Not till he freed himself, tried to go on, and put weight on his right leg did he realize a chunk of metal egg casing had wounded him. He went down in a heap. Unlike Turpino's, his leg wouldn't support him anymore. Blood poured from a gash above the knee. Pain poured from the gash, too, now that he knew he had it.
'Stretcher-bearers!' he bawled, hoping some of them would hear him. 'Stretcher-bearers!' He took a bandage from his belt pouch and bound up the wound as best he could. He also gulped down a little jar of poppy juice. That made the pain retreat, but couldn't rout it. Battle Group Turpino now, he thought.
'Here we are, pal,' an Algarvian said. He and his comrade lifted Spinello and set him on their stretcher. 'We'll get you out of here- that or die trying.' It wasn't a joke, even if it sounded like one.
'I wanted to see the fight on the high ground,' Spinello grumbled. But he wouldn't, not now.
Thirteen
Marshal Rathar had stayed in Durrwangen to direct the twin fights on each flank of the salient from his headquarters for as long as he could stand- and, indeed, for a little longer than that. As long as both battles were going furiously, he didn't see much point to directly overseeing one or the other. He might have guessed wrong as to which would prove the more important, and would have no one but himself to blame. King Swemmel would have no one but him to blame, either.
Now, though, the Algarvians plainly wouldn't break through in the east. They'd thrown everything they had at Braunau. They'd broken into the village several times. They'd never gone past it, and they didn't hold it at the moment. Rathar had a good notion of the reserves the redheads had left on that side of the bulge, and of his own forces over there. Braunau and that whole side of the salient would stand.
Here in the west, though… Here on the western side of the bulge, the Unkerlanters had badly hurt Mezentio's men. They'd killed a lot of enemy behemoths, and they'd cost the Algarvians a lot of time fighting their way through one heavily defended line after another.
But on this flank, unlike the other, the Algarvians hadn't had to halt. They were still coming, they'd gained the high ground he'd hoped to deny them, and they might yet break through and race to cut off the salient in the style they'd shown the past two summers.
'We'll just have to stop them, that's all,' he said to General Vatran.
'Oh, aye, as easy as boiling water for tea,' Vatran said, and took a sip from the mug in front of him. His grimace filled his face with so many wrinkles, it might almost have belonged to an aging gargoyle. 'Don't I wish! Don't we all wish!'
'We have to do it,' Rathar repeated. He got up from the folding table at which he'd been sitting with Vatran and paced back and forth under the plum trees that shielded his new field headquarters from the prying eyes of dragonfliers. The plateau up here sloped down toward the ground the Algarvians had already won. Gullies, some of them dry, more with streams at their bottom, cut up the flat land. Most of it was given over to fields and meadows, but orchards like this one and little clumps of forest varied the landscape. Rathar sat his jaw. 'We have to do it, and we cursed well will.' He raised his voice: 'Crystallomancer!'
'Aye, lord Marshal?' The young mage came running, his crystal ready to hand.
'Get me General Gurmun, in charge of the reserve force of behemoths,' Rathar said.
'Aye, sir.' The crystallomancer murmured the charm he needed. Light flared from the crystal. A face appeared in it: another crystallomancer's face. Rathar's man spoke to the other fellow, who hurried away. Less than a minute later, General Gurmun's hard visage appeared in the sphere of glass. Rathar's crystallomancer nodded. 'Go ahead, lord Marshal.'
Without preamble, Rathar said, 'General, I want all your behemoths moving to me and to the advancing Algarvians in an hour. Can you do it?'
If Gurmun said no, Rathar intended to sack him on the spot. Gurmun had first won command of an army in the war against the Zuwayzin, when his then-superior proved too drunk to deliver an attack when Rathar wanted it. Drunkenness wasn't Gurmun's vice. He hadn't shown many vices in the three and a half years since, but now would be the worst possible moment for one to make itself known.
'Sir, we can,' Gurmun said. 'Inside half an hour, in fact. We'll hit the redheads an hour after that. By the powers above, we'll hit 'em hard, too.'
'Good enough.' Rathar gestured to his crystallomancer, who broke the etheric link. Gurmun's image vanished as abruptly as it had appeared.
Vatran whistled, a low, soft note. 'The whole reserve of behemoths, lord Marshal?' He pointed west, toward Mezentio's own oncoming horde of behemoths. 'The field won't be big enough to hold all the beasts battling on it.'
Rathar didn't answer. He walked to the edge of the plum orchard and swung a spyglass in the direction Vatran had pointed. Advancing wedges of Algarvian behemoths leaped toward his eye. The redheads weren't having things all their own way- Unkerlanter behemoths and footsoldiers and dragons made them pay for every yard they gained. But Mezentio's men had the bit between their teeth. Like any good troops, they could feel it. On they came. If the reserves couldn't stop them…
If the reserves couldn't stop them, odds were Vatran or Gurmun or some other general would get the big stars on his collar, the green sash, and the ceremonial sword that went with being Marshal of Unkerlant. Swemmel had been more forgiving of Rathar than of any other officer in his command, perhaps- but only perhaps- because he truly believed Rathar wouldn't try to steal the throne. But he was unlikely to tolerate failure here. Sitting on the throne, Rathar knew he too would have been unlikely to tolerate failure here.
Unkerlanter dragons struck at the Algarvian behemoths. Algarvian dragons promptly struck at the Unkerlanters, keeping them too busy to deliver the blows they should have. Rathar cursed under his breath. He'd hoped to have gained control of the air by this point in the fighting. No such luck. As far as he could tell, neither side dominated the air above the Durrwangen bulge.
He turned to the southeast, looking for some sign of the arrival of Gurmun's behemoths. No such luck there, either. The plum trees screened him away from a good view in that direction. He looked back toward the Algarvians and scowled. If Gurmun didn't get here when he'd said he would, this headquarters would come under attack before long.
Even though Rathar couldn't see much to the southeast, he knew to the minute when the behemoth reserve began to draw near. Half, maybe more than half, of the Algarvian dragons broke off their fight with their Unkerlanter counterparts and flew off to the southeast as fast as they could go. He might not have seen Gurmun coming, but they had.
Rathar ran back to the table where Vatran still stat. As he ran, he shouted for the crystallomancer again. 'The commanders of the dragon wings,' he ordered when the minor mage hurried up to him. Then he spoke urgently into the crystal: 'The redheads kept you from savaging their behemoths too badly. By the powers above, you've got to keep them from punishing ours before they reach the field. If you fail there, we're liable to be ruined.'
One after another, the wing commander promised to obey. Rathar hurried back to the edge of the orchard. This time, Vatran came with him. Fewer Unkerlanter dragons were attacking the Algarvian behemoths. He supposed that meant- he hoped it meant- the Unkerlanters were holding the Algarvian dragons away from their behemoths. 'Curse the redheads,' he growled. 'They're altogether too good at what they do.'
Vatran set a hand on his arm. 'Lord Marshal, you've done everything you could do here,' he said. 'Now it's time to let the men do what they can do.'
'I want to grab a stick and fight alongside them,' Rathar said. 'I want to be everywhere at once, and fighting in all those different places.'
'You are,' Vatran told him. 'Everybody out there' -he waved- 'is doing what he's doing because your orders told him to do it.'
'Not everybody,' Rathar said. Vatran raised a shaggy white eyebrow. The marshal explained: 'The Algarvians, powers below eat 'em, don't want to listen to me at all.'
Vatran laughed, though Rathar hadn't meant it as a joke. Then, at the same time, he and Vatran both cocked their heads to one side, listening hard to a low but building rumble to the southeast. Or was it listening? Vatran said, 'I'm not sure I hear that with my ears or feel it through the soles of my feet, you know what I mean?' Rathar nodded; that said it better than he could have.
He stepped out from the cover of the plum trees and looked in the direction of the rumble again. A couple of Algarvian behemoths had drawn close enough for their crews to spy him. Eggs flew toward him, but burst a couple
