Into The Darkness

Presently, the regimental commander deigned to emerge from the tent. With green-brown tunic and trousers stretched tight to cover his globular frame, with bejeweled medallions of nobility glittering on his chest, with rank badges shining from his shoulder straps, he resembled nothing so much as a heroic coconut. "My men!" he said, and the sagging flesh under his chin wobbled. "My men, you have not advanced far enough or fast enough to satisfy our most magnificent sovereign, his Radiant Splendor, King Donalitu V. Press ahead more bravely hence forward, that he may be more pleased with you.

One of Talsu's friends, a tall, skinny chap named Smidsu, murmured,

"You don't suppose it's ever crossed the king's mind that one of the reasons we haven't gone farther and faster is that we've got Colonel Dzirnavu commanding, do you?"

"He's Count Dzirnavu, too, so what can you do?" Talsu answered.

"The only thing that would happen if we moved fast against the Algarvians; is that we'd leave him behind." He paused for a moment.

"Might be the best thing that could happen to the regiment."

Smilsu snickered, hard enough to draw a glare from a sergeant. Talsu loathed sergeants and pitied them at the same time. They made themselves as hateful as possible to the men of their own estate under them, knowing all the while that the officers above them despised them for their low birth, and that, however heroically they might serve, they could not hope to become officers themselves.

Colonel Dzirnavu, perhaps exhausted at having addressed his soldiers, retreated behind canvas once more. Smilsu said, "You notice the king is displeased with us, not even with us and the colonel?"

"So it goes," Talsu said resignedly. "When we win the war, though, he'll be pleased with the colonel and then, if he happens to recollect, with us, too."

From inside the tent, Dzirnavu let out a bellow. Vartu hurried in to see what his master required. Then he hurried out again. When he returned, he was carrying a small, square bottle of dark green glass.

"What have you got there?" Talsu asked. He knew the answer, but wanted to see what Dzirnavu's servant would say.

Sure enough, Vartu had a word for it: "Restorative."

Talsu laughed. "Make sure he's good and restored, then. If he's back here snoring while the rest of us fight the Algarvians up ahead, we'll all be better off."

"No, no, no." Smilsu shook his head. "Just restore him enough to get him fighting mad, Vartu. I want to see him go charing between the rocks, straight at the Algarvians. They'll run like rabbits - like little fluffy bunnies they'll run. They won't have figured we'd be able to bring a behemoth through the mountains."

Vartu snickered. He almost dropped the dark green bottle, and had to make a desperate lunge for it. Fortunately for him, he caught it.

Unfortunately for him, Colonel Dzirnavu chose that moment to bellow: "[..Corif I ing..] out again: sound it, Vartu, you worthless turd, what are you doing there, fiddling with yourself"

"If you were fiddling with yourself, you'd be having more fun than you are now," Talsu told the servant. With a sigh, Vartu went off to deliver the therapeutic dose to his master.

"If he liked the illustrious count better, we couldn't talk to him the way we do," Smilsu said.

"If he liked the illustrious count better, we'd probably like the illustri ous count better, too, and we wouldn't have to talk to him the way we do," Talsu said.

His friend chewed on that, then slowly nodded. "Some nobles do make good officers," Smilsu admitted. "If they didn't, we never would have won the Six Years' War, I don't suppose."

"I don't know about that," Talsu said. "I don't know about that at all. The Algarvians have noble officers, too."

"Heh." Smilsu shook a fist at Talsu. "Now look what you've gone and done, you lousy traitor."

"What are you talking about?" Talsu demanded.

"You've made me feel sorry for the stinking enemy, that's what." Smilsu paused, as if considering. "Not too sorry to blaze away at him and put him out of his misery, I guess. Maybe I won't have to report you after all."

Talsu started to say it would be softer back of the front than at it, but held his tongue. The dungeon cell waiting for anyone reported as a traitor would make the front feel like a palace. Worse things would happen to a traitor back there than to a soldier at the front, too.

By midafternoon, the regiment had taken possession of a little valley, in which nestled a village whose Algarvian inhabitants had fled, taking their sheep and goats and mules with them. Colonel Dzirnavu promptly established himself in the largest and most impressive house there.

His men, meanwhile, fanned out through the valley to make sure the

Algarvians had not yielded it to set up an ambush. Talsu looked up at the higher ground to either side of the valley. "Hope they haven't got an egg-tosser or two stashed away up there," he remarked. "That sort of thing could ruin a night's sleep."

"That's not in our orders," one of his comrades said.