Through the Darkness

After a couple of days of marching, Sidroc’s company went into a forest that astonished him. Forthweg didn’t have woods like these, dark and brooding and wild, with the air chill and damp even in summertime under pines and beeches and firs and birches and larches and spruce. Sidroc kept looking around not for Unkerlanter irregulars but for bears or possibly trolls. He knew there were no such things as trolls, but that didn’t keep him from worrying about them, not in a place like this.

Without warning, the trooper tramping along three men in front of him went down as if all his bones had turned to jelly. Sidroc hurried up to him. He had a neat hole in his left temple; the beam that killed him had blown off much of the right side of his skull. Blood soaked into the pine needles on the path.

“By squads!” an Algarvian officer shouted. “Into the woods on either side. We won’t let the buggers get away with this.”

Into the woods Sidroc went. He hoped somebody in his squad could find the way back to the path, because he soon lost track of it. He could hear himself and his comrades blundering along. He couldn’t hear anyone else--but at least one Unkerlanter irregular had been there somewhere, and probably more. They knew the woods, the whoresons. If he heard them at all, it would be because they were laughing their heads off.

“Back!” The command came in Algarvian. It also told Sidroc where the path lay. Back he went. He didn’t care that he’d caught no irregulars. He just wanted to escape the woods alive.

He did. A little village lay beyond the forest. Farmers and their wives looked up curiously at the bearded men in strange uniforms. Without a word, the men of Plegmund’s Brigade started blazing. They killed as many as they could catch, and left the village a smoking ruin behind them. Sidroc laughed. “Welcome to Grelz!” he said. “As long as we’re here, we may as well make ourselves at home.”

“Another pack of murdering goons to worry about,” Munderic said, leaning against the trunk of a spruce. “That’s all Algarve’s brought to Grelz--foreign murdering goons.”

“Aye,” Garivald said: one voice in a general rumble of agreement from the irregulars.

Another fighter said, “These Forthwegian buggers are even nastier than the redheads, powers below eat ‘em.”

“That’s bad, but it’s not so bad,” Garivald said. People turned to look at him, puzzlement on a good many faces. He tried to put it into words: “The more people who hate these buggers, the more who’ll come over to our side.”

“Here’s hoping, anyway,” Munderic said. “But we’ve got to show folks we can stand up to the whoresons, hurt ‘em bad when we find the chance. Otherwise they’ll just be afraid, and do whatever the foreigners say.”

“We blazed that one fellow just to give ‘em a hello, like,” somebody said, “and then they wrecked a village to pay it back. What’ll they do if we nail a proper lot of ‘em?”

“See? They’ve already put you in fear,” Munderic said. “We’ll find a time to give ‘em a good boot in the arse, see what they do then. If we can prod ‘em into something everybody’s bound to hate, all the better.”

“They must look like a pack of wild beasts, with all that hair on their faces people talk about,” Garivald said. He had a good deal of hair on his face, too; chances to scrape it off were few and far between. But he still thought of himself as clean-shaven, which the Forthwegians weren’t.

“They act like a pack of wild beasts, that’s certain,” Munderic said. “Off what they’ve shown so far, they are worse than the Algarvians.”

“A mean man will keep a meaner dog,” Garivald said, and then, musingly, tasting the words, “Sometimes you have to whack it with a log.” He made a face. That didn’t work. Around him, irregulars nudged one another and grinned. They knew the signs of a man with a song coming on.

Munderic didn’t give Garivald any time to work on it now. He said, “We’re going to hit them. We’re going to teach them this is our countryside, and they can’t come along and tear things up whenever they get the urge.”

Obilot stuck up a hand. When Munderic pointed to her, she added, “Besides, with these cursed Forthwegians beating on us here in Grelz, the redheads can send more of their own soldiers against our regular armies.”

“That’s so.” Munderic grinned at her. “You make quite a little general there.” Most of the irregulars--most of the male irregulars, anyhow-- grinned and chuckled, too. Obilot’s jaw set, though she didn’t say anything. Most of the men viewed the handful of women who’d joined them as something more than conveniences, but something a good deal less than full-fledged fighters.