Rulers of the Darkness

Leudast said, "Let's go with them and bypass this place. Once we get behind it, it won't be worth anything to the Grelzers anymore."

Recared frowned. "We ought to go straight at the enemy. He's right there in front of us."

"And we're right here in front of him, where he's got the best blaze at us," Leudast answered. "When the Algarvians were driving us, they'd go around the places that fought hard and let them wither on the vine. They'd advance where we were weak, and we couldn't be strong everywhere."

"That's so," Recared said thoughtfully. He hadn't been there to go through most of that, but he knew about it. A great many of the soldiers who had gone through it were dead; Leudast knew how lucky he was to be among the exceptions. To his relief, Recared nodded again, blew his whistle, and shouted for his men to swing south of the village and go with the behemoths. "The men who come after us, the ones who aren't good enough to fight in the first rank, can mop up these traitors," he declared.

As Leudast hurried toward the behemoths, he wondered if the Grelzers would sally to try to stop them. But the men who followed King Mezentio's cousin stayed under cover; they knew they'd get slaughtered out in the open. Leudast expected them to get slaughtered anyway, but now it would take longer and cost more.

The Unkerlanters pressed on for another couple of miles before a well-aimed beam from a heavy stick left one of their behemoths kicking its way toward death in the mud. Another beam, not so well aimed, threw up a great gout of nasty-smelling steam between a couple of other behemoths. All the crews frantically pointed ahead. When Leudast saw Algarvian behemoths at the edge of some woods, he threw himself flat in the muck. The redheads didn't seem to have so many behemoths left these days, but they used the ones they did have with as much deadly panache as ever.

Still, two and a half years of war had taught King Swemmel's soldiers several painful but important lessons. Their behemoths didn't charge straight at the Algarvian beasts. Some of them traded beams and sticks with the Algarvians from a distance. That let the others sidle around to the flank. Leudast had watched this dance of death before. He knew what the right counter would be: having more behemoths waiting to engage the Unkerlanters trying the flanking move. The Algarvians didn't have them. That meant they could either withdraw or die where they stood.

They chose to withdraw. Someplace else, someplace where they found odds that looked better, they would challenge the Unkerlanters again. In the meanwhile… "Forward!" Leudast shouted, scrambling up out of the mud. He wasn't that much filthier than the men around him, and his voice lent him authority.

Not long before nightfall, his squad and a couple of others fought their way into a village neither the Grelzers nor the Algarvians defended very hard. Captain Recared strode for the firstman's house, to make his headquarters there. He found the place empty, the door standing open. "Where's the firstman?" he asked a dumpy woman looking out the window of the hut next door.

She jerked a thumb toward the east. "He done run off," she answered, her Grelzer accent thick as syrup in Leudast's ears. "He were in bed with the Algarvians, he were." She sniffed. "His daughter were in bed with anything that walked on two legs and weren't quite dead. Little slut."

Recared nodded and went inside. Leudast nodded, too- wearily. He heard that story, or one just like it, in every village the Unkerlanters recaptured. All those villages had the same look: a lot of houses abandoned because the peasants had fled east to stay under Algarvian protection, hardly any men fit for soldiers showing themselves on the street.

The first few times he'd heard peasants tell tales of woe, he'd been sympathetic. Now… Now sympathy came harder. A lot of these people had run away rather than returning to King Swemmel's rule. From what Leudast had seen, a lot of the ones who'd stayed behind had done so only because they hadn't found the chance to flee.

No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than a scuffle broke out in a house not far away: curses and thumps and a shout of pain. "Think we ought to do anything about that, Sergeant?" one of his men asked.

Leudast shrugged and then shook his head. "I think it'll sort itself out without us. When it does…"

He proved a good prophet. A couple of minutes later, three middle-aged men half led, half dragged one of their contemporaries up before him. "Ascovind here, he done sucked up to the Algarvians and to the miserable little tinpot king they made," one of the captors said. "He ought to get what's coming to him."

"That's a filthy lie!" Ascovind shouted, twisting and trying to break free. "I never done nothing like that."

"Liar!" all three of the men shouted at the same time. One added, "He done told the Grelzers where irregulars hid out. Hurt 'em powerful bad, I bet."