Another night and day of hammering produced only a little progress, and only a couple of lodgements on the high ground Mezentio’s men were defending. Had everything gone according to plan, Rathar’s behemoths would have been lumbering toward Trapani by then. But the Marshal of Unkerlant wasn’t the only one who’d made plans for this moment, and those of the Algarvians looked to be working a little better than his.
“How long can this go on?” Vatran complained that evening.
“I don’t know,” Rathar answered. “I still think we’re all right, though. We have made them fall back some, and we’ve still got reinforcements pouring in from the west. When they use up what they’ve mustered against us, it’s gone, and gone for good.”
But even he had trouble staying detached and optimistic when his men gained hardly any more ground on the third day of the attack than they had on the second. And that evening, Vatran wasn’t the one doing the complaining. A crystallomancer came up to Rathar and said, “Sir, King Swemmel would speak to you at once.”
Rathar had more than expected such a call. If anything, he was a little surprised the king had waited this long. “I’m coming,” he said. Just for a moment, he imagined ordering the crystallomancer to tell Swemmel he couldn’t come, that he was too busy. But no one had any business being too busy to talk to the King of Unkerlant.
Swemmel’s image stared out of the crystal at Rathar. Not for the first time, the marshal thought his sovereign looked like an Algarvian. He had a long, pale face with a straight nose, though his hair and eyes were dark like a proper Unkerlanter’s. Those eyes often had a febrile glow to them, and they positively blazed now. “We are not pleased, Marshal, not pleased at all,” Swemmel said without preamble. “We had hoped and believed the news from the front would be better than what we have heard.”
“I’d hoped so myself, your Majesty,” Rathar replied. “For now, the Algarvians are fighting harder than I thought they could. But when springs come to the icebound rivers in the south, the ice does melt each year, and the water does flow down to the Narrow Sea. As the ice does, the Algarvians’ lines will break up. The thaw is slow, but it will come.”
“Very pretty,” Swemmel said. “We did not know we had a poet commanding our armies. We want to be sure we do have a soldier commanding them.”
Stiffly, Rathar said, “Your Majesty, the redheads thought I was doing well enough to make it worth their while to try to murder me. If you think someone else can do better, give me a stick and send me to the front line. I will fight for you in whatever way suits you best.”
“We want Mezentio, Marshal,” the king said. “Give us Mezentio, as you gave us Raniero. By the time Mezentio dies, he will have spent long and long envying his cousin.”
Swemmel had boiled Raniero alive after his soldiers recaptured most of the Duchy of Grelz. Rathar didn’t know what he could do to Mezentio that was worse, but his sovereign had had a year and a half to think about it. “I don’t know if I can give you Mezentio, your Majesty,” he said. “He will have somewhat to say about that himself, very likely. But I can give you Trapani, and I will.”
“You should have done it already,” Swemmel said peevishly.
“The day will come, your Majesty,” Rathar promised. “And I think it will come soon. The Algarvians have lost ground here, and they can’t afford to lose much more. This is the last obstacle in front of us. We are beating it down.”
“Enemies everywhere,” King Swemmel muttered. Rathar didn’t think that was aimed at him. Had it been, Swemmel would have sacked him, or worse. The king gathered himself. “Break the Algarvians. Crush them beneath your heel- beneath our heel.” That was the royal we again, proud and imperious.
“Your Majesty, it will be a pleasure,” Rathar said. “And we will do it. It’s only a matter of time.” He hadn’t finished before the crystal flared and Swemmel’s image vanished. He’d told the king what he wanted to hear. Now he had to make it good. He hadn’t lied. He didn’t think it would take long.
Garivald had hated the Algarvians even before they overran his home village. But ever since he’d faced the redheads as an irregular-and especially since King Swemmel’s impressers hauled him into the army and he’d fought Mezentio’s men here in the north-he’d developed a sincere if grudging respect for them as soldiers. However outnumbered they were, they always fought cleverly, they always fought hard, and they always made Unkerlant pay more than it should have for every inch of land it took.
Always-until now. A couple of redheaded soldiers came out of a house with hands high over their heads and with fearful expressions on their faces. Garivald had been fearful, too, as in any fight. They might have killed him. He knew that all too well. But they’d given up instead. More and more now, Algarvians were throwing down their sticks and throwing up their hands. They knew, or some of them knew, they were beaten.
With a gesture from the business end of his stick, Garivald sent these redheads off to captivity. He didn’t even bother rifling their belt pouches for whatever silver they carried. It was as if he were saying, You fellows can go on. I’ll catch some of your pals pretty soon and frisk them instead.
Lieutenant Andelot called, “Well, Fariulf, they really are starting to go to pieces now. Even a few weeks ago, those whoresons would have made us pay the price of prying them out of there.”
A few weeks before, the Unkerlanter army, or the part of it with which Garivald was most intimately concerned, had been falling back from Bonorva in the face of a fierce Algarvian counterattack. Mezentio’s men couldn’t sustain it, though. And, having used up so many men and behemoths, they hadn’t been able to hold their ground against the Unkerlanters afterwards.
“I think you’re right, sir,” Garivald answered. By now, he took his false name as much for granted as his real one. He pointed toward the southeast, the direction in which his regiment had been driving. “What’s the name of the next town ahead?”
“I have to look.” Andelot unfolded a map, then checked himself. “No. Here, Sergeant. You come see for yourself. If you’ve got your letters, you may as well use them.”
“All right.” Garivald trotted over to the company commander. “Whereabouts are we now?” Andelot showed him with a grimy-nailed finger. “And we’re going this way, right?” Garivald asked. The young lieutenant nodded. Frowning in concentration, Garivald studied the map. “Then we’re headed toward. . Torgavi?” He wondered if he’d correctly pronounced the foreign name.
By the way Andelot beamed, he had. “That’s good, Fariulf. Anybody would think you’d been reading for years.” The lieutenant pointed to the blue line meandering past Torgavi. “And what’s the name of this river here?”
Garivald squinted at the map again: the river’s name was written in very small characters. “It’s the Albi, sir,” he said confidently; with a name that short, he was sure he hadn’t made a hash of it.
And he hadn’t. “Right again,” Andelot said. “You do so well here. Why didn’t you ever learn before?”
They’d been over this ground before. Shrugging broad shoulders, Garivald answered, “How could I have, sir? Our village had no school. Our firstman knew his letters, but I don’t think anybody else who lived there did. I don’t suppose any of the villages around ours were any different, either.”
Andelot nodded. “I’m sure you’re right, Sergeant. But things like that aren’t good for the kingdom. We’re less efficient than we ought to be. Just about all of these Algarvians can read and write. It makes them more flexible than we are, able to do more things. The same is true for the Kuusamans and Lagoans. They’re our allies now, but who knows how long that will last once Mezentio gets what’s coming to him? We need to start thinking about such things.”
Garivald shrugged again. The men from the great island in the distant east hardly seemed real to him. Of course, it hadn’t been so very long before that the Algarvians had hardly seemed real to him, either. He’d come to know them better than he’d ever imagined he would-and b
etter than he’d ever wanted to, too. Would the same thing happen with the men of Kuusamo and Lagoas? He hoped not. Once the fight ended, all he wanted to do was find his way back to Obilot. He’d lost one family in the war. He hoped for the chance to start another.
Up ahead, somewhere near Torgavi, a few eggs burst. Less than a minute later, several more came down, these a lot closer to Garivald and Andelot. Garivald grimaced. “Not all the buggers have quit,” he said.
“No, not yet,” Lieutenant Andelot agreed. “That’s why we’re here-to take care of the ones too stubborn or too stupid to know they’re licked.” He blew a shrill blast on his whistle, loud enough to make Garivald’s ears ring, and shouted, “Forward!”
“Forward!” Garivald echoed, and then, showing off what he’d learned, “Let’s clear these bastards out of Torgavi.”
All along the line, officers’ whistles squealed. Officers and underofficers yelled, “Forward!” And forward the Unkerlanters went, trotting toward Torgavi across wheatfields and through olive groves. Garivald wondered why anyone wanted to cultivate olives. He didn’t think much of the fruit, and the oil had a nasty flavor. He doubted olives would grow down in the Duchy of Grelz, and didn’t miss them a bit.
Unkerlanter behemoths advanced with the footsoldiers, using their egg-tossers and heavy sticks to smash up the strongpoints the redheads were defending. Garivald took that cooperation for granted. Men who’d been in the army longer didn’t. By what they said, the Algarvians had always been able to bring it off. King Swemmel’s men had had to learn how, and a lot of the lessons had proved painful and expensive.
Dragons pounded Torgavi’s defenders, too. Again, some of the Algarvians began coming out into the open and surrendering. But some of them kept fighting, too. I don’t want to die now, Garivald thought as he flopped down near a house on the outskirts of Torgavi. Why don’t they all just give up, curse them? That would make things easier on them and easier on me, too.
With a rumbling roar, a bridge across the Albi tumbled into the river. Mezentio’s men must have wrecked it with eggs. Sure enough, some of them kept fighting as if the war still hung in the balance. Fools, Garivald thought. Enough.
A column of behemoths lumbered into Torgavi. Garivald waved as many men as he could forward; the behemoths protected footsoldiers, but the reverse also held true. That too was cooperation. Some Algarvian diehards in a house near the outskirts of the town blazed at the behemoths. The behemoth crews lobbed three or four eggs at the house. At such short range, the house crumbled as if made of pasteboard. No more blazes came from it.
“That’s the way!” Garivald shouted. One of the crewmen on the closest behemoth waved to him. He waved back. That other soldier undoubtedly wanted to make it through the war and then go home, too.
After the Unkerlanters dealt with the diehards, the rest of the redheads in Torgavi decided they’d had enough. White flags and banners appeared in windows all over town. Kilted soldiers came out of the few strongholds they still held. They might have feared going into captivity, but they feared dying more. With brusque gestures, Garivald and the other Unkerlanters sent the captives to the rear.
Somewhere not far away, a woman started screaming. Garivald looked around for Lieutenant Andelot. When he caught the company commander’s eye, Andelot just shrugged. Garivald nodded. The Algarvians had outraged plenty of women in Unkerlant; he’d seen that for himself in Zossen. Rough justice said his countrymen could pay them back in the same coin. The woman’s screams went on. A moment later, more screams started, these rather shriller.
“Come on,” Andelot called to the men within earshot. “Let’s get down to the river and see if we can find a way to cross. Powers below eat the Algarvians for dropping the bridge in the water.”
“Powers below eat the Algarvians.” Garivald needed no qualifiers for that. Now Andelot was the one who nodded.
What remained of the bridge over the Albi were a couple of stone piers in the river that had supported it and a lot of twisted ironwork. On the far side of the stream, perhaps a hundred yards away, a couple of behemoths and a squad of footsoldiers approached the riverbank. Garivald started to dive for cover.
“Wait,” Andelot said. The one word held such quiet excitement, it froze Garivald where he stood. Andelot went on, “Do you know, Fariulf, I don’t think those are Algarvians at all.”
“Who else would they be, sir?” Garivald shaded his eyes with the palm of his hand to see better. He didn’t think the soldiers on the far bank wore kilts. They weren’t blazing at his comrades and him. They were looking and pointing in much the same way as the Unkerlanters were. One of them trained a shiny brass spyglass on Garivald and the other soldiers here. Garivald could see the fellow jump when he got a good look. “Whoever he is, he just figured out we aren’t redheads.”
The fellow with the spyglass set it on the ground. Cupping his hands in front of his mouth, he shouted, “Unkerlant?”
“Aye, we’re from Unkerlant,” Lieutenant Andelot shouted back. “Who are you?”
Garivald couldn’t make out all of the answer, but one word was very clear: “Kuusamo.” Awe prickled through him. His countrymen and those fellows on the other bank of the Albi had fought their way across half of Derlavai to meet here.
That same realization went through the rest of Swemmel’s soldiers, too. “By the powers above,” someone said softly. “We’ve cut Algarve in half,” somebody else added. Most of the men began to cheer. A couple began to weep. On the other bank, the Kuusamans were cheering, too.
“We’ve got to get across,” Andelot said. He peered up and down the river.
So did Garivald. “There’s a rowboat!” he exclaimed at the same time as Andelot started for it. Garivald hurried after his company commander. If I ever have grandchildren, I can tell them about this, he thought. Another soldier had the same idea. Garivald tapped the three bronze triangles that showed he was a sergeant. The other man bared his teeth in a disappointed grimace, but fell back.
Garivald was clumsy with the oars. He didn’t care, and Andelot didn’t complain. They would have paddled with their sticks had the boat not held oars.
On the other bank, the Kuusamans greeted them with open arms. They gave the Unkerlanters smoked salmon and wine. Garivald had something stronger than wine in his water bottle. He gladly shared it. The swarthy little slant-eyed men smacked their lips and clapped him on the back.
None of them spoke Unkerlanter, and neither Garivald nor Andelot knew any of their tongue. A Kuusaman tried another language. “That’s classical Kaunian,” Andelot said. “I know of it, but I don’t speak it.” He had some Algarvian, and did his best with that. A couple of the Kuusamans proved to know some of the enemy’s speech, too.
“What do they say, sir?” Garivald asked around a mouthful of salmon. The stuff tasted amazingly good.
“They say it won’t be long now,” Andelot answered. Garivald nodded vehemently, to show how much he hoped they were right.
As he had for weeks now, Ealstan peered longingly toward Gromheort. The Unkerlanter army, of which he was a small but unwilling part, hadn’t pushed the attack against his home town so hard as it might have, seeming content to let time and hunger do some of their work for them. The redheads in there are going hungry, he thought. That’s fine, but my family is going hungry, too.
He wondered if he had any family left alive. All he could do was hope. Before long I’ll find out. People said the Unkerlanter army down in the south had finally launched its great attack on Trapani. He didn’t know whether that was true or just one more rumor. He suspected it held some truth, though, because the fight around Gromheort was heating up again, too.
Dragons dropped eggs on the city and swooped down to rooftop height to flame any enemy soldiers they could catch away from cover. Egg-tossers punished Gromheort still more. Behemoths came forward, assembling almost contemptuously outside the city to let the Algarvians know what would be heading their way.
An Unkerlanter office
r went into Gromheort under flag of truce to demand surrender one last time. The Algarvians sent him back. He happened to walk past Ealstan’s regiment shaking his head. Somebody called to him, “We’ll have to squash the whoresons, eh?”
“That’s right,” the envoy answered. Ealstan followed Unkerlanter fairly well these days. The officer added, “We can do it, too.” Maybe he expected the soldiers to burst into cheers. If he did, he was disappointed. They’d seen too much fighting to be eager for more.
Before dawn the next morning, more dragons swooped down on Ealstan’s poor, beleaguered city. Egg-tossers pummeled Gromheort anew. He grimaced at the chaos and destruction ahead. How could anyone, Algarvian soldier or Forthwegian civilian, have survived the pummeling the Unkerlanters had given the place?
As soon as the sunrise painted the sky with pink, whistles shrilled all around Gromheort. Officers and sergeants shouted, “Forward!” Clutching his stick, doing his best not to be afraid and not to let himself worry, forward Ealstan went.
Watching behemoths going forward, too, was reassuring. For one thing, they fought vastly better than individual footsoldiers could. For another, they drew blazes from the enemy, who knew how well they fought at least as well as Ealstan did. If the redheads were blazing at behemoths, they weren’t blazing at him.
And redheads blazing there were. Regardless of whether Ealstan thought the Unkerlanter pounding should have killed them all, it hadn’t. They plainly intended to make the attackers pay for every inch of the journey into Gromheort.
Perhaps fifty yards off to Ealstan’s left, a behemoth’s massive foot came down on an egg buried in the ground. The egg burst. An instant later, so did all the smaller eggs the behemoth was carrying. The blast of sorcerous energy knocked Ealstan off his feet and left him half stunned, his ears ringing. When he looked over there, he saw no sign the behemoth or its crew had ever existed except for a crater gouged in the earth.
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