Through the Darkness

where they stood. Others writhed on the ground or ran screaming, human torches who could ignite their friends.

He and his wing hadn’t had such an easy time wrecking an enemy column since the early days of the war against Unkerlant. The Lagoans, aiming at surprise, hadn’t brought their dragons with them, so the Algarvians had the air to themselves. And even when King Vitor’s men did blaze down an Algarvian dragon, the dead beast fell among them and wrecked most of a company in its death throes.

Sabrino’s dragon clawed its way higher. It was ready and more than ready for another run at the Lagoans. Looking down on them, though, Sabrino saw they’d been thrown into enough disorder. Their attack on the Algarvian expeditionary force would not come off. No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than Captain Domiziano’s image appeared in his crystal. “Enemy dragons flying hard out of the east,” the squadron commander reported.

Sabrino looked that way. Sure enough, he saw them himself. “Back to our own men,” he said. “We can defend them, and they can defend us with their heavy sticks. And now, instead of the Lagoans’ moving on our soldiers on the ground, we’ll move on theirs. Try and pull the wool over our eyes, will they?”

“We’ve already taught ‘em a good lesson,” Domiziano said.

“So we have,” Sabrino agreed, waving for the wing to break off the attack on the Lagoans. “We’ve taught ‘em the magic the shamans of the Ice People use isn’t as good as they thought it was.”

“We ought to see if we can find some friendly shamans ourselves, though, and use it along with everything else we’ve got,” Captain Domiziano said. Sabrino started to tell him that was nothing but foolishness. He stopped with the words unspoken. The more he thought about the idea, the better he liked it.

Somewhere above Sergeant Istvan and his comrades, the moon and stars shone down. He couldn’t see them, though, except in brief, scattered glimpses through the treetops as he crept along on hands and knees. He knew they looked down on the whole world. The vast forests of western Unkerlant only seemed to cover the whole world. He’d been in them for what felt like forever, but that stood to reason.

From a few feet away, Szonyi whispered, “Good thing we don’t need to see where we’re going, not for a while, anyway.”

“Aye.” Istvan chuckled and sniffed. “We can follow our noses instead.”

Kun was off to the other side of Istvan. He said, “Smells a lot better than anything our cooks have dished out lately.”

Kun could always find something to complain about. As often as not, Istvan thought he was complaining to hear himself talk. This time, he thought Kun was dead right. The rich, meaty odor that wafted from an Unkerlanter cook pot somewhere up ahead would have draw him as rubbed amber attracted straws and bits of parchment even if his squad hadn’t been ordered out on a night raid against King Swemmel’s forward positions.

One of the other troopers in the squad let out an all but voiceless hiss: “There’s their fire up ahead.”

Istvan didn’t see the light till he’d scrambled past the trunk of a pine so huge, it might have been standing there since the day the stars chose the Gyongyosians, out of all the peoples of the world, as the folk they claimed for their own. Once he did spy it, he moved even more slowly and carefully than before. The Unkerlanters had proved time and again they were more woods-wise than his countrymen. The last thing he wanted was to give the game away before his comrades and he got the chance to steal that stew.

The firelight ahead did draw him more accurately than the delicious smell coming from the pot had. He stretched out on his belly behind a clump of ferns and stared at the handful of Unkerlanters gathered around their little fire. They looked more alert than he would have liked; one of them sat a good way away from the flames, with his back to the fire and a stick in his lap: their lookout, without a doubt.

He has to be the first one we kill, Istvan thought. If we blaze him down without making any noise, we can get rid of the rest of the goat-eaters a lot easier. He couldn’t pass the order along, even in a whisper-too risky. He had to hope the troopers in his squad would be able to figure things out for themselves. The men who couldn’t do that kind of figuring were mostly dead by now.

One of the Unkerlanters walked over to the fire and stirred the pot with a big iron spoon. Another one asked him a question in their guttural language. Before the first fellow answered, he licked the spoon. Then he grinned and nodded. If that didn’t mean the stew was ready. .

Istvan’s stomach thought that was what it meant. The growl that rose from his midsection might have come from a hungry wolf. He glanced anxiously toward the Unkerlanters in the clearing. Attacks could go wrong all sorts of ways, but he’d never heard of one betrayed by a rumbling belly.

Alarm ran through him when one of Swemmel’s soldiers looked his way.

I’m not here, he thought, as loudly as he could. You didn’t hear that. After a moment, the Unkerlanter looked away. Istvan didn’t even dare sigh with relief.

Ever so slowly, he brought his stick up to his shoulder. He had a clear blaze at the enemy sentry. He couldn’t assume any of his comrades did. If he managed to knock the fellow over, the rest of the soldiers in the squad would take that as their signal to blaze at the other Unkerlanters. If everything went right, the clearing-and the cook pot- would be theirs in minutes.

If anything went wrong.. Istvan didn’t dwell on that. He’d seen too many things go wrong since getting hauled out of his valley and into the army. All you could do was make the best of them.

His finger slid toward the touch hole at the base of the stick. The Unkerlanter sentry leaned forward, suddenly wary. He lifted his hand to point into the woods, not toward Istvan, but about where Szonyi would have been.

Istvan blazed him. The beam caught the Unkerlanter just in front of the right ear. He toppled forward, dead before he could finish his motion. His stick made only a small thump as it fell out of his lap.

But that thump was enough to make some of the soldiers by the fire turn their heads his way. The Unkerlanters got out a startled yelp or two before a storm of beams from the woods cut them down. Istvan and his comrades rushed forward into the firelight to finish them with knives.

It was all over faster than Istvan had dreamt it could be. His squadmates and he dragged corpses in rock- gray tunics away from the campfire. “This position is ours,” he said happily. “So is this stew.”

No one cheered. That might have drawn Unkerlanters down on the squad. But smiles stretched wide behind tangled tawny beards. As one man, the Gyongyosians brought out their tin mess kits. Istvan grabbed the iron spoon that still stuck out of the pot. He held the highest rank here, so he had the right to serve the other soldiers according to how well they’d fought.

As far as he could tell, everyone had fought splendidly. And the pot held plenty of stew: more than those Unkerlanters could have eaten by themselves, he was sure. He spooned out carrots and onions and big chunks of turnip and even bigger chunks of meat, all in a thick gravy that said the Unkerlanters had been cooking it for a long, long time.

“Benczur,” he called to one of the troopers, “eat yours on the way back to the company’s encampment. Tell Captain Tivadar we’ve taken this clearing. Tell him we’ll save some of what’s in the pot for him, too.”

“Aye, Sergeant,” Benczur said around a big mouthful of meat. “Seems a shame to waste such good stuff on officers, but what can you do?” He slipped off into the woods, heading west, the direction from which the Gyongyosians had come.

Istvan also sent Szonyi and another soldier into the woods to the east, to give a little warning if the Unkerlanters counterattacked. Then he happily settled down by the fire and started spooning up stew himself.

“Wouldn’t mind some ale or honeywine to wash it down,” he said. “They threw in too much salt.” He grinned as he spoke; too much salt or not, it was better food than he could have got from the cooks who accompanied the Gyongyosian army.

In a similar vein, and even with a similar grin, Kun said, “And I don’t care how long they cooked this mutton, it wasn’t long enough. Might as well be chewing old clothes.”

“Aye, it’s pretty tough,” Istvan agreed. “But are you sure it’s mutton? I think it tastes more like beef.”

“I used to think all your taste was in your mouth, Sergeant,” Kun said, planting his barb with relish. “Now I see you haven’t got any there, either.”

“Go ahead and argue, you two,” one of the ordinary troopers said. “I don’t care if it’s mountain ape, by the stars. Whatever it is, it’s a lot better than empty.” He took another mouthful.

Istvan could hardly quarrel with that. His own mess tin had emptied with astonishing speed. He was working