Through the Darkness

An egg burst not far from them. Rocks and clods of earth and chunks of wood pattered down on Trasone. He ignored them with the resignation of a man who’d known worse. “We ought to find some kind of way to get across the Wolter,” he said.

Over in his foxhole, Panfilo laughed. “Only way I know is straight south,” he answered. “This is the only place where we’ve even come close to the bloody, stinking river--and we’ve already got Yaninans guarding our flanks.”

Trasone grunted. He knew that as well as Panfilo did. “They aren’t quite as hopeless as I thought they’d be,” he said--not much praise, but the best he could do.

Panfilo laughed again. “They don’t like the notion of getting killed any better than you do, pal. If they don’t fight some, they know cursed well they’ll die. But wouldn’t you sooner see our lads doing the job instead?”

“Of course I would. You think I’m daft, or something?” Trasone shook his head, which made a couple of pebbles fall from the brim of his hat into the dirt beside him. “And I’d sooner the Yaninans were full strength with behemoths and egg-tossers and dragons. I’d sooner we were, too.” Now he laughed, a laugh full of vitriol. “And while I’m at it, I’ll wish for the moon.”

It wasn’t funny. Replacements kept filtering in to the battalion, but it was still far under strength. All the battalions and regiments at the thin end of the wedge were far under strength. That was how it got to be the thin end of the wedge: by grinding against the Unkerlanters. They had to be getting thin on the ground, too, but they always seemed to have plenty of soldiers when the battalion tried to go forward.

And sometimes they tried coming forward themselves. More eggs fell around Trasone. He wanted to hide, to dig down deep in the dirt so no danger could find him. But he knew what was liable to happen when the Unkerlanters started tossing lots of eggs. They wanted the Algatvians to put their heads down, whereupon a wave of infantry in rock-gray tunics would wash over them.

Sure enough, from off to the left Major Spinello shouted, “Here they come, the bare-faced, bald-arsed buggers!”

He didn’t need to have cried out. The rhythmic roars of “Urra! Urra!” that rose from the Unkerlanters would have told the Algarvians fighting in the outskirts of Sulingen everything they needed to know. Now Trasone had to peer out from behind his heap of bricks.

As he’d seen them do outside Aspang, the Unkerlanters were advancing in thick lines, one a few feet behind another. They blazed as they came. Some of diem had linked arms, which helped steady them as they scrambled over the wreckage that had once been houses and shops.

They hadn’t knocked out all the Algarvian egg-tossers. Eggs caught the footsoldiers out in the open, knocking some of them down, flinging others high into the air, leaving nothing whatever of still others. The eggs tore great holes in the Unkerlanters’ ranks. But Trasone, like his countrymen, had long since learned King Swemmel’s men had very little give in them. The ones who weren’t felled came on. “Urra! Swemmel! Urra!”

Along with his comrades, Trasone started blazing. Their beams made more Unkerlanters stumble and fall, but other men in rock-gray always rushed up to take the places of those who couldn’t go forward any more.

Trasone’s mouth went dry. The Unkerlanters were going to break in among the Algarvian troopers. It would be every man for himself then, with numbers counting as much as or more than skill: a melee of blazing and sticks swinging like clubs and knives and fists and teeth. Sometimes the Unkerlanters took prisoners. More often, they slaughtered them. The Algarvians fought the war the same way.

Trasone had just blazed down another Unkerlanter when several shadows swiftly swept over him. With coughing roars, half a dozen Algarvian dragons flamed Swemmel’s onrushing soldiers. The Unkerlanters could endure eggs. They could endure beams. Watching their friends crisp and blacken, smelling the stink of burnt flesh, was more than they could bear. They broke and fled, or went to earth well outside the Algarvian lines.

“Forward!” Spinello ordered, and blew a long blast on his officer’s whistle to emphasize the order.

Wishing the battalion commander would have been content to beat back the Unkerlanter attack, Trasone scrambled out from behind the shelter that had served him so well. Somebody saw him: a beam charred in hole in a sun-bleached board by his head. It could have gone through him instead, and he knew it.

He threw himself flat behind an overturned wagon. It offered concealment, but not much protection. He looked ahead for a better place. Spying one, he dashed toward it. An Unkerlanter broke cover and started running for the same hole. They saw each other at the same instant. The Unkerlanter started to bring his stick up to his shoulder. Trasone blazed from the hip. The Unkerlanter went down, stick falling from nerveless fingers. Trasone dove into the hole.