Through the Darkness

But the dead enemy’s countrymen attacked again; they truly were saying, Thus far and no farther. Again, Algarvian dragons swooped down on the Unkerlanters. Swemmel’s men could not stand in the face of flame. Those who could fell back.

Those who couldn’t. . . Trasone ran past a shrunken, twisted black doll that had, up till a few minutes before, been a man who wanted to kill him. Now the horrid thing, still smoking, sent up a stink that reminded him of a pork roast forgotten on a hot, hot stove. He spat--and spat black, from all the soot he was breathing in. With a broad-shouldered shrug, he jumped down into a new hole.

A moment later, Sergeant Panfilo jumped down with him. “You see the dead one back there?” Panfilo asked. Trasone nodded. Panfilo shuddered. “That could have been us, as easy as it was him.”

“Not quite as easy,” Trasone said. “The Unkerlanters haven’t got a whole lot of dragons down here.”

“What difference does that make?” Panfilo demanded. “You think our own beasts wouldn’t flame us? They’re too stupid to care who they’re killing, as long as they’re killing somebody.”

“That’s why they’ve got dragonfliers on their backs,” Trasone pointed out.

“Aye, so they do--and half the time they’re as stupid as the beasts they ride,” Panfilo said. Trasone chuckled and nodded; he was always ready to listen to slander about anyone who wasn’t a footsoldier.

Before Panfilo could add to the slander, Spinello’s whistle blew an urgent blast. “Be ready, boys!” he called.

“Ready for what?” Trasone asked.

“More counterattacks,” the major answered. “Crystal says they’re sending lots of men up over the Wolter from the south bank. They don’t want us in Sulingen. They don’t want us anywhere near Sulingen. If we can get them out of this place and cross the Wolter ourselves, there’s nothing between us and the Mamming Hills and most of the cinnabar that isn’t in the land of the Ice People.”

“Nothing but a few million Unkerlanters who hate everything about us and want to have fun with us before they finally let us die,” Trasone said.

“We can lick the Unkerlanters,” Spinello said. Trasone envied him his blithe confidence, but couldn’t imagine where he got it. Spinello went on, “If we couldn’t lick the buggers, what would we be doing here? We’ve done nothing but lick ‘em for the last seven hundred miles or so, and we can keep right on doing it a few miles more.”

The Algarvians hadn’t done nothing but lick the Unkerlanters; they’d taken some lickings of their own, as Trasone knew and Spinello should have remembered. But the battalion commander had a point: without a lot of victories, the Algarvian banner wouldn’t be flying here so far from home.

“And one thing more,” Spinello added: “Be ready to counterattack, boys. You’ll know when.”

Before Trasone could ask any questions about that, the Unkerlanters started tossing eggs at his position again. “Urra! Urra! Urra!” The fierce shouts they used to nerve themselves for battle rang out. Sometimes they nerved themselves with raw spirits, too. “Here they come!” someone yelled in Algarvian.

Again, Algarvian egg-tossers caught the Unkerlanters in the open. Again, they worked a gruesome slaughter on Swemmel’s men. Again, the Unkerlanters, or those of them who lived, rolled forward in spite of that and in spite of the sharp, accurate blazing of the Algarvians awaiting them.

Then the ground shuddered under Trasone. It shuddered more under the Unkerlanters. Fissures opened in what had been solid ground; what had been holes closed up, often trapping men inside them. Flames spurted up from the surface of the ground, violet flames like nothing Trasone had seen till the autumn before. Burned Unkerlanters shrieked. As the dragons had been, the magic was more than King Swemmel’s men could bear. They turned and fled.

Spinello’s whistle shrilled once more. “Come on, boys!” he yelled. “They’re on the run now. You don’t want to make our mages spend all those Kaunians for nothing, do you? Come on!” Scrappy as a terrier, he was, as usual, the first to leap from cover and rush after the retreating foe.

Trasone followed. He didn’t care whether Kaunians were being massacred to some good purpose or for no reason at all. He had no use for diem, and wouldn’t have been sorry to see them all dead. But seeing the Unkerlanters in front of him dead struck him as a lot more important at the moment.

He and his comrades were nearing the Unkerlanters’ trenches when the ground shook beneath them again. This time, Spinello cried out in fury-- Algarvian mages weren’t the ones working magic here. Trasone cried out, too--in fear. He didn’t run, not because he didn’t want to but because he didn’t think it would do any good. He lay down behind a riven wall and hoped no crevasse would gape wide beneath him.