Harry Turtledove - Through the Darkness

When the leading squads of his battalion started into the town to fight it out with King Swemmel’s men, Major Spinello threw a fit. “No, no, no!” he howled, and made as if to tear his fiery hair or rip out his waxed mustachios. “Stupid buggers, pox-brained cretins, what do you think you’re doing? Go around, flank them out. Let the poor trudging whoresons who come after us dig the pus out of the pocket. Our job is to keep moving. We never let them get set up to slug it out with us. We go around. Have you got that? Have you? Powers below eat you, you’d better.”

“All right, we’ll bloody well go around,” Panfilo said, and swung his arm to lead his squad south of Unkerlant. Spinello was also screeching at the behemoths on this part of the field, and got them not to go straight into the town, either. They tossed a few eggs into it as they skirted it to north and south.

Trasone said, “I think he’s a pretty good officer. As long as we keep moving, we can lick these Unkerlanter whoresons right out of their boots. Only time they match us is when mud and rain or snow make us slow down.”

“Maybe so,” Panfilo allowed: no small concession from a veteran sergeant toward a green officer. He promptly qualified it by adding, “If he tells one more dirty story about that Kaunian bitch back in Forthweg, though, I’ll hit him over the head with my stick and make him shut up.”

“Oh, good,” Trasone said. “I’m not the only one who’s sick of them, then.” Somehow, finding that out made the march seem easier.

The Unkerlanters must have been hoping the Algarvians would come into the town and fight for it street by street. When they saw Mezentio’s men weren’t about to, they began pulling out themselves: men in rock-gray tunics dog-trotting in loose order, with horses hauling egg-tossers and carts full of eggs.

They wouldn’t have held the town against the Algarvian troopers following the ones pushing the front forward. Out in the open, they didn’t last long against those front-line troops. The Algarvians on the behemoths showered eggs down on them with impunity. As soon as one of those eggs touched off a supply dump for the Unkerlanter egg-tossers, King Swemmel’s men began to realize they were in a hopeless position. At first by ones and twos and then in larger numbers, they threw down their sticks and came toward the Algarvians with hands held high. Along with his comrades, Trasone patted them down, stole whatever money they had and whatever trinkets he fancied, and sent them off toward the rear. “Into the captives’ camps they go, and good riddance, too,” he said.

“We may be seeing some of them again one day,” Panfilo said.

“Huh?” Trasone shook his head. “Not likely.”

“Aye, it is,” Panfilo said. “Haven’t you heard?” He waited for Trasone to shake his head again, then went on, “They go through the camps and let out some of the Unkerlanters who say they’ll fight for Raniero of Grelz-which means, for us.”

Trasone stared. “Now that’s a daft notion if ever there was one. If they were trying to kill us a little bit ago, why should we trust ‘em with sticks in their hands again?”

“Ahh, it’s not the worst gamble in the world,” Panfilo said. “Put it this way: if you were an Unkerlanter and got the chance to give King Swemmel a good kick in the balls, wouldn’t you grab it with both hands?”

“I might,” Trasone said slowly, “but then again, I might not, too. I haven’t noticed that the whoresons are what you’d call shy about fighting for their king, no matter whether he’s crazy or not.”

“It’s not like they’ve got a lot of choice, not after Swemmel’s impressers get their hands on ‘em.” Sergeant Panfilo’s shoulders moved up and down in a melodramatic, ever so Algarvian shrug. “And it’s not like I can do anything about it any which way. I’m just telling you what I’ve heard.”

“Pretty shitty way to go about things, anybody wants to know what I think,” Trasone said.

Panfilo laughed at him. “Don’t be dumber than you can help. Nobody cares a sour fart for what a common footslogger thinks-or a sergeant, either, come to that. Now Spinello-Spinello they’ll listen to. He’s got himself a fancy pedigree, he does. But I bet he doesn’t care one way or the other what happens to Unkerlanter captives.”

“He’s not interested in laying them, so why should he care?” Trasone returned, and got a laugh from the sergeant.

Neither one of them was laughing a few minutes later, when a flight of Unkerlanter dragons streaked toward them out of the trackless west. Because the Unkerlanters painted their beasts rock-gray, and because they came in low and fast, Trasone and his comrades didn’t see them till they were almost on top of the Algarvians. A tongue of flame reached out for him as a dragon breathed fire.

Trasone threw himself flat. The flame fell short. He felt an instant’s intense heat and did not breathe. Then the dragon raced by. The wind of its passage blew dust and grit into Trasone’s face.

He rolled from his belly to his back so he could blaze at the Unkerlanter dragons. He knew how slim his chances of hurting one were, but blazed anyhow. Stranger things had happened in this war. As far as he was concerned, that the Unkerlanters were still fighting was one of those stranger things.

A dragon flamed an Algarvian behemoth. The soldiers riding the behemoth died at once, without even the chance to scream. Partly shielded by its armor, the beast took longer to perish. Bellowing in agony, flames dripping from it and starting fires in the grass, it galloped heavily till at last it fell over and lay kicking. Even then, it bawled on and on.

“There’s supper,” Trasone said, pointing. “Roasted in its own pan.”

Panfilo lay sprawled in the dirt a few feet away. “If this were last winter, roast behemoth would be supper-and we’d be cursed glad to have it, too.”

“Don’t I know it,” Trasone answered. “What? Did you think I was kidding? There’s not a man with a frozen-meat medal”-the decoration given for surviving the first winter’s savage fighting in Unkerlant-”who’ll do much kidding about behemoth meat, except the ones who ate mule or unicorn instead.”

“Or the ones who didn’t eat anything,” Sergeant Panfilo said.

“They’re mostly dead by now.” Trasone got to his feet. “Well, we’d better keep going and hope those buggers don’t come back. Our dragonfliers are better than the Unkerlanters’ any day, but they can’t be everywhere at once.”

Now Panfilo was the one to say, “Don’t I know it.” He went on, “When we started this cursed fight, did you have any notion how stinking big Unkerlant was?”

“Not me,” Trasone answered at once. “Powers below eat me if I don’t now, though. I’ve walked every foot of it-and a lot of those feet going forwards and then backwards and then forwards again.” And he hadn’t walked enough of Unkerlant, either. He hadn’t marched into Cottbus, and neither had any other Algarvian.

It still might happen. He knew that. Despite Unkerlanter dragons, King Mezentio’s army was rolling forward again here in the south. Take away Unkerlant’s breadbasket, take away the cinnabar that helped her dragons flame. . Trasone nodded. Let’s see Swemmel fight a war once we have all this stuff, he thought.

“Come on!” Major Spinello shouted. “We’re not going to win this cursed war sitting on our arses. Get moving! Get moving!” Trasone glanced toward Sergeant Panfilo. Panfilo waved the squad forward. On they went, into the vastness of Unkerlant.

Marshal Rathar scowled at the map in his office. With his heavy Unkerlanter features, he had a face made for scowling. He ran a hand through his iron-gray hair. “Curse the Algarvians,” he growled. “They’ve got the bit between their teeth again.” He glared at his adjutant, as if it were Major Merovec’s fault.