Darkness Descending

As soon as the ley-line caravan stopped moving, Sergeant Leudast stood up in the straw of the car in which part of his company had traveled. The car was better suited to hauling livestock than soldiers; by the lingering stench that filled it, it had carried a lot of livestock. But Unkerlant, these days, used anything it could.

Leudast undogged the door and slid it open. The fresh air that poured into the car made him notice the livestock smell more than he had for a while; he’d got used to it as the caravan came down into the Duchy of Grelz. “Come on, boys-- out we go,” he said. “Now we’re here, and we’ll have work to do.”

His men held in their enthusiasm, if they’d ever known any. After the botched attack on Lautertal, they had to be wondering again about the orders they were getting. But, wondering or not, they had to obey. So did Leudast. He knew that, too.

He jumped down out of the car and waved to Captain Hawart, who waved back and came up to him with a grin. “Well, what did you think of Cottbus when we went through it?” Hawart asked.

“If you hadn’t told me we were going that way, sir, I never would have known it,” Leudast answered. “And in a closed car like that one, I didn’t get a chance to see it at all. As far as I’m concerned, Cottbus smells like cows.”

“As far as you’re concerned, everything smells like cows right now,” the regimental commander said, and Leudast could hardly disagree. Hawart went on, “But you should have known we’d be going through Cottbus even if I hadn’t told you. It’s the biggest ley-line center in the kingdom; that’s one of the reasons we had to hold onto it no matter what.”

Hawart was a man not just of wit but also of education. He paid Leudast a compliment by assuming the sergeant shared his background. Leudast knew only too well that he didn’t. Trying to hold his own, he said, “You mean hanging onto Cottbus makes us more efficient.” King Swemmel was wild for efficiency, which meant his subjects had to be, too.

To Leudast’s relief and pride, Captain Hawart nodded. “That’s right. If we’d lost Cottbus, we’d be going around three sides of a rectangle to get soldiers from the north down here to Grelz.”

If they’d lost Cottbus, they would have lost the war. Hawart didn’t dwell on that. Neither did Leudast. He said, “Well, we’re here now, and we got here the short way. As long as we are here, we’d better make the redheads sorry about it.”

“Aye, that’d be efficient, sure enough,” Hawart agreed. He didn’t dare sound anything but serious about King Swemmel’s favorite word, either. He slapped Leudast on the shoulder. “Get ‘em moving. Head ‘em east.” He might have been talking about cattle himself. “As soon as the whole army’s in place, we’ll show the Algarvians what we can do.”

With shouts and waves and occasional curses, Leudast did get his men moving. The encampment into which Hawart’s regiment went was one of the biggest ones he’d ever seen: rock-gray tents that stretched and clumped for a couple of miles. Here and there, heavy sticks thrust their noses up into the air.

Pointing to one of them, Leudast said, “Almost makes me hope the cursed Algarvians do send some dragons over. Those little toys will blaze them right out of the sky.”

“So they will--if the weather stays clear so their crews can see where to aim, and so clouds don’t make the beams spread too much to do any good,” Captain Hawart told him. “Don’t go wishing for any more trouble than you’ve got, Leudast. You’ll generally have plenty.”

Leudast knew good advice when he heard it. He saluted. “Aye, sir.” After he made sure the soldiers in his charge were settled, he paced here and there through the encampment, trying to figure out what sort of orders the regiment would get when it went into action.

He returned to his company’s tents certain of but one thing: whatever was coming would be big. The encampment held not only footsoldiers beyond counting but also units of horse and unicorn cavalry--Leudast liked the bugling cries unicorns let out--and a good many behemoths, though he would have liked to see even more of the great beasts. There was also a large dragon farm.

“Oh, aye, Sergeant, we’re as ready as can be for the stinking Algarvians,” one of his troopers said. “What we get to find out next is how ready the redheads are for us.”

Leudast wished he hadn’t put it like that. The Algarvians were rarely anything but ready. They could be beaten--Leudast knew that now, where he hadn’t been so sure the summer before--but they always put up every ounce of fight they had. Anybody who thought that would be different this time had to be drunk, either on spirits or, perhaps more dangerous, on hope.