Through the Darkness

But it wouldn’t be easy. He didn’t take long to discover that. Advancing over the ground on which the Unkerlanters had attacked was easy. Past that ground, though, they had their own field works, starting in the mean little workmen’s hovels in front of the great ironworks and extending back line after line, all the way to the river. Unkerlanter soldiers popped up out of cellars to blaze at the Algarvians, then disappeared again. Even more than Mezentio’s men, they lived like moles, tunneling from one hut to the next and only showing themselves above ground to blaze or to charge.

Major Spinello’s whistle squealed. “Come on, boys! Reach out and grab it, the way you’d grab a pretty Kaunian girl’s tits!”

Again, the Algarvians and Sibians went forward in a desperate push toward the riverbank. But the Unkerlanters were desperate, too. They funneled more and more men into the fight. For all Trasone knew, they had tunnels leading all the way back to the ironworks and the granary, strongpoints Mezentio’s men had yet to clear. The Algarvian advance stalled.

Trasone glanced toward the sky. Seen through shifting plumes of smoke, the sun had slid a long way down toward the western horizon. It was setting earlier now than it had not so long before. The start of fall couldn’t be more than a few days away. And after fall came winter. The thought of another winter in southern Unkerlant chilled Trasone to the marrow.

“We’d better win now, then,” he muttered, and crawled a few feet farther forward, into the crater a bursting egg had left.

A beam started a fire in the pile of rubble he’d just vacated--the beam from a heavy stick. It had come from up ahead. Somewhere up there, an Unkerlanter behemoth prowled. One of the Algarvian beasts had already gone down, blazed in the vulnerable belly by an Unkerlanter who came out of a hole below it and then ducked down again.

Dragons dove flaming. They were Unkerlanter beasts. Screams rang out among the Sibians. Trasone didn’t blame them. No troops had an easy time facing dragons. The sun set. Night fell. The Algarvians huddled in the ruins of Sulingen, only a couple of furlongs, maybe only one, from the Wolter. “We’ll get ‘em tomorrow!” Spinello called cheerfully.

In his gullyside headquarters, Marshal Rathar turned to General Vatran. “Can we hold them?” the marshal asked anxiously.

 “We have to hold them,” Vatran answered. “If we don’t hold the buggers, we don’t hold Sulingen. And if we don’t hold Sulingen ...”

“We get boiled alive, and so does the kingdom,” Rathar said. Vatran’s grunt might have been laughter. The only trouble was, Rathar wasn’t joking. The Algarvians had been advancing through Sulingen street, by street--slowly, but with grim persistence. Unkerlant had few streets left to lose.

Eggs burst not far from the mouth of the cavern in which Rathar and Vatran made their headquarters. The Unkerlanters moved soldiers up from the river through the gullies piercing Sulingen, and the Algarvians knew it. Their egg-tossers and dragons kept pounding away at those gullies. They took a horrible toll, but it would have been worse had Swemmel’s men gone forward any other way.

“If we lose those piers, we’re ruined,” Vatran said. “What have we got there to keep the redheads from reaching the river?”

“One behemoth and a couple of battalions, or whatever’s left of them by now,” Vatran told him. The general scowled at the map. “There are a lot more Algarvians in that part of town right now.”

“Our men have to hold anyway,” Rathar said. “We’ve got three good brigades waiting on the southern bank of the Wolter. They can’t get over the river till nightfall. If they try, the Algarvian dragons will have a field day. So we have to hang on to that landing area no matter what. Who’s in command there?”

“Powers above only know,” Vatran answered. “Whoever’s seniormost and hasn’t taken a beam through the brisket.”

“Aye, no doubt you’re right about that,” Rathar said. He turned his head and raised his voice to a shout: “Crystallomancer!”

“How may I serve you, lord Marshal?” asked one of the military mages in charge of keeping the cave in touch with the battle raging all through Sulingen.

Rather pointed to the map. “Get me the senior officer in this sector. I don’t know who he’ll be. I only hope his crystallomancer’s still breathing.”

The mage murmured over his glassy sphere. Moments later, an image formed in it: that of another crystallomancer, huddled in the ruins of what had been an ironworker’s hut. When Rathar’s crystallomancer told him what the marshal required, he nodded and said, “Wait.” He crawled off. A moment later, he came back with a soldier even grimier than he was. “Here is Major Melot.”

“Major, you are to hold the Algarvians away from the piers until nightfall, come what may,” Rathar said.

“Lord Marshal, you don’t know what you’re asking,” Melot said. “I’m down to about my last hundred men here. My only behemoth has a broken leg. And it looks like every Algarvian in the world is out there.”