Algarvians be pushed out of Unkerlant altogether by the coming of spring. That hadn’t happened. It wouldn’t happen. Not a quarter of it would happen. In the palace, Swemmel could demand whatever he pleased, and it would be his at once. Here in the real world, unfortunately, the redheads also had a good deal to say about the business.
Made bold by Rathar’s forbearance, Wimar said, “Ask you something, sir?” Forbearing still, Rathar nodded. The sergeant licked his lips, then continued, “Sir, can we really beat ‘em?”
“Aye, we can.” The marshal spoke with great conviction. “We
“Anybody who thinks anything against Mezentio’s buggers will ever be easy is a cursed fool, anybody wants to know the way it looks to me,” Wimar said. When he was expressing strong emotion, his Grelzer accent got thicker.
Before Rathar could answer, the Algarvians started tossing eggs into the area, as if they’d decided to underscore the sergeant’s words. Rathar had huddled behind burning rocks when he went up to Zuwayza to get that bungled campaign moving forward once more. Now he dove into a hole with a dusting of snow on the mud at the bottom. He knew a certain amount of pride that he got in there before Wimar could.
The sergeant cursed in disgust. “Their tossers have been short of eggs lately. They must have got a couple of caravans through.”
An egg burst close enough to make the ground shudder under Rathar. “Be glad it was eggs and not Kaunian captives,” he said as dirt rained down on the sergeant and him.
“Oh, aye, there is that,” Wimar answered. “Of course, they might have brought eggs and Kaunians both. Have we got any old folks and convicts ready to slaughter in case they did bring up some of those poor whoresons--or even if they didn’t, come to that? Every little bit helps, is what folks say.”
“Every little bit helps,” Rathar repeated in a hollow voice. Wimar thought of his countrymen the same way Swemmel did: as weapons, or perhaps tools, in the struggle against Algarve, nothing more. Rathar wondered what the people the king’s inspectors routed from their villages thought. Whatever it was, it did them no good. Unkerlanter mages used their life energy as readily as the redheads stole that of the Kaunians.
More eggs fell, a heavier plastering than before. Wimar cursed again. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say the stinking redheads were getting their ducks in a row for a counterattack,” he said.
“Why do you know better?” Rathar asked, genuinely puzzled. “They’ve done plenty of counterattacking this winter.”
“If they were going to counterattack, I expect they’d already be killing Kaunians,” the sergeant answered. “We’d have to get out of this hole, too. It’d be a death trap.”
“Ah.” The marshal inclined his head. “I should have thought of that. But you have more experience in the field against them than I do.”
“More than I want, sir--I’ll tell you that,” Wimar said.
Before the marshal could reply, cries rang out from the front: “The redheads!” “The Algarvians!” And another shout, more alarmed and more alarming than the rest: “Behemoths!”
Maybe Mezentio’s men hadn’t been able to bring any Kaunians to this part of the line. No matter what Wimar had expected, they were throwing themselves into the fight without much magic to back them up. And--Rathar looked around--there were no Unkerlanter behemoths anywhere close by.
All through the long, hard winter in Unkerlant, the Algarvians had lost a great many behemoths. Without snowshoes, the beasts had trouble in deep snow. Some the redheads had killed when they couldn’t keep up with the retreating footsoldiers to keep the Unkerlanters from capturing them. Others had frozen. Still others had been lost in action. Mezentio’s men couldn’t have very many more left down here in Grelz.
Because of all that, Rathar would have thought the Algarvians would use the behemoths they had left with caution. But doing things by halves was not the Algarvian way. When the redheads attacked, they still came at their foes with as much panache as they had when the war was new.
Peering out of the hole, Rathar saw half a dozen behemoths--animals that must have already broken through the Unkerlanters first line--bearing down on the company Sergeant Wimar commanded. In the style they’d perfected, Algarvian footsoldiers followed the great beasts, advancing through the hole they’d created. “Mezentio!” the Algarvians yelled, as cheerful as if they were breaking into Cottbus after all. Most of them wore white; they were learning.
