Into The Darkness

Another beam slammed into the tree. Its resinous sap had a tangy odor very different from that of the elm. Skarmi was glad the woods were moist; the fight would have fired drier country. He peered up over the top of a gnarled root. Spying a bit of tan among green bushes, he stuck his finger into the stick's recess and blazed away at it.

The leaves the beam touched went sere and brown in an instant, as if winter had come all at once to that corner of the world. An Algarvian soldier had been hiding in those bushes, too. He let out a horrible cry in his ugly, trifling native tongue. Another Valmieran blazed at him from off to one side of Skarmi. That cry abruptly cut off

"Come on, men!" Skarmi shouted. "Forward! King Gainibu and victory!"

"Gainibu!" his men shouted. They did not rush straight at the Algarvians lurking among the trees. Such headlong dash was all very well in an entertainment. In real war, it brought nothing but gruesome casualties. The Valmierans darted from tree to tree, from bush to rock, one group blazing to make the enemy keep his head down while another advanced.

A couple of soldiers went staggering back with wounds, one with an arm over the shoulder of a healthy comrade. One or two men went down and would not get up again. The rest, though, drove the Algarvians, who did not seem present in any great numbers, before them. Once, by the shouts - no, the screams - the fighting came to such close quarters that it went on with knives and reversed sticks rather than with beams, but that did not last long. Valmieran voices soon rang out in triumph.

Pushing forward as he did, paying more heed to what the enemy soldiers in tan kilts were trying to do than to exactly where he was, Skarmi was surprised when he burst out of the woods. He stood a moment, blinking in the bright afternoon sun that beat into his face. Ahead lay fields of barley and oats going from green to gold, and beyond them an Algarvian farming village. The sturdy buildings would have looked more picturesque had he not been able to make out Algarvian troops moving among them.

Algarvian troops rather closer by could make him out. One of them blazed at him from the cover of the growing grain. The beam went wide.

Cursing, Skarmi ducked back among the trees. He went some little distance along the edge of the forest before peering out again. This time, he was careful to keep a screen of leaves and branches in front of his face.

As if by sorcery, Sergeant Raunu silently materialized beside him.

"Wouldn't want to try crossing that without a lot of friends along," Raunu remarked in matter-of-fact tones. "Truth is, I wouldn't want to cross that even with a lot of friends along, but some of us might get to the other side if we did it like that."

Skarmi's voice was dry: "I hadn't planned on ordering us to cross those fields and seize that village."

"Powers above and powers below' be praised," Raunu muttered.

Not knowing whether he was supposed to have heard him, Skarmi pretended he hadn't. He pulled a map out of a tunic pocket. "That should be the village of Bonorva," he said. "It's past those woods on the other wide that the Algarvians are supposed to have their main belt of fortifications."

Raunu nodded. "Aye, that makes sense, lord. The forts are too far back for us to fling eggs at 'em from our side of the border."

Skarmi whistled thoughtfully. That hadn't occurred to him. Raunu might be a sausage-seller's son, but he was no fool. Many Valmieran nobles assumed all those below them to be fools: Skarmi chuckled, thinking of his sister. He had less of that attitude in him, but he wasn't free of it, either.

"They'll have to bring everyone up for the assault on the forts," he said. "That will make taking Bonorva look like a walk in Two Rivers Park by comparison."

"It'll cost a deal of blood, all right," Raunu agreed. "I wonder how many who hit the forts from this side will make it through to the other."

"However many they are, they'll be in position to peel the shell off Algarve, the way you do with a plump lobster," Skarmi said.

"I wouldn't know about that, sir," Raunu said. "It's bread and sausage and fruit for the likes of me. But you can't peel anything if you don't get through. Anybody who fought in the Six Years' War would tell you that.

All of Valmiera's generals, like those of any other kingdom, were vet erans of the war a generation earlier. But Skarmi was not thinking of other kingdoms; he was thinking of his own. "That's why we haven't pressed our attacks harder!" he exclaimed with the air of a man who'd had a revelation. "The commanders dread the casualties they'd cost."