Tomm Grimswal stood by a tree in the darkness. Stood because orders said to; you weren't as likely to fall asleep on your feet.
Wintry temperatures had arrived on schedule in the Free Lands; nothing severe yet, but seasonable. Only the snow delayed. A cold night wind moaned through the treetops and rattled the leafless roivan branches. Tomm had been a high school student in Rumaros before the war. He didn't like the wind, and he'd decided too late that he didn't like the army. He especially didn't like picket duty at night.
For one thing it seemed unnecessary. The Komarsi weren't going to come in the night. In fact, they weren't going to move this far from their lines day or night. Besides, clouds hid the stars, and the moons if any of them were up now. You couldn't see ten feet, and all you could hear was the wind.
He was tired of holding his submachine gun, too. A rifle was long enough that you could lean on it, but on night duty you got SMGs because any fighting would be at short range, and you couldn't aim at night anyway.
He'd sit down and maybe catch twenty winks, except Marky was on the other side of the tree, and he'd tell the sergeant. Marky Felkor was unreasonable about orders, even when the orders were obvious bullshit. He thought because he'd been in the fighting along the . . .
From just around the tree from him, Tomm was startled by a burst of submachine gun fire, and then another. His immediate thought was that Marky had fallen asleep and fired by accident, maybe from a dream. He heard Sergeant Tarrbon call out: "What post is that?"
"Fourteen!" Marky shouted back. It was the last thing Tomm Grimswal ever heard, because just then a large hard hand closed over his mouth, and a razor-sharp knife slit his throat nearly to the spine. It might have been soundless, except that when he'd felt the hand, the youth's thoracic muscles had spasmed, driving air from the severed trachea with a rude and liquid noise. His submachine gun fell to the frozen ground unfired, its safety catch still set, its only sound a thud.
Corporal Il-Dak realized at once that the soldier's comrade had heard the noise, and instead of lowering the body quietly, he dropped it and jumped sideways six feet, landing in a crouch. Overhead a flare popped, and another, flooding the forest with brilliant white light. Though he didn't look up at it, the brightness blinded him, blinded all of them for a moment. Then he spotted his partner, sprawled where the first shots had found him. He bounded forward like a night cat to find and shoot the other picket, but someone fired from behind another tree, a burst needlessly, wastefully long. Five slugs tore into Il-Dak's torso. And his own burst tore into frozen ground as he fell. All around, the T'swa slunk forward, avoiding the glare so far as possible, keeping to the inky shadows. More shots were fired.
From here and there came gunfire. These aren't Komarsi, thought Lieutenant Joran Bannsfor. Not deep in the forest in the dark of night, sixty miles north of the Eel. Which meant the T'swa had arrived! He peered hard and saw nothing.
The flares, on their parachutes, had been swept southeastward by the wind. Bannsfor fired another, off somewhat to his right, then glimpsed movement among the trees just ahead, coming toward him as he reloaded the flare pistol. Marsoni's rifle banged beside him. T'swa or whatever, he thought, these people know how to move.
And thought no more. Some of the T'swa had infiltrated unnoticed, and one of them fired a burst from behind him. Bannsfor fell dying. Private Marsoni spun even though hit, and fired a single round from his bolt action, the bullet finding nothing, before a T'swa round took him in the face.
Major Hober Steeg had wakened to a call of nature, and been standing beside a straddle trench when the first burst had ruptured the night. T'swa, he thought. Before he'd even buttoned his fly, there was firing from here, there, seemingly everywhere, and he dropped into a crouch. The first flares had almost blown away already, but more were being fired; the T'swa night vision, it seemed to him, wasn't an advantage to them any longer.
He held his pistol in a white-knuckled fist and peered around with no idea what to do next. Meanwhile the firing increased. "Shit!" he said aloud, and started for his nearby command tent. Then a different sound assaulted his ears as a grenade blasted the tent ahead of him. A bullet plucked his sleeve, and he threw himself onto the ground. He could see his on-duty radioman sprawled in the tent door, and wondered if he'd gotten a message off. A man in black ran past in a crouch, a submachine gun in his hands. The major, prostrate, twisted and fired. The man didn't pause, but before Steeg could shoot again, someone else had, and the man in black fell, half spinning. The face was black too, the eyes large in the flare light: a T'swi for sure! The black man rose to his knees and fired a burst at something, then dropped to his side, drawing another magazine from his belt, slamming it into his weapon. The major shot again, once, twice, and the T'swi went limp.
The major got to his feet and headed for the radio.
Artus Romlar sat in his winterized command tent at base camp. Morning lit it through the fabric roof. The T'swa were more than an intelligence report now. A force of them, probably a company, had hit 2nd Battalion, 5th Smoleni Infantry, shot it up and withdrawn. Fairly standard T'swa procedure: When you arrive in a war zone, you engage the enemy in a small action to test his fighting quality and learn what you'll be dealing with. Then you plan.
A stocky, middle-aged Smoleni woman popped into the tent with breakfast. There were snowflakes on her shawl. She put the tray on his table and he thanked her. More bodies might be found later, he thought, and some of the wounded would no doubt die, but the initial count was encouraging: 42 T'swa bodies had been counted. The Smoleni Battalion had lost 96 killed and 152 wounded. The T'swa would be impressed and pleased with the quality of their opposition.
Where were they quartered? Or bivouacked? He should have something on that soon. Since the big Komarsi strike of Sevendek, Colonel Fossur had set up a field recon network of converted fur trappers, with iron rations and forestry maps. They ranged in threes through the forests in the zone north of the Eel, watching the roads. Each trio had a radio that would reach Shelf Falls.
This snow, if it stayed, would complicate things for the recon network, disclose its presence and force them to keep moving constantly. But it should make them more effective, too, because enemy movements would leave far more conspicuous tracks. The biggest danger was that the T'swa would hunt them down.
He had no doubt that as soon as the snow was deep enough, the T'swa would be out learning to snowshoe.