Rulers of the Darkness

After a couple of heartbeats' thought, Istvan nodded. "Aye. Go ahead. Do it."

The charm was very simple. If it hadn't been very simple, the former mage's apprentice wouldn't have been able to use it. When he was done, he said one word: "Somebody."

"There would be." Istvan gestured to Szonyi. "Let's go find out. The idea is to come back, understand, not just to disappear out there."

"I'm not stupid," Szonyi answered. Istvan wasn't altogether sure that was true, but he didn't argue.

They left the redoubt to the rear, shielded from the enemy's sight- and from his sticks- by the snow-covered logs piled up in front. Istvan gestured to the left. Szonyi nodded. Both the gesture and the nod were small, all but unnoticeable. In their white smocks, Istvan and Szonyi might have been a couple of moving drifts of snow. Istvan felt cold as a snowdrift.

But, even as he muttered inaudibly to himself about that, he also felt like a proper warrior again. He wondered about that. It perplexed him. Saying it alarmed him wouldn't have been far shy of the mark, either. He'd seen enough fighting to last him a lifetime, probably two. Why go looking for more?

Because that's what I've been trained to do, he thought, but that wasn't the whole answer, or even any great part of it. Because if I don't go looking for it, it'll come looking for me. At that, he nodded again, though he was careful to keep the hood of his smock low and expose none of his face to an enemy's beam.

He knew what he was doing in the snow. He'd had enough practice in it, after all; his home valley was worse in winter than these woods ever dreamt of being. He got within five or six feet of an ermine before it realized he was there. He'd spotted it by the triangle of black dots that marked its eyes and nose and the black spot at the very tip of its tail that never went white in winter. It drew back in sudden horror when it spied or scented him, baring a pink mouth full of needle teeth. Then it scurried behind a tree trunk and vanished.

Istvan followed it, not in any real pursuit but because that beech also gave him cover from the east. The ermine, by then, was gone, only tiny tracks in the snow showing where it had run.

Szonyi had found cover behind a pine not far away. He glanced toward Istvan, who paused for a moment, taking his bearings. Then Istvan pointed in the direction from which he thought the suspicious noise had come. Szonyi considered, then nodded. They both crawled forward again.

Now they advanced separately, each one taking his own path to the target. If something happens to me, Szonyi will get back with the word, Istvan thought. He hoped the converse was in Szonyi's mind. He hoped even more that the two of them were right.

Have to be close now, went through his mind a few minutes later. He looked around for Szonyi, but didn't see him. He refused to let that worry him. Despite the stories told, silently killing a man wasn't that easy. Had something gone wrong, he would have heard the struggle. So he told himself, at any rate.

He started to come out from behind a birch, then froze in the sense of not moving as opposed to the sense of being cold. In the snow in front of the tree were tracks- not the little marks of an ermine, but those of a man on snowshoes. The Unkerlanters were very fond of snowshoes, and Istvan didn't think any of his own folk had come this way lately.

A scout, he thought. Doesn't look like more than one man. Just a scout, snooping around to see what we're up to. That wasn't so bad. He vastly preferred it to coming across the forerunners of a brigade about to sweep down on him. Maybe the rumor of attack Hevesi had brought was nothing but a rumor. The Unkerlanters have as much trouble putting enough men into this fight as we do. Different reasons, but as much trouble.

No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than the Unkerlanter soldier came out from behind a tree a couple of hundred yards away. Istvan got only a glimpse- other trees blocked his view and gave him hardly any chance for a good blaze.

He wasn't too inclined to take one anyhow; he had more sympathy for Swemmel's men than he'd had when the war was new. But, a moment later, the Unkerlanter crumpled with a yowl of pain- Szonyi, evidently, had a better spot and less sympathy. "Back now!" Istvan called, and headed off toward the redoubt. If Swemmel's men had hoped to catch the Gyongyosians hereabouts napping, they'd just been disappointed.

***

Captured by the Algarvians the summer before, retaken by Unkerlant only a couple of months earlier, the starting point from which Marshal Rathar had sent out his attacking columns to ravage the redheads further, Durrwangen was under Algarvian attack again.

Now that it was too late to do him any good, Rathar understood the lesson Mezentio's men had taught him. "We just pushed them back here and there," he said to General Vatran. "We didn't pinch in behind them and destroy them, the way they did to us so many times."