Harry Turtledove - Jaws of Darkness

The caravan car glided past trenches, and past hastily dug graves-red-brown lines on green. Still… Leino turned to Xavega and spoke in classical Kaunian: “The Algarvians have not put up the hardest of fights.”

“No. The Lagoans have rolled over them.” She coughed a couple of times, then grudgingly added, “And the Kuusamans as well.” It was more like the Kuusamans and the Lagoans as well, but Leino didn’t bother correcting her.

They also glided past dragon farms and fields full of grazing behemoths and unicorns and horses and rows of egg-tossers and piles of eggs ready to fling and endless files of tents, some Lagoan brown, others-more- Kuusaman green: all the appurtenances of modern war.

And, when they arrived at the sorcerers’ encampment, they found another Kuusaman sergeant. This one used classical Kaunian so well Leino wondered what he’d done before becoming a soldier: “Ah, the pair fromHabakkuk. I have you assigned to the same tent.”

Xavega smiled and nodded. The smile was full of promise, so much promise that Leino nodded, too. So much for your good intentions, he thought. Well, you’ll enjoy yourself… till the quarrels start again. He sighed. Odds are, it won’t be long.

Marshal Rathar’s headquarters had moved east, out of Pewsum. Had he stayed there, the front in northern Unkerlant would have left him behind, as the sea leaves bathers behind when the tide goes out. Now he directed the attack against Algarve from a village just west of Sommerda, a village whose name he hadn’t bothered to learn. As things stood, he didn’t think he would ever know it.

He turned to General Gurmun and said, “You know, we’re going to have to move again soon.”

“Looks that way,” Gurmun agreed. “The troopers are getting ahead of us, sure enough. By the time we’re through, this Algarvian army will be gone from the board. Powers below eat all the redheads. I won’t miss ‘em a fornicating bit.”

“Neither will I.” As it had a way of doing, Rathar’s gaze fell on the map pinned to a table undoubtedly stolen from a fancier hut than this one. He shook his head in slow wonder. “It’s going just the way we drew it up back in Cottbus. If anything, we’re ahead of the timeline we drew up back in Cott-bus. Who would have imagined that would happen against the Algarvians?”

Dispassionate as if he had clockwork in his belly, Gurmun answered, “We broke the buggers last year in the Durrwangen bulge. Now it’s just a matter of kicking down the door and charging through.”

Rationally speaking, Rathar supposed he was right. Still, he said, “This is the fourth summer of the war against them. It’s the first time they haven’t tried an attack of their own. Do you wonder that I’m happy at how things are going?”

“No, lord Marshal,” Gurmun said. “You can be happy. Just don’t be surprised.” He sounded like what he was: an officer tough, competent, and altogether confident. Unkerlant hadn’t had many officers like that when the war against Algarve started. She still didn’t have enough, but one Gurmun made up for a lot.

“How are the behemoths holding up?” Rathar asked.

“Losses are within the range we expected,” Gurmun answered. “The farms in the west are sending enough fresh beasts forward. The redheads’ dragons never could fly that far, not even when things looked worst for us. And the Gongs never have put a whole lot of dragons in the air against us. I wouldn’t want to try flying over the Elsung Mountains, either.”

“Something to that,” Rathar agreed.

“A week-maybe even less-and we’ll be swarming over the Forthwegian border,” Gurmun said. “What was the Forthwegian border, I mean.”

Marshal Rathar started to call him a mad optimist. Then he took another look at the map, and at what the Algarvians could put between his behemoths and the old Forthwegian frontier. “You may be right,” he said.

“You bet I’m right,” Gurmun declared.

“Getting more footsoldiers on horseback helps, too,” Rathar said. “Even though they fight on foot, moving ‘em mounted helps ‘em keep up with the behemoths. The redheads used that trick, too, whenever they could scrape up the mounts.”

“Powers below eat the redheads,” Gurmun said again. “The powers beloware eating the redheads, and we’re serving them up. The first couple of years of this fight, they taught us lessons. Now we’re better than our schoolmasters.”

Rathar doubted that. The Algarvians still had more flexible arrangements than the soldiers of his own kingdom. They coordinated better among foot-soldiers and behemoths and dragons. Each of their regiments or squadrons had more crystals than its Unkerlanter counterpart, which made them more responsive to trouble. An Algarvian regiment was probably worth close to two Unkerlanter units.

But if King Swemmel’s soldiers threw three or four or five regiments at each Algarvian formation… Here in the north, the Unkerlanters had thrown a lot more than that at each Algarvian regiment at the spearpoint of the attack. And the redheads, however fiercely they’d fought, couldn’t stand up against such an overwhelming weight of numbers. This time, they’d really and truly broken.

“Our way of putting out a fire is throwing bodies on it till it smothers,” Rathar said. “Sorry, Gurmun, but I don’t think that’s the most efficient way to do things.”

“It works,” Gurmun said. “It’s worked.”

“So it does,” Rathar agreed. Again, if it hadn’t worked, Unkerlant would have lost the war. But the price the kingdom was paying… Every ruined, empty village he rode through as his countrymen fought their way east tore at him. How would Unkerlant rebuild once the fighting finally ended? Where would the peasants to fill those villages come from? He had no idea.

Before he could say as much-not that General Gurmun would have worried about such a thing; his mind focused solely on using his beloved behemoths against the Algarvians-the sound of many marching feet came to his ear. His head swung toward it: toward the eastern side of the village, the side closest to the fighting. Gurmun’s head swung the same way. A grin spread over his blunt-featured face as he said, “How much do you want to bet those are captives?”

“I’d sooner keep my silver, thanks,” Rathar answered.

Gurmun’s grin got wider. “Let’s go have a look at the whoresons.” Without waiting for a reply, he hurried out of the peasant hut. Rathar followed a little more slowly. He’d seen captive Algarvians before.

Still, being reminded what these attacks were doing to the enemy wouldn’t hurt. And the column of captives coming through the village represented more than a regiment’s worth of men. The guards in their rock-gray tunics wore grins a lot like Gurmun’s. Some of the Algarvians were grinning, too: the nervous grins of men glad to be alive and unsure how much longer they would stay that way. More of them looked glum. They might be alive, but they didn’t want to be in Unkerlanter hands. Their light brown tunics and kilts were shabbier than Algarvian uniforms had been when the war was new. It wasn’t just that they were filthy and worn; the cloth itself was thinner and cheaper and flimsier than what they’d used then.

Despite everything, a few redheads strode along as if they owned the world. They towered over their captors, as Algarvians usually did tower over Unkerlanters, and gave the impression that the guards were actually escorts, taking them someplace where more Unkerlanters would serve them. Rathar admired Algarvian arrogance and despised it at the same time. Regardless of their true situation, Mezentio’s men still reckoned themselves the masters of Derlavai. Some of them almost made even their foes believe it.