Rulers of the Darkness

"You wanted to make them fight in front of rivers and such," Vatran said. "We thought they were panicked, or else turning coward, when they wouldn't stand and fight, but fell back instead."

"Never trust an Algarvian retreat," Rathar said solemnly- mournfully, when you got down to it. "They saved their men, they concentrated them- and then they went and hit us with them."

"Disgraceful, deceitful thing to go and do," Vatran said, as if the Algarvians had pulled off some underhanded trick instead of one of the more brilliant counterattacks Rathar had ever seen. He would have appreciated it even more had it not been aimed at him.

"We were almost up to Hagenow," he said, pointing to the map. His voice grew more mournful still. "We'd driven east all the way up to the border of Grelz. And then, curse them, the redheads bit back." He kicked at the floor of the battered bank that housed his headquarters. "I knew they'd try. I didn't think they could bite so hard, or with such sharp teeth."

As if to underscore that, more eggs burst in Durrwangen, some of them close to the headquarters. He didn't have to worry about splinters of glass flying through the air like shining knives to pierce him; by now, he doubted whether any building in Durrwangen kept glazed windows. He knew perfectly well that the headquarters didn't.

"Shall we go down to the vault?" Vatran asked.

"Oh, very well." Rathar's voice was testy. He seldom suggested such a thing himself; he was too proud for that. But he wasn't too proud to acknowledge common sense when he heard it.

Down in the vault, everyone- commanders, subordinate officers, runners, crystallomancers, secretaries, cooks, what have you- was crowded together as tightly as sardines in a tin. People didn't even have oil to lubricate the spaces between them. They elbowed one another, trod on one another's toes, breathed in one another's faces, and, without intending to at all, generally made themselves as unpleasant for one another as they could.

Above them, around them, the ground shuddered as if in torment. And that was only from the sorcerous energy the Algarvian eggs released when they burst. If Mezentio's mages decided to start killing Kaunians… Turning to Vatran, Rathar asked, "Are our special sorcerous countermeasures in place?"

Special sorcerous countermeasures was a euphemism for the peasants and condemned criminals Unkerlanters had available and ready to slay to blunt Algarvian magics and to power spells against the redheads. Rathar was no more comfortable than anyone else- always excluding King Swemmel, whose many vices did not include hypocrisy- about calling murder by its right name.

Vatran nodded. "Aye, lord Marshal. If they try and bring the roof down around our ears with magecraft, we can try to hold it up the same way."

"Good," Rathar said, though he was anything but sure it was. He wished the Algarvians hadn't turned loose the demon of slaughter. It might have won them the war if Swemmel hadn't been so quick to adopt it for his own, but Swemmel, as he'd proved in the Twinkings War, would do anything survival called for. Now both sides slaughtered, and neither gained much by it.

More eggs fell, these closer still. Ysolt the cook, who'd been steady as a rock in the cave by the Wolter River even when the fighting for Sulingen was at its worst, let out a shriek that tore at Rathar's eardrums. "We'll all be killed," she blubbered. "Every last one of us killed." Rathar wished he were convinced she was wrong.

And then Vatran asked him a truly unwelcome question: "If they try to throw us out of Durrwangen, can we stop 'em?"

"If they come straight at us out of the north, aye, we can," Rathar replied. But that wasn't exactly what the general had asked. "If they try to flank us out… I just don't know."

Vatran replied with what the whole Derlavaian War had proved: "They're cursed good at flanking maneuvers."

Before Rathar could say anything to that, Ysolt started screaming again. "Be silent!" he roared in a parade-ground voice, and the cook, for a wonder, was silent. He wished once more, this time that he could control the Algarvians so easily. Since he couldn't, he answered Vatran, "Up until a few days ago, I was hoping for a late thaw this spring, so we could grab all we could before everything slowed to a crawl. Now I'm hoping for an early one, to do half- powers above, more than half- our fighting for us."

Vatran's chuckle was wheezy. "Oh, aye, Marshal Mud's an even stronger master than Marshal Winter."

"Curse the Algarvians," Rathar ground out. "We had them on the run. I never dreamt I was fighting circus acrobats who could turn a somersault and then come forward as fast as they'd gone back."