Rulers of the Darkness d-4

by Harry Turtledove

  The behemoths turned to use the track Captain Turpino had suggested. Spinello blew his whistle. "Follow me!" he shouted- a cry that made Algarvian footsoldiers respect and obey the men who led them. Then he added another cry that was more likely to keep the men of Battle Group Spinello alive: pointing to the behemoths, he yelled, "Follow them!"

  For half a mile or so, everything went very well- so well, in fact, that Spinello started to get suspicious. His eyes went back and forth, back and forth. He kept expecting hordes of drunken Unkerlanters to leap from trenches on either flank and rush toward his men with shouts of, "Urra!"

  But the trouble, when it came, came from the front. The Unkerlanters crouched in their holes and waited till the wedges of behemoths were almost upon them. Some of those holes were so hard to spot, Spinello guessed they had sorcery covering them. When Swemmel's men did pop up and start blazing, even they weren't so rash- or so drunk- as to charge. Instead, they ducked down again and waited for the Algarvian onslaught.

  They didn't have long to wait. The behemoths tossed eggs into their trenches. "Forward!" Spinello shouted again. "Loose order!" The men he led probably could have done the job without commands. They'd done it before, some of them countless times. Having behemoths along to help was, if anything, an unusual luxury. They advanced by rushes, some soldiers blazing while others moved ahead. The Unkerlanters had an unpleasant choice: keep their heads down till they were slaughtered in their holes or come out and try to get away.

  More often than not, most of them would have died in place. Here, rather to Spinello's surprise, most of them fled. Maybe it's the behemoths, he thought. If we can be twitchy about theirs, no reason they shouldn't be twitchy about ours.

  Whatever the reason, running did the Unkerlanters little good. More eggs from the Algarvian behemoths burst among them, flinging them this way and that like broken toys. When the beam from a heavy stick caught a man in the back, he didn't just go down. He also went up- in flames.

  "Forward!" Spinello shouted. Every step took Battle Group Spinello- and the behemoths with it- closer to the high ground at the heart of the salient. If the Algarvians could get up there in numbers, if they could move quickly once they did, this great, bloody grapple might yet turn out to have been worthwhile.

  But one of the Unkerlanter officers must have had a crystal, and must have used it before he fell. The Algarvians hadn't gone far past the Unkerlanter trench line before eggs began dropping among them. Spinello curled himself into a ball behind a boulder. The big gray rock shielded him from the energies of eggs bursting in front of it. It would do him no good if eggs burst in back of it. He preferred not to dwell on that.

  Somewhere not far away, an Unkerlanter was down and shrieking for his mother in a high, shrill voice. His cries went on and on, then cut off abruptly. Somebody, Spinello supposed, had put him out of his agony. He hoped someone would do the same for him if the need arose. Even more, he hoped it never would. He aimed to die in bed, preferably with company.

  Despite the eggs falling among its men and behemoths, Battle Group Spinello fought its way forward. Spinello noticed the ground rising more sharply under his feet than it had before. "We're getting where we need to go," he called, pointing ahead. "If we can get up there in strength, if we can drive the Unkerlanters back once we do it, nothing we've been through will have mattered. We'll rip Swemmel's boys a new arsehole, and then we'll go on and win this war. Mezentio and victory!"

  "Mezentio and victory!" the soldiers shouted. They were veterans. They knew he was telling them the truth. As long as they could keep going forward, they would finally battle their way past the last Unkerlanter defensive line. Then it would be fighting in open country, and Swemmel's soldiers had never been able to match them in that. Destroy the Durrwangen bulge, destroy the Unkerlanter armies here, and who could say what might happen after that?

  The Unkerlanters might have drawn the same conclusion. If they had, they liked it less than Spinello had. More eggs fell on the advancing Algarvians, forcing footsoldiers to go to earth and separating them from the behemoths, which made life more difficult for all of Mezentio's men. Algarvian egg-tossers and Algarvian dragons went hunting the enemy's tossers.

  But Algarvian dragons didn't have everything their own way, not here. Dragons painted rock-gray swooped down on Battle Group Spinello. Unkerlanter dragons had contested the sky west of here ever since this battle began. Some of them tried to flame behemoths. Others dropped still more eggs on the Algarvian footsoldiers.

  Spinello was running toward the crater one egg had blown in the ground when another burst close by. All at once, he wasn't running anymore, but flying through the air. He landed in a thornbush, which tore at him but probably saved him from the worse damage he would have got slamming into the ground.

  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.<
br />
  "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 of hundred yards short.

  And then he whooped like a schoolboy unexpectedly dismissed early. "Here they come!" he shouted. "Gurmun's on time after all."

  Now that their crewmen had seen the Algarvian enemy, the behemoths from Gurmun's reserve- several hundred of them, a whole army's worth- broke into a furious gallop, to get into the fight quick as they could. They cut in behind the leading Algarvian behemoths, moving so fast that the redheads didn't have time to deploy against them.

  "Look at that!" Hardly aware he was doing it, Rathar pounded Vatran on the back. "Will you look at that? There hasn't been a charge like that this whole bloody war. Some of them are even using their horns to fight with."

  If the field had seemed too small with only the Algarvian behemoths moving forward on it, it suddenly got more than twice as crowded. Rathar knew a moment's pity for the footsoldiers on that field. Neither side's behemoths were likely to. Their crews tossed eggs and blazed at one another from ridiculously short ranges. As Rathar had said, some gored others right through their armor, as if they were unicorns back in the days before mages learned how to make sticks.

  Grass fires sprang up in a dozen places at once, making it harder for Rathar to tell what was going on even with his spyglass. But he could see that the Algarvians, as was their way, didn't stay surprised long. They fought back furiously against Gurmun's behemoths. Wedges of Algarvian beasts would pop out from behind orchards and copses, toss eggs and blaze at the foe, and then take cover again. Gurmun didn't need long to adopt the same tactics.

  Overhead, both sides' dragons battled to something close to a draw. The Algarvians sacrificed Kaunians. Addanz and the other Unkerlanter mages sacrificed their own luckless people to answer. The sorcerous duel, the duel of horrors, was also as near even as made no difference.

  That left it up to the behemoths. They surged back and forth over the plain as the sun crawled across the sky. If the redheads had enough beasts left after shattering Gurmun's reserve, their own attack might go on. But Rathar knew that part of their force of behemoths remained some miles to the southwest. It wouldn't get here while today's fight lasted. Gurmun had the advantage of numbers, the Algarvians, in spite of everything, the advantage of skill. With two heavy weights flung into the pans of the scale, they jounced up and down, now one higher, now the other.

  An Unkerlanter behemoth crew blazed down an Algarvian beast. The other Algarvian behemoths in that part of the field attacked the Unkerlanters, badly wounding their behemoth. The driver, the only crewman left on it, charged the Algarvians. He blazed down one and gored another in the flank before his own behemoth finally toppled.

  By then, the sun had sunk low in the southwest. Seen through thick s
moke, it was red as blood. Rathar wondered where the day had gone. He turned to Vatran. "We haven't broken them, but we've held them," he said. "They aren't going to come pouring through in a great tide, the way we feared they would."

  Wearily, Vatran nodded. "No doubt you're right, lord Marshal. They can't hit us another blow like this one- they've left too many men and beasts dead on the field."

  "Aye." Marshal Rathar preferred not to dwell on how many Unkerlanter men and beasts lay dead on the fields of the Durrwangen bulge. Whatever the cost, though, he and the soldiers of his kingdom had stopped the Algarvians here. Which meant… He called for the crystallomancer. When the man came up to him, he said, "Connect me to the general commanding our army east and south of the Algarvian forces on the eastern flank of the salient." And when that officer's image appeared in the crystal, Rathar spoke four words: "Let the counterattack begin."

  ***

  Like the rest of the Algarvian constables in Gromheort, Bembo avidly followed news of the big battles down in the south of Unkerlant. News sheets from across the nearby border with Algarve were brought into town daily, so the constables didn't have to go to the trouble of learning to read Forthwegian.

  For the first several days of the fight near Durrwangen, everything seemed to go well. The news sheets reported victories on the ground and in the air, and their maps showed King Mezentio's armies advancing. The news sheets in Forthwegian must have said the same thing, for the locals, who didn't love their Algarvian occupiers, strode through Gromheort with long faces.

  And then, little by little, the news sheets stopped talking about the battle. They didn't proclaim the great, crushing triumph all the Algarvians had looked for. "I want to know what's going on," Constable Almonio complained one morning while he and his comrades were queued up for breakfast.

  Bembo stood right behind him. Sergeant Pesaro stood behind Bembo. Turning to Pesaro, Bembo said, "Touching to see such innocence in this age of the world, isn't it?"