Out of the Darkness

Lammi scribbled notes. “That will do for now. I must compare your words to those of this other man, this Kun. I shall have more to ask you about another time.” She spoke to the guards in Kuusaman. They took Istvan back to the camp. He wondered if the forensic mage would feed him so well the next time she asked him questions. He hoped so.

Marshal Rathar lay in a warm, soft Algarvian bed in an Algarvian house in the middle of an Algarvian town. He could have had a warm, soft Algarvian woman in the bed with him. Plenty of Unkerlanter soldiers were avenging themselves, indulging themselves, with rape or other, less brutal, arrangements. He understood that. A lot of revenge was owed. A lot would be taken. But, as marshal, he found rape beneath his dignity, and he hadn’t seen a redheaded woman he really wanted, either.

Mangani-that was the name of the town. It lay not too far west of the Scamandro River, which was what the Algarvians called this reach of the Skamandros. The Scamandro flowed into the South Raffali. On the marshy ground between the South Raffali and the North Raffali lay Trapani. Mezentio’s men had pushed almost as far as Cottbus. Now King Swemmel’s soldiers were getting close to the Algarvian capital.

And we aren‘t the only ones, Rathar thought discontentedly as he got out of the warm, soft bed and went downstairs. General Vatran was already down there, eating porridge and drinking tea as he peered at a map through spectacles that magnified his eyes.

“Be careful,” Rathar said. “King Mezentio is watching.”

“Huh?” Vatran’s bushy white eyebrows rose. “What are you talking about, sir?”

Rathar pointed to the far wall of the dining room, where a reproduction of a portrait of Mezentio hung at a distinctly cockeyed angle. Vatran eyed the image of the King of Algarve, then spat at it. His spittle fell short and splatted on the floor. Rathar laughed, saying, “May we get the chance to try that in person soon.”

“That would be good,” Vatran agreed. “But it won’t be quite so soon as we’d like, curse it. The redheads have a pretty solid line set up on the east bank of the Scamandro. They’re good with river lines, the buggers.”

“They’ve had plenty of practice making them,” Rathar said, “but we’ve smashed every one they’ve made. We’ll smash this one, too. . eventually.”

“Eventually is right,” Vatran said. “Maybe it’s just as well they did slow us down for a while. We could use a little time to let our supplies catch up with our soldiers.”

Marshal Rathar grunted. He knew how true that was. No other army could have come so far so fast as the Unkerlanters had, for no other army was so good at living off the countryside. But, while Unkerlanters could find more food than other forces and so needed to bring less with them, they couldn’t find eggs growing on trees or in fields. They had indeed run short. Had the redheads had more themselves, they could have put in a nasty counterattack. But, while they remained brave and highly professional, they were far more desperately short of everything-men, behemoths, dragons, eggs, cinnabar-than their foes. And every mile King Swemmel’s men advanced was a mile from which the Algarvians could no longer draw any of those essentials.

But King Swemmel’s men weren’t the only ones advancing in Algarve these days. Worry in his voice, Rathar asked, “How far west have the islanders come?”

“Just about all of the Marquisate of Rivaroli is in their hands, sir,” Vatran answered. “That’s what the crystallomancers say. The really bastardly part of it is, the fornicating Algarvians aren’t putting up much of a fight against them.”

“Of course they aren’t. Whatever they have left, they’re throwing it at us.” Rathar understood why. The redheads knew to the copper how much Unkerlant owed them. They were doing everything they could to keep Unkerlant from paying.

“But if they fight us like madmen and if they don’t hardly fight Kuusamo and Lagoas at all. .” Vatran sounded worried, too. “If the islanders take Trapani and we don’t, King Swemmel will boil both of us alive.”

Rathar would have argued about that, if only he could. Since he couldn’t, he went back to the kitchen and got a bowl of porridge and some tea for himself, too. He brought them out to the dining room and ate while he, like Vatran, studied the map. His army had no bridgeheads over the Scamandro. A couple of crossings had been beaten back. The redheads had learned, too. They knew how disastrous Unkerlanter bridgeheads could be.