Harry Turtledove - Jaws of Darkness

“Probably just what the stinking rebels want-us blazing us, I mean,” one of the soldiers said. Bembo wished he could have argued with that, but it seemed pretty self-evidently true.

He would have said so, but the Algarvians chose that moment to start tossing eggs at the Forthwegians just in front of his companions and him. He’d found out in a hurry that a certain number of such eggs were liable to fall short of where they were aimed. He threw himself into a hole some earlier burst had made and hoped none would land on him.

“I hate this!” he shouted to anybody who would listen. But how likely was it that anybody would? And even if somebody would, how likely was it that he could hear one man’s cry of protest through the endless roar of bursting eggs?

As soon as that roar let up, someone shouted, “Forward!” Bembo scrambled to his feet and went forward with the rest of the soldiers and constables. He was no hero. He’d never been a hero. But he couldn’t bear to have his comrades reckon him a coward.

Would you rather have them reckon you a dead man? he asked himself as he advanced. The answer was evidently aye, because he kept going. Sometimes saving face counted for as much as saving his neck.

The houses and blocks of flats ahead had been battered before. They were more battered now, with smoke and dust rising from them in great clouds. Broken glass glittered in the streets and on the slates of the sidewalks. It could slice right through a boot. Bembo noticed it as he ran, but it was the least of his worries. That thunderstorm of eggs hadn’t got rid of all the Forthwegian fighters up there: someone was blazing at the Algarvians from a building ahead.

Bembo threw himself flat behind what had been a chimney before it came crashing down in ruin. He was used to going after people who tried to get away from him, not after men who stood their ground and blazed back. No one cared what he was used to. He stuck up his head and waited to see where the Forthwegian’s beam came from. When he did spot it, he blazed, and was rewarded with a howl of pain.

More eggs started bursting ahead. Bembo hunkered down again. Every block of Eoforwic the Algarvians took from the rebels had to get pounded flat before they could be sure of holding on to it.

“Forward!” That hateful shout again. Forward Bembo went, cursing under his breath.

From a doorway twice its natural size, somebody stepped out and flung what looked like a cheap sugar bowl. The Forthwegian fell an instant later, blazed by three beams. But then the bowl landed among the oncoming Algarvians, and the burst of sorcerous energy trapped inside flung pottery fragments in all directions.

Something bit Bembo’s leg. He yelped and looked down at himself. Blood trickled along his calf, but the leg still bore his weight. He ran on toward a doorway. When he dashed into the meager shelter it gave, he discovered he shared that shelter with Oraste. “I’m wounded!” he cried dramatically.

His old partner glanced down at the cut on his leg. “Go home to mama when this is done,” Oraste said. “She can kiss it and make it better.”

“Well! I like that!” Bembo struck a heroic pose-carefully, so as not to expose any of his precious person to lurking foes. “Here I am, injured in service to my kingdom, and what do I get? Mockery! Scorn!”

“About what you deserve,” Oraste said. “I’ve seen people get hurt worse if they scratch themselves while they’ve got a hangnail.”

“Powers below eat you!” Bembo cried. “I’m going to put in for a wound badge when we come off duty.”

“You’ll probably get one, too. From what I’ve seen, the only way you can keep from getting a wound badge is if you get killed-and then they probably give the bastard to your next of kin.” Oraste’s cynicism knew no bounds.

Before Bembo could let out another indignant squawk, somebody up ahead yelled, “Forward!” again. Oraste left the shelter of the doorway without the least hesitation. Bembo had to follow him. On he ran, puffing, marveling that the fear of looking bad in front of his comrades once more proved stronger than the fear of death.

A Forthwegian’s head appeared in a second-story window. Bembo blazed at the Forthwegian, who toppled. Bembo ran on. He had no idea whether the man he’d just blazed was a fighter or an innocent bystander. He didn’t care, either. The fellow had shown up in the wrong place at the wrong time. He had to pay for that. If the penalty was death, too bad. Better his than mine or one of my pals’, Bembo thought.

More Forthwegians were holed up in a furniture shop not far ahead. No chance they were innocent bystanders: they blazed at the oncoming soldiers and constables. Bembo wasted no time ducking for cover. He wasn’t ashamed to do it, for he was far from the only one doing it.

Then several eggs crashed down around the furniture shop, and one right on it. “Surrender!” an Algarvian yelled to the Forthwegians still inside. “You can’t win!” He switched to Forthwegian so rudimentary, even Bembo could follow it: “Coming out! Hands high!”

“You no to kill we?” one of the Forthwegians called back in equally bad Algarvian.

“Not if you give up right now,” the soldier answered. “Make it snappy- this is your last chance.”

To Bembo’s surprise, half a dozen Forthwegians did come out of the wrecked shop, their faces glum, their hands up over their heads. When more eggs burst not far away, they all flinched. Not one of them tried to take shelter, though. They must have been sure the Algarvians would blaze them if they did. And they were, without a doubt, right.

“You constables!” one of the Algarvians soldiers said to Bembo and Oraste. “You know what to do with captives. Take these buggers away.”

“Right.” Bembo grunted as he got to his feet. Thatwas something he knew how to do. And, while I’m away from the lines, I’ll see how I go about asking for that wound badge, too.

Leudast had served in the Unkerlanter army for a long time. He’d been fighting in the Elsung Mountains in what was thenKingSwemmel ’s desultory border war with Gyongyos when the Derlavaian War first broke out between Algarve and most of her neighbors. He’d been part of the Unkerlanter force that gobbled up western Forthweg while the redheads were smashing most ofKingPenda ’s army. And he’d spent a demon of a lot of time fighting the Algarvians himself.

Two leg wounds weren’t so very much to show for all that. He’d started out a common soldier, with no hope of rising higher, and here he was, a lieutenant.

In all those years in the army, he’d never been particularly eager to go into a fight. In fact, he’d always been happiest during the brief spells of quiet he’d found. And here he was now, forced to stay quiet as he recovered from this second wound well behind the fighting front.

He hated it. He hated every minute he had to lie on his back. He hated every minute the healers used to poke and prod at his blazed leg, and hated the wise things they muttered back and forth in a language that hardly seemed to be Unkerlanter at all.

“When will you let me go?” he demanded. “When will you let me get back to my men? When will you let me get back to the fighting?”

Am I really saying that? But he was. Now, at last, after so much terror, he could begin to smell victory against the Algarvians. They still fought bravely. They still fought cleverly-more cleverly than his own countrymen, most of the time. But there weren’t enough of them to hold back the rising Unkerlanter tide no matter how bravely and cleverly they fought. And, having gone through all the black days when the Algarvians seemed sure to overwhelm Unkerlant, Leudast wanted to be there to help beat them. How much he wanted that amazed him.