Rulers of the Darkness

The Unkerlanters not only had behemoths on that hill, they had footsoldiers there, too. Spinello watched beams flash from places where he would have sworn no squirrel, let alone a man, could have hidden. Beams burned brown lines in the green grass, some very near him. Here and there, little grass fires sprang up. He almost welcomed them. The smokier the air, the more it spread beams and the more trouble they had biting. But bite they still did; men fell all around him.

He dove into a hole in the ground. It was big enough to hold two, and Spinello's dour shadow dove in right behind him. Turpino said, "They're going to make us pay a demon of a price for that high ground."

"I know," Spinello answered. "We've got to have it, though."

"The army's melting the way the snow did this spring," Turpino said.

"I know that, too" Spinello said. "I'm not blind." He raised his voice to a shout again: "Crystallomancer!" A moment later, he shouted it once more, and louder: "Crystallomancer!"

"Aye, sir?" The Algarvian who scrambled over to Spinello didn't belong to his regiment. He'd never seen the fellow before. But he had a crystal with him, and that was good enough.

"Get me the mages at Special Camp Four," Spinello said: the fourth special camp was attached to his division.

"Aye, sir," the crystallomancer repeated, and went to work. In bright daylight, Spinello could hardly see the flash of light that showed the crystal's activation, but he couldn't miss the image of the mage that formed in it. The crystallomancer said, "Go ahead, sir."

"Right." Spinello spoke into the crystal: "Major Spinello here. My regiment and a good part of this army, footsoldiers and behemoths both, are pinned down in front of the hill at map grid Green-Seven. We need that hill if we're going to go on, and we need the special sorceries if we're going to take it."

"Are you certain?" the mage asked. "Demand for the special sorceries has been very high, far higher than anyone expected when we began this campaign. I am not sure we'll have enough to sustain us if we keep using up our resources at this rate."

Spinello abruptly dropped the language of euphemism: "If you don't start killing Kaunians pretty cursed quick, there won't be any campaign left to worry about. Have you got that, sorcerous sir? If the Unkerlanters halt us here, what's to stop them from rolling forward? What's to stop them from rolling over you and all the precious Kaunians you're hoarding?"

"Very well, Major. The point is taken." The Algarvian mage looked and sounded affronted. Spinello didn't care, so long as he got results. The mage said, "I shall consult my colleagues. Stand by to await developments."

His image winked out. The crystallomancer said, "That's it, sir."

Turpino said, "You made him angry when you reminded him what he was really doing back there."

"What a pity," Spinello growled. "If he's unhappy about it, let him come to the front and see what we're really doing up here." That earned him one of the few looks of unreserved approval he'd ever had from Turpino. He went on, "Besides, if he's not getting screams from every other officer on this field, I'm a poached egg."

Regardless of whether he was a poached egg, the mages back at the special camp must have decided the Algarvian army did need help. Spinello knew to the moment when the sacrifices began. A great cloud of dust rose from the hillside as the ground shook there. Cracks opened, then slammed shut. Flames shot up from the ground.

"Now we're in business," Turpino said happily. "Cursed Kaunians are good for something, anyhow." This time, he rose and ran forward first, leaving Spinello to hurry after him. Spinello did. So did the crystallomancer, evidently glad to have someone giving him orders even if it wasn't his proper commander.

But they hadn't gone far before the ground trembled under their feet. A huge crack opened under the crystallomancer. He had time for a terrified shriek before it smashed him as it closed. Violet flame engulfed two behemoths and their crews not far from Spinello, and more men and beasts elsewhere on the field.

Spinello fell. He clutched the ground, trying to make it hold still. "Powers below eat the Unkerlanters," cried Turpino, who had also fallen. "Their mages are hitting back harder and faster than they ever did before."

"Can they spend more peasants than we can spend Kaunians?" Spinello asked- a question on which the fate of the battle might turn. He gave the only answer he had for it: "We'll find out."

Even before the mage-made earthquake ended, he fought his way back onto his feet. He hauled Turpino up, too. "Thanks," the company commander said.

"My pleasure," Spinello said, and bowed. He looked behind him. "I think we've got more still standing than the Unkerlanters do." After blowing his whistle, he yelled, "Come on! Aye, all of you- you Forthwegians, too! We can take that hill!"