Through the Darkness

Then he looked down at the advancing Algarvian army, looked down and cried out in dismay. He knew what sort of sorcery the mages wrought, and now he saw it visited not upon the Lagoans against whom it was aimed but upon his own countrymen. Crevasses yawned beneath them, holes closed upon them, flames seared soldiers and behemoths alike. In the blink of an eye, the Algarvians on the austral continent went from army to ruin.

Sabrino flew on for a little while, too numb for the time being to think of doing anything else. Somewhere down on that frozen waste, a hairy old shaman was saying, “I told you so.”

Once upon a time, Sergeant Leudast thought, Sulingen wouldn’t have been a bad town in which to live. Oh, it would get cold in the winter, he had no doubt of that; he came from the north of Unkerlant, which had a milder climate. But it would have been pleasant, sprawled as it was along the Wolter, with plenty of little patches of wood and parkland and with steeply sloping gullies to break up the blocks of homes and shops and manufactories.

But it wasn’t pleasant any more. Algarvian dragons had been plastering it with eggs for weeks, and many of those blocks of homes were nothing but rubble. Leudast, as a matter of fact, didn’t mind rubble as terrain in which to fight. It offered endless places to hide, and he knew how to take advantage of them. The soldiers who hadn’t learned that lesson were mostly dead by now.

Captain Hawart pointed north, though he was careful not to let the motion expose his arm to a beam from the enemy who lurked too close. “Let’s see the cursed Algarvians outflank us and run rings around us in this,” he said.

“Let’s see anybody do anything in this,” Leudast answered, which made his company commander laugh and nod. Men could move freely enough. The company had spent some time digging trenches through the rubble, which made them much less likely to get blazed if they scrambled from one stretch of wreckage to another. But even behemoths had a hard time going where no paths had been cleared among piles of brick and stone and broken boards.

Hawart said, “The only thing they can do now is come straight at us and slug. They’re quicker than we are. They’re more supple than we are. By the powers above, they’re more clever than we are, too. But how much good does any of that do them here?”

“Do you really think they’re more clever than we are?” Leudast asked.

“If we were more clever, we’d be attacking Trapani--they wouldn’t be here,” Hawart answered, and Leudast had a hard time finding a counterargument. But Hawart went on, “But that only takes you so far. If I hit you in the head with a big rock, how clever you are doesn’t matter anymore. And here in Sulingen, we can hit the redheads with lots of big rocks. If they were really clever, they would have made the fight somewhere else.”

Before Leudast could reply, the Algarvians started tossing eggs at the Unkerlanter front line. As usual, Mezentio’s men had made sure that their egg-tossers kept up with their advancing footsoldiers. Leudast cowered in his hole as the rubble around him got ground a little finer. It occurred to him, perhaps more slowly than it should have, that the Algarvians, regardless of whether or not they were clever, could hit the Unkerlanters with big rocks, too.

It also occurred to him that the Algarvians could pin the Unkerlanters in their holes by tossing eggs and then finish them with the horrific magic they made from the life energy of slaughtered Kaunians. He hoped they wouldn’t think of that along this particular stretch of the line.

Off to his right, someone shrieked. Maybe the redheads wouldn’t need to be clever to go forward. Maybe they could just go on killing the way they’d been doing for quite a while.

Another cry rose, this one alarm, not pain: “They’re coming!” Eggs kept right on landing. Maybe Mezentio’s men didn’t care if they killed a few of their own. Maybe they just figured it was a good bargain, and that getting rid of the Unkerlanters counted for more. And maybe they were right about that, too.

If they were coming, Leudast didn’t want--didn’t dare--to get caught in his hole. He popped up and started to blaze. An Algarvian tumbled down, and another. More dove for cover. Some kept coming. His mouth went dry--quite a few were coming, more than he thought he and his comrades could hold back. He’d already made himself expensive. Now he had to see how he could cost the redheads even more before they finally pulled him down.

And then, from the rear, he heard one of the sweetest sounds he’d ever known; officers’ whistles shrilling reinforcements into action. “Urra!” the soldiers shouted. “King Swemmel! Urra!” They rushed past Leudast, meeting the Algarvian charge with one of their own.