Through the Darkness

“Any soldier who retreats without orders shall be reckoned a traitor against us; and shall be punished as befits treason,” Hawart read. “Any officer who gives the order to retreat without direst need shall be judged likewise. Our inspectors and impressers shall enforce this command by all necessary means.”

“What does that mean?” Haifa dozen soldiers asked the question out loud. Leudast didn’t, but it blazed in his mind, too. After the impressers caught him and made sure he had a rock-gray tunic on his back, he’d thought he was done worrying about them. Was he wrong?

Evidently he was, for Captain Hawart said, “I’ll tell you what it means, boys. Somewhere back of the army, there’s a thin line of impressers and inspectors. Every one of them has a stick in his hands. You try running away, those buggers’d just as soon blaze you as look at you.”

Leudast believed him. By the way soldiers’ heads bobbed up and down, everybody believed him. Anyone who’d ever dealt with inspectors and impressers could have no possible doubt that they would blaze their own countrymen. But how many of them would get blazed in return while they were doing it?

No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than he shied away from it, as a unicorn might shy from a buzzing fly. If Unkerlanters began battling Unkerlanters, if the Twinkings War, or even some tiny portion of it, visited the kingdom once again, what would spring from it? Why, Algarvian conquest, and nothing else Leudast could see.

“So,” Hawart said. “There it is, lads. We don’t go back any more, not if there’s any help for it. We go forward when we can, we die in place when there’s no other choice, and we don’t go back, not unless .. .” He paused and shook his head. “We don’t go back. We can’t afford to, not anymore.”

“You heard the captain,” Leudast growled, as any sergeant might have after an officer gave orders. He’d heard the captain, too, and wished he hadn’t. Swemmel’s orders left no room for misunderstanding.

Hawart put the paper back into his belt pouch. He had to look up, orienting himself by the sun, before he could point east and north. “That’s where the Algarvians are,” he said. “Let’s go find them and give them a good boot in the arse. They’ve already done it to us too many times.”

“Aye,” Leudast said. A few other troopers snarled agreement. But most of the men, though they obeyed Hawart readily enough, did so without any great eagerness. They’d seen enough action by now to understand how hard it was to halt the redheads in the open field. Leudast had seen more action than almost any of them. He wondered why he retained enough enthusiasm to want to go forward against the Algarvians. I’m probably too stupid to know better, he thought.

Sunflower leaves rustled, brushing against his tunic and those of his comrades. Dry, fallen leaves crunched under his boots. The plants bobbed and shook as he pushed his way through them. The sunflowers were taller than a man, but an alert Algarvian with a spyglass could have tracked from afar the marching Unkerlanters by the way the plants moved without a breeze to stir them. Leudast hoped Mezentio’s men weren’t so alert--and also hoped that, even if they were, they had no egg-tossers nearby.

Coming out from among the sunflowers was almost like breaking the surface after swimming underwater in a pond: Leudast could suddenly see much farther than he had been able to. Ahead lay the village whose peasants would have harvested the sunflowers. Dragons--perhaps Algarvian but perhaps Unkerlanter, too--had visited destruction on it from the air. Only a few huts still stood. The rest were either blackened ruins or had simply ceased to be.

People moved amongst the ruins, though. For a moment, Leudast admired the tenacity of his countrymen. Who but Unkerlanter peasants would have tried so hard to go on with their lives even in the midst of war’s devastation?

Then he stiffened. Unkerlanters would have been more solidly made than these tall, scrawny apparitions. And no matter how tall and scrawny Unkerlanters might have been, they would never, ever, have worn kilts.

Leudast’s body realized that faster than his mind. He threw himself to the ground. At the same time, someone else shouted, “Algarvians!”

“Forward!” Captain Hawart called: he was going to obey King Swemmel’s order. Or die trying, Leudast thought. But Hawart didn’t want to do any more dying than he had to, for he added, “Forward by rushes!”

“My company--even squads forward!” Leudast commanded. He got up and went forward with the even-numbered squads. He’d learned from Hawart not to order anything he wouldn’t do himself. The men in the odd-numbered squads blazed at the Algarvians in the village ahead. As Leudast dove to the ground again, he wondered how many Algarvians the village held and how many more were close enough to join the fight. He’d find out before long.