Into The Darkness

"It is for this that you waved at the Forthwegian dragonfliers when we went to examine the ancient power point, my granddaughter," Brivibas said. "This is what King Penda sought to visit upon the kingdom of Algarve. Now that he finds it visited upon his own kingdom instead, whom has he to blame?"

Vanai looked for such philosophical detachment inside herself. looked for it and found it not. "These are our neighbors who suffer, my grandfather, our neighbors and some of them folk of our blood."

"Had they but stayed here rather than foolishly fleeing, they would be safe now," Brivibas said. "Shall I then praise them for their foolishness, cherish them for their want of wisdom?"

Before Vanai could answer, the first eggs began falling inside Oyngestun. More screams rose, these close and urgent. Algarvian dragons ruled the sky above the village; none painted in Forthwegian colors came flying out of the west to challenge them. More and more eggs fell. "Get down, you lackwits!" a Forthwegian soldier shouted at Vanai and Brivibas.

Before Brivibas could move, a shard of glass or brickwork scored a bleeding line across the back of his hand. He stared at the little wound in astonishment. "Who is the fool now, my grandfather?" Vanai asked, speaking to him with more bitterness than she'd ever used before. "Who now wants wisdom?"

"Get down!" the soldier yelled again.

This time, Brivibas did, though still a beat behind his granddaughter.

Cradling the injured hand to his chest, he said, "Who would have imagined, after the Six Years' War, that folk would be eager for more such catastrophes?" His voice was plaintive and without understanding.

A Forthwegian officer called, "Build the rubble into barricades! If those redheaded whoresons want this place, they're going to have to pay for it."

"That's the spirit!" Vanai shouted in Forthwegian. The officer waved to her and went on directing his men.

In pungently sardonic Kaunian, Brivibas said, "Splendid! Encourage him to endanger our lives as well as his own." Still angry, Vanai ignored him.

The Forthwegian soldiers briskly went about turning Oyngestun into a strongpoint, They beat back the first Algarvian probe at the town that afternoon. Wounded Algarvians, Vanai discovered, screamed no differently from wounded Kaunians or Forthwegians. But then, toward sunset, the Forthwegian crystallomancer cried in fury and despair. "The Unkerlanters!" he yelled to his commander - and to anyone else who would hear. "The Unkerlanters are pouring over the western border, and there's no one to stop them!"

"Now this," Leudast said as he tramped through western Forthweg, "this is what efficiency is all about."

Sergeant Magnulf nodded. "You had best believe it, soldier," he said.

"Shows the Forthwegians need lessons. If you're stupid enough to start a war on one border when the kingdom on your other border can't stand you, seems to me you deserve whatever happens to you."

"I hadn't even thought about that," Leudast said. "I was just thinking we're going to have a lot easier time than we did against the Gyongyosians." He looked around. "A lot better country to fight in, too."

"Aye, so it is," Magnulf agreed.

"Reminds me of home, as a matter of fact." Leudast pointed west ward. "My family's farm isn't that far on the other side of the border, and it looks a lot like this back there." He waved.

Most of the farm buildings hereabouts were of sun-dried brick brightened with whitewash or, less often, paint. Wheat ripened golden in the fields; plump, ripe olives made branches sag. The breeds of cattle and sheep the Forthwegians raised were similar to those with which Leudast had grown up back in Unkerlant.

Nor did the Forthwegians themselves look that different from Unkerlanters. They were, most of them, stocky and swarthy, with proud, hook-nosed faces. Save that the men wore beards, Leudast would have been hard pressed to prove he'd entered another kingdom.

Most of the beards he saw were grizzled or white; the young men were off in the east, fighting the Algarvians. Graybeards and women, those who had not fled, stared with terrible bitterness as the Unkerlanter soldiers marched past. Every so often, one of them would shout something Leudast almost understood; the Unkerlanter dialect he spoke wasn't that far removed from Forthwegian. It was close enough to make him certain the locals weren't paying compliments.

Every so often, Forthwegian border guards and the small garrisons King Penda had left behind in the west would try to make a stand against the Unkerlanters, defending a line of hills or a town or sending out cavalry to nip at the thick columns of men King Swemmel had flung into their kingdom.

They were brave. Leudast couldn't see that it did them much good. The Unkerlanters; flowed around them, surrounded them, and attacked them from all sides at once. Behemoths trampled Forthwegian cavalry underfoot.