to defend the Yaninans some more, Spinello half changed the subject: “They do say the Sibs taking service with Mezentio are really good fighters, and this brigade of Forthwegians they’re putting together is supposed to be full of tough customers, too.”
Having fought in Sibiu, Trasone knew the men who came out of the island kingdom could indeed fight hard. But that wasn’t the point, or wasn’t the whole point. “Do we really need all those foreign buggers? And if we do, are there going to be any Algarvians left alive by the time this war is through?”
“It’s like any other brawl,” Sergeant Panfilo said. “Last man standing wins.”
The road came up to and into a wood full of pines and beeches and birch. Pointing ahead, Trasone said, “How many Unkerlanters are hiding in there? And how many of us’ll be standing by the time we come out the other side?”
Nobody answered. Any Algarvian officer who fought in Unkerlant hated forests. The Unkerlanters were better woodsmen, and had the advantage of preparing their positions ahead of time. Digging them out always cost.
A kilted soldier at the edge of the woods waved the battalion forward. Forward Trasone went, not without a pang. He’d had other Algarvians wave him forward into woods-and forward into trouble.
He waited nervously for Unkerlanters in hidden holes to start blazing at his comrades and him from behind-or for a whole swarm of squat men in rock-gray tunics to charge from one side of the road or the other, half of them drunk, all of them roaring, “Urra!” as loud as they could. If they got the chance, they’d knock the Algarvians into the undergrowth and maul them like wild beasts.
With every quiet, peaceful step he took, he grew more suspicious. Sparrows chirped. A rabbit peered out at the Algarvians, then ducked back behind a bush. “All right,” Trasone said. “Where are they?”
“Maybe we really did clear this wood,” Panfllo said. “Stranger things have happened… I suppose.”
“Name two,” Trasone challenged.
Before the sergeant could take him up on it, the earth began to shake beneath their feet. Here and there along the road, purplish flames shot up out of the ground. Men caught in them screamed horribly, but not for long. Along either side of the roadway, trees shivered like men caught naked in an Unkerlanter winter. Some of them toppled. As they did, their crowns caught fire. More Algarvians screamed in torment.
Trasone was screaming, too, screaming in terror. Sergeant Panfilo’s shout had words in it: “Magecraft! Unkerlanter magecraft!”
He was right, of course. Knowing he was right didn’t make the sorcerous onslaught any easier for Trasone or his comrades to bear. Had King Swemmel’s men started tossing eggs at him, normally he would have scraped a hole in the ground and waited them out as best he could. He didn’t want to do that here, not when any hole he dug was liable to close up on him as soon as he dove into it.
He knew the danger because he’d seen it happen to Unkerlanters when his own army’s mages sacrificed a regiment’s worth of Kaunians. But the Kaunians, as far as he could see, had it coming, and so did the Unkerlanters. Trasone was no more likely than anyone else to think he deserved to be on the receiving end of anything unpleasant.
The moment the ground stopped quivering, the moment trees stopped falling, Major Spinello shouted, “Be ready! Those ugly buggers are going to try to throw us out of here now, you mark my words. Are we going to let ‘em?”
As far as Trasone was concerned, the Unkerlanters were welcome to this stretch of forest, especially after they’d rearranged it so drastically. But he yelled, “No!” along with everybody else still able to talk.
“Well, then, we’d better get ready to give ‘em a proper greeting, hadn’t we?” Spinello said. Suiting action to word, he sprawled behind one of the pines that had come down but hadn’t caught fire.
Trasone was still looking for his own place to hide when eggs did start falling in the woods. He ducked down behind a big, gray, lichen-covered rock. Panfilo sprawled a few feet away, digging himself a hole with a short- handled spade while lying on his belly. “Aren’t you afraid that’ll swallow you if the Unkerlanters throw more magic at us?” Trasone asked.
“Aye, but I’m more afraid of getting caught in the open if an egg bursts close by,” the sergeant answered. Trasone pondered that, but not for long. After a moment, he yanked his own spade off his belt and started digging.
“Urra! Urra! Urra!” That cry, swelling like surf as the tide came in, announced an Unkerlanter attack. Through it, Major Spinello let loose a cry of his own: “Crystallomancer!”
“Sir?” The soldier who kept the battalion in touch with the army of which it was a part crawled toward Spinello. The major spoke urgently to him, and he in turn spoke into the clear, polished globe he carried in his pack.
“Urra! Urra! Swemmel! Urra!” Here came the Unkerlanters, pushing their way up into the wood from the south. They’d brushed aside the Algarvians who’d already passed through the trees; now they were intent on taking back the forest.
“They think we’ll be easy meat,” Spinello said. “They think they’ve rattled us. They panic when we hit them a good sorcerous lick, and they figure we’ll do the same. But they’re only Unkerlanters, and we’re Algarvians. Now we’re going to show them what that means, aren’t we?”
The only other choice was dying. Trasone didn’t think much of that. And if Spinello figured the sorcerous attack hadn’t rattled him, the dapper little major was out of his mind. The difference between a veteran and a raw recruit-Trasone had no idea whether it was the difference between Algarvians and Unkerlanters-was that he could keep going no matter how rattled he was.
Peering over the top of his boulder, he saw Unkerlanters in rock-gray rushing up the road and through the woods toward the line the Algarvians were holding. His lips skinned back from his teeth in a savage grin-by the way they were advancing, Swemmel’s men didn’t know a solidly held line was waiting for them. Well, they’d find out.
He brought his stick up to his shoulder and blazed down a couple of Unkerlanters who took no pains to hide themselves. Nor was he the only Algarvian blazing. King Swemmel’s men fell one after another. But they kept coming. As always, they were recklessly brave. And, as always, they had soldiers to spare.
But, before long, he had to scramble backwards to a new hiding place to keep from getting flanked out. He wasn’t the only one, either; he wondered if Spinello could keep any kind of control over his line for long.
Then eggs started dropping on the Unkerlanters, both in the woods and beyond them. Dragons shrieked fury as they flew past at treetop height. Cries of panic replaced cries of “Urra!” The enemy attack foundered, cut off at the root.
Major Spinello blew a shrill blast on his whistle. “Forward!” he shouted. “They had their chance. Now it’s our turn. Mezentio!” He was the first to rush against the Unkerlanters.
“Mezentio!” Trasone yelled, and went forward, too. Caught by surprise by the dragons the crystallomancer had summoned, the Unkerlanters gave ground more readily than usual. Trasone’s battalion burst out into the open company south of the forest. Some of the grass was burning there, thanks to the Algarvian dragons. And on the blackened grass lay blackened bodies. Trasone trotted past them with hardly a sideways glance; he’d already seen plenty of dead Unkerlanters.
And, a couple of miles farther south, he saw more: not soldiers, these, but row on row of peasants-old men and women, mostly-with their hands bound behind them and their throats cut. Those corpses did make him grimace: they were the fuel for the sorcery the Unkerlanter mages had aimed at him and his comrades. The mages, unlike their victims, had fled. Grimly, Trasone trudged after them.
“Camel.” Sabrino spoke the word as if it were an obscure but potent obscenity. “If I never taste camel again, I’ll count myself lucky.”
“Dragons like it well enough,” Lieutenant Colonel Caratzas said. As far as Sabrino was concerned, the new Yaninan senior officer wasn’t a quarter the man Colonel Broumidis had been. He was, among other things, much too fond of the anise-flavored spirits his countrymen brewed. About all he really shared with Broumidis-and most other Yaninans-was a passion for expressive gestures. “The only other real choice we have is eating marmots and voles and grubs.”
“They’d have to be tastier,” Sabrino insisted. “They’d have to be more tender, too. Tell me I’m wrong. Go on,
