Through the Darkness

Tactically, that made good sense. It was hard on the penal battalion, though. Leudast considered, then shrugged. The battalion was there to be expended. It existed for no other real reason; officers restored to their posts were lucky accidents, nothing more.

They waited. The Algarvians in the ruins of the caravan depot put up a ferocious fight. Leudast had expected nothing less. The Algarvians always fought hard. Here they had even less choice than usual. Those ruins were a linchpin for their line in the northern part of Sulingen. If Mezentio’s men lost them, they would have to pull back on a broad front, and they couldn’t afford that.

Leudast pointed. “Do you see, sir? There, by the wreckage of the tower. That’s one of their strongpoints. The attack’s bogged down in front of it.”

“You’re right, Sergeant,” Recared agreed. “If it weren’t for the penal battalion, we would have found that out the hard way.”

The penal battalion was finding out the hard way. But Leudast understood what Recared meant. Someone always got it in the neck. If you were an Unkerlanter, you knew that. Better somebody else than you. One of these days, your turn would come, no matter what you did.

“Now that we know where they’re strongest, we ought to take another blaze at getting some egg-tossers to give ‘em what for,” Leudast said.

“That’s what the penal battalion’s supposed to do,” Recared said, but then he relented. “You’ve got a point. I’ll send a runner back. We’ll see what we can manage.”

Before long, eggs did start falling on that Algarvian concentration. Unkerlant had plenty of egg-tossers around Sulingen. King Swemmel’s men still didn’t maneuver them as smartly as the redheads, but this wasn’t a war of quick movement, not here it wasn’t. All they had to do was pound at the Algarvians, and pound they did.

After a while, Recared said, “I think we’re about ready now.” There was a little doubt in his mind, as if he was asking Leudast’s opinion. Leudast nodded. He thought they were ready, too. Recared get to his feet and blew a long, ear-splitting blast on his whistle. “Forward, lads!” he shouted, though he was more nearly a lad than most of his soldiers. “Forward for King Swemmel! Urra!” He was brave. Leudast had already seen that. He charged toward the caravan depot at the head of his regiment.

“Urra!” Leudast yelled as he too broke from cover. “King Swemmel! Urra!”

A few eggs burst among the Unkerlanters as they surged forward, but only a few. The Algarvians didn’t have many tossers left, and didn’t have many eggs left to fling from them, either. They’d also buried eggs in front of their position. The penal battalion had discovered that, the hard way. So did a couple of luckless men from Recared’s regiment. Dowsers could have found paths past the buried eggs, but dowsers, like trained men of all sort, were in short supply in Unkerlant. King Swemmel had plenty of footsoldiers, though.

Leudast dashed past dead men from the penal battalion, then flung himself down behind a pile of bricks. Up ahead, the Algarvians were still shouting Mezentio’s name: they had spunk and to spare. But there weren’t enough of them, and they didn’t have enough of anything but spunk. One by one, their battle cries fell silent. A beam struck snow off to Leudast’s left, raising a puff of steam. He scrambled to the right and then, bent low at the waist, forward again.

A man from the penal battalion and an Algarvian thrashed on the ground in a death struggle: two fierce, skinny, miserable creatures, both intent on living, neither with much of anything left to live for. Which one had suffered worse in this war? Leudast wouldn’t have wanted to guess. He knew which one was on his side, though. As soon as he got the chance, he blazed the Algarvian.

“Thank you, friend,” the Unkerlanter from the penal battalion said in educated accents that belied his pinched, half-starved face and his fiercely glittering eyes. He cut the dead redhead’s belt pouch open with his knife, exclaimed in triumph, and stuffed the little chunk of sausage he found there into his mouth. Only after he’d gulped it down did he seem to remember Leudast again. “You have no idea how good that is.”

Leudast started to say he’d been hungry, but something in the other man’s expression warned he’d get only scornful laughter if he did. He contented himself with, “Let’s go get some more of those buggers, then.” A moment later, he did something smarter: he gave the soldier from the penal battalion some of the black bread he had in his own belt pouch. He felt ashamed that he hadn’t thought of it right away.

The other Unkerlanter made it disappear faster than a man should have been able to. Then he warned, “Don’t let an inspector see you do anything like that. You could end up in my outfit, easy as you please.”

Shouts--Unkerlanter shouts--rose in triumph. “We’ve broken them!” Leudast exclaimed.