Darkness Descending

Almost on time, Unkerlanter egg-tossers started pounding Midlum. “Get ready, boys,” Leudast said. “It won’t be long now.” He peered across the fields toward the bursts of sorcerous energy ahead. Now the Algarvians would know something was coming their way. With luck, the bursting eggs would keep them from doing too much about it. With luck . . .

They were alert, there in Midlum. Leudast had never known the Algarvians when they weren’t alert. He wished this might be one of those times, but it wasn’t. Eggs began flying back toward his own position. Fortunately, the Algarvians were tossing a little long, so they didn’t hurt too badly the men gathered to attack them.

Whistles blew, all along the Unkerlanter line: officers ordering their men forward. Leudast was doing an officer’s job, but he didn’t have the formal rank, so he didn’t have a whistle, either. A shout had to do: “Let’s go!”

The behemoths went forward, too. They paused outside of Midlum. Some, the ones that mounted egg-tossers on their backs, joined in pounding the village and the Algarvians inside. Others sent beams from their heavy sticks against the houses to the east. Fires began to burn, lighting up the eastern sky as if dawn were coming too soon.

Leudast flopped down behind what he thought was a snow-covered boulder. But boulders didn’t have hair: it was a dead behemoth--a long-dead behemoth, which meant it had probably belonged to the Algarvians. “Blaze and move!” he shouted. “Blaze and move!”

His men knew what they were supposed to do: some were to blaze to make the Algarvians keep their heads down while others advanced into new cover. Then the two groups would reverse roles. But knowing what to do and doing it right the first time you tried it were two different things. Leudast had expected no better than he got.

He wondered if the Algarvians had any behemoths in Midlum. If they did, the beasts needed to come out and fight: the only thing with much hope of stopping one behemoth was another. But no behemoths came forth from the village. Maybe they’d all frozen to death. Leudast hoped so.

When it was his turn, he ran forward, toward the burning village. He pounded passed a young man lying in the snow clutching both hands to his belly. Those hands couldn’t keep the Unkerlanter soldier’s lifeblood from pouring out. Steam rose from the pool it formed. Leudast shook his head and ran on.

He’d fought to hold the Algarvians out of a good many villages. He knew how the job was done. So did they, worse luck, and they proved as stubborn in defense as they ever had on the attack. But they couldn’t simply stay in Midlum and fight it out to the last man there, for the Unkerlanters were not only assailing the strongly held village but also sending men around it to either side to cut it off from other territory the redheads held.

You taught us that trick, you whoresons, Leudast thought. How do you like having it pulled on you?

He didn’t know what he would have done in the Algarvian commander’s predicament. The redhead sent some of his men east toward their comrades and used the rest to make a stand. Unkerlanter behemoths lumbered after the Algarvians struggling through the snow. With the eastern sky now going gray with true dawn, the retreating Algarvians made easy targets.

Inside Midlum, though, the enemy kept on fighting hard. A beam zipped past Leudast’s head. He threw himself flat and blazed back. A scream answered him. He grunted in satisfaction, but didn’t rise too soon. Any Algarvians who’d come this far were likely veterans and full of the tricks veterans knew.

Well, Leudast had a few tricks, too. “Surrender!” he shouted in his own language and then in what he thought was Algarvian. Returning to Unkerlanter--he had no choice--he went on, “You can’t get away.”

Maybe some of Mezentio’s men understood Unkerlanter. Maybe they didn’t need to understand it--maybe they could see what was so for themselves. Little by little, the blazing died away. Algarvians started coming out of battered huts and holes in the grounds. They carried no sticks. Their hands were high. Fear filled their faces.

“Powers above,” Leudast whispered in something approaching awe. He’d never seen so many redheads surrender, not all at once. After staring, he rushed forward with the rest of his men to plunder the Algarvians.

As Trasone stumbled south and east through the snow, he thought about what might have been. “Hey, Sergeant!” he called, his breath making a bank of mist around his head. “Did we really see the towers of stinking Swemmel’s stinking palace?”

“Don’t know about you, but I sure as blazes did,” Sergeant Panfilo answered, his voice coming muffled through the wool scarf he’d wrapped around the lower part of his face. “You were there in the market square at Thalfang, same as me. If we could have made it across to the other side ...”