Through the Darkness

“But what about the piers, sir?” Leudast asked in no small alarm. “How are we going to get more men up into Sulingen? If we lose the ironworks here, we can’t hold the piers, and if we can’t hold the piers. . ..” He shuddered. “If we hadn’t been able to bring in those three brigades a few nights ago, we would have lost the city by now.”

Hawart nodded. “I know all that, believe me I do. By now, we’ve lost most of the men in those brigades instead. A lot of them went in here, and you know what’s happened to this place. And the rest, or most of the rest, went into the granary, and the Algarvians hold it, or what’s left of it. Those brigades probably saved Sulingen, but they wrecked themselves doing it.”

“Wrecked plenty of Algarvians, too, by the powers above,” Leudast said savagely. Captain Hawart nodded again. Leudast repeated the question the officer hadn’t answered before: “If we give up the ironworks, if we’ve lost the granary, if we lose the piers, too--how do we bring in reinforcements?”

“They’ve run up more piers farther east, in the districts we do control,” Hawart said. “We’ll have to hang on to those. But we can’t hold these any more. Some prices are too high to pay.”

As if to underscore that, the Algarvians started tossing eggs into the ironworks from the west. Leudast and Hawart huddled side by side. Fragments of the eggs shells hissed through the air with malignant whines. So did bricks and boards and chunks of iron hurled by the blasts of sorcerous energy. Here and there, wounded Unkerlanters shrieked. Here and there, wounded Algarvians shrieked, too. The fighting was at quarters too close for either side to toss eggs without hurting some of its own soldiers. That didn’t stop the redheads, and it didn’t stop the Unkerlanters, either.

Even while the eggs were still falling, Leudast and Hawart looked around opposite ends of the forge. Sure enough, the Algarvians were moving forward, taking their chances on being hurt by their own side while the Unkerlanters had to keep their heads down. The redheads were brave. Leudast had seen as much, many times. They were also clever. He’d seen that, too. This time, they were too clever for their own good. He blazed down three of them, one after another.

“Got you, you son of a whore!” Hawart exclaimed, which argued his luck was also good. Leudast blazed again. An Algarvian screamed. Leudast nodded, well pleased with himself.

But his pleasure evaporated when Hawart started shouting orders for the withdrawal from the ironworks. The Unkerlanters knew how to conduct retreats. We’d better, Leudast thought bitterly. We’ve had enough practice. They did it by odd and even numbers, the same way they conducted advances. Half stayed behind and blazed while the rest slipped away to new positions. Then the first group fell back past the second while the second covered their withdrawal. The redheads could move forward only slowly and cautiously.

“We’re clear,” Leudast said when he left the ruins of the iron manufactory and came out into the ruins of the rest of Sulingen. He stayed in the open not an instant longer than he had to, but dove into the first hole in the ground he saw.

Most of his countrymen did the same thing. One trooper, though, crumpled and fell to the ground, stick slipping from hands that could hold it no more. There was a neat hole in the side of his head, just above and in front of his left ear.

“Cursed sniper!” cried one of the Unkerlanters hiding in the wreckage of what had been a block of ironworkers’ cottages. “That whoreson hides like a viper, and he’s got eyes like an eagle. He’s picked off a couple of dozen of us, maybe more, the past few weeks.”

“Bugger him,” Leudast said. “Bugger him with a straight razor.” No matter how fiercely he spoke, though, he made sure he didn’t expose any part of his person to the Algarvian sniper.

“We ought to bring in a sniper of our own and get rid of him,” Captain Hawart said.

“I hate snipers, theirs and ours, too,” Leudast said. “They aren’t going to change the way the battle goes. All they’re good for is blazing some poor fool who’s squatting somewhere taking a dump. Powers below eat the lot of them.”

“Powers below eat the Algarvians,” Hawart answered. “Can you see the granary without getting killed doing it?”

“I think so.” Leudast wriggled around in his hole. Sure enough, he could make out the top of the tall, strong brick building--and the Algarvian banner lazily flapping above it. Leudast cursed. Before long, those red, green, and white stripes would be flying above the ruins of the ironworks, too.