Into The Darkness

"Why shouldn't they?" Trasone answered. "Once they get us to Sibiu, their job is done. They can sit back and drink wine. We're the ones who get to pay the bill after that."

He wasn't quite being fair. If the Sibs got the chance, they'd blaze at ships as well as soldiers. Before Tealdo could point that out, the motion of the Ambuscade changed. The pitching from bow to stem became more emphatic, and the ship began to roll from side to side as well. "We're off," Tealdo said.

His stomach took the ship's motion in stride. Before long, though, he discovered that, as painstaking as the company's combat rehearsals had been, they hadn't covered everything. Several soldiers started puking.

The compartment did have buckets to cope with such emergencies, but the emergency often arrived before the bucket did. In spite of everyone's best efforts, the compartment became a very unpleasant place.

The amused contempt the yachtsmen showed as they carried buckets away did not endear them to their passengers. "If I could move, I'd kill those bastards," a sufferer groaned.

Nobody could move much. The compartment held too many men for that. Tealdo hoped no one would heave up dinner on to his shoes. Past that, he squatted and chatted with the men around him and took [..breatlis..] as shallow as he could.

Time dragged on. He supposed it had grown dark outside. He couldn't have proved it, not down here. Every so often, someone fed the lantern oil. Those flickering flames were all the light he and his comrades had. For A he knew, they were below the waterline, which would have made portholes a bad idea.

He wished lie were a horse or a unicorn, so he could sleep while he wasn't lying down. A couple of soldiers did start to snore. He envied them. Because he envied them, he laughed all the louder when [.i.] roll bigger than usual made them topple over.

After what seemed like forever, the Ambuscade heeled sharply. Sailors shouted in excitement. "Get ready, boys," Sergeant Panfilo said. "I think the shop is about to open for business."

While Captain Larbino was saying the same thing in more elegant words, the Ambuscade proved him right by thudding against a quay - Tealdo hoped that was what had happened, at any rate, and that the ship hadn't struck a rock instead. The door to the compartment flew open.

"Out! Out! Out!" a yachtsman screamed.

Out the company went, and up the narrow stair-way that led to the deck. "Nobody falls!" Panfilo bellowed. "Nobody falls, or he answers to me." And nobody did fall. The men had rehearsed going up stairs like these so many times, they might have been stairs to the houses in which they'd grown up.

Cold, fresh air smelling of sea salt and smoke slapped Tealdo in the face. Not far away, another Algarvian ship burned brightly, lighting up the darkened harbor of Tirgoviste. Tealdo hoped the soldiers had been able to get off the ship. Every man counted in this assault. If the

Algarvians did not conquer Sibiu, they would not be going home again.

After that, he stopped worrying about anything except what he was supposed to do. He followed the man in front of him over the gangplank and on to the quay. That too went off as it should have done. No one fell into the water. Had anybody done so, the weight of his kit would quickly have dragged him under.

"Move!" Captain Larbino shouted. "We have to move fast! Don't stand there gaping. We've still got the headquarters building to take."

No one was standing around gaping, either. That would have been handing the Sibians an invitation to blaze the men. Nobody with sticks had set up at the landward end of the quay, and Tealdo, and his comrades didn't propose to wait till someone did. "Easier than practice, so far," he said.

"So far, maybe," Trasone answered. "But nobody who got killed in practice stayed dead. Won't be like that here."

Sure enough, the Sibians began to wake up. They started blazing at the invaders from buildings by the port. But it was too late then, with

Algarvians flooding into Tirgoviste from all their ships. Tealdo wondered how things were going at the other Sibian ports. Well, he hoped. Hope was all he could do.

Shouts rose, up ahead. He could understand most of them. Sibian very close to the southern dialects of Algarvian, and not tremendous removed from his own more northerly accent. The Sibs were ye about stopping his pals and him. "Good luck," he snarled, a carnivo grin on his face.

He hadn't realized how meticulously his superiors had reproduce environs of Tirgoviste harbor at the rehearsal sites near Imola.

Sibians popped up to blaze at his comrades and him, they did so in places from which Algarvian "defenders" had fought during those I tedious practice runs. Tealdo knew where they would be almost be they got there. He knew where to take cover, and where to aim his s[..].

He didn't have to think. He just had to do, and to go on doing.

"Keep moving!" Larbino yelled. "Don't let them gather themse

Don I t let them make a stand. If we press them hard now, they'll br[..]