He whirled, and there stood Baiardo, as haggard and unkempt as ever, putting the laurel leaf and the opal back into his pack. The mage added, "I got what I came for."

"And you almost got blazed before you could deliver it, whatever it was, you cursed fool," Sidroc said angrily. "Don't you have any sense at all?"

Baiardo gave that serious consideration. "I doubt it," he said at last. "It doesn't always help in my business."

They trudged back toward the fire, Baiardo pleased with himself, Sidroc still a little- maybe more than a little- twitchy. The mage, he noticed, had sense enough not to carry his own pack when he didn't have to. He left that to Sidroc.

***

"Welcome back," people kept telling Fernao, in Kuusaman and in classical Kaunian. Some of them added, "How well you are moving!"

"Thank you," Fernao said, over and over. The mages and the cooks and maids in the hostel in the Naantali district were just being polite, and he knew it. He would never move well again, not as long as he lived. Maybe he was moving a little better than he had when he went off to Setubal. Maybe. He remained imperfectly convinced.

Ilmarinen helped him put things in perspective. The master mage patted him on the back and said, "Well, after so much time off in that miserable little no-account excuse for a city, you must be glad to come back here, to a place where interesting things are happening."

His classical Kaunian was so fast and colloquial- so much like a living language in his mouth- that at first Fernao thought he meant the Naantali district was the sleepy place and Setubal the one where things happened. When he realized Ilmarinen had said the opposite, he laughed out loud. "You always have that knack for turning things upside down," he told the Kuusaman mage. His own Kaunian remained formal: a language he could use, but not one in which he felt at home.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Ilmarinen answered. "I always speak plain sense. Is it my fault the rest of the world isn't ready to see it most of the time?"