Out of the Darkness

“Thank you so much.” Lurcanio unfolded the paper. It was written in classical Kaunian. To Colonel Lurcanio of the Algarvian army, greetings, he read. Major Vizgantu is my chosen representative in requesting a surrender of the Algarvian forces currently surrounded in this area. If you do not permit him to proceed to your commander, no other representative will be proffered, and no other request for surrender will be made. The fate of your army will be left, in that case, to the chances of the battlefield. The choice, sir, is yours. Your humble servant, Marshal Araujo, commanding allied armies in southern Algarve.

“Have you read this?” Lurcanio asked the Valmieran. A slight smirk was all the answer he needed. He let out a long sigh. The enemy commander had had his revenge, and had taken more than he’d expected. Was Araujo bluffing? Lurcanio studied the note again. He didn’t think so, and he knew the army of which he was a part had no hope of stopping any serious push the Lagoans and Kuusamans--aye, and the Valmierans--chose to make.

“What is your answer, Colonel?” Vizgantu demanded.

Lurcanio contemplated his choice: give up his pride or give up any hope for the soldiers in the pocket with him. He knew more than a few of his countrymen who would have sacrificed the army for the sake of pride. Had he been younger, he might have done the same himself. As things were . . .

He thought of salvaging what he could by insulting the Valmieran again, by saying that if Marshal Araujo, a distinguished soldier, chose to use a man who was anything but as his emissary, that had to be respected, but he himself deplored it. He thought of it, then shook his head. It would have come out as childish petulance, no more. All he said was, “I shall send you forward, Major.”

“Thank you,” Vizgantu said. “You might have done this yesterday and saved everyone a good deal of difficulty.”

“So I might have, but I did not,” Lurcanio replied. “And I doubt everything was perfectly smooth in Valmiera almost five years ago, when you folk found yourselves on the other end of victory.”

Vizgantu gave back a proverb in classical Kaunian: “The last victory counts for more than all the others before it.”

Since Lurcanio knew that to be true, he didn’t try to argue it. He just sent the Valmieran major deeper into the pocket the Algarvians still held. If the Algarvian commander chose to surrender, that was, or at least might have been, his privilege. And if he chose to fight on ...

If he chooses to fight on, he’s a madman, Lurcanio thought. That, of course, had little to do with anything. If the Algarvian commander chose to fight on, his men would keep fighting for as long as they could. Lurcanio didn’t know what good it would do, but he hadn’t known what good further fighting would do for quite a while. He didn’t want to die at this stage of the war--his goal was to be blazed by an outraged husband at the age of 103--but he knew he would go forward if ordered, or hold in place as long as he could.

The order didn’t come. Instead, that afternoon a runner announced, “General Prusione will yield up this army at sunrise tomorrow.”

“It’s over, then,” Lurcanio said dully, and the runner nodded. He looked not far from tears.

It wasn’t quite over, of course. Around Trapani and here and there in the north, the Algarvians still fought on. Surrendering to Unkerlant was different from yielding to Lagoas and Kuusamo--different and much more frightening. The Algarvians had plenty of reason to worry about how their enemy in the west would treat them once they gave up, and even about whether King Swemmel would let them give up.

But that wasn’t Lurcanio’s concern. He took a certain pride in knowing he’d made a tolerably good combat soldier. It hadn’t mattered, though. However well he’d fought, Algarve still lay prostrate.

When the sun rose, he led his men out of their holes. Lagoan soldiers relieved them of their weapons and whatever small valuables they had. Lurcanio strode into captivity with his head up.

Eleven

News-sheet vendors in Eoforwic shouted that Gromheort had fallen. Vanai cared very little about that. The vendors also shouted about the hard fighting Forthweg’s Unkerlanter allies had done. Vanai cared very little about that, either. But she did fear hard fighting in Gromheort would have taken a toll on the civilians there. She hoped Ealstan’s family had come through as well as possible.