Out of the Darkness

He waited for the lieutenant general to call him insubordinate or to say the soldiers in question were better than he claimed. Back in Trapani, a lot of men still clung to illusions that had died at the front line. But the officer only sighed and said, “Do the best you can, Colonel. I don’t know what else to tell you, except you’re not the only one with troubles.”

“I understand that, sir, but-” The crystal flared and then went blank before he could get his protest well begun. He said something sulfurous under his breath. He surely wasn’t the only one with troubles. As best he could tell, the whole Kingdom of Algarve was falling to pieces before his eyes.

Things hadn’t been this bleak even at the end of the Six Years’ War. Then Algarve had asked for armistice while her armies still mostly stood on enemy soil. Now. . He imagined asking Swemmel of Unkerlant for an armistice. Swemmel didn’t want one. Swemmel wanted every Algarvian in the world dead. The way things were going, he was liable to get his wish, too. And the Lagoans and Kuusamans showed no sign of being in a dickering mood, either.

Of course they don’t want to dicker with us, Lurcanio thought. We came too close to beating them all this time. They don’t want us getting another chance any time soon. They want to smash us flat instead. Had he been a Kuusaman, he supposed he would have felt the same way. Had he been an Unkerlanter. . Lurcanio shook his head. Some things were altogether too depressing to contemplate.

He strode out of the barn where his crystallomancer had set up shop. It was raining outside, a cold, driving rain on the edge of turning into sleet. Lurcanio pulled his hat down low to keep the rain out of his face. Eggs were bursting in the neighborhood, but not too many of them. The rain slowed down the enemy, too.

A sergeant came up to him, a plump little man in civilian tunic and kilt at the underofficer’s heels. “Sir, allow me to present Baron Oberto, who has the honor to be the mayor of the town of Carsoli,” the sergeant said.

Carsoli was the town just west of the brigade’s present position, the one Lurcanio was currently trying to hold. He bowed to Oberto. “Good day, your Excellency,” he said. “And what can I do for you this afternoon?”

By the expression on Oberto’s face, it wasn’t a good day and was unlikely to become one. “Colonel,” he said, surprising Lurcanio by correctly reading his rank badges, “I hope you will not find it necessary to fight inside my fair city. When the time comes, as we both know it must, I beseech you to pull back through Carsoli, so that the islanders can occupy it without doing it too much harm.”

Lurcanio gave him a long, measuring stare. Oberto nervously looked back. “So you think the war is lost, do you?” Lurcanio said at last.

Oberto’s head bobbed up and down, as if on a spring. “Of course I do,” he said. “Any fool can see as much.”

Any fool could have seen as much two years earlier, when the Unkerlanters drove the Algarvians back from Sulingen. Lurcanio bowed again, then backhanded Oberto across the face. The mayor of Carsoli cried out and staggered. “Be thankful I don’t order you blazed on the spot. Get out of my sight. I have a war to fight, whether you’ve noticed it or not.”

“You’re a madman,” Oberto said, bringing a hand up to his cheek.

“I’m a soldier,” Lurcanio answered. In his own mind, he wasn’t so sure the two were different, but he would never have admitted that to the luckless, cowardly mayor of Carsoli. Admitting it to Oberto might have meant admitting it to himself.

Hand still pressed to his face, Oberto staggered away. I wonder if I ought to draft an order of the day reminding the men they are still obliged to do their duty, Lurcanio thought. If they give up, what hope have we? A moment later, he grimaced and kicked at the muddy ground. Even if they don’t give up, what hope have we?

He had been thinking about pulling back through Carsoli if enemy pressure grew too great. Now he resolved to fight in the place till not one brick remained atop another. That’s what you get, Oberto, curse you. You would have done better to keep your mouth shut, but what Algarvian could ever manage that?

In a perfectly foul temper, he stormed off toward the farmhouse where he made what passed for his headquarters. Before he got there, though, another soldier called, “Colonel Lurcanio!”

“What is it?” he snarled.