Darkness Descending (6 page)

This time, though, he didn’t let her go free right away. Looking down at her face from a distance of about six inches, he said. “You were wise to yield yourself to me. The whole of Derlavai is yielding itself to Algarve.”

All Vanai said, rather faintly, was, “You’re squashing me.”

Spinello took more of his weight on his elbows and knees. He stayed atop her, though, his legs between hers, imprisoning her. “Forthweg is ours,” he said. “Sibiu is ours. Valmiera is ours. Jelgava is ours. And Unkerlant crumbles. Like a child’s sand castle when the tide rolls over it, Unkerlant crumbles.”

Boasting of his kingdom’s conquests excited him; she felt him stir against her inner thigh. He bent his head to her breast. She realized he was going to have a second round. With a small sigh, she looked up at the rough plaster of the ceiling till he finished.

As he got back into his kilt and tunic, he went on, “The war is as good as over. You need have no doubt of that. Our time, the Algarvian time, is come at last, the time of which our forefathers dreamt even in the days when they dwelt in the forests of the distant south.”

Vanai only shrugged. What seemed a golden dream to Spinello was her nightmare brought to life. She shuddered to think of Algarvians free to torment Kauni-ans for the next hundred years. She also shuddered to think of Spinello free to come back here tomorrow or the next day or a week from now to make her do whatever he wanted.

She could do nothing about Spinello. She could do nothing about the war. As the Algarvian major had boasted that his kingdom’s armies were overwhelming the Unkerlanters, so the war had overwhelmed her.

Spinello chucked her under the chin—one more liberty she had to let him take. “Until I see you again,” he said with a bow, as if he imagined she might want to see him again. “And do give my best regards to your ever so learned grandfather.” Out he went laughing and whistling.

He was happy. Why not? He’d satisfied himself, and Algarve’s armies stood everywhere triumphant. Vanai, despised by the large Forthwegian majority in her own kingdom, despised even more by its conquerors, went off to get a rag and a pitcher and to do her best to scrub the memory of his touch from her body. She despised herself most of all.

Marshal Rathar had come down into the south to see with his own eyes how the Algarvians were making such headway against the Unkerlanter armies there. He had gone to the north, to the border with Zuwayza, to take charge of the fight in the desert when it was going badly. That had been an embarrassment for Unkerlant. If this fight went badly, it would be a catastrophe.

His first lesson was very nearly his last. He had just got out of his ley-line caravan car in the medium-sized town of Wirdum, a good twenty miles behind the battle line, when flight after flight of Algarvian dragons appeared overhead. By the time they got done dropping eggs, the local depot was burning. So were the baron’s castle and much of the center of town.

He didn’t realize he was bleeding till someone offered him a sticking plaster for the cut on his cheek. He declined with a shrug: “I thank you, but no. I don’t want the soldiers to think I hurt myself shaving.” The joke would have been better if he hadn’t had to say it three times, each louder than the one before, till the fellow with the plaster finally got it. The rain of eggs from the sky had stunned everyone’s ears.

Strong, hook-nosed face set in a frown, he rode forward toward General Ortwin’s headquarters. That was no easy trip, either. The Algarvians had already given the roads hereabouts the same sort of pasting Wirdum had just taken. Rathar s horse had to pick its way through the fields to get around the craters in the roadway. Soldiers and horses and unicorns and a few behemoths lay sprawled in death; the stink of rotting meat that rose from them was very strong. Flies rose from them, too, in great humming, buzzing clouds. Rathar’s horse flicked its tail this way and that; the marshal swatted and fumed.

Turning to the soldier guiding him to General Ortwin, he demanded, “Where are our own dragons? We need to pay the enemy in his own coin.”

“We didn’t have as many to start with as the cursed redheads did,” the man answered. “The ones we did have are mostly dead by now.”

Closer to the line of battle, egg-tossers concealed from the air with nets hurled destruction back at King Mezentio’s men. Rathar grunted in some satisfaction when he saw that. “The Algarvians aren’t having it all their own way then,” he said.

“Oh, no, my lord Marshal,” his escort replied. “They pay a price for every mile they move forward.”

“They’ve already moved too many miles forward,” Rathar said, “and the price they’ve paid hasn’t been nearly high enough.” The soldier riding with him grimaced and then, with obvious reluctance, nodded.

After what seemed far too long, the marshal reached the tent from which General Ortwin was conducting his defense. Ortwin, who was very bald on top but, as if to compensate, had tufts of white hair sprouting from his ears and nostrils, shouted into a crystal: “Bring that regiment forward, curse you! If we don’t hold the line of the river, we’ll have to fall back past Wirdum, and King Swemmel will pitch a fit.” He glanced up and saw Rathar. In a voice full of defiance, he said, “If you want to haul me away for lese majesty, my lord Marshal, here’s your chance.”

“I want to halt the Algarvians,” Rathar said. “That’s the only thing I want, and I’m not fussy about how I do it.”

Ortwin snorted, which made his nose hairs quiver like grass in the breeze. “Why aren’t you shorter by a head?” he asked with what sounded like genuine curiosity. “Everybody thought you were going to be, this past fall.”

Rathar shrugged. “His Majesty believes I do not want to be king, I think. Powers above know it’s a true belief. But I came here to escape the court, not to gossip of it.” He strode forward. “Show me how you are doing.”

“None too bloody well,” Ortwin answered, which would have served as commentary for the entire Unkerlanter fight against Algarve. “When you set out, we still had a decent force on the east side of the Klagen. This morning, though, the cursed Algarvians threw us back over the river, and powers below eat me if I see how we’re going to keep them from crossing.” He pointed to the map to show what he meant.

“Why didn’t you reinforce your men on the east side?” Rathar asked.

“My lord Marshal, what do you think I tried to do?” Ortwin retorted. “I haven’t got a fancy hat with a feather in it like an Algarvian general, but I’m not stupid—not too stupid, anyhow. I tried. I couldn’t. Their dragons kept dropping eggs on the fords of the Klagen, and their behemoths thundered right through the line our men put up.”

“Where were our behemoths for a counterattack?” Rather inquired.

“Spread too thin to do much,” Ortwin told him. “They bunched theirs, and they broke through with them.”

Rather exhaled angrily. “Shouldn’t that have given you a hint, General? We’re going to have to learn to fight like the Algarvians if we intend to throw them back.”

Ortwin said, “My lord Marshal, I didn’t have enough of the beasts to make any great counterattack with them anyhow.” He held up a hand whose back was gnarled with veins like old tree roots. “And before you ask why I didn’t get some from the north or the south, the redheads are driving back our armies there, too, and no general has enough for himself, let alone to spare any for his neighbors.”

“That is not good,” Rathar said, an understatement if ever there was one. “We must be able to concentrate our behemoths, as the Algarvians are doing, or else they will go right on smashing through us.”

“You are the marshal of Unkerlant,” Ortwin said. “If anyone can make it so, you are the man.” He cocked his head to one side. “Listen to the way the eggs are falling. Sure as sure, Mezentio’s men are trying to get over the Klagen.” Rathar cocked his head to one side, too. Ortwin was right. Most of the bursts came from the southeast, where the Unkerlanters were fighting to hold the line of the river. One of the crystallomancers turned and spoke urgently to the general.

“I came here to see the fighting,” Rathar said as he started out of the tent. “I am going up toward the line there.”

“Crystals,” Ortwin called after him. “We need more crystals, too. Seems as though the stinking Algarvians have ‘em on every behemoth and every dragon, and we’ve got regiments out there without any. They fight smoother than we can, if you know what I mean.”

“I do know,” Rathar flung back over his shoulder. “The sorcerers are working night and day to activate more. But we have to keep so many of them busy turning out sticks and eggs, we can’t do as much with crystals as we’d like.” Unkerlant was a bigger, more populous kingdom than Algarve. King Mezentio’s domain, though, had more trained mages and artisans than did King Swemmel’s. Algarve spent materiel and sorcerous energy lavishly. To stop the redheads, if they could be stopped, Rathar feared Unkerlant would have to spend men lavishly.

He shouted for a fresh horse. When he got one, he rode toward the Klagen at a rapid though bone-jarring canter. Unkerlanter egg-tossers were flinging relentlessly, straining to hold back the Algarvians. Even as Rathar watched, though, Algarvian dragons dove on a knot of tossers. The fliers released their eggs at just above treetop height, so they could hardly miss. Most of those egg-tossers fell quiet. No Unkerlanter dragons challenged the ones painted in red and white and green.

Men in rock-gray tunics streamed back toward the west. “Stand, curse you!” Rathar shouted. “Stand and fight!”

“The Algarvians!” three of them shouted at him in return. “The Algarvians are across the river.” One soldier added, “Our officers say that if we don’t get out now, they’ll cut us off and we won’t be able to get out at all.”

Their officers might well have been right. Rathar rode toward a farmhouse where a captain was pulling together a rear guard to hold off the redheads while their comrades retreated. The young officer gaped, goggle-eyed, at the large stars on the collar of Rathar’s tunic. “Carry on, Captain,” the marshal said crisply. “You know the situation and the ground better than I do.”

“Uh, aye, sir,” the captain said, staring still. He ordered his men—more than a company’s worth—with no small skill.

But then, from the east, another shout rose: “Behemoths!” Rathar grinned in fierce anticipation; he’d come a long way to see the fearsome Algarvian behemoths in action. Only belatedly did he realize that, having seen them, he was liable not to be able to make the long journey back again.

Far from thundering down on the farm in a great rampaging charge, the behemoths paused out of range of a footsoldier’s stick and began methodically pounding the Unkerlanter strongpoint to bits. Eggs fell on and around the holes the Unkerlanters had dug for themselves. Heavy sticks set the farmhouse and its outbuildings ablaze, flushing from cover the soldiers who’d sheltered there. After they’d battered the position, Algarvians in short tunics and kilts snaked forward to finish off their foes.

“My lord Marshal, get out while you can,” the young captain called to Rathar. “We’ll hold them off here while you get away.” A cheer rose from the Unkerlanter line. One of the troopers had been lucky enough to blaze a behemoth in the eye. As the beast toppled, it crushed a couple of the Algarvians who’d been riding it.

Rathar realized the captain was right. If he was going to get out, he had to do it now. He saluted the soldiers who would cover his retreat, then remounted and rode off toward the west. A couple of Algarvian behemoth crews lobbed eggs after him. They burst close enough to frighten his horse, but not close enough to knock it over.

More Algarvian dragons flew overhead. Again, they had the sky to themselves. They did not bother with a lone man on horseback, but saved their attention for larger groups of soldiers and horses and unicorns. Rathar had seen the gruesome results of that tactic on the ride up from Wirdum. Now, as he retreated along with the mass of Unkerlanter soldiery, he saw those results again, rather fresher this time.

On came the Algarvians behind him. All through their fights against earlier foes, they’d advanced as smoothly as a ley-line caravan. Nothing he’d seen here made it look as if things would be any different—till he thought of that young captain. And there, ahead of him, another officer was shouting at the men around him to form up for another rear-guard action. The men obeyed, too, though they must have known they were unlikely to last long.

This far south, darkness came late. A little bit further on toward summer and it would hardly have come at all. When at last twilight deepened, Marshal Rathar lay down in a hole in the ground and slept like a worn animal. The Algarvians hadn’t come far enough to scoop him up before he woke. Nor, for a wonder, had anyone stolen his horse, which he’d tied to a bush close by. He rode west again.

General Ortwin greeted him with a cry of glad surprise when he rode up to the headquarters. “Powers above be praised you’re here, my lord Marshal,” the general said. “We’ve got to pull back soon—can’t hold here much longer with the redheads over the Klagen; I told you that already—and you’re urgently ordered back to Cottbus.”

“What?” Rathar said irritably. “Why?” Only too late did he wonder if he really wanted to know.

Want to or not, he found out. “I’ll tell you why,” Ortwin said. “The Gongs have stabbed us in the back, that’s why. They’ve started up the war in the far west again.”

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