Out of the Darkness

Sidroc kicked a brass-wired bird cage as if it were a football on a pitch. The door flew open as it rolled. A couple of finches from Siaulia-brilliant little birds, all scarlet and gold and green-flew out of it and away. He hoped they’d do all right so far from home. The war wasn’t their fault.

“Keep moving!” the lieutenant called. “You see more junk in the road, just go on through it.”

Ceorl did just that, and seemed to take considerable pleasure in trampling the possessions the Algarvians in the town had spent a lifetime gathering. “You ask me, these whoresons don’t deserve to win the war,” he said. “If they can’t figure out what in blazes is important and what they’d better leave behind, the powers below are welcome to ‘em.”

By all the signs, the powers below were going to get their hands on a lot of Algarvians regardless of whether they knew what to do with their goods. And they’ll probably get their hands on me, too, Sidroc thought. He shrugged. He’d stuck with the redheads this far. He couldn’t very well abandon them now.

He couldn’t even strip off his uniform, find civilian clothes, and do his best to pretend he’d never been in the army. He looked about as unlike an Algarvian as it was possible for anyone this side of a black Zuwayzi to look. He would have had a better chance pretending to be an Unkerlanter.

Some few Algarvian soldiers, at least, were doing their best to slide out of the war. Maybe some of them got away with it. Not all of them did. As the men of Plegmund’s Brigade tramped out of the town, they passed three redheaded corpses hanging from trees by the side of the road. The placards tied round their necks warned, this is what deserters get.

“They deserve it,” Lieutenant Puliano said. “Anybody who gives up on his kingdom when it needs him the most deserves everything that happens to him, and more besides.”

The Forthwegians in Algarvian service solemnly nodded. Unlike the redheads, they couldn’t even try to go home again. The handful of blonds from Valmiera also nodded. They really couldn’t go home again. They were far worse traitors in the eyes of their countrymen than the men of Plegmund’s Brigade were to theirs.

But Sidroc had some gloomy thoughts of his own as he marched by the hanged deserters. Even Mezentio’s men are starting to see there’s no hope left for them. If they can see it, I’d have to be a cursed fool to miss it myself. He knew he wasn’t the brightest fellow around. If he’d ever had any doubts on that score, spending years getting compared to his clever cousin Ealstan would have cured them.

He laughed, none too pleasantly. If Ealstan was so fornicating smart, why did he fall in love with a Kaunian girl? I wonder if he ever found out he was getting that redheaded officer’s sloppy seconds. He laughed again. I hope so.

“Watch your step here, boys,” Puliano called. “You don’t want to go off the road, or you’d end up arse-deep in mud. This is swampy country.”

“It doesn’t look too bad,” somebody said. And, indeed, it didn’t. In fact, it looked greener than most of the firmer ground farther west. On dry land, spring was just starting to make itself known. Here, though, the swamp plants, or most of them, had kept their color through the winter. The road might almost have been passing through a meadow.

Sudaku stepped up alongside Sidroc. In his Valmieran-flavored Algarvian, he said, “This swamp is a sign we grow near to Trapani. I passed through the capital and through this country on the way west to join the Phalanx of Valmiera.”

“Getting near Trapani, eh?” Sidroc said, and the blond’s head bobbed up and down. Sidroc grunted. “That doesn’t sound so good.”

“No,” the Kaunian said. “But, by now, what is left for us to do but die like heroes?”

Sidroc grunted again. “I didn’t sign up to be a hero.”

“But what else are we, fighting to the death for a cause surely lost?” Sudaku persisted.

“Who knows? Come to that, who cares?” Sidroc said. “Besides, if we lose- when we lose-who’s going to call us heroes? Winners are heroes. They get the girls, and they don’t get their uniforms mussed. In the stories, we’re just the fellows who blaze at them and miss.”

“Everyone is a hero in his own story,” the Kaunian said. “The only trouble is, our stories, I fear, will be ending soon.”

Before Sidroc could answer that-not that it needed much answering, for it seemed pretty obviously true-someone toward the rear of the weary, shambling column of men let out a frightened shout: “Dragons! Unkerlanter dragons!”