Through the Darkness

“What will we do if we spy real Algarvian horse, lord Marshal--or if the redheads spot us?” Vatran asked in piteous tones.

“Why, charge them of course,” Rathar answered, deadpan. Vatran groaned, then cursed as he realized the marshal hadn’t meant it seriously. Rathar laughed a little. Finding anything to laugh about wasn’t easy.

In the tradition of battles from long-ago days, he rode toward the sound of the loudest fighting. Vatran managed to stay with him. They trotted past a team of Unkerlanters stripping the armor and egg-tosser off a slain Algarvian behemoth. “That’s good,” Vatran said. “That’s very good. We can use the gear, and that’s a fact. The Algarvians have too fornicating much of everything.”

“Except soldiers, we hope,” Rathar said, and Vatran nodded. The marshal looked over his shoulder at the Unkerlanter workmen. Thoughtfully, he went on, “Have to make sure they slap a coat of rock-gray paint on that mail before they put it on one of our behemoths. Even then, our men are liable to take it for a ruse--the redheads’ patterns are different from ours.”

“Here’s hoping the Algarvians don’t think of a ruse like that,” Vatran said with feeling. “They think of too cursed many things, and that’s the truth.”

“Aye, isn’t it just?” Rathar said. He filed the idea away, as one against which he would have to warn the Unkerlanter soldiery.

Up ahead, dragons swooped again and again. The sharp roars of bursting eggs came ever closer together. And Unkerlanter footsoldiers began streaming away from the center of the fighting before Rathar could get there and take charge of the defense. They had the look he’d seen too often in the fight against the Algarvians: the look of men not just beaten but stunned by what had rolled over them. They gaped at the sight of anyone going toward the battle from which they were retreating. “It’s another cursed breakthrough,” one of them said.

“Didn’t you hear the king’s order?” General Vatran thundered. “Not another step back!”

The soldier came to a ragged sort of attention, realizing the two men on unicornback were officers. He didn’t realize what sort of officers they were; he was too battered and worn to pay attention to the rank badges on their collar tabs. “If old Swemmel went through what I’ve been through, he’d step back himself, and pretty fornicating lively, too.”

Vatran looked about ready to burst like an egg. His fury did him no good. Before he could start thundering again, the weary soldier and his comrades trudged past him and Rathar, heading west and south. They might--they probably would--fight again later, when the odds looked better. For now, they’d taken all they could.

“Come on,” Rathar told Vatran. “We’ve got more important things to worry about than a squad’s worth of stragglers.” If we can’t stop the Algarvians from breaking through whenever they press hard, the whole kingdom will go over a cliff.”

“Ought to line ‘em up against a wall and blaze ‘em,” Vatran said, forgetting his earlier claim that the king had been too merciful. “That’s what we’d have done in the Twinkings War, and you cursed well know it.”

“We’ve done it in this fight, too,” Rathar said. “And we’ll do more of it, if we have to. But not this lot, that’s all.”

Vatran grunted. His unicorn chose that moment to sidestep. It almost threw him, where even an average rider would have shifted his weight a little and gone about his business. By the time the general had his mount under control (Rathar would have taken oath the beast looked scornful, but it might have been the way the paint streaked its muzzle), he’d calmed down a little. “Have to hit the redheads’ column in flank as it punches through. That’ll give ‘em some trouble, if we can bring it off.”

“Good notion,” Rathar told him, and it was. They’d blunted some Algar-vian attacks that way. He wondered if the Unkerlanter forces moving against the breakthrough could cut it off. Even more, though, he wondered where he was going to make the next fight this side of Sulingen.

Under Garivald’s tunic, a drop of sweat ran down his back as he trudged toward the village of Pirmasens. Heat wasn’t what made him sweat, though the weather was as warm and sticky as it ever got down in the Duchy of Grelz. No, he was afraid, and knew how afraid he was.

“Liaz,” he said, over and over again. “Liaz. Liaz.” He couldn’t very well go into any Grelzer village under his own name, not with the whacking great price the Algarvians had put on his head. Most villagers hated King Mezentio and his puppet King of Grelz, his cousin Raniero, more than they hated King Swem-mel. But enough felt the other way about things to make him glad he had an alias. Now if only he could be sure of remembering it!