Through the Darkness

Out trotted a force of Algarvian behemoths, whose crews skirmished at long range with the Unkerlanters. Even at a glance, Sidroc could see that the Unkerlanters outnumbered them. King Swemmel’s men saw the same thing. They didn’t come charging out after the Algarvians, as they might have when the war was new--from some of the stories the redheads told, they’d been very stupid in the early days. But they did forget about the footsoldiers. They forgot about everything, in fact, except what the Algarvian commander showed them.

And they paid for it. The officer in charge of the Algarvians had more than one string for his bow. “While the Unkerlanters were busy fighting and seemingly repelling the behemoths in front of them, another force entered the village from behind. The fight that followed was sharp but very short. The relief force kept moving south, on toward Sulingen.

“We’ve got a smart general,” Sergeant Werferth said. “That’s good. That’s mighty good. He buggered Swemmel’s boys just as pretty as you please.”

Sidroc snorted, then guffawed when he realized how apt the figure was. “Aye, bugger ‘em he did--came right up their backside.”

But it stopped being easy after that. Sidroc had found in Presseck how dangerous the Unkerlanters could be when they had numbers and power on their side. Now he discovered they didn’t need numbers to be dangerous. They knew what the Algarvians were trying to do, and threw everything they had into stopping them.

As so many had before him, Sidroc grew to hate and dread the cheer, “Urra!” Single Unkerlanters would pop up out of the snow shouting it and blaze down a man--or two, or three, or four--before they died themselves. Companies would fight like grim death in villages, bellowing defiance till the last man was slain. And regiment after regiment would charge across the plain at the relief force, sometimes with their arms linked, all the soldiers roaring, “Urra!”

Nor would those regiments charge alone, unsupported. The Unkerlanters threw behemoths and dragons and egg-tossers into the fight with the same air they threw men into it. Aye, they seemed to say, you ‘II smash these up, but we ‘ve got plenty more.

And the Algarvians did not have plenty more. Sidroc needed only a day or two to see that. Relief forces came in by dribs and drabs, when they came in at all. If the army couldn’t relieve the men in Sulingen with what it had now, it couldn’t relieve them.

“When are they going to break out toward us?” Sidroc asked, six days into the move south. By then, he’d taken to wrapping the lower part of his face in wool rags, so that only his eyes showed. He’d thought he knew how cold Unkerlant could get. Every new day proved him wrong.

“I don’t know what they’re doing down there,” Sergeant Werferth told him. “I don’t give a dragon turd what they’re doing, either. It’s too soon to worry. Whatever they’ve got in mind, right now it doesn’t change my job one fornicating bit.”

Sidroc started to bristle. Ceorl would have, because Ceorl was the sort who bristled at anything. But Sidroc realized Werferth was just giving good advice. Worrying about what he couldn’t help wouldn’t, couldn’t, change things.

At dawn the next morning, the Unkerlanters attacked the relief force before it could get moving. By the time Swemmel’s men sullenly withdrew, the sun was halfway across the sky. The Unkerlanters left hundreds of bodies lying in the snow, but they’d robbed the relief force of men and of time, and it could recover neither.

Despite the troops Swemmel and his generals kept throwing at them, the soldiers and behemoths of the relieving force managed to keep moving south. They crossed the Presseck, from whose banks the men of Plegmund’s Brigade had been so rudely expelled not long before. And they also forced their way over the Neddemin, the next river to the south, in a sharp battle with the Unkerlanters trying to keep them from gaining the fords.

“What’s the river after this one?” Sidroc asked that night as he toasted a gobbet of horsemeat on a stick. He’d never imagined eating horse up in Forthweg. Compared to going hungry, it was tasty as could be.

“That’s the Britz,” Werferth answered. “If we make it over the Britz, the fellows in Sulingen should be able to fight their way out to meet us.” He’d come far enough, he was willing to look ahead a bit.

“They’d better be able to fight their way out to meet us,” Sidroc said. “Curse me if I know how we’ve made it this far. I don’t know how much further we can go.”

“Other question is, how far can they come?” Werferth asked. “What have their behemoths and horses and unicorns been eating down there? Mostly nothing, or I miss my guess. Odds are the men haven’t had much more, either.”

Sidroc took a bite of horseflesh. Juice running down his chin, he said, “It’s not like we’ve got a lot.” The sergeant nodded, but they both knew the men down in Sulingen had less.