Darkness Descending

“Did you hear that, boys?” Istvan said to his squad. He felt about to burst with pride. “We’re the best, and the captain knows it. We’ll wreck the Unkerlanters good and proper, won’t we?”

“Aye,” the soldiers chorused. They took their places on the left of Captain Tivadar’s little line of battle and started east with the rest of the company. The wind blew snow from the ground and lashed their backs. It blew snow through the bare branches of stunted birch trees that clung to the sides of the valley in which the village lay. Istvan and his squad scurried through the trees. They were the only cover the freezing landscape offered.

Eggs began bursting farther south. “May the stars go dark for the Unkerlanters!” Istvan said angrily. “They weren’t supposed to have a tosser in there.” What that meant was, Captain Tivadar hadn’t warned him to expect one.

Kun said, “Their officers are probably saying we aren’t supposed to be coming after them. We need to be more like mages and deal with what is, not with what’s supposed to be.” He went into a snow-covered hole in the ground that was where it wasn’t supposed to be, and rose coated with white. Istvan was unkind enough to laugh.

Not three minutes later, he spied movement ahead, the distinctive movement only a human body can make. All the Gyongyosians in this part of the world were with him. That made the stooped figure ahead an enemy. Istvan threw his stick up to his shoulder and blazed.

The Unkerlanter shrieked and fell. “It’s a woman!” Szonyi exclaimed as she kept on shrieking. “What’s a woman doing out here?”

“We’ll never know,” Istvan said as he ran toward her through the snow. He pulled a knife from its sheath. “Wrong place at the wrong time, that’s all. Have to shut her up.” Nervously, he glanced south, hoping the noise of combat there would keep anyone in the village from hearing her cries.

She found a rock in the snow and threw it at him as he drew near. It missed. She was groping for another one when he cut her throat. Her blood splashed red across the winter white.

“That was a waste, Sergeant,” one of his troopers said from behind him.

“We haven’t got time for fun,” Istvan answered with another shrug. “Too cursed cold to go whipping it out, anyhow. Come on. Keep moving.”

He tried to gauge how the fighting was going by where the Unkerlanters’ eggs were bursting. The rest of the company wasn’t moving as fast as Captain Tivadar had hoped. Istvan scowled. Instead of just following orders, he’d have to start thinking for himself. He didn’t care for that. It was, properly, an officer’s job.

As if to reassure him, Szonyi pointed down in the direction of the village and said, “We’ve set it afire.”

“Aye.” Istvan considered that, then slowly nodded. “That’ll help. The Unkerlanters will have a harder time aiming their tosser.” He thought a little more. His mind didn’t move very fast but had a way of getting where it was going. “And with the wind blowing at our backs, the smoke’ll help hide us when we get into place to come at ‘em from behind. We’d better do that. The rest of the company is going to need us even more than the captain thought they would.”

But for that luckless woman (what had she been doing?--gathering firewood, most likely), no one in the village had any notion his squad was moving around it toward the rear. Once in position, Istvan peered toward the place from behind a rock. Through blowing smoke, he saw Unkerlanter soldiers running here and there. The wind carried their guttural shouts to his ears.

One of them set an egg on the tosser’s hurling arm. Another launched the egg toward Istvan’s countrymen. Catching sight of the egg-tosser told him what he had to do next. He pointed toward it. “We’re going to take that miserable thing. The rest of the boys will have an easier time then. Forward--and don’t shout till you’re sure they’ve spied us.”

He was the first one to break cover and run toward the village. His men followed. If he went, they would go. The crunch of their boots on crusted snow seemed dreadfully loud in his ears. So did his own coughing after he sucked in too thick a lungful of smoky air.

But the tunic-clad Unkerlanters, intent on serving their egg-tosser and beating back the threat from the west, paid no attention to their rear till too late. Because of the smoke in the air, Istvan had to get closer than usual to them before he started blazing. First one of the enemy soldiers fell, then the other. The second Unkerlanter was grabbing for his own stick to blaze back when another Gyongyosian’s beam finished him.

“Gyongyos!” Istvan did shout then, as loud as he could. “Ekrekek Arpad! Gyongyos!” The rest of the squad echoed the cry. To the Unkerlanters’ frightened ears, they must have sounded like a regiment. They fought almost like a regiment, too, for the Unkerlanters, well concealed against Tivadar’s attackers, were hardly hidden at all from men coming the other way.