Harry Turtledove - Jaws of Darkness

That kind of warning would have deterred him. Some Forthwegians, though, were willing, even eager, to kill Algarvians regardless of whether it cost them their lives. It usually did, and painfully, but they were still hard to guard against.

He peered across the Twegen again. The river wasn’t very wide. Had the Unkerlanters wanted to force a crossing, they probably could have done it. Instead, they seemed content for the time being to pound Eoforwic to pieces while they built up their forces. Some of them were walking along the river-bank as openly as if they were back in their own kingdom.

“Crystallomancer!” Spinello shouted in some annoyance. He had to shout it more than once, which annoyed him further.

“Here, sir,” a smooth-cheeked youngster said at last.

Spinello shook his head. The youth looked like an apprentice, not a real soldier. But he would have to do. “Connect me to our egg-tossers,” Spinello said. “Those whoresons over there need to learn some respect for us.”

“Aye, sir.” The crystallomancer did make the etheric connection with commendable speed. “Go ahead, sir.”

“Thank you.” Spinello stared into the crystal at the image of a gruff officer who might have fought in the Six Years’ War. He quickly explained what he wanted.

“Aye, we can do that,” the veteran said. “Can’t have those bastards think they rule the roost even if they do, eh?” He gestured sharply, Spinello supposed to his own crystallomancer. Spinello’s crystal flared and then went inert.

A few minutes later, eggs began bursting on the east side of the Twegen. The rain kept Spinello from seeing as much as he would have liked, but Swemmel’s soldiers wouldn’t go for their afternoon stroll along the riverbank any more. He was sure of that. They’d hide in holes the way he did, the ones not too seared by sorcerous energy to worry about hiding ever again.

All that might have been true. But the Unkerlanters also took revenge. Spinello wondered how many egg-tossers they had, there on the other side of the Twegen. Plenty to knock down big chunks of Eoforwic that had somehow stayed standing through the Forthwegian uprising. Plenty to stir around the chunks that had already fallen down and to make big chunks into little ones.

And plenty to make Spinello laugh, there in his hole with his face pressed to the earth and with his heart pounding from fear he couldn’t quell. The Unkerlanters could have pounded Eoforwic just as hard while the Algarvians were crushing the uprising. They could have, but they hadn’t. And why should they have? he wondered. We were doing their dirty work for them. Now they have to do their own.

The other obvious implication there was that Swemmel’s soldiers thought they could overrun Eoforwic whenever they chose. He’d been fighting them for three years. He had the nasty feeling they knew what they were about.

What does that say about Algarve? he thought at the ground quivered beneath him like an animal in pain. Does it say we’re going to lose the war? If he looked at things rationally, he couldn’t see how it would say anything else. But war wasn’t altogether a rational business. He’d seen enough of it to know that, too. If our secret sorceries come to fruition, or even if the Lagoans and Kuusamans get sick of staying allied to that madman of a Swemmel…

It could happen. Many stranger things had happened. Being something of a student of history, Spinello knew as much. Lagoas and Kuusamo were civilized kingdoms. Why would they stay in harness with a barbarian maniac like Swemmel, especially when they were all fighting against another civilized kingdom like Algarve?

Kaunians. The word tolled in his mouth like an iron bell, seeming louder than all the eggs bursting around and behind him. But then he shook his head. Lagoans and Kuusamans weren’t Kaunian folk. Lagoans were Algarvic, with blood ties to Algarve and Sibiu. Why should they care what happened to blonds? They’d fought plenty of wars againstKaunianValmiera.

They don’t want Algarve lord of all Derlavai. That made Spinello laugh, too, though he didn’t really find it funny. So they help Swemmel against us, and Unkerlantbecomes lord of all Derlavai. What good does that do them?

He laughed again. That’s the next war. It isn‘t this one. Who worries about tomorrow when he’s fighting to stay alive today?

The Algarvians were fighting to stay alive today, fighting in a way Lagoas and Kuusamo weren’t-and having less luck with it. Somewhere not far away from Spinello, someone started screaming. He cursed. The scream had words, and some of them he recognized as Algarvian. He wouldn’t have cared much what happened to a Forthwegian, but a countryman was a countryman.

Before he thought about what he was doing, he popped out of his hole and ran toward the screams. One of his troopers was doing the same thing. “Get down, Colonel!” the soldier yelled, his voice coming to Spinello by fits and starts through the roar of the bursting eggs.

“Shut up,” Spinello said. The soldier didn’t argue. Spinello almost wished he would have. I’ve got a ribbon with my wound badge, he thought. Do I really want another one? He might easily get killed, too, but he refused even to think about that. He couldn’t do anything about it, anyhow.

Youcoulddive into a hole, fool, the rational part of his mind insisted. But then he spotted the wounded Algarvian and loped toward him. The trooper followed. It was, he saw as he stooped beside the hurt man, the crystallomancer who’d put him in touch with the egg-tossers.

“Belly,” the trooper said, glancing at the wound. “That’s not so good.”

“I know.” Spinello didn’t want to look at it. “Here, son.” He gave the crystallomancer a long draught of opium-laced spirits. It wasn’t much, but it was the best he could do. When he started to put a dressing on the wound, the crystallomancer, only half conscious, tried to fight him off.

The trooper grabbed the wounded man’s hands. “We’re going to have to get him to the healers,” he said as Spinello worked.

Spinello tapped his wound badge. “My pals didn’t let me down when I got hurt. Time to pay them back.” The common soldier only nodded. He wore a wound badge, too, and already had two ribbons under it.

When they lifted the crystallomancer, he shrieked like a cursed soul.

Then, mercifully, he did pass out. They half carried, half dragged him back to a battered building-more battered now than Spinello remembered it- where healers were hard at work. The place smelled of smoke and unwashed men and the butcher-shop odor of blood and the latrine stink of pierced entrails. Spinello did his best to hide his shudder. He’d been in places like this before, when he was the one who suffered. The smells made his body remember, and remember too well.

“Hey, quacks!” the trooper said, perhaps hiding his own unease with bravado. “We’ve got another one for you to practice on.”

A harried healer hurried over. He took one look at the crimsoned, soaking bandages and winced. “Belly wound, eh? We can’t do much with that here. We’ll have to put him on ice and ship him back to Algarve. Maybe they can help him back there, maybe not. He’ll have some kind of chance, anyway.”

With a nod, Spinello said, “That’s about what I thought.” A dragon had flown him out of Sulingen after a sniper put a beam through the right side of his chest. Now he could take a more detached interest in the proceedings.

A couple of eggs burst close enough to make the ground shake under his feet. Irritably, the healer said, “Don’t they ever run out of those cursed things?”

Almost on cue, the pounding of Eoforwic eased. “Who knows?” Spinello said in glad surprise. “Maybe they do.”