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They'd buried eggs in the mud in front of their village, too. An Unkerlanter soldier trod on one. He shrieked briefly as the released energies consumed him. Leudast cursed. His own countrymen had stalled Algarvian attacks in the Durrwangen salient with belt after belt of hidden eggs. Having the stratagem turned against them seemed anything but fair.

Then Recared pointed south of the village and said the happiest words any Unkerlanter footsoldier could use: "Behemoths! Our behemoths, by the powers above!"

Even with snowshoes spreading their weight, even with the way made easier with brush and logs spread in front of them, the great beasts made slower, rougher going in the mud than they had on the hard ground of summer. But they moved forward faster than men could, and they and their armored crewmen were much harder to kill than ordinary footsoldiers.

Leudast said, "Let's go with them and bypass this place. Once we get behind it, it won't be worth anything to the Grelzers anymore."

Recared frowned. "We ought to go straight at the enemy. He's right there in front of us."

"And we're right here in front of him, where he's got the best blaze at us," Leudast answered. "When the Algarvians were driving us, they'd go around the places that fought hard and let them wither on the vine. They'd advance where we were weak, and we couldn't be strong everywhere."

"That's so," Recared said thoughtfully. He hadn't been there to go through most of that, but he knew about it. A great many of the soldiers who had gone through it were dead; Leudast knew how lucky he was to be among the exceptions. To his relief, Recared nodded again, blew his whistle, and shouted for his men to swing south of the village and go with the behemoths. "The men who come after us, the ones who aren't good enough to fight in the first rank, can mop up these traitors," he declared.

As Leudast hurried toward the behemoths, he wondered if the Grelzers would sally to try to stop them. But the men who followed King Mezentio's cousin stayed under cover; they knew they'd get slaughtered out in the open. Leudast expected them to get slaughtered anyway, but now it would take longer and cost more.

The Unkerlanters pressed on for another couple of miles before a well-aimed beam from a heavy stick left one of their behemoths kicking its way toward death in the mud. Another beam, not so well aimed, threw up a great gout of nasty-smelling steam between a couple of other behemoths. All the crews frantically pointed ahead. When Leudast saw Algarvian behemoths at the edge of some woods, he threw himself flat in the muck. The redheads didn't seem to have so many behemoths left these days, but they used the ones they did have with as much deadly panache as ever.

Still, two and a half years of war had taught King Swemmel's soldiers several painful but important lessons. Their behemoths didn't charge straight at the Algarvian beasts. Some of them traded beams and sticks with the Algarvians from a distance. That let the others sidle around to the flank. Leudast had watched this dance of death before. He knew what the right counter would be: having more behemoths waiting to engage the Unkerlanters trying the flanking move. The Algarvians didn't have them. That meant they could either withdraw or die where they stood.