Through the Darkness

“They aren’t battling they way they did, that’s sure enough,” Panfilo agreed. “Maybe the fight’s finally leaking out of ‘em--or maybe they’re falling back toward wherever they’re going to make a stand.”

“Now there’s a cheery thought,” Trasone said. “Here’s hoping the Unkerlanters don’t have it. Wouldn’t you like things to be easy for once?”

“Oh, that I would,” Panfilo answered. “But you’ve been doing this a long time by now. How often are things easy?”

“Valmiera was easy,” Trasone said.

“That makes once,” the sergeant told him. Trasone nodded. They both let out noises that might have been grunts or might have been laughs, then got back to the serious business of marching again.

Not all the Unkerlanter soldiers had run off toward the west. Some egg-tossers the dragons hadn’t wrecked started lobbing eggs at the advancing Algarvians. Somebody not too far from Trasone went down with a scream. Trasone shivered as he tramped past the wounded man. It could have been him as easily as not, and he knew as much.

When the leading squads of his battalion started into the town to fight it out with King Swemmel’s men, Major Spinello threw a fit. “No, no, no!” he howled, and made as if to tear his fiery hair or rip out his waxed mustachios. “Stupid buggers, pox-brained cretins, what do you think you’re doing? Go around, flank them out. Let the poor trudging whoresons who come after us dig the pus out of the pocket. Our job is to keep moving. We never let them get set up to slug it out with us. We go around. Have you got that? Have you? Powers below eat you, you’d better.”

“All right, we’ll bloody well go around,” Panfilo said, and swung his arm to lead his squad south of Unkerlant. Spinello was also screeching at the behemoths on this part of the field, and got them not to go straight into the town, either. They tossed a few eggs into it as they skirted it to north and south.

Trasone said, “I think he’s a pretty good officer. As long as we keep moving, we can lick these Unkerlanter whoresons right out of their boots. Only time they match us is when mud and rain or snow make us slow down.”

“Maybe so,” Panfilo allowed: no small concession from a veteran sergeant toward a green officer. He promptly qualified it by adding, “If he tells one more dirty story about that Kaunian bitch back in Forthweg, though, I’ll hit him over the head with my stick and make him shut up.”

“Oh, good,” Trasone said. “I’m not the only one who’s sick of them, then.” Somehow, finding that out made the march seem easier.

The Unkerlanters must have been hoping the Algarvians would come into the town and fight for it street by street. When they saw Mezentio’s men weren’t about to, they began pulling out themselves: men in rock-gray tunics dog-trotting in loose order, with horses hauling egg-tossers and carts full of eggs.

They wouldn’t have held the town against the Algarvian troopers following the ones pushing the front forward. Out in the open, they didn’t last long against those front-line troops. The Algarvians on the behemoths showered eggs down on them with impunity. As soon as one of those eggs touched off a supply dump for the Unkerlanter egg-tossers, King Swemmel’s men began to realize they were in a hopeless position. At first by ones and twos and then in larger numbers, they threw down their sticks and came toward the Algarvians with hands held high. Along with his comrades, Trasone patted them down, stole whatever money they had and whatever trinkets he fancied, and sent them off toward the rear. “Into the captives’ camps they go, and good riddance, too,” he said.

“We may be seeing some of them again one day,” Panfilo said.

“Huh?” Trasone shook his head. “Not likely.”

“Aye, it is,” Panfilo said. “Haven’t you heard?” He waited for Trasone to shake his head again, then went on, “They go through the camps and let out some of the Unkerlanters who say they’ll fight for Raniero of Grelz--which means, for us.”

Trasone stared. “Now that’s a daft notion if ever there was one. If they were trying to kill us a little bit ago, why should we trust ‘em with sticks in their hands again?”

“Ahh, it’s not the worst gamble in the world,” Panfilo said. “Put it this way: if you were an Unkerlanter and got the chance to give King Swemmel a good kick in the balls, wouldn’t you grab it with both hands?”

“I might,” Trasone said slowly, “but then again, I might not, too. I haven’t noticed that the whoresons are what you’d call shy about fighting for their king, no matter whether he’s crazy or not.”

“It’s not like they’ve got a lot of choice, not after Swemmel’s impressers get their hands on ‘em.” Sergeant Panfilo’s shoulders moved up and down in a melodramatic, ever so Algarvian shrug. “And it’s not like I can do anything about it any which way. I’m just telling you what I’ve heard.”

“Pretty shitty way to go about things, anybody wants to know what I think,” Trasone said.