Through the Darkness d-3

by Harry Turtledove

  “Nothing but a few million Unkerlanters who hate everything about us and want to have fun with us before they finally let us die,” Trasone said.

  “We can lick the Unkerlanters,” Spinello said. Trasone envied him his blithe confidence, but couldn’t imagine where he got it. Spinello went on, “If we couldn’t lick the buggers, what would we be doing here? We’ve done nothing but lick ‘em for the last seven hundred miles or so, and we can keep right on doing it a few miles more.”

  The Algarvians hadn’t done nothing but lick the Unkerlanters; they’d taken some lickings of their own, as Trasone knew and Spinello should have remembered. But the battalion commander had a point: without a lot of victories, the Algarvian banner wouldn’t be flying here so far from home.

  “And one thing more,” Spinello added: “Be ready to counterattack, boys. You’ll know when.”

  Before Trasone could ask any questions about that, the Unkerlanters started tossing eggs at his position again. “Urra! Urra! Urra!” The fierce shouts they used to nerve themselves for battle rang out. Sometimes they nerved themselves with raw spirits, too. “Here they come!” someone yelled in Algarvian.

  Again, Algarvian egg-tossers caught the Unkerlanters in the open. Again, they worked a gruesome slaughter on Swemmel’s men. Again, the Unkerlanters, or those of them who lived, rolled forward in spite of that and in spite of the sharp, accurate blazing of the Algarvians awaiting them.

  Then the ground shuddered under Trasone. It shuddered more under the Unkerlanters. Fissures opened in what had been solid ground; what had been holes closed up, often trapping men inside them. Flames spurted up from the surface of the ground, violet flames like nothing Trasone had seen till the autumn before. Burned Unkerlanters shrieked. As the dragons had been, the magic was more than King Swemmel’s men could bear. They turned and fled.

  Spinello’s whistle shrilled once more. “Come on, boys!” he yelled. “They’re on the run now. You don’t want to make our mages spend all those Kaunians for nothing, do you? Come on!” Scrappy as a terrier, he was, as usual, the first to leap from cover and rush after the retreating foe.

  Trasone followed. He didn’t care whether Kaunians were being massacred to some good purpose or for no reason at all. He had no use for diem, and wouldn’t have been sorry to see them all dead. But seeing the Unkerlanters in front of him dead struck him as a lot more important at the moment.

  He and his comrades were nearing the Unkerlanters’ trenches when the ground shook beneath them again. This time, Spinello cried out in fury- Algarvian mages weren’t the ones working magic here. Trasone cried out, too-in fear. He didn’t run, not because he didn’t want to but because he didn’t think it would do any good. He lay down behind a riven wall and hoped no crevasse would gape wide beneath him.

  When the shaking finally ended, the battalion didn’t return to the attack with the same jauntiness. Trasone wondered how many of their own-they didn’t use Kaunians-the Unkerlanters had spent to gain a respite. However many it was, it had worked.

  Sidroc had seen war before, when the Algarvian army pummeled Gromheort from the air and then took it. He’d lost his mother when the redheads dropped an egg on his house. He knew he was lucky to be breathing himself.

  But then, after the Algarvians occupied eastern Forthweg, a routine of sorts had returned to life. And the Algarvians, as he’d seen, were strong, where his own people were weak and the cursed Kaunians even weaker. Fighting in Plegmund’s Brigade, Sidroc gathered strength for himself.

  When the Algarvians, including their alarming physical trainer, decided his regiment was ready to fight, the Forthwegians left the encampment in the southwest of their kingdom and went south and south again, sometimes by ley-line caravan, sometimes by shank’s mare, till they reached the Duchy of Grelz.

  Until he joined Plegmund’s Brigade, Sidroc had never been far from Gromheort. What he saw of southern Unkerlant didn’t impress him. Even the houses that hadn’t been wrecked in the fighting struck him as shabby. So did the Unkerlanters, especially the men. Their custom was to stay clean-shaven, but most of them wore a few days’ worth of stubble, giving them the look of derelicts. When they spoke, he could sometimes understand a word or two of their tongue, which was related to his own, but never a full sentence. That made them seem suspicious to him, too.

  His squad leader was a scarred veteran sergeant named Werferth, who’d fought in the Algarvian army during the Six Years’ War and for Forthweg in the early days of the Derlavaian War. Werferth seemed happy as long as he was fighting for someone, or perhaps against someone. For or against whom? As best Sidroc could tell, the sergeant didn’t care. He said, “You’d fornicating well better be suspicious of these cursed Unkerlanters. Turn your back and they’ll cut your balls off.”

  “They’ll be sorry if they try.” At eighteen, after weeks of hard training, Sidroc felt ready to take on the world.

  Werferth laughed in his face. Sidroc bristled-inside, where it didn’t show. He didn’t think he was afraid of any Unkerlanters, but he knew he feared the sergeant. Werferth said, “You’re liable to be sorry if they try, on account of they’re sneaky whoresons and you’re still wet behind the ears. Like I said, the trick of it is not to give the buggers the chance.”

  Sidroc nodded and did his best to look wise. Werferth laughed at him again, which made him grind his teeth. But that was all he did. After one more chuckle, Werferth went off to terrorize some other common soldier.

  For the first time, all of Plegmund’s Brigade assembled together just outside Herborn, the capital of Grelz. The regiments already down there were as full of cutthroats and men down on their luck as the one of which Sidroc was a part. But that didn’t matter when the Brigade drew itself up for King Raniero’s review.

  Algarvian officers and Forthwegian underofficers scurried among the men, making sure not a speck of dust lay on a tunic sleeve or a boot top, not a hair was out of place. To his dismay, Sidroc had discovered sergeants insisted on even more in the way of cleanliness and tidiness than mothers or aunts. He could give them what they wanted, but he resented the need.

  Drawn up to one side of Plegmund’s Brigade stood a regiment of Grelzer infantry in dark green tunics that looked to have been recently dyed. Like Sidroc and his comrades, they had Algarvian officers. They looked very serious and solemn about what they were doing. The couple of companies of Algar-vians on the other side of Plegmund’s Brigade looked anything but. They stood at attention and their faces were quiet, but mischief still gleamed in their eyes and blazed forth from every line of their bodies.

  A band marched out from Herborn blaring a tune that might have been the Grelzer national hymn-Sidroc presumed it was. Guarded by a squad of horsemen in dark green tunics, King Raniero rode a fine white unicorn. Three or four high-ranking Algarvian officers accompanied him. He was an Algarvian himself, of course, but wore a long tunic of the same color as his soldiers’, but of finer fabric and cut.

  He swung down from the unicorn with surprising grace and began the inspection. The Grelzer soldiers gave him a curious little half bow by way of a salute. He was half a head taller than most of them. Sidroc wondered what they thought of having a foreign sovereign. If they had any doubts, they would be wise to keep quiet about them.

  When Raniero came to Plegmund’s Brigade, he startled Sidroc by speaking good Forthwegian: “I thank you all for joining my Algarvian allies in helping to assure my kingdom’s safety.”

  “Huzzah!” the Brigade’s Algarvian officers shouted. “Huzzah!” the Forthwegian troopers echoed a moment later. The redheads swept off their hats and gave Raniero extravagant bows. Sidroc was cursed if he’d do any such thing. Like the rest of the ordinary soldiers, he stayed at stiff attention.

  “I know how brave you men are,” Raniero went on. “During the Six Years’ War, I commanded a regiment of Forthwegians, and they fought like lions.” Sidroc hadn’t done well in school, but he knew Algarve and Unkerlant had divided Forthweg between them like a co
uple of hungry men cutting up a slab of roast beef. Any Forthwegians Raniero commanded would have been fighting for Algarve-as Werferth had done-not for their own kingdom.

  And now that was so again. Sidroc shrugged. Nothing he could do about it. And he didn’t like Unkerlanters, not even a little. If fighting for Algarve was how he got to fight against King Swemmel, then it was, that was all.

  Raniero said, “Bandits and brigands still trouble my land. I know you will help put them down. For that, you will have not only my thanks but also the thanks of all the great and ancient Kingdom of Grelz.”

  Beside Sidroc, Sergeant Werferth snickered, just loud enough to let him hear. He understood what that snicker meant, more from dining-room talk between his father and Uncle Hestan than from anything he’d learned in school. Grelz hadn’t been a kingdom for three hundred years. The Algarvians had revived it not for the sake of the Grelzers but to complicate life for Swemmel of Unkerlant.

  How many Grelzers really thought of Raniero as their king? If the Algarvians had named one of their own King of Forthweg after King Penda fled, Sidroc wouldn’t have thought of him as his king. He’d always said pretty much what he thought, but saying that struck him as a bad idea.

  Raniero strolled through the ranks of Plegmund’s Brigade. He smelled of sandalwood, which almost made Sidroc crack a smile. But he’d learned that wasn’t a good idea, either. Then Raniero went over to the Algarvian companies. He had no compunction about joking with the redheads, nor they with him. Guffaws floated up to the sky. Sidroc tried to remember his Algarvian so he could find out what was funny, but couldn’t make out enough to tell.

  And then the ceremony was done. Raniero got back onto his unicorn and rode away. So did his Algarvian commanders and his Grelzer bodyguards. The regiment of Grelzers marched back toward Herborn, as did the Algarvian companies. That left Plegmund’s Brigade alone on the vast plain of southern Unkerlant.

  They set up camp as if in the middle of hostile company-which in fact they were, or why else would Raniero have wanted them? Sentry posts surrounded the encampment on all sides. Seeing them, Sidroc said, “Well, at least we’ll be able to rest easy tonight.”

  Sergeant Werferth snickered again, this time at him. “Oh, aye, if you want to wake up with your throat cut. You got to figure the Unkerlanters for sneaky whoresons. What happens if they slide past the sentries? They’re liable to, you know. How well can you see in the dark?”

  “I don’t know,” Sidroc answered. “I guess I’ll just have to be ready to get up and fight in a hurry if I have to.”

  That made Werferth nod and thump him on the back. “Aye, so you will. There-you see? You’re not as dumb as you look.”

  Worries about sleep turned out to be largely academic. As soon as the sun went down, mosquitoes came out by armies, swarms, hordes. The tents the Brigade had brought from Forthweg lacked the netting they needed to hold the mosquitoes at bay; Forthweg was a drier, hotter land, with fewer bugs.

  When Sidroc got up the next morning, he was yawning and irascible and covered with bites. So was Werferth, who looked no happier than he did. “And we aren’t the worst of it,” the sergeant added. “Cursed mosquitoes flew off with two men from another company. They raise ‘em the size of dragons around here.” Sleepy and grouchy, Sidroc believed him for a moment. Then he snorted and went off to stand in line for breakfast.

  The Brigade broke up into regiments and then into companies, and began prowling across the countryside looking for Unkerlanter irregulars. What they found were farmers doing their best to get a crop out of their land. Few of the farmers seemed very friendly, but few seemed actively hostile, either.

  Werferth hated all of them, for no better reason Sidroc could see than that they were there. “Some of ‘em are irregulars, sure as I stand here farting,” the veteran sergeant said. “And a lot of the ones who haven’t got the ballocks for that will tell the irregulars where we’ve been and where we’re going. Bugger the bunch of’em, is what I’ve got to say.”

  After a couple of days of marching, Sidroc’s company went into a forest that astonished him. Forthweg didn’t have woods like these, dark and brooding and wild, with the air chill and damp even in summertime under pines and beeches and firs and birches and larches and spruce. Sidroc kept looking around not for Unkerlanter irregulars but for bears or possibly trolls. He knew there were no such things as trolls, but that didn’t keep him from worrying about them, not in a place like this.

  Without warning, the trooper tramping along three men in front of him went down as if all his bones had turned to jelly. Sidroc hurried up to him. He had a neat hole in his left temple; the beam that killed him had blown off much of the right side of his skull. Blood soaked into the pine needles on the path.

  “By squads!” an Algarvian officer shouted. “Into the woods on either side. We won’t let the buggers get away with this.”

  Into the woods Sidroc went. He hoped somebody in his squad could find the way back to the path, because he soon lost track of it. He could hear himself and his comrades blundering along. He couldn’t hear anyone else-but at least one Unkerlanter irregular had been there somewhere, and probably more. They knew the woods, the whoresons. If he heard them at all, it would be because they were laughing their heads off.

  “Back!” The command came in Algarvian. It also told Sidroc where the path lay. Back he went. He didn’t care that he’d caught no irregulars. He just wanted to escape the woods alive.

  He did. A little village lay beyond the forest. Farmers and their wives looked up curiously at the bearded men in strange uniforms. Without a word, the men of Plegmund’s Brigade started blazing. They killed as many as they could catch, and left the village a smoking ruin behind them. Sidroc laughed. “Welcome to Grelz!” he said. “As long as we’re here, we may as well make ourselves at home.”

  “Another pack of murdering goons to worry about,” Munderic said, leaning against the trunk of a spruce. “That’s all Algarve’s brought to Grelz-foreign murdering goons.”

  “Aye,” Garivald said: one voice in a general rumble of agreement from the irregulars.

  Another fighter said, “These Forthwegian buggers are even nastier than the redheads, powers below eat ‘em.”

  “That’s bad, but it’s not so bad,” Garivald said. People turned to look at him, puzzlement on a good many faces. He tried to put it into words: “The more people who hate these buggers, the more who’ll come over to our side.”

  “Here’s hoping, anyway,” Munderic said. “But we’ve got to show folks we can stand up to the whoresons, hurt ‘em bad when we find the chance. Otherwise they’ll just be afraid, and do whatever the foreigners say.”

  “We blazed that one fellow just to give ‘em a hello, like,” somebody said, “and then they wrecked a village to pay it back. What’ll they do if we nail a proper lot of ‘em?”

  “See? They’ve already put you in fear,” Munderic said. “We’ll find a time to give ‘em a good boot in the arse, see what they do then. If we can prod ‘em into something everybody’s bound to hate, all the better.”

  “They must look like a pack of wild beasts, with all that hair on their faces people talk about,” Garivald said. He had a good deal of hair on his face, too; chances to scrape it off were few and far between. But he still thought of himself as clean-shaven, which the Forthwegians weren’t.

  “They act like a pack of wild beasts, that’s certain,” Munderic said. “Off what they’ve shown so far, they are worse than the Algarvians.”

  “A mean man will keep a meaner dog,” Garivald said, and then, musingly, tasting the words, “Sometimes you have to whack it with a log.” He made a face. That didn’t work. Around him, irregulars nudged one another and grinned. They knew the signs of a man with a song coming on.

  Munderic didn’t give Garivald any time to work on it now. He said, “We’re going to hit them. We’re going to teach them this is our countryside, and they can’t come along and tear things up whenever they get t
he urge.”

  Obilot stuck up a hand. When Munderic pointed to her, she added, “Besides, with these cursed Forthwegians beating on us here in Grelz, the redheads can send more of their own soldiers against our regular armies.”

  “That’s so.” Munderic grinned at her. “You make quite a little general there.” Most of the irregulars-most of the male irregulars, anyhow- grinned and chuckled, too. Obilot’s jaw set, though she didn’t say anything. Most of the men viewed the handful of women who’d joined them as something more than conveniences, but something a good deal less than full-fledged fighters.

  In a way, Garivald understood that. The only reason he’d gone easier on his wife back in Zossen than most Unkerlanter peasants did was that he had a wife of unusually forceful character. But all the women here fit that bill-and most of them had been through worse than any of the men. He sent Obilot a sympathetic glance. She didn’t seem to notice. He shrugged. She probably thought he was leering at her, the way the men often did.

  Someone said, “Those Forthwegians are no cursed good in the woods.”

  “They don’t seem to be,” Munderic agreed. “They’re even worse than the Algarvians, I think. The redheads act like they think woods ought to be parks or something, but the Forthwegians, I think half of’em never saw a tree before in all their born days.” He smacked one fist into the palm of his other hand. “And we’ll make ‘em pay for it, too, as soon as we get the chance.”

  Three days later, an Unkerlanter slipped into the irregulars’ camp with word that the Forthwegians would make another sweep through the eastern part of the forest, the part closest to Herborn, before long. Garivald never saw the fellow, but such things happened all the time: people who had to work with the Algarvians-and, now, with their Forthwegian flunkies-were only too glad to let the irregulars know what was going on.

  “I’ve got just the spot for an ambush,” Munderic said with a broad smile that showed broken teeth. He walked over to Garivald and slapped him on the shoulder. “It’s not far from where we nailed those redheads and picked you up, as a matter of fact.”