three children who’d been inside.
Waddo stared at the carnage the space of a few minutes had seen. “We ought to bury the poor brave fellows,” he said, pointing out toward the slaughtered soldiers.
“What if they’d been in the village instead of just outside when the dragons came?” Garivald asked. “Who’d bury us then?” Waddo turned that horrified stare on him, then limped off without answering.
About noon the next day, four horse-drawn egg-tossers set up near the edge of the woods outside Zossen and started flinging death at the Algarvians farther east. For a little while, their solid presence cheered Garivald. Then he realized the enemy had drawn within egg-tosser range of the village. And then the Algarvians started tossing eggs back at that detachment.
Earth leapt skyward from the fields. Now Garivald watched in a different sort of horror: those were the crops on which Zossen would get through the winter--if it got through the winter. An older man, a fellow who’d fought in the Six Years’ War, shouted at him and the other gawkers: “Get down, you cursed fools! A burst close by’U pick you up and smash you flat against the closest wall that doesn’t fall over.” He lay on his belly--he believed what he was saying.
Garivald did, too. He got down flat. He wished he could dig a hole. That was what soldiers did. When an egg burst behind him, it rolled him over and battered him with its force. Others who hadn’t listened to the veteran were down and screaming--except for one woman who lay with her head twisted at an unnatural angle and would never get up again.
Before long, the Unkerlanter egg-tossers fell silent, beaten into submission by the redheads’. A couple of men from their crews ran off into the woods. Garivald had a hard time blaming them when all their comrades were slain or wounded.
More and more soldiers in rock-gray tunics streamed through and past Zossen. By then, the villagers had nothing left to give them but water from the wells. The next morning, an officer declared, “This is a good enough place for a stand. We’ll make the redheads pay high for it, by the powers above. You peasants head off to the west. If you’re lucky, you’ll get away.”
“But, my lord,” Waddo quavered, “that will mean the end of the village.”
The officer pointed his stick at the firstman’s face. “Argue with me, wretch, and it’ll mean the end of you.”
He started giving orders that would have turned Zossen into the best fortress he could make of it. Before he’d got far, though, his crystallomancer cried, “Sir, the redheads have broken through south of the woods. If we try to hold in the front, they’ll take us in flank.”
“Curse them!” the officer snarled. “That stretch of line should have held.” He ground his teeth; Garivald clearly heard the sound. The officer’s shoulders sagged. “Whoever was commanding down there ought to have his neck stretched, but no help for it. We’ve got to fall back again.”
His men had already begun trickling off toward the west. They’d been through this before. Garivald wondered if they’d been through anything else.
“Firstman!” the officer shouted. Waddo hobbled toward him, looking apprehensive. The officer’s lip curled. “Oh. You. Listen to me: if you’ve got a crystal in this miserable place, bury it deep. You won’t like what happens to you if the Algarvians find it.” Without waiting for an answer, he tramped off. He had more fight in him, but Garivald wasn’t sure whether he’d sooner take on King Mezentio’s men or his own side.
“Garivald!” Waddo called.
“Aye?” Garivald answered, all too sure he knew what was coming next. With his bad leg, Waddo couldn’t dig.
And the firstman did not surprise him. “Fetch a spade and come with me,” Waddo said. “We’d better get the crystal out of sight. I don’t think we have much time.”
Wishing Waddo had picked someone else, Garivald shouldered a shovel. The firstman went into his house--which eggs had left untouched--and came out with the crystal. Garivald followed him to a yard-deep hole in the middle of a vegetable plot where an egg had burst.
“Bury it at the bottom of that,” the firstman said, pointing. “With the ground already torn, some more digging won’t show.”
“Fair enough.” Garivald got into the hole and went to work. He might not like Waddo, but the firstman wasn’t stupid. Garivald kept looking over his shoulder as he dug. Some people in Zossen liked Waddo even less than he did. If they told the Algarvians what the firstman had done, the redheads would do something to Waddo. While they were about it, they were liable to do something to Garivald, too.
Thinking thus, Garivald hid the crystal,
