Before Leudast could reply, the Algarvians started tossing eggs at the Unkerlanter front line. As usual, Mezentio’s men had made sure that their egg-tossers kept up with their advancing footsoldiers. Leudast cowered in his hole as the rubble around him got ground a little finer. It occurred to him, perhaps more slowly than it should have, that the Algarvians, regardless of whether or not they were clever, could hit the Unkerlanters with big rocks, too.
It also occurred to him that the Algarvians could pin the Unkerlanters in their holes by tossing eggs and then finish them with the horrific magic they made from the life energy of slaughtered Kaunians. He hoped they wouldn’t think of that along this particular stretch of the line.
Off to his right, someone shrieked. Maybe the redheads wouldn’t need to be clever to go forward. Maybe they could just go on killing the way they’d been doing for quite a while.
Another cry rose, this one alarm, not pain: “They’re coming!” Eggs kept right on landing. Maybe Mezentio’s men didn’t care if they killed a few of their own. Maybe they just figured it was a good bargain, and that getting rid of the Unkerlanters counted for more. And maybe they were right about that, too.
If they were coming, Leudast didn’t want-didn’t dare-to get caught in his hole. He popped up and started to blaze. An Algarvian tumbled down, and another. More dove for cover. Some kept coming. His mouth went dry-quite a few were coming, more than he thought he and his comrades could hold back. He’d already made himself expensive. Now he had to see how he could cost the redheads even more before they finally pulled him down.
And then, from the rear, he heard one of the sweetest sounds he’d ever known; officers’ whistles shrilling reinforcements into action. “Urra!” the soldiers shouted. “King Swemmel! Urra!” They rushed past Leudast, meeting the Algarvian charge with one of their own.
They were new men, unblooded, ferried north over the Wolter and thrown straight into the fight. Everything about them proclaimed as much, from their clean, unfaded tunics to the way they ran straight up rather than hunching forward to give the redheads smaller targets. A lot of them fell before they ever came to grips with Mezentio’s veteran troopers. But enough Unkerlanters lived to stop the Algarvian advance before it really got going.
Leudast was already moving forward when Captain Hawart shouted, “Come on-we’re not going to let the new lads have all the fun!”
It wasn’t fun. Only a madman would have reckoned it fun. It was combat at the close quarters of fornication, and hardly less intimate. The Algarvians were as determined to go forward as the Unkerlanters were to drive them back. Men fought one another with beams, with sticks swung like clubs, with knives, with feet and fists and teeth. No one on either side threw up his hands.
An Algarvian who had to be out of charges for his stick tried to brain Leudast with it. Leudast had no time to blaze him; he had all he could do to duck. The redhead threw the dead stick at him. He knocked it aside with his own stick as the Algarvian drew a knife and rushed. He knocked the wicked-looking blade aside, too. Then he could blaze, could and did. The Algarvian howled and toppled. Leudast blazed him again, and the howling stopped.
“Forward!” Captain Hawart shouted again.
Forward Leudast went-a handful of paces, till he spied a likely-looking hole in the ground. He jumped down into it without the slightest sense of shame or embarrassment. Aye, he wanted to drive the redheads out of Sulingen. But he also wanted to live to see them go. He didn’t think that was likely, not the way things stood, but it was what he wanted.
Hisses overhead and crashes behind and near the Algarvians’ lines announced that the egg-tossers on his own side weren’t so sleepy as usual. Captain Hawart had been right-the Algarvians lacked the room to maneuver and deceive here. Out on the plains, the Unkerlanters’ egg-tossers hadn’t always been able to get where they were needed while they were still needed there. In Sulingen, that problem didn’t arise. They were already where they needed to be. All they had to do was toss. They could manage that.
Little by little, the pressure from the redheads eased. Leudast let out a long, weary sigh. “Held ‘em again,” he said to no one in particular.
Soldiers dragged wounded men to the rear, to see what mages and surgeons could do for them. That held true no matter to which side the men at the front belonged, no matter whether they wore gray tunics or tan kilts. The Algarvians rarely blazed at soldiers helping wounded comrades; Leudast and his countrymen usually extended the redheads the same courtesy. It was one of the few courtesies both sides extended.
A runner came up with a big sack full of loaves of black bread. Leudast grabbed one and bit into it. It was heavy and chewy, bound to have more barley and rye flour in it than wheat. He didn’t care. It was food, and food for which he didn’t have to go foraging through the rubble. He didn’t mind taking what had been other people’s dainties; the real trouble was that he didn’t find them often enough to keep his own belly full.
One of the raw Unkerlanter soldiers-a lot less raw now than he had been a couple of hours before-spoke to Leudast: “Sergeant? Sir?”
He
“Aye, sir-uh, Sergeant.” Beneath his dirty, swarthy hide, the young soldier blushed like a girl. Leudast didn’t much blame him for being confused. He’d been doing an officer’s work himself, commanding a company, and he was far from the only sergeant who could say that. And not all the real officers in Unkerlant’s army were bluebloods these days, as they had been during the Six Years’ War. King Swemmel had killed off a lot of noblemen during and after the Twinkings War, and the Algarvians had killed off a lot more since.
“Well, what do you want, then?” Leudast asked, less of a growl in his voice this time. “And who are you, anyway?”
“Oh! My name’s Aldrian.. Sergeant.” The youngster beamed at doing it right. “What I want to know is, is it always going to be like
Leudast considered. While he considered, he ate another big bite of bread. Slowly, deliberately, he chewed and swallowed. Then he said, “You figure it out. The redheads want Sulingen. King Swemmel says they can’t have it. If they keep throwing in soldiers and he keeps throwing in soldiers, what do you think will happen?”
By his accent, Aldrian came out of Cottbus. And, again by his accent, he was an educated young man. He really did furrow up his unwrinkled brow and think it over. Leudast could tell to the heartbeat when he reached his conclusion. He could also tell Aldrian didn’t much fancy the answer he got. Turning a stricken face toward Leudast, he asked, “Do you think any of us will be left alive by the time it’s over here, however it turns out?”
After eating some more bread, Leudast answered, “Well, it could be worse.”
“How?” Aldrian’s eyes widened.
“We could be Kaunians,” Leudast said, and drew his thumb across his throat; the nail rasped on whiskers he hadn’t had the chance to shave any time lately. “You know what Mezentio’s mages do to them, and why?” He waited for Aldrian to nod. Then, with deliberate brutality, he went on, “Or we could be old men and women King Swemmel’s inspectors can’t find any other use for any more. You know what our mages do to them, and why?”
“Aye.” Aldrian nodded again. Though his features were pinched as if at the smell of rotting meat-not that there wasn’t plenty of that stink around-he still managed to bring out Swemmel’s favorite catchword: “Efficiency.”
Leudast spat. “That for efficiency.” Back before the war heated up to its present boil, he never would have dared do such a thing, for fear of Swemmel’s inspectors. But they couldn’t condemn him to much worse than what he’d already had: something more than a year of fighting the Algarvians.
He’d shocked Aldrian-he could see as much. “Where would we be if everyone said that?” the youngster asked.
He’d intended it for a rhetorical question. Leudast wasn’t long on rhetoric, and so he answered it anyway: “Where would we be? About where we are anyhow, I expect.” He looked a challenge toward Aldrian, defying the recruit to disagree with him.
Aldrian opened his mouth, then closed it again. “Good fellow,” Leudast told him. “If you live, you’ll learn.”
Once upon a time, the neighborhood through which Bembo and Oraste strolled had been among the better ones in Gromheort. It still showed faint signs of that, as a desperately ill woman of fifty-five might show signs of
