Through the Darkness

When the shaking finally ended, the battalion didn’t return to the attack with the same jauntiness. Trasone wondered how many of their own--they didn’t use Kaunians--the Unkerlanters had spent to gain a respite. However many it was, it had worked.

Sidroc had seen war before, when the Algarvian army pummeled Gromheort from the air and then took it. He’d lost his mother when the redheads dropped an egg on his house. He knew he was lucky to be breathing himself.

But then, after the Algarvians occupied eastern Forthweg, a routine of sorts had returned to life. And the Algarvians, as he’d seen, were strong, where his own people were weak and the cursed Kaunians even weaker. Fighting in Plegmund’s Brigade, Sidroc gathered strength for himself.

When the Algarvians, including their alarming physical trainer, decided his regiment was ready to fight, the Forthwegians left the encampment in the southwest of their kingdom and went south and south again, sometimes by ley-line caravan, sometimes by shank’s mare, till they reached the Duchy of Grelz.

Until he joined Plegmund’s Brigade, Sidroc had never been far from Gromheort. What he saw of southern Unkerlant didn’t impress him. Even the houses that hadn’t been wrecked in the fighting struck him as shabby. So did the Unkerlanters, especially the men. Their custom was to stay clean-shaven, but most of them wore a few days’ worth of stubble, giving them the look of derelicts. When they spoke, he could sometimes understand a word or two of their tongue, which was related to his own, but never a full sentence. That made them seem suspicious to him, too.

His squad leader was a scarred veteran sergeant named Werferth, who’d fought in the Algarvian army during the Six Years’ War and for Forthweg in the early days of the Derlavaian War. Werferth seemed happy as long as he was fighting for someone, or perhaps against someone. For or against whom? As best Sidroc could tell, the sergeant didn’t care. He said, “You’d fornicating well better be suspicious of these cursed Unkerlanters. Turn your back and they’ll cut your balls off.”

“They’ll be sorry if they try.” At eighteen, after weeks of hard training, Sidroc felt ready to take on the world.

Werferth laughed in his face. Sidroc bristled--inside, where it didn’t show. He didn’t think he was afraid of any Unkerlanters, but he knew he feared the sergeant. Werferth said, “You’re liable to be sorry if they try, on account of they’re sneaky whoresons and you’re still wet behind the ears. Like I said, the trick of it is not to give the buggers the chance.”

Sidroc nodded and did his best to look wise. Werferth laughed at him again, which made him grind his teeth. But that was all he did. After one more chuckle, Werferth went off to terrorize some other common soldier.

For the first time, all of Plegmund’s Brigade assembled together just outside Herborn, the capital of Grelz. The regiments already down there were as full of cutthroats and men down on their luck as the one of which Sidroc was a part. But that didn’t matter when the Brigade drew itself up for King Raniero’s review.

Algarvian officers and Forthwegian underofficers scurried among the men, making sure not a speck of dust lay on a tunic sleeve or a boot top, not a hair was out of place. To his dismay, Sidroc had discovered sergeants insisted on even more in the way of cleanliness and tidiness than mothers or aunts. He could give them what they wanted, but he resented the need.

Drawn up to one side of Plegmund’s Brigade stood a regiment of Grelzer infantry in dark green tunics that looked to have been recently dyed. Like Sidroc and his comrades, they had Algarvian officers. They looked very serious and solemn about what they were doing. The couple of companies of Algar-vians on the other side of Plegmund’s Brigade looked anything but. They stood at attention and their faces were quiet, but mischief still gleamed in their eyes and blazed forth from every line of their bodies.

A band marched out from Herborn blaring a tune that might have been the Grelzer national hymn--Sidroc presumed it was. Guarded by a squad of horsemen in dark green tunics, King Raniero rode a fine white unicorn. Three or four high-ranking Algarvian officers accompanied him. He was an Algarvian himself, of course, but wore a long tunic of the same color as his soldiers’, but of finer fabric and cut.

He swung down from the unicorn with surprising grace and began the inspection. The Grelzer soldiers gave him a curious little half bow by way of a salute. He was half a head taller than most of them. Sidroc wondered what they thought of having a foreign sovereign. If they had any doubts, they would be wise to keep quiet about them.

When Raniero came to Plegmund’s Brigade, he startled Sidroc by speaking good Forthwegian: “I thank you all for joining my Algarvian allies in helping to assure my kingdom’s safety.”