Crickets were chirping not far from the campfire by which Garivald sat when Andelot came up to him and asked, “Got a moment, Fariulf?”
“Aye, sir,” Garivald answered. You couldn’t tell a superior no. He hadn’t needed more than one scorching from a furious sergeant to learn that lesson forever. And, in truth, he hadn’t been doing anything more than marveling at hearing crickets in wintertime. There wouldn’t have been any singing down around Zossen. He scrambled to his feet. “What do you need, sir?”
“Walk with me,” Andelot said, and headed away from the fires and out into the darkness. Garivald grabbed his stick before following. Everything seemed quiet, but you never could tell. Andelot only nodded. If he’d discovered who Garivald was, he wouldn’t have wanted him armed. So Garivald reasoned, at any rate. His company commander nodded again once they were out of earshot of the rest of the Unkerlanters. “Sergeant, you showed outstanding initiative there when you volunteered to go after the Algarvian egg-tosser. I’m very pleased.”
“Oh, that.” Garivald had already forgotten about it. “Thank you, sir.”
“It’s something we need more of,” Andelot said. “It’s something the whole kingdom needs more of. It would make us more efficient. Too many of us are happy doing nothing till someone gives them an order. That’s not so good.”
“I hadn’t really thought about it, sir,” Garivald said truthfully. If you didn’t have to do something for yourself, and if nobody was making you do it for anyone else, why do it?
“Mezentio’s men, curse them, have initiative,” Andelot said. “They get themselves going without officers, without sergeants, without anything. They just see what needs doing and do it. That’s one of the things that makes them so much trouble. We should be able to match them.”
“We’re beating them anyhow,” Garivald said.
“But we should do better,” Andelot insisted. “The price we’re paying will cripple us for years. And it’s something we should do for our own pride’s sake. How does the song go?” He sang in a soft tenor:
“ ‘Do anything to beat them back.
Don’t hold off, don’t go slack.’
Something like that, anyhow.”
“Something like that,” Garivald echoed raggedly. He was glad the darkness hid his expression from Andelot. He was sure his jaw had dropped when the officer started to sing. How not, considering that Andelot was singing one of his songs?
The company commander slapped him on the back. “So, as I say, Sergeant, that’s why I’m so pleased. Anything you can do to encourage the men to show more initiative would also be very good.”
“Why don’t you just order them to …?” Garivald’s voice trailed away. He felt foolish. “Oh. Can’t very well do that, can you?”
“No.” Andelot chuckled. “Initiative imposed from above isn’t exactly the genuine article, I’m afraid.” He headed back toward the fires. So did Garivald. One of the nice things about being a sergeant was not having to go out and stand sentry in the middle of the night.
He woke the next morning before dawn, with Unkerlanter egg-tossers thunderously pounding the Algarvians farther east. Andelot’s whistle shrilled. “Forward!” he shouted. Forward the Unkerlanters went, footsoldiers, behemoths, and dragons overhead all working together most efficiently. Garivald didn’t worry, or even stop to think, that the Algarvians had devised the scheme his countrymen were using. It worked, and worked well. Nothing else mattered to him.
Artificers had laid bridges over the river that ran near Gromheort-nobody had bothered telling Garivald its name. Andelot clapped his hands when he thudded across one of those bridges. “Nothing between us and Algarve now but a few miles of flat land!” he shouted.
Garivald whooped. That there might be some large number of redheads with sticks between him and their kingdom was true, but hardly seemed to matter. If King Swemmel’s men had surged forward from the Twegen and Eoforwic to here in a few short weeks, another surge would surely take them onto Algarvian soil.
Garivald whooped again when he saw Unkerlanter behemoths on this side of the rivet. Footsoldiers were a lot safer when they had plenty of the big beasts along for company.
But then one of those behemoths crumpled as if it had charged headlong into a boulder. A couple of the crewmen riding it were thrown clear; its fall crushed the rest. “Heavy stick!” someone close to the beast yelled. “Blazed right through its armor!”
Maybe that was just an enemy emplacement nearby. Or maybe. . An alarmed shout rose: “Enemy behemoths!”
Even before the first egg from the Algarvian beasts’ tossers burst, Garivald was digging himself a hole in the muddy ground. A footsoldier without a hole was like a turtle without a shelclass="underline" naked, vulnerable, and ever so likely to be crushed.
Another Unkerlanter behemoth went down, this one from a well-aimed egg. The Algarvians knew what they were doing. They generally did, worse luck. Had there been more of them. . Garivald didn’t care to think about that. Beams from ordinary, hand-held sticks announced that Algarvian footsoldiers were in the neighborhood, too.
“Crystallomancer!” Andelot bellowed. “Powers below eat you, where’s a crystallomancer?” No one answered. He cursed, loudly and foully. “The fornicating Algarvians would have a crystallomancer handy.”
Before he could embroider on that theme, Unkerlanter dragons dove on the enemy behemoths. Crystallomancer or not, someone back on the other side of the river knew what was going on. Under the cover of their aerial umbrella, the men in rock-gray moved forward again. Garivald ran past a couple of corpses in kilts, and past a redhead down and moaning. He blazed the Algarvian to make sure the fellow wouldn’t get up again, then ran on.
But Mezentio’s men hadn’t given up. A crash from behind Garivald made him whirl. There was the bridge on which he’d crossed, smashed by an egg. A moment later, another one went up. A tall column of water rose into the air. “They’re using those stinking sorcerously guided eggs again,” somebody exclaimed.
“They did this to us back by the Twegen, too, and we managed fine then,” Garivald said. But that bridgehead had been well established. This one was brand new. Could it stand against enemy counterattack? He’d find out.
Vanai hadn’t known peace, hadn’t known the absence of fear, since Algarvian footsoldiers and behemoths swept into, swept past, Oyngestun. Now Eoforwic was calm and quiet under the rule of King Beornwulf and the more obvious and emphatic rule of the Unkerlanters who propped him on his throne. She could go out without sorcerous disguise if she wanted to. Some Kaunians did. She hadn’t had the nerve to try it herself, not after having had her nose rubbed in how little so many Forthwegians loved the blonds who lived among them.
But lack of love was one thing. The desire to kill her on sight was something else again. For the first time in more than four years, she didn’t have to worry about that. Life could have been idyllic … if the Unkerlanters hadn’t hijacked Ealstan into their army.
Fear for her husband swirled around her and choked her like nasty smoke. “It’s not fair,” she told Saxburh. The baby looked up at her out of big round eyes-eyes that, by now, were almost as dark as Ealstan’s. Saxburh smiled enormously, showing a new front tooth. Now that it had come in, she was happy. She had no other worries. Vanai wished she could say the same herself.
“Not fair,” she whispered fiercely. Saxburh laughed. Vanai didn’t.
In a way-in a couple of ways, actually-this was worse than worrying about her grandfather when Major Spinello set out to work him to death. She’d agonized over Brivibas more from a sense of family duty than out of real affection. And she’d been able to do something to keep her grandfather safe, even if letting Spinello into her bed had been a nightmare of its own.