And the Algarvians did not respond so readily or so strongly as they would have a few weeks or even a few days before. Pulled by horses or mules or behemoths, egg-tossers had an ever-harder time keeping up with footsoldiers as they pushed the front forward. Tealdo hoped for dragons, but the cold and the snow were hard on them, too.
After about a quarter of an hour, the eggs stopped falling as abruptly as they’d begun. In the sudden silence, Captain Galafrone raised a shout: “Forward, men! The Unkerlanters are still getting ready to hit us. We’ll cursed well hit them before they are ready.” He shouted again: “Mezentio!”
“Mezentio!” Tealdo yelled, and sprang up from his hiding place. Other officers were shouting their men forward, too; more than half a year of war had taught them how their foes fought. And, sure enough, they caught King Swemmel’s soldiers out of their holes and gathering for their own attack. That made the white-smocked Unkerlanters easier targets than they would have been resting in the soot-streaked snow or scurrying from house to house.
Tealdo blazed a couple of enemy troopers. More fell to beams from his comrades’ sticks. But the rest, instead of retreating, surged forward. Tealdo dove behind a snow-covered pile of bricks. He came up blazing and knocked over another Unkerlanter. In an abstract way, he might have admired the courage King Swemmel’s men showed. They’d shown it ever since the fighting started. They’d been forced back, but they hadn’t given up on themselves the way the Valmierans and Jelgavians had. He wished they would have despaired. In that case, Algarve would be victorious, and he wouldn’t have to worry about getting killed any more.
“Forward!” Captain Galafrone shouted again. “Once we break out ofThalfang, they won’t have anything left to stop us.”
Tealdo didn’t know whether the Algarvians could break out ofThalfang and kept thinking about all the eggs the Unkerlanters had thrown at them. But he scrambled to his feet. He sprinted for the next bit of cover he saw--an overturned wagon in the middle of the street. He crouched behind it, blazing at the Unkerlanters. Their attacking force melted as the snow hereabouts wouldn’t do till spring.
Trasone ran past him. “Come on,” Tealdo’s burly friend called. “Do you want to be late for the party?”
“Can’t have that.” Tealdo got up and advanced again. As he ran, he realized something had changed. He needed a moment to know what it was. Then he exclaimed in glad surprise: “The snow’s stopped!”
“Oh, happy day!” That wasn’t Trasone; it was Sergeant Panfilo. “Any minute now, the sun will come out, and then you can go climb a fornicating palm tree, just like they’ve got in fornicating Siaulia.”
A few minutes later, the sun did come out. Tealdo saw no palm trees, fornicating or otherwise. All he saw was a battered Unkerlanter town; sunshine made it dazzling without making it beautiful. Ahead lay a broad expanse of empty, snow-covered ground. “The market square!” Tealdo shouted. “We’re halfway through this stinking place, anyway.”
“Aye, so we are,” Trasone answered. “And there’s half as many of us as there were when we got here, too.”
Tealdo nodded, but he wasn’t really listening. He was staring northwest, across the market square, across the rest of the ruins ofThalfang, toward higher ground in the distance. He pointed. “Curse me if those aren’t the towers or whatever they call them of King Swemmel’s palace.”
Trasone stopped and stared, too. “You’re right,” he said, his rough voice softened for once. “We’ve come all this cursed way, and there it is, close enough to reach out and touch.” He stretched out a hand, then shook his head and laughed. “Of course, we’ve still got a few Unkerlanters to go through.”
“Aye, a few.” Tealdo nodded. “They know they can’t afford to lose this town. And I’m not looking forward to crossing the square. They’re bound to have snipers on the far side, and we’re not decked out in white like they are. Makes us too easy to spot.”
“Ought to cut the balls off whoever didn’t think to lay in white smocks for us,” Trasone growled. “Some bespectacled whoreson in a nice warm office back in Trapani probably figured we’d lick the Unkerlanters before we needed them, so he didn’t bother having any made.”
“Come on, boys! There’s Cottbus ahead!” Captain Galafrone pointed in the direction of King Swemmel’s palace. “It’ll be as easy to grab as a whore’s snatch now. Forward!” As if spying the towers had sorcerously restored his youth, he charged out into the market square. Every Algarvian within the sound of his voice followed.
Thalfang’s square was bigger than the one an Algarvian town with about as many people would have had. Not being so crowded in their kingdom, the Unkerlanters could and did use space more lavishly. And slogging through deep snow made the market square seem bigger still.
Something moved, there in one of the streets leading into the market square from the far side. Tealdo blazed at it, but couldn’t be sure whether he’d hit it or not. Then eggs came whistling into the square out of the north and west. They burst all around the advancing Algarvians. Wounded men screamed and flopped in the snow like newly landed fish.
Tealdo threw himself down. “The captain’s hit!” somebody yelled--Tealdo thought it was Trasone, but he couldn’t be sure, not with his ears stunned from so many bursts close by. The Unkerlanters had more left than anyone had thought they did, and they were throwing in every bit of it to try to hold Thalfang.
That thought had hardly crossed his mind before fresh shouts of dismay rose from some of the Algarvians caught in the open. “Behemoths!” Raw terror edged those cries. “Unkerlanter behemoths!”
Into the market square they came. Tealdo lifted his head and blazed at them. Now he knew what he’d seen, there in the street across the square. He expected to have all the time in the world to pick off their crewmen, even if he couldn’t do anything much to the beasts themselves. If Algarvian behemoths bogged down in snowdrifts, surely Unkerlanter behemoths would do the same.
But they didn’t. They came forward almost as swiftly as they would have over dry ground in summer. Gaping, Tealdo saw that they had wide, net-laced contraptions strapped to their feet. Snowshoes, he thought numbly. The Unkerlanters have tricked out their cursed behemoths in snowshoes. Why didn’t we come up with something like that?
He got no time to brood about it. The behemoth began tossing eggs with deadly accuracy. Beams from heavy sticks hissed like giant serpents when they struck snow, kicking great clouds of steam up into the frosty air. Some of that steam was tinged with red; those beams boiled a man’s blood as readily as a snowbank.
Behind the behemoths came white-smocked Unkerlanter soldiers, also on snowshoes. Unlike the Algarvians, they didn’t flounder through the drifts, but strode along atop them. And there were so cursed many of them! Captain Galafrone had said that, once the Algarvians got past Thalfang, not much stood between them and Cottbus. From somewhere or other, King Swemmel had found reserves Galafrone hadn’t known about.
Well, Galafrone was already down. Tealdo didn’t know how badly he was hurt, or whether he realized how wrong he’d been. Along with the behemoths, the Unkerlanters were throwing a couple of brigades at a banged-up battalion’s worth of Algarvians. And how many more soldiers did they have flooding into Thalfang from the north?
Those behemoths were terrifyingly close now. They’d already passed--or run over--the forwardmost Algarvians. Did they intend to trample Mezentio’s men as well as tossing eggs at them and blazing them with heavy sticks? Tealdo rose a little to blaze down an Unkerlanter behemoth-rider who was fitting an egg to his tosser. But other behemoths were already past him, with footsoldiers close behind them. Cries of “Urra!” and “Swemmel!” mingled and began to drown those of “King Mezentio!”