Jaws of Darkness

“Sounds good to me,” Ceorl said. Sergeant Werferth only shrugged. He’d always paid more attention to the proper rules of soldiering and less to what would save his own neck than made Sidroc comfortable.

But he was the one who’d ordered the retreat. He didn’t expect his men to do the impossible; too many of them had died trying. Sidroc’s boots squelched through mud. That would slow the behemoths down, too, even if it wouldn’t slow them down so much as he would have liked.

“Here! Over here!” That was an Algarvian voice, and one full of the authority the redheads effortlessly assumed. “Here is the crossing of the Skamandros. We shall pass over it, hold it open as long as we can, and then destroy it to keep the Unkerlanters from following.”

“There, you see?” Sidroc said cheerfully. “I ought to be an officer.”

“You ought to get a good kick in the slats.” Ceorl also sounded cheerful, as if he would have enjoyed delivering the kick. All things considered, he probably would have.

The bridge, when they reached it, was wooden and narrow: a miserable, rickety piece of work, like a lot of the things Sidroc had seen in Yanina. “Behemoths would have a demon of a time crossing on this,” he said as he started across it himself.

“Don’t want footsoldiers crossing, either,” Werferth said. “Swemmel’s whoresons are downright nasty when it comes to grabbing bridgeheads.” He was, without a doubt, right about that. Sidroc sighed with relief when he stepped into the mud on the far bank. The Unkerlanters would be a while crossing, anyhow.

A couple of Algarvian mages stood on the eastern bank of the Skamandros. One said to the other, “We’ll give it a few minutes more and then bring down the bridge. We don’t want to let the Unkerlanters get close enough to try a counterspell and stop us.”

“That’s the truth,” the other wizard said. “I’ve still got hopes of living to get old and gray and crotchety. A few behemoths in the wrong place don’t do those plans any good.”

They both laughed. Algarvians took pride in absurdity. Sidroc didn’t. He was just glad he’d got over the river before the redheads sorcerously smashed the bridge.

“To me!” called the Algarvian officer who’d known where the crossing was. “There’s a village ahead. We can shelter in it.”

“Who knows?” Sidroc said. “Maybe the stinking Yaninans will have more hams buried under the water barrel. Here’s hoping.” Marching made him weary, as it always did, but he wasn’t hungry. That in itself made a pleasant novelty.

He hadn’t gone far before a rending crash behind him a

The village wasn’t far ahead. Yapping dogs a

“Keep moving,” the Algarvian officer commanded, leading from the front as his kind usually did. “We’re going to dig in here. We’re going to stop the Unkerlanters in their tracks.” As his kind usually did, he sounded utterly certain of that. What difference did it make that powers-above-only-knew-how-many similar declarations had been wrong before?

Sidroc knew what difference it made. “We’d cursed well better stop Swemmel’s bastards,” he said. “We haven’t got a lot of room left to play around with.” He scowled at the village ahead, and at the dogs trying to nerve themselves for a run at the soldiers tramping up the road towards them.

“We’ve got to keep trying, no matter what,” Sergeant Werferth said. “If we don’t, we’re cooked, on account of-” He suddenly stopped talking. He suddenly stopped walking, too, crumpling down to the roadway as if he were a marionette with cut strings. He twitched a couple of times and lay still.

“He’s dead,” Ceorl said in slow wonder. “I fornicating can’t believe it. I was fornicating sure he’d outlive every fornicating one of us.”

That thought had gone through Sidroc’s mind, too. Now only anger filled him. He pointed ahead. “The beam came from that first house there. I saw it. Now we pay back the bastard who did it.”

“Now we pay back the whole fornicating village,” said Sudaku, the man from the Phalanx of Valmiera. He might be only a Kaunian, Sidroc thought, but he’s a pretty cursed good soldier.

A low growl ran through the men-Forthwegians, Kaunians, and Algarvians. Everyone who’d known Werferth had liked him. And he was one of their own, and a civilian sniper had blazed him. They shook themselves out into a skirmish line and advanced on the village at a purposeful trot. Most of the dogs in front of it fled, yelping in dismay. The soldiers blazed the ones that didn’t.

Another beam winked at them from that farmhouse window. This time, it didn’t hit anybody. A couple of soldiers blazed back, while others moved toward the farmhouse. Along with the rest, Sidroc trotted into the village. “Out!” he shouted in Algarvian. “Out! Out! Out!” A dozen, a score, of voices took up the cry. A couple of men even knew how to say it in Yaninan.

Confused and frightened-looking villagers started coming forth. Sidroc blazed the first one he saw, a woman a few years older than he was. She fell with a shriek. The rest of the Yaninans cried out in horror. Then their yells turned to agony, too, for all the men who fought for Mezentio started blazing at them. It was vengeance swift and sure, vengeance a hundredfold for the soldier their countryman had slain.

Afterwards, Sidroc remembered the massacre in red fragments. An old man with no teeth yammering in mushy terror, mouth open very wide, till Sidroc’s beam blew out the back of his head. A young man charging the soldiers but falling before he could use his fists, the only weapons he had. A young woman ru

It didn’t take long, the massacre. “They had it coming,” Sidroc said. A few Yaninans still writhed and moaned. Most lay where they had fallen.

“Of course they had it coming,” the young Algarvian officer said. “Now dig in. I don’t know how long the line of the Skamandros will hold the Unkerlanters. Not long enough, curse it.” He was likely right about that. Sidroc got to work.

Twenty

Somewhere not far ahead, the Algarvians waited. Leino knew it. Sometime soon, they would try to strike back. The Kuusaman mage didn’t know that, not for a fact, but he felt it in his boots. Mezentio’s men had already yielded half of Jelgava-more than half, farther to the south. If they were going to hold the armies of Kuusamo and Lagoas away from their own border, they would have to strike back soon.

He started to say as much to Xavega, but she picked that moment to look up from the grimoire she was studying and a

“Well, so it is,” Leino said. “You could always go outside the tent for some air.”

“It will be too hot out there, too.” Even in clean, abstract classical Kaunian, Xavega had no trouble sounding querulous. “This is autumn. The weather should be changing.”

“It has changed,” Leino said. Xavega shook her head, sending copper curls flying, but he went on, “It was much too hot. Now it is only too hot. Jelgava is a warm kingdom, much warmer than either Kuusamo or Lagoas.”

“Disgusting,” Xavega said. “I am always as sweaty as if we had just finished making love.” She put the grimoire aside and glanced over at him. “Since I am already sweaty, shall we?” Without waiting for an answer, she started undoing the toggles of her tunic.