Through the Darkness

Here in Sulingen, the snow that stuck on the ground was gray, ranging toward black. So much of the city had burned as the Algarvians battled block by block to seize it from King Swemmel’s men. Trasone turned to Sergeant Panfilo, who stood a few feet away. He waved a magnificent, all-encompassing Algarvian wave. “It’s ours at last!” he shouted. “Isn’t that bloody fornicating wonderful?”

“Oh, aye, it’s terrific, all right.” Panfilo pointed east. “We still haven’t got quite all of it.” Fresh smoke rose from the pockets where Unkerlanter soldiers still stubbornly hung on. The sergeant turned away from them, back toward the parts of Sulingen the Algarvians had won. Fresh smoke rose from them, too, here and there--Unkerlanter dragons and egg-tossers kept reminding the Algarvians the war went on. Panfilo gestured in disgust. “It wasn’t supposed to be a fight about Sulingen. We were supposed to take this place and then go on to the cursed hills and the cinnabar in them.”

Trasone spat. “You know that. I know that. Nobody bothered to tell the stinking Unkerlanters.”

“Now, boys!” That was Major Spinello’s cheery voice. Trasone didn’t know how the battalion commander did it. Had he not known better, he would have suspected Spinello of keeping his spirits up with nostrums and potions. But even food had a hard time coming into Sulingen, let alone drugs. Spinello went on, “Aren’t you proud of our magnificent victory?”

“One more victory like this and we won’t have any soldiers left at all,” Trasone answered. Spinello didn’t mind if his soldiers spoke their minds. He always spoke his.

Panfilo said, “Even if we do finally clean out the Unkerlanters, we won’t be able to cross the Wolter and get into the Mamming Hills till spring. That’s not how it was supposed to work.”

“How many things do work out just the way you want them to?” Spinello asked. “I can only think of--” He stopped, a surprised look on his face. In normal, conversational tones, he said, “I’ve been blazed.” He crumpled to the snow- and soot-streaked ground.

“Sniper!” Trasone screamed as he threw himself flat. Panfilo also lay on the ground; he was shouting the same thing. Trasone crawled over to Major Spinello and started to drag him off toward some rubble nearby. Panfilo helped. “How bad is it, sir?” Trasone asked.

“Hurts,” Spinello answered. When the two soldiers dragged him over a broken brick, he began to shriek.

Once they got him behind the wreckage--so the Unkerlanter sniper, wherever he was, would have a harder time getting a good blaze at any of them--Trasone and Panfilo examined the wound. It went through the right side of Spinello’s chest and back. The major kept on shrieking and writhing while they looked him over. Trasone took that in stride. He’d helped too many wounded men to do anything else.

“Through the lung,” Panfilo said. “That’s not good.”

“No,” Trasone said. “But he’s not bleeding too much, the way they do sometimes. If we can get him out of here and the healers can slow him down and work on him, he’s got a chance. He’s an officer, and he’s a noble--if we can haul him out of here, they’ll sure as blazes sling him under a dragon and fly him off.”

“All right, let’s try it,” Sergeant Panfilo said. “He’s not a bad fellow.”

“Pretty fair officer,” Trasone agreed as each of them draped one of Spinello’s arms over his shoulder. “Of course, if it was you or me, we’d take our chances right here in Sulingen.” Panfilo nodded. They both scrambled to their feet and hauled Spinello off toward the closest dragon farm, a few hundred yards from the Wolter. Perhaps mercifully, the wounded major passed out before they got there.

“We’ll get him away,” the chief dragon handler promised. “He’s not the first one that stinking sniper’s nailed. Somebody ought to give the whoreson what he deserves.” The Algarvian slashed a forefinger across his throat to show what he meant.

“Where are our snipers, the lazy buggers?” Trasone grumbled as he and Sergeant Panfilo made their way toward the front once more.

“We’ve got a good one in that Colonel Casmiro,” Panfilo answered. “He’s sent dozens of Swemmel’s men down to the powers below. They say he learned his business hunting big game in Siaulia.”

“Maybe so,” Trasone said, “but the tigers and elephants and what-have-you don’t blaze back. It’d be a lot easier if the Unkerlanters didn’t.”

They were both crawling by the time they got to the place where Spinello was blazed. Trasone wasn’t so cold as he had been the year before. This time, warm clothes had got to the men before snow started falling. He wished that had happened the year before. He and Panfilo also wore white smocks not much different from those King Swemmel’s men had.

That evening, a couple of squads of Unkerlanters sneaked out of their pocket and prowled among the Algarvians, doing all the damage they could till they were hunted down and killed. When the wan sun of fading autumn rose in the northwest, Trasone was running on wine and fury, for he hadn’t had any sleep.