Darkness Descending

A troop of Algarvian horsemen rode up across the field. Not having been churned by the behemoths, the ground there held their weight better than the alleged road would have. The horsemen had ropes with them. The men who rode the lead behemoth began making lines fast to their beast. “Do they really think they’ll be able to pull him out?” Tealdo asked.

“If they don’t, they’re going to a cursed lot of trouble for nothing,” Trasone answered.

Tealdo hadn’t the faintest idea how to go about putting ropes around a behemoth to get it out of the mud. Unlike him, though, the men who rode the great animals looked to have considered the problem before, for they went about the business as matter-of-factly as he would have built a fire.

“Go!” a behemoth-rider shouted to the horsemen. They urged their animals forward, but could not move the heavy behemoth. “Go!” the rider shouted again. The horses had no better luck the second time. The behemoth-rider threw up his arms in despair. Then his eye fell on the men of Captain Galafrone’s company slogging past. “Lay hold of the ropes and lend a hand, will you?” he asked--begged, actually.

Had he tried to order Galafrone’s soldiers to help, Tealdo was sure the company commander would have consigned him to the powers below. As things were, Galafrone said nothing but, “Aye--needs doing,” and ordered his men to the ropes.

With a company of soldiers adding their strength to that of the horses, the behemoth came up, ever so slowly, out of the clinging mud. The men who rode him cheered themselves hoarse. Then they fastened the ropes to the next behemoth so that the footsoldiers and horses could pull him free, too.

Getting all six of the great beasts out of the ooze took all day. And, by the time the dripping sky began to darken, Tealdo was more worn than he had been after any battle in which he’d ever fought. Too weary to eat, he wrapped his blanket around himself, lay down not far from where he’d labored so hard, and slept like a dead man.

Someone kicked him awake, not unkindly, at dawn the next day. A field kitchen had found the company sometime in the night; he wolfed down a couple of bowls of hot barley porridge with bits of unidentified meat floating in it. In his civilized days, he would have turned up his nose at such coarse fare. Now it brought him back to life. He resumed the long tramp westward with more spirit than he would have thought possible before he ate.

“We’re going to be late to Tannroda,” Galafrone muttered discontentedly. “Powers above, we’re already late to Tannroda.”

When they got to the town, it didn’t seem worth reaching. The Unkerlanters must have fought hard there; it looked as if a giant had set it afire and then stamped out the flames with his feet. A military constable asked Galafrone to which regiment his men belonged. The captain told him, looking apprehensive.

But the fellow just nodded and said, “You’re only the third company through--this wretched weather is playing hob with everyone. Use the northwest road--that one there. The Unkerlanters, curse ‘em, are mounting another counterattack.”

“I thought King Swemmel was supposed to be running short of men by now,” Tealdo said as he and his comrades slogged on to try to throw the Unkerlanters back yet again.

“You’ve been in the army awhile now,” Trasone answered. “Don’t you know better than to believe everything you hear yet?” Tealdo pondered, grunted, nodded, and kept marching.

Tired as usual after a long day’s labor, Leofsig made his way through the streets of Gromheort back toward his home. He stepped carefully; the pavement was wet and slippery from a shower that had passed through earlier in the afternoon. He was wet from the shower, too, which meant he was a little less filthy than on most days. He thought about heading for the baths, but decided not to bother. The sooner he got home, the sooner he could eat and sleep. Nobody was as clean as in the days before the war.

He’d got more than halfway home before he noticed the new broadsheet pasted to walls and fences and trees. The Algarvians had put it up, of course--the penally for a Forthwegian putting up a broadsheet was death, and the penalty for a Kaunian probably something worse. But, regardless of whether the Algarvians had put it up, it showed the tough, jowly image of Bung Plegmund, arguably Forthweg’s greatest ruler, and a troop of hard-looking soldiers carrying spears and bows and dressed in the styles of four hundred years before.

PLEGMUND SMASHED THE UNKERLANTERS, read the legend below the illustration. YOU CAN, TOO! JOIN PLEGMUND’S BRIGADE. BEAT BACK BARBARISM. Smaller

letters gave the address of the recruiting station and also warned, No Kaunians will be accepted into this Brigade.