Harry Turtledove - Jaws of Darkness

Rambaldo’s shrug was a work of art even among Algarvians, who could say more with their hands and bodies than most folk could with words. “The Unkerlanters wouldn’t have had the extra day or two to dig themselves into Pewsum, either.”

Spinello grunted. An Unkerlanter detachment new in a place might be easily routed out. A day later, the job got harder. Two days later, it could become impossible. He’d seen as much in Sulingen and at the Durrwangen bulge and a good many other places besides. He hoped he wouldn’t see it again here.

Eggs burst in front of the advancing Algarvians. Moments later, eggs burst among them; Swemmel’s soldiers in Pewsum had no intention of being dislodged. Algarvian behemoths lumbered forward to deal with the Unkerlanters’ less mobile egg-tossers. And then the terrible beam from a heavy stick blazed through white surcoat and armor and flesh of three behemoths in quick succession. The rest milled about in dismay before pulling back out of range. The heavy stick’s crew didn’t bother burning down individual foot-soldiers with it; that would have been like smashing cockroaches with an anvil.

Feeling very much like a cockroach, Spinello scuttled forward, cherishing whatever cover he could find.

Dragons painted in Algarvian green, red, and white swooped down on Pewsum. That horrible heavy stick waited for them, and swatted first one and then another out of the sky. Then more eggs burst around it, and it fell silent. But the dragons couldn’t silence all the sticks and egg-tossers around Pewsum, any more than the behemoths had, and Spinello’s brigade stalled just outside the town, taking casualties and unable to advance any farther.

Huddled in a hole behind what was left of a stone fence, Spinello cursed the stubborn Unkerlanter defenders. “Well, you were right, Major,” he called to Rambaldo, who sprawled not far away. “Now we have to see what else we can do about it.” He raised his voice to a shout: “Crystallomancer!”

One of the young mages attached to the brigade hurried up. “Aye, sir?”

“Put me through to the mages at the special camp,” Spinello said. “We’re going to need the strong magic.”

“Aye, sir,” the crystallomancer repeated, and took the glass globe from his pack. After activating it, he pushed it to Spinello: “Go ahead, sir.” Spinello spoke to the wizard whose image appeared in the crystal. The mage nodded. Then he vanished. The crystal flared and went inert. Spinello gave it back to the crystallomancer.

“Will we get what you want?” Rambaldo asked.

“We’ll get what we need,” Spinello answered, and the regimental commander nodded.

The sorcerers at the special camp had had such requests many times before over the past two and a half years. Swemmel of Unkerlant preached efficiency; the Algarvian mages practiced it. Rounding up however many Kaunians they needed and slaying them didn’t take long.

Peering out from behind the stone wall, Spinello watched the ground shake in Pewsum, as if it were being visited by its own private earthquake. But the magic the Algarvians powered with Kaunian life energy was potent beyond any mere temblor. Not only did buildings shudder and collapse, but great fissures in the ground opened and closed, gulping down men and even an Unkerlanter behemoth. And lambent purple flames shot up from the ground, engulfing still more enemy soldiers and beasts.

Spinello’s whistle screeched, along with those of the rest of the Algarvian officers still able to advance. “Forward!” he shouted, and sprang to his feet himself. “Now that the mages have staggered ‘em, let’s knock ‘em flat!”

With a cheer, the brigade went forward again. The men had confidence, no doubt of that. Some of them shouted, “Jadwigai!” along with “Mezentio!” and “Algarve!” Again Spinello wondered what the pretty little Kaunian mascot thought. She was close enough to Pewsum to have seen, even to have felt, the magecraft. How could shenot know whence it came? But if she did, how could she stay friendly to the Algarvians who kept her? Could she pretend so well, just to stay alive? Spinello didn’t know. He wondered if he ever would.

He also discovered, not for the first time, that counting on the Unkerlanters to stay stodgy was no longer a paying proposition. No sooner had his brigade burst from cover and rushed toward Pewsum thanKingSwemmel ’s mages unleashed against them the same sorcery the town’s defenders had just suffered. The Unkerlanters didn’t kill Kaunians. They got rid of their own old and useless and condemned. But life energy was life energy. The spell wreaked as much havoc on the Algarvians as it had on the Unkerlanters.

Spinello fell to the ground as it shuddered beneath him. Algarvian soldiers shrieked as violet flames devoured them. Not twenty feet from Spinello, the earth opened up, swallowingMajorRambaldo. An instant later, the crack slammed shut, crushing him and his fancy, ever so expensive windup clock. Spinello staggered to his feet once more, but he could see at a glance that the assault on Pewsum had failed.

He hung his head and kicked at the frozen dirt. Algarve had seen too many failures lately, some small like this one, some very great indeed. When, he wondered, would his kingdom start seeing successes again?

Leudast had spent a lot of time commanding a company while still a sergeant. He was far from the only Unkerlanter underofficer who’d done that. Unkerlant often gave responsibility without giving rank to go with it. That saved the paymasters money-it saved them more than just the monthly difference between a sergeant’s rate and a lieutenant’s, too, for everyone’s pay was chronically in arrears.

But now Leudast was a lieutenant himself. It would have taken capturing a fugitive would-be king to get a born peasant bumped up to officer’s rank, but he’d done exactly that. Mezentio’s cousin Raniero, who’d styled himself King of Grelz, had gone into Swemmel’s stewpot, and Leudast wore two little brass stars on each of his tunic’s collar tabs.

He still commanded a company.

MarshalRatharhad promised him five pounds of gold for capturing Raniero. He hadn’t seen any of it yet. If he lived through the war, maybe he would. As a born peasant, he knew better than to complain. If he let people see he was unhappy, he didn’t know exactly what he’d get, but he had a good idea it wouldn’t be the missing five pounds of gold.

At the moment, he stood inside a peasant hut not much different from the one he’d grown up in, save that one wall and half the thatched roof had burned away. With him stood the other lieutenants and sergeants commanding the companies in his regiment, and Captain Recared, the regimental commander. Recared looked preposterously young to be a captain; the previous summer, before the great battles in the Durrwangen salient, Recared had looked preposterously young to be a lieutenant.

“You know what we have to do, men,” Recared said in the abrupt tones that marked him not only for a city man but for an educated city man to boot. “We’ve stopped the redheads’ drive on Herborn. They’re not going to take it back from us, no matter how much they want to. And they’ve stretched themselves thin trying, too. Now we see if we can bite off the columns they used for their push.”

“We’ll hurt ‘em if we do,” Leudast remarked. His own accent said he came from the northeast, not far from the Forthwegian border, and sounded particularly out of place down here in Grelz.

Recared smiled at him. “That’s the idea, Sergeant-uh, Lieutenant. The worse that happens to the Algarvians, the better for Unkerlant.”

“Oh, aye, sir.” If anything, Leudast knew that better than his superior. He was one of what couldn’t be more than a handful of men who’d fought the redheads since the first day of the war against them. Most of the soldiers who’d servedKingSwemmel on that now long-vanished day were dead or captured or crippled. Leudast had been wounded only twice, and put out of action for a few weeks of the slaughter around Sulingen. If that wasn’t good luck, what was?