Harry Turtledove: Darkness Descending

He and his men tramped across the meadow that led to the forest. The grass was a brilliant green, far brighter than the nearly black needles on the trees ahead. Yellow ox-eye gentian and red clover brightened the meadow more. Butterflies flitted from flower to flower. Some sort of ground squirrel, not long out of its burrow after a long winter’s nap, stood up on its hind legs and chattered indignantly at the soldiers marching past.

And then, off to Istvan’s left, the ground erupted in a roar. A trooper shrieked, but not for long. Istvan stared up at the sky. No dragons wheeled there, only a rusty-red jay like the ones he might have seen at home. And no more eggs were flying through the air to land on the advancing Gyongyosians.

Someone else shouted out what flashed through his mind: “Have a care, all! The stinking sons of goats have buried eggs under the meadow. Tromp on one and you’ll never tromp on anything else.”

All at once, Istvan wanted to walk above the grass. His bowels knotted with every step he took. Kun spat and said, “I wonder how much fun we’ll have going down the highway that’s supposed to run through the forest.”

Istvan didn’t like thinking about that, either. “Have we got any mages who can sniff out buried eggs for us?” He asked the question in a loud, hopeful voice. Nobody responded to it. Istvan rounded on Kun. “What about you? You were a mage’s apprentice, after all.”

Kun bared his teeth in what was anything but a smile. “If I could, do you think I’d be stomping along like everybody else?”

“No law against hoping, is there?” Istvan said.

“No, and there’s no law against stupidity, either, though there cursed well ought to be,” Kun retorted. That was insubordinate, but Istvan let it slide. He knew why Kun was unhappy. He was unhappy for the same reason himself.

Another egg burst, this one half a mile over to the right. Istvan couldn’t hear whether the luckless Gyongyosian who’d trodden on it shrieked or not. He ground his teeth and kept going. Half a minute later, yet another burst shattered the morning calm. A magpie screeched annoyance at having its hunt for worms and crickets and maybe mice disturbed.

Higher and higher, the trees loomed ahead. But for the roadway that led into the forest, no one had ever taken an axe to it. Gyongyos had few woods like this, and none so vast. People were scattered thinly over this part of the world; it looked, Istvan judged, much as it had when the stars first shone down on it.

“Kun, walk point,” he called as his squad went into the forest a little to the north of the road. “Szonyi, on the right. Fenyes, on the left. I’ll take rear guard for a while. Keep your eyes open, everyone. Somewhere in there, the filthy goat-buggers are waiting for us.”

The world changed when he went in among the trees. The sun disappeared, except for occasional dapplings sneaking through the thick branches overhead. The air got cooler and damper; spicy, resinous scents filled it. Istvan’s boots scuffed on red-brown fallen needles. Here and there, especially at the bases of tree trunks, lacy green ferns sprang up.

On the meadow, Istvan had been able to see for miles. Here, the trees cramped his vision, and not just from side to side. When he looked up, those dark boughs hid the sky. He shook his head. He didn’t like that.

“No stars tonight,” he muttered, more to himself than to anyone else.

But one of his troopers heard, and answered, “They’ll see us, Sergeant, even if we can’t see them.”

“Aye,” Istvan answered, but he remained unreassured. He kept looking up. Every once in a while, he managed to spy a sliver of blue. When he did, he felt he’d won a victory.

A red squirrel holding a fir cone in its front paws peered down at him with beady black eyes and chittered in annoyance, as its cousin had out on the meadow. He raised a hand. The squirrel ducked back, putting the bulk of the branch--which was as thick as a man’s leg--between itself and what looked like danger.

Seeing it put a new thought in his mind. “Keep watching overhead,” he called to his men. “If the Unkerlanters haven’t put some snipers in the trees, I’m an even bigger fool than you think I am.”

Up ahead, Kun said something. Istvan thought he heard the word impossible, but he wasn’t sure. He decided not to find out.

Heading east and not getting turned around in this dim, shadowless world kept the whole squad--and probably the whole army--busy. Kun’s sorcerous training, though scanty, did come in hand there. From somewhere or other, he’d got a chunk of lodestone. He tied it on the end of a string and chanted over it. It swung in a particular direction. “That’s south,” he said confidently, and made half a turn to his left. “So this is east.” He pointed.

“How does the lodestone know where south lies?” Istvan asked.

“Curse me if I can tell you,” the former sorcerer’s apprentice said. “But I know that it does, which is what we need.”

“What we need is to bump up against the Unkerlanters, so we can knock ‘em out of the way,” Istvan said. “All this waiting is making my belly gripe.”

“It’ll loosen up when the fighting starts, that’s certain,” Szonyi said. “If you’re anything like me, you’ll thank the stars that you don’t foul yourself.”

That was no way for a member of a warrior race to talk, but Istvan just chuckled and nodded. Maybe some heroes didn’t think about what might happen to them when they went into action, but he did. He couldn’t help it.

Twilight under the trees was darkening toward real twilight when he and his countrymen ran into the first positions the Unkerlanters had built to block their path. “Down!” Kun shouted, and everyone in the squad threw himself flat. A beam zipped past above Istvan’s head. Whether it would have caught him had he not gone down, he didn’t know. It struck a tree trunk behind him and blazed through the bark deep into the wood. Aromatic steam gushed from the wounded pine.

Istvan scuttled over behind another tree. Ever so warily, he glanced around it. He saw nothing but more trees ahead. “Where are they?” he called softly.

“Up ahead somewhere,” Kun answered, which was doubtless true but imperfectly helpful. Sounding exasperated, the point man went on, “They’re Unkerlanters, curse it. They’re good at hiding to begin with, and they’ve had plenty of time to get ready for us.”

Shouts and curses and screams rang out all through the forest, as the Gyongyosian army ran into the concealed Unkerlanter defenders. The Unkerlanters had egg-tossers hidden among the trees along with their soldiers and started using them as soon as their foes collided with them.

And King Swemmel’s men had left forces in the woods who’d waited and stayed hidden while the Gyongyosians went past, then attacked from the rear after Istvan and his comrades bumped into the main defensive line. Istvan found out about that when one of them blazed at him from behind. He’d thought he had good cover, but suddenly a charred hole appeared in the tree in back of which he was hiding and only bare inches from his head.

He whirled and threw himself down on his belly. Where had the beam come from? Shouts of “Swemmel!” echoed through the darkening woods. For a moment, panic filled him. Was the whole Gyongyosian force surrounded and about to be cut to pieces? If it was, the Unkerlanters would have to go through a lot of stubborn men like him. Maybe there was something to springing from a warrior race after all.

Was that a rock-gray tunic? Istvan blazed. An Unkerlanter groaned and tumbled out from behind the trunk of a spruce. Istvan yanked a folding shovel off his own belt and began digging a hole in the soft dirt. He’d named himself rear guard for the squad. That meant he was the one who had to be first defender against threats from behind.