Rulers of the Darkness

A couple of villagers and a couple of Grelzer soldiers came out to see what the fuss was about. In the dim light, none of the irregulars tried to figure out who was who. They just started blazing. It wasn't a battle. It wasn't anything like a battle. In a very few minutes, Lohr was theirs.

The survivors they captured from the squad of Grelzers made Garivald sad. They could as easily have fought on his side as for the Algarvian puppet king of Grelz. But they'd made the other choice- the wrong choice, as it turned out- and they would have to pay for it. Tantris was looking at him, as if wondering whether he had the stomach to give the order.

He did, saying, "Blaze the traitors." A moment later, he added, "Blaze the firstman, too. He's been in bed with the Algarvians ever since they got here." None of that took long, either. Before the sun had risen, the irregulars were on their way back to their forest fastness.

Tantris came up to him, saying, "Very neat. You see what you can do."

Garivald nodded. "I also see you weren't joggling my elbow, the way you did when you tried to use Sadoc for more than he could give."

"Do I have to tell you again that everything you say will be remembered?" Tantris asked.

"Do you care to remember that I told you the truth?" Garivald answered. He stepped up his pace. Tantris didn't try to stay with him.

He caught up with Obilot just as the sun came red over the horizon. Her eyes, he thought, shone brighter than it did. "We did well there, even if they were only Grelzers," she said.

"Aye." Garivald nodded. Her words weren't much different from what Tantris had given him, but warmed him far more. He could have done without the regular's approval; at times, he would gladly have done without the regular altogether. But what Obilot thought mattered to him. All at once, hardly thinking what he was doing, he reached out and took her hand.

She blinked. Garivald waited to see what would happen next. If she decided she didn't like that, she was liable to do something much more emphatic than just telling him so. But she let his hand stay in hers. All she said was, "Took you long enough."

"I wanted to be sure," he answered, though he'd been anything but. Then he took his hand away, not wanting to push too hard.

The band got back under the trees without having lost a man- or a woman, either. Garivald left sentries behind to warn of a Grelzer counterattack if one came. The rest of the irregulars returned to the clearing for as much of a celebration as they could manage, though a lot of them wanted nothing but sleep.

Garivald caught Obilot's eye again. He wandered into the woods. If she followed, she did. If she didn't… He shrugged. Pushing Obilot when she didn't care to be pushed was a good way to end up dead.

But she did follow. When they found a tiny clearing far enough from the main one, they paused and looked at each other. "Are you sure?" Garivald asked. He'd been away from his wife and family for more than a year. Obilot nodded. He thought she had no family left alive, though he wasn't sure. He took her in his arms. None of what they said to each other after that had anything to do with words.

***

Flying over the plains of southern Unkerlant, Count Sabrino felt a strong sense of having done all this before. By the way things looked, the war against Unkerlant, the war the Algarvians had thought they would win in the first campaigning season, would go on forever.

His mouth twisted. Appearances were liable to be deceiving, but not in the way for which his countrymen would have hoped. If they'd broken through to Cottbus, if they'd broken past Sulingen, maybe even if they'd torn the heart from the Unkerlanter defenses in the Durrwangen bulge…

But they hadn't. They hadn't done any of those things. And how many Algarvian behemoths lay rotting on the battlefields of the Durrwangen salient? Sabrino couldn't have said, not to the closest hundred, not even to the closest five hundred, not to save his own life. But he knew the answer just the same. Too many.

These days, the Algarvians had to hold on tightly to the behemoths they had left. If they incautiously threw them away, they'd have none at all. Oh, that wasn't quite true- but it came all too close. And it would be at least another year, more likely two or three, before new beasts came off the breeding farms in anything like adequate numbers.

Meanwhile… Meanwhile, the Unkerlanters still had behemoths and to spare. And they handled them better than they had when the war was new. Why not? Sabrino thought bitterly. They've spent the past two years learning from us.

They had behemoths. More came from their breeding farms in a steady stream. How many breeding farms did they have, there in the far west beyond the reach of any Algarvian dragon? Those same two words formed again in Sabrino's mind. Too many. They had footsoldiers in endless profusion, too. And they had mages willing to be as ruthless as- maybe more ruthless than- any who served King Mezentio.