Jaws of Darkness Read Online Free Page B

and its crew. This time, Sidroc saw the dragon that flamed the beast. It was painted in green, red, and white: Algarvian colors. He cheered again. The redheads had been short of dragons since Durrwangen, too, though not to the same degree as they’d been short of behemoths.
    But the Unkerlanter behemoth crews who served heavy sticks also blazed at the Algarvian dragons. Their beams were strong enough to burn through silvery belly paint and the armoring scales beneath. A dragon slammed into the snow. It thrashed for a long time before it died; its great tail sent a couple of Unkerlanters spinning, smashed and broken, to their deaths. The dragon-flier, though, had surely died at that first crushing impact.
    With most of the enemy behemoths dead, Algarvian officers blew their whistles. Their imperative cry rang out again: “Forward!”
    Sidroc would sooner have stayed where he was and let somebody else take the chances. But, along with the other troopers from Plegmund’s Brigade— and along with the Algarvians, too; no denying the redheads had spirit—he scrambled to his feet and went forward. Even as he did, he wondered why. He didn’t particularly care about clearing the Unkerlanters from the village ahead. He didn’t even particularly care about retaking Herborn; he’d seen enough battered Unkerlanter villages and towns and cities to last him the rest of his days.
    What do I care about, then? he wondered, blazing at an Unkerlanter in a snow smock not much different from his own. The Unkerlanter toppled. Sidroc whooped and slogged on. Why am I giving these buggers the chance to do to me what I just did to that poor whoreson?
    He whooped again when Ceorl blazed an Unkerlanter. He didn’t even like Ceorl, and he knew full well the ruffian had no use for him when they weren’t up against Swemmel’s soldiers. Oddly, that gave him an answer of sorts: I can’t let the fellows who are in this with me down. If he stayed behind, they’d think he was a coward, and their opinions were the only ones that mattered to him these days. His mother was dead, killed when the Algarvians took Gromheort. His father remained back in Forthweg, and had no real understanding of what he was doing here. He’d killed his cousin Leofsig in a brawl. He’d brawled with Leofsig’s brother Ealstan, too—and Ealstan, from what he gathered, had run off with a Kaunian tart. Leofsig and Ealstan’s father and mother and sister hated him. Who was left, then, but the men alongside whom he fought?
    More Algarvian dragons swooped down on the Unkerlanters. Behemoths died under the eggs they dropped and from the flame that burst from their jaws. The handful of behemoths that survived had had enough, and lumbered off toward woods beyond the village. The trees helped shelter them from dragon attacks.
    “Forward!” shouted the Algarvian officers, and forward went the Algarvian footsoldiers and the men of Plegmund’s Brigade.
    They overran the village King Swemmel’s troopers had defended so fiercely. Some of the redheads had weapons Sidroc hadn’t seen before: small pottery jugs that they flung at their foes, and that burst like miniature eggs. “I want some of those. When can we get ‘em?” he asked Sergeant Werferth.
    “When the Algarvians have enough to spare for their poor relations,” Werferth answered. Sidroc swore and kicked at the snow; the sergeant was bound to be right.
    Some soldiers pushed on down the snow-covered road toward Herborn. Others—the less lucky—were ordered into the woods to go after the last few Unkerlanter behemoths and the footsoldiers with them.
    Werferth had never been given to wild flights of optimism—what veteran sergeant was? But now he said, “Maybe we really will drive these sons of whores out of Herborn. Looks like we’ve got a lot of ‘em in a pocket here.”
    “I wouldn’t mind,” Sidroc said. “But what’ll the Algarvians do for a new King of Grelz? Who’d be daft enough to want the job after