Through the Darkness

The firelight ahead did draw him more accurately than the delicious smell coming from the pot had. He stretched out on his belly behind a clump of ferns and stared at the handful of Unkerlanters gathered around their little fire. They looked more alert than he would have liked; one of them sat a good way away from the flames, with his back to the fire and a stick in his lap: their lookout, without a doubt.

He has to be the first one we kill, Istvan thought. If we blaze him down without making any noise, we can get rid of the rest of the goat-eaters a lot easier. He couldn’t pass the order along, even in a whisper--too risky. He had to hope the troopers in his squad would be able to figure things out for themselves. The men who couldn’t do that kind of figuring were mostly dead by now.

One of the Unkerlanters walked over to the fire and stirred the pot with a big iron spoon. Another one asked him a question in their guttural language. Before the first fellow answered, he licked the spoon. Then he grinned and nodded. If that didn’t mean the stew was ready . . .

Istvan’s stomach thought that was what it meant. The growl that rose from his midsection might have come from a hungry wolf. He glanced anxiously toward the Unkerlanters in the clearing. Attacks could go wrong all sorts of ways, but he’d never heard of one betrayed by a rumbling belly.

Alarm ran through him when one of Swemmel’s soldiers looked his way.

I’m not here, he thought, as loudly as he could. You didn’t hear that. After a moment, the Unkerlanter looked away. Istvan didn’t even dare sigh with relief.

Ever so slowly, he brought his stick up to his shoulder. He had a clear blaze at the enemy sentry. He couldn’t assume any of his comrades did. If he managed to knock the fellow over, the rest of the soldiers in the squad would take that as their signal to blaze at the other Unkerlanters. If everything went right, the clearing--and the cook pot--would be theirs in minutes.

If anything went wrong.. . Istvan didn’t dwell on that. He’d seen too many things go wrong since getting hauled out of his valley and into the army. All you could do was make the best of them.

His finger slid toward the touch hole at the base of the stick. The Unkerlanter sentry leaned forward, suddenly wary. He lifted his hand to point into the woods, not toward Istvan, but about where Szonyi would have been.

Istvan blazed him. The beam caught the Unkerlanter just in front of the right ear. He toppled forward, dead before he could finish his motion. His stick made only a small thump as it fell out of his lap.

But that thump was enough to make some of the soldiers by the fire turn their heads his way. The Unkerlanters got out a startled yelp or two before a storm of beams from the woods cut them down. Istvan and his comrades rushed forward into the firelight to finish them with knives.

It was all over faster than Istvan had dreamt it could be. His squadmates and he dragged corpses in rock-gray tunics away from the campfire. “This position is ours,” he said happily. “So is this stew.”

No one cheered. That might have drawn Unkerlanters down on the squad. But smiles stretched wide behind tangled tawny beards. As one man, the Gyongyosians brought out their tin mess kits. Istvan grabbed the iron spoon that still stuck out of the pot. He held the highest rank here, so he had the right to serve the other soldiers according to how well they’d fought.

As far as he could tell, everyone had fought splendidly. And the pot held plenty of stew: more than those Unkerlanters could have eaten by themselves, he was sure. He spooned out carrots and onions and big chunks of turnip and even bigger chunks of meat, all in a thick gravy that said the Unkerlanters had been cooking it for a long, long time.

“Benczur,” he called to one of the troopers, “eat yours on the way back to the company’s encampment. Tell Captain Tivadar we’ve taken this clearing. Tell him we’ll save some of what’s in the pot for him, too.”

“Aye, Sergeant,” Benczur said around a big mouthful of meat. “Seems a shame to waste such good stuff on officers, but what can you do?” He slipped off into the woods, heading west, the direction from which the Gyongyosians had come.

Istvan also sent Szonyi and another soldier into the woods to the east, to give a little warning if the Unkerlanters counterattacked. Then he happily settled down by the fire and started spooning up stew himself.

“Wouldn’t mind some ale or honeywine to wash it down,” he said. “They threw in too much salt.” He grinned as he spoke; too much salt or not, it was better food than he could have got from the cooks who accompanied the Gyongyosian army.

In a similar vein, and even with a similar grin, Kun said, “And I don’t care how long they cooked this mutton, it wasn’t long enough. Might as well be chewing old clothes.”