Out of the Darkness

“I think you’re right, sir,” Garivald answered. By now, he took his false name as much for granted as his real one. He pointed toward the southeast, the direction in which his regiment had been driving. “What’s the name of the next town ahead?”

“I have to look.” Andelot unfolded a map, then checked himself. “No. Here, Sergeant. You come see for yourself. If you’ve got your letters, you may as well use them.”

“All right.” Garivald trotted over to the company commander. “Whereabouts are we now?” Andelot showed him with a grimy-nailed finger. “And we’re going this way, right?” Garivald asked. The young lieutenant nodded. Frowning in concentration, Garivald studied the map. “Then we’re headed toward. . Torgavi?” He wondered if he’d correctly pronounced the foreign name.

By the way Andelot beamed, he had. “That’s good, Fariulf. Anybody would think you’d been reading for years.” The lieutenant pointed to the blue line meandering past Torgavi. “And what’s the name of this river here?”

Garivald squinted at the map again: the river’s name was written in very small characters. “It’s the Albi, sir,” he said confidently; with a name that short, he was sure he hadn’t made a hash of it.

And he hadn’t. “Right again,” Andelot said. “You do so well here. Why didn’t you ever learn before?”

They’d been over this ground before. Shrugging broad shoulders, Garivald answered, “How could I have, sir? Our village had no school. Our firstman knew his letters, but I don’t think anybody else who lived there did. I don’t suppose any of the villages around ours were any different, either.”

Andelot nodded. “I’m sure you’re right, Sergeant. But things like that aren’t good for the kingdom. We’re less efficient than we ought to be. Just about all of these Algarvians can read and write. It makes them more flexible than we are, able to do more things. The same is true for the Kuusamans and Lagoans. They’re our allies now, but who knows how long that will last once Mezentio gets what’s coming to him? We need to start thinking about such things.”

Garivald shrugged again. The men from the great island in the distant east hardly seemed real to him. Of course, it hadn’t been so very long before that the Algarvians had hardly seemed real to him, either. He’d come to know them better than he’d ever imagined he would-and better than he’d ever wanted to, too. Would the same thing happen with the men of Kuusamo and Lagoas? He hoped not. Once the fight ended, all he wanted to do was find his way back to Obilot. He’d lost one family in the war. He hoped for the chance to start another.

Up ahead, somewhere near Torgavi, a few eggs burst. Less than a minute later, several more came down, these a lot closer to Garivald and Andelot. Garivald grimaced. “Not all the buggers have quit,” he said.

“No, not yet,” Lieutenant Andelot agreed. “That’s why we’re here-to take care of the ones too stubborn or too stupid to know they’re licked.” He blew a shrill blast on his whistle, loud enough to make Garivald’s ears ring, and shouted, “Forward!”

“Forward!” Garivald echoed, and then, showing off what he’d learned, “Let’s clear these bastards out of Torgavi.”

All along the line, officers’ whistles squealed. Officers and underofficers yelled, “Forward!” And forward the Unkerlanters went, trotting toward Torgavi across wheatfields and through olive groves. Garivald wondered why anyone wanted to cultivate olives. He didn’t think much of the fruit, and the oil had a nasty flavor. He doubted olives would grow down in the Duchy of Grelz, and didn’t miss them a bit.

Unkerlanter behemoths advanced with the footsoldiers, using their egg-tossers and heavy sticks to smash up the strongpoints the redheads were defending. Garivald took that cooperation for granted. Men who’d been in the army longer didn’t. By what they said, the Algarvians had always been able to bring it off. King Swemmel’s men had had to learn how, and a lot of the lessons had proved painful and expensive.

Dragons pounded Torgavi’s defenders, too. Again, some of the Algarvians began coming out into the open and surrendering. But some of them kept fighting, too. I don’t want to die now, Garivald thought as he flopped down near a house on the outskirts of Torgavi. Why don’t they all just give up, curse them? That would make things easier on them and easier on me, too.

With a rumbling roar, a bridge across the Albi tumbled into the river. Mezentio’s men must have wrecked it with eggs. Sure enough, some of them kept fighting as if the war still hung in the balance. Fools, Garivald thought. Enough.

A column of behemoths lumbered into Torgavi. Garivald waved as many men as he could forward; the behemoths protected footsoldiers, but the reverse also held true. That too was cooperation. Some Algarvian diehards in a house near the outskirts of the town blazed at the behemoths. The behemoth crews lobbed three or four eggs at the house. At such short range, the house crumbled as if made of pasteboard. No more blazes came from it.

“That’s the way!” Garivald shouted. One of the crewmen on the closest behemoth waved to him. He waved back. That other soldier undoubtedly wanted to make it through the war and then go home, too.

After the Unkerlanters dealt with the diehards, the rest of the redheads in Torgavi decided they’d had enough. White flags and banners appeared in windows all over town. Kilted soldiers came out of the few strongholds they still held. They might have feared going into captivity, but they feared dying more. With brusque gestures, Garivald and the other Unkerlanters sent the captives to the rear.

Somewhere not far away, a woman started screaming. Garivald looked around for Lieutenant Andelot. When he caught the company commander’s eye, Andelot just shrugged. Garivald nodded. The Algarvians had outraged plenty of women in Unkerlant; he’d seen that for himself in Zossen. Rough justice said his countrymen could pay them back in the same coin. The woman’s screams went on. A moment later, more screams started, these rather shriller.

“Come on,” Andelot called to the men within earshot. “Let’s get down to the river and see if we can find a way to cross. Powers below eat the Algarvians for dropping the bridge in the water.”

“Powers below eat the Algarvians.” Garivald needed no qualifiers for that. Now Andelot was the one who nodded.

What remained of the bridge over the Albi were a couple of stone piers in the river that had supported it and a lot of twisted ironwork. On the far side of the stream, perhaps a hundred yards away, a couple of behemoths and a squad of footsoldiers approached the riverbank. Garivald started to dive for cover.

“Wait,” Andelot said. The one word held such quiet excitement, it froze Garivald where he stood. Andelot went on, “Do you know, Fariulf, I don’t think those are Algarvians at all.”

“Who else would they be, sir?” Garivald shaded his eyes with the palm of his hand to see better. He didn’t think the soldiers on the far bank wore kilts. They weren’t blazing at his comrades and him. They were looking and pointing in much the same way as the Unkerlanters were. One of them trained a shiny brass spyglass on Garivald and the other soldiers here. Garivald could see the fellow jump when he got a good look. “Whoever he is, he just figured out we aren’t redheads.”

The fellow with the spyglass set it on the ground. Cupping his hands in front of his mouth, he shouted, “Unkerlant?”

“Aye, we’re from Unkerlant,” Lieutenant Andelot shouted back. “Who are you?”

Garivald couldn’t make out all of the answer, but one word was very clear: “Kuusamo.” Awe prickled through him. His countrymen and those fellows on the other bank of the Albi had fought their way across half of Derlavai to meet here.

That same realization went through the rest of Swemmel’s soldiers, too. “By the powers above,” someone said softly. “We’ve cut Algarve in half,” somebody else added. Most of the men began to cheer. A couple began to weep. On the other bank, the Kuusamans were cheering, too.

“We’ve got to get across,” Andelot said. He peered up and down the river.

So did Garivald. “There’s a rowboat!” he exclaimed at the same time as Andelot started for it. Garivald hurried after his company commander. If I ever have grandchildren, I can tell them about this, he thought. Another soldier had the same idea. Garivald tapped the three bronze triangles that showed he was a sergeant. The other man bared his teeth in a disappointed grimace, but fell back.

Garivald was clumsy with the oars. He didn’t care, and Andelot didn’t complain. They would have paddled with their sticks had the boat not held oars.

On the other bank, the Kuusamans greeted them with open arms. They gave the Unkerlanters smoked salmon and wine. Garivald had something stronger than wine in his water bottle. He gladly shared it. The swarthy little slant-eyed men smacked their lips and clapped him on the back.