Out of the Darkness

he would rather not have had: on the far side of the Scamandro, the Algarvians had started fighting back fiercely. “How can they?” Vatran said when the crystallomancers reported that. “We should have squashed them flat as a bug.”

“I think I know what they did,” Rathar said. “I’m not sure, but I think so. I think they pulled back from their frontline positions before we hit them. They did that a few times back in Unkerlant. It would let them save a lot of their men and egg-tossers and behemoths, even if it did cost them land.”

“They can’t afford to lose anything right now,” Vatran said.

“I know.” Rathar nodded. “But if they’d lost the men, they surely would have lost the land, too. This way, they have a chance of counterattacking and driving us back-or they think they do, anyhow.”

“We have to keep throwing men and behemoths at them,” Vatran said.

“We’re doing that. We haven’t been building up here for nothing,” Rathar said. “But it’s going to be harder than we thought it would.”

General Vatran made a sour face. “What isn’t, with Algarvians?”

Rathar had no answer for that. The redheads had come horrifyingly close to conquering his kingdom. Now he was tantalizingly close to conquering theirs. But they hadn’t made any of the fights easy, not a single one. They’d failed not because they weren’t good soldiers, but because there weren’t enough of them and because King Mezentio hadn’t thought he would need to bother conciliating the Unkerlanters his men overran. Arrogance was an Algarvian vice.

It wasn’t one that mattered here, though. There still aren‘t enough of them to stop us, Rathar thought. “Wherever we penetrate, send in reinforcements;” he commanded. Again, crystallomancers relayed his words to the commanders at the front.

He hoped they wouldn’t need the order. It was standard doctrine in Unkerlant. He gave it anyhow. In the heat of the moment, who could guess whether these front-line commanders bothered to remember doctrine?

More dragons flew east, to torment the Algarvians with eggs and with fire. Crystallomancers reported only a handful of enemy beasts rising to challenge them. There was no doubt whatsoever that the Unkerlanters had at last forced the line of the Scamandro. How much more they would be able to do, though, remained an open question.

“Powers below eat the redheads,” Vatran growled as the day wore on with no sign of a breakthrough.

“They will,” Rathar said. “We’re feeding them.”

“Not fast enough,” Vatran grumbled. Rathar wished he could have argued with his general. Unfortunately, he agreed with him. The Algarvians had salvaged more than he’d thought they could, and they were righting not only with their usual cleverness but also with the desperate courage of men who had nothing left to lose. They knew as well as Rathar that only they lay between his army and Trapani.

Another night and day of hammering produced only a little progress, and only a couple of lodgements on the high ground Mezentio’s men were defending. Had everything gone according to plan, Rathar’s behemoths would have been lumbering toward Trapani by then. But the Marshal of Unkerlant wasn’t the only one who’d made plans for this moment, and those of the Algarvians looked to be working a little better than his.

“How long can this go on?” Vatran complained that evening.

“I don’t know,” Rathar answered. “I still think we’re all right, though. We have made them fall back some, and we’ve still got reinforcements pouring in from the west. When they use up what they’ve mustered against us, it’s gone, and gone for good.”

But even he had trouble staying detached and optimistic when his men gained hardly any more ground on the third day of the attack than they had on the second. And that evening, Vatran wasn’t the one doing the complaining. A crystallomancer came up to Rathar and said, “Sir, King Swemmel would speak to you at once.”

Rathar had more than expected such a call. If anything, he was a little surprised the king had waited this long. “I’m coming,” he said. Just for a moment, he imagined ordering the crystallomancer to tell Swemmel he couldn’t come, that he was too busy. But no one had any business being too busy to talk to the King of Unkerlant.

Swemmel’s image stared out of the crystal at Rathar. Not for the first time, the marshal thought his sovereign looked like an Algarvian. He had a long, pale face with a straight nose, though his hair and eyes were dark like a proper Unkerlanter’s. Those eyes often had a febrile glow to them, and they positively blazed now. “We are not pleased, Marshal, not pleased at all,” Swemmel said without preamble. “We had hoped and believed the news from the front would be better than what we have heard.”

“I’d hoped so myself, your Majesty,” Rathar replied. “For now, the Algarvians are fighting harder than I thought they could. But when springs come to the icebound rivers in the south, the ice does melt each year, and the water does flow down to the Narrow Sea. As the ice does, the Algarvians’ lines will break up. The thaw is slow, but it will come.”

“Very pretty,” Swemmel said. “We did not know we had a poet commanding our armies. We want to be sure we do have a soldier commanding them.”

Stiffly, Rathar said, “Your Majesty, the redheads thought I was doing well enough to make it worth their while to try to murder me. If you think someone else can do better, give me a stick and send me to the front line. I will fight for you in whatever way suits you best.”

“We want Mezentio, Marshal,” the king said. “Give us Mezentio, as you gave us Raniero. By the time Mezentio dies, he will have spent long and long envying his cousin.”

Swemmel had boiled Raniero alive after his soldiers recaptured most of the Duchy of Grelz. Rathar didn’t know what he could do to Mezentio that was worse, but his sovereign had had a year and a half to think about it. “I don’t know if I can give you Mezentio, your Majesty,” he said. “He will have somewhat to say about that himself, very likely. But I can give you Trapani, and I will.”

“You should have done it already,” Swemmel said peevishly.

“The day will come, your Majesty,” Rathar promised. “And I think it will come soon. The Algarvians have lost ground here, and they can’t afford to lose much more. This is the last obstacle in front of us. We are beating it down.”

“Enemies everywhere,” King Swemmel muttered. Rathar didn’t think that was aimed at him. Had it been, Swemmel would have sacked him, or worse. The king gathered himself. “Break the Algarvians. Crush them beneath your heel- beneath our heel.” That was the royal we again, proud and imperious.

“Your Majesty, it will be a pleasure,” Rathar said. “And we will do it. It’s only a matter of time.” He hadn’t finished before the crystal flared and Swemmel’s image vanished. He’d told the king what he wanted to hear. Now he had to make it good. He hadn’t lied. He didn’t think it would take long.

Garivald had hated the Algarvians even before they overran his home village. But ever since he’d faced the redheads as an irregular-and especially since King Swemmel’s impressers hauled him into the army and he’d fought Mezentio’s men here in the north-he’d developed a sincere if grudging respect for them as soldiers. However outnumbered they were, they always fought cleverly, they always fought hard, and they always made Unkerlant pay more than it should have for every inch of land it took.

Always-until now. A couple of redheaded soldiers came out of a house with hands high over their heads and with fearful expressions on their faces. Garivald had been fearful, too, as in any fight. They might have killed him. He knew that all too well. But they’d given up instead. More and more now, Algarvians were throwing down their sticks and throwing up their hands. They knew, or some of them knew, they were beaten.

With a gesture from the business end of his stick, Garivald sent these redheads off to captivity. He didn’t even bother rifling their belt pouches for whatever silver they carried. It was as if he were saying, You fellows can go on. I’ll catch some of your pals pretty soon and frisk them instead.

Lieutenant Andelot called, “Well, Fariulf, they really are starting to go to pieces now. Even a few weeks ago, those whoresons would have made us pay the price of prying them out of there.”

A few weeks before, the Unkerlanter army, or the part of it with which Garivald was most intimately concerned, had been falling back from Bonorva in the face of a fierce Algarvian counterattack. Mezentio’s men couldn’t sustain it, though. And, having used up so many men and behemoths, they hadn’t been able to hold their ground against the Unkerlanters afterwards.