Through the Darkness

Forthwegian custom of nudity but in truth flouting it by flaunting their bodies instead of taking no special notice of them in the baths. Even the attendant noticed, and she was as bovine a woman as Vanai had ever seen. She scowled and snapped at the redheads as she passed them their tunics and kilts. They only laughed, as if to say nothing a mere Forthwegian did could matter to them.

And the worst of it was… in ordinary times, as far as the title could be applied to the war, nothing the Forthwegians did would or could let them rise up in numbers that would make them more than a nuisance to Mezentio’s men and women.

In ordinary times. What if times weren’t ordinary? What if the Unkerlanters ran the redheads out of Sulingen? What if the Algarvians didn’t look so much like winning the war? Would the Forthwegians decide they weren’t going to stay quiet under the Algarvian yoke forever? If they did decide that, how much trouble could they cause the redheads?

Vanai didn’t know. She hoped she would get the chance to find out. Meanwhile, she’d go right on cursing the Algarvians.

“Another winter,” Istvan said. Another self-evident truth, too: what else would this be, with snow filtering down through the trees of the trackless, apparently endless forest of western Unkerlant?

Corporal Kun said, “And where would we be if this weren’t another winter? Up among the stars with the other spirits of the dead, that’s where.”

Taking a sergeant’s privilege, Istvan said, “Oh, shut up.” Kun sent him a wounded look; he didn’t usually take such privileges with a man beside whom he’d fought for years. Istvan refused to let that stare bother him. He knew what he’d meant. Since Kun didn’t, he set it out in large characters: “Another winter here. Another winter away from my home valley, away from my clansfolk. I haven’t even had leave in most of a year.”

He held his hands out to the little fire around which he and his men sat, trying to get some warmth back into them. Then he looked down at his palms. The scar from the wound Captain Tivadar had given him remained fresh, easy to see, despite calluses and dirt. He didn’t say anything about it; not all the soldiers crouched around the fire had eaten goat’s flesh with him.

If he came home to the little village of Kunhegyes on leave, his family wouldn’t know what the scar meant. They would welcome him into their bosom with glad cries and open arms, as they had the last time he’d got away from the war for a little while. They would have no idea he was, at best, only marginally purified from the uncleanness into which he’d fallen. If he didn’t tell them, they would never learn. He could live out his life in the valley with no one the wiser.

He looked at the scar again. Whether his kinsfolk knew or not, he would know. He could imagine the knowledge eating away at him, day by day, month by month, year by year. He could imagine himself screaming out the truth one day, just because he couldn’t stand to hold it in any more. What he knew counted for more than what anyone else knew.

Szonyi spat into the flames. His saliva sizzled for a moment and then was gone. He said, “We’re a warrior race. We’re here because we’re a warrior race. Sooner or later, we’ll win because we’re a warrior race. We’re too stubborn to quit, by the stars.”

“Aye,” Istvan said. In a way, that was the other side of the coin to his own thoughts. Gyongyosians did what they did because of what was inside of them, not because of any outside force.

And then Kun spat, too, in utter contempt. “Oh, aye, that’s why we’ll be marching into Cottbus week after next,” he said.

“There aren’t enough of us here,” Istvan protested.

“More of us than there are Unkerlanters,” the onetime mage’s apprentice said.

“Well, but…” Istvan’s wave encompassed the forest, or as much of it as remained visible through the drifting, swirling snow. “I’d call this place the arsehole of the world, but you need to know where your arsehole is once or twice a day. Nobody’s needed to know where these woods are since the stars made them.”

“We wouldn’t have come as far as we have if we weren’t a warrior race,” Szonyi said stubbornly. “Some of us still believe in things, we do. Next thing you know, some of us will say we’ve stopped believing in the stars.” He stared a challenge back at Kun.

But Istvan took him up on it: “No, nobody is going to say anything like that. I didn’t mean anything like that, and Kun didn’t mean anything like that, either.” If Kun did mean something like that, Istvan didn’t want to hear about it, and he didn’t want anybody else to hear about it. He went on, “Even a warrior can have enough of war for a while.”

“I suppose so.” Szonyi’s voice was grudging.

“If you don’t see that that’s true, you’re a bigger twit than anyone gives you credit for,” Kun said. “We’d be fighting among ourselves all the time if it weren’t.”

“Enough,” Istvan said, and used his own rank to make sure it was enough. Still, as far as he was concerned, Kun proved he came from a warrior race by the way he stood up to Szonyi. The hulking common soldier made two of the corporal, but Kun didn’t back away from him.

Off in the distance, a couple of eggs burst. Everyone’s head came up. “Are those ours or theirs?” somebody asked.

“We’ll find out,” Kun said, “probably the hard way.”

Istvan wanted to contradict him, but found he couldn’t. He did say, “Those are more likely to be theirs than ours. The Unkerlanters have an easier time bringing egg-tossers into the forest across the flatlands than we do hauling them over the cursed mountains.” That made it harder for the Gyongyosians to show their full mettle as a warrior race, too, though Istvan didn’t suppose Kun would ever admit as much.

More eggs burst, these closer to the fire. Istvan grimaced, then shoveled snow over the flames. Nobody said anything. The soldiers all looked to their sticks. Some of them took positions behind trees, from which they’d be able to blaze eastward if the Unkerlanters really did have an attack laid on.

Along with the thunder of bursting eggs-rather muffled by the snow- came shouts. Istvan couldn’t tell what language they were in, but they kept getting closer, too. He found a place behind a spruce of his own. Trouble was heading this way. He didn’t know who’d started it, but he doubted whether that mattered.

Out of the snow came the first Unkerlanters, white smocks over their tunics and snowshoes on their feet. Istvan didn’t think they knew he and his men were in place waiting for them. From what he’d heard, the Unkerlanters had the edge against the Algarvians in the far east during the winter. That wasn’t so here. He and his fellow Gyongyosians knew as much about snow and ice and fighting in them as any Unkerlanter ever born.

He waited till the first Unkerlanter was almost on top of him before he started blazing. That way, he made sure he couldn’t miss, and that the blowing snow wouldn’t attenuate his beam. The Unkerlanter gave a startled grunt and toppled.

The rest of the men who fought for Swemmel stopped in alarm. One of them pointed west past Istvan, deeper into the woods. They thought the beam had come from that direction. When no more of them fell for a little while, they started moving forward again.

This time, Istvan wasn’t the only one who blazed at them. Down they went, one after another, like oxen slaughtered for a noble’s wedding feast. A few of them let out howls of pain as they fell. Most simply died, death taking them by surprise. Istvan had the feeling he’d just disrupted the advance of at least a company.

After a bit, the Unkerlanters decided they wanted no part of the position he and his squad were defending. They fell back. He decided not to stay around and try to hold in place. “Back,” he ordered urgently. “Next things they’ll do is, they’ll hit this place with everything they’ve got.”

As he knew winter, so he knew the Unkerlanters. They didn’t withdraw from a position because they’d lost hope of taking it. They withdrew because they wanted to hit it a different, harder, blow. Runners-well, waddlers in this country-were surely going back to their officers with the bad news. Some of those officers would have crystallomancers. Before too long, fury would fall on the fighters who’d presumed to slow Swemmel’s soldiers.

And so, for now, retreat. It galled Istvan; his instinct, like the Unkerlanters’, was to go forward first. But he didn’t know how many of the foe pressed against him. And so he fell back a quarter of a mile. Having advanced through that stretch of the wood, he knew what was there. Before long, he and his men took a position as strong as the one they’d just left.

They’d hardly settled in when eggs started falling on the little clearing they’d abandoned. “The sergeant