Through the Darkness

“Aye. If,” Rathar said unhappily. King Swemmel had insisted that the Unkerlanters strike the first blow in the south, as soon as the land down there got hard enough to let soldiers and behemoths move. And so they had, but then the Algarvians struck, too, and struck harder.

And now the army the Unkerlanters had built up to batter their way back into Grelz was shattered. It had held the finest regiments Swemmel and Rathar could gather. Some of them had managed to break out of the pocket the Algarvians formed south of Aspang. Some--but not enough. Soldiers who might have been strong in defending the south were now dead or captive.

Rathar got up from his desk and paced back and forth across his office. Merovec had to step smartly to get out of the way. The marshal hardly noticed he’d almost trampled his aide. He strode over toward the map. “What are they after?” he rumbled, down deep in his chest.

Merovec started to answer, but then realized Rathar hadn’t aimed the question at him. Indeed, as his pacing proved, Rathar had forgotten Merovec was there. He might have asked the question of himself or of the powers above; his adjutant’s views didn’t matter to him.

Rathar had a gift for visualizing real terrain when he looked at a map. It was a gift rarer than he wished it were; he knew too many officers who saw half an inch of blank paper between where they were and where they wanted to be and assumed getting from the one point to the other would be easy. They didn’t quite ignore swamps and forests and rivers in the way, but they didn’t take them seriously, either. The marshal of Unkerlant did.

This spring, at least, the Algarvians hadn’t attacked all along the front, as they had a year earlier. Mezentio’s men lacked the strength for that. But they’d sapped Unkerlant, too. The question was whether King Swemmel’s soldiers-- King Swemmel’s kingdom--could still stand up against the blow the redheads were still able to launch.

“Cinnabar,” Rathar muttered. Down in the Mamming Hills were the mines from which Unkerlant drew most of its supply of the vital mineral. Algarve was always short on cinnabar, which had to account for the redheads’ growing adventure in the land of the Ice People. Maybe the mines scattered through the barren hills in the far south of Unkerlant were reason enough for Mezentio to launch the kind of attack he had. It made more sense than anything else Rathar had stumbled across.

“Cinnabar, sir?”

When Major Merovec did finally speak, he reminded the marshal of his existence. “Aye, cinnabar,” Rathar said. “It’s obvious.” It hadn’t been, not till he pondered the map in just the right way, but it was now. “We have it, they need it, and they’re going to try to take it away from us.”

Merovec came over and looked at the map, too. “I don’t see it, sir,” he said with a frown. “They’ve got too much too far north to be striking down at the Mamming Hills.”

“Wouldn’t you?” Rathar retorted. “That’s the screen, to keep us from coming down and hitting them in the flank. If they gave me the chance, that’s just what I’d do, too, by the powers above. I may try it anyhow, but they’re making things harder for me. They’re good at what they do. I wish they weren’t.”

“But--the Mamming Hills, lord Marshal?” Merovec still sounded anything but convinced. “They’re a long way from where Mezentio’s men are now.”

“They’re a long way from anything,” Rathar said, which was true enough. “Not even a lot of Unkerlanters down in those parts except for the miners. The hunters and herders in the hills look more like Kuusamans than anything else.”

“Pack of thieves and robbers,” Major Merovec muttered.

“Oh, aye.” Like any Unkerlanter, Rather looked down his beaky nose at the alien folk who lived on the edges of his kingdom. After a few moments’ thought, he added, “I hope they stay loyal. They’d better stay loyal.”

There his adjutant reassured him: “If they don’t, it’ll be the worst and the last mistake they ever make.”

Rathar nodded at that. Anyone who failed to take King Swemmel’s views on vengeance seriously was a fool. A generation of Unkerlanters had come to take that for granted. Even the hillmen had learned to fear the king’s name. If they went over to the Algarvians, they would be sorry. The other question was, how sorry would they make Unkerlant?

“Get paper and pen, Major,” Rathar said. “I want to draft an appreciation of the situation for his Majesty.” The sooner Swemmel got Rathar’s views on what was going on, the less inclined he would be to listen to anyone else or to get strange notions of his own ... or so the marshal hoped.

Merovec dutifully took dictation. When Rathar finished, his adjutant rolled the sheets into a cylinder and tied a ribbon around them. Rathar used sealing wax and his signet to confirm that he had dictated the memorial. Merovec took it off to pass to Swemmel’s civilian servitors.