Out of the Darkness

many more such “victories” could Algarve afford before she had no dragonfliers left?

Lieutenant Leudast stared glumly east across the Skamandros River. The river, running harder than usual because of the late-fall rains and not yet ready to freeze over, had stalled Unkerlant’s armies longer than its commanders would have wanted. Artificers were supposed to have bridged it by now, but Algarvian dragons had put paid to that. Now the artificers, or those of them the attack from the air hadn’t killed, were trying again.

Captain Drogden came up to Leudast. Drogden was a rugged forty; like Leudast himself, he’d seen a lot of war. He headed the regiment of which Leudast commanded a company. Both of them wore hooded capes over their tunics, and both of them had the hoods up to fight the freezing rain. Both of them also wore wool leggings, wool drawers, and stout felt boots. Cold was one thing Unkerlanter warriors knew how to beat.

“Maybe we’ll get it across this time,” Drogden said, peering through the nasty rain at the artificers at work.

“Maybe.” Leudast didn’t sound convinced. “But not if the stinking redheads send more dragons and we haven’t got any on patrol. That wasn’t what you’d call efficient.” King Swemmel had tried mightily to make efficiency Unkerlant’s watchword. His subjects mouthed his slogans-inspectors made sure of that- but they had a good deal of trouble living up to them.

Captain Drogden rubbed his nose. Like Leudast-like most Unkerlanters- he boasted a fine hooked beak, one that was sometimes vulnerable to cold weather. He said, “I hear there’s a new commander at the closest dragon farm. The old commander’s gone to a penal battalion.”

“Oh,” Leudast said, and said no more. Once in a while, the men who fought in a penal battalion escaped it by conspicuous, death-defying heroism. Far more often, they simply died softening up tough Algarvian positions so the soldiers who followed them in the attack got a better chance of success.

“Chief dowser almost went with him,” Drogden added.

“Rain must have saved the mage,” Leudast said. His superior nodded. Dowsers spotted dragons at long range by sorcerously detecting the motion of their wingbeats. Finding that motion in the midst of millions of raindrops taxed dowsing rods, spells, and the men who used them.

A gang of Yaninan peasants squelched by, carrying timbers for the Unkerlanter artificers and their bridge- building. The Yaninans were as swarthy as Unkerlanters, but they were mostly lean men with long faces, not stocky men with broad cheekbones. They grew bushy mustaches, where Leudast and his countrymen shaved when they got the chance. They wore tight tunics, trousers so tight they were almost leggings, and, absurdly, shoes with pompoms on them. They also wore unhappy expressions at being shepherded along by a couple of Unkerlanter soldiers with sticks.

“Our allies,” Leudast said scornfully.

Drogden nodded. “As long as we don’t turn our backs on them, anyhow. Powers below eat them for kicking us when we were down, and for getting away with switching sides when they did. We could have smashed them right along with the redheads.”

“Probably, sir,” Leudast agreed. “But the way I look at it is like this: their whole fornicating kingdom is a penal battalion these days. And they know it, too-look at their faces.”

The regimental commander thought about that, then laughed and nodded and slapped Leudast on the back. “A penal kingdom,” Drogden said. “I like that, curse me if I don’t. You’re dead right. King Swemmel will find a way to make them pay.”

“Of course he will,” Leudast said. Both men took care to speak as if they were paying the king a huge compliment. No one in Unkerlant dared speak of Swemmel any other way. You never could tell who might be listening. One of the oldest sayings in Unkerlant was, When three men conspire, one is a fool and the other two are royal inspectors. It held a lot of truth under any king who ruled from Cottbus. Under Swemmel, who’d had to win a civil war against his twin brother before taking the throne, and who scented plots whether they were there or not, it might as well have been a law of nature.

A few eggs burst, perhaps a quarter of a mile away: Algarvian egg-tossers, feeling for the new bridge. The bursts weren’t particularly close to it, either. A couple of the Yaninans in the work gang dropped the log they were carrying and made as if to run. One of the soldiers with them blazed a puff of steam from the wet ground in front of them. They probably didn’t understand his curses, but that message needed no translation. They picked up the log and went back to work.

“Surprised he didn’t blaze ‘em,” Drogden remarked.

“Aye,” Leudast said. “Back when the war was new-when we moved into Forthweg, or we’d just started fighting the Yaninans-I’d’ve taken cover when I heard bursts that close. I know better than to bother now. Those dumb buggers don’t.”

“You’ve been in it from the start?” Drogden asked.

“I sure have, sir,” Leudast answered. “Before the start, even-I was fighting the Gongs in the Elsung Mountains, way out west, when Algarve’s neighbors declared war on her. I was in Forthweg when the redheads jumped on our back, and I’ve been trying to kill those whoresons ever since. They’ve been trying to kill me, too, but they only blazed me twice. Add it all up and I’ve been pretty lucky.”

“Matter of fact, they’ve got me twice, too,” Drogden said. “Once in the leg, and once-” He held up his left hand. Till he did it, Leudast hadn’t noticed he was missing the last two joints of that little finger.

“Were you in from the very beginning, too?” Leudast asked him.

“I’ve been in the army since then, aye, but I only went to the front a year and a half ago,” Drogden said.

“Really?” Leudast said. “You don’t mind my asking, sir, how did you manage to stay away so long?” Who kept you safe? went through his mind. So did, Who finally got angry enough at you to make you come work for a living like everybody else?

But Drogden said, “For a long time, I was in charge of one of the big behemoth-breeding farms in the far southwest. It was crazy there, especially after the redheads started overrunning so many of the farms here in the east. We were getting breeding stock and fodder out as best we could, and sending the animals and everything else across the kingdom so we could go on breeding them in places where the enemy’s dragons couldn’t reach. We did it, aye, but it wasn’t easy.”

“I believe that,” Leudast said. There had been plenty of times, the first year and a half of the war, when he’d wondered if the kingdom would hold together. There had been more than a few times when he’d feared it wouldn’t. He went on, “You had an important job, sir. What are you doing here?”

With a shrug, Drogden replied, “They replaced me with a man who knew behemoths but who’d lost an arm. He couldn’t fight any more, but he could be useful in my old slot. That freed me up to go into battle. Efficiency.”

“Efficiency,” Leudast echoed. For once, he didn’t feel like a hypocrite saying it. The move Captain Drogden described made good sense, even if he might have preferred to stay thousands of miles away from the war. On the other hand. . “Uh, sir? Why didn’t they put you in among the behemoth-riders, if you were in charge of a breeding farm?”

“Actually, I trained as a footsoldier,” Drogden answered. “Raising behemoths was the family business. I joined the army because I didn’t feel like going into it.” He laughed a brief, sardonic laugh. “Things don’t always work out the way you plan.”

“That’s true enough,” Leudast agreed. A couple of more Algarvian eggs burst. These were a little closer, but not enough to get excited about. He went on, “If things had worked out the way the redheads planned, they’d have marched into Cottbus before the snow fell that first winter of the war.”

“You’re right,” Drogden said. “From what I’ve seen, Mezentio’s men are almost as smart as they think they are. That makes them pretty cursed dangerous, on account of they really are a pack of smart buggers.”

“We’ve seen that, curse them,” Leudast said.

His regimental commander nodded. “Sometimes, though, they think they can do more than they really can. That’s when we’ve made ‘em pay. And now, by the powers above, they’ll pay plenty.”

“Aye.” Savage hunger filled Leudast’s voice. Like almost all Unkerlanter soldiers who’d seen what the Algarvians had done with-done to-the part of his kingdom they’d occupied, he wanted Algarve to suffer as much or more.

Drogden looked up to the dripping sky. A raindrop hit him in the eye. He rubbed at his face as he said, “I hope the weather stays bad. The worse it is, the more trouble the Algarvians will have hitting that bridge-and however many others we’re building across the Skamandros.”