“Oh, I do,” Garivald answered, feeling the sweat start out under his arms once more. “Every day, I do.” He stood there for a moment, wondering whether the Algarvians were going to try to wring him dry. But the fellow who’d spoken just nodded and waved him away. Trying not to let out a sigh of relief, he went out into the hot sunshine.
He didn’t just turn around and go back the way he’d come. That would have roused suspicions. Instead, he kept walking east, toward Herborn. Eventually, when he judged it safe, he’d make a wide circle around Pirmasens and double back toward the forests where Munderic, not false King Raniero, was lord and master. For now, he felt like a traveling mountebank who’d stuck his head into a dragon’s mouth and pulled it back unscathed.
Dragons were stupid beasts, though. Every once in a while, no matter how you trained them, they would bite down.
Dragons flew south overhead: hundreds of them, maybe even thousands, some high, some low. All were painted in one variant or another of Algarve’s green, red, and white. To Sergeant Leudast’s horrified gaze, they seemed to cover the whole sky.
“And not a single one of ours to try to flame them down,” he said bitterly.
“They’ll have a fight on their hands sooner or later,” Captain Hawart said. “They’d better, anyhow, or the game is as good as over.”
Leudast wondered if the game
“They’re nasty buggers, no two ways about it,” Hawart agreed. Like every man in his regiment, he looked worn and battered.
Still another wave of Algarvian dragons passed overhead. “At least they’re not dropping their eggs on us,” Leudast said. “Where do you suppose the whoresons
“Sulingen.” Captain Hawart spoke with great authority. “Has to be Sulingen on the Wolter. That’s the last city in front of the Mamming Hills, the last city in front of the cinnabar mines, the last place where we can keep them from breaking through.”
“Sulingen.” Leudast nodded. “Aye, I’ve heard the name. But after a pounding like that, there won’t be one stone in the town left standing on another.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” the regimental commander said, sticking a long stalk of grass in the corner of his mouth so he looked like a peasant from a village in the back of beyond rather than the educated man he was. “Sulingen’s a good-size place, and towns take a deal of knocking down before there’s nothing left of them. Powers above know we’ve seen that.”
“Well, I won’t say you’re wrong, sir,” Leudast admitted. “Rubble’s as good to fight from as buildings are, too, maybe even better. But still…” He didn’t go on. He and Hawart had been through a lot together, but not so much that he cared to tag himself with the label of defeatist.
Hawart understood where his ley line of thought was going. “But still,” he echoed. “You don’t want them to drive you back to your last ditch, because you don’t have anywhere to go if they push you out of it.” The stalk of grass bobbed up and down as he spoke. He tried to sound reassuring: “They haven’t even driven us back into it yet.”
“No, sir.” Leudast wasn’t about to argue, but he still wanted to say what was in his mind: “You can see it from here, though.”
Off to the east, Leudast could also see columns of smoke marking the latest Algarvian thrust into Unkerlant. He turned his head and looked west. No new smoke there. Leudast let out a small sigh of relief. The regiment wasn’t about to be cut off and surrounded any time soon, anyhow.
A starling hopped through the grass, chirping metallically. It pecked at a worm or a grub, then flew away when Leudast shook his fist at it. “Those things are cursed nuisances,” he said. “They’ll eat the fruit right off a tree and the grain right out of the fields.”
“They might as well be Algarvians,” Hawart said. Leudast laughed, though it was at best a bitter joke.
A runner trotted up, shouting for an officer. When Hawart admitted he was one, the other Unkerlanter said, “Sir, you’re ordered east with as many men as you command, to try and hold back the Algarvians.”
Captain Hawart sighed. Leudast knew how he felt. Simply lying in the grass for a little while, without eggs bursting close by or beams sizzling past overhead, was sweet. It couldn’t last; Leudast knew that all too well. But he wished it would have lasted a little longer.
“Aye, we’ll come, of course,” Hawart said, and started shouting for his men to get to their feet and get moving. The runner saluted and hurried off, likely to haul some more weary footsoldiers into the fight. Hawart sighed again. “We’ll see if we go out again once we’re done, too.”
“Won’t have so many dragons dropping eggs on us, anyhow,” Leudast said as he heaved himself upright. “They’re all off pounding that Sulingen place.”
“Well, so they are,” Hawart said. “Maybe we’ll be able to catch Mezentio’s men in flank, too. From where the smoke’s rising, their spearpoint’s gone past us. With a little luck, we’ll chop it off.”
“Here’s hoping.” Leudast wasn’t sure he believed the Unkerlanters could do that; they’d had as little luck down here in the south this fighting season as they’d had all along the front the summer before. But it was worth trying.
He wondered how many miles he’d marched since the war against Algarve started. Hundreds, he knew-most of them heading west. He was moving east now, toward Algarve. Back during the winter, that had mattered a great deal. Now. . He supposed it still did, but what mattered even more was that he could be blazed just as dead heading this way as the other.
“Open order!” he called to the men he led. “Stay spread out. You don’t want them to be able to get too many of you all at once.”
The veterans in his company already knew that, and were doing it. But he didn’t have a lot of veterans left, and every fight claimed more. Most of his men were not long off farms or city streets. They were brave enough, but a lot of them would get killed or maimed before they figured out what they should be doing. Only luck had kept Leudast from going that way, and he knew it.
A good-size counterattack against the western flank of the Algarvian drive looked to be building. Behemoths trotted forward along with Unkerlanter footsoldiers. More behemoths hauled egg-tossers too heavy to fit on their backs. Teams of horses and mules urged on by sweating, cursing teamsters and hostlers hauled even more.
Leudast looked up into the sky, hoping to spot dragons painted in rock-gray. When he didn’t, he grunted and kept marching. He knew he couldn’t have everything. The support the footsoldiers were getting on the ground was already more than he’d expected.
Eggs started bursting in front of the regiment sooner than he’d hoped, though not really sooner than he’d thought they would. As usual, the Algarvians were alert. They could be beaten, but seldom surprised. Some soldier on the flank with a crystal had seen something he didn’t like, talked to the redheads’ egg-tossers, and then, no doubt, ducked back down into the tall grass.
“Come on,” Leudast said. “They’re trying to scare us off. Are we going to let them?” He was scared every time he went into a fight. He hoped his men didn’t know it. He knew too well he did.
As he’d hoped, Mezentio’s soldiers didn’t have that many egg-tossers here on their flank. Most of them would be down at the head of the attack, at what Captain Hawart called the spearpoint. Leudast would have put them there, too, if he’d wanted to break through deeper into Unkerlant. But now he and his comrades were trying to break through, and he thought they might do it.
Then, just after he’d tramped through the fields around a ruined, abandoned peasant village, somebody blazed at him. The beam missed, but charred a line through the rye that struggled against encroaching weeds. Leudast threw himself down on his belly. The smell of damp dirt in his nostrils brought back his own days in a peasant village.
“Advance by squads!” he shouted to his men. Again, the veterans already knew what to do. He heard them
