Rulers of the Darkness

He laughed, a sound not far from honest mirth. He wondered what had happened, up there in Forthweg. Had the Algarvians gone in and cleaned the Kaunians out of Oyngestun, the way they should have? Or was dear old Ealstan still getting that redhead's sloppy seconds?

"We might as well kill some more Kaunians," he said, thinking of a new argument. "You think the Unkerlanters'll stop slaying their own if we quit? Not bloody likely, you ask me. They'll keep right at it, they will. Even if we don't kill blonds to strike, we'll need to do it to shield ourselves." He stuck out his chin. "Go on. Tell me I'm wrong."

Werferth grunted. "I'll tell you you talk too cursed much, that's what I'll do." He yawned so wide, the hinge at the back of his jaw cracked like a knuckle. "I want to sleep for a year. Two years, with any luck at all."

"I'm with you there." Sidroc had never known a man could be so worn. "I don't think I've slept more than a couple of hours at a stretch since this cursed fight started. I feel drunk half the time."

"I wish I were drunk," Werferth said. "Haven't even had a nip since I found that one dead Unkerlanter with a canteen half full of spirits." He stretched himself out on the torn ground. A couple of minutes later, he was snoring.

A couple of minutes after that, Sidroc was probably snoring, too. His comrades said he did. Since he'd never heard himself, he couldn't have proved it one way or the other. Snoring or not, he was certainly asleep, the deep, almost deathlike sleep that comes from complete exhaustion.

And, a couple of minutes after that, he and Werferth were both awake and both digging like men possessed as Unkerlanter eggs burst all around them. Sidroc felt as if he were moving underwater. He kept dropping the little short-handled shovel. "Cursed thing," he muttered, as if his clumsiness were its fault.

The Algarvians finally started tossing eggs back at King Swemmel's men. "Took 'em long enough," Werferth growled. "I figured they'd wait till we were all dead and then give back a little something."

"I'm not all dead," Sidroc said. "I'm just mostly dead." He and the sergeant both found that very funny, a telling measure of how tired they were. They laughed without restraint, till tears rolled down their faces. And then, in spite of the eggs that kept bursting all around them, they lay down in the hole they'd dug and went back to sleep.

An officer's whistle woke Sidroc a little before dawn. Lieutenant Ercole looked as grimy and beat as any of the Forthwegians he commanded; not even Algarvian vanity let him steal a few minutes for primping, not on this field. But he sounded far livelier than Sidroc felt. "Up, you lugs!" he cried. "Up! Up and forward! We've got a long way to go before we can be lazy again."

"What does he mean, again?" Werferth mumbled, staggering to his feet as if he'd suddenly aged forty or fifty years. "We've never once been lazy. Powers above, when have we had the time for it?"

"I'd like to have the time to be lazy," Sidroc said. He reached into his belt pouch and pulled out a chunk of stale barley bread. He gnawed it as he listened to Ercole.

The company commander pointed ahead. "You see that wedge of behemoths in front of us?" Sure enough, a couple of dozen of the great shapes were silhouetted against the lightening sky. Lieutenant Ercole went on, "We are going to form up behind them. They will pound a breach in the next Unkerlanter line for us. We will go in behind them. We will go into the enemy line. We will go through the enemy line. We will go on toward our brothers who are fighting their way west toward us. Mezentio and victory!"

"Mezentio and victory!" The men of Plegmund's Brigade tried their best, but couldn't raise much of a cheer. Too many of them were dead, too many wounded, too many of the unhurt survivors shambling in an exhausted daze like Sidroc and Werferth.

Dazed or not, exhausted or not, Sidroc trudged forward to find his place behind the behemoths. Not only Forthwegians from Plegmund's Brigade were assembled there, but also Algarvian footsoldiers. The redheads didn't sneer at the Forthwegians anymore; ties of blood bound them together.

Other wedges of behemoths were coming together along the Algarvian line. "They've thought of something new," Sidroc remarked.

"Good for them," Werferth said. "And we get to be the ones who find out whether it works." He kicked at the dirt. "If we live, we're heroes." He kicked again, then shrugged. "And if we don't live, who gives a futter what we are?"

At shouts from the men who crewed them, the behemoths tramped off toward the rising sun. They didn't advance at a full, thunderous gallop, which would have left the footsoldiers far behind, but did move with an implacability that suggested nothing would stop them. Sidroc hoped the suggestion held truth.