Through the Darkness d-3

by Harry Turtledove

  A flight of dragons painted in bright Algarvian colors swooped down on the ironworks, dropping eggs as they dove. The eggs burst on and around the building. Some more of the roof came down. Trasone didn’t get excited about that, as he might have a couple of weeks earlier. He knew all too well that the Unkerlanters, those whom the bursts didn’t slay, went right on working in the ruins.

  And they kept fighting back, too. They had a lot of heavy sticks crowded into the parts of Sulingen they still held-beams stabbed into the sky after the dragons. Those beams might have done more harm than they did if the smoke that rose from countless fires hadn’t spread and weakened them. As things were, one of the dragons staggered in the air. It didn’t plummet, as Trasone had seen so many plummet, but it couldn’t go on with its flightmates, either. It did manage to come to earth in Algarvian-held territory. Trasone hoped the dragonflier wasn’t badly hurt. He had to be better off than Algarvian dragon-fliers who fell into Unkerlanter hands.

  Then Trasone stopped worrying about dragonfliers. The Unkerlanters had dragons, too, flying north from farms on the far side of the Wolter. They seldom fought the Algarvians in the air; most of them lacked the skill for that. But, as Mezentio’s men pounded their positions, they returned the disfavor.

  Eggs fell around Trasone. He rolled himself into a ball in the trench, as if he were a pillbug. But he didn’t even have an armored exterior to present to the world. All he could do was make himself small and hope. A shard of something bit into his little finger. He yelped and pulled out a sliver of glass-Folvo’s improvised periscope was no more.

  Trasone braced himself for the shouts of “Urra!” that were bound to follow the rock-gray dragons. He’d long since lost track of how many Unkerlanter counterattacks he and his friends had beaten back. Too many of his friends were wounded or dead because of them, though-he knew that.

  Beneath him, the ground shook slightly. He cursed and braced himself again, this time to withstand sorcery-whether from his own side or the Unkerlanters he couldn’t yet guess. But it wasn’t the onset of magecraft: instead, it was four or five Algarvian behemoths lumbering up to the battle line. “Huzzah!” Trasone shouted. He waved his hat-though not very high. He didn’t want to get blazed while celebrating, after all.

  “Here they come!” That was Sergeant Panfilo’s shout. Trasone couldn’t see his sergeant, which was all to the good. He hoped the Unkerlanters couldn’t see Panfilo, either.

  He peered up out of his own hole, peered up and whooped with glee. “They waited too stinking long this time,” he said, and settled down and started to blaze.

  He would never have made a general. The officers set over him had decided he wouldn’t even make a good corporal. He’d long since stopped worrying about not getting promoted. All he wanted to do was stay alive and make sure a good many Unkerlanters didn’t. But he was no fool. When it came to measuring a narrow little battlefield, he could do the job as well as any nobleman with fancy rank badges.

  Here came Swemmel’s soldiers, picking their way through the rubble toward the trenches the Algarvians held. They were shouting “Urra!”-and their king’s name, too. As always, they were game. Trasone wondered how many of them were drunk. He knew their officers served up raw spirits before sending the men to the attack. Assailing a position like the one he and his comrades held, he would have wanted to be drunk, too.

  An Unkerlanter fell, and another. Trasone had no idea whether his beam was the one that had knocked either of them over. A lot of Algarvian troopers had popped up from their shelters at the same time as he had from his.

  And then another Unkerlanter went down, this one with a hole in him you could have thrown a dog through. No footsoldier’s weapon could have made such a wound, only a heavy stick mounted on the back of a behemoth. That stick found one foe after another. When the Unkerlanters dove for cover, it blazed right through the boards and sheet metal some of them chose.

  The rest of the behemoths carried egg-tossers. They rained death down on the Unkerknters: not death at random, but death precisely aimed, death that pursued them, death that found them. The charge faltered. When his comrades lay broken and bloodied all around him, not even a bellyful of raw spirits would take a man forward any more.

  Along with the behemoths, fresh troops in Algarvian uniform came up on the right of Trasone’s regiment. For a moment, he didn’t recognize the patch each newcomer wore on his left sleeve: a sea-green shield with five gold crowns. Then he did, and his jaw dropped. “Powers above!” he exclaimed. “They’re fornicating Sibs!”

  Folvo nodded. “Didn’t you hear about that?” he said. “They’ve recruited a couple of regiments’ worth of men on the five islands. They’re supposed to be tough enough to suit anybody.”

  “What’s the world coming to?” Trasone shook his head. “Yaninans for flank guards, now these Sibs right alongside us-and I did hear tell we’ve got Forthwegians doing something or other, too. What’s next? Are we going to start setting up regiments of Kaunians?”

  “I’d sooner there were Kaunians here than me,” Folvo said.

  “Oh, aye, but all the same…” Trasone turned and called to one of the Sibians: “Hey, pal, you speak my language?”

  “At least as well as you do,” the Sibian answered in cold, precise Algarvian. “Probably better.”

  “Well, you can go futter yourself, too,” Trasone muttered, but not so loud as to make the newcomer-who was, after all, supposed to be on his side- notice.

  Officers’ whistles screeched and wailed, both among the Sibians and in his own regiment. At the same time, the Algarvian behemoths lumbered forward, the heavy stick blazing Unkerlanter after Unkerlanter, the egg-tossers making the enemy burrow for his life instead of fighting back. “Let’s go!” Major Spinello shouted. “One more good push and we’re at the Wolter. That’s where we want to be. That’s where we have to be, if we’ve ever going to go any farther. Mezentio!” As usual, the battalion commander was the first man out of his whole, the first man rushing toward the enemy.

  “Mezentio!” Trasone shouted. Bent at the waist, he scuttled forward, too, dashing from one pile of rubble to the next, blazing any Unkerlanters he ran past in case they were playing dead and would rise up to blaze his countrymen if they got the chance. He knew the men of his regiment would go forward, too. They always had. He trusted them with his life, and they trusted him with theirs.

  He wasn’t so sure about the Sibians. They were foreigners, after all, so what could you expect from them? The Algarvians had licked them, too, which automatically made them suspect in his eyes. They shouted something in their own language instead of “Mezentio!” or “Algarve!” That would get some of them blazed by their allies if they weren’t careful or lucky. But everything Folvo had said about them looked to be true. They went forward just as fast and just as hard as the Algarvians on their left. And their companies and battalions, unlike Trasone’s, were at full strength, which gave their attack extra weight.

  “There it is!” Trasone said. He didn’t need Folvo’s contraption to see the Wolter up ahead now. There was the river, and there were the piers sticking out into it at which boats coming from the far side unloaded Unkerlanter reinforcements. If he and his comrades-or even the Sibians fighting alongside them-could take those piers and hold them or burn them, how would Swemmel’s soldiers bring new men up into Sulingen?

  But it wouldn’t be easy. He didn’t take long to discover that. Advancing over the ground on which the Unkerlanters had attacked was easy. Past that ground, though, they had their own field works, starting in the mean little workmen’s hovels in front of the great ironworks and extending back line after line, all the way to the river. Unkerlanter soldiers popped up out of cellars to blaze at the Algarvians, then disappeared again. Even more than Mezentio’s men, they lived like moles, tunneling from one hut to the next and only showing themselves above ground to blaze or to charge.

  Major Spinello’s whistle squealed. “Come on, boys! Reach out and grab it,
the way you’d grab a pretty Kaunian girl’s tits!”

  Again, the Algarvians and Sibians went forward in a desperate push toward the riverbank. But the Unkerlanters were desperate, too. They funneled more and more men into the fight. For all Trasone knew, they had tunnels leading all the way back to the ironworks and the granary, strongpoints Mezentio’s men had yet to clear. The Algarvian advance stalled.

  Trasone glanced toward the sky. Seen through shifting plumes of smoke, the sun had slid a long way down toward the western horizon. It was setting earlier now than it had not so long before. The start of fall couldn’t be more than a few days away. And after fall came winter. The thought of another winter in southern Unkerlant chilled Trasone to the marrow.

  “We’d better win now, then,” he muttered, and crawled a few feet farther forward, into the crater a bursting egg had left.

  A beam started a fire in the pile of rubble he’d just vacated-the beam from a heavy stick. It had come from up ahead. Somewhere up there, an Unkerlanter behemoth prowled. One of the Algarvian beasts had already gone down, blazed in the vulnerable belly by an Unkerlanter who came out of a hole below it and then ducked down again.

  Dragons dove flaming. They were Unkerlanter beasts. Screams rang out among the Sibians. Trasone didn’t blame them. No troops had an easy time facing dragons. The sun set. Night fell. The Algarvians huddled in the ruins of Sulingen, only a couple of furlongs, maybe only one, from the Wolter. “We’ll get ‘em tomorrow!” Spinello called cheerfully.

  In his gullyside headquarters, Marshal Rathar turned to General Vatran. “Can we hold them?” the marshal asked anxiously.

  “We have to hold them,” Vatran answered. “If we don’t hold the buggers, we don’t hold Sulingen. And if we don’t hold Sulingen …”

  “We get boiled alive, and so does the kingdom,” Rathar said. Vatran’s grunt might have been laughter. The only trouble was, Rathar wasn’t joking. The Algarvians had been advancing through Sulingen street, by street-slowly, but with grim persistence. Unkerlant had few streets left to lose.

  Eggs burst not far from the mouth of the cavern in which Rathar and Vatran made their headquarters. The Unkerlanters moved soldiers up from the river through the gullies piercing Sulingen, and the Algarvians knew it. Their egg-tossers and dragons kept pounding away at those gullies. They took a horrible toll, but it would have been worse had Swemmel’s men gone forward any other way.

  “If we lose those piers, we’re ruined,” Vatran said. “What have we got there to keep the redheads from reaching the river?”

  “One behemoth and a couple of battalions, or whatever’s left of them by now,” Vatran told him. The general scowled at the map. “There are a lot more Algarvians in that part of town right now.”

  “Our men have to hold anyway,” Rathar said. “We’ve got three good brigades waiting on the southern bank of the Wolter. They can’t get over the river till nightfall. If they try, the Algarvian dragons will have a field day. So we have to hang on to that landing area no matter what. Who’s in command there?”

  “Powers above only know,” Vatran answered. “Whoever’s seniormost and hasn’t taken a beam through the brisket.”

  “Aye, no doubt you’re right about that,” Rathar said. He turned his head and raised his voice to a shout: “Crystallomancer!”

  “How may I serve you, lord Marshal?” asked one of the military mages in charge of keeping the cave in touch with the battle raging all through Sulingen.

  Rather pointed to the map. “Get me the senior officer in this sector. I don’t know who he’ll be. I only hope his crystallomancer’s still breathing.”

  The mage murmured over his glassy sphere. Moments later, an image formed in it: that of another crystallomancer, huddled in the ruins of what had been an ironworker’s hut. When Rathar’s crystallomancer told him what the marshal required, he nodded and said, “Wait.” He crawled off. A moment later, he came back with a soldier even grimier than he was. “Here is Major Melot.”

  “Major, you are to hold the Algarvians away from the piers until nightfall, come what may,” Rathar said.

  “Lord Marshal, you don’t know what you’re asking,” Melot said. “I’m down to about my last hundred men here. My only behemoth has a broken leg. And it looks like every Algarvian in the world is out there.”

  “Hold,” Rathar repeated, his voice deadly cold. “Blaze the behemoth and use the carcass for a strongpoint. Rally your men around it. If you don’t hold off the redheads till the sun goes down, I’ll have you blazed first thing tomorrow morning. Have you got that?”

  “Aye, lord Marshal.” Melot shrugged. “We’ll do what we can, sir. That’s all we can do.” Raising one shaggy eyebrow, he stared at Rathar. “The way things are, I’m not much afraid of you blazing me. The Algarvians’ll take care of it for you, never fear.”

  A moment later, the crystal flared light for a moment. The images of the embattled major and his mage faded. Rathar’s crystallomancer said, “They’ve broken the link, sir.”

  “That fellow is insubordinate,” Vatran grumbled.

  “He’s on the spot,” Rathar said mildly. “He’ll do what I told him to do, or he’ll die trying.” He made a fist and pounded it down on his knee. “I don’t mind if he dies trying, but he has to do it. If he doesn’t, they cut Sulingen in half. How long till sunset?”

  He couldn’t tell by looking: shadow already shrouded the far wall of the gully. Vatran spoke in reassuring tones: “Only a couple of more hours, lord Marshal. Let’s get some food in you first. What do you say to that?”

  “All right.” Rathar realized how empty he felt. He would have made sure his army’s behemoths were well fed, but didn’t bother giving himself the same care.

  Vatran nodded, as if to say he knew as much. “Hey, Ysolt!” he shouted. “Bring the marshal a big bowl of whatever’s in the pot, and a mug of spirits to go with it.”

  “Ill do that,” the cook said, and she did. She handed Rathar a bowl of buckwheat groats and onions, with bits of meat floating in it.

  He dug in, pausing now and again to swig from the mug of spirits. “Good,” he said with his mouth full, and then pointed at the bowl. “What’s the meat?”

  “Unicorn, lord Marshal,” Ysolt answered. She was nearing middle age, wide in the shoulder and wider in the hips, her face always red from the cook-fires she tended. “One of the ones the Algarvians killed out in the gully. Seemed a stinking shame to let the flesh go to waste.”

  “Unicorn,” Rathar echoed. He wasn’t sure he’d ever eaten it before. He’d eaten horse, but this was less gluey on the tongue, more flavorful. “Not bad. Can you fill up the bowl again?”

  “Why not?” The cook took it from him and went back to the fire, her big haunches rolling as she walked. Vatran eyed her with appreciation. Rathar didn’t think the general was sleeping with her, but he wasn’t sure. The past few days, nobody in this hole in the ground had been sleeping much.

  After a while, darkness did fall. Vatran said, “Well, we haven’t heard that the piers are lost, anyhow.”

  “Would we?” Rathar asked. “If everyone over there is dead, nobody’d be left to tell us everything had fallen apart.” He raised his voice once more. “Crystallomancer! Get me Major Melot again.”

  The mage cast his spell. After what seemed a very long time, someone’s face appeared in the crystal. Whose? Too dark to tell. “Report your situation,” Rathar said, wondering if he was taking with an Algarvian who’d overrun the Unkerlanter defenders.

  “We’re still here, sir.” The fellow sounded like an Unkerlanter, anyhow.

  “Where’s Major Melot?” Rathar rapped out.

  “Dead,” the Unkerlanter soldier answered. “There’s maybe fifty of us left-but Mezentio’s men have settled down for the night. We gave ‘em all they wanted and then some. Plenty of those whoresons down for good, too, you bet.”

  Maybe he didn’t know to whom he was speaking. Maybe he was too worn to care. Rathar remembered fights like th
at, back in the Twinkings War. If he had to, he’d grab a stick and go into battle himself once more-that was how vital he reckoned holding Sulingen to be. “Good enough, soldier,” he said gruffly, and nodded to the crystallomancer, who dissolved the link. Rathar turned to Vatran. “What do you think?”

  “If we don’t send those brigades across, lord Marshal, we may as well pack it in,” Vatran answered. “Even if the redheads have a trap waiting to close on ‘em, we’ve got to try it. Without ‘em, the Algarvians have it all their own way in Sulingen. You’ll do what you’ll do-you’re the marshal. But that’s how it looks to me.”

  “And to me,” Rathar said. He tapped the crystallomancer on the shoulder. “Get me Major General Canel, on the southern bank of the Wolter.” A couple of minutes later, Canel’s image appeared in the crystal. The Unkerlanter officer had a bloody bandage wrapped loosely around his head. “Redheads come calling?” Rathar asked.

  “It’s only a scratch,” Canel answered. “They didn’t hit more than a couple of boats, either, lord Marshal. I can move if you want me to.”

  “Stout fellow,” Rathar said. “I want you to, all right. First thing you do is, you throw the Algarvians back from the pier. Then reinforce the ironworks and the granary, and then the hill east of the ironworks.”

  Canel nodded, which made the bandage flop down over his left eye. “Never a dull moment in these parts, is there? Cursed Algarvians.”

  “If you wanted a nice, easy job, you should have chosen something quiet and safe-tiger-taming, maybe,” Rathar said. Canel grinned at him. Lantern light shone from the major general’s teeth. Rathar went on, “Hit ‘em hard.” He didn’t think Canel’s brigades would turn the tide by themselves. He expected them to get chewed up, in fact. Too many of Mezentio’s men were in Sulingen for anything else to be likely. But Canel led good troops. They’d do some chewing of their own, too.

  Rathar could tell just when the Unkerlanters crossed from the southern bank of the Wolter into Sulingen. The din of battle, which had quieted after sunset, picked up again. Vatran chuckled. “We’ll shake the Algarvians out of their feather beds, by the powers above.”