Rulers of the Darkness

Some of them would, no matter what they wanted. Garivald was pretty sure of that, even as he got the irregulars moving a little past midnight. He hoped they weren't dwelling on it. But if they wrecked those bridges south of Pirmasens, the enemy would have a good idea of where they were- and would stand between them and the shelter of the woods. Getting back wouldn't be so easy.

Getting to the bridges was another matter. Nights were long now, long and cold and dark: plenty of time for marching, plenty of darkness for concealment. Clouds overhead threatened snow. Garivald hoped they would hold off. That'd be just what we need, he thought: a bunch of tracks saying, Here we are- come blaze us!

They carried four eggs, two for each bridge, with each egg yoked between two men with carrying poles and rope. Every so often, new pairs would take them; they weren't light, and Garivald didn't want anyone exhausted. He also sent out scouts well ahead of the main body of irregulars: here of all times, he couldn't afford to be surprised.

Tantris came up to him and remarked, "I've seen real officers who didn't arrange their men half so well."

"Have you?" Garivald said, and the regular nodded. Garivald let out a thoughtful grunt. "No wonder the Algarvians drove us so hard during the first days of the war, then."

"You may make fine songs, but your mouth will be the death of you one day," Tantris said. Garivald didn't answer. He just kept trudging along. When the time came to take one egg's carrying poles on his shoulders for a while, he did it without hesitation. A real officer probably wouldn't have, but he wasn't one, so he didn't care.

He sent a runner up to the scouts with orders to swing wide around Pirmasens. The glow from the campfires there was plenty to warn him away from the place. The runner came back with word that the scouts had already swung wide on their own. Garivald wondered if regular soldiers would have. He didn't ask Tantris.

When they got to the first bridge, they planted an egg at each end. The second bridge lay a few hundred yards upstream. When they got there, Sadoc murmured, "I feel a power point. All I have to do is say the word, and-"

"No!" Garivald hissed frantically. To his vast relief, Tantris said the same thing in the same tone of voice. Sadoc muttered something else, but the louder mutter of the rain-swollen river swept it away.

Tantris went off by himself into the darkness. The eggs were his; he knew the spell that would make them burst, and he jealously guarded the knowledge. Garivald made out only one word from him- "Now!" -and then four nearly simultaneous roars shattered the night and shattered the bridges. Chunks of wood rained down on the irregulars. Someone let out a yowl of pain. Nobody would cross the river by either of those ways for a good long while.

But then, even before Garivald could order the irregulars back toward the woods, challenges rang out and beams began to flicker in the night. The Grelzers had had patrols on the move- he'd just been lucky enough to miss them. Now… Now there were a lot of shouts of "Raniero!" and a lot of men rushing down from Pirmasens to join the hunt for the bridge-wreckers. Garivald's mouth went dry. Some Grelzer soldiers would sooner surrender than fight. Some were very good men indeed. My luck to run into that kind again, he thought. And they can pin us against the river. We can't use those stinking bridges, either.

The Grelzers plainly intended to do just that. Garivald had no idea how to stop them. If Tantris did, he kept it as secret as the bursting spell. Another thought ran through Garivald's mind. We're going to die here. We're all going to die here. A beam zipped past him. For a moment, the air smelled of thunderstorms.

No sooner had that crossed his mind than lightning smote the Grelzers, not once but again and again. Each crash of cloven air dwarfed the roars that had come from the bursting eggs. No snow. No rain. Only bolt after bolt of lightning, peal after peal of thunder.

Through those peals, Garivald heard someone laughing like a man possessed. Sadoc, he realized. Awe- or perhaps the aftereffects of lightning- made the hair prickle up on his arms and at the nape of his neck. He's found himself at last. And then, as the Grelzer soldiers fled howling in fear, Well, for sure he picked the right time.

***

As the ley-line caravan glided to a stop on the eastern outskirts of Eoforwic, Vanai squeezed Ealstan's hand in excitement. "Oh, I can hardly wait!" she exclaimed.

He was grinning, too. They both got to their feet and descended from the caravan car. They both popped open umbrellas; it was drizzling. The misty rain hid all but the nearest houses. There weren't so many, anyhow; the city faded away into meadows and orchards and farmland- exactly the sort of landscape Vanai wanted now.