He spoke Algarvian, of course; the Forthwegians in the Brigade were expected to understand him rather than the other way round. But, no matter what language he used, none of his troopers was eager to go forward against the heavily defended city. Even Sergeant Werferth, who loved fighting for its own sake, said, "Why am I not surprised they chose us?"
Captain Zerbino fixed him with a malignant stare. "And what, pray tell, do you mean by this, Sergeant?" he asked in his haughtiest manner.
Werferth knew better than to be openly insubordinate. But, from behind the Algarvian officer, somebody-Sidroc thought it was Ceorl, but he wasn't sure- spoke up: "He means we aren't redheads, that's what. So who gives a fornicating futter what happens to us?"
Zerbino whirled. He drew himself up to his full height; being an Algarvian, he had several inches on most of the men in his company. After a crisp, sardonic bow, he answered, "I am a redhead, and I assure that, when the order to attack is given, I shall be at the fore. Where I go, will you dare to follow?"
Nobody had anything to say to that. Sidroc wished he could have found something, but his wits were empty, too. Like all the officers assigned to Plegmund's Brigade, Zerbino had shown himself to be recklessly brave. Where he went, the company would follow. And if that was straight into the meat grinder... then it was, and nobody could do anything about it.
Sidroc slapped his canteen. It held nothing but water. He sighed, wishing for spirits. Somebody would have some, but would anybody be willing to give him any? All he could do was try to find out.
He ended up paying some silver for a short knock. "I can't spare any more," said the soldier who let him have it. "I'm going to drink the rest myself before we go at 'em tomorrow."
Sidroc wished he could get drunk for the assault, too. He wrapped himself in his blanket and tried to sleep. Bursting eggs didn't bother him; he had their measure. But thinking about what he'd go through come morning... He tried not to think about it, which only made things worse.
Eventually, he must have slept, for Sergeant Werferth shook him awake. "Come on," Werferth said. "It's just about time."
Egg-tossers and dragons were pounding the forwardmost Unkerlanter positions. "More will come when we go forward," Captain Zerbino promised. "We are not breaking into Durrwangen alone, after all; Algarvian brigades will be moving forward, too."
Which is why they'll do something more to help us along, Sidroc thought. Before he could say it aloud-not that it needed saying, not when most of the men in the company were doubtless thinking the same thing-Zerbino raised his long, tubular brass whistle to his lips and blew a blast that pierced the din of battle like a needle piercing thin, shabby cloth. And, as Zerbino had promised, he was the first one out of the muddy holes in which the men of Plegmund's Brigade sheltered, the first one moving toward the enemy.
The ground ahead was also muddy, muddy and churned to chaos by the bursts of endless eggs. It sucked, leechlike, at Sidroc's boots, trying to pull them off his feet. The mud stank, too, stank with the od or of all the men and animals already killed in it. There would be more before the day was through. Sidroc hoped he wouldn't be part of the more.
A barrage of eggs flew through the air, arcing up from the south toward the soldiers of Plegmund's Brigade and the Algarvians who advanced on either side of them. Try as they would, the Algarvians' egg-tossers and dragons hadn't wrecked the Unkerlanters' ability to hit back.
Sidroc would have been angrier had he expected more. As things were, he threw himself down into the noisome mud and hoped no egg burst right on top of him.
Captain Zerbino kept blowing his whistle for all he was worth. That pulled Sidroc up and got him squelching toward Durrwangen again.
An egg burst just in front of Zerbino. It flung him high in the air. Limp and broken, he fell to the soggy ground. No more whistles, Sidroc thought. He trudged on anyhow. Someone, he was all too certain, would blaze him if he turned back.
The ground shook under his feet. Up ahead, some of the rubble in which the Unkerlanters sheltered slid into ruin. Only when Sidroc saw purple flames shooting up from the ground among those ruins did he fully understand. Then he whooped and cheered. "Aye, kill those Kaunians!" he yelled. "They don't deserve anything better, by the powers above!" Had his superiors asked it of him, he would cheerfully have set about killing blonds himself.
As things were, he rushed toward the defenses battered by Algarvian sorcery- rushed as best he could with great globs of mud clinging to his boots and more sticking on at every stride. Even the strongest sorcery didn't take out all the defenders. Here and there amidst the wreckage ahead, beams winked to life. A Forthwegian not far from Sidroc dropped his stick, threw up his hands, and fell face forward into the muck.
But Plegmund's Brigade and the Algarvians moving forward with it pressed on toward Durrwangen. With the city battered by murderous mage-craft, Sidroc didn't see how they could fail to break in.
And then the ground shook beneath him, hard enough to knock him off his feet. As he sprawled in the mire, a great crack opened ahead. It sucked down a couple of Forthwegian troopers and slammed shut again, smashing them before they could even scream.
Sidroc felt like screaming himself. He did scream-he screamed curses at the Algarvian wizards safe behind the line: "Them, you crackbrained whoreson arseholes! Them, not us!"
"Crackbrain yourself!" Ceorl yelled. "That's not the redheads. That's Swemmel's mages killing peasants and hitting back."
"Oh." Sidroc felt like a fool, not for the first time since joining Plegmund's Brigade. That didn't even count the times he felt like a fool for joining Plegmund's Brigade. He looked to his right and left gain. The Algarvian troops to either side of the Brigade had been hit at least as hard as his Forthwegian countrymen. "How are we supposed to go forward, then?"
Ceorl didn't answer. Swarms of Unkerlanter dragons painted rock-gray flew up from the south, dropping eggs on the attackers and flaming those incautious enough to bunch together. The Algarvians' magecraft hadn't reached far enough to do anything to King Swemmel's dragon farms.
And then the ground shook and opened and closed again, almost under Sidroc's feet. More purple flames shot up from it. One incinerated an Algarvian behemoth and its crew not far away. King Swemmel didn't seem to care how many of his own folk his mages killed, so long as they halted their foes. And they'd done that. Sidroc was no general and never would be, but he could tell at a glance that the Algarvians hadn't the least chance of taking Durrwangen till after the mud of southern Unkerlant turned hard again.
***
Spring was coming to the Valmieran countryside. The first shoots of new green grass were springing up from the ground. Leaf buds sprouted on apple and plum
and cherry trees. Early birds were returning from their winter homes in northern Jelgava and Algarve and on the tropical continent of Siaulia.
Pretty soon, Skarnu thought, it'll be time to plant the year's barley and wheat and turn the cattle and sheep out to pasture instead of feeding them on hay and silage. He laughed at himself. Before the war, he'd never thought about where food came from or how it was produced. For all he knew or cared, it might have appeared by sorcery in grocers' or butchers' shops.
He knew better now. He knew enough to make himself more than a little useful on a farm out in the country. He'd helped one farmer who hid him, and now he was doing the same for another. This fellow was as surprised as the other had been. He said, "I heard tell you were a city man. You talk like a city man, that's a fact. But you know what to do with a pitchfork, and that's a fact, too."
"I know what to do with a pitchfork," Skarnu agreed, and let it go at that. The less people knew about him, the better.
Again, he wasn't too far from Ventspils, and wanted to get farther away. The Algarvians had come too close to nabbing him-to nabbing the whole underground organization-there. Somebody'd been made to talk somewhere, or trusted someone he shouldn't have-the risks irregulars inevitably took when fighting an occupying army more powe
rful than they.
When fighting an occupying army and a whole great swarm of traitors, Skarnu thought sourly. As always, the first traitor whose face came to mind was his sister, Krasta. Right behind her, though, were all the Valmieran constables who served the Algarvians as steadily as they'd ever served King Gainibu. If they hadn't, he didn't see how the redheads could have held on to his kingdom and held it down.
But the fellow who came to the farm a couple of days later was neither an Algarvian nor a constable in the redheads' pay. The painter who headed up the irregulars in Ventspils found Skarnu weeding the vegetable plot by the farmhouse. Amusement in his voice, he said, "Hello, Pavilosta. Anybody would think you'd been doing that all your born days."
"Hello yourself." Skarnu got to his feet and swiped at the mud on the knees of his trousers. "Good to see Mezentio's men didn't manage to grab you, either."
"I worry more about our own," the painter said, echoing Skarnu's earlier thought. "But I came out here to talk about you, not me. What are we going to do with you, anyhow?"
"I don't know." Skarnu pointed to the plants he'd been weeding. "The scallions and leeks look to be doing nicely."
"Heh," the underground leader said: not a laugh, but the appearance of one. "You're too good a man with your hands to waste them on produce. You need to go someplace where you can give the redheads a hard time. I wish we could send you into Priekule. You'd do good things, the way you know the city."
"Trouble is, the city knows me, too," Skarnu said. "I wouldn't last long before somebody fingered me to the Algarvians." He thought of Krasta again, but she wasn't the only one-far from it. How many Valmieran nobles in the capital were in bed with the occupiers, literally or metaphorically? Too many. He sighed. "I wish I could go back to the farm by Pavilosta. I was doing fine there."
"Not safe." The painter spoke with great authority. He rubbed his chin as he thought. "I know of a couple of fellows you might want to meet. They've been away for a while-you could show 'em how things have changed."
"Why me? What in blazes do I know about anything?" Skarnu didn't try to hide his bitterness. "I couldn't even guess where the redheads were shipping those poor cursed Kaunians from Forthweg. They must have aimed their magic at Kuusamo, but it wouldn't have gone at Yliharma, or we would have heard about it." He stared down at his hands. They had mud on them, too, but in his eyes it looked like blood.
"No, not at Yliharma," the man from Ventspils agreed. "They did something nasty with the life energy they stole, something that helped them and hurt us. I don't know any more about it than that. I don't think anybody in Valmiera knows much more about it than that."
He'd succeeded in making Skarnu curious. He'd also let him know his curiosity wouldn't be satisfied. Scowling, Skarnu said, "Who are these two fellows, and how will you bring them here without bringing Mezentio's men, too?"
"I won't," the painter said. "You'll go to them. You know that little village you visited once before? Tomorrow, about noon, a wagon will stop here. The man driving it will say, 'The Column of Victory.' You answer, 'Will rise again.' He'll take you where you're going."
"What if he doesn't say that?" Skarnu asked.
"Run like blazes," the other irregular leader answered. As if he'd said everything he'd come to say, he turned on his heel and ambled back toward Ventspils.
Sure enough, the wagon turned up the next day. Skarnu warily approached. The driver said what he was supposed to say. Skarnu gave the countersign. The driver nodded. Skarnu climbed aboard. The driver flicked the reins and clucked to the horses.
They got to the village a day and a half later. By then, Skarnu thought his fundament was turning to stone. The driver seemed undisturbed. He even chuckled at the old man's hobble with which Skarnu made for the house that served as the underground's nerve center.
The woman he'd met there at his last visit let him in. She gave him bread and beer, which were both welcome, and let him sit down on a soft chair, which at the moment seemed almost as fine as falling into Merkela's arms. He let out a long sigh of pleasure before asking, "I'm to meet someone?"
"So you are," she said. "Let me go upstairs and get them. I'll be back directly." Skarnu was perfectly content for her to take as much time as she wanted. He could have sat in that chair f orever without minding in the least. But she came back, far too soon to suit him fully, with a couple of men dressed in the shabby homespun of farmers-dressed much as he was, as a matter of fact.
He had to heave himself to his feet to greet them. His back groaned when he rose. But then, to his astonishment, he discovered he recognized both newcomers. "Amatu! Lauzdonu! I thought you were dead."
"No such luck," said Lauzdonu, the taller of the two. He grinned and pumped Skarnu's hand.
"We were both flying dragons down in the south when the collapse came," Amatu added.
"I knew that," Skarnu said. "That's why I thought you'd bought a plot."
"Came close a few times," Lauzdonu said in the offhand way of a man who had indeed had death brush his sleeve a time or two. "The Algarvians had too many dragons down there-nothing like a fair fight."
"They had too much of everything all over the place," Skarnu said bitterly.
"That they did," Amatu agreed. "But when the surrender order came, neither one of us could stomach it. We climbed on our dragons and flew across the Strait of Valmiera to Lagoas, and we've been in Setubal ever since." His lip curled. "They're Algarvic over there, too, but at least they're on our side."
Skarnu remembered that Amatu had always been a snob. Lauzdonu, who had somewhat more charity in him, put in, "Aye, they kept fighting even when things looked blackest."
"Well, so did you two," Skarnu said. "And so did I." And if more Valmieran nobles had, we'd have given Mezentio's men a harder time, he thought. But most of them, and a lot of the kingdom's commoners, had made their accommodations. Inevitably, his sister sprang to mind yet again. To force the thought of Krasta down, he asked, "And what are you doing here on the right side of the Strait again?"
Their faces, which had been smiling and excited, closed down again. Skarnu knew what that meant: they had orders they couldn't talk about. Lauzdonu tried to make light of it, saying, "How's that pretty sister of yours, my lord Marquis?"
"My lord Count, she's sleeping with a redhead." Skarnu's voice went flat and harsh.
Lauzdonu and Amatu both exclaimed then, the one in surprise, the other in outrage. Lauzdonu strode forward to lay a sympathetic hand on Skarnu's shoulder. Skarnu wanted to shake it off, but made himself endure it. Amatu said, "Something ought to happen to her, and to her lover, too."
"I wouldn't mind," Skarnu said. "I wouldn't mind at all." He eyed the two nobles he'd known in Priekule. "You may have to talk to me sooner or later. They brought me here to go with you, wherever it is you're going."
"Better you than that leviathan-rider who fetched us from Lagoas," Amatu said. "He told us he was a Sib, but he could have passed for an Algarvian any day."
"It'll be good to have you along," Lauzdonu said. "After all, it's been going on three years since we left. We don't know who's alive, who's dead... who chose the wrong bloody side." He patted Skarnu again.
"Where are you going?" Skarnu asked. "I won't ask what you'll do when you get there, but I do need to know that."
"Zarasai," Lauzdonu answered. Amatu's lip curled again. To him, any town that wasn't the capital really wasn't worth visiting. Lauzdonu seemed to have a clearer understanding of the way things worked: "If we go to Priekule, somebody will betray us to the Algarvians."
"That's why I haven't gone back," Skarnu agreed. He nodded to the two of them. Priekule, then Setubal-they'd been spoiled, and they didn't even know it. "You'll find the rest of the countryside isn't so bad. And" -he turned serious- "you'll find you do better if you don't let on that you've got noble blood."
"Commoners getting out of hand, are they?" Amatu said. "Well, we'll tend to that once we've beaten the Algarvians, by the powers above."
&nb
sp; "I'm surprised you didn't take your dragons up to Jelgava," Skarnu murmured. "You'd have felt right at home there." Amatu stared at him in annoyed incomprehension. Lauzdonu snickered and then tried to pretend he hadn't. Jelgavan nobles had long since given themselves a name for reaction. That Amatu couldn't hear how he sounded warned that he would indeed have fit right in.
Lauzdonu said, "Skarnu knows how things work these days, better than we do."
"I suppose so," Amatu spoke grudgingly.
"Zarasai." Skarnu spoke in musing tones. "Well, among other things, that's a good place to monitor the ley lines coming down toward the coast from the north and west."
Turtledove, Harry - Darkness 04 - Rulers Of The Darkness Page 25
