Into The Darkness

Leudast heard some noise off to his night: running footsteps. He whirled. Straight at him came a Gyongyosian trooper who must have noted the thud and clatter he'd made diving for cover. With a gasp, Leudast thrust his forefinger into the recess at the base of his stick.

As much by luck as by good aim, his beam caught the Gong square in the chest. just for a moment, Leudast saw the enemy's broad, staring face, made animal-like - at least to a clean-shaven Unkerlanter - by a bushy yellow beard. The fellow let out a grunt, more of surprise than of pain, and toppled.

"The stick," Leudast muttered, and scurried over to grab it. He didn't know how much power his own had left. This far from a ley line, with no first-rank mage close by, when that power was gone, it was gone.

Good to have a second stick handy.

He scowled at the Gyongyosian's body, from which rose a faint smell of burnt meat along with the latrine odor of suddenly loosed bowels. The bastard was already dead, sure as sure. A mage didn't have to be of the first rank to draw energy from a sacrifice. Soldiers who gave themselves up to power their comrades sticks won the Star of Efficiency - post humously, of course - but expending a captive was more efficient still. [...t 1 n t matter, not here. For one ng, e a p first-ran crawled back b...]

For several minutes, they didn't. Maybe they weren't sure how much damage the dragon attack had done. Or maybe they weren't any more enthusiastic about the war than Leudast was. He listened to somebody, presumably an officer, haranguing them in their unintelligible twittering language. Knowing what an Unkerlanter officer would say in such a spot, Leudast guessed the fellow was telling them they'd get worse from him than from their foes if they didn't start moving.

Here they came, the fuzzy bastards, some of them blazing, others daring forward while the rest made the Unkerlanters keep their heads down.

Leudast popped up, took a couple of blazes with his beam, and then ducked again be re t e ongs cou puncture in as e puncture

When he [...] to him, [...] cover again, and blazing back at the wing up from the rear, shouting King Swemmel's name as they advanced.

The Gyongyosians shouted, too, in dismay. Their chance was gone, and they knew it. The reinforcements even had a small portable gg with them. How the Gongs howled when they were on the receiving.

"Forward, men!" an Unkerlanter officer shouted. "Let's drive them out of the mountains and into the flat. King Swemmel and efficiency!"

As far as Leudast was concerned, thinking a couple of platoons o soldiers could drive Gyongyos out of the Elsung Mountains wasn't very efficient. He lay panting behind his heap of rocks. e een in t mountains for a while. No overeager fool was going to get [..im e..]

"[..n] one playing is efficient, too," he muttered, and sat tight.

Fernao stood at the bow of the Leopardess as she bounded north and west across the waves from Setubal, the capital of Lagoas, toward the Algarvian port of Feltre. The mage felt harassed. Not only did he have to bear in mind the pattern of ley lines on the sea - harder to read than they were on land - but he also had to be alert for any trace of Sibian warships, and perhaps for those of Valmiera, too.

Captain Rogelio came up to him. "Anything?" he asked.

"No, sir." Fernao shook his head, and felt the ponytail flip back and forth on his neck. Like most Lagoans, he was tall and on the lean side. In some lights, his hair was auburn; in others, a rich brown. His narrow eyes, with a fold of skin at the inner corners that made them look set at a slant, told of Kuusaman blood. "All seems as quiet as if we were still at peace."

Rogelio snorted. "Lagoas is at peace, I'll thank you to remember. It's all the other fools who've thrown the world into the fire." He twiddled at his mustache: he wore a big waxed swashbuckler, in Algarvian style.

"As if the world were at peace." Fernao accepted the correction; like any mage worth his salt, he craved precision. After a moment, he went on, "In the Six Years' War, we chose sides."

"And a whole great whacking lot of good it did us, too," the captain of the Leopardess said with another snort. "What did we get out of it?"

Thousands - tens, hundreds of thousands - dead, even more maimed, a war debt we're just now starting to get out from under, half our shipping sunk - and you want to do it again? Here's what I think of that." He spat - carefully, over the leeward rail.

"I never said I wanted to do it again," Fernao replied. "My older brother died in the woods in front of Priekule. I don't remember much about him; I was only six or seven. I lost an uncle - my mother's younger brother - and a cousin, and another cousin came home short a foot." He shrugged. "I know it's not anything special. Plenty of families in Lagoas have worse stories to tell. Too many families simply aren't, after the Six Years' War."