Harry Turtledove - Into the Darkness

He also had his pride. He said, “Remember, men, you won’t be going anywhere I haven’t gone myself, because I’ll be out in front of you every step of the way. We’ll do all we can for our king and kingdom.” He raised his voice to a shout: “King Gainibu and victory!”

“King Gainibu!” the men echoed. “Victory!” They cheered enthusiastically. Why not? Cheering cost them nothing and exposed them to no danger.

Seeing that Skarnu had finished, Sergeant Raunu strode out in front of the company. He glanced at Skarnu for permission to speak. Skarnu nodded. The company would have got on fine without him, but he couldn’t have run it without Raunu. The veteran underofficer affected not to know that. Skarnu understood perfectly well that the pose was an affectation. He wondered how many company officers really believed their sergeants thought them indispensable. Too many, odds were.

Raunu said, “Boys, we’re lucky. You know it, and I know it. A lot of officers would send us forward but stay in a hole themselves. If we won, they’d take the credit. If we lost, we’d get the blame—only we’d be dead and they’d try again with another company. The captain’s not like that. We’ve all seen as much. Let’s give him a cheer now, and let’s fight like madmen for him tomorrow.”

“Captain Skarnu!” the men shouted. Skarnu waved to them, feeling foolish. He was used to accepting the deference of commoners because of his blood. Like his sister Krasta, he’d taken it for granted. The deference he got here in the field was different. He’d earned it. It made him proud and embarrassed at the same time.

“Whatever we can do, sir, we’ll do tomorrow,” Raunu said.

“I’m sure of it,” Skarnu said. That was a polite commonplace. He started to add something to it, then stopped. Sometimes Raunu, if given the chance to talk, came out with things he wouldn’t have otherwise, things an officer would have had trouble learning any other way.

This proved to be one of those times. “Do you really think we’ll break the Algarvian line tomorrow, sir?” the sergeant said.

“We’ve been ordered to do it,” Skarnu said. “I hope we can do it.” He went no further than that.

“Mm.” Raunu’s wrinkles refolded themselves into an expression less forbidding than the one he usually wore. “Sir, I hope we can do it, too. But if there’s not much chance… Sir, I saw a lot of officers with a lot of courage get themselves killed for nothing during the Six Years’ War. It’d be a shame if that happened to you before you figured out what was what.”

“I see.” Skarnu nodded brightly. “After I figure out what’s what, it will be all right for me to get myself killed for nothing.”

“No, sir.” Raunu shook his head. “After you know what’s what, you’ll know better than to go rushing ahead and get yourself killed for nothing.”

Skarnu quoted doctrine: “The only way to make an attack succeed is to go into it confident of success.”

“Aye, sir.” Raunu frowned again. “The only trouble is, sometimes that doesn’t help, either.”

Skarnu shrugged. Raunu looked at him, shook his head, and walked off. Skarnu understood what the veteran was trying to tell him. Understanding didn’t matter. He had his orders. His company would break through the Algarvian line ahead or die trying.

All through the night, egg-tossers hurled destruction at the Algarvian positions. Dragons flew overhead, dropping more eggs on the redheads. Skarnu had mixed feelings about all that. On the one hand, slain enemy soldiers and wrecked enemy works would make the attack easier. On the other, the Valmierans couldn’t have done a better job of announcing where that attack would go in if they’d hung out a sign.

The Algarvians made little reply to the eggs raining down. Maybe they’re all dead, Skarnu thought hopefully. He couldn’t make himself believe it, try as he would.

He led his men to the ends of the approach trenches they’d dug over the previous couple of days. That new digging might also have warned the Algarvians an attack was coming. But Skarnu and his men would not have to cross so much open ground to close with the enemy when the assault began, and so he reluctantly decided it was likely to be worthwhile.

“This is how we did it in the Six Years’ War,” Raunu said as the soldiers huddled in the trenches, waiting for the whistles that would order them forward. “We licked the redheads then, so we know we can do it again, right?”

Some of the youngsters under Skarnu’s command grinned and nodded at the veteran sergeant. They were too young to know about the gruesome casualties Valmiera had endured in that victory. Raunu deliberately didn’t mention those. The men hadn’t suffered badly in this war, not yet, not least because their leaders did remember the slaughters of the Six Years’ War and had avoided repeating them. Now the risk seemed acceptable … to men who weren’t facing it themselves.

Off in the west, behind Skarnu, the sky went from black to gray to pink. Peering over the dirt heaped up in front of the approach trenches, he saw the enemy’s field fortifications had taken a fearful battering. He dared hope that no Algarvian position during the Six Years’ War had been so thoroughly smashed up.

He said as much to Raunu, who also stuck his head up to examine the ground ahead. The sergeant answered, “Just where it looks like there couldn’t be even one of the bastards left alive, that’s where you’ll find whole caravans full of’em, and they’ll all be doing their best to blaze you down.”

Raunu had been loud and enthusiastic while heartening the common soldiers in the company. He spoke quietly to his superior, not wanting to dilute the effect he’d had on the men.

More eggs and still more eggs fell on the Algarvian entrenchments and forts. And then, without warning, they stopped falling. Skarnu pulled a brass whistle from his trouser pocket and blew a long, echoing blast, one of hundreds ringing out along several miles of battle line. “For Valmiera!” he cried. “For King Gainibu!” He scrambled out of the approach trench and trotted toward the Algarvians’ works.

“Valmiera!” his men shouted, and followed him out into the open. “Gainibu!” He looked to either side. Thousands of Valmierans, thousands upon thousands, stormed west. It was a sight to make any soldier proud of his countrymen.

Only a few hundred more yards, Skarnu thought. Then we’ll be in among the redheads, and then they’ll be ours. But already flashes ahead warned that some Algarvians had survived the pounding the Valmierans had given them. More and more enemy soldiers began blazing at Skarnu and his comrades. Men started falling, some without a sound, others shrieking as they were wounded.

The Algarvians had endured all the eggs the Valmierans tossed at them without responding—till this moment, when the men attacking them were most vulnerable. And now they rained eggs down on the Valmierans. Skarnu found himself on the ground without any clear memory of how he’d got there. One moment, he’d been upright. The next—

He scrambled to his feet. His trousers were torn. His tunic was out at the elbow. He wasn’t bleeding, or didn’t think he was. Lucky, he thought.

He waved to show his men he was all right, arid looked back over his shoulder to see how they were doing. Even as he did so, a couple of them went down. They hadn’t come very far—surely not halfway—but he’d lost a lot of them. If he kept losing them at that rate, he wouldn’t have any men left by the time he got to the forwardmost Algarvian trenches. He probably wouldn’t live to get to those trenches himself, an unpleasant afterthought to have.

The headlong charge was simply too expensive to be borne. “By squads!” he shouted. “Blaze and move by squads!”