Jaws of Darkness (68 page)

Magecraft!
flashed through her mind just before the egg burst. She knew of no spell that could catch a quickly falling object like an egg and swing it back toward its target, but she didn’t know everything there was to know, either. The Algarvians had talented mages of their own. If they’d concentrated on this kind of magic, they might be as far ahead with it as her group was with its special spells.

Even as she realized that, the egg released its sorcerous energy with a great roar and a flash of light just behind the hostel. Although she’d wandered a couple of hundred yards away before she saw the dragon, the noise was terrific, a hammer-blow against the ears. Part of the hostel sagged down toward the back, like a tired old man sagging into a sofa. Smoke began to rise.

“No!” Pekka screamed, and dashed back to the battered building. As she ran, she looked up into the sky. She couldn’t spot the dragon at first. Then she did. It wasn’t circling any more. It was flying off toward the north, as if the man aboard it knew he’d done what he was supposed to do. And so, no doubt, he did.

Pekka cursed him with all her heart. She doubted the curse would bite; her own countrymen were warded against such, and the Algarvians were bound to be, too. She cursed anyhow.

People started spilling out of the hostel, some bleeding, some limping, some helping others who had trouble moving on their own. There was Ilmarinen, with blood running down his face from a cut cheek—and with the plate of smoked salmon from which he’d been eating still in his hand. He waved to her, calling, “They managed to sneak one in on us, the stinking whoresons.” Was he angry, or did he admire the Algarvians’ professional skill? Pekka couldn’t tell.

She waved back and said, “Aye.” She was glad to see Ilmarinen not badly hurt, but he wasn’t the one who’d made her come tearing back the way she had. “Where’s Fernao?” she cried.

In the midst of death and destruction, Ilmarinen laughed at her. But the laughter cut off. “He’s in there somewhere,” he answered, “one way or another.” He took the last bite of salmon off the plate and ate it.

More smoke poured from the hostel and more of it slid toward ruin. More people came staggering out, too, mages and servants and cooks all mixed together. Pekka’s heart leaped when she saw a tall, redheaded man with a ponytail—but it wasn’t Fernao, only one of the Lagoan mages who’d come here to learn the sorceries he’d helped shape.

Fernao had rescued her when the Algarvians assailed the blockhouse. Could she do anything less for him? She started into the hostel. A couple of men caught her and held her back. “Don’t go inside, Mistress Pekka,” one of them said. “The whole thing is liable to fall down.”

“I don’t care.” She kicked out at them. “Let me go!”

“No, mistress,” the man replied. “We need you safe. Plenty of other people to go in there and get out the hurt and the dead. You’re staying right here.” Between them, he and his friend were much stronger than she.

She struggled anyhow, and had to bite her tongue to keep from cursing them as savagely as she had the Algarvian dragonflier. And then, all at once, she went limp in their restraining arms. There was Fernao, staggering out through the door Ilmarinen had used. He’d lost his stick and made heavy going without it, but didn’t seem badly hurt.

“Pekka! Where’s Pekka?” he shouted in his accented but now fluent Kuusaman.

“Here I am,” Pekka called. When she said, “Let me go,” this time, the men who had hold of her did. She hurried over to Fernao. “Are you all right?” she demanded.

“Not too bad,” he answered. “How in blazes did the Algarvians manage to do this to us?” His face went thoroughly grim. “If one of the Lagoan mages I brought in turns out to be a spy, you can do whatever you please with me. I’d deserve it.”

“No,” she said. “It had nothing to do with you or any of the other Lagoans.” She explained how she knew.

“Guiding falling eggs by sorcery?” Fernao said when she was through. “I wouldn’t want to try that. But I won’t argue with you—you saw it, and I didn’t. I’m just glad you’re all right.”

“I’m glad
you‘re
all right,” Pekka said. They clung to each other. Now that she knew he was hale, Pekka’s wits started working again. “I’ve seen Ilmarinen. Now we have to find out if the rest of the theoretical sorcerers are safe.”

“There’s Palis.” Fernao pointed. “And who’s he dragging out? … Oh, powers above, it’s Viana.”

The Lagoan sorceress’ neck bent at an unnatural angle. She was plainly dead. Piilis let her rest on the grass and hurried in after someone else before Pekka could tell him to stop. She stared at Viana’s corpse, which looked skyward with blank eyes. In an odd way, her jealousy of the Lagoan might have saved her life. Shame filled her. She began to cry.

Fifteen

A
t some point in his life, Sidroc had surely heard the phrase
Misery loves company.
If he had, the exact meaning of that phrase had escaped him till he found himself not far from the town of Mandelsloh, in the extreme east of Unkerlant, surrounded by King Swemmel’s soldiers.

He didn’t know how many men who fought for King Mezentio were surrounded with him, but he did know the number wasn’t small. And he knew that the miserable men in the Mandelsloh pocket came from just about every kingdom that had followed Algarve into war against Unkerlant. Had he not known, the men sitting and lying around the fire with him would have done a good enough job of teaching the lesson.

Even in the chaotic, desperate fighting that marked the Algarvian response to the Unkerlanters’ latest blow here in the south, he hadn’t lost touch with Sergeant Werferth or Ceorl, though he wouldn’t have particularly missed the ruffian had something happened to him. A young, exhausted Algarvian lieutenant sprawled on the ground close by them. He’d been attached to Plegmund’s Brigade, but not to Sidroc’s company of Forthwegians in Algarvian service.

A couple of Grelzers in dark green tunics by now had beards that would have let them pass for Forthwegians—except that Sidroc understood very little of what they said. One of them was roasting some meat: probably a chunk of dead unicorn, but possibly dead behemoth. Not far from them, a blond from the Phalanx of Valmieran lay snoring. A Yaninan in leggings and the funny shoes the soldiers of his kingdom wore changed the bandage on a minor wound.

Unkerlanter dragons flew by overhead. They ruled the skies these days. They didn’t bother dropping an egg on the campfire: they were after bigger targets. Before long, eggs burst half a mile or so away. Sidroc didn’t even stir. If a burst wasn’t close enough to put him in danger of his life, he didn’t intend to worry about it. Even if it was that close, he wouldn’t worry about it much. Next to what would happen if Swemmel’s soldiers got their hands on him alive, dying didn’t look so bad.

“Where do we go from here?” he said—in Algarvian, the one language all the weary, frightened, battered soldiers nearby might understand.

Sure enough, the Yaninan answered in the same tongue: “East.”

“Plenty of Unkerlanters east of us, too,” Werferth said fatalistically.

That lieutenant sat up. “But our comrades are there to the east.” He was worn and filthy, not at all the proper, dapper Algarvian officer. “We have to break through. If we don’t break through, we’re all dead.”

“And if we do break through, we are still all dead.” That was one of the Grelzers, the one who wasn’t roasting meat. “It will take a little longer, that is all.” His Algarvian was so heavily accented, Sidroc had a hard time understanding him. But, once Sidroc did make sense of the words, he had a demon of a time disagreeing with them.

The Yaninan finished fiddling with his bandage. He pointed to the Grelzers. “You not have to go east,” he said, also haltingly. “You take off tunics, you just peasants.”

They both shook their heads. “I will not live under King Swemmel,” said the one who’d spoken before. “He kills his whole kingdom.”

When the other Grelzer took his meat off the fire, Ceorl pointed to it and said, “You want to share that?” As usual, he had his eye on the main chance. The Grelzer plainly wanted nothing of the sort. He glared at Ceorl as a dog with a bone might glare at another dog who’d looked at it. But, unlike a dog, he thought before he fought, and reluctantly nodded. He started cutting up the gobbet so everyone could get a couple of bites from it.

Sidroc wolfed down his portion. He had some bread in his pack, but he didn’t take it out. What he showed, he would have to share. If he went hungry now, he might be able to eat more a little later. Meanwhile, the Yaninan shook the Kaunian from Valmiera awake so he could get his little portion.

“Thank you,” the blond said around a yawn. He’d been asleep when the other trapped soldiers talked about what to do next, but he had the same idea: “We had better get moving.” The accent he gave to Algarvian was even stranger than that of the Grelzers. But he still thought straight, for he went on, “The longer the Unkerlanters have to tighten the noose around us, the more trouble we will be in.”

Ceorl said, “I’m sick to death of marching.”

“If you stay here, you’ll get your death whether you’re sick or not,” Sidroc said. Ceorl glared at him. They still didn’t like each other. Had they not had worse worries, they might have fought.

With a groan, the Algarvian lieutenant heaved himself to his feet. “He’s right,” he said. “We’ve got no good chances, but moving fast is our best one.”

Sidroc groaned, too, as he made himself stand. He wanted to sleep, with luck for about a week. But he wasn’t ready to sleep forever, not yet, and so he trudged off with the rest.

Everything inside the Mandelsloh pocket painted a picture of the disintegration of the army trapped there. Unkerlanter dragons had caught a column of supply wagons out in the open and smashed it to bits. The wagons lay burnt and scattered like savaged toys; the animals that had drawn them were bloated and starting to stink.

A battery of Algarvian egg-tossers had suffered a similar fate. The engines made to fling death at the Unkerlanters wound up on the receiving end of what they were supposed to dish out. Their tumbled and broken disarray argued that this fight would not be won, not by the Algarvians.

And a ley-line caravan had taken an egg and now blocked the line it was intended to travel. Soldiers struggled to move it aside so other caravans might pass.
How much good will that do?
Sidroc wondered.
They still can’t get through the ring Swemmel’s buggers have around us.

The lieutenant leading the motley little group of which Sidroc was a part must have had the same thought. He didn’t let them get close enough to the wrecked caravan to be ordered to help shift it. They just went on their way, one band among many without much hope but without much choice, either. With only one choice, in fact: Break out or die.

More dragons appeared overhead. Sidroc promptly dove into the crater a bursting egg had left behind. His comrades took cover, too. He waited for more eggs to fall, for the earth to shake at their bursts, for the screams of wounded men to start. Nothing of the sort happened. After a moment, the blond from the Phalanx of Valmiera said, “Those are Algarvian dragons.”

Algarvian dragons
had
flown over the Mandelsloh pocket before, but not very often. When they did, they sometimes dropped food or medicines for the soldiers. Sidroc looked, up to the sky with sudden hope. The thought of getting his hands on a food package made his belly growl and his mouth water.

But no food parcels plummeted down. In a way, they were only cruel hoaxes, since the dragons couldn’t possibly bring in enough even to come close to supplying all the men trapped around Mandelsloh. Every little bit helped someone, though.

Instead of food packets, leaves of paper fluttered in the air, slowly dancing toward the ground. Sidroc grunted. “What sort of lies are they telling us?” he asked nobody in particular. The Unkerlanters sometimes dropped leaflets urging their foes to surrender and promising them good treatments if they did. The leaflets would have been much more persuasive had those foes not known what had happened to Raniero of Grelz.

Sidroc didn’t even have to climb out of his hole to get his hands on a leaflet. Two of them swirled down into the crater; one hit him in the shoulder. He grabbed it and turned it right side up.

Soldiers of Algarve, help is on the way!
it read.
A strong counterattack from the east has been launched to regain contact with you and reestablish the front in this area. We expect your rescuers to fight their way through the forces of the barbarous foe and join you within two days’ time. You are urged to break out toward the east to aid this movement and to insure that it is crowned with success no matter what the result of the attack fom the rescuing units.

He read it through twice. He spoke Algarvian better than he read it. But there still didn’t seem any room for doubt. “They’re going to try,” he said as he came out of the crater. “They’re going to try, but they don’t think they can do it.”