Out of the Darkness

“If those whoresons in this village start blazing at us on account of they think we’re Swemmel’s buggers, I say we treat ‘em just like we did the Yaninans who blazed Sergeant Werferth,” Ceorl growled.

They’d already drawn a couple of blazes from panicky redheads. The Algarvians saw swarthy men in tunics and didn’t stop to find out which swarthy men they were or whose side they were on. So far, the troopers of Plegmund’s Brigade hadn’t answered with massacre. “Looks like they’re just running here,” Sidroc said.

Sure enough, Algarvians--mostly women and children, with a few old men-- fled the village on foot, on horseback, and in whatever carriages and wagons they could lay their hands on. Some of the redheads on foot carried bundles heavier than a soldier’s pack. Others pulled light carts as if they were beasts of burden themselves. Still others took nothing at all with them, abandoning homes without a backward glance and relying on luck to keep them fed so long as they could escape the Unkerlanters.

“We’re going to stand here,” Lieutenant Puliano said, commanding the Forthwegians with as much aplomb as if he were a marshal. “I’ll need two or three groups forward--that house there, that stand of trees, and that tumbledown barn. You know the drill. Let Swemmel’s buggers come past you, then hit ‘em from the sides and from behind. Questions? All right, then . . .”

One of the joys of being a corporal was that Sidroc got told off to lead one of Puliano’s forward groups: the one in the stand of trees. “Dig in,” he told the squad he headed. “This would have been a lot better cover if we were here in the summertime.”

“What was that?” Sudaku asked in Algarvian. The blond from the Phalanx of Valmiera was picking up Forthwegian fast, but still had only so much. Sidroc translated his words into Algarvian. Sudaku nodded agreement.

With his short-handled shovel, Ceorl dug like a mole. He threw another shovelful of dirt on the mound in front of his deepening hole, then said, “Ain’t a futtering one of us going to be here in the summertime.” His Algarvian was as rough and laced with obscenities as his Forthwegian.

“No. We will have retreated by then,” Sudaku said.

“That ain’t what I meant, you stupid fornicating Kaunian,” Ceorl said.

“If your dick were bigger--much, much bigger--you could bugger yourself,” Sudaku replied. They both spoke without heat. Sudaku went on digging. So did Ceorl, who paused only to slice a thumb across his throat to show what he had meant.

A few eggs burst, perhaps a quarter of a mile in front of the grove where Sidroc and his double handful of men waited. “Feeling for us,” Sidroc muttered, more than half to himself. Sure enough, the bursts crept closer, kicking up fountains of snow and dirt.

Only a couple of eggs burst among the trees. The rest marched into the village. Houses and shops crumbled into wreckage. Not all the Algarvian civilians were likely to have got clear. They’d be running around and screaming and getting in the way of the soldiers. As far as Sidroc was concerned, that was about all civilians were good for. But knocking a lot of buildings in the village to pieces wouldn’t hurt the defense. If anything, it might help. Everybody in Plegmund’s Brigade had had plenty of practice fighting in rubble.

“Heads up!” hissed somebody among the trees. “Here they come.”

Sidroc’s heart thuttered. His mouth went dry. He’d been through too many battles, skirmishes, clashes, fights. It never got easier. If anything, it got harder every time. At first, he hadn’t believed he could die. He believed it now. He’d seen far too much to have any possible doubt.

Some of the oncoming Unkerlanters wore snow smocks over their rock-gray tunics. Some didn’t bother. The men in white and those in Unkerlanter rock-gray were about equally hard to see. Winter hereabouts wasn’t quite so harsh, quite so snowy, as it was farther west.

“Remember, let ‘em by, like Lieutenant Puliano said,” Sidroc reminded his men. “Then we give it to ‘em up the arse.”

He studied the way Swemmel’s soldiers loped forward, then gave a soft grunt of satisfaction. Ceorl put that grunt into words: “They don’t move like veteran troops. They ought to be easy meat.”

“Aye--depending on how many of ‘em there are,” Sidroc answered.

“I see no behemoths,” Sudaku remarked.

“Don’t miss those fornicators,” Sidroc said. He saw none of the great armored beasts, either. That was another sign the Unkerlanters moving on the village weren’t first-rate men. Enemy doctrine assigned help first to the soldiers most likely to succeed.

“Ahh, the fools,” Ceorl said as the enemy drew near. “The dick-sucking virgins. They aren’t even sending anybody in here to see if we’ve got any little surprises waiting.” His chuckle was pure evil. “They’ll find out.”

On toward the village trotted the Unkerlanters. “Wait,” Sidroc said, over and over. “Just wait.”