Into The Darkness

"If I ever told a wench it was her patriotic duty to lay me, she'd figure it was her patriotic duty to smack me in the head," Tealdo said, which made Trasone laugh. Tealdo went on, "The other thing I like about being here is that I'm not blazing away at the Valmierans or the Jelgavans – and they're not blazing away at me.

Trasone laughed again, a big bass rumble that suited his burly frame.

"Well, I won't argue with that. Powers above, I can't argue with that.

But sooner or later we'll have to do some blazing, and when we do it's liable to be worse than facing either one of the stinking Kaunian kingdoms. "

"Sooner or later will take care of itself," Tealdo said. "For now, nobody's blazing at me, and that's just fine."

He strode out of the barracks, which were made of pine timber so new, they still smelled strongly of resinous sap. Off in the distance, waves from the Narrow Sea slapped against the stone breakwater that shielded the harbor of Imola from winter storms. Endless streams of birds flew past overhead, all of them going north. Already they were fleeing the brief summer of the land of the Ice People. Soon, very soon, they would be fleeing the Duchy of Bari, too, bound for warmer climes. Some would stop in northern Algarve and Jelgava; some would cross the Garelian Ocean and winter in tropic Siaulia, which hardly knew the meaning of the word.

Above the twittering flocks, dragons whirled in lazy - no, in lazy looking - circles. Tealdo looked south, toward the sea and toward Sibiu.

More dragons circled over the sea. Tealdo resented the dragonfliers less than he had when he was marching into the Duchy. They kept the Sibs [..ed he ans nian ow, r so aves elded past brief d be ould relian ing..] of lazy Sibiu. [..rs less e...] Sibs from dropping eggs on his head. He heartily approved of that. They also kept the enemy's dragons from peering down on him and his comrades.

He approved of that, too.

A trumpeter on the parade ground in front of the barracks blew a sprightly flourish: the call to assembly. Tealdo dashed for his place.

Behind him, men poured from the barracks as if from a bawdy house the constables were raiding. He took his assigned place in the ranks of the regiment ahead of almost everyone else. That gave him half a minute to brush a few specks of dust from his kilt, to slide his boots along his socks, and to adjust his broad-brimmed hat to the proper jaunty angle before

Sergeant Panfilo started prowling.

Prowl Panfilo did. He favored Tealdo with a glare sergeants surely had to practice in front of a reflecting glass. Tealdo looked back imperturbably. Panfilo reached out and slapped away some dust he'd missed - or perhaps slapped at nothing at all, to keep Tealdo from thinking he had the world by the tail. Sergeants did things like that.

"King Mezentic, doesn't want slobs in his army," Panfilo growled.

"Told you so himself, did he?" Tealdo asked innocently.

But Panfilo got the last word: "That he did, in his regulations, and I'll thank you to remember it." He stalked off to make some other common soldier's life less joyous than it had been.

Colonel Ombruno swaggered out to the front of the regiment. "Well, my pirates, my cutthroats, my old-fashioned robbers and burglars," he called with a grin, "how wags your world today?"

"We are well, sit," Tealdo shouted along with the rest of the men.

"Diddling enough of the pretty girls around these parts?" Ombruno asked.

"Aye!" the men shouted, Tealdo again loud among them. He knew

Ombruno chased - and caught - the Barian women as frequently as he had farther north in Algarve.

"That's good; that's good." The regimental commander rocked back on his heels, then forward once more. "No diddling for now, though, except that we're going to figure out how to diddle our enemies. Go load your packs, grab your sticks, and report back here in ten minutes.

Dismissed!"

This time, Tealdo groaned. He knew what they would be doing for the rest of the day: the same thing they'd been doing most of the days since they'd established themselves by Imola. Unless it involved a pretty girl, he soon got sick of doing the same thing over and over. He realized that, when the time for fighting came, all this practice was liable to help keep him alive. That didn't, that couldn't, make him enjoy it while it was going on.

His pack sat at the foot of his cot, in precisely the prescribed place. His stick leaned against the wall at the left side of the bed, at precisely the pre scribed angle. Panfilo hadn't been able to find a thing to complain about in the way he handled his gear, If Panfilo couldn't find it, it wasn't there.

Tealdo slung the pack over his shoulder, grunting at its weight. When he picked up the stick, his finger accidentally slid into the blazing hole. It didn't matter here, not directly: in training, well away from any fighting front, none of the weapons carried a sorcerous charge. But it was not a good habit to acquire.