Harry Turtledove - Jaws of Darkness

But if you did go prowling forth, they were liable to kill you for your trouble. Patrols didn’t always come back. Sometimes they just vanished as if they’d never been. Sidroc was painfully aware of that. He tried to tiptoe through the woods of the eastern Duchy of Grelz. Somebody had to go out on patrol, aye. He wished he weren’t one of the somebodies.

He also wished he and his comrades from Plegmund’s Brigade didn’t have to rely on the guide who walked through the woods with them. Some Grelzer peasants hatedKingSwemmel and his inspectors and impressers worse than the Algarvians did. Others pretended to hate Swemmel so as to lure the redheads-and the Forthwegians who fought alongside them-to destruction. Finding out you’d trusted the wrong sort of guide was too apt to be the last discovery you ever made.

SergeantWerferthspoke in Algarvian: “Where did you see these Unker-lanter soldiers?” Then he repeated the question in Forthwegian, which was at least related to the language spoken hereabouts.

“I see… by village,” the guide said in bad Algarvian, and pointed west and a little north. “Two companies, maybeso three.” He showed the numbers on his fingers to leave no room for error.

“Maybeso,” Ceorl jeered. “Maybeso you’re leading us into an ambush, eh?”

With a shrug, the guide answered, “You kill me then.”

“Let him alone, Ceorl,” Werferth said. “He’s supposed to be on our side, remember?”

“He’s supposed to be, aye,” Sidroc said. “Butis he?” Ceorl looked at him in surprise; they seldom agreed about anything. Sidroc went on, “I don’t want him leading us down the primrose path, either, you know.”

He’d spoken Forthwegian. Sure enough, the local could follow bits of the language, for he said, “No primroses.” Then he said several other things in his own dialect of Unkerlanter. Sidroc got only fragments of that, but none of it sounded complimentary toKingSwemmel . He kicked at the muddy pine needles underfoot. The guide would sound the same way no matter how he really felt about the King of Unkerlant.

“He knows this country better than we do,” Werferth said. “It’s his neck if the Unkerlanters catch him after he’s helped us.”

If he’s the straight goods, Sidroc thought. If he’s not… If the guide wasn’t the straight goods, they could indeed avenge themselves upon him. That wasn’t likely to do them much good, though.

Off in the distance, a wolf howled. Sidroc hoped it was a wolf, anyhow. So did the Algarvian lieutenant heading up the patrol. He said, “Do they really let those cursed things run loose in this part of the world?”

“Aye,” the guide answered.

Sidroc wasn’t altogether sure why anyone let the Algarvian lieutenant run loose in this part of the world. Sidroc hadn’t seen his twentieth birthday yet, but he felt ten years older than the redhead. Even so, the Algarvian gave the orders, as if to proclaim that his folk were the conquerors, with the men of Plegmund’s Brigade only along for the ride.

If they ‘re the conquerors, how come they‘ve spent most of the past year retreating? Sidroc wondered. And what happens if they spend most of the next year retreating, too? He didn’t want to dwell on that. One of the reasons he’d signed up for Plegmund’s Brigade was that the Algarvians had looked like world-beaters back in Forthweg. If the world was theirs, what better way to grab a chunk of it than fighting at their side?

He still couldn’t imagine the world belonging to the Unkerlanters. They were too dowdy for that to seem possible.

Another wolf howled, this one in the direction where the guide said the Unkerlanters were based. “I don’t like that,”SergeantWerferth muttered.

“Why not?” The Algarvian lieutenant sounded curious. A bright child might have sounded the same way. We don’t need a bright child leading our patrol, Sidroc thought. We need a nasty old veteran who knows what he’s doing and how to go about it. But the young Algarvian was what they had.

Patiently, Werferth said, “Because it sounds like signal and answer, sir. If it is signal and answer, we’re liable to be walking into something we’d be better off missing.”

“Ah,” the lieutenant said, as if that hadn’t occurred to him. He swept off his hat and bowed to Werferth, so maybe it hadn’t. Sidroc sighed. If the lieutenant lived, he’d learn in a hurry. Fighting against the Unkerlanters, you had to. But if he didn’t live, he was liable to drag the whole patrol down in ruin with him.

Very close by, a jay jeered. The guide froze. So did all the men from Plegmund’s Brigade. That raucous cry made an even better signal than a wolfs howl. The Algarvian lieutenant took another couple of steps before realizing something might be wrong. He looked around wildly, his stick at the ready.

But then Sidroc spotted the bird, pinkish brown with a black tail, fluttering from one pine to another. As it flew, it screeched again. He breathed easier. “It’s a real jay,” he said.

“Nice to know something’s real,” Werferth said. Nobody argued with him.

The Algarvian lieutenant laughed and said, “If any Unkerlanters heard it, they probably started shivering, thinking it was us.” Sidroc nodded. The lieutenant was likely to be right. Swemmel’s men alarmed Sidroc, but he’d seen that Mezentio’s men alarmed the Unkerlanters, too. That was fortunate, as far as he was concerned. Every so often, it kept the enemy from pressing an attack as hard as he might have.

“Forward,” the young lieutenant said. Sidroc had heard the word too many times-mostly shouted, and emphasized by shrilling whistles-for it to spur him on as it had when he’d first joined Plegmund’s Brigade. What was it but an invitation to get himself killed? Even the redhead seemed to realize as much, for he spoke quietly, as if to say the patrol needed to go on but shouldn’t make a fuss about it.

Even though that jay had been real, Unkerlanters lurked among the trees. Sidroc could feel their presence even if he couldn’t see or hear or smell them. The hair on his arms and at the back of his neck kept trying to prickle up. He was almost panting, as if he’d run a long way. But it wasn’t exhaustion that had done it to him: it was nerves. He felt taut as a viol string about to snap.

Beside him, Ceorl started cursing under his breath: harsh, monotonous, vicious cursing, all in a tiny voice no one farther away than Sidroc could have heard. “You know they’re there, too, eh?” Sidroc whispered. Ceorl looked astonished, as if he hadn’t realized what he was doing. Maybe he hadn’t. He nodded abruptly and went back to his oaths.

“Clearing,” the guide said, first in his own language, then in Algarvian. The Unkerlanter word sounded like one that meantmarket square in Forthwegian, so Sidroc supposed he understood the fellow twice.

“Well, go on across it,” the young lieutenant said. “We’ll follow.” That made good sense. Unkerlanter soldiers were far less likely to blaze a peasant than soldiers in the uniforms of their foes. Even so, the guide gave the redhead a look full of hate and fear as he started across the muddy open space. A couple of men at a time, the troopers from Plegmund’s Brigade followed.

The guide had got about halfway to the trees on the far side of the clearing when he trod on a cunningly buried egg. Afterwards, Sidroc realized that was what must have happened. At the time, all he knew was the sudden roar and flash of light as the sorcerous energies trapped in the egg suddenly released themselves, all channeled upward to be as deadly as possible. The luckless guide didn’t even have the chance to shriek. He simply ceased to be. One of his boots-probably not the one that had stepped on the egg-flew high into the air before thudding back to earth. That was the sole remaining sign he’d ever lived.