Harry Turtledove - Darkness Descending

Garivald did, too. He got down flat. He wished he could dig a hole. That was what soldiers did. When an egg burst behind him, it rolled him over and battered him with its force. Others who hadn’t listened to the veteran were down and screaming--except for one woman who lay with her head twisted at an unnatural angle and would never get up again.

Before long, the Unkerlanter egg-tossers fell silent, beaten into submission by the redheads’. A couple of men from their crews ran off into the woods. Garivald had a hard time blaming them when all their comrades were slain or wounded.

More and more soldiers in rock-gray tunics streamed through and past Zossen. By then, the villagers had nothing left to give them but water from the wells. The next morning, an officer declared, “This is a good enough place for a stand. We’ll make the redheads pay high for it, by the powers above. You peasants head off to the west. If you’re lucky, you’ll get away.”

“But, my lord,” Waddo quavered, “that will mean the end of the village.”

The officer pointed his stick at the firstman’s face. “Argue with me, wretch, and it’ll mean the end of you.”

He started giving orders that would have turned Zossen into the best fortress he could make of it. Before he’d got far, though, his crystallomancer cried, “Sir, the redheads have broken through south of the woods. If we try to hold in the front, they’ll take us in flank.”

“Curse them!” the officer snarled. “That stretch of line should have held.” He ground his teeth; Garivald clearly heard the sound. The officer’s shoulders sagged. “Whoever was commanding down there ought to have his neck stretched, but no help for it. We’ve got to fall back again.”

His men had already begun trickling off toward the west. They’d been through this before. Garivald wondered if they’d been through anything else.

“Firstman!” the officer shouted. Waddo hobbled toward him, looking apprehensive. The officer’s lip curled. “Oh. You. Listen to me: if you’ve got a crystal in this miserable place, bury it deep. You won’t like what happens to you if the Algarvians find it.” Without waiting for an answer, he tramped off. He had more fight in him, but Garivald wasn’t sure whether he’d sooner take on King Mezentio’s men or his own side.

“Garivald!” Waddo called.

“Aye?” Garivald answered, all too sure he knew what was coming next. With his bad leg, Waddo couldn’t dig.

And the firstman did not surprise him. “Fetch a spade and come with me,” Waddo said. “We’d better get the crystal out of sight. I don’t think we have much time.”

Wishing Waddo had picked someone else, Garivald shouldered a shovel. The firstman went into his house--which eggs had left untouched--and came out with the crystal. Garivald followed him to a yard-deep hole in the middle of a vegetable plot where an egg had burst.

“Bury it at the bottom of that,” the firstman said, pointing. “With the ground already torn, some more digging won’t show.”

“Fair enough.” Garivald got into the hole and went to work. He might not like Waddo, but the firstman wasn’t stupid. Garivald kept looking over his shoulder as he dug. Some people in Zossen liked Waddo even less than he did. If they told the Algarvians what the firstman had done, the redheads would do something to Waddo. While they were about it, they were liable to do something to Garivald, too.

Thinking thus, Garivald hid the crystal, covered it over, and scrambled out of the burst hole as soon as he could. He hurried to put away the spade. He’d just come out of his hut again when the first Algarvian behemoth trotted into the village.

He stopped in the doorway and stared. He couldn’t help himself. He’d never seen a behemoth before, not in the flesh. The size and power of the beast astonished him. The iron sheathing its great horn and the heavy mail that protected it were rusty and had seen hard use. The mail jingled at every stride the behemoth took. The animal had a strong odor, something like a horse’s, something like a goat’s.

The behemoth bore on its back a heavy stick and four Algarvians--the first Algarvians Garivald had seen in the flesh, too. Two more behemoths followed close behind. They escorted a couple of squads of kilted footsoldiers. The Algarvians ran taller and leaner than Garivald’s countrymen; to him, it gave them the aspect of coursing wolves.

One of the men atop the lead behemoth shouted in what he thought was Garivald’s language: “Unkerlanti soldieri?”

“Not here.” Three peasants said it at the same time. Two of them pointed west, to show where King Swemmel’s men had gone.

Laughing and nodding, the Algarvian translated for his comrades. They grinned, too. They’re stupid, not to figure it out for themselves, Garivald thought. But the redheads weren’t so stupid as to take anything on trust. The footsoldiers fanned out through the village in pairs, searching every house--and seizing the chance to feel up any woman they found pretty. Several indignant squawks rose, but the Algarvians did nothing worse than let their hands roam free. Once they’d satisfied themselves no aiabushers lurked nearby, they relaxed and seemed friendly enough--for invaders.

Before long, an unmistakable Algarvian officer strode into Zossen. He owned even more arrogance than had marked his Unkerlanter counterpart not long before. He also owned a real command of the Unkerlanter language, barking, “Where is the firstman for this stinking, miserable pustule of a village?”

Leaning on his cane, Waddo limped forward. “Here I am, lord,” he quavered.

With a curse, the Algarvian pushed him over and kicked him. “You’re not Swemmel’s dog anymore. Have you got that? You’re King Mezentio’s dog now. And if you try any funny business, you’ll be a dead dog. Have you got that?” He kicked Waddo again.

“Aye, lord,” the firstman gasped. “Mercy, lord!”

Out of the side of his mouth, Garivald whispered to Annore, “So it’s going to be like that, is it?” His wife’s hand stole into his. They squeezed each other, hard.

Four

From the air, the battle below had for Sabrino the perfect clarity granted to footsoldiers only on maps after the fact. He watched with some anxiety the development of the Unkerlanter counterattack toward Sommerda, a city from which King Mezentio’s men had driven the enemy a couple of days before. The Unkerlanters lost fight after fight, but seemed too stupid to understand they were losing the war. They kept hurling new soldiers into the fray and striking back as best they might.

Nor could Sabrino blithely hurl his wing of dragonfliers at the men in rock-gray on the ground, as he had in the first days of King Mezentio’s assault on Unkerlant. Dragons painted an unromantic rock-gray were in the air, too, their fliers intent on doing to Algarvian soldiers what Sabrino and his comrades had done to the Unkerlanters since the war was new.

Those boring gray paint jobs made Unkerlanter dragons cursed hard to spot, especially against cloudy skies or smoke coming from the ground. A squadron had got below Sabrino’s wing before some sharp-eyed Algarvian flier spied them and spoke into his crystal, alerting the whole wing.

“They’ll pay for that!” Sabrino whooped. “Domiziano, your squadron, and yours, too, Orosio. The rest of you, stay on top to make sure they don’t try to bring any more of their little friends down on us.”

He urged his dragon into a dive. He was wing commander, but he was also a fighting man. The dragon screamed in anger at being ordered about, but then screamed in fury at sighting the Unkerlanter dragons. Its great muscles surged beneath Sabrino, almost like an ardent lover’s; its wings beat hard.