stream that runs by the other side of the town and have some chance of really stopping the redheads.”
That stream was hardly more than a creek. Leudast hadn’t bothered looking for a ford before wading across it, and the water hadn’t come above his waist. He didn’t think it would prove much of an obstacle to the Algarvians. As a matter of fact, it
“We’ll have reinforcements coming in behind us,” Hawart promised. “They’ll give us the men we need to make a proper stand on the river line.” It wasn’t a river. Not even in flood could it be a river. But the regimental commander had met Leudast’s most urgent concern.
In any case, Hawart gave the orders. Leudast’s job was to obey them and see that the men in his squad did the same. He glanced over to Sergeant Magnulf. Magnulf shrugged, ever so slightly. He had to obey orders, too. After a moment, Leudast also shrugged. Going straight at the Algarvians was only slightly more perilous than falling back before them.
“Let’s get moving,” Hawart said. “Advance in open order. Use whatever cover you can find. If you can manage it, Unkerlant needs you alive. But Unkerlant needs dead Algarvians even more. Come on.”
“Open order,” Magnulf repeated. “Spread it out as wide as you can. We want to get into the village, we want to clear out the Algarvians, and we want to keep on advancing to the line of the stream. And Leudast here,” he added, pointing toward the corporal, “wants to keep the redheads as far away from his home village as he can.”
“Aye, that’s so,” Leudast agreed. He turned his head to look westward. His village couldn’t have been more than twenty or thirty miles west of the battle line, though he was rather south of it, too. “Too many villages lost already.”
“Well, let’s take one back,” Magnulf said.
Leudast did his best to force fear to one side. He couldn’t keep from feeling it. As long as he kept from showing it, though, he could hold his head up among his comrades. Maybe they felt it, too. He hadn’t asked. Nobody’d asked him either.
He trotted forward through fields of growing wheat that might never be harvested. He wished he were dressed in green, not rock-gray. How far forward had the Algarvians moved their outposts during the night? One way to find out was to get blazed by a redhead. Somebody was liable to find out that way. He hoped he wouldn’t be the one.
Eggs started falling on the advancing troops. The Algarvians were demons for making their egg-tossers keep up with the rest of the army. Here, though, they were tossing a little long, so they did less harm than they might have.
Before they could correct their aim, flashes of sorcerous energy came from inside Pfreimd. Leudast let out a glad, startled whoop, then turned it into words: “We’ve got egg-tossers of our own in the fight.” He shook his fist in the direction of the village. “How do you Algarvians like it, curse you?”
He didn’t think the Algarvians liked it at all. Dishing it out was always easier than taking it. The eggs the Unkerlanters flung at the redheads must have put a couple of their tossers out of action, for the rain of eggs down onto the advancing Unkerlanter regiment slowed.
Leudast waved men forward as he himself ran on. Maybe Captain Hawart hadn’t been trying to get what was left of the regiment killed after all. Familiar-looking thatch-roofed houses--some amazingly intact, others nothing but charred ruins--swelled in Leudast’s sight as he drew near them.
“Unkerlant!” he yelled. “King Swemmel! Urra! Urra!”
More Unkerlanter eggs fell on Pfreimd. They would make the Algarvians holed up in the village keep their heads down. With a little luck, that creek on the other side of Pfreimd would become the front line once more. A barricade of Algarvian corpses might keep the defenders safe.
Troopers started blazing at the nearest houses, houses in which the redheads might be lurking. Where beams struck it, thatching began to smolder. So did some of the timbers. Before long, those houses would catch fire. The Algarvians would have to come forth or roast.
In the meanwhile, though, they fought. Beams began cutting down the Unkerlanters advancing on the village. A near miss charred a line through the grass by Leudast’s feet. He threw himself down behind a rock that wasn’t really big enough to shield him and blazed back.
After a moment to gather himself, he was up and running again. Then he was in among the houses of the village, and discovered that the Algarvians hadn’t merely taken cover in them. The redheads had also dug trenches and foxholes by the houses and in the village square. They resisted with everything they had, too, and seemed not in the least inclined to give up Pfreimd.
