Out of the Darkness

Algarve ends. If I were dealing with the redheaded barbarians, the matter would be easy. With those from the west, it is less so, but I hope I can manage it.

He sends you his love, as should not surprise you. Writing letters home is actively discouraged among the Unkerlanter soldiery, but I shall do my best to smuggle out a note if he manages to produce one. In the meantime, let me say that I very much look forward to meeting both you and your daughter, and that both of you will be welcome in this house in whatever guise you wear. Your father-in-law, Hestan.

That should have ended it. That was enough, and more than enough. But Ealstan’s father also wrote, You should know that my brother, Hengist, yet lives, and that he and I are as completely estranged as two men can be. When last I heard, Hengist’s son, Sidroc, survived, too. Since he remains in Plegmund’s Brigade, perhaps this state of affairs will not continue indefinitely.

Vanai looked over at Saxburh, who’d just pulled herself up and fallen down again. Her own tears blurred the little girl in her sight. “Your father is … still alive,” Vanai said. That he was wounded was less than she’d hoped, but ever so much better than it could have been. “He’ll be all right, or pretty much all right. He may even get out of the Unkerlanter army before too long. Powers above, make it so.”

Saxburh paid no attention. When Ealstan came home, his daughter would have to get to know him all over again. Vanai slowly nodded. That was all right. Saxburh would have the chance to do it. Having the chance was all that really mattered.

“He’ll be all right,” Vanai said again. She went through the letter for a second time, then nodded once more. Reading Hestan’s words, she saw, or thought she saw, a good deal about how Ealstan had come to be the way he was. She was always glad to be reminded not all Forthwegians despised the Kaunians who dwelt in their kingdom beside them.

Ealstan is. . going to be all right. Even that much sang within her. She began to think about what things would be like once the war finally ended and Forthweg started pulling itself together. I won’t have to stay in this miserable flat the rest of my life. Saxburh and I could go to Gromheort. I could find out if the Thelberge face I wear really does look like Conberge, the way Ealstan’s been saying it does.

I could meet other people who care whether I live or die. After everything she’d been through, that thought struck her as strange. Then she shook her head. The Algarvians had cared whether she lived or died, too. The trouble was, they’d wanted her dead. Hestan and his wife-Elfryth, that was her name- wouldn’t. Presumably, Conberge wouldn’t, either. The same might even hold true for her husband, whose name Vanai couldn’t have remembered had her life depended on it.

She went over and picked up Saxburh and gave her a big, loud, smacking kiss. Saxburh thought that was the funniest thing in the world. Vanai carried the baby to the window. She needed all the sunshine she could find.

A moment later, she pulled back again. If that wasn’t Guthfrith coming up the street.. But it was, and she didn’t want him seeing her up here. Why aren‘t you playing music? she thought angrily. If he walked into this block of flats, her anger was going to turn to fear.

To her relief, he walked past instead. But under the relief, unease remained. She went looking for a leaf of paper with which to answer Hestan. Before too long, civilian ley-line caravans would again be running between Eoforwic and Gromheort. Maybe she would do well to go east just as soon as she could.

Ahead of Leudast, Trapani burned. He could see the capital of Algarve now, see the tall buildings that marked the heart of the great city. Some of them were plainly shorter than they had been before dragons started dropping eggs on them. If they all fell over, Leudast didn’t care.

He just wanted to be there at the end of the fight, when-if-that finally came. The Unkerlanters had fought their way into the suburbs of Trapani. They’d surrounded the city. But the last couple of rings of defenses still lay ahead. So did whatever nasty magecraft the redheads had left.

A storm of eggs fell on the Algarvian positions in front of Leudast’s men. A couple of behemoths lumbered toward them and flung more eggs at whatever the tossers behind the lines hadn’t flattened. Leudast blew a blast from his officer’s whistle. “Forward!” he yelled.

Not all the Algarvians were dead, however much he wished they would have been. They knew everything there was to know about taking shelter. As soon as the Unkerlanters broke cover to rush toward them, they popped up and started blazing. Men in rock-gray tunics fell, some hit, some diving for cover.

“Hands high!” Leudast shouted in Algarvian. “Sticks down!”

An Algarvian emerged from behind a wall. He did have his hands high. Leudast gestured with the business end of his stick. The redhead hurried away. Leudast doubted he was more than fifteen years old. King Mezentio was scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Of course, so was King Swemmel. Some of the men Leudast led had no more years on them than the new captive. Had the Algarvians been strong enough to keep the war going another couple of years, neither they nor the Unkerlanters would have had any men at all left alive.

Seeing that the first redhead who surrendered didn’t get killed out of hand, more of Mezentio’s men-or rather, Mezentio’s boys-came out of hiding with their hands above their heads. Leudast and his countrymen sent them off to the rear, too. But then beams from closer to the center of Trapani knocked down several of the kilted soldiers who were trying to get out of the fight. Leudast dove for cover again, but the diehards up there seemed more interested in blazing Algarvians who yielded than the Unkerlanters who made them give up.

In Swemmel, such men would have served as behind-the-lines inspectors whose job was to get rid of any man seeking to retreat without orders. Leudast had always despised them-despised them and feared them, too. He wasn’t sorry to see the other side also had them. If nothing else, it proved his kingdom wasn’t the only one where such whoresons grew.

Behemoths tossed eggs at the buildings and piles of rubble from which the diehards were blazing. As the Unkerlanter footsoldiers rushed toward the strong-points, the surviving redheads popped out of their holes and blazed away at them, shouting, “Algarve!” and “Mezentio!”

The fight didn’t last long. Not all that many Algarvians were stubborn enough to fight so fiercely for a cause now hopeless, and Swemmel’s men were there in large numbers. But the Algarvians who did fight refused to take a step back, dying in place instead. And they made the Unkerlanters pay full price- pay more than full price-for digging them out.

More Algarvian soldiers did give up once the knot of diehards was gone: fear of them had kept others fighting. But Mezentio’s soldiers had turned a park and a few nearby houses into a strongpoint. They had some egg-tossers there, and a behemoth mounting a heavy stick that took advantage of the rubble to blaze from cover again and again, knocking over several Unkerlanter beasts.

Might as well be Sulingen, Leudast thought. He’d been through the block-by-block fighting there, perhaps the worst of the whole war. A moment later, he wished the comparison hadn’t occurred to him. He’d been wounded in Sulingen, too. He didn’t want that to happen again. He’d picked up another wound later on, in the Duchy of Grelz. As far as he was concerned, two pale, puckered scars for the sake of his kingdom were quite enough.

Clearing the redheads from their little redoubt took all day. Not till dragons swooped down from above and killed that behemoth did the job get done. Things were easier in that regard here than in Sulingen. The Algarvians had hardly any dragons left now. Back then, Leudast had spent plenty of time cowering in holes in the ground as Algarvian beasts flamed and dropped eggs from above.

Not that holes in the ground were any too pleasant now. Leudast dragged a dead Algarvian out of a good one in the middle of the park and settled down for the night. He’d just gone to sleep when he had to come out of the hole and fight again: using darkness as their cloak, Mezentio’s men made a ferocious counterattack, and almost drove the Unkerlanters from the ground they’d taken. More dragons and behemoths finally threw the redheads back.

“These buggers don’t know how to quit, do they, sir?” asked a young soldier named Noyt. His voice broke in the middle of the question; he didn’t need to scrape a razor across his cheeks to keep them smooth. He’d been a little boy when the war started.

“They’re like snakes,” Leudast agreed. “They’ll fight you till you cut the head off-and if you pick up the head a couple of hours later, it’ll twist around and bite you even though it’s dead.”

He rolled himself in his blanket and fell asleep-and woke again in short order when a mosquito bit him on the end of the nose. The Algarvians might not have many dragons left in the air, but Trapani lay in the middle of a