Into The Darkness

"Getting myself killed for no good reason isn't in my orders, either," Talsu retorted.

In the end, a couple of platoons did sweep the mountainside. Talsu made sure he got part of that duty, thinking, if you want something done tight, do it yourself But he soon discovered even the whole regiment couldn't have done the job right, not without working on it for a week.

Near the valley floor, the mountainsides were covered with scrubby bushes. He might have walked past an Algarvian company and never known it. Farther up, tumbled rocks offered concealment almost equally good. The sweep found no one, but none of the Jelgavans - save possibly their captain, a pompous marquis - had any illusions about what that proved.

When Talsu got back to the village, he set out his bedroll as far from the handful of buildings as he could. He noted that Smilsu was doing the same thing not far away. The two men shared a wry look, shook their heads, and went on about the business of getting ready for the night.

Talsu woke up at every small noise, grabbing for his stick. No soldier who wanted to live to get old could afford to be a heavy sleeper. But he did not wake for the egg flying past till it slammed into the fanning village.

Three more followed in quick succession: not big, heavy, immensely potent ones, but the sort a crew might hurl with a light tosser a couple of men could break out and carry in and out with them on their backs.

They knocked down three houses and set several others afire. Talsu and his company went out into the fields to keep the Algarvians from getting close enough to blaze at their comrades, who labored to rescue the men trapped in the building the egg had wrecked. Looking back, Talsu saw the house Colonel Dzirnavu had taken as his own now burning mer fily. He wondered whether or not he should hope the illustrious colonel had escaped.

Leofsig trudged east along a dirt road in northern Algarve, in the direction of the town of Gozzo. That was what his officers said, at any rate, and he was wining to take their word for it. The countryside looked much as it did back in Forthweg: ripening wheatfields, groves of almonds and olives and oranges and limes, villages full of houses built from white washed sun-dried brick with red tile roofs.

But the stench of war was in his nostrils, as it had not been around Gromheort. Smoke blew in little thin wisps, like dying fog: some of the wheatfields behind him were no longer worth admiring. And dead horses and cows and unicorns lay bloating by the roadside and scattered through the fields, adding their sickly-sweet reek to the sour sharpness of the smoke. Forthwegians and Algarvians lay bloating in the fields and by the roadside, too. Leofsig did his best not to think about that.

When he'd found himself included in King Penda's levy, he'd been proud, eager, to serve the king and the kingdom. Ealstan, his little brother, had been sick with jealousy at being too young to go off and smash the Algarvians himself. Having seen what went into smashing a foe - and how the foe could smash back - Leofsig would have been just as well pleased to return to Gromheort and help his father cast accounts the rest of his days.

What would please a soldier and what he got were not one and the same.

A trooper mounted on a brown-painted unicorn came trotting back toward the column of which Leofsig was a tiny part. He pointed over his shoulder, gesturing and shouting something Leofsig couldn't understand.

The gestures were plain enough, though. Turning to the soldier on his left, Leofsig said, "Looks like the Algarvians are going to try to hold us in front of Gozzo."

"Aye, so it does," answered his squadmate, whose name was Beocca.

Leofsig envied him his fine, thick beard. His own still had almost hairless patches on his cheeks and under his lower lip. When Beocca scratched his chin, as he did now, the hairs rustled under his fingers. "We've pushed'em back before - otherwise, we wouldn't be here. We can do it again."

Before long, officers started shouting orders. The column deployed into skirmish lines. Along with his comrades, Leofsig tramped through the fields instead of between them. The grain went down under the feet of thousands of men almost as if cut by a reaper.

"One way or another, we'll make the redheads go hungry," Beocca said, stamping down the ripening grain with great relish. Leofsig, sweating in the hot sun, hadn't the energy to stamp. He just nodded and kept marching.

More shouts produced lanes between blocks of men. Unicorn and horse cavalry trotted forward to screen the footsoldiers who would do the bulk of the fighting. Forthwegian dragons flew overhead, some so high as to be only specks, others low enough to let Leofsig hear their shrill screeches.

"I hope they drop plenty of eggs on Gozzo," Beocca said.

"I hope they keep the Algarvians from dropping eggs on us," Leofsig added. After a moment, Beocca grunted agreement.