Through the Darkness

As the captain saluted and left, one of Rathar’s crystallomancers said, “Lord Marshal, I’ve got a report from the force moving on Durrwangen.”

By his tone, Rathar knew the report wouldn’t be good. “Tell me,” he said.

“They brought up behemoths from down this way and smashed up our attacking column pretty well,” the crystallomancer said. “Looks like they’ll be able to hold west of the city.”

“Oh, a pestilence!” the marshal exclaimed in disgust. General Vatran cursed with a good deal more imagination than that. Rathar said, “I wanted to trap that second army, too, and now those whoresons’ll be able to get out through Durrwangen.”

“If you’d pulled off the double pocket, you’d have gone down in history forever,” Vatran said.

“I’m not going to lose any sleep about history,” Rathar said. “If I’d shut both pockets on the redheads, we could have had the war within shouting distance of being won.” King Swemmel had wanted the war won--had insisted on it--a year before. That hadn’t happened; Unkerlant was lucky the war hadn’t been lost this past summer. That Rathar could speak of such possibilities .. . meant nothing at all, because his soldiers hadn’t been able to bag the second army as they had the one down in Sulingen.

Vatran said, “We’ve got some more work to do, sure enough. We’ll grind the army in Sulingen to dust, we’ll run the redheads out of Durrwangen, and we’ll see how far we can chase them before the spring thaw stops everything.”

“And we’ll see what sort of surprises Mezentio’s boys pull out from under their hats in the meantime,” Rathar said. “Do you really think we can just chase them and have them go?”

“Too much to hope for, I suppose,” Vatran said. “Next time the Algarvians do just what we want ‘em toll be the first.”

As if to underscore that, a few eggs fell in and around the village. Rathar wondered if the redheads had somehow learned he was headquartered here, or if Mezentio’s dragonfliers had simply spied soldiers and behemoths in the streets and decided to leave their calling cards. If an egg burst on this house, the hows and whys wouldn’t matter.

The marshal refused to dwell on that. He studied the map to see what sort of reinforcements he could send to the Unkerlanter army west of Durrwangen. The only men he saw were the ones involved in the attack on Sulingen. He grimaced. The Algarvians there had done right by not surrendering.

Vatran was making similar calculations. He said, “Even if we pull soldiers out of the south, we’ve got no guarantee that we’ll take Durrwangen. Mezentio’s men’ll hang on to it tooth and toenail, not only for itself but because it’s the key to their road north. Is it worth risking Sulingen for a chance at seizing Durrwangen?”

“I don’t think we’d risk Sulingen.” But Rathar wasn’t happy as he turned back to the map. “Still and all, if the redheads in there found we had nothing but a little screen up against them, they’d be liable to break out and make trouble all over the landscape.”

“And isn’t that the sad and sorry truth?” Vatran said. “You just can’t trust Algarvians to sit there and let themselves get massacred.”

“Heh,” Rathar said, though it wasn’t really funny. Vatran had a point. If the initiative was there to seize, Mezentio’s men would without fail seize it. He wished the Unkerlanters showed as much drive, as much willingness to do things on their own if they saw the chance. He knew of too many times when they’d let the Algarvians outmaneuver them simply because they didn’t think to do any maneuvering of their own.

Of course, the Algarvians weren’t so burdened with inspectors and impressers. They didn’t need so many people like that. More of them lived in towns, and more of them had their letters. Rathar didn’t know how King Swemmel could run his vast, sprawling, ignorant kingdom without hordes of functionaries to make sure his orders were carried out. Having those functionaries over them, though, meant the peasants didn’t--wouldn’t--do much thinking on their own. They waited for orders instead.

“If we take the sure thing,” Rathar said slowly, “we clear the Algarvians from a big chunk of the south.” Vatran nodded. Rathar went on, “As long as we make sure they never get to the Mamming Hills, we go a long way toward winning the war.” Vatran nodded again. Rathar continued, “We can’t take any chances about that. We can’t let them get into a position of driving deep into the south again. We’ll take the sure thing, and then we’ll bang heads with them farther north. I hate that, but I don’t see that we can do anything else.”

“For whatever it’s worth to you, lord Marshal, I think you’re right,” Vatran said. “And after Sulingen goes down, then we can throw everything we’ve got at Durrwangen. And when we do that, I don’t think the Algarvians can hold it.”

“No, not in the wintertime,” Rathar agreed. “They’re better at that game than they were last year, but they’re not good enough.”