Darkness Descending

“Me, I’d sooner kill Kaunians than Algarvians--I’ll say that,” Tealdo remarked. “But if we’re doing it and now they’re doing it, too, wouldn’t it be better if both sides stopped, since it’s pretty much evened out?”

“If one side stopped and not the other, that could mean--would mean--disaster,” the mage said. “Sometimes climbing onto a wolf is easier than climbing off again.”

“Maybe somebody should have thought of that before we went and got into this lousy war with Unkerlant in the first place,” Tealdo said. “This is a cursed big wolf, and I ought to know. I’ve walked every miserable inch of the way from the Yaninan border to here.”

“It is the inches you have yet to walk that truly matter,” the mage said. “What could be more important than taking Cottbus?”

Staying alive, Tealdo thought. He kept that to himself, judging he’d already pushed the mage about as far as he could. He started marching once more, trotting a little to catch up to Trasone. Snow kept swirling down. The stuff was very pretty to watch, but Tealdo wouldn’t have been sorry never to see it again.

By the time evening came, he had to lift up his foot at every step, which made him slow and awkward despite the hard ground under his feet. Captain Galafrone chose a grove of firs as a halting place. Tealdo had hoped for a village, but this would do; the trees grew close enough together to make a good windbreak. He sat down on the leeward side of one of the first. “This isn’t as easy as they thought it would be back home,” he said.

Captain Galafrone looked like an old man now. He’d given everything his kingdom asked of him and more, but he had very little left to give. Wearily, he said, “Can somebody get a fire going before we all freeze to death?” With the fir trees breaking the force of the wind and keeping off a good bit of the snow, Tealdo used his stick to start a small blaze. It wasn’t really enough to keep the soldiers warm, but it did make them feel a little better.

Somebody said, “After we take Cottbus and drive King Swemmel off into the wilderness, this will seem worthwhile.”

“My arse,” Trasone exclaimed. “This’ll be fornicating dreadful if we look back on it a hundred years from now. And half of Unkerlant’s a fornicating wilderness. What do you call this where we’re at right now, a fornicating playground?”

“We still have to take Cottbus,” Galafrone said, rallying a little at the sight of the flames. “I’d like to see Swemmel try and fight a war without the place.”

“Maybe, just maybe,” Tealdo said in speculative tones, “we could spend some time out of the line, let some other people take it on the chin for a while.”

“Can’t let our mates down,” Galafrone said reproachfully.

“No, I suppose not,” Tealdo agreed, and his comrades nodded. He went on, “Not letting my mates down is about the only reason I see for going forward anymore. I don’t care one pile of behemoth dung for the greater glory of Algarve, I’ll tell you that.” The rest of the redheaded soldiers nodded again.

Galafrone said, “Anybody who went through the Six Years’ War knows what glory’s worth--not even a pile of shit, like you said. But we lost that war, and all our neighbors made us pay. If we don’t want to pay again, we’d better win this one.

“Oh, aye,” Tealdo said. “I remember how glad they were when we marched into the Duchy of Bari. That started us getting our own back.” He shook his head in slow, chilly wonder. “Two years ago now, two years and more. A lot’s happened since.”

“I wonder how glad the folk of Bari are now that we marched in then,” Trasone said. “Now they get the joys of fighting in Unkerlant, too. That wasn’t the first thing on their minds back then, I bet.”

“First thing on their minds then was screwing us till we couldn’t see straight.” Fond reminiscence filled Sergeant Panfilo’s voice. “I like the way they thought.”

Captain Galafrone climbed to his feet. “Like Tealdo says, that was awhile ago now. Us, we’ve still got a war to fight. Come on, let’s go do it.”

As soon as the Algarvians came out of the shelter of the wood, Unkerlanters started blazing at them from behind snow-covered bushes. Tealdo threw himself down on his belly in the snow. A beam made steam hiss up from the white powder a couple of feet away from him. When he blazed back, more steam rose from the cover King Swemmel’s men were using.

He thought the troopers under Galafrone’s command outnumbered their Unkerlanter foes. Galafrone evidently thought the same thing, for he sent out flanking parties to left and right to make the Unkerlanters give ground or risk being blazed from three sides at once. A couple of his men fell, but more gained the positions to which they’d been running.