Through the Darkness

But Recared went right on. Maybe he used lecturing to fight the fear that went with battle. “We attack to the west,” he said. “We--not the cursed Algarvians. We and all the egg-tossers and behemoths and dragons we could gather here, brought through the Mamming Hills and up over the Wolter. We attack to the west. . . and Marshal Rathar’s other army, miles and miles away, will attack to the east. We will meet in the middle, and cut off all the stinking redheads down in Sulingen.”

“Aye,” the men chorused again, this time with fierce hunger in their voices. If everything went the way it should, they would make Mezentio’s men sorry they’d ever thrust their noses into Unkerlant. If... But with Algarvians, you never could tell. Leudast had seen that too often, to his sorrow and nearly to his destruction.

That made him think of something else. He stuck up his hand. “May I say a word, sir?”

Recared didn’t look happy at the idea of anyone else talking, but nodded. “Go ahead, Sergeant.”

“Thank you, sir.” Leudast turned to the waiting soldiers. “Remember, boys, what we’ve got in front of us isn’t Algarvians. We have a big kingdom here, and they’re stretched too thin to hold all the line themselves. It’ll be Yaninans and whatever other odds and sods they can scrape up. I’ve fought those buggers, and I’ve fought the Algarvians, too. Give me Yaninans any day.”

The soldiers who’d gone against King Tsavellas’ men nodded and began telling their friends what cowards the Yaninans were. Recared slapped Leudast on the shoulder. “That was well said,” he told him. A moment later, the lieutenant turned and looked back over his shoulder. He pointed to a tiny gleam seen for a moment through clouds. “The sun!” he cried.

Leudast wasn’t sure it really was the sun, but officers higher than Recared must have thought so, too. Egg-tossers began hurling death at the Yaninans huddled in their tents and holes and trenches. Leudast’s eyebrows flew up at the number of eggs bursting on the enemy. Neither his own folk nor the Algarvians had managed to put so many tossers on one narrow stretch of line very often.

Dragons painted rock-gray flew low overhead. Some had eggs slung beneath their bellies. Others flew unburdened, to protect their comrades and to flame the luckless Yaninans. Leudast took off his fur hat and waved it at the dragonfliers. Every enemy soldier they and the egg-tossers killed or wounded was an enemy who couldn’t kill or wound him.

Chainmail clattering with every “great stride they took, behemoths lumbered forward. Leudast waved his hat at their crews, too. He knew his countrymen had been gathering them, as Lieutenant Recared had said. As with the egg-tossers, he hadn’t known so many had made their way here. But then, he hadn’t been here very long himself.

Recared proved himself an officer by blowing a long, piercing blast on the whistle he wore round his neck. “Forward!” he shouted.

“Forward!” Leudast echoed. He had no whistle, but he’d long since got used to doing without. “King Swemmel! Urra!”

“Urra!” the Unkerlanter soldiers echoed as they swarmed out of their trenches. “Swemmel! Urra!”

Some men linked arms with their comrades and charged on together, doing their best to keep up with the behemoths. What had been the Yaninan lines were now a smoking, cratered jumble. After the pounding they’d taken, Leudast couldn’t see how anything could remain alive in them.

But his countrymen started falling--not in’ enormous numbers, as happened when an attack went wrong, but here and there, now one, now another. Egg-tossers on the behemoths pounded positions where the Yaninans held out in some strength. Footsoldiers overran the rest.

“Urra!” Leudast roared, and jumped down into a battered trench. He landed on a dead Yaninan, noticing only because he didn’t hit the ground so hard as he thought he would. A moment later, a live Yaninan came out of a hole, his hands high, terror twisting his face. Leudast took what food he had--- black bread and moldy sausage--and let him live. “Urra!” he shouted again, and ran on.

Every so often--almost surely in the places where they had good officers-- the Yaninans fought hard. But Tsavellas’ men had next to no behemoths, and few heavy sticks that might penetrate the armor the Unkerlanter beasts wore. Few enemy dragons flew, either.

Leudast looked around a little past noon and was astonished at how far he’d come. Recared had come all that way, too. “It’s a rout, sir!” Leudast exclaimed. He sounded drunk, but he hadn’t had enough spirits in his water bottle to get him high. This is what victory feels like, he thought dazedly.

He’d fought Yaninans before. He’d beaten them before. But that had been only a skirmish, and part of the Unkerlanter army’s long retreat to Sulingen. His comrades and he weren’t retreating any more. They were moving forward, and the Yaninans could not stand in their way.