Somewhere up ahead, eggs were bursting. Istvan wondered who was tossing them at whom. With the breeze blowing from out of the east, bringing the sound toward his ears, he had trouble being sure. He hoped those eggs were landing on the Unkerlanters’ heads.
“Come on! Come on!” That was Captain Tivadar’s voice. Istvan relaxed a little; if he’d found his company commander, he’d brought the squad somewhere close to where it was supposed to be. Tivadar caught sight of him and waved. “The party’s up ahead.”
“Aye.” Istvan turned to his men. “Come on, you lugs. Back into the line we go.”
“Not enough time pulled back, and we didn’t pull back far enough, either,” Szonyi said. Istvan remembered when he’d been new to the game. He wasn’t any more. He picked the same thing to complain about as Istvan would have, or, for that matter, as a fellow who’d been in the army since before Istvan was born would have.
“They can’t very well give us a proper leave, not when it’s a week’s march back to the nearest ley line that could take us anywhere worth going,” Istvan told him. Istvan had been a sergeant long enough by now to know how to squelch grumblers, too.
“Then they cursed well ought to bring some whores forward,” Szonyi said. Since Istvan thought that was a good idea, too, he didn’t argue any more.
Captain Tivadar fell into step beside him. “Swemmel’s boys are up to something,” he said. “Nobody knows what yet, but they haven’t been standing and fighting the past couple of days the way they would before.”
“Maybe they finally know they’ve been licked.” Istvan threw up a hand. Tivadar sputtered raucous laughter all the same. Istvan went on, “No, I didn’t mean it. They’re tough, no doubt about it.”
“And they’ve got more lines in these woods than a thief has on his back after he takes his forty lashes,” Tivadar added. “No, if they don’t fight now, it’s because they’re plotting something nasty for later.”
“Aye, you’re likely right, sir,” Istvan agreed with a sigh.
More eggs burst, closer now. Istvan looked around for the nearest hole in which he could hide, something he did as automatically as he breathed, and because he wanted to keep breathing. That also made him take more notice of the forest through which he was marching. Tivadar noticed him noticing; the captain didn’t miss much. “You see what I mean?”
“Aye,” Istvan said again, nodding. “If they’d fought the way they usually do, the woods here would be beaten flat. Instead, most of the trees are still standing.”
“That’s what I’m talking about,” the company commander agreed. “When they’ve always done one thing and they all of a sudden change to another, anybody with any sense starts wondering why.”
An egg burst close enough to send branches crashing down only a few strides away. “They haven’t quite given up yet,” Istvan remarked dryly.
Tivadar chuckled. “No, it doesn’t seem that way, does it? But it’s not the same kind of fight as it has been, and I don’t trust it.”
The breeze from out of the east blew smoke into Istvan’s face. He coughed a couple of times. A moment later, he smelled something else: the sickly-sweet reek of corruption. Sure enough, a few paces farther on he strode past a bloated corpse in a rock-gray tunic. He jerked a thumb toward it. “Good to see we got one of those sons of goats, anyhow.”
“Oh, we’ve hurt them,” Tivadar said. “But what they’ve done to us.. ”
“The whole cursed country is too big and too far from everything to make it easy to fight over,” Istvan said. “We can’t get at it, and the Unkerlanters can’t get very many men into it, either. But as long as they can keep us from getting into country that really is worth something, they’re ahead of the game.”
“That’s about the size of it,” Captain Tivadar agreed. The breeze out of the east picked up, and tried to lift his service cap off his head. He tugged it down over his curly hair. “Sooner or later, we will break out. Then, by the stars, we’ll make them pay. Till then …” He grimaced. “Till then, the debt just keeps getting bigger.”
Cries echoed through the forest as Istvan’s squad neared the front. He had trouble sorting out Gyongyosians and Unkerlanters. No matter which kingdom wounded men came from, their moans and screams sounded very much alike. Telling how far away the racket came from wasn’t easy, either. Istvan kept expecting attackers to burst out of the bushes at any moment, only to realize a heartbeat later that the noises he’d heard came from a long way off.
“They’ve stopped tossing eggs,” Tivadar said. He frowned and plucked a hair from his beard. “I wonder why. They’ve got more egg-tossers than we do: they don’t have to manhandle them over the mountains to get them here.”
“Only the stars know why Unkerlanters do things.” But Istvan frowned, too. “When they don’t do what they usually do, you wonder what they’re up to, like you said.”
“You’d better, too, if you want to keep the stars shining on you,” the company commander answered. He started to say something else, but coughed a couple of times instead. “Smoke’s getting thick.”
“Aye, it is.” Istvan’s eyes stung and watered. He pointed east. “It’s coming from that way, too. Maybe Swemmel’s men are burning themselves up, and that’s why they aren’t using their egg-tossers.” He laughed, then coughed himself. “Too much to hope for.”
“No doubt it is,” Tivadar said, “but we have to-”
Before he could tell Istvan what the Gyongyosians had to do, a couple of his countrymen burst out of the woods ahead. Istvan almost blazed them for Unkerlanters. But Swemmel’s men didn’t wear leggings or bushy yellow beards, and they didn’t yell, “Fire!” at the top of their lungs in his language, either.
While Istvan was gaping, Captain Tivadar rapped out, “Where? How bad?”
“Bad,” the men said in the same breath. One of them added, “The accursed goat-eaters have fired the whole forest against us.” And then, without waiting for any more questions, they both dashed off toward the west.
Istvan and Tivadar stared at each other. While they were staring, the breeze-no, more than a breeze now, a freshening wind-blew thick smoke into their faces. They both coughed, and both looked as if they wished they hadn’t. Istvan heard other shouts of, “Fire!” He also heard more Gyongyosian soldiers plunging through the woods, fleeing the flames.
And then he heard the fire itself, crackling with insane glee. A moment later, he saw it through the branches and brambles ahead: a wall of flames, licking up tree after tree and advancing on him as fast as a man could walk. He turned to Tivadar. “What do we do, sir?”
“We-” The company commander bit back whatever he’d been about to say and answered, “We fall back. What else can we do? It’ll cook us if we stay.” He shook his fist at the fire, and at the Unkerlanters behind it. “May the stars never shine on them! Who would have thought to use fire as a weapon of war?”
Whoever had thought of it had had a good idea. Istvan didn’t need to order his squad away from the flames; he had to work to keep them from fleeing like so many panicked horses. He had to work to keep panic from sinking its teeth into him, too. The fire was frightening in a way war wasn’t. It wasn’t trying to kill him; it was just doing what it did, and the only thing he could do about it was run.
Run he did, hoping he could go faster than the flames. Behind him-ever closer behind him, it seemed-trees turned into torches. Smoke got thicker and thicker, till he could hardly breathe, could hardly tell in which direction he should run. Away from the flames-that was all he knew.
At last, when he was beginning to wonder how much farther he could run, he plunged into the bog from which he’d emerged earlier that day. He slogged into the mud, rejoicing at what he’d cursed then. Now the fire had trouble following. He shook his fist at it, as Tivadar had shaken his fist at the Unkerlanters who’d started it. When the flames died down, he and his comrades would go forward again. And what would King Swemmel’s men have waiting for them then?