Rank, or at least some rank, had finally caught up with Leudast. He was, at last, officially a sergeant. He was also commanding a company: a handful of veterans like himself, fleshed out with recruits who no longer deserved to be called fresh-faced--a few days in the line and they were as grimy and disreputable-looking as anybody else.
He wondered how many other sergeants in King Swemmel’s army were commanding companies. A lot of them, or else he was a black Zuwayzi in disguise. He also wondered when the extra pay that went with his new rank would start catching up with him. He didn’t intend to hold his breath.
Thinking about money made him laugh, anyhow. What could he do with it, up here at the front, but gamble? He couldn’t buy much--there wasn’t much to buy. And he wouldn’t hold his breath waiting for leave, either. Every man who could carry a stick was in the line these days, or so it seemed.
But, for the first time in the fight against Algarve, the Unkerlanter armies were moving forward. Leudast was almost inclined to cheer every time snow or freezing rain came pelting down, even if he had to endure them out in the open. He knew Marshal Winter had done as much to stop the redheads as Marshal Rathar had.
Somewhere not far away, eggs began bursting. The Algarvians holed up in the village northeast of the trench in which he huddled weren’t about to give up without a fight. They had plenty of egg-tossers and, no doubt, plenty of stubborn soldiers, too. A wounded man started screaming not far away. Leudast clicked his tongue between his teeth. The Algarvians might be retreating, but they weren’t making life easy for their foes.
Captain Hawart came up to Leudast, leaving tracks behind him in the snow. Hawart had started out commanding the company Leudast now led. These days, the captain was in charge of a brigade’s worth of men. He hadn’t been promoted at all and was doing a senior officer’s work on a junior officer’s pay.
He’d also grown forgetful like a senior officer, for he called, “A good day to you, Magnulf.”
“Magnulf’s dead,” Leudast said. Had he been looking out of the hole he’d shared with his sergeant when the egg burst in front of it, he would have been the one who didn’t come out. Luck, he thought. Nothing but luck. “I’m Leudast.”
“Well, so you are.” Hawart took off his fur hat and whacked himself in the side of the head. “And I’m Marvefa, the fairy who makes new leaves grow every spring.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me a bit, sir--you look just like her,” Leudast said, and Captain Hawart rocked back on his heels and laughed. He was a pretty good officer, and didn’t slip very often. Leudast went on, “What now?”
Hawart pointed ahead, toward the village from which the Algarvians were still tossing occasional eggs. “Tomorrow morning, we’re going to throw them out of that Midlum place,” he answered. “We’re supposed to have behemoths coming up to give us a hand, but we’ll take a whack at it whether they do or not.”
“Aye, sir,” Leudast said resignedly, and then, because he couldn’t help himself, “If they don’t show up, we’re going to leave a lot of dead men in the snow in front of Midlum.”
“I know.” Captain Hawart sounded resigned, too. “But those are the orders I got, so that’s what I’m going to do. Even if we get slaughtered, we help the kingdom.”
“Huzzah,” Leudast said in tones that sounded like anything but celebration.
More often than not, Hawart would have laughed again and agreed with him. Today, the captain said, “Like it or not, it’s true. We’re doing our best to shove our way back into Grelz. This attack--and we’re just part of it--is supposed to keep the Algarvians from moving reinforcements down there.”
“All right, sir,” Leudast said. “Once I’m dead, I’m sure I’ll be glad to know it was for some good reason.”
“Probably because I hit you over the head with a rock.” But Captain Hawart was laughing again. He slapped Leudast on the back. “Have your men ready. We move before sunup, with the behemoths or without “em.”
“Aye, Captain.” Leudast didn’t expect the behemoths. The whole course of the war had taught him not to expect them. There were rarely enough to go around; more stretches of line needed the great beasts than could have them. He got his company ready to attack Midlum without them. For once, he was glad he had only a handful of veterans. The new troops would go forward without knowing how unlikely they were ever to get into the village.
And then, in the middle up the chilly night, the behemoths did come up to the front, chainmail clinking below the heavy blankets that helped their shaggy fur keep them warm. Starlight glittered off their long, sharp, iron-shod horns. Thanks to the great snowshoes attached to their feet, they had little trouble making their way over the drifts.
Real hope--a strange feeling--began to rise in Leudast. “We’re going to do this,” he told his men. “We’re going to kick the redheads out of that village, we’re going to chase them across the fields, and we’re going to slaughter them. This is what they bought for coming into Unkerlant and trying to take away our homes. Now they’ll pay full price--every last copper.”
His own home village, not too far from what had been Unkerlant’s border with Forthweg, lay far to the east of where he squatted now. He wondered how his kinsfolk fared under Algarvian occupation. The only thing he could do to help them was hurt Mezentio’s men as much as he could.
In the darkness, his men’s heads bobbed up and down. They listened earnestly. Most of them lacked the experience to know what they were getting into. After the coming day’s fighting, though, they’d be veterans, too--the ones who wouldn’t be corpses strewn across the frozen ground.
Almost on time, Unkerlanter egg-tossers started pounding Midlum. “Get ready, boys,” Leudast said. “It won’t be long now.” He peered across the fields toward the bursts of sorcerous energy ahead. Now the Algarvians would know something was coming their way. With luck, the bursting eggs would keep them from doing too much about it. With luck . . .
They were alert, there in Midlum. Leudast had never known the Algarvians when they weren’t alert. He wished this might be one of those times, but it wasn’t. Eggs began flying back toward his own position. Fortunately, the Algarvians were tossing a little long, so they didn’t hurt too badly the men gathered to attack them.
Whistles blew, all along the Unkerlanter line: officers ordering their men forward. Leudast was doing an officer’s job, but he didn’t have the formal rank, so he didn’t have a whistle, either. A shout had to do: “Let’s go!”
The behemoths went forward, too. They paused outside of Midlum. Some, the ones that mounted egg-tossers on their backs, joined in pounding the village and the Algarvians inside. Others sent beams from their heavy sticks against the houses to the east. Fires began to burn, lighting up the eastern sky as if dawn were coming too soon.
Leudast flopped down behind what he thought was a snow-covered boulder. But boulders didn’t have hair: it was a dead behemoth--a long-dead behemoth, which meant it had probably belonged to the Algarvians. “Blaze and move!” he shouted. “Blaze and move!”
His men knew what they were supposed to do: some were to blaze to make the Algarvians keep their heads down while others advanced into new cover. Then the two groups would reverse roles. But knowing what to do and doing it right the first time you tried it were two different things. Leudast had expected no better than he got.
He wondered if the Algarvians had any behemoths in Midlum. If they did, the beasts needed to come out and fight: the only thing with much hope of stopping one behemoth was another. But no behemoths came forth from the village. Maybe they’d all frozen to death. Leudast hoped so.