Rulers of the Darkness

I guess I did, Leudast thought, a little surprised. That hadn't occurred to him. He peered east, toward the rising sun. If the Algarvians attacked now, they'd be silhouetted against the bright sky every time they came over a rise. He judged they would wait till the sun was well up before moving. He was in no great hurry to risk getting killed or maimed. They could wait forever, for all of him.

Light built, grew. Leudast studied the landscape. He couldn't see most of the defensive positions the Unkerlanters had built. If he couldn't see them, that meant Mezentio's men wouldn't be able to, either. He hoped that was what it meant, anyhow.

The sun climbed in the sky. The day grew warm, even hot. Leudast slapped at bugs. There weren't so many as there had been right after the snow melted, when the endless swampy puddles in the mud bred hordes of mosquitoes and gnats. But they hadn't all gone away. They wouldn't have wanted to, not with so many latrines and animals to keep them happy.

Leudast was pissing in a slit trench when the Algarvians started flinging eggs. He almost jumped right into that latrine trench; combat had taught him how important taking cover was, and diving into the closest available hole was almost as automatic as breathing. But he hadn't wanted to breathe by the noisome, nearly full trench, and he didn't jump into it, either. Not quite. He ran back toward the hole in the ground from which he'd come.

Such sensibilities almost cost him his neck. An egg burst not far behind him just as he started sliding into his hole. It flung him in instead, flung him hard enough to make him wonder if he'd cracked his ribs. Only when he'd sucked in a couple of breaths without having knives stab did he decide he hadn't.

He'd been through a lot fighting the Algarvians. He'd helped hold them out of Cottbus. He'd been wounded down in Sulingen. He'd thought he knew everything the redheads could do. Now he discovered he'd been wrong. In all that time, with everything he'd seen, he'd never had to endure such a concentrated rain of eggs as they threw at him, threw at all the Unkerlanters.

The first thing he did was dig himself deeper. He wondered if he were digging his own grave, but the shallow scrape he'd had before didn't seem nearly enough. He flung dirt out with his short-handled spade, wishing all the while that he had broad, clawed hands like a mole's so he wouldn't need a tool. Sometimes he thought bursts all around him threw as much dirt back into the hole as he was throwing out.

After the hole was deep enough, he lay down at full length in it, his face pressed into the rich, dark loam. He needed a while to realize he was screaming; the din of those bursting eggs was so continuous, he could hardly even hear himself. Realizing what he was doing didn't make him stop. He'd known fear. He'd known terror. This went past those and out the other side. It was so immense, so irresistible, it carried him along as a wave might carry a small boat.

And, after a little while, it washed him ashore. If he was beyond fear, beyond terror, what else was there to do but go on? He got up onto his knees- he wasn't ready to expose his body to blasts of sorcerous energy and to flying metal shards of egg casing- and looked at the sky instead of the dirt.

He had plenty to watch up there. Dragons wheeled and dueled and flamed, some painted in Unkerlant's concealing rock-gray, others wearing Algarve's gaudy colors. It was a dance in the air, as intricate and lovely as a springtime figure dance in the square of the peasant village where he'd grown up.

But this dance was deadly, too. An Algarvian dragon flamed one from his kingdom, flamed its wing and flank. Across who could say how much air, he heard the great furious bellow of agony the Unkerlanter dragon let out. Surely the dragonflier screamed, too, but his voice was lost, lost. The dragon frantically beat the air with its one good wing. That only made it twist in the other direction. And then it twisted no more, but fell, writhing. It smashed to the unyielding ground not far in front of Leudast.

As abruptly as they'd started, the Algarvians stopped tossing eggs. Leudast knew what that meant. He snatched up his stick and did peer out from his hole. "They're coming!" he shouted. His own voice sounded strange in his ears because of the pounding they'd taken.

Dimly, as if from far away, he heard others shouting the same thing. Footsoldiers loped ahead of Algarvian behemoths. The men in kilts looked tiny. Even the behemoths looked small. The redheads would have to fight their way through a couple of defensive lines before they reached the position Lieutenant Recared's regiment held. By the way they came on, Mezentio's men thought they could fight their way through anything. After what they'd done two summers in a row in Unkerlant, who could say they were wrong?