Through the Darkness

They were new men, unblooded, ferried north over the Wolter and thrown straight into the fight. Everything about them proclaimed as much, from their clean, unfaded tunics to the way they ran straight up rather than hunching forward to give the redheads smaller targets. A lot of them fell before they ever came to grips with Mezentio’s veteran troopers. But enough Unkerlanters lived to stop the Algarvian advance before it really got going.

Leudast was already moving forward when Captain Hawart shouted, “Come on--we’re not going to let the new lads have all the fun!”

It wasn’t fun. Only a madman would have reckoned it fun. It was combat at the close quarters of fornication, and hardly less intimate. The Algarvians were as determined to go forward as the Unkerlanters were to drive them back. Men fought one another with beams, with sticks swung like clubs, with knives, with feet and fists and teeth. No one on either side threw up his hands.

An Algarvian who had to be out of charges for his stick tried to brain Leudast with it. Leudast had no time to blaze him; he had all he could do to duck. The redhead threw the dead stick at him. He knocked it aside with his own stick as the Algarvian drew a knife and rushed. He knocked the wicked-looking blade aside, too. Then he could blaze, could and did. The Algarvian howled and toppled. Leudast blazed him again, and the howling stopped.

“Forward!” Captain Hawart shouted again.

Forward Leudast went--a handful of paces, till he spied a likely-looking hole in the ground. He jumped down into it without the slightest sense of shame or embarrassment. Aye, he wanted to drive the redheads out of Sulingen. But he also wanted to live to see them go. He didn’t think that was likely, not the way things stood, but it was what he wanted.

Hisses overhead and crashes behind and near the Algarvians’ lines announced that the egg-tossers on his own side weren’t so sleepy as usual. Captain Hawart had been right--the Algarvians lacked the room to maneuver and deceive here. Out on the plains, the Unkerlanters’ egg-tossers hadn’t always been able to get where they were needed while they were still needed there. In Sulingen, that problem didn’t arise. They were already where they needed to be. All they had to do was toss. They could manage that.

Little by little, the pressure from the redheads eased. Leudast let out a long, weary sigh. “Held ‘em again,” he said to no one in particular.

Soldiers dragged wounded men to the rear, to see what mages and surgeons could do for them. That held true no matter to which side the men at the front belonged, no matter whether they wore gray tunics or tan kilts. The Algarvians rarely blazed at soldiers helping wounded comrades; Leudast and his countrymen usually extended the redheads the same courtesy. It was one of the few courtesies both sides extended.

A runner came up with a big sack full of loaves of black bread. Leudast grabbed one and bit into it. It was heavy and chewy, bound to have more barley and rye flour in it than wheat. He didn’t care. It was food, and food for which he didn’t have to go foraging through the rubble. He didn’t mind taking what had been other people’s dainties; the real trouble was that he didn’t find them often enough to keep his own belly full.

One of the raw Unkerlanter soldiers--a lot less raw now than he had been a couple of hours before--spoke to Leudast: “Sergeant? Sir?”

He was raw. “I’m just a sergeant,” Leudast said gruffly. “You don’t call me sir. You call officers sir. Have you got that?”

“Aye, sir--uh, Sergeant.” Beneath his dirty, swarthy hide, the young soldier blushed like a girl. Leudast didn’t much blame him for being confused. He’d been doing an officer’s work himself, commanding a company, and he was far from the only sergeant who could say that. And not all the real officers in Unkerlant’s army were bluebloods these days, as they had been during the Six Years’ War. King Swemmel had killed off a lot of noblemen during and after the Twinkings War, and the Algarvians had killed off a lot more since.

“Well, what do you want, then?” Leudast asked, less of a growl in his voice this time. “And who are you, anyway?”

“Oh! My name’s Aldrian . .. Sergeant.” The youngster beamed at doing it right. “What I want to know is, is it always going to be like this? His wave encompassed the battered, worthless stretch of ground the Algarvians hadn’t quite been able to seize.

Leudast considered. While he considered, he ate another big bite of bread. Slowly, deliberately, he chewed and swallowed. Then he said, “You figure it out. The redheads want Sulingen. King Swemmel says they can’t have it. If they keep throwing in soldiers and he keeps throwing in soldiers, what do you think will happen?”