Through the Darkness

“It’s about what you’d expect,” the general said. “They’ve been licked too many times, and some of ‘em don’t see how anything different’s going to happen when they bump up against the Algarvians again.”

“That’s not good,” Rathar said in what he thought a commendable understatement. “I haven’t seen anything about it in your written reports.”

“No, and you won’t, either,” Vatran told him. “D’you think I’m daft, to put it in writing where his Majesty could see it? My head would go up on a pike five minutes later--unless he decided to boil me alive instead.” He spread his hands--broad peasant hands, much like Rathar’s. “You hold my life, lord Marshal. If you want it, you can take it. But you need to know the truth.”

“For which I thank you.” Rathar again wondered whether he wanted Vatran dead. Probably not: who could have done better here in the south? No one he could think of, save perhaps himself. “Don’t the men remember what we did to the Algarvians last winter?”

“No doubt some of ‘em do,” Vatran answered. “But it’s not winter now, and it won’t be for a while, even down here. And in summer, when their dragons can fly and their behemoths can run, nobody’s beaten Mezentio’s men yet.”

“We’ve made them earn it,” Rathar said. “If we can keep on making them earn it, sooner or later they’ll run out of men.”

“Aye,” Vatran said, “either that or we’ll run out of land we can afford to lose. If we don’t hold Sulingen and the Mamming Hills, can we keep on with the war?”

People had asked that about Cottbus the summer before. Unkerlant hadn’t had to find out the answer, for the capital had held. Rathar hoped his kingdom wouldn’t have to find out the answer this time, either. He had no guarantee, though, and neither did Unkerlant.

Doing his best to look on the bright side of things, he said, “I hear they’re starting to put Yaninans in the line. They wouldn’t do that if they didn’t have to.”

“That’s so--to a point,” Vatran said. “But they’re no fools. They wouldn’t be so dangerous if they were. They give the boys with the pretty shoes the quiet stretches to hold. That lets them concentrate more of their own men where they have to do real fighting.”

Before Rathar could reply, more eggs fell on Durrwangen. Again, he and Vatran stretched themselves on the floor. The schoolhouse shook and creaked all around them. Rathar hoped the roof wouldn’t come down on his head.

Still more eggs fell. The Algarvians couldn’t have moved so many tossers so far forward ... could they? More likely, dragons with redheads atop them were dropping their loads of death on the Unkerlanter city. And Vatran had already said he lacked the dragons to repel them.

A runner with more courage than sense rushed into Vatran’s headquarters even while the eggs were falling. “General!” he cried. “General!” By his tone, Rathar knew something had gone badly wrong. Sure enough, the fellow went on, “General, the Algarvians have broken through our lines west of the city. If we can’t stop them, they’ll slide around behind us and cut us off!”

“What?” Vatran and Rathar said the same thing at the same time in identical tones of horror. Both men cursed. Then Vatran, who know the local situation better, demanded, “What happened to the brigades that were supposed to hold the buggers back?”

Unhappily, the runner answered, “Uh, some of them, sir, some of them went and skedaddled, fast as they could go.”

Rathar cursed again. In a low voice, Vatran said, “Now you see what I meant.”

“I see it,” the marshal said. “I see we’ll have to stop it, too, before the rot gets worse.” He climbed to his feet. The runner stared at him. “How bad a breakthrough is it?” he snapped.

“Pretty bad, sir,” the messenger replied. “They’ve got behemoths through, and plenty of footsoldiers with ‘em. They’re astride--no, they’re past--the ley line leading west out of Durrwangen.”

That was also Rathar’s most direct route back to Cottbus, not that any route from the embattled south to the capital was direct these days. “Can we drive them back?” he asked both the runner and General Vatran.

“Sir--uh, lord Marshal--the redheads have pushed a lot of men through,” the runner said. His gaze swung toward Vatran.

So did Rathar’s. Vatran licked his lips. “I don’t know where we could scrape up the men,” he said at last, most unhappily. “And coming at Durrwan-gen from out of the west! Who would have thought the Algarvians--who would have thought anybody--could come at Durrwangen from out of the west? We haven’t got the defenses there that we do east of the city.”

“Probably why the Algarvians chose that direction for their attack,” Rathar said. Vatran gaped at him as if he’d suddenly started declaiming poetry in Gyongyosian. The marshal repeated the question he’d asked before: “Can we hold Durrwangen?”

“I don’t see how, lord Marshal,” Vatran answered.