Rulers of the Darkness

When Istvan looked up at the night sky from the island of Becsehely, he had no trouble seeing the stars. The didn't glitter so brilliantly as they did in the clear, cold air of his own mountain valley, but they were there, from horizon to horizon. "It almost seems strange," he remarked to Szonyi. "After so long in the accursed woods of western Unkerlant, I'd got used to seeing a star here, a star there, but most of them blotted out by branches overhead."

"Aye." Szonyi's fingers writhed in a sign to avert evil. "Me, too. No wonder I felt forsaken by the stars while I was there."

"No wonder at all." Some of Istvan's shiver had to do with the night air, which was moist and chilly. More sprang from dread and loathing of the forest he and his companions had finally escaped. "There are places in those woods that no star saw for years at a time."

"Can't say that here." Szonyi's waved encompassed all of Becsehely- not that there was a whole lot to encompass. "It's not much like Obuda, is it? Before we got to this place, I always thought, well, an island is an island, you know what I mean? But it doesn't look like it works that way."

The gold frame to Captain Kun's spectacles glittered in the firelight as he turned his head toward Szonyi. "After you had one woman," he asked, "did you think all women were the same, too?"

He probably wanted to anger Szonyi. But the big trooper just laughed and said, "After my first one? Aye, of course I did. I found out different pretty fast. Now I'm finding out different about islands, too."

"He's got you there, Kun," Istvan said with a laugh.

"I suppose so- if you're daft enough to assume one island is like another to begin with," Kun answered.

"Enough." Istvan put a sergeant's snap in his voice. "Let's hope this island won't be anything like Obuda. Let's hope- and let's make sure- we don't lose it to the stinking Kuusamans, the way we lost Obuda."

He peered west through the darkness, as if expecting to spot a fleet of Kuusaman ley-line cruisers and patrol boats and transports and dragon haulers bearing down on Becsehely. Gyongyos had lost a good many islands besides Obuda to Kuusamo this past year; Ekrekek Arpad had vowed to the stars that the warrior race would lose no more.

I am the instrument of Arpad's vow, Istvan thought. An instrument of his vow, anyway. In the forests of Unkerlant, he'd often feared that the Ekrekek had joined the stars in forsaking him. Here, by contrast, he felt as if he were serving under his sovereign's eye.

After a while, he wrapped himself in a blanket and slept. When he woke, he wondered if Ekrekek Arpad had blinked: a thick fog covered Becsehely. All the Kuusaman ships in the world could have sailed past half a mile offshore, and he never would have known it. More fog streamed from his nose and mouth every time he exhaled. When he inhaled, he could taste the sea almost as readily as if he were a fish swimming in it.

Not far away, a bell began ringing. Istvan's stomach rumbled. "Follow your ears, boys," he told the troopers in his squad. "Try not to break your necks before you get there."

His boots scrunched on gravel and squelched through mud as he made his own way toward the bell. The fog muffled his footsteps. It muffled the bell, too, and the endless slap of the sea on the beach perhaps a quarter of a mile away. Becsehely was low and flat. Had it not lain along a ley line, it wouldn't have been worth visiting at all- but then, as far as Istvan was concerned, the same held true for every island in the Bothnian Ocean.

There was the cookfire- and there was a queue of men with mess kits. Istvan took his place in it. The man in front of him turned and said, "Good morning, Sergeant."

"Oh!" Istvan said. "Good morning, Captain Frigyes. I'm sorry, sir- a man wouldn't know his own mother in this fog."

"Can't argue with you there," his company commander replied. "You'd almost think the Kuusamans magicked it up on purpose."

"Sir?" Istvan said in some alarm. "You don't suppose-?"

Frigyes shook his head. "No, I don't suppose that. Our mages would be screaming their heads off were it so. They aren't. That means it isn't."

Istvan considered. "Aye. That makes sense." He peered out into the fog with new suspicion just the same.

A bored-looking cook filled his mess tin with a stew of millet and lentils and bits of fish. He ate methodically, then went down to the beach and washed the tin in the ocean. Becsehely boasted only a handful of springs; fresh water was too precious to waste on washing.

Toward mid-morning, the fog lifted. The sky remained gray. So did the sea. Becsehely seemed gray, too. Most of the gravel was that color, and the grass and bushes, fading in the fall, were more yellowish gray than green.