Out of the Darkness

“Enemies everywhere,” King Swemmel muttered. Rathar didn’t think that was aimed at him. Had it been, Swemmel would have sacked him, or worse. The king gathered himself. “Break the Algarvians. Crush them beneath your heel- beneath our heel.” That was the royal we again, proud and imperious.

“Your Majesty, it will be a pleasure,” Rathar said. “And we will do it. It’s only a matter of time.” He hadn’t finished before the crystal flared and Swemmel’s image vanished. He’d told the king what he wanted to hear. Now he had to make it good. He hadn’t lied. He didn’t think it would take long.

Garivald had hated the Algarvians even before they overran his home village. But ever since he’d faced the redheads as an irregular-and especially since King Swemmel’s impressers hauled him into the army and he’d fought Mezentio’s men here in the north-he’d developed a sincere if grudging respect for them as soldiers. However outnumbered they were, they always fought cleverly, they always fought hard, and they always made Unkerlant pay more than it should have for every inch of land it took.

Always-until now. A couple of redheaded soldiers came out of a house with hands high over their heads and with fearful expressions on their faces. Garivald had been fearful, too, as in any fight. They might have killed him. He knew that all too well. But they’d given up instead. More and more now, Algarvians were throwing down their sticks and throwing up their hands. They knew, or some of them knew, they were beaten.

With a gesture from the business end of his stick, Garivald sent these redheads off to captivity. He didn’t even bother rifling their belt pouches for whatever silver they carried. It was as if he were saying, You fellows can go on. I’ll catch some of your pals pretty soon and frisk them instead.

Lieutenant Andelot called, “Well, Fariulf, they really are starting to go to pieces now. Even a few weeks ago, those whoresons would have made us pay the price of prying them out of there.”

A few weeks before, the Unkerlanter army, or the part of it with which Garivald was most intimately concerned, had been falling back from Bonorva in the face of a fierce Algarvian counterattack. Mezentio’s men couldn’t sustain it, though. And, having used up so many men and behemoths, they hadn’t been able to hold their ground against the Unkerlanters afterwards.

“I think you’re right, sir,” Garivald answered. By now, he took his false name as much for granted as his real one. He pointed toward the southeast, the direction in which his regiment had been driving. “What’s the name of the next town ahead?”

“I have to look.” Andelot unfolded a map, then checked himself. “No. Here, Sergeant. You come see for yourself. If you’ve got your letters, you may as well use them.”

“All right.” Garivald trotted over to the company commander. “Whereabouts are we now?” Andelot showed him with a grimy-nailed finger. “And we’re going this way, right?” Garivald asked. The young lieutenant nodded. Frowning in concentration, Garivald studied the map. “Then we’re headed toward. . Torgavi?” He wondered if he’d correctly pronounced the foreign name.

By the way Andelot beamed, he had. “That’s good, Fariulf. Anybody would think you’d been reading for years.” The lieutenant pointed to the blue line meandering past Torgavi. “And what’s the name of this river here?”

Garivald squinted at the map again: the river’s name was written in very small characters. “It’s the Albi, sir,” he said confidently; with a name that short, he was sure he hadn’t made a hash of it.

And he hadn’t. “Right again,” Andelot said. “You do so well here. Why didn’t you ever learn before?”

They’d been over this ground before. Shrugging broad shoulders, Garivald answered, “How could I have, sir? Our village had no school. Our firstman knew his letters, but I don’t think anybody else who lived there did. I don’t suppose any of the villages around ours were any different, either.”

Andelot nodded. “I’m sure you’re right, Sergeant. But things like that aren’t good for the kingdom. We’re less efficient than we ought to be. Just about all of these Algarvians can read and write. It makes them more flexible than we are, able to do more things. The same is true for the Kuusamans and Lagoans. They’re our allies now, but who knows how long that will last once Mezentio gets what’s coming to him? We need to start thinking about such things.”