Turtledove, Harry - Darkness 04 - Rulers Of The Darkness

by Rulers of the Darkness (lit)

  "That would be so even if we did move it," Addanz answered. Rathar gnawed his lip some more. The archmage went on, "And we have masked it as best we can, both with magecraft and with such tricks as soldiers use." He didn't sound patronizing; he seemed to make a point of not sounding patronizing. That only made Rathar feel twice as patronized.

  He shook his head. Addanz had won this round. "All right. I'll never complain about anyone who wants to get close to the enemy. I just don't want the enemy getting too close to you too fast."

  "I rely on your valiant men and officers to keep such a calamity from happening," Addanz said. I'll blame them to Swemmel if it does. He didn't say that, but he might have.

  "Your mages know exactly what they have to do?" Rathar persisted.

  "Aye." Addanz nodded. A year and a half before, the notion had so rocked him, he couldn't even think of it for himself. How Swemmel had laughed! Nothing rocked Swemmel, not if it meant holding on to his throne. And now Addanz took it for granted, too. The war against Algarve had coarsened him, as it had everybody else. That was what war did.

  Distant thunder rumbled, off to the south. But there should have been no thunder, not on a fine, warm early summer day. Eggs. Thousands of eggs, bursting at once. Rathar looked to Vatran. Vatran was already looking to him. "It's begun," the marshal said. Vatran nodded. Rathar went on, "Now we'll know. One way or the other, we'll know."

  "What?" Addanz needed a moment to recognize the sound. When the archmage did, he blanched a little. "How shall I go back to the center now?"

  "Carefully," Rathar answered, and threw back his head and laughed. Addanz looked most offended. Rathar hardly cared. At last, after longer than he'd expected, the waiting was over.

  ***

  Even Sergeant Werferth, who had been a soldier for a long time, first in Forthweg's army and then in Plegmund's Brigade, was impressed. "Look at 'em, boys, he said. "Just look at 'em. You ever see so fornicating many behemoths in one place in all your born days?"

  Sirdoc wrinkled his nose. "Smell 'em, boys," he said, doing his best to imitate his sergeant. "Just smell 'em. You ever smell so fornicating many behemoths in one place in all your born days?"

  Everybody in the squad laughed-even Ceorl, who was about as eager to fight Sidroc as the Unkerlanters; even Werferth, who seldom took kindly to being lampooned. They all had to laugh. Sidroc's joke held altogether too much truth. Algarve had indeed assembled a great host of behemoths to hurl against the western flank of the Unkerlanter salient around Durrwangen. And those behemoths did indeed stink. They'd been moving up toward the front for days now, and the air was thick with the rotten-grass reek of their droppings.

  It was also thick with flies, which buzzed around the behemoths and their droppings, and which weren't too proud to visit the waiting men and their latrines as well. Like the other soldiers in Plegmund's Brigade, like the Algarvians with them, Sidroc slapped all the time.

  Like everybody else, he also did his best to be careful where he put his feet. He knew all about stepping in horse turds. Who didn't, by smelly experience? But a horse turd dirtied the bottom of a shoe, and maybe a bit of the upper. Behemoths were a lot bigger than horses. Their droppings were in proportion. Those who didn't notice them in the weeds and rank grassland and unattended fields had enormous reason to regret it.

  An Algarvian senior lieutenant named Ercole had replaced the late Captain Zerbino as company commander. Sidroc wondered how Ercole had got to be senior to anybody; he doubted the redhead had as many years as his own eighteen. Ercole's mustache, far from the splendid waxed spikes his countrymen adored, was hardly

  more than copper fuzz. But he sounded calm and confident as he said, "Once the eggs stop falling, we go in alongside the behemoths. We protect them, they protect us. We all go forward together. The cry is, 'Mezentio and victory!' "

  He waited expectantly. "Mezentio and victory!" shouted the Forthwegians of Plegmund's Brigade. The Brigade might have been named after their own great king, but it served Algarve's.

  Were any Unkerlanters close enough to hear? Sidroc didn't suppose it mattered. They'd soon hear a lot of that cry. With the help of the powers above, it would be the last cry a lot of them heard.

  Algarvian egg-tossers began to fling then. Sidroc whooped at the great roar of bursts to the east of him. And it went on and on, seemingly without end. "There won't be anything left alive by the time they're through!" He had to shout even to hear himself through the din.

  "Oh, yes, there will." Sergeant Werferth was shouting, too. His shout held grim certainty: "There always is, curse it."

  As if to prove him right on the spot, Unkerlanter egg-tossers began hurling sorcerous energy back at the Algarvians. There didn't seem to be so many of them, and they flung fewer eggs, but they hadn't gone away, either. Sidroc wished they would have. He crouched in a hole scraped in the ground and hoped for the best. Not a lot of Unkerlanter eggs were fall ing close by. He approved of that, and hoped it would go on.

  Algarvian dragons flew by overhead at what would have been treetop height had any trees grown close by. They had eggs slung under their bellies to add to those the tossers were flinging. Not long after they struck Swemmel's men, fewer eggs flew back toward the Algarvian army of which Plegmund's Brigade was a part.

  The pounding from the Algarvian side kept on. "They've put everything they've got into this, haven't they?" Sidroc shouted.

  This time, Ceorl answered him: "Aye, they have. Including us."

  Sidroc grunted. He wished Ceorl wouldn't have put it quite like that. He also wished he could have found some way to disagree with the ruffian.

  At last, after what seemed like forever but was probably a couple of hours, the Algarvian egg-tossers stopped as abruptly as they'd begun. All up and down the line, officers' whistles shrilled. They didn't seem so much of a much, not to Sidroc's battered ears. But they were enough to send men and behemoths trotting forward against the foe.

  Lieutenant Ercole blew his whistle as lustily as anyone else. "Forward!" he shouted. "Mezentio and victory!"

  "Mezentio and victory!" Sidroc shouted as he scrambled out of his hole. He kept shouting it as he went forward, too. So did the rest of the Forthwegians in Plegmund's Brigade. They wore tunics. They had dark hair and proud hooked noses. Even though they wore beards, they didn't want excitable Algarvians-and what other kind were there? -taking them for Unkerlanters and blazing them by mistake.

  If anything or anyone had stayed alive in the tormented landscape ahead, Sidroc had trouble understanding how. After a good part of a year in action, he reckoned himself a connoisseur of ruined terrain, and this churned, smoking, cratered ground was as bad as any he'd ever seen.

  And then, off to his right, a new crater opened. A flash of sorcerous energy and a brief shriek marked the passage of an Algarvian soldier. Someone shouted an altogether unnecessary warning: "They've buried eggs in the ground!"

  All at once, Sidroc wanted to tippytoe forward. Then, a little farther away, an egg burst under a behemoth. That one blast of sorcerous energy touched off all the eggs the behemoth was carrying. Its crew had no chance. Sidroc wondered if any pieces would come down, or if the men were altogether destroyed.

  And he couldn't tippytoe despite the buried eggs, another of which blew up a soldier not too far from him. However many eggs the tossers had rained down on the ground ahead, they hadn't got rid of all the Unkerlanters. Sidroc hadn't really expected they would, but he had hoped. No such luck. Swemmel's men popped up out of holes and started blazing at the soldiers struggling through the belt of buried eggs. Going fast meant you might miss whatever signs there were on the ground to warn you an egg lay concealed beneath it. Going slow meant the Unkerlanters had a better chance to blaze you.

  Shouting, "Mezentio and victory!" at the top of his lungs, Sidroc dashed ahead. He might get through to unblighted ground. If he stayed where he was, he would get blazed. Lieutenant Ercole was shouting and waving all his men on, so Sidroc supposed he'd done the righ
t thing.

  When the crews of the Algarvian behemoths saw targets, they lobbed eggs at them or blazed at them with heavy sticks. Fewer beams tore at the advancing soldiers. Men ahead of Sidroc were battling Unkerlanters in their holes. He saw a man in a rock-gray tunic show his head and shoulders as he looked for a target. That was enough-too much, in fact. Sidroc blazed the Unkerlanter down.

  "Keep moving!" Ercole screamed. "You've got to keep moving. This is how we beat them-with speed and movement!" By all the news sheets Sidroc had read back in Gromheort before joining Plegmund's Brigade, by all the training he'd had, by all the fighting he'd seen, the company commander was right.

  But it wouldn't be easy, not here it wouldn't. The Unkerlanters had known they were coming-had probably known for a long time. They'd fortified this ground as best they could. It didn't look like much, but obstacles-tree trunks, ditches, mud-made the going slower than it would have been otherwise. Those obstacles also channeled the advancing men and behemoths in certain directions-right into more waiting Unkerlanters.

  As soon as the Algarvians and the men of Plegmund's Brigade got in among the first belt of Unkerlanter defenders, others farther back began blazing at them from long range. More obstacles slowed their efforts to get at the Unkerlanters who now revealed themselves. Men on both sides fell as if winnowed. Algarvian behemoths went down, too, here and there, though few Unkerlanter behemoths were yet in the fight.

  At last, around noon, Mezentio's men cleared that first stubborn belt of defenders. Ercole was almost beside himself. "We aren't keeping up with the plan!" he cried. "We're falling behind!"

  "Sir, we've done everything we could," Sergeant Werferth said. "We're still here. We're still moving."

  "Not fast enough." Ercole stuck his whistle in his mouth and blew a long, piercing blast. "Onward!"

  For a furlong or so, the going was easy. Sidroc's spirits began to rise. Then he heard the sharp, flat roar of an egg bursting under another Algarvian soldier.

  He realized why no Unkerlanters infested this stretch of ground-they'd sown it with more eggs to slow up his advancing comrades.

  What had been woods ahead had taken a demon of a beating, but still offered some shelter: enough that the Unkerlanter behemoths emerging from it were an unwelcome surprise. "Powers above!" Sidroc exclaimed in dismay. "Look at how many of the whoresons there are!"

  The behemoths started tossing eggs at Plegmund's Brigade and at the Algarvian footsoldiers to either side of the Forthwegians. Sidroc jumped into a hole in the ground. He had plenty from which to choose. So did Ceorl, but he jumped down in with Sidroc anyhow. Sidroc wondered whether he wouldn't be safer facing the Unkerlanter behemoths.

  "Hard work today," Ceorl remarked, as if he'd been hauling sacks of grain or chopping wood.

  "Aye," Sidroc agreed. An egg burst close by, shaking the ground and showering them with clods of dirt.

  "But we'll do it," Ceorl went on. "We go east, the redheads on the other side come west, and we meet in the middle. Be a whole great fornicating kettle full of dead Unkerlanters by the time we're through, too." He sounded as if he enjoyed the idea.

  "A lot of us dead, too," Sidroc said. "A lot of us dead already."

  Ceorl shrugged. "Can't make an omelette without breaking eggs." He brought out the cliché as if he were the first one ever to use it. Maybe he thought he was.

  An officer's whistle squealed. "Onward!" That was Lieutenant Ercole, who'd had the sense to jump in a hole. Now, sooner than he might have been, he was out again. The Algarvians hadn't given Plegmund's Brigade any officers who weren't recklessly brave-that Sidroc had to admit. "Come on!" Ercole shouted again. "We won't win anything if we stay here all day!"

  Sidroc surged up out of the hole. The Algarvian behemoths had taken care of a lot of their Unkerlanter counterparts, but they'd had holes torn in their ranks, too. A dragon fell from the sky and thrashed out its death throes a couple of hundred yards from Sidroc. It was painted rock-gray. A moment later, an Algarvian dragon smashed down even closer.

  By the time night came, they'd almost cleared that second belt of defenders.

  ***

  "We've got to be efficient." Lieutenant Recared sounded serious and earnest. "The Algarvians will throw everything they've got at us. We've got to make every blaze count, and to use the positions we've spent so long building up." He turned to Leudast. "Anything you want to add to that, Sergeant?"

  Leudast looked at the men in his company. They knew the Algarvians would be coming any day, maybe any minute. They were serious, even somber, but, if they were afraid, they didn't let it show. Leudast knew he was afraid, and did his best not to let that show.

  He thought Recared wanted him to say something, so he did: "Just don't do anything stupid, boys. This'll be a hard enough fight even if we're smart."

  "That's right." Recared nodded vigorously. "Being smart is being efficient. The sergeant said the same thing I did, only with different words."

  I guess I did, Leudast thought, a little surprised. That hadn't occurred to him. He peered east, toward the rising sun. If the Algarvians attacked now, they'd be silhouetted against the bright sky every time they came over a rise. He judged they would wait till the sun was well up before moving. He was in no great hurry to risk getting killed or maimed. They could wait forever, for all of him.

  Light built, grew. Leudast studied the landscape. He couldn't see most of the defensive positions the Unkerlanters had built. If he couldn't see them, that meant Mezentio's men wouldn't be able to, either. He hoped that was what it meant, anyhow.

  The sun climbed in the sky. The day grew warm, even hot. Leudast slapped at bugs. There weren't so many as there had been right after the snow melted, when the endless swampy puddles in the mud bred hordes of mosquitoes and gnats. But they hadn't all gone away. They wouldn't have wanted to, not with so many latrines and animals to keep them happy.

  Leudast was pissing in a slit trench when the Algarvians started flinging eggs. He almost jumped right into that latrine trench; combat had taught him how important taking cover was, and diving into the closest available hole was almost as automatic as breathing. But he hadn't wanted to breathe by the noisome, nearly full trench, and he didn 't jump into it, either. Not quite. He ran back toward the hole in the ground from which he'd come.

  Such sensibilities almost cost him his neck. An egg burst not far behind him just as he started sliding into his hole. It flung him in instead, flung him hard enough to make him wonder if he'd cracked his ribs. Only when he'd sucked in a couple of breaths without having knives stab did he decide he hadn't.

  He'd been through a lot fighting the Algarvians. He'd helped hold them out of Cottbus. He'd been wounded down in Sulingen. He'd thought he knew everything the redheads could do. Now he discovered he'd been wrong. In all that time, with everything he'd seen, he'd never had to endure such a concentrated rain of eggs as they threw at him, threw at all the Unkerlanters.

  The first thing he did was dig himself deeper. He wondered if he were digging his own grave, but the shallow scrape he'd had before didn't seem nearly enough. He flung dirt out with his short-handled spade, wishing all the while that he had broad, clawed hands like a mole's so he wouldn't need a tool. Sometimes he thought bursts all around him threw as much dirt back into the hole as he was throwing out.

  After the hole was deep enough, he lay down at full length in it, his face pressed into the rich, dark loam. He needed a while to realize he was screaming; the din of those bursting eggs was so continuous, he could hardly even hear himself. Realizing what he was doing didn't make him stop. He'd known fear. He'd known terror. This went past those and out the other side. It was so immense, so irresistible, it carried him along as a wave might carry a small boat.

  And, after a little while, it washed him ashore. If he was beyond fear, beyond terror, what else was there to do but go on? He got up onto his knees-he wasn't ready to expose his body to blasts of sorcerous energy and to flying metal shards of egg casing-and lo
oked at the sky instead of the dirt.

  He had plenty to watch up there. Dragons wheeled and dueled and flamed, some painted in Unkerlant's concealing rock-gray, others wearing Algarve's gaudy colors. It was a dance in the air, as intricate and lovely as a springtime figure dance in the square of the peasant village where he'd grown up.

  But this dance was deadly, too. An Algarvian dragon flamed one from his kingdom, flamed its wing and flank. Across who could say how much air, he heard the great furious bellow of agony the Unkerlanter dragon let out. Surely the dragonflier screamed, too, but his voice was lost, lost. The dragon frantically beat the air with its one good wing. That only made it twist in the other direction. And then it twisted no more, but fell, writhing. It smashed to the unyielding ground not far in front of Leudast.

  As abruptly as they'd started, the Algarvians stopped tossing eggs. Leudast knew what that meant. He snatched up his stick and did peer out from his hole. "They're coming!" he shouted. His own voice sounded strange in his ears because of the pounding they'd taken.