Into The Darkness

"We're hard to hit anyway, at this range," Smilsu answered. "You have to be lucky to blaze a man with a footsoldier's stick out past a couple-three furlongs. You have to be even luckier to hurt him very bad if you do hit him."

As if to make him out a liar, one of his comrades fell, clutching at his leg and cursing. But most of the Algarvians' beams went wide or had dispersed too widely to be damaging. A couple of them started fires in the grass. That made Talsu want to cheer: Smoke weakened beams, too.

But then, with a roar and a blast of fire, an egg bunied in the ground burst under a Jelgavan soldier. He had time for only the beginning of a shriek before the energies consumed him. The rest of the Jelgavans skidded to a halt. Talsu dug in his heels and stood panting where he was.

"They don't hide those things by ones and twos," he said. "They put'em down by the score, by the hundred." All the ground on which he was not standing at the moment suddenly seemed dangerous. Had he jus trotted past an egg? If he took one step back or to either side, would he suddenly go up in a sheet of fire?

He didn't want to find out. He didn't want to stay where he either. If he kept standing here, the redheads in the pear orchard woul blaze him sooner or later. He threw himself down on the ground-, an didn't touch off an egg doing it. Slowly and carefully, he crawled for ward, examining every stretch of ground before he trusted his weight t it. If it looked disturbed in any way, he crawled around it.

Colonel Adomu didn't take long to notice his flanking maneuver had slowed. Colonel Dzirnavu, had he bothered making a flanking maneuver - in itself unlikely - wouldn't have kept such close ley of it once it got going. But the energetic Adomu not only saw the slowing but realized what had caused it. He sent an egg-dowser forward to find a clear way through the stretch of ground filled with hidden peril.

Talsu watched the dowser - a tall, skinny man who managed to look disheveled despite uniform tunic and trousers - with the fascination any man gives to someone who can do something he cannot. The fellow held his forked rod out before him as if it were a pike. Dowsing was an ever more specialized business these days. Talsu's ancestors had found water with it in the days of the Kauman Empire. Now people all over Derlavai dowsed for water with it in the days of the Kaunian Empire. Now people all over Derlavai dowsed for water, for metals, for coal, for rock oil (not that the latter had much use), for things missing, and everywhere and always for things desired.

And soldiers dowsed for dragons in the air and for eggs hidden under the ground. "How did you learn to find buried eggs?" Talsu called to the dowser.

"Carefully." The fellow's lips skinned back from his teeth in a humor less grin. "Now don't jog my elbow any more, or I'm liable not to be careful enough. I wouldn't like that: in my line of work, your first mis take is usually your last one." His rod dipped sharply downward. With a grunt of satisfaction, he took from his belt a sharp stake with a bright streamer of cloth at the unpointed end. He plunged it into the ground to show where the egg lay. The soldiers in the company followed him in as near single file as made no difference as he marked out a path of safety.

Snudsu said, "I wonder what happens when the Algarvians come up with a new kind of egg, or with a new way to mask the eggs they have already." He kept his voice down so the dowser wouldn't hear him.

Also quietly, Talsu answered, "That's when they start teaching a new dowser how to do the job." His friend nodded.

Had the Algarvians; been present in large numbers, sergeants would have needed to start teaching a lot of new Jelgavan soldiers how to do the job. But the redheads could not take advantage of the way they had stalled their opponents. Before long, the dowser stopped finding eggs to mark. The company started moving faster again. The dowser went along in case the men ran into - literally and metaphorically - another trouble some belt of land.

But they didn't, and soon began blazing into the pear orchard from t side. The Algarvians had been protecting themselves behind trees against an attack from the front. And, as soon as Colonel Adomu realized flanking force finally was doing what he'd intended it to do, in went the attack from the front.

That made the Algarvians stop paying so much attention to Talsu at his friends. Vartu let out a whoop, then howled, "Now we've got 'em."

Talsu hoped Colonel Dzirnavu's former servant was right. If he wrong, a lot of Jelgavans would end up dead, Talsu all too probably among them. He howled, too, as much to hold fear at bay as for any other reason.