Out of the Darkness

Ealstan had imagined a great many ways he might return to Gromheort. He might have come after the war ended, bringing Vanai and Saxburh to meet his mother and father and sister. He might have come back to make sure Elfryth and Hestan and Conberge were all right, and then returned to Eoforwic to bring his wife and little daughter to them. He might even have come as part of a triumphant Forthwegian army, driving the Algarvians before him.

Coming to Gromheort as part of a triumphant Unkerlanter army that cared little, if at all, for anything Forthwegian had never once crossed his mind. Nor had he thought the Algarvians would do anything but pull out of Gromheort once they faced overwhelming force. That they might pull back into his home town and stand siege there. . No, he hadn’t thought of that, not in his wildest nightmares.

But that was just what the redheads had done, and they’d thrown back several Unkerlanter efforts to break into Gromheort. By now, Mezentio’s men trapped inside the city couldn’t retreat into Algarve even if they’d wanted to. The Unkerlanter ring around Gromheort was twenty miles thick, maybe thirty. The Algarvians had only two choices: they could fight till they ran out of everything, or they could yield.

Unkerlanter officers under flag of truce had already gone into Gromheort twice, demanding a surrender. The Algarvians had sent them away both times, and so Ealstan sprawled in a field somewhere between Oyngestun and Gromheort, peering toward his home town.

Gromheort’s wall had been more a formality than a defense for several generations. He knew that perfectly well. But seeing so many chunks of the wall bitten away by bursting eggs still hurt. What hurt worse was being unable to tell his comrades why it hurt. For one thing, they had trouble understanding him, and he them. Forthwegian and Unkerlanter were related languages, but they were a long way from identical. And, for another, they wouldn’t have cared anyhow. Gromheort was nothing to them but one more foreign town they had to take.

Whistles shrilled. Officers along the line shouted, “Forward!” That word wasn’t much different in Unkerlanter from its Forthwegian equivalent. Even if it had been, Ealstan would have been quick to figure out what it meant.

He didn’t want to advance. He wanted to go back to Eoforwic, to Vanai and Saxburh. But one Unkerlanter word he had learned was the one for efficiency. In their own brutal way, Swemmel’s men did their best to practice what they preached. Hard-faced fellows with sticks in their hands waited not far behind the line. Any soldier who tried to retreat without orders got blazed on the spot. Soldiers who went forward had at least a chance of coming through alive. The argument was crude, but it was also logical.

“Up!” a sergeant screamed. Sergeants didn’t get whistles, but soldiers had to do as they said anyhow. Ealstan got up and trotted forward with the rest of the men in rock-gray.

Rock-gray dragons swooped low overhead, eggs slung under their bellies. The eggs burst in front of and inside Gromheort. Ealstan didn’t know what to think about that. It made him more likely to live and his kinsfolk more likely to die. He wanted to give up thinking altogether.

“Behemoths!” That shout came in Unkerlanter. The word was nothing like its Forthwegian equivalent, which had been borrowed from Algarvian. Ealstan had had to learn it in a hurry. It meant either Help is coming or We’re in trouble, depending on who owned the behemoths being shouted about.

These behemoths had Algarvians aboard them. They were sallying from Gromheort, doing their best to hold the Unkerlanters away from the town. Officers or no officers, sergeants or no sergeants, Ealstan threw himself down on the muddy ground. He’d seen behemoths in the desperate fighting in and around Eoforwic, and had a hearty respect for what they could do. Most of the Unkerlanters close by him dove for cover, too. Anyone who’d had more than the tiniest taste of war knew better than to stay on his feet when enemy behemoths were in the neighborhood.

Somewhere not far away, a crystallomancer shouted into his glassy sphere. Before long, egg-tossers started aiming at the Algarvian beasts. They did less than Ealstan would have liked; only a direct hit, which took luck, would put paid to the immense beasts in their chain-mail coats. But a barrage of bursting eggs did keep Algarvian footsoldiers from going forward with the behemoths, and that left the animals and their crews more vulnerable than they would have been otherwise.

Ealstan swung his stick towards one of the redheads atop a behemoth a couple of hundred yards away. He had to aim carefully; behemoth crewmen wore armor, too. Why not? They relied on the animals to take them where they needed to go, and didn’t get down on the ground themselves unless something went wrong.