On came the Unkerlanter behemoths, footsoldiers trotting along behind. “Those men on foot should be up farther,”SergeantWerferth said from close by Sidroc, as if the Unkerlanters were his troops. “We’re going to make them pay.”
Sidroc intended to make them pay. He waited quietly in his hole till an incautious behemoth drew too close. Then he flung one of the little pottery-encased sorcerous eggs the Algarvians had been issuing lately. As he’d hoped, it landed right under the behemoth, rolling beneath the animal’s armored skirt before bursting. Mad with pain and fear, the behemoth rampaged back the way it had come, trampling a luckless footsoldier who stood in its path.
Other Unkerlanter footsoldiers started blazing at Sidroc when he stayed up too long to admire his handiwork. Werferth knocked him down. “Back in your hole, sonny boy,” the veteran said. “We’ll need you next time around.”
“Right,” Sidroc said. “Thanks, Sergeant.” Only after the words were out of his mouth did he remember how angry at Werferth he was supposed to be. He shrugged. He didn’thave to do anything about it now. If he decided he still wanted to later, he could take care of it. He’d have more chances. He was sure of that.
LieutenantLeudastsprang to one side, away from the wounded behemoth that now ran wild, far out of its crew’s control. Trailing blood, the behemoth thundered west, back toward the Fluss River. It would keep spreading chaos through the Unkerlanter bridgehead till its injuries made it fall over or till someone finally killed it.
“Steady, men!” Leudast called. “Keep up the advance. We can do it.”
In spite of his words, the Unkerlanter counterattack faltered. The Algarvians and their Forthwegian flunkies weren’t going to be able to smash in the bridgehead and drive his countrymen back over the river. That much seemed clear. The enemy lacked both men and behemoths for the job. But no breakthrough was coming here, either, not until more Unkerlanter men and beasts and egg-tossers made it over the Fluss.
Little by little, both sides realized they wouldn’t accomplish much, and the fighting tapered off. What point to risking your neck when getting killed wouldn’t get you victory? What point to risking your neck even when getting killed willget you victory? Leudast wondered. He shook his head. That was a subversive thought for a soldier to have.
SergeantKiunsaid, “I don’t like fighting those fornicating Forthwegians for beans. For one thing, they always fight hard.”
“They’re volunteers,” Leudast answered. “They aren’t conscripts, the way the redheads are.” He didn’t mention how impressers went through Unkerlanter villages herding young men into Swemmel’s army. He didn’t need to mention it. He’d joined the army that way. So, very likely, had Kiun, and so, very likely, had most of the men they led.
“Other thing is,” Kiun went on, “they look more like us and they dress more like us than the Algarvians do. That means you’re liable not to figure out who they are till too late.”
“That’s so,” Leudast said. “It’s not as bad as with the Grelzers, but it’s so.”
“Grelzers.” Kiun rolled his eyes. “May we see the last of the stinking traitors, and soon.”
Leudast nodded. He hadn’t had anything in particular against the folk of the Duchy of Grelz before entering it. All he’d known about them was that they had what was, in his ear, a funny accent. Capturing Raniero, the redhead who’d called himself their king, had won him wealth and rank, no matter what it had done to Raniero himself afterKingSwemmel paraded him through Herborn.
But fighting Grelzers… At the beginning of the war through the Duchy, some of the men who wore the dark green tunics of what called itself the Kingdom of Grelz had been halfhearted about fighting their Unkerlanter brethren. A good many had thrown down their sticks and surrendered the first chance they got.
That didn’t happen anymore. With most of Grelz inKingSwemmel ’s hands these days, the Grelzers who kept on fighting against him were the ones who’d joined the late, not much lamented Raniero because they hated the King of Unkerlant with a deep and abiding passion, not because they’d been looking for advantage from the Algarvians. Few of the ones who wore dark green these days bothered trying to surrender. Few of the ones who did yield went back to captives’ camps.
With a sly grin, Kiun said, “Bet you almost wouldn’t’ve minded getting chased back over the Fluss, Lieutenant.”
“You can’t say things like that,” Leudast answered, which didn’t mean the underofficer was wrong.
“I just thought you’d like to get back to Leiferde and your lady friend there,” Kiun said, his smile disarming now. “I’ve got a lady friend back there myself, matter of fact.”
“Have you?” Leudast said, and Kiun nodded. “I didn’t think you meant anything you shouldn’t have,” Leudast continued, “but you never can tell who may be listening.”
Kiun’s grimace said he understood exactly what Leudast meant. KingSwemmel saw traitors everywhere. That he saw so many had helped create a good many here in the Duchy of Grelz. It had probably helped create a good many elsewhere in Unkerlant, too. But any Swemmel could reach suffered for it: a potent argument against treason.
Captain Recared, the regimental commander, came up to Leudast. “I think things here have settled down for a while,” he said.
“Aye, sir.” Leudast nodded. “Just one more little fight.”One more little fight I’m lucky I lived through. How many didn ‘t this time? How many have I got left?
“We’ve held the bridgehead,” Recared went on, and Leudast nodded again. His superior said, “That’s what really matters. Sooner or later, we’ll break out and give the Algarvians another good kick in the teeth.”
“We’ve given them a lot of kicks, the past year and a half,” Leudast said. “Feels good to be the foot and not the backside.”
Recared laughed. He’d seemed impossibly young when he first took command of the regiment where Leudast commanded a company. His features were still youthful-he couldn’t have been much above twenty years old- but he’d been through a lot since then, just as all Unkerlanter soldiers had. All of us who are still breathing, anyhow, Leudast thought.
“You saw how they threw a few behemoths at us and tried to make them count for a lot,” Recared said. “That’s what they’re reduced to these days. They’re still dangerous-I expect they’ll always be dangerous-but we can beat them.”
They’re still dangerous-but we can beat them. Almost three years before, Leudast had been near the border between Unkerlanter and Algarvian-occupied Forthweg. He and his comrades had been on the point of attacking the Algarvians, but the redheads struck first. After that, Leudast had done nothing but retreat for a long time, till Mezentio’s men finally stalled in the snow of an Unkerlanter winter just outside Cottbus.
He’d done more retreating the following summer, down in the south, and missed some of the fight in Sulingen because he’d been down with a leg wound that still pained him now and again. But he’d come a long way east since then.
They’re still dangerous-but we can beat them. It would have seemed absurd in the days when the Algarvians swept all before them. Now it was simply truth.
“Do you know what I wish, sir?” Leudast asked.
“Probably,” Recared answered. “You wish you were back on the other side of the Fluss, finding some way or other to be alone with that girl you met there. Am I right, or am I wrong?” He chuckled. He knew he was right.
And Leudast could only nod once more. “If I live through the rest of the war, I think I’ll come back here.”
“Who knows whether you’ll think the same way then?” Recared said. “A girl goes to bed with you a few times, you decide you’re in love.” That was cynical enough to have come from an Algarvian’s throat. Before Leudast could say anything or even shake his head, the regimental commander changed the subject: “Do you know, Lieutenant, we’ve been promised a new field kitchen, and it never did show up.”