Rulers of the Darkness

"Most embarrassing," a sour-faced Lagoan captain said in what he imagined was Sibian but was in fact only Algarvian slightly mispronounced. Most of the time, that playing fast and loose with his language offended Cornelu. Not today- he wanted facts. Instead, the captain gave him an opinion: "Worst thing that's happened to our navy since you Sibs beat it right outside of Setubal here two hundred and fifty years ago."

It was, at least, an opinion calculated to put a smile on Cornelu's long, dour face. He asked, "What will you do now?"

"Build more ships, train more men, give back better than we got," the captain replied without hesitation. "We did that against Sibiu, too."

He was, unfortunately, correct. Here, at least, he and Cornelu had the same enemy. "Where do I make my report?" the Sibian exile asked.

"Third door on your left," the sour-faced captain answered. "We'll get our own back- you wait and see." Cornelu didn't want to wait. He hurried to the third door on his left.

***

"In the summertime," Marshal Rathar said, "Durrwangen can get quite respectably warm."

"Oh, aye, I think so, too," General Vatran agreed. "Of course, the naked black Zuwayzin would laugh themselves to death to hear us go on like this."

"I won't say you're wrong." Rathar shuddered. "I was up in the north for the end of our war against them, you know." He waited for Vatran to nod, then went on, "Ghastly place. Sand and rocks and dry riverbeds and thorn-bushes and camels and poisoned wells and the sun blazing down- and the Zuwayzin fought like demons, too, till we broke 'em by weight of numbers."

"And drove 'em straight into King Mezentio's arms," Vatran said mournfully.

"And drove 'em straight into King Mezentio's arms," Rathar agreed. He stared north across the battered ruins of Durrwangen toward the Algarvian lines not far outside of town. Then he turned to Vatran. "You know, if the redheads wanted to come straight at us, they could push us out of here."

Vatran's nod was stolid. "Oh, aye, they could. But they won't."

"And how do you know that?" Rathar asked with a smile.

"How do I know?" Vatran's shaggy white eyebrows rose. "I'll tell you how, by the powers above. Three different ways." As he spoke, he ticked off points on his gnarled fingers. "For one thing, they learned at Sulingen that coming straight at us doesn't pay, and they haven't had the chance to forget it yet. For another, they're Algarvians- they never like doing anything simple if they can do it fancy and tie a big bow and red ribbons around it besides."

"Huh!" Rathar said. "If that's not the truth, curse me if I know what is."

"You hush, lord Marshal. I wasn't done." Vatran overacted reproach. "For a third, all the signs show that they're going to try to bite off the salient and trap us here, and all the captives we take say the same thing."

"I can't argue with any of that," Rathar said. "It's your second reason that worries me a little, though. Doing it fancy might mean setting us up for an enormous surprise." But he shook his head. "They're Algarvians, and that means they think they're smarter than everybody else." He sighed. "Sometimes they're right, too- but not always. I don't think they're right here."

"They'd better not be," Vatran said. "If they are, it'll mean we've wasted a cursed lot of work in the salient."

"We've done what we can," Rather said. "Anybody who tries to break through there will have a rough time of it." He sighed again. "Of course, the Algarvians have done things I would've sworn were flat-out impossible. How they got into Sulingen last summer…"

"They got in, but they didn't get out again." Vatran sounded cheerful, as he usually did. Rathar had a good soldier's confidence, even a good soldier's arrogance, but he was not by nature a cheerful man. Nobody who'd served so long directly under King Swemmel had an easy time being cheerful.

"We beat them in the wintertime, the same as we held them out of Cottbus the winter before," Rathar said. "It's summer now. Whenever they attack in the summer, they drive us before them."

"Nobody's driving us out of this salient," Vatran said. "Nobody. And just because you're talking about what they have done, what's that got to do with what they're going to do? Not a fornicating thing, says I."

Rathar slapped him on the shoulder, not so much for being right as for trying to raise both their spirits. But if the Algarvians had gone forward by great leaps in the two earlier summers of their war against Unkerlant, what was to keep them from going forward by great leaps in this third summer of the war?

Unkerlanter soldiers, that's what, he thought. Unkerlanter behemoths, Unkerlanter dragons, Unkerlanter cavalry. We've learned a lot from these redheaded whoresons the past two years. Now we'll find out if we've got our lessons right.