Out of the Darkness

had been borrowed from Algarvian. Ealstan had had to learn it in a hurry. It meant either Help is coming or We’re in trouble, depending on who owned the behemoths being shouted about.

These behemoths had Algarvians aboard them. They were sallying from Gromheort, doing their best to hold the Unkerlanters away from the town. Officers or no officers, sergeants or no sergeants, Ealstan threw himself down on the muddy ground. He’d seen behemoths in the desperate fighting in and around Eoforwic, and had a hearty respect for what they could do. Most of the Unkerlanters close by him dove for cover, too. Anyone who’d had more than the tiniest taste of war knew better than to stay on his feet when enemy behemoths were in the neighborhood.

Somewhere not far away, a crystallomancer shouted into his glassy sphere. Before long, egg-tossers started aiming at the Algarvian beasts. They did less than Ealstan would have liked; only a direct hit, which took luck, would put paid to the immense beasts in their chain-mail coats. But a barrage of bursting eggs did keep Algarvian footsoldiers from going forward with the behemoths, and that left the animals and their crews more vulnerable than they would have been otherwise.

Ealstan swung his stick towards one of the redheads atop a behemoth a couple of hundred yards away. He had to aim carefully; behemoth crewmen wore armor, too. Why not? They relied on the animals to take them where they needed to go, and didn’t get down on the ground themselves unless something went wrong.

“There,” Ealstan muttered, and let his finger slide into the stick’s blazing hole. The beam leaped forth. The Algarvian started to clutch at his face, but crumpled with the motion half complete. He never knew what hit him, Ealstan thought. Instead of celebrating, he crawled toward a new hiding place. If one of Mezentio’s men had seen his beam, staying where he was might get him killed.

More men fell from the Algarvian behemoths. The Unkerlanter footsoldiers, like Ealstan, had learned to pick off crewmen whenever they got the chance. Had Algarvian footsoldiers gone forward with the beasts, they could have kept Swemmel’s soldiers too busy to let them snipe at the behemoth crews. But eggs bursting all around had held back the unarmored footsoldiers.

Sullenly, the Algarvian behemoths drew back toward Gromheort. Ealstan waited for the order to pursue. It didn’t come. The Unkerlanters around him seemed content to stay where they were, even if they could have gained some ground by showing initiative. There were also times when the efficiency Swemmel’s men talked so much about proved only talk.

Night fell. That didn’t keep the Unkerlanters from pounding Gromheort with eggs or the Algarvians in the town from answering back as best they could. Ealstan filled his mess tin with boiled barley and chunks of meat from a pot bubbling over a fire well shielded from sight by banks of dirt-Algarvian snipers sometimes sneaked out after dark to pick off whomever they could spot, and they were good at what they did. Poking one of the chunks with his spoon, Ealstan asked the cook, “What is this?”

“Unicorn tonight,” the fellow answered. “Not too bad.”

“Not, not too,” Ealstan more or less agreed. Unicorn, horse, behemoth-he’d eaten all sorts of things he never would have touched before the war. Behemoth was very tough and very gamy. But when the choice lay between eating it and going hungry. . Hard times had long since taught him that lesson.

He sat with his squadmates, going through the stew and talking. He couldn’t always understand them, nor they him, but they and he kept repeating themselves and changing a word here, a word there, till they got it. They didn’t hold his being Forthwegian against him. A couple of them still seemed to think he was just an Unkerlanter from a district where the dialect was very strange. They’d already seen he knew enough on the battlefield not to be a danger to them.

As for his method of joining King Swemmel’s army, most of them had stories not a whole lot different. “Oh, aye,” said a fellow named Curvenal, who, by his pimpled but almost beardless face, couldn’t have been much above sixteen. “The impressers came into my village. They said I could go fight the Algarvians or I could get blazed. With that for a choice. . The Algarvians might not blaze me, so here I am.”

“Me, I’m from the far southwest,” another soldier said. “I’d never even heard of Algarvians till the fornicating war started. All I want to do is go home.”

Ealstan could have had something to say about Unkerlant’s jumping on Forthweg’s back after the Algarvians stormed into his kingdom. He could have, but he didn’t. What point to it? None of these men had been in Swemmel’s army then; Curvenal would have been about eleven years old. And most of his new comrades were peasants. He might be ignorant of their language, but they were ignorant of much more. How could one not have heard of Algarvians? Not have met any? — that, certainly; the far southwest of Unkerlant was far indeed. But not to know they existed? That astonished Ealstan. He’d never met any Gyongyosians, but he would have had no trouble finding Gyongyos on a map.

Under cover of darkness, more Unkerlanter soldiers came forward. As soon as it got light, dragons painted rock-gray started harrying Gromheort once more. Listening to the thud of bursting eggs, Ealstan wondered again how his family was faring. He hoped they were well. That was all he could do.

Behemoths lumbered toward the city wall. “Forward!” officers shouted. Forward Ealstan went, along with his squadmates, along with the fresh troops. The Algarvians fought like canny veterans. Some of the new Unkerlanter soldiers were very raw indeed, too raw to know to take cover when the enemy started blazing at them. They might as well have been grain before the reaper.

But they also took a toll on the redheads. Though it was a smaller toll, the Algarvians could afford less in the way of losses. And, seeing smoke rising all around Gromheort, Ealstan realized Swemmel’s soldiers were coming at the city from every side. If they broke in anywhere, they would be ahead of the game.

No such luck. The Algarvians in Gromheort were trapped, but they hadn’t given up-and they hadn’t run out of food or supplies. They threw back this attack as they’d thrown back the others. They had courage and to spare-or maybe they didn’t dare let themselves fall into Unkerlanter hands.

“Won’t be anything left of that place before long,” Curvenal said.

“I used to live there,” Ealstan said in Forthwegian, and then had to struggle to get meaning across in Unkerlanter, which formed past tenses differently.

“Is your family still there?” Curvenal asked.

Ealstan nodded. “I think so. I hope so.”

The young Unkerlanter slapped him on the back. “That’s hard. That’s cursed hard. The redheads never got to my village, so I’m one of the lucky ones. But I know how many people have lost kin. I hope your folks come through all right.”

Sympathy from one of Swemmel’s men came as a surprise. “Thanks,” Ealstan said roughly. “So do I.” In ironic counterpoint, more eggs burst on Gromheort. He hoped his mother and father and sister were down in cellars where no harm could come to them. He also hoped they had enough to eat. The Algarvians would probably do their best to keep everything in the besieged town for themselves.

If any Forthwegians got food, he suspected his own family would. His father had both money and connections, and the Algarvians took bribes. Ealstan had seen that for himself, both in Gromheort and in Eoforwic. But even the redheads wouldn’t give civilians food if they had none to spare.

All I can do is try to break into the city when we’ve worn Mezentio’s men down enough to have a decent chance of doing it, Ealstan thought. If I desert and try to sneak in on my own, the Unkerlanters will blaze me if they catch me and the Algarvians will if the Unkerlanters don’t. And I couldn‘t do anything useful even if I did get in.

Every bit of that made perfect logical sense, the sort of sense that should have calmed a bookkeeper’s spirit. Somehow or other, it did nothing whatever to ease Ealstan’s mind.

Hajjaj was glad Bishah’s rainy season, never very long, was drawing to a close. That meant his roof wouldn’t leak much longer-till next rainy season. Zuwayzi roofers were among the most inept workmen in the whole kingdom. They could get away with it, too, because they were so seldom tested.

“Frauds, the lot of them,” he grumbled to his senior wife just after the latest set of bunglers packed up their tools and went down from the hills to Bishah.

“They certainly are,” Kolthoum agreed. They’d been together for half a century now. It had been an arranged marriage, not a love match; leaders among Zuwayzi clans wed for reasons far removed from romance. But they’d grown very fond of each other. Hajjaj wondered if he’d ever spoken the word love to her. He didn’t think so, but he couldn’t imagine what he would do without her.