Darkness Descending

How could she be sure? Had she been her grandfather, she would have gone to the shelves of dusty journals to find out what historians and historical mages had written. But she was not Brivibas. Knowing how she’d got free of Spinello didn’t matter to her. Knowing that she’d got free did. There in the crowded little hallway, she began to dance.

For once, Corporal Leudast looked at behemoths with admiration rather than dread. These behemoths belonged to his own side and were trotting into action for King Swemmel and against the Algarvian invaders. “Stomp ‘em flat!” he shouted at the Unkerlanter soldiers riding the big beasts.

“Poor tactics, Corporal,” Captain Hawart said. “More efficient to blaze the redheads down or toss eggs onto their heads.” But having delivered that admonition, he grinned. “I hope they stomp the buggers flat, too.”

“We’ve got fine big behemoths there to do it,” Sergeant Magnulf remarked. “I think they’re bigger than most of the ones the Algarvians breed.”

Hawart nodded. “I think you’re right. That’s the far western strain, bigger and fiercer than any the redheads or the Kaunians ever tamed. I wish we had more of them.” His grin faded. “I wish the size difference mattered more nowadays, too. With the weapons behemoths carry, it’s not body against body and horn against horn as often as it used to be.”

“Maybe not, sir,” Leudast said, “but if I don’t like medium-sized Algarvian behemoths coming at me, Mezentio’s men sure won’t like great big Unkerlanter behemoths coming at them.”

“Here’s hoping they don’t,” Hawart said. “Whatever we do, we’ve got to hold the corridor between Glogau and the rest of the kingdom. The Zuwayzin have stopped their push, but the Algarvians--” He broke off, his face grim.

Leudast wondered if anything could stop the Algarvians. Nothing had yet, or he and his comrades--those of them left alive--wouldn’t have been pushed so far back into Unkerlant. But new recruits in rock-gray tunics kept coming out of die training camps farther west. King Mezentio’s men occupied his own village along with countless others, but Unkerlant still held even more.

“Come on!” Captain Hawart shouted to the mix of veterans and new men making up his regiment. “Forward, and stick close to the behemoths. We need them to smash a hole in the enemy’s line, but they need us, too. If the redheads pop up out of the grass and blaze the men off those beasts, they aren’t any good to us by themselves.”

“Algarvian tactics,” Leudast remarked.

Sergeant Magnulf nodded. “The redheads had a long time to figure out how to put all the puzzle pieces together. We’re having to learn on the fly, and I think we’re doing a lot better than we were just after they hit us.”

“Aye,” Leudast said. “Nothing comes cheap for them these days.” But trying to hold back the Algarvians didn’t come cheap, either. As one who’d started fighting them in central Forthweg and was still fighting them here deep inside Unkerlant, Leudast understood that better than most.

“Forward!” Magnulf shouted, echoing Captain Hawart, and Leudast shouted, too, echoing his sergeant. And forward the Unkerlanter footsoldiers went, on the heels of their behemoths. In a way, such willingness to keep on counterattacking was surprising, considering how often such blows either came to nothing or were frittered away; Leudast remembered the fight for Pfreimd only too well. In another way, though ... A lot of the men who’d retaken Pfreimd only to have to yield it up again were by now dead or wounded. The fresh-faced young soldiers who’d replaced them didn’t realize how easily their superiors could throw their lives away for no good reason.

They’ll find out, Leudast thought. The ones who live will find out. The ones who died would find out, too, but the knowledge would do them no good. After another couple of strides, he wondered how much good it would do the ones who lived.

He pounded along, hunched forward at the waist to make himself as small a target as he could. Men who’d seen some fighting imitated him, and also imitated him in zigzagging frequently so as not to let any Algarvian footsoldiers grow too sure where they’d be in the next moment. Troopers newly pulled from their villages stood straight up and ran straight ahead. The ones who lived would soon learn better, and that lesson would actually do them some good.

Bursting eggs from the behemoths’ tossers tore up the wheatfield ahead. The Algarvians were supposed to have come that far, though no one on the Unkerlanter side seemed sure of exactly where they were. That struck Leudast as inefficient. Quite a few things about the way his side was fighting the war struck him as inefficient. But mentioning them struck him as efficient only in the sense that it would be an efficient way to get himself into trouble.