Out of the Darkness

“Maybe you’re right,” Lurcanio answered, and went off to get some tea of his own.

Things went well on the second day, too, though not quite so well as they had on the first. Algarvians slogged forward through snow that slowed both foot-soldiers and behemoths. “We’ve got to keep going,” Santerno said discontentedly. “The faster we move, the better our chances.”

But the Kuusamans and Lagoans, no longer taken altogether by surprise as they had been when the attack opened, fought back hard. They also wrecked every bridge they could as they retreated, making Mezentio’s artificers spend precious hours improvising crossings. And the enemy seemed to have endless herds of behemoths, not the carefully hoarded beasts the Algarvians had accumulated with so much labor and trouble. They weren’t so good on the behemoths as the veterans who rode the Algarvian animals, but they could afford to spend their substance freely. Lurcanio’s countrymen couldn’t.

On the third day, the sun burned through the low clouds earlier than it had on the first two of the attack. “Forward!” Lurcanio shouted once more. The Algarvians had pushed about a third of the way down to the Strait of Valmiera, fairly close to the distance their plan had prescribed for the first two days. Lurcanio was more pleased than not; no plan, he knew, came through battle intact.

He was also weary unto death. He felt every one of his years like another heavy stone on his shoulders. I have had a soft war, he thought as he splashed south through an icy stream. A good thing, too, or I’d have fallen over dead a long time ago. Someone blazed at him from the trees beyond the stream as he came up onto the bank. The beam boiled a puff of steam from the snow near his feet. He threw himself down on his belly with a groan. I wish I could just lie here and go to sleep. Not far away, Captain Santerno sprawled behind a tree trunk. Lurcanio noted with a certain amount of relief that the hard-faced youngster looked about as haggard as he felt himself.

A couple of Algarvian behemoths lumbered up out of the stream. The egg-tossers on their backs made short work of the enemy footsoldiers in the trees. Lurcanio heaved himself to his feet. “Forward!” he yelled, and then, more quietly, spoke to Santerno: “Who would have thought it? We may really do this.”

“Why not?” his adjutant answered. “These Kuusamans and Lagoans, they’re not so tough. If you haven’t fought in Unkerlant, you don’t know what war’s about.”

Lurcanio had heard that song before. He began to think Santerno was right, though. Then, toward the afternoon, his brigade surrounded a town called Adutiskis. The road the Algarvians really needed to use ran through the town. The Kuusamans holed up inside threw back the brigade’s first attack, killing several behemoths Lurcanio knew his countrymen couldn’t afford to lose. He sent in a message under flag of truce to the Kuusaman commander: “I respectfully suggest you surrender your position. I cannot answer for the conduct of my men if they overrun the town. You have already fought bravely, and further resistance is hopeless.”

In short order, the messenger returned, bearing a written answer in classical Kaunian. It said, Powers below eat you. Lurcanio and Santerno stared at that. The hard-bitten adjutant swept off his hat in salute and said, “The man has style.”

“Aye,” Lurcanio agreed. “He also has Adutiskis, and it’s a cork in the bottle.” He led another attack. It failed. Mages brought up blonds to kill-maybe Kaunians from Forthweg, maybe Valmierans scooped up at random. Lurcanio asked no questions. Winning overrode everything else. But Kuusaman wizards in the town threw the spell back on their heads. “We have to get through,” Lurcanio raged. “They’re crimping the whole attack.”

The fourth morning dawned even brighter and clearer than the third had, and swarms of Kuusaman and Lagoan dragons flew up from the south. Eggs crashed down on the Algarvians’ heads. Dragons flamed behemoths one after another till the stink of burnt meat filled Lurcanio’s nostrils. The Kuusamans in Adutiskis held against a third attack, and then he had to turn men away from the town to try to contain an enemy thrust bent on relieving it. By the slimmest of margins, he did.

Even more enemy dragons were in the air the next morning. Every so often, one would get blazed out of the sky and smash down into the snow, but two or three fresh beasts always seemed to take its place. The Algarvian advance stumbled to a halt. “Did you ever see anything like this in Unkerlant?” Lurcanio asked Santerno.

Numbly, the younger officer shook his head. “We have to fall back,” he said. “We can’t stay out in the open like this. We’ll all get killed.” The Algarvian commanders took three days longer to realize the same thing, which gained them little ground and cost them men and beasts they could not spare. Adutiskis never did fall. And the way into Algarve lies open for the enemy, Lurcanio thought grimly.

Leudast had no trouble figuring out when he crossed the border from Yanina into Algarve. It wasn’t so much that the buildings in the villages changed, though they did-the Algarvians were given to vertical lines enlivened with ornamental woodwork that struck the Unkerlanter lieutenant as busy. It wasn’t even that redheads replaced small, skinny, swarthy Yaninans. More than anything else, it was the roads.

In Unkerlant, cities had paved streets. Villages didn’t. Often, good-sized towns didn’t. Roads between cities were invariably dirt-which meant that, in spring or fall, they were invariably mud. That mud had gone a long way toward slowing the Algarvian advance on Cottbus the first autumn of the war.

Yanina hadn’t seemed much different from Unkerlant, not as far as roads went. Oh, there was one paved highway leading east from Patras, but Leudast hadn’t been on it very long. Everywhere else, the rules he knew held good: paved streets in cities, dirt in villages and out in the countryside.

In Algarve, things were different. Every road was topped with cobbles or slates or concrete. Every single one, so far as Leudast could see. “Powers above, sir,” he said to Captain Drogden. “How much does it cost to pave over a whole cursed kingdom?”

“I don’t know,” Drogden answered. “A lot. I’m sure of that.”

“Aye.” Leudast clicked his tongue between his teeth. “I always knew the redheads were richer than we are. They have a lot more crystals than we do, their soldiers eat better food and more of it, they use supply caravans that put anything we’ve got to shame. But seeing their kingdom. .” He shook his head. “I didn’t know they were that much richer than we are.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Drogden said. “It doesn’t fornicating matter. The whoresons aren’t in Unkerlant any more, trying to take away what little we’ve got. Now we’re here-and by the time we’re through with them, they won’t be so fornicating rich any more. Most of ‘em’ll be too dead to be rich.”

“Suits me, sir,” Leudast said. “Suits me fine. I just don’t want to end up dead with ‘em. They pushed us back till they could see Cottbus. I’ve come this far. I want to see Trapani.”

“So do I,” Drogden said. “Bastards fight for every village like it was Trapani, too.” He spat. “They haven’t got enough men left to stop us, though.”

Leudast nodded. “Some of that last batch of captives we took look like they were too old to fight in the last war, let alone this one.”

“Some of ‘em won’t be ready to fight till the next one, either.” Drogden spat again. “Little buggers like that are dangerous, too. It’s like a game to them, not anything real. You and me, we’re afraid to die. Those kids, they don’t think they can. They’ll do crazy things on account of it.”

“They’re Algarvians,” Leudast said. “That means they’re all dangerous, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Something to that-something, but not everything,” Drogden answered. “The women, now. . Mezentio’s whoresons had fun with our girls when they came into Unkerlant. Now it’s our turn. Redhaired pussy’s as good as any other kind.”

“I expect it would be,” Leudast agreed. Drogden sounded as if he was speaking from experience. No one among the Unkerlanters’ commanders would say a word if their soldiers and officers raped their way through Algarve. Leudast hadn’t indulged himself yet. He didn’t know whether he would or not. Go without long enough and you didn’t much care how you got it.

“They’re all sluts anyway-Algarvian women, I mean,” Drogden said. “They deserve it-and they’re going to get it, too.”

“A lot of ‘em are running away from us as fast as they can go, for fear of what we’ll do to them,” Leudast said.

“That’s fine. I don’t mind a bit.” Drogden had a nasty chuckle when he chose to use it. “The more they clog their nice paved roads for their own soldiers, the more trouble they end up in. And when our dragons fly over, don’t they have fun?”

“Don’t they just?” Now Leudast spoke with the same savage enthusiasm as his regiment commander. “The