Into The Darkness

Half his men - half the men he had left - dove into such cover as th could find - mostly the holes burst eggs had dug in the ground. The re raced by them. Then they flattened out and blazed at the Algarvians whith the others rose and dashed past. Little by little, they worked their pen. thou oldier among d that given nd his king as out at thought [..] over his of them he'd lost any men probably erthought orne. "By [..vcr as they d The Test lans..] while their way toward the trenches from which the redheads were blazing at them.

Skarmi took shelter in a hole himself, waiting for his next chance to advance. He looked around, hoping the order he'd had to give hadn't slowed his company too badly. What he saw left him wide-eyed with [..dis may..] As many Valmierans were running back toward their own lines as were still going forward against the enemy. Of the ones still advancing, most paid no attention to tactics that might have cut their losses. They kept moving up tin they went down. When they could bear no more, they broke and fled.

"You see, sir?" Raunu shouted from a hole not far away. "This is how I feared it would be."

"What can we do?" Skarmi asked.

"We aren't going to break through their lines," Raunu answered.

"We aren't even going to get into their lines - or if we do, we won't come out again. Best we can do now is hang tight here, hurt'em a bit, and get back to where we started from after nightfall. If you order me for ward, though, sir, I'll go."

"No," Skarmi said. "What point to that but getting us killed to no purpose?" He assumed that, if he ordered Raunu forward, he would have to try to advance, too. "This is what you warned me about before the attack began, isn't it?"

"Aye, sir. Good to see you can recognize it," Raunu said. "I only wish our commanders could." Skarmi started to reproach the sergeant for speaking too freely. He stopped with the words unspoken. How could Raunu have spoken too freely when all he did was tell the truth?

Leofsig still retained the tin mess kit he'd been issued when mustered into King Penga's levy. As captives went, that made him relatively lucky.

Forthwegian soldiers who'd lost their kits had to make do with bowls that held less. The Algarvians might have issued their own kits to men who lacked them, but that didn't seem to have entered their minds.

What had crossed their minds was carefully counting the captives in each barracks in the encampment before those captives got anything in their mess kits or bowls. Leofsig would not have bet that the Algarvian guards could count to ten, even using their fingers. The endless recounts to which the captives had to submit argued against it, at any rate.

Every so often, a captive or two really did turn up missing. That meant the redheads tore the encampment apart till they found out how the [.in.] had disappeared. It also meant a week of half rations for the escapee barracksmates. No one got fat on full rations. Half rations were slo starvation. Half rations were also an argument for betraying anyo thinking of getting away.

This morning, everything seemed to add up. "Powers above praised," Leofsig muttered. He was cold and tired and hungry; standi in formation in front of the barracks was not his idea of a good tim [..]

Standing in line and waiting for the meager breakfast the cooks would dole out didn't strike him as delightful, either. Eventually, though, he get sfood in his belly, which came close to making the wait worthwhile [..]

Plop! The sound of a large ladle of mush landing in his mess kit w about as appetizing as the stuff itself. The mush was mostly wheat porridge, with cabbage and occasional bits of salt fish or pork mixed in. The captives ate it breakfast, dinner, and supper. It was never very good. This morning, it smelled worse than usual.

Leofsig ate it anyhow. If it made him sick - and it did make people sick every so often - he'd go to the infirmary. And if anybody claimed he [.w.] malingering, he'd throw up in the wretch's lap.

The handful of Kaumans in his barracks ate in a small knot by the selves, as they usually did. He would sometimes join them. So would few of his fellow Forthwegians. Most, though, wanted nothing to d with the blonds. And a few, like Merwit, still stirred up trouble eve chance they got.

"Hey, you!" Merwit said now. Leofsig looked up from his mush. Sure enough, Merwit was staring his way with a smile that made him too neither friendly nor attractive. "Aye, you, yellow-hair lover," the [.bu.] captain went on. "You going on latrine duty after breakfast? That'd give you the chance to hang around with your pals?"

"You ought to try it yourself, Merwit," Leofsig answered. "There' nobody else I know who's half so full of shit."

Merwit's eyes went big and wide. He and Leofsig had quarreled Fefore but Leofsig hadn't given back insult for insult tin this moment. Carefu[..]

Merwit set down his own mess kit. "You're going to pay for that," he sa in matter-of-fact tones. He charged forward like a behemoth.