Darkness Descending

“Of course we would.” Laughter dropped from the king like a discarded cloak. He leaned forward in his seat and brought the full weight of his presence to bear on Rathar. “Where else, how else, shall we get chainmail and a broadsword of our own?”

That was another question Rathar wished Swemmel had not asked. Having fallen into the abyss themselves, the Algarvians would now pull him in after them.

He had never been a man to look away from trouble, but he looked away now, trying to distract King Swemmel from a large concern with small ones: “Where would we get the victims?” he asked. “We had but a handful of Kaunians on our soil, and even if you thought to use them for such purposes, they’re in Algarvian hands now. And if we start slaying redheaded captives, they’ll murder ours in place of the Kaunians.”

Swemmel’s shrug chilled the marshal with its indifference. “We have plenty of peasants. We care nothing--nothing at all--if only one of them is left alive when the fighting’s over, so long as the very last Algarvian is dead.”

“I don’t know if we can quickly match them in their magecraft,” Addanz said. “As with so much else, they have been readying themselves for long and long. Even if we are forced to this thing to survive”--he shuddered--”we have much learning to do.”

“Why did you not begin learning before?” the king demanded.

His archmage looked back at him in harassed fury. “Because I never imagined--no one ever imagined--the Algarvians would be so vile. I never imagined anyone could be so vile. And I three times never imagined I could be forced to be so vile.”

Rathar had seen that defiance sometimes got Swemmel’s notice in a way nothing else could. Sometimes a defiant man found he didn’t want Swemmel’s notice once he had it, but that didn’t happen here. In surprisingly mild tones, the king asked, “And would you rather go down to ruin because the redheads were vile and you couldn’t stomach matching them?”

“No, your Majesty.” Addanz had to know his head would answer for any other reply.

“Nor would we,” King Swemmel said. “Go, then. You and your mages had better learn how to do as the Algarvians do, and you had better learn it soon. We promise you, Archmage: if we do fall before the redheads, you will not last long enough for Mezentio’s men to finish off. We shall make certain of that. Do you understand us?”

“Aye, your Majesty,” Addanz said. Swemmel made a peremptory gesture of dismissal. Addanz fled. Rathar did not blame him. The marshal would have liked to flee, too. But the king had not dismissed him.

Swemmel said, “Your task, Marshal, is to make sure the Algarvians cannot finish us before we find out how best to fight back. How do you aim to do that?”

Rathar had been thinking of little else since word of the disasters reached him. He began ticking points off on his fingers: “We are spreading our men thinner, so the Algarvians cannot catch so many of them with one sorcerous stroke. We are making our positions deeper, so we can attack the redheads even if they pierce our front.”

“This will slow Mezentio’s bandits. It will not stop them,” Swemmel observed. He wasn’t stupid. Often, he would have been easier to deal with had he been stupid. He was shrewd, just shrewd enough to think himself smarter than he really was.

Here, however, he was also right. Rathar said as much, and then continued, “The weather also works for us. Try as they will, the Algarvians cannot go forward as fast as they would like. We trade space for time.”

“We have less space to trade than we did,” the king growled.

And you were on fire for charging straight at King Mezentio. Rathar thought. He couldn’t say that. He did say, “Winter is coming. Advancing will get no easier for them. And, your Majesty, we are also doing all we can to send parties behind the enemy’s position to sabotage the ley lines coming out of Forthweg. If the cursed redheads can’t bring the Kaunians forward, they can’t very well kill them.”

Rathar seldom won out-and-out approval from Swemmel, but this was one of those times. “Now that is good,” the king said. “That is quite good.” He paused; his approval never lasted long. “Or is it? Can the redheads not slay them back in Forthweg and bring the power of the magic forward?”

“You would do better asking Addanz than me,” Rathar said. “My answer is only a guess, but it would be no. If the Algarvians could do that, why would they put the Kaunians in camps near the front?”

Swemmel fingered his narrow chin. But for being dark of hair and eye, he did look like an Algarvian. He grunted. “It could be so. And if we overrun any of those camps, we can dispose of the Kaunians in them instead of using our own folk. That would be funny, having the redheads do our gathering work for us.”

He had a rugged sense of humor. Rathar had seen as much over the course of many years. The marshal said, “We might do better to turn them loose and let them try to get back to Forthweg.”