Harry Turtledove - Into the Darkness

Marshal Rathar peered north across the Zuwayzi desert. Had King Swemmel let him use the plan his aides had long since developed, he might well have been in Bishah by now. So he reminded the king in every despatch he sent him. Maybe King Swemmel would pay attention and not start his next war too soon. Rathar sighed. Maybe dragons would stand up and start giving speeches, too, but he wasn’t going to hold his breath waiting for that, either.

And Rathar might well not have been in Bishah by now. He’d been forcibly made aware of that, though not a hint of it got into the letters he sent Swemmel. The Zuwayzin had had plans of their own, and they might have made them work even against the full weight of the Unkerlanter army.

Unkerlant had not had to fight a desert campaign since bringing Zuwayza under the rule of Cottbus. No one was left alive from those days, and the art of war had changed a good deal since. The Unkerlanter officer corps had not figured out how best to apply all the changes: the plan with which Unkerlant had gone to war involved nothing more complicated than hammering at Zuwayza till she broke.

“The black men know us better than we know them,” Rathar muttered discontentedly. That the Zuwayzin should have a good notion of what Unkerlant intended made all too much sense. Unkerlanters had been overlords in Zuwayza for more than a hundred years. Their resentful subjects had had to learn to know them well. The reverse, unfortunately, did not apply. All the Unkerlanters had done in Zuwayza was give orders. That hadn’t encouraged them to try to understand the dusky people on the other end of those orders.

A messenger came up and stood to attention, awaiting Rathar’s notice.

At last, Rathar nodded to him. The fellow said, “My lord, I have the honor to report that General Werpin’s force is ready for the attack over the Wadi Uqeiqa.” His tongue stumbled over the unfamiliar syllables, so different from those of Unkerlanter.

“Good,” Rathar said, nodding. “I shall order the attack tomorrow morning, as planned. Go back to the crystals and tell General Werpin to keep a tight watch for camels on his flank.”

“Camels on his flank,” the messenger repeated. “Aye, my lord; just as you say.” He saluted and hurried away.

“Camels,” Rathar said, mostly to himself. “Who would have imagined camels could cause so much trouble?”

For more than a generation, the emphasis in most armies—all armies that could afford them—had been on great herds of behemoths. Behemoths could carry men and weapons and armor enough to make them invulnerable to a footsoldier’s stick. That made them the nearest terrestrial equivalent to warships. In the hands of the Algarvians, they’d smashed the Forthwegian army to bits. Rathar and his underlings were still studying how the redheads had done that.

Zuwayza, though, was proving less than ideal country for behemoths. They ate a lot. They drank even more. That wasn’t good, not in a landscape with many more wadis—dry riverbeds—than rivers. Even in winter, the allegedly wet season hereabouts, the wadis stayed dry. Winter was also allegedly the cool season hereabouts. That didn’t keep behemoths from falling over dead, cooked inside their own armor.

Till King Swemmel ordered him to strike at Zuwayza, Rathar hadn’t paid much attention to camels. Unicorns, aye. Behemoths, aye. Horses, aye. Camels? For the life of him, he hadn’t seen much use to camels.

Now he did. In terrain where wadis outnumbered rivers, where poisoning wells was a useful stratagem, camels looked a lot less ugly than they did anywhere else. Zuwayzi camel dragoons kept appearing out of nowhere, almost as if by magecraft. They would strike stinging blows to the Unkerlanters’ flanks, ravage supply columns, and then vanish as swiftly and unexpectedly as they’d struck. It was maddening.

For quite a while, Rathar had been too busy responding to Zuwayzi raids—some of which reached a startling distance back into Unkerlant—to carry on his own campaign in anything like proper fashion. He hoped he was turning the corner there. Any minute now, he’d find out.

When, after half an hour, he still hadn’t heard from General Droctulf, who commanded the eastern prong of the army, he went over to the crystallomancers’ tent to find out what was going on with that part of the force and whether it would be ready to move at the time he had appointed. “I will call his headquarters, my lord,” said the young specialist to whom he gave his requirements. “I remind you also to speak with care. The Zuwayzin are liable to be listening in spite of all our spells to keep these talks secret.”

“I understand,” Rathar said. “I have reason to understand; they’ve hurt us more than once with what they’ve stolen. Somehow, we haven’t had the same luck with them.”

“No, lord,” the crystallomancer agreed. “They tell so many lies, it’s hard for us to sort out the truth. And their masking magic is very good, very sneaky. I wish ours were half so effective.”

Rathar sighed. If he had a copper for every time he’d heard someone wish Unkerlant did something or other as well as its neighbors, he wouldn’t have needed the salary King Swemmel paid him. “We just have to learn to be more efficient,” he said, and the crystallomancer nodded.

The man did his job well enough; before long, Rathar saw the face of one of Droctulf’s crystallomancers staring out of the globe in front of him. “My superior needs to speak to your superior,” Rathar’s crystallomancer said. If the Zuwayzin were listening, they would have trouble sorting out who was who.

Droctulf’s crystal man had trouble sorting out who was who. “Who is your superior?” he demanded in haughty tones. Some of that toploftiness vanished when Rathar bent low and made his image appear beside his crystallomancer’s. Gulping, the other crystal man stammered, “I—I—shall fetch my superior.”

“Next time, do it without any backtalk,” Rathar growled. But Droctulf’s crystallomancer had already disappeared. By the last expression Rathar had seen on his face, he’d wished he could vanish permanently.

In a gratifyingly short time, Droctulf’s own image filled the crystal in front of Rathar. Droctulf’s appearance, however, did not gratify the marshal. The general looked like a peasant who’d been whiling away the winter with a jug of something potent. “A good day to you, my lord,” he said in what, even though a crystal, Rathar recognized as a careful voice: one Droctulf didn’t want to make too loud for fear of hurting his own head.

“Will your men be ready to push across their present line at the appointed hour?” Rathar snapped without preamble.

“I think they will,” Droctulf answered. “They ought to be able to.” He stared owlishly at Rathar’s image.

“General, I relieve you,” Rathar said crisply. “You will report here for reassignment. Let me speak to General Gurmun, your second-in-command.”

“My lord!” Droctulf exclaimed. “Have mercy, my lord! When word reaches the king that I was not so efficient as I might have been, what will he do to me?”

“I suggest you should have thought of that before you got drunk,” Rathar replied. “If our attack fails because of your inefficiency, what will the king have to say of me? You are relieved, General. Get me Gurmun.”

Droctulf disappeared from the crystal. Rathar wondered if he would have to send soldiers to enforce his subordinate’s relief. If he did, he thought Droctulf’s head would answer for it. King Swemmel did not tolerate anything that smacked of rebellion. The marshal sighed again. He and Droctulf had fought for Swemmel during the Twinkings War. Droctulf had liked his drink then, too. Now, though, this war had already gone on too long. Swemmel would not stomach any more delay. Rathar could not stomach any more, either.