“Aye,” Farkas answered, on reaching a point where he could stop. “It is a subtle tongue, and painful experience on the islands has taught us that we need subtlety to detect and neutralize this sorcery.”
He kept looking through the spiderweb. Istvan wondered if it let him see the holy stars despite daylight and cloud cover. If it did, what were the stars showing him?
Istvan got the answer to that in short order. “There are mages familiar with the nasty Kuusaman spell on that bearing.” Farkas pointed toward the southeast, not quite in the same direction Kun had before. He did some more incanting, this time all in hieratic Gyongyosian. Kun joined him in a few of the responses. If there was risk in what he did, Istvan couldn’t see it. At last, Farkas said, “The distance is just over a mile. Have we egg-tossers far enough forward to reach them?” His tone said Tivadar had better be able to produce such egg-tossers.
And Tivadar nodded. “Sir, we do.” He took a map from his belt pouch, studied briefly, and made a mark on it. When he showed Farkas the mark, the military mage nodded. Tivadar gave Szonyi the map. “Take this back to the tossers in the clearing. Tell ‘em to pound that spot with everything they have.”
“Aye, Captain.” Szonyi saluted and hurried away, the map clutched in his big fist.
Farkas said, “I notice that several men here have the identical scar on their left hands. What does it mean. Sergeant, would you tell me?” His golden-brown eyes speared Istvan.
Istvan spluttered and stammered. Ice walked up his back. Telling the truth was the last thing he wanted to do. His face heated; taken by surprise, he had trouble coming up with a plausible lie. Captain Tivadar did it for him, speaking in casual tones: “Some few of these veterans have sworn blood brotherhood, one with another. You see the marks from the wounds that went with the oaths.”
“Ah.” Farkas inclined his head in grave approval. “The marks of warriors.” “The marks of warriors.” Istvan found his tongue. “Aye, sir.” A few minutes later, eggs started bursting on-he hoped they were on-the Unkerlanter position. He hoped they slew those devious mages. Even so, he had the feeling he’d escaped worse danger from Farkas than anything the Unkerlanters could have given him. Goat-eater. No, the mark inside him would never go away.
Leudast’s leg twinged under him. He had the feeling he would be able to foretell bad weather with his wound as long as he lived. He still limped. But he could get around on the leg, and so the Unkerlanters had handed him a stick and thrown him back into the fight against the invaders.
As a sergeant, he’d been given a platoon, here in the low, rolling hills northeast of Sulingen. His company commander was a very young lieutenant named Recared. Recared was either impeccably shaved where most of his countrymen were bristly, or else, more likely, couldn’t raise a beard no matter what. Leudast missed Captain Hawart, missed him and wondered if he still lived. He doubted he’d ever find out.
Recared liked to hear himself talk. As night slowly and reluctantly yielded to day, he said, “You men know that, when the sun rises behind us, we attack.”
“Aye,” Leudast chorused along with the rest of the soldiers Recared was haranguing. He wished the lieutenant would shut up. If they didn’t know what they were supposed to do by now, one more lecture wouldn’t get it through their heads.
But Recared went right on. Maybe he used lecturing to fight the fear that went with battle. “We attack to the west,” he said. “We-not the cursed Algarvians. We and all the egg-tossers and behemoths and dragons we could gather here, brought through the Mamming Hills and up over the Wolter. We attack to the west. . and Marshal Rathar’s other army, miles and miles away, will attack to the east. We will meet in the middle, and cut off all the stinking redheads down in Sulingen.”
“Aye,” the men chorused again, this time with fierce hunger in their voices. If everything went the way it should, they would make Mezentio’s men sorry they’d ever thrust their noses into Unkerlant. If… But with Algarvians, you never could tell. Leudast had seen that too often, to his sorrow and nearly to his destruction.
That made him think of something else. He stuck up his hand. “May I say a word, sir?”
Recared didn’t look happy at the idea of anyone else talking, but nodded. “Go ahead, Sergeant.”
“Thank you, sir.” Leudast turned to the waiting soldiers. “Remember, boys, what we’ve got in front of us isn’t Algarvians. We have a big kingdom here, and they’re stretched too thin to hold all the line themselves. It’ll be Yaninans and whatever other odds and sods they can scrape up. I’ve fought those buggers, and I’ve fought the Algarvians, too. Give me Yaninans any day.”
The soldiers who’d gone against King Tsavellas’ men nodded and began telling their friends what cowards the Yaninans were. Recared slapped Leudast on the shoulder. “That was well said,” he told him. A moment later, the lieutenant turned and looked back over his shoulder. He pointed to a tiny gleam seen for a moment through clouds. “The sun!” he cried.
Leudast wasn’t sure it really was the sun, but officers higher than Recared must have thought so, too. Egg-tossers began hurling death at the Yaninans huddled in their tents and holes and trenches. Leudast’s eyebrows flew up at the number of eggs bursting on the enemy. Neither his own folk nor the Algarvians had managed to put so many tossers on one narrow stretch of line very often.
Dragons painted rock-gray flew low overhead. Some had eggs slung beneath their bellies. Others flew unburdened, to protect their comrades and to flame the luckless Yaninans. Leudast took off his fur hat and waved it at the dragonfliers. Every enemy soldier they and the egg-tossers killed or wounded was an enemy who couldn’t kill or wound him.
Chainmail clattering with every “great stride they took, behemoths lumbered forward. Leudast waved his hat at their crews, too. He knew his countrymen had been gathering them, as Lieutenant Recared had said. As with the egg-tossers, he hadn’t known so many had made their way here. But then, he hadn’t been here very long himself.
Recared proved himself an officer by blowing a long, piercing blast on the whistle he wore round his neck. “Forward!” he shouted.
“Forward!” Leudast echoed. He had no whistle, but he’d long since got used to doing without. “King Swemmel! Urra!”
“Urra!” the Unkerlanter soldiers echoed as they swarmed out of their trenches. “Swemmel! Urra!”
Some men linked arms with their comrades and charged on together, doing their best to keep up with the behemoths. What had been the Yaninan lines were now a smoking, cratered jumble. After the pounding they’d taken, Leudast couldn’t see how anything could remain alive in them.
But his countrymen started falling-not in’ enormous numbers, as happened when an attack went wrong, but here and there, now one, now another. Egg-tossers on the behemoths pounded positions where the Yaninans held out in some strength. Footsoldiers overran the rest.
“Urra!” Leudast roared, and jumped down into a battered trench. He landed on a dead Yaninan, noticing only because he didn’t hit the ground so hard as he thought he would. A moment later, a live Yaninan came out of a hole, his hands high, terror twisting his face. Leudast took what food he had-- black bread and moldy sausage-and let him live. “Urra!” he shouted again, and ran on.
Every so often-almost surely in the places where they had good officers- the Yaninans fought hard. But Tsavellas’ men had next to no behemoths, and few heavy sticks that might penetrate the armor the Unkerlanter beasts wore. Few enemy dragons flew, either.
Leudast looked around a little past noon and was astonished at how far he’d come. Recared had come all that way, too. “It’s a rout, sir!” Leudast exclaimed. He sounded drunk, but he hadn’t had enough spirits in his water bottle to get him high. This is what victory feels like, he thought dazedly.