Through the Darkness

“Hold,” Rathar repeated, his voice deadly cold. “Blaze the behemoth and use the carcass for a strongpoint. Rally your men around it. If you don’t hold off the redheads till the sun goes down, I’ll have you blazed first thing tomorrow morning. Have you got that?”

“Aye, lord Marshal.” Melot shrugged. “We’ll do what we can, sir. That’s all we can do.” Raising one shaggy eyebrow, he stared at Rathar. “The way things are, I’m not much afraid of you blazing me. The Algarvians’ll take care of it for you, never fear.”

A moment later, the crystal flared light for a moment. The images of the embattled major and his mage faded. Rathar’s crystallomancer said, “They’ve broken the link, sir.”

“That fellow is insubordinate,” Vatran grumbled.

“He’s on the spot,” Rathar said mildly. “He’ll do what I told him to do, or he’ll die trying.” He made a fist and pounded it down on his knee. “I don’t mind if he dies trying, but he has to do it. If he doesn’t, they cut Sulingen in half. How long till sunset?”

He couldn’t tell by looking: shadow already shrouded the far wall of the gully. Vatran spoke in reassuring tones: “Only a couple of more hours, lord Marshal. Let’s get some food in you first. What do you say to that?”

“All right.” Rathar realized how empty he felt. He would have made sure his army’s behemoths were well fed, but didn’t bother giving himself the same care.

Vatran nodded, as if to say he knew as much. “Hey, Ysolt!” he shouted. “Bring the marshal a big bowl of whatever’s in the pot, and a mug of spirits to go with it.”

“Ill do that,” the cook said, and she did. She handed Rathar a bowl of buckwheat groats and onions, with bits of meat floating in it.

He dug in, pausing now and again to swig from the mug of spirits. “Good,” he said with his mouth full, and then pointed at the bowl. “What’s the meat?”

“Unicorn, lord Marshal,” Ysolt answered. She was nearing middle age, wide in the shoulder and wider in the hips, her face always red from the cook-fires she tended. “One of the ones the Algarvians killed out in the gully. Seemed a stinking shame to let the flesh go to waste.”

“Unicorn,” Rathar echoed. He wasn’t sure he’d ever eaten it before. He’d eaten horse, but this was less gluey on the tongue, more flavorful. “Not bad. Can you fill up the bowl again?”

“Why not?” The cook took it from him and went back to the fire, her big haunches rolling as she walked. Vatran eyed her with appreciation. Rathar didn’t think the general was sleeping with her, but he wasn’t sure. The past few days, nobody in this hole in the ground had been sleeping much.

After a while, darkness did fall. Vatran said, “Well, we haven’t heard that the piers are lost, anyhow.”

“Would we?” Rathar asked. “If everyone over there is dead, nobody’d be left to tell us everything had fallen apart.” He raised his voice once more. “Crystallomancer! Get me Major Melot again.”

The mage cast his spell. After what seemed a very long time, someone’s face appeared in the crystal. Whose? Too dark to tell. “Report your situation,” Rathar said, wondering if he was taking with an Algarvian who’d overrun the Unkerlanter defenders.

“We’re still here, sir.” The fellow sounded like an Unkerlanter, anyhow.

“Where’s Major Melot?” Rathar rapped out.

“Dead,” the Unkerlanter soldier answered. “There’s maybe fifty of us left--but Mezentio’s men have settled down for the night. We gave ‘em all they wanted and then some. Plenty of those whoresons down for good, too, you bet.”

Maybe he didn’t know to whom he was speaking. Maybe he was too worn to care. Rathar remembered fights like that, back in the Twinkings War. If he had to, he’d grab a stick and go into battle himself once more--that was how vital he reckoned holding Sulingen to be. “Good enough, soldier,” he said gruffly, and nodded to the crystallomancer, who dissolved the link. Rathar turned to Vatran. “What do you think?”

“If we don’t send those brigades across, lord Marshal, we may as well pack it in,” Vatran answered. “Even if the redheads have a trap waiting to close on ‘em, we’ve got to try it. Without ‘em, the Algarvians have it all their own way in Sulingen. You’ll do what you’ll do--you’re the marshal. But that’s how it looks to me.”

“And to me,” Rathar said. He tapped the crystallomancer on the shoulder. “Get me Major General Canel, on the southern bank of the Wolter.” A couple of minutes later, Canel’s image appeared in the crystal. The Unkerlanter officer had a bloody bandage wrapped loosely around his head. “Redheads come calling?” Rathar asked.

“It’s only a scratch,” Canel answered. “They didn’t hit more than a couple of boats, either, lord Marshal. I can move if you want me to.”

“Stout fellow,” Rathar said. “I want you to, all right. First thing you do is, you throw the Algarvians back from the pier. Then reinforce the ironworks and the granary, and then the hill east of the ironworks.”

Canel nodded, which made the bandage flop down over his left eye. “Never a dull moment in these parts, is there? Cursed Algarvians.”