Rulers of the Darkness

"Sir? One more question?" Istvan asked. Tivadar paused, then nodded. Istvan asked, "Have we got enough mages forward to warn us if Swemmel's whoresons are going to turn that horrible magic loose on us again? You know the one I mean."

"I know the one you mean," the company commander agreed grimly. "What I don't know is the answer to your question. I'm not even sure mages can detect that spell before the Unkerlanters start slaughtering people to power it. We might do better to slide forward to find out if they're bringing peasants up toward the front."

"That's not a bad notion, sir," Kun said. "I don't mean just for us. I mean all along the line of these cursed woods."

"I'm no general. I can't give an order for the whole line. I can't even give an order for the whole regiment," Tivadar said. "But if you boys want to poke men out to the east to see what's going on, you won't make me unhappy. And now I will be on my way." He climbed the sandbagged steps at the rear of the redoubt and hurried off through the forest.

"He had a good idea there, Sergeant," Kun said. "If we could get some warning before the Unkerlanters started slaying…" He shuddered. "When they loosed that magic the last time, it was so vile I thought my head would burst like an egg. By the stars, I hoped my head would burst like an egg."

"All right, we'll do it," Istvan said, "though it'd only be luck if Swemmel's buggers had their victims in our sector. We ought to have scouts pushing forward all along the line. The Unkerlanters do, may the stars go black for them."

Before he could order anyone to go out and scout around in the woods to the east, an egg burst about fifty yards in front of the redoubt. A moment later, another burst less than half as far away. Before the third egg could land, Istvan was flat on his belly, his face pressed against the black earth. He breathed in a moist lungful of air smelling of mold and old leaves.

That third egg burst behind the redoubt, close enough that the blast of sorcerous energy made the ground shudder beneath Istvan's prostrate form. A couple of trees crashed in noisy ruin. Earth and twigs rained down on Istvan. He'd been through such pummelings before. Unless an egg burst right on top of the redoubt, he knew he was safe enough.

He was. His squad was. As more eggs burst all around, he exclaimed in dismay: "Captain Tivadar!" He didn't dare raise his head very far, no matter how dismayed he was.

"He has a good chance," Kun said, his head not an inch farther from the ground than Istvan's was. "He'd have gone flat when the first egg flew, and started digging himself a hole before the second one burst. You would. I would. The captain, too. He's no fool." From Kun, that was highest praise.

"We ought to go out after him," Szonyi said. "If it was one of us stuck in a storm like that, he'd go out and bring us back."

"We don't even know which way he went," Istvan said. But that sounded hollow even to him. Szonyi didn't answer. His silence sounded more reproachful than shouted curses would have.

Cursing on his own, Istvan heaved himself to his feet and left the redoubt. As soon as he was out in the woods, he went down on his belly again; eggs were still bursting all around. "Captain Tivadar!" he shouted, though his voice seemed tiny and lost through those shattering roars of suddenly released sorcerous energy. "Captain Tivadar, sir!"

Even if Tivadar did answer, how was Istvan supposed to hear him? His ears were bruised, overwhelmed, battered. An egg burst nearby, very close. A pine that might have stood for a hundred years swayed, toppled, and crashed down. Had it fallen at a slightly different, an ever so slightly different, angle, it would have crushed the life out of him.

Was that someone's tawny hair or a bit of dead, yellowed fern? Istvan crawled toward it, then wished he hadn't. There lay Tivadar, broken like a jointed doll some thoughtless child had stepped on. But dolls didn't bleed. A bursting egg must have flung him full force into a tree trunk.

At least he can't have known what hit him, Istvan thought. "Stars above preserve and guide his spirit," he murmured, and hurried back to the redoubt. He hoped his own end, if it came, when it came, would be as quick.

***

As winter gave way to spring, so Talsu accommodated himself to life in prison. He hadn't intended to do any such thing. But, as he'd found in the Jelgavan army, routine had a force of its own. Even when the routine was horrid, as it was here, he got used to it. His belly anticipated almost to the minute the times the guards fed him his nasty, sadly inadequate bowls of gruel. Afterwards, for half an hour, sometimes even for an hour, he felt as nearly content as he could in a small, stinking, vermin-infested cell.