Darkness Descending

“Aye.” Trasone broke a corner off the block and stuffed the cheese into his mouth. With it still full, he went on, “Toss me a couple more of those, pal, will you? It’s not the greatest stuff in the world, but it’ll keep a man going for a while.”

“Help yourself--stuff your pack full,” the other Algarvian said. “If we don’t haul it away with us, it’s not going anywhere.” Trasone took him up on that. So did Sergeant Panfilo. They both ate as they loaded up, too. Trasone guessed a lot of the soldiers at the caravan car had been garrisoning Aspang. They didn’t have the abraded look of men who’d been fighting and marching and fighting again for much too long.

Eggs began bursting once more, this time west of Aspang. Trasone looked up, but saw no dragons. That meant the Unkerlanters had brought their egg-tossers almost far enough forward to start hitting the town. Trasone cursed under his breath. He’d hoped the rear guard would have done a better job of holding back King Swemmel’s men than that.

“To me!” shouted the officer who’d taken over the battalion, or what was left of it, after Sergeant Panfilo brought it out of Thalfang. “Come on--we have to hold this place. Can’t let the Unkerlanters have it, come what may.”

Trasone was more than willing to ignore the dapper little nobleman, but Panfilo, after stuffing a last brick of cheese into his pack, turned away from the caravan car. “Come on,” he told Trasone. “Major Spinello’s not so bad, as officers go.”

“Not so bad,” Trasone agreed grudgingly.  “But I’d got used to being commanded by commoners--first Galafrone, then you. Nobles just aren’t the same after that. Harder to take ‘em seriously, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh, aye,” Panfilo said. “Don’t worry, though. I’m still commanding you. Now get moving.”

Get moving Trasone did. Major Spinello was still flitting every which way at once and talking like a man possessed: “Come on, my dears. If the Unkerlanters are going to pay us a call, we must be ready to receive them in the style they deserve. After all, we wouldn’t want to disappoint them, now would we?”

He sounded like a bad caricature of every noble officer Trasone had ever known. Even the dour veteran couldn’t help snickering. Up till very recently, Spinello hadn’t been a combat soldier; he kept going on and on about the Forthwegian village whose garrison he’d headed till the war here in the west yanked him out of it. Not all of his orders made the best sense in the world. But Trasone had already seen that he was recklessly brave. As long as he listened to Panfilo and others who actually knew what they were doing, he’d shape pretty well.

What needed doing here was obvious, and Major Spinello saw it. He posted his battalion in among the ruins at the western edge of Aspang. “Find yourselves some good holes,” he urged the soldiers. “Make sure they’re as tight and as deep as a Kaunian trollop’s twat.” He sighed. “Ah, the one I was laying before duty called me here.” He sighed again and kissed his fingertips.

Trasone would sooner have been laying a pretty blonde than lying in wait for some ugly Unkerlanters, too. Nobody’d given Spinello a choice, and nobody was giving him one, either. He found cover behind a waist-high wall that was all that remained of a house or shop and settled in. Looking around, he spied a couple of other places to which he could withdraw in a hurry if he had to.

Unkerlanter eggs fell closer and closer to the town, then began bursting around him and his comrades. He kept his head down and huddled close to the wall. Before long, the storm of sorcerous energy moved deeper into Aspang. Trasone knew what Swemmel’s men were doing: they were going after the Algarvian egg-tossers. He also knew that meant the attack was on its way.

He looked out over the ruined wall and steadied his stick on it. Sure enough, the Unkerlanters were forming up just out of stick range: row upon close-ranked row of blocky men in white smocks over rock-gray tunics. It was, in its way, an awe-inspiring sight.

To his surprise, he could hear the command the Unkerlanter officer shouted. The enemy soldiers stormed forward, some of them arm in arm. “Urra!” they shouted: a deafening roar. “Urra! Swemmel! Urra!”

Almost at once, eggs began bursting among them, tearing holes in their neat ranks--they hadn’t succeeded in knocking out the Algarvian tossers after all. Still shouting, more Unkerlanters hurried up to fill the gaps. Along with his comrades, Trasone started blazing at them. Soldiers went down as if scythed. The ones who didn’t go down, though, kept on coming, roaring like demons.

Trasone’s mouth went dry. If that human wave broke over his battalion . . . He looked around at his lines of retreat again. Would he have time to use them?

He wished Algarvian mages back of the front would slaughter some Kaunians to get the sorcerous energy for a spell to stop the Unkerlanters in their tracks.