Out of the Darkness

“For the sake of my men, I must accept them.” Tears ran down Oldrade’s face. Rage? Humiliation? Sorrow? Rathar couldn’t say. All he knew was, no Unkerlanter would have thus bared himself before a foe. Vatran turned away, embarrassed to look at the Algarvian.

“I will have a secretary write out the terms, in Unkerlanter and Algarvian,” Rathar said. Oldrade, still weeping, nodded. The Marshal of Unkerlant went on, “I will also send out men with flags of truce and mages to magnify voices, letting everyone know the fighting here is over. When you pass back into your own lines, you do the same.” Oldrade nodded again. Rathar guessed the battle wouldn’t end at once, but would sputter out over several days. People would die for no reason whatever. He shrugged, hoping he was wrong but knowing he wouldn’t be able to stop such things.

“You have given us harsh terms,” Oldrade said. “I hope that, as tempers cool, you will be more generous in your triumph.”

The Algarvian general was three or four inches taller than Rathar. The marshal had to tilt his head back to look down his nose at Oldrade, and he did. “What sort of terms would you have offered if you had taken Cottbus?” he asked. General Oldrade flushed and did not answer. He didn’t have to; they both knew the truth there.

Vatran said, “We ought to send a mage to check Mezentio’s body, make sure it’s not somebody else wearing a sorcerous disguise.”

“A good point,” Rathar said. “I will have the secretary put that in the surrender document.”

“You are the conquerors.” Oldrade didn’t try to hide his bitterness. “You may do as you please.”

“That’s right,” Rathar said, and called his secretary. He told the young lieutenant what he wanted. The secretary was fluent in both his own language and Algarvian, which Rathar also spoke and read. He skimmed through both texts, then passed them to Oldrade.

After reading them, the redhead nodded. He pulled a pen from a tunic pocket. Rathar pushed a bottle of ink toward him. The pen scratched across both instruments of surrender. Oldrade said, “Would you please have your mages make copies for me to take back to ... what is left of my command?”

“Of course, General.” In small matters, Rathar could afford courtesy. “With the fall of Trapani, this war is as near over as makes no difference. May we never fight another one.”

“May it be so,” Oldrade agreed. With a sigh, he unbuckled his sword and held it out to Rathar. “Now it is yours, sir, the negotiations being complete.”

“I accept it in the name of my king,” Rathar said. “Go now, and make the surrender known to your men. Your escort will take you back through the lines.” General Oldrade bowed, spun on his heel, and left the headquarters.

“Congratulations, lord Marshal,” Vatran said again. “We’ve done it.”

Rathar returned the general’s salute. “So we have,” he said. “And now to let his Majesty know we’ve done it.” He went off to the crystallomancers’ room. Arranging an etheric connection back to Cottbus didn’t take long. He hadn’t thought it would; the crystallomancers had to have been waiting for this moment. As soon as King Swemmel’s image appeared in the crystal before the marshal, he said, “Your Majesty, the Algarvians in Trapani have yielded, the surrender to spare their lives but nothing more. The enemy’s capital is yours.”

“And what of the enemy’s king?” Swemmel demanded. “We want Mezentio.”

“He is said to have died in the fighting, your Majesty,” Rathar answered. “I am sending a sorcerer to make sure the corpse is his.”

King Swemmel snorted contemptuously. “Mark our words--he turned coward at the end. He dared not face what we would have done to him for all that he did to our kingdom.” Rathar thought his sovereign likely to be right. In Mezentio’s place, he wouldn’t have cared to endure Swemmel’s wrath, either. The king went on, “Who now claims the throne of Algarve, if Mezentio is truly dead?”

“His brother Mainardo, your Majesty,” Rathar said. “He is said to have yielded himself up to the Kuusamans in the northeast.”

“They will not kill him, as he deserves. No.” Swemmel sounded worried, almost frightened. His eyes flicked back and forth, back and forth, as if watching demons only he could see. “No. They will leave him alive, leave him on what they call the throne of Algarve. The stinking whoresons, they will use him for a cat’s paw, a stalking horse, against us.”

“They want Algarve beaten as much as we do, your Majesty,” Rathar said.

“Algarve is beaten,” the king said. “Now they want us crushed as well. They think they can loose their sorceries in the middle of the Bothnian Ocean without our knowing it, but they are wrong--wrong, we tell you!” Swemmel’s voice rose to something close to a scream.