Rulers of the Darkness

"Forward!" Sergeant Leudast shouted. "Aye, forward, by the powers above!" Since the great battles in the Durrwangen bulge, he'd shouted the order to advance again and again. It still tasted sweet as honey, still felt strong as spirits, in his mouth. He might almost have been telling a pretty woman he loved her.

But the men holed up in the village ahead didn't love him or his comrades. The ragged banners flapping in the chilly breeze there were green and gold- the colors of what the Algarvians called the Kingdom of Grelz. As far as Leudast was concerned, that kingdom didn't exist. The Grelzers blazing at his company from those battered huts had a different opinion.

"Death to the traitors!" Captain Recared yelled. Somewhere in the long fight between Durrwangen and west-central Grelz, a promotion had finally caught up with him. Leudast couldn't remember where. It didn't matter to him. Promotion or no, Recared kept doing the same job. Leudast kept doing the same job, too, and nobody would ever promote him to lieutenant's rank. He was sure of that. He had neither the bloodlines nor the pull to become an officer. "Death to the traitors!" Recared cried again, from behind a pale-barked birch tree.

Leudast crawled over toward Recared. Somebody in the village saw the motion and blazed at him. The ground was wet: steam puffed up where the beam bit, a few feet in front of his head. He froze. In southern Unkerlant, with winter coming on fast, that could easily be a literal as well as a metaphorical statement. After shivering for half a minute, he dashed forward again, and found shelter behind another tree trunk. The Grelzer blazed at him again, and missed again.

"Death to those who follow the false king!" Captain Recared roared.

"Sir," Leudast said, and then, when Recared didn't notice him right away, "Sir!"

"Eh?" That second time, he'd spoken loud enough to make Recared jump. The young regimental commander turned his head. "Oh, it's you, Sergeant. What do you want?"

"Sir, if you don't mind, don't shout about death so much," Leudast answered. "It just makes the cursed Grelzers fight harder, if you know what I mean. Sometimes they'll surrender, if you give 'em the chance."

Recared chewed on that: visibly, for Leudast watched his jaw muscles work. At last, he said, "But they deserve death."

"Aye, most of 'em do." Leudast didn't want to argue with his superior; he just wanted him to shut up. "But if you tell 'em ahead of time that they'll get it, then they've got no reason not to fight as hard as they can to keep from falling into our hands. Do you see what I'm saying?"

The winter before, Recared wouldn't have. Now, reluctantly, he nodded, though he said, "I still have to make our men want to fight."

"Haven't you noticed how it is, sir?" Leudast asked. "Advancing makes a big difference there." Unkerlanter egg-tossers began pelting the enemy-held village. Leudast grinned wider at each burst. "And so does efficiency. They see we really can lick the whoresons on the other side."

"Of course we can," Recared exclaimed, as if the first two desperate summers of the war against Algarve had never happened. He knew how to take advantage of the egg-tossers, though. He raised his voice to a shout again: "They've got to keep their heads down, boys, so we can take 'em. Forward! King Swemmel and victory!"

"Swemmel and victory!" Leudast echoed, also at the top of his lungs. Nothing wrong with that war cry, nothing at all. A lot of Unkerlant- and a good big stretch of the Duchy of Grelz here- had been recaptured behind it.

Recared ran forward- he was brave enough and to spare. Leudast followed him. So did everybody within earshot, and then the rest of the Unkerlanter soldiers who saw their comrades moving. "Urra!" they shouted, and, "Swemmel and victory!"

Shouts rose from inside the village: "Raniero!" and "Swemmel the murderer!" Advancing Unkerlanters went down. Some howled out cries that held no words, only pain. Others lay very still. These Grelzers weren't about to surrender regardless of what the Unkerlanters yelled.

They'd buried eggs in the mud in front of their village, too. An Unkerlanter soldier trod on one. He shrieked briefly as the released energies consumed him. Leudast cursed. His own countrymen had stalled Algarvian attacks in the Durrwangen salient with belt after belt of hidden eggs. Having the stratagem turned against them seemed anything but fair.

Then Recared pointed south of the village and said the happiest words any Unkerlanter footsoldier could use: "Behemoths! Our behemoths, by the powers above!"

Even with snowshoes spreading their weight, even with the way made easier with brush and logs spread in front of them, the great beasts made slower, rougher going in the mud than they had on the hard ground of summer. But they moved forward faster than men could, and they and their armored crewmen were much harder to kill than ordinary footsoldiers.