Out of the Darkness

One of the joys of being a corporal was that Sidroc got told off to lead one of Puliano’s forward groups: the one in the stand of trees. “Dig in,” he told the squad he headed. “This would have been a lot better cover if we were here in the summertime.”

“What was that?” Sudaku asked in Algarvian. The blond from the Phalanx of Valmiera was picking up Forthwegian fast, but still had only so much. Sidroc translated his words into Algarvian. Sudaku nodded agreement.

With his short-handled shovel, Ceorl dug like a mole. He threw another shovelful of dirt on the mound in front of his deepening hole, then said, “Ain’t a futtering one of us going to be here in the summertime.” His Algarvian was as rough and laced with obscenities as his Forthwegian.

“No. We will have retreated by then,” Sudaku said.

“That ain’t what I meant, you stupid fornicating Kaunian,” Ceorl said.

“If your dick were bigger-much, much bigger-you could bugger yourself,” Sudaku replied. They both spoke without heat. Sudaku went on digging. So did Ceorl, who paused only to slice a thumb across his throat to show what he had meant.

A few eggs burst, perhaps a quarter of a mile in front of the grove where Sidroc and his double handful of men waited. “Feeling for us,” Sidroc muttered, more than half to himself. Sure enough, the bursts crept closer, kicking up fountains of snow and dirt.

Only a couple of eggs burst among the trees. The rest marched into the village. Houses and shops crumbled into wreckage. Not all the Algarvian civilians were likely to have got clear. They’d be running around and screaming and getting in the way of the soldiers. As far as Sidroc was concerned, that was about all civilians were good for. But knocking a lot of buildings in the village to pieces wouldn’t hurt the defense. If anything, it might help. Everybody in Plegmund’s Brigade had had plenty of practice fighting in rubble.

“Heads up!” hissed somebody among the trees. “Here they come.”

Sidroc’s heart thuttered. His mouth went dry. He’d been through too many battles, skirmishes, clashes, fights. It never got easier. If anything, it got harder every time. At first, he hadn’t believed he could die. He believed it now. He’d seen far too much to have any possible doubt.

Some of the oncoming Unkerlanters wore snow smocks over their rock-gray tunics. Some didn’t bother. The men in white and those in Unkerlanter rock-gray were about equally hard to see. Winter hereabouts wasn’t quite so harsh, quite so snowy, as it was farther west.

“Remember, let ‘em by, like Lieutenant Puliano said,” Sidroc reminded his men. “Then we give it to ‘em up the arse.”

He studied the way Swemmel’s soldiers loped forward, then gave a soft grunt of satisfaction. Ceorl put that grunt into words: “They don’t move like veteran troops. They ought to be easy meat.”

“Aye-depending on how many of ‘em there are,” Sidroc answered.

“I see no behemoths,” Sudaku remarked.

“Don’t miss those fornicators,” Sidroc said. He saw none of the great armored beasts, either. That was another sign the Unkerlanters moving on the village weren’t first-rate men. Enemy doctrine assigned help first to the soldiers most likely to succeed.

“Ahh, the fools,” Ceorl said as the enemy drew near. “The dick-sucking virgins. They aren’t even sending anybody in here to see if we’ve got any little surprises waiting.” His chuckle was pure evil. “They’ll find out.”

On toward the village trotted the Unkerlanters. “Wait,” Sidroc said, over and over. “Just wait.”

The men in and around the outlying house started blazing at Swemmel’s soldiers first. Sidroc could hear the Unkerlanters’ howls and curses, and even make sense of a few of those oaths. His men sat quietly in their holes, waiting and watching. They all expected the same thing. And they got it: the Unkerlanters wheeled toward the house, intent on flushing out their tormentors.

That that might expose their backs to another set of tormentors never seemed to cross their minds. “Now!” Sidroc shouted, and started blazing. One enemy soldier after another went down. For a couple of minutes, Swemmel’s men couldn’t even figure out where the beams wreaking such havoc among them were coming from. Sidroc laughed. “Easy!”

But then more Unkerlanters came forward, and they had some idea that danger lurked among the trees. Danger also lurked, though, by the tumbledown barn, and that hadn’t occurred to them. The men from Plegmund’s Brigade posted there worked the same kind of slaughter as Sidroc’s squad had a few minutes earlier.

With that, the entire Unkerlanter advance came unglued. Swemmel’s men had been hit from unexpected directions three times in a row. When they could follow orders exactly as they got them, they made fine soldiers. Having spent more than two years in the field against them, Sidroc knew exactly how good they could be. But when they got surprised, they sometimes panicked.