Out of the Darkness

After the Unkerlanters dealt with the diehards, the rest of the redheads in Torgavi decided they’d had enough. White flags and banners appeared in windows all over town. Kilted soldiers came out of the few strongholds they still held. They might have feared going into captivity, but they feared dying more. With brusque gestures, Garivald and the other Unkerlanters sent the captives to the rear.

Somewhere not far away, a woman started screaming. Garivald looked around for Lieutenant Andelot. When he caught the company commander’s eye, Andelot just shrugged. Garivald nodded. The Algarvians had outraged plenty of women in Unkerlant; he’d seen that for himself in Zossen. Rough justice said his countrymen could pay them back in the same coin. The woman’s screams went on. A moment later, more screams started, these rather shriller.

“Come on,” Andelot called to the men within earshot. “Let’s get down to the river and see if we can find a way to cross. Powers below eat the Algarvians for dropping the bridge in the water.”

“Powers below eat the Algarvians.” Garivald needed no qualifiers for that. Now Andelot was the one who nodded.

What remained of the bridge over the Albi were a couple of stone piers in the river that had supported it and a lot of twisted ironwork. On the far side of the stream, perhaps a hundred yards away, a couple of behemoths and a squad of footsoldiers approached the riverbank. Garivald started to dive for cover.

“Wait,” Andelot said. The one word held such quiet excitement, it froze Garivald where he stood. Andelot went on, “Do you know, Fariulf, I don’t think those are Algarvians at all.”

“Who else would they be, sir?” Garivald shaded his eyes with the palm of his hand to see better. He didn’t think the soldiers on the far bank wore kilts. They weren’t blazing at his comrades and him. They were looking and pointing in much the same way as the Unkerlanters were. One of them trained a shiny brass spyglass on Garivald and the other soldiers here. Garivald could see the fellow jump when he got a good look. “Whoever he is, he just figured out we aren’t redheads.”

The fellow with the spyglass set it on the ground. Cupping his hands in front of his mouth, he shouted, “Unkerlant?”

“Aye, we’re from Unkerlant,” Lieutenant Andelot shouted back. “Who are you?”

Garivald couldn’t make out all of the answer, but one word was very clear: “Kuusamo.” Awe prickled through him. His countrymen and those fellows on the other bank of the Albi had fought their way across half of Derlavai to meet here.

That same realization went through the rest of Swemmel’s soldiers, too. “By the powers above,” someone said softly. “We’ve cut Algarve in half,” somebody else added. Most of the men began to cheer. A couple began to weep. On the other bank, the Kuusamans were cheering, too.

“We’ve got to get across,” Andelot said. He peered up and down the river.

So did Garivald. “There’s a rowboat!” he exclaimed at the same time as Andelot started for it. Garivald hurried after his company commander. If I ever have grandchildren, I can tell them about this, he thought. Another soldier had the same idea. Garivald tapped the three bronze triangles that showed he was a sergeant. The other man bared his teeth in a disappointed grimace, but fell back.

Garivald was clumsy with the oars. He didn’t care, and Andelot didn’t complain. They would have paddled with their sticks had the boat not held oars.

On the other bank, the Kuusamans greeted them with open arms. They gave the Unkerlanters smoked salmon and wine. Garivald had something stronger than wine in his water bottle. He gladly shared it. The swarthy little slant-eyed men smacked their lips and clapped him on the back.

None of them spoke Unkerlanter, and neither Garivald nor Andelot knew any of their tongue. A Kuusaman tried another language. “That’s classical Kaunian,” Andelot said. “I know of it, but I don’t speak it.” He had some Algarvian, and did his best with that. A couple of the Kuusamans proved to know some of the enemy’s speech, too.

“What do they say, sir?” Garivald asked around a mouthful of salmon. The stuff tasted amazingly good.

“They say it won’t be long now,” Andelot answered. Garivald nodded vehemently, to show how much he hoped they were right.

As he had for weeks now, Ealstan peered longingly toward Gromheort. The Unkerlanter army, of which he was a small but unwilling part, hadn’t pushed the attack against his home town so hard as it might have, seeming content to let time and hunger do some of their work for them. The redheads in there are going hungry, he thought. That’s fine, but my family is going hungry, too.