Through the Darkness

The door opened. A couple of men jumped down from the carriage. “Away!” the painter said urgently. The men of the underground scattered. One of them led off the rescued dragonfliers. The rest headed back to their homes. Skarnu moved slowly through the dark streets of Ventspils, not wanting to get lost. Another lick against Algarve, he thought, and wondered what the next one would be.

What was left of Plegmund’s battered Brigade welcomed two new regiments hurried down from Forthweg with all the charm veterans usually showed new fish. Now a veteran himself, Sidroc jeered along with his comrades: “Does your mother know you’re here?” he asked a recruit obviously several years older than he was. “Does your mother know they’re going to bury you here?”

He howled laughter. So did his comrades. They were all a little, or more than a little, drunk, having liberated several jars of spirits from a village the Unkerlanters had abandoned in haste. Had the Unkerlanters abandoned it in something less than haste, they would have taken their popskull with them.

Sergeant Werferth said, “Nobody told him that when he comes down here, the buggers on the other side blaze back.”

That set the survivors of overrun Presseck into fresh gales of laughter. The recruits stared at them as if they’d gone mad. Maybe we have, Sidroc thought. He didn’t much care, one way or the other. He swigged from his canteen. More raw spirits ran hot down his throat.

Those spirits gave him most of the warmth he felt. The tents of Plegmund’s Brigade sat on the vast plains of southern Unkerlant, out in the middle of nowhere, so the frigid wind could get a running start before it blew through them. He said, “One thing--the Algarvians with us are every bit as cold as we are.”

“Serves ‘em right,” Ceorl said.

“Together, we and the Algarvians will drive Swemmel’s barbarians back into the trackless west,” the recruit said stiffly.

Together, Sidroc, Werferth, and Ceorl howled laughter. “We’ll try and stay alive,” Sidroc said. “And we’ll try and kill some Unkerlanters, because that’ll help us stay alive.”

“Don’t waste your time on him,” Werferth said. “He’s a virgin. He’ll find out. And if he lives through it, he’ll be telling the new recruits what they need to know next summer. If he doesn’t--” He shrugged.

Sidroc’s head ached the next morning. Ache or not, he drew himself to attention to listen to an Algarvian officer harangue the men of the Brigade. “We are part of something larger than ourselves,” the officer declared. “We shall rescue our brave Algarvian comrades down in Sulingen, we and this force King Mezentio’s might has gathered.”

He let loose with a typically extravagant, typically expansive Algarvian gesture. Sure enough, the tents of Plegmund’s Brigade weren’t the only ones on the plain. Several brigades of Algarvians had been mustered with them, and troop after troop of behemoths. It was a formidable assemblage. Whether it was formidable enough to punch through the cordon the Unkerlanters had drawn around Sulingen, Sidroc didn’t know. He knew it would do all it could.

“We must do this,” the Algarvian officer said. “We must, and so we can, and so we shall. Where the will is strong, victory follows.”

Redheads were drawn up getting their marching orders, too. “Mezentio!” they shouted, with as much spirit as if they were going on parade through Trapani to show off for pretty girls.

Not to be outdone, the Forthwegians who’d taken service with Algarve shouted, “Plegmund!” as loud as they could, doing their best to outyell the men who’d taught them what they knew of war. The Algarvians yelled back, louder than ever. It was a good-natured contest, nothing like the one that lay ahead.

Snow swirled through the air as Sidroc tramped south. “Loose order!” officers and underofficers called. He knew why: to keep too many of them from getting killed at once if things went wrong. He had a heavy cloak, and a white snow smock over it. He wore a fur hat some Unkerlanter soldier didn’t need any more. The weather was colder than any he’d ever known, but he wouldn’t freeze. He hoped he wouldn’t.

Freezing soon proved to be that least of his worries. The soldiers set over him had known what they were talking about when they warned their charges to spread out. The relief force had been moving for only a couple of hours when Unkerlanter dragons appeared overhead. They dropped a few eggs, flamed a few soldiers, and flew away. A pinprick--but the force hadn’t been overstrong to begin with. Now it was a little weaker.

About noon, they neared another of those Unkerlanter peasant villages scattered across the plain. Swemmel’s men held it. Warning shouts of, “Behemoths!” echoed through the army. Sure enough, Sidroc saw them moving inside the village, perhaps milling about in the square. Some of them began lobbing eggs at the advancing Algarvians--and at Plegmund’s Brigade as well.