over them.' He'd seen the Algarvians do that before, but not since the fighting in the ruins of Sulingen, where they'd had plenty of time to dig in.
No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than an Unkerlanter behemoth trod on a buried egg. The burst of sorcerous energy killed the beast at once. Its body shielded the crew who rode it from the worst of the energies, but as it toppled over onto its side, it crushed a couple of men beneath it.
Recared's whistle squealed again- the shrill squeak reminded Leudast of the noise a pig made in the moment it was castrated. 'Forward!' the young lieutenant yelled once more. 'Look behind you- we're not in this alone. We've got reinforcements coming up to give us a hand, too.'
Leudast risked a quick glance over his shoulder. Sure enough, a fresh wave of soldiers in white smocks worn over long gray tunics stormed toward the village on the heels of Recared's regiment. That was plenty to make him shout, 'Urra!' and scramble toward the huts himself. This winter, for the first time, his kingdom seemed able to put men where they were needed when they were needed there. Up till very recently, far too many attacks had gone in either late or in the wrong place.
An Algarvian picket popped up out of his hole to blaze at the onrushing Unkerlanters. Leudast raised his own stick to his shoulder and blazed the redhead. The enemy soldier went down with a screech. An Unkerlanter closer to that hole than Leudast was jumped down into it. A moment later, he scrambled out again and ran on toward the village. The Algarvian didn't come up again.
As King Swemmel's men pushed forward, a couple of enemy pickets tried to run back into the village themselves. One fell before he could take half a dozen steps. The other might have blazed Leudast if he hadn't been more interested in trying to get away.
'Surrender!' Leudast shouted in Algarvian. 'Hands high!' That was about all of the language he knew: all a soldier needed to know.
The soldier took a couple more steps. Leudast raised his stick, ready and more than ready to blaze. Then the redhead seemed to realize he couldn't get away. He threw his stick down in the snow and raised his hands over his head. The smile he aimed at Leudast was was half cheerful, half fearful. He loosed a torrent of speech in his own language.
'Shut up,' barked Leudast, who understood not a word. He strode forward and relieved the Algarvian of money and rations, then gestured with his stick: go to the rear. Hands still high, the redhead obeyed. Maybe he'd end up in a captives' camp; maybe the other Unkerlanters would kill him before he got off the battlefield. Leudast didn't look back to find out.
Sticks or bursting eggs had started fires in a couple of the peasant huts at the southern end of the village. Leudast welcomed the smoke. It made the Algarvians have a tougher time seeing him, and it might attenuate their beams, too. More eggs churned up the ground in front of him as the behemoth crews did all they could to help the footsoldiers.
Getting through the houses in the southern half of the village proved easier than Leudast had expected. Once the Unkerlanters reached those houses, the enemy fought only a rear-guard action against them. That surprised Leudast till he got to the edge of the market square.
As in most Unkerlanter peasant villages, the square was good and wide. In happier times, people would buy and sell things there, or else just stand around and gossip. Now… Now the Algarvians had dug themselves in on the far side of the square. If the Unkerlanters wanted to come at them, they would have to charge across that open space. It might be possible. It wouldn't be easy, or cheap.
An Algarvian beam seared the timbers of the hut behind which Leudast crouched. He pulled back in a hurry; smoke scraped his throat as he breathed in. He hoped the hut wouldn't catch.
A couple of men, both new recruits, tried to rush across the square. Almost contemptuously, the Algarvians let them run for four or five strides before knocking them over. One crumpled and lay still. The other, moaning and dragging a useless leg, crawled back toward cover. Beams boiled snow into puffs of steam all around him. He'd nearly made it to safety when one struck home. His moans turned to shrieks. A moment later, another beam bit. He fell silent.
'Can we do it, Sergeant?' a soldier asked Leudast.
He shook his head. He wouldn't order a charge across the square. If Recared did, he'd try to talk the regimental commander out of it. If he couldn't, he'd sprint across the square along with his comrades- and see how far he got.
Somewhere a few houses over, Lieutenant Recared was speaking to some other soldiers: 'We'll have to be quick, aye, and we'll have to be bold, too. The Algarvians can't have that many men on the other side of the square.' Leudast's heart sank. He saw no reason why the redheads couldn't have that many men and more in the northern part of the village.
But it turned out not to matter. He didn't know where the dragons came from. Maybe they were returning from another raid when some of their dragonfliers looked down and saw the fighting, or maybe the other regiment had a crystallomancer with better connections than Recared's. The Algarvians in the village were surely ready for an attack on the ground. They were just as surely not ready for the death that swooped on them from the sky.
When Leudast heard the thunder of great wings overhead, he threw himself flat in the muddy snow- not that that was likely to save him. But the attacking dragons were painted rock-gray, and they flamed the half of the village Mezentio's men still held. Even from across the market square, he could feel the heat as houses and barricades- and soldiers- caught fire. Soldiers burned not quite to death screamed. A couple of minutes later, the Unkerlanter dragons flamed the Algarvians again. Then they flew off toward the south.
Even before Lieutenant Recared blew his precious officer's whistle, Unkerlanters started rushing across the square. A few of them fell; the dragons hadn't killed all the redheads. But they had flamed the heart out of the enemy's position. Some of the Algarvians fought on anyhow, and made Swemmel's men pay a price for killing them. The rest- more than usual in this kind of fight- surrendered. They seemed dazed, astonished to be alive.
'Another village down,' Recared said proudly. 'Little by little, we take back our kingdom.'
'A village down is right, sir,' Leudast answered, coughing a little and then more than a little. 'It'll be a while before the peasants move back here.'
Recared opened his mouth in surprise, as if the people who'd once lived in the village hadn't crossed his mind. They probably hadn't; he was, Leudast knew, a city man. After a moment, he did find a reply: 'They weren't serving the kingdom with the Algarvians holding this place.' Since that was true, Leudast nodded. He couldn't prove Recared had missed the point.
With what light remained to the day, the Unkerlanters pushed north again. Leudast approved of that without reservation. He approved of it even more because it didn't involve fighting. Somewhere up ahead, Algarvians would be holed up in the next village. When he came to them, he'd do whatever he had to do. Till then, he enjoyed the respite.
He didn't enjoy having Recared shake him awake in the middle of the night. 'What's gone wrong, sir?' he asked, assuming something had.
Only faint glowing embers illuminated the young lieutenant's face. In that dim, bloody light, Recared looked, for once, far older than his years. 'Our crystallomancer just got the order,' he said. 'We have to countermarch, head back south.'
'What?' Leudast exclaimed. 'Powers above, why?'
'I don't know, curse it. The order didn't explain.' Recared sounded as harassed as an ordinary soldier. 'But you're bound to be right, Sergeant: something's gone wrong somewhere.'
Hajjaj hoped no one knew he'd left Bishah. He did manage to sneak out of the capital every now and again. So far, he'd managed to keep the secret from those who would have been most interested in learning it: chief among them Marquis Balastro, the Algarvian minister to Zuwayza. Balastro knew Zuwayza was imperfectly happy in her role as Algarve's ally; Hajjaj worked hard to keep him from knowing just how unhappy his kingdom was, not least since Zuwayza would have been even unhappier without Algarve.
As the ley-line caravan glided east out of the Zuwayzi capital, Hajjaj smiled at his secretary and said, 'Isn't it astonishing how quickly I've recovered from the indisposition everyone thinks I have?'
Qutuz smiled, too. 'Astonishing indeed, your Excellency. And I am very glad to see you looking so well.'
