that we do east of the city.”
“Probably why the Algarvians chose that direction for their attack,” Rathar said. Vatran gaped at him as if he’d suddenly started declaiming poetry in Gyongyosian. The marshal repeated the question he’d asked before: “Can we hold Durrwangen?”
“I don’t see how, lord Marshal,” Vatran answered.
“I don’t, either, but I was hoping you did, since you’ve been on the spot here longer than I have,” Rathar said. “Since we can’t hold the place, we’d better save what we can when we pull out, don’t you think?”
A loud thud outside the schoolhouse-not a bursting egg, but a heavy weight falling from a great height-made Vatran smile savagely. “That’s a dragon blazed out of the sky,” he said, as if one downed Algarvian dragon made up for all disasters. “Aye, we’ll get out and we’ll keep fighting.”
“And we’d better make sure there are no more skedaddles,” Rathar said. “Whatever we have to do to stop them, we’d best do it.” King Swemmel might have spoken through his mouth. He was ready to be as harsh as Swemmel, to get what he had to have-no, what Unkerlant had to have. Somewhere not far away, another dragon slammed to the ground. Rathar nodded. Once more, the Algarvians were paying a price.
Along with his men, Leudast squatted in a field of sunflowers. It would have been a dangerous place to have to fight. With the plants nodding taller than a man, the only way to find a foe would be to stumble onto him.
For the moment, the Algarvians were a couple of miles to the north-or so Leudast hoped with all his heart. He leaned forward to listen to what Captain Hawart had to say. The regimental commander spoke in matter-of-fact tones: “The kingdom is in danger, boys. If we don’t stop Mezentio’s whoresons before too long, it won’t matter anymore, because we’re licked.”
“You wouldn’t be talking like that if we’d hung on to Durrwangen,” somebody said.
“That’s so, but we didn’t,” Hawart answered. “And some soldiers got blazed because they didn’t fight hard enough, too. Not just ground-pounders, either; there are a couple of dead brigadiers on account of that mess.”
“We’ve done everything we could.” That voice came from behind Hawart. Leudast didn’t see who’d spoken up there, either. Whoever it was hadn’t stood up and waved, that was for sure. Leudast wouldn’t have, either, not if he’d said something like that.
The regimental commander whirled, trying to catch the soldier who’d let his mouth run. Captain Hawart couldn’t, which meant he glared at everyone impartially. “Listen to me,” he said. “You’d cursed well better listen to me, or you’ll all be dead men. If the Algarvians don’t kill you, your own comrades will. It’s that bad. It’s that dangerous. We can’t fall back any more.”
“What’s this about our comrades, sir?” Leudast said. Hawart had ordered him to ask the question.
With a flourish, Captain Hawart took from his belt pouch a sheet of paper. He waved it about before beginning to read it. Leudast watched the soldiers’ eyes follow the sheet. A lot of the men were peasants who could no more read than they could fly. To them, anything on paper seemed more important, more portentous, simply because it was written down.
Leudast knew better, at least most of the time. But Hawart had told him what this paper was. Now the officer explained it to the rest of the regiment: “This is an order from King Swemmel. Not from our division headquarters. Not from General Vatran. Not even from Marshal Rathar, powers above praise him. From the king. So you’d better listen, boys, and you’d better listen good.”
And the troopers he commanded did lean forward so they could hear better. The king’s name made them pay attention. Leudast knew it made him pay attention. He also knew he didn’t want the king or the king’s minions paying attention to him, which they were too likely to do if he disobeyed a royal order even to the slightest degree.
“Not one step back!” Hawart read in ringing tones. “Iron discipline. Iron discipline won the day for the right in the Twinkings War. Even when things looked blackest, our army held firm against the traitors and rebels who fought for that demon in human shape, Kyot.”
Kyot, of course, had been Swemmel’s twin brother: an inconvenient twin, who refused to admit he was the younger of them. He’d paid for his claim. The whole kingdom had paid-and paid, and paid. But if Kyot was a demon in human shape and was also Swemmel’s twin, what did that make the present king of Unkerlant?
Before Leudast could dwell on that for very long, Hawart went on, “The Algarvian invaders shall not be permitted to advance one foot farther onto the precious soil of Unkerlant. Our soldiers are to die in place before yielding any further territory to Mezentio’s butchers and wolves. The enemy must be checked, must be halted, must be driven back. Any soldiers who shirk this task shall face our wrath, which, we assure all who hear these words, shall blaze hotter than anything the redheaded mumblers can possibly inflict on you.”
Here and there, soldiers looked at one another. Leudast looked up at the sky and the nodding sunflowers. He did not want to have to try to meet anyone else’s eyes. From everything he’d heard, from everything he’d seen, Swemmel was neither lying nor boasting. However much Leudast feared the Algarvians, he feared his own sovereign more.
“Any soldier who retreats without orders shall be reckoned a traitor against us; and shall be punished as befits treason,” Hawart read. “Any officer who gives the order to retreat without direst need shall be judged likewise. Our inspectors and impressers shall enforce this command by all necessary means.”
“What does that mean?” Haifa dozen soldiers asked the question out loud. Leudast didn’t, but it blazed in his mind, too. After the impressers caught him and made sure he had a rock-gray tunic on his back, he’d thought he was done worrying about them. Was he wrong?
Evidently he was, for Captain Hawart said, “I’ll tell you what it means, boys. Somewhere back of the army, there’s a thin line of impressers and inspectors. Every one of them has a stick in his hands. You try running away, those buggers’d just as soon blaze you as look at you.”
Leudast believed him. By the way soldiers’ heads bobbed up and down, everybody believed him. Anyone who’d ever dealt with inspectors and impressers could have no possible doubt that they would blaze their own countrymen. But how many of them would get blazed in return while they were doing it?
No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than he shied away from it, as a unicorn might shy from a buzzing fly. If Unkerlanters began battling Unkerlanters, if the Twinkings War, or even some tiny portion of it, visited the kingdom once again, what would spring from it? Why, Algarvian conquest, and nothing else Leudast could see.
“So,” Hawart said. “There it is, lads. We don’t go back any more, not if there’s any help for it. We go forward when we can, we die in place when there’s no other choice, and we don’t go back, not unless.. ” He paused and shook his head. “We don’t go back. We can’t afford to, not anymore.”
“You heard the captain,” Leudast growled, as any sergeant might have after an officer gave orders. He’d heard the captain, too, and wished he hadn’t. Swemmel’s orders left no room for misunderstanding.
Hawart put the paper back into his belt pouch. He had to look up, orienting himself by the sun, before he could point east and north. “That’s where the Algarvians are,” he said. “Let’s go find them and give them a good boot in the arse. They’ve already done it to us too many times.”
“Aye,” Leudast said. A few other troopers snarled agreement. But most of the men, though they obeyed Hawart readily enough, did so without any great eagerness. They’d seen enough action by now to understand how hard it was to halt the redheads in the open field. Leudast had seen more action than almost any of them. He wondered why he retained enough enthusiasm to want to go forward against the Algarvians.
Sunflower leaves rustled, brushing against his tunic and those of his comrades. Dry, fallen leaves crunched under his boots. The plants bobbed and shook as he pushed his way through them. The sunflowers were taller than a man, but an alert Algarvian with a spyglass could have tracked from afar the marching Unkerlanters by the way the plants moved without a breeze to stir them. Leudast hoped Mezentio’s men weren’t so alert-and also hoped that, even if they were, they had no egg-tossers nearby.
Coming out from among the sunflowers was almost like breaking the surface after swimming underwater in a pond: Leudast could suddenly see much farther than he had been able to. Ahead lay the village whose peasants would have harvested the sunflowers. Dragons-perhaps Algarvian but perhaps Unkerlanter, too-had visited destruction on it from the air. Only a few huts still stood. The rest were either blackened ruins or had simply ceased to be.
People moved amongst the ruins, though. For a moment, Leudast admired the tenacity of his countrymen.
