Darkness Descending

None of the rear guard Hawart had set was still fighting. The Algarvians’ advance remained unhindered till they got within range of the Unkerlanter soldiers holed up and waiting for them. “Mezentio! Mezentio!” The yell raised Leudast’s hackles.

“Urra!” he cried as he began to blaze. “King Swemmel! Urra!” He picked off one Algarvian after another. He seemed unable to miss. Every time he blazed, another redhead fell. He’d never had such a run of luck.

But he couldn’t kill the whole Algarvian army by himself. The soldiers he didn’t kill kept on toward the village. Idly, he wondered what the name of this place was. If he died, he would have liked to know where he was doing it.

A beam almost as thick as his thigh struck the hut from which he was fighting. He stared in astonishment at the hole it made. The edges of that hole began to burn merrily. Leudast swatted at the flames with a rag, but couldn’t put them out. They licked hungrily at the old dry boards of the wall.

Smoke started to choke him. He realized he couldn’t stay were he was, not unless he wanted to burn, too. Reluctantly, he ran out into the street.

“Over here!” Sergeant Magnulf shouted, and waved to show where he was. “Come on--this is a good hole.”

Leudast needed no further invitation. He dove into the hole. He didn’t know how good it was, but it was very welcome. “We’re still here,” he said, and Magnulf nodded.

But the Algarvians were still there, too, and still there in large numbers. And their behemoths kept sending powerful beams through the village and tossing eggs into it. One of those eggs burst right in front of the hole.

Magnulf’s head had been up above the edge. He shrieked and clutched at his face. Blood poured around the edges of his mittens. After a moment of standing there swaying, he slowly crumpled. His hands fell away from the hideous wounds. His eyes were gone, as if he’d never had any. His nose was burned away, too, leaving only a gaping hole in the middle of his face. Leudast grimaced. He’d seen a lot of horrors since the fighting started, but few close to this.

Magnulf likely wouldn’t live, not with those wounds. If by some chance--some mischance--he did, he likely wouldn’t want to. Leudast pulled a knife from his belt and drew it across the sergeant’s burned and blistered throat. More blood fountained, but not for long. Even before Magnulf drew in his last bubbling breath, Leudast was peering out as his friend had done, hoping he wouldn’t be unlucky as his friend had been, and getting ready once more to fight to hold the Algarvians out of the village.

Fernao was wishing he’d never been born. That failing, he was wishing he’d never studied magecraft. And, that failing, he was wishing he’d never, ever, set foot in the land of the Ice People. Had he escaped that, Colonel Peixoto wouldn’t have thought to include him in the Lagoan expeditionary force cruising the ley lines toward the austral continent.

“A plague of boils on King Penda’s pendulous belly,” Fernao muttered as the Implacable bucked beneath his feet like a unicorn gone mad. Had he not set out to rescue Penda, he wouldn’t have had to go to the land of the Ice People. Setubal could be a dreary place during the winter. Next to a cramped cabin on a ship implacably gliding farther south and east every moment, dreariness seemed most attractive.

The ley-line cruiser’s bow pitched down into a trough. That pitched Fernao off his feet. Fortunately, he landed on his bunk, not on his head.

“Gliding,” he said, packing the word with enough loathing to suit a major curse. On land, a caravan traveling along a ley line stayed a fixed distance above the ground, and the ground stayed fixed, too. But the surface of the sea wasn’t fixed--was, in these southern waters, anything but fixed. The Implacable, like the rest of the ships in the Lagoan fleet, drew from the ley line the energy she used to travel. She couldn’t possibly hope to draw enough energy to stay steady when the sea refused to do the same.

Rubbing his shin, which had banged off the bunk’s iron frame, Fernao got up and left the cabin. He felt trapped in there. If anything happened to the Implacable, he’d die before he found out what was wrong. And if you go up on deck, you’ll die knowing exactly what’s wrong, his mind gibed. Is that an improvement?

In an odd sort of way, it was. The ship’s corridors and stairs had handrails that helped in a fierce sea. Fernao used them. Had he not used them, he would have suffered far worse than a barked shin.

When he came out on deck, sleet blew into his face. Sailors ran about doing their jobs with no more concern than if the cruiser had been tied up at a quay in Setubal. Fernao envied them their effortless ease--and kept a hand on a rail or a rope at all times. The wind howled like a hungry wolf.

Captain Fragoso came up to Fernao, walking along the slanting deck as casually as the sailors did. “A fine morning, sir mage,” he shouted cheerily. “Aye, a fine morning.” If he noticed the sleet, he gave no sign of it.