Out of the Darkness

It wasn’t one that mattered here, though. There still aren‘t enough of them to stop us, Rathar thought. “Wherever we penetrate, send in reinforcements;” he commanded. Again, crystallomancers relayed his words to the commanders at the front.

He hoped they wouldn’t need the order. It was standard doctrine in Unkerlant. He gave it anyhow. In the heat of the moment, who could guess whether these front-line commanders bothered to remember doctrine?

More dragons flew east, to torment the Algarvians with eggs and with fire. Crystallomancers reported only a handful of enemy beasts rising to challenge them. There was no doubt whatsoever that the Unkerlanters had at last forced the line of the Scamandro. How much more they would be able to do, though, remained an open question.

“Powers below eat the redheads,” Vatran growled as the day wore on with no sign of a breakthrough.

“They will,” Rathar said. “We’re feeding them.”

“Not fast enough,” Vatran grumbled. Rathar wished he could have argued with his general. Unfortunately, he agreed with him. The Algarvians had salvaged more than he’d thought they could, and they were righting not only with their usual cleverness but also with the desperate courage of men who had nothing left to lose. They knew as well as Rathar that only they lay between his army and Trapani.

Another night and day of hammering produced only a little progress, and only a couple of lodgements on the high ground Mezentio’s men were defending. Had everything gone according to plan, Rathar’s behemoths would have been lumbering toward Trapani by then. But the Marshal of Unkerlant wasn’t the only one who’d made plans for this moment, and those of the Algarvians looked to be working a little better than his.

“How long can this go on?” Vatran complained that evening.

“I don’t know,” Rathar answered. “I still think we’re all right, though. We have made them fall back some, and we’ve still got reinforcements pouring in from the west. When they use up what they’ve mustered against us, it’s gone, and gone for good.”

But even he had trouble staying detached and optimistic when his men gained hardly any more ground on the third day of the attack than they had on the second. And that evening, Vatran wasn’t the one doing the complaining. A crystallomancer came up to Rathar and said, “Sir, King Swemmel would speak to you at once.”

Rathar had more than expected such a call. If anything, he was a little surprised the king had waited this long. “I’m coming,” he said. Just for a moment, he imagined ordering the crystallomancer to tell Swemmel he couldn’t come, that he was too busy. But no one had any business being too busy to talk to the King of Unkerlant.

Swemmel’s image stared out of the crystal at Rathar. Not for the first time, the marshal thought his sovereign looked like an Algarvian. He had a long, pale face with a straight nose, though his hair and eyes were dark like a proper Unkerlanter’s. Those eyes often had a febrile glow to them, and they positively blazed now. “We are not pleased, Marshal, not pleased at all,” Swemmel said without preamble. “We had hoped and believed the news from the front would be better than what we have heard.”

“I’d hoped so myself, your Majesty,” Rathar replied. “For now, the Algarvians are fighting harder than I thought they could. But when springs come to the icebound rivers in the south, the ice does melt each year, and the water does flow down to the Narrow Sea. As the ice does, the Algarvians’ lines will break up. The thaw is slow, but it will come.”

“Very pretty,” Swemmel said. “We did not know we had a poet commanding our armies. We want to be sure we do have a soldier commanding them.”

Stiffly, Rathar said, “Your Majesty, the redheads thought I was doing well enough to make it worth their while to try to murder me. If you think someone else can do better, give me a stick and send me to the front line. I will fight for you in whatever way suits you best.”

“We want Mezentio, Marshal,” the king said. “Give us Mezentio, as you gave us Raniero. By the time Mezentio dies, he will have spent long and long envying his cousin.”

Swemmel had boiled Raniero alive after his soldiers recaptured most of the Duchy of Grelz. Rathar didn’t know what he could do to Mezentio that was worse, but his sovereign had had a year and a half to think about it. “I don’t know if I can give you Mezentio, your Majesty,” he said. “He will have somewhat to say about that himself, very likely. But I can give you Trapani, and I will.”

“You should have done it already,” Swemmel said peevishly.

“The day will come, your Majesty,” Rathar promised. “And I think it will come soon. The Algarvians have lost ground here, and they can’t afford to lose much more. This is the last obstacle in front of us. We are beating it down.”