Dazed or not, exhausted or not, Sidroc trudged forward to find his place behind the behemoths. Not only Forthwegians from Plegmund's Brigade were assembled there, but also Algarvian footsoldiers. The redheads didn't sneer at the Forthwegians anymore; ties of blood bound them together.
Other wedges of behemoths were coming together along the Algarvian line. "They've thought of something new," Sidroc remarked.
"Good for them," Werferth said. "And we get to be the ones who find out whether it works." He kicked at the dirt. "If we live, we're heroes." He kicked again, then shrugged. "And if we don't live, who gives a futter what we are?"
At shouts from the men who crewed them, the behemoths tramped off toward the rising sun. They didn't advance at a full, thunderous gallop, which would have left the footsoldiers far behind, but did move with an implacability that suggested nothing would stop them. Sidroc hoped the suggestion held truth.
From on high, Algarvian dragons dropped eggs on the Unkerlanter trenches and redoubts ahead. The crews of the behemoths with egg-tossers also began pounding the enemy position as soon as they drew within range. The Unkerlanters had dug ditches to keep behemoths away from their trench line, but the rain of eggs caved in the edges to a lot of those ditches. And behemoths, even armored, even carrying men and egg-tossers or heavy sticks, were surprisingly nimble beasts. They had little trouble finding ways to go forward.
Just before the behemoths reached the first trench line, both Algarvian and Unkerlanter wizards used sacrifices to get the life energy they needed for their potent spells. Lieutenant Ercole wasn't twenty feet from Sidroc when violet flame shot up from the ground and consumed him. He had time for one brief, agonized shriek before falling silent forever. Sidroc smelled burnt meat. Absurdly, dreadfully, the smoke-sweet scent made his mouth flood with spit.
As soon as the ground stopped shaking beneath him, he got up and moved on. From not far away, Ceorl called to Werferth, "You're in charge of the company now."
"Aye, so I am." Werferth sounded surprised, as if he hadn't thought of that.
"The redheads won't let you keep it," Sidroc predicted. "After all, you're just a lousy Forthwegian."
"I've got it now, though," Werferth said. "Don't see anything to do but keep on going forward. Do you?"
Sidroc stared at him. "You're not supposed to ask me what to do. You're supposed to tell me what to do. You're supposed to tell all of us what to do."
"Aye," Sergeant Werferth said again. He pointed ahead. "There's a little rise. Let's take it, and then we'll figure out what to do next."
Like any high ground on this field, the little rise had Unkerlanters on it. The men of Plegmund's Brigade were able to get closer to the foe than Algarvians would have before the Unkerlanters started blazing. For once, being Forthwegians helped them- King Swemmel's men thought for a little too long that they were on the same side. By the time they realized their mistake, Sidroc and his countrymen were already on top of them.
From the crest of the rise, they could see more high ground farther east. Pointing again, Werferth said, "If we can get up there, I think we can tear this whole position open."
"We?" Sidroc echoed. "Do you mean this company? Do you mean Plegmund's Brigade, whatever's left of it?"
Wearily, Werferth shook his head. "No and no. I mean the whole army. The behemoths will have to do most of the work. I can't see footsoldiers making it all that way without help. Must be another five, six miles."
In ordinary marching, that would have taken the soldiers a couple of hours- a good deal less than that, if they were in a hurry. Sidroc wondered how long it would take with what had to be all the Unkerlanters in the world between his army and that precious ground.
Swemmel's soldiers weren't inclined to let Plegmund's Brigade move another inch forward, let alone five or six miles. As soon as the Unkerlanters realized they'd lost the rise, they started tossing eggs at it. Sidroc and his comrades huddled in the holes from which they'd driven the enemy.
"Here they come!" Ceorl shouted. Sure enough, Unkerlanters in rock-gray tunics swarmed up the eastern slope of the rise, intent on retaking it. Sidroc blazed down several of them. The other Forthwegians did as well, but the Unkerlanters kept coming.
Then eggs started bursting among Swemmel's soldiers. A beam from a heavy stick blazed down two Unkerlanters unlucky enough to be in line with it. "Behemoths!" Sidroc yelled, his throat raw with excitement and smoke. "Our behemoths!"
Caught by surprise, the Unkerlanters ran away. They would sometimes do that when facing the unexpected, though not often enough for anyone ever to count on it. Sidroc waited for Werferth to order a pursuit. The order didn't come. Instead, Werferth said, "Let's wait till we get some more troops up here. Then we'll go after the whoresons."
Sidroc couldn't very well argue with that. More eggs began falling on the men from Plegmund's Brigade. Sidroc looked out toward the high ground in the distance. How could they hope to advance when it was all they could do not to retreat?
Once upon a time, probably, the village of Braunau hadn't been much different from any other Unkerlanter peasant village. That was before the Algarvians pushing west collided here with the Unkerlanters who had no intention of letting them go any farther. Now whatever was left of the village once the fighting finally went somewhere else would be remembered forever. How it would be remembered… The answer to that question was being written in blood in and around the place.
Again, Leudast thought of Sulingen. The Unkerlanters defending Braunau fought with the same determination their countrymen farther south had shown. Every hut, every barn, every well was defended as if it were the gateway to King Swemmel's palace in Cottbus. No one counted the cost. The determination was there: the Algarvians would not get past the village.
For their part, King Mezentio's soldiers remained stubborn and resourceful. No sooner would the defenders of Braunau chew up one brigade than another went into the fight. As always, the redheads were brave. Here, that ended up hurting them at least as much as it helped.
"They can't get at Braunau any other way than from straight ahead, do you see?" Recared said. "The ground won't let them try any of their fancy Algarvian tricks and come up our backside."
"That's the way it looks, anyhow," Leudast agreed. He wasn't so sure about what Mezentio's men could or couldn't do. He'd been wrong too many times.
Recared had fewer doubts- but then, he hadn't been in the fight as long as Leudast had. "Do they play the game called 'last man standing' in your village?" he asked.
"Aye, sir," Leudast answered. "They play it everywhere, I think. It helps if you're drunk." Two men stood toe to toe, taking turns hitting each other as hard as they could. Eventually, one of them wouldn't be able to get up any more, and the other fellow was the winner.
"Well, that's what we've got here," Recared said. "Either we end up on our feet here in Braunau, or the Algarvians do."
"Something to that," Leudast said. "But whether we're standing or the redheads are, Braunau won't be."
Not much of Braunau was standing at the moment. Leudast and Recared both peered out of a trench between a couple of ruined houses on the eastern edge of the village. A dead Algarvian lay in front of them; a couple more lay behind them. The redheads had twice got into Braunau, but they hadn't been able to stay. Their trenches, right this minute, lay a couple of hundred yards outside it.
From behind Leudast, Unkerlanter egg-tossers on the ridge in back of Braunau began pounding the Algarvian positions. Algarvian egg-tossers answered. Leudast said, "Better to have the redheads aiming at them than at us."
"Oh, they'll get to us, never fear," Recared said. "They always do." Leudast wished he thought the regimental commander were wrong.
Algarvian dragons flew by. They also dropped eggs on the Unkerlanter tossers. Some of them dropped eggs on Braunau, too. "Where are our dragons?" Leudast demanded. "Haven't seen many of them since this fight was new."
"Something went wrong," Recared answered. "I don't quite know what, but something did. We were supposed to hit the Algarvians a hard blow, but they did it to us instead."
Leudast sighed. "How many times have we heard that sort of story before?" he said. "How many of us are going to end up dead on account of it? They ought to blaze whoever fouled things up for us."
"Odds are, the Algarvians killed him, whoever he was," Recared said.
But Leudast said, "No. Somebody behind the line will have forgotten something or overlooked something. That's how it is with us. He's the one who deserves to get boiled alive."
"Maybe you're right," Recared said. "But even if you are, we can't do anything about it. All we can do is hold on here and not let the redheads through."
"No, sir." Leudast shook his head. "There's one other thing we can do. We can pay the price for that cursed fool's mistake. We can. And it looks like we will."
Lieutenant Recared scowled at him. "Sergeant, if you'd said something like that to me this past winter, I'd have given you up to the inspectors without a qualm."
He might not have had any qualms; the idea was plenty- more than plenty- to send a chill through Leudast. Leudast had the feeling that anybody turned over to the inspectors today would be sacrificed tomorrow, or the day after at the latest, and his life energy turned against the Algarvians. But Recared wasn't proposing to give him up now. Cautiously, he asked, "What makes you think different these days?"
"Well, a couple of things," the young regimental commander answered. "For one, I've seen that you're a brave man and a good soldier. And…" He sighed. "I've also seen that not all our higher officers are everything they might be."
With that, Recared had just put his own life in Leudast's hands. If Leudast chose to denounce him, the regiment would have a new leader immediately thereafter. That it was in the middle of a desperate battle, a battle where the future of Unkerlant hung in the balance, would not matter at all. After saluting, Leudast spoke with great solemnity: "Sir, I didn't hear a word you said there."
"No, eh?" Recared wasn't a fool. He knew what he'd done, too. "Well, that's probably for the best."
Leudast shrugged. "You never can tell. It might not have mattered any which way. I mean, what are the odds that either one of us is going to come out of Braunau in one piece? Let alone both of us?"
"If it's all the same to you, I'm not going to answer that question," Recared said. "And if you've got any sense, you won't spend much time thinking about it, either."
He was right. Leudast knew as much. Most of the time, he didn't worry about getting wounded or killed. Worrying wouldn't help, and it was liable to hurt. You had to do what you had to do. If you spent too much time thinking and worrying, that might make you slow when you most needed to be fast. But here in Braunau, as in Sulingen, you were only too likely to get hurt or killed regardless of whether you were a good soldier. Too many eggs, too many beams, too many Algarvian dragons overhead.