shoulder, thrust his right index finger out through the open seam in his mitten, and rammed it into the stick’s activation hole. The beam leaped forth from the other end. He hoped it bit an Unkerlanter.
Swemmel’s soldiers were blazing back at the men of Plegmund’s Brigade and the Algarvians, too. Puffs of steam rose from the snow where their beams missed Sidroc and his comrades. The screams that rang out said not all the beams had missed. Sidroc did his best not to think about that, even when a beam zipped past his head so close, he smelled thunderstorms for a moment.
A few inches more to the left, and… Sidroc shook his head. I’m notthinking about that, curse it.
He spied more movement in the village. He raised his stick again, then lowered it, swearing as vilely as he could.
SergeantWerferthsaw that movement, too, and also knew it for what it was. “Behemoths!” he shouted in Algarvian, and followed that with his own foul Forthwegian. Werferth was no youngster looking for adventure like Sidroc, nor a ruffian two jumps ahead of the constables like Ceorl. He’d been a sergeant in the Forthwegian army before the Algarvians smashed it. As far as Sidroc could see, he’d joined Plegmund’s Brigade simply because he liked being a soldier. He would never make officer’s rank, not in the Brigade-he wasn’t an Algarvian. Of course, he wouldn’t have made officer’s rank in the Forthwegian army, either-he wasn’t a nobleman.
But Sidroc didn’t have much time to worry about Werferth. The behemoths, now, they were really something to worry about. They lumbered forward, each one with enormous snowshoes on its feet, each one with a surcoat that made it harder to spot flapping over its chainmail, each one with its great curved horn sheathed in iron to make it all the more sharp and deadly-and each one mounting a crew of armored Unkerlanters who served either a heavy stick or an egg-tosser that made the behemoth deadly far beyond the reach of its horn.
Sidroc threw himself down in the snow again. A footsoldiercould blaze down a behemoth-if he put a beam right in its eye. What were the odds? Not worth betting. He tried to knock over the Unkerlanter footsoldiers who ran forward with the beasts. He had a better chance of that.
“Where areour behemoths?” he shouted. Eggs burst around the Unkerlanter animals, but only a direct hit was likely to slay one. The best way to fight behemoths was with other behemoths.
“Whereare our behemoths?” That was Ceorl, and that was alarm in his voice. The summer before, Algarve had lost far more behemoths than she could afford to lose, trying to smash the Unkerlanter salient around the town of Durrwangen. Since then, the redheads hadn’t had enough to meet the Unkerlanters’ onslaught-which was one great reason Swemmel’s soldiers had pushed so far east since the battles around Durrwangen. The Algarvians had come up with a fair number of behemoths for the counterattack aimed at Herborn-which was one great reason Mezentio’s soldiers had been able to head west again. juvs of
If, however, they didn’t get some behemoths right here pretty soon, some of Mezentio’s soldiers and a good many Forthwegians who’d been rash enough to join them were going to have a very thin time of it indeed.
An egg burst right on top of an Unkerlanter behemoth. All the eggs it had been carrying for its tosser burst, too: a great flash of light, an enormous clap of thunder. Only a hole in the ground-a shallow hole in the ground, for it was frozen hard-showed where the beast had been. The Unkerlanters who served that egg-tosser couldn’t have known what hit them. Sidroc cheered. He didn’t raise his head to do it, though. Plenty ofKingSwemmel ’s soldiers remained alive.
Flame enveloped another behemoth and its crew. This time, Sidroc saw the dragon that flamed the beast. It was painted in green, red, and white: Algarvian colors. He cheered again. The redheads had been short of dragons since Durrwangen, too, though not to the same degree as they’d been short of behemoths.
But the Unkerlanter behemoth crews who served heavy sticks also blazed at the Algarvian dragons. Their beams were strong enough to burn through silvery belly paint and the armoring scales beneath. A dragon slammed into the snow. It thrashed for a long time before it died; its great tail sent a couple of Unkerlanters spinning, smashed and broken, to their deaths. The dragon-flier, though, had surely died at that first crushing impact.
With most of the enemy behemoths dead, Algarvian officers blew their whistles. Their imperative cry rang out again: “Forward!”
Sidroc would sooner have stayed where he was and let somebody else take the chances. But, along with the other troopers from Plegmund’s Brigade- and along with the Algarvians, too; no denying the redheads had spirit-he scrambled to his feet and went forward. Even as he did, he wondered why. He didn’t particularly care about clearing the Unkerlanters from the village ahead. He didn’t even particularly care about retaking Herborn; he’d seen enough battered Unkerlanter villages and towns and cities to last him the rest of his days.
WhatdoIcare about, then? he wondered, blazing at an Unkerlanter in a snow smock not much different from his own. The Unkerlanter toppled. Sidroc whooped and slogged on. Why am I giving these buggers the chance to do to me what I just did to that poor whoreson?
He whooped again when Ceorl blazed an Unkerlanter. He didn’t even like Ceorl, and he knew full well the ruffian had no use for him when they weren’t up against Swemmel’s soldiers. Oddly, that gave him an answer of sorts: Ican’t let the fellows who are in this with me down. If he stayed behind, they’d think he was a coward, and their opinions were the only ones that mattered to him these days. His mother was dead, killed when the Algarvians took Gromheort. His father remained back in Forthweg, and had no real understanding of what he was doing here. He’d killed his cousin Leofsig in a brawl. He’d brawled with Leofsig’s brother Ealstan, too-and Ealstan, from what he gathered, had run off with a Kaunian tart. Leofsig and Ealstan’s father and mother and sister hated him. Who was left, then, but the men alongside whom he fought?
More Algarvian dragons swooped down on the Unkerlanters. Behemoths died under the eggs they dropped and from the flame that burst from their jaws. The handful of behemoths that survived had had enough, and lumbered off toward woods beyond the village. The trees helped shelter them from dragon attacks.
“Forward!” shouted the Algarvian officers, and forward went the Algarvian footsoldiers and the men of Plegmund’s Brigade.
They overran the villageKingSwemmel ’s troopers had defended so fiercely. Some of the redheads had weapons Sidroc hadn’t seen before: small pottery jugs that they flung at their foes, and that burst like miniature eggs. “I want some of those. When can we get ‘em?” he askedSergeantWerferth.
“When the Algarvians have enough to spare for their poor relations,” Werferth answered. Sidroc swore and kicked at the snow; the sergeant was bound to be right.
Some soldiers pushed on down the snow-covered road toward Herborn. Others-the less lucky-were ordered into the woods to go after the last few Unkerlanter behemoths and the footsoldiers with them.
Werferth had never been given to wild flights of optimism-what veteran sergeant was? But now he said, “Maybe we really will drive these sons of whores out of Herborn. Looks like we’ve got a lot of ‘em in a pocket here.”
“I wouldn’t mind,” Sidroc said. “But what’ll the Algarvians do for a new King of Grelz? Who’d be daft enough to want the job after what happened to the old one?”
Before the sergeant could answer, the Algarvian officers’ whistles started screeching again. But instead of yelling, “Forward!” as they had since the drive on Herborn began, the redheads shouted, “By the left flank! Crystallomancers say there’s an Unkerlanter attack coming in. We have to hold. We can’t let Swemmel’s men out of the box we’ve shoved ‘em into. By the left flank!”
“By the left flank!” Werferth echoed loudly. Then he sighed. “Something’s gone wrong somewhere.”
Sidroc only shrugged. “Not like it’s the first time.” He too turned to the left.
CountSabrinohad fought as a footsoldier during the Six Years’ War, which ended almost thirty years before the Derlavaian War broke out. That put the colonel of dragonfliers well up into his fifties these days. He was more than twice the age of most of the men in the wing he commanded. When the wing worked hard, as it was working hard now, he felt the weight of every one of those years, too.
I’m still strong, he thought as he spooned up boiled oats with onions and carrots and chunks of meat cooked into them. Like every Algarvian fighting in Unkerlant, he’d long since given up asking what the meat was. Better not to know, /amstill strong, curse it. In a standup fight, I can take most of my men.
But that wasn’t what left him feeling like an antiquity in the museum back in Trapani. The youngsters he led could get by with irregular meals and not enough sleep-and much of that at odd hours-and stay fresh. He couldn’t, not any more. A hard stretch of flying left him feeling as if he were moving underwater. He had trouble trusting himself to make the right decisions when he was too worn to see straight.
Captain Orosio, one of his squadron leaders-the only one who’d been with the wing when the war was new- gave him a sympathetic look when he complained. “My guess is, your wound’s still troubling you, sir,” Orosio
