Darkness Descending

Twelve

Garivald wasn’t drunk yet from this latest jar of spirits, but he wasn’t far away, either. There just wasn’t that much else to do, not with snowdrifts taller than a man on the ground in Zossen.

Oh, the livestock took up some time, but less than in summer, the pig and the chickens and Garivald’s couple of sheep and the cow shared his thatch-roofed house with him, Annore, Syrivald, and Leuba. They would freeze if they tried to go through the winter outdoors. Here in the hut, they helped the hearth keep things warm.

They also made a dreadful mess, even if the floor was only of rammed earth. Annore did her best to clean up after them, but her best, though better than that of most village wives, wasn’t nearly good enough. Garivald didn’t mind the stink; he’d long since got used to that, as he did every winter. He didn’t like stepping in freshly dropped dung, but a careful man didn’t do that very often.

He lifted his mug and let another swig of spirits burn its way down his throat. “Well, it’s not as bad as it could have been, I suppose,” he said.

“What isn’t?” Annore asked darkly. She was washing Leuba’s feet. Leuba, at not quite three, didn’t watch where she stepped, and didn’t much care, either.

“Having the Algarvians in Zossen,” Garivald answered.

“What? The redheads?” Annore’s thick eyebrows shot upwards. “Powers above curse them, I say!” She set hands on hips to show how strongly she meant it. Her nostrils flared. She pointed at Garivald. “You say that when they’ve worked you like a slave chopping wood for them?”

“Aye, I do,” he answered. “Think--in spite of everything, we have more to get us through the winter than we did in any other year I can remember. Aye, they work us like slaves sometimes. Aye, they robbed the harvest. But we still managed to store away more than usual. Go ahead. Tell me I’m wrong.” He folded his thick arms across his chest and looked a challenge at Annore.

A lot of Unkerlanter husbands, especially after they’d started drinking, would have followed up that challenge by going over and smacking their wives around. Garivald didn’t. What restrained him wasn’t so much chivalry as the nagging fear that he’d wake up one morning with his throat slit if he got too rough with her.

She shrugged. “Maybe we did,” she said in grudging tones.

“No maybes about it,” Garivald exclaimed. “Aye, powers above curse the Algarvians, but they’re lousy thieves. Inefficient, I say. King Swemmel’s inspectors would have found a lot more of the hiding places where we squirreled things away.”

“Maybe,” Annore repeated.

“Maybe,” Leuba said gaily. She didn’t know what her mother and father were talking about--for which Garivald envied her--but she wanted to join in.

“No maybes,” Garivald said again. “They’re not up to a proper job of robbery, the way Unkerlanter inspectors would be.

Words formed inside his head. They’re lousy thieves, he thought, And who believes I They’re here to stay? I For Swemmel’s soldiers I Grow ever bolder I To drive them away. It wasn’t a great song. He knew that. But it was a beginning. Maybe he could turn it into something worth hearing. He hadn’t known he could make songs till the summer before. Now they kept springing into his mind all unbidden.

Softly, he sang those first couple of scrappy verses to Annore, setting them to the tune of a sprightly dance. She nodded approval, but warned, “You’ll have to be careful about letting people hear that one. Somebody’s liable to go to the Algarvians with it, and then where would you be?”

“I know,” Garivald said. “You’d best believe I know. But maybe our own soldiers will come back to Zossen before too long. The redheads are still retreating, they say.” They were his fellow villagers, who knew no more than he did, and roaming small bands of Unkerlanter soldiers still on the loose after being bypassed by the advancing redheads, who might.

“Here’s hoping they’re right,” Annore said, “but be careful anyhow, until the rightful king’s men take Zossen back.”

“What?” Now Garivald raised an eyebrow. “You don’t call Raniero your king?”

“This for Raniero,” Annore said, and made a rude noise. Delighted, so did Leuba. And so did Syrivald, who, these days, was almost as tall as his mother. Garivald laughed. After the redheads overran southeastern Unkerlant, Mezentio had proclaimed his cousin Raniero King of Grelz.

Once upon a time, Grelz had been a kingdom, before shrinking to a duchy in the Union of Crowns with Unkerlant. But Grelzers and Unkerlanters were closest kin; Grelz had never had an Algarvian king. As far as Garivald was concerned, it still didn’t: only an Algarvian cat’s-paw.

Leuba wasn’t likely to talk enough to get Garivald into trouble. He did eye his son. “You have to remember, Syrivald, nobody needs to hear what we say inside the house.”

“I know, Father,” Syrivald said seriously. After eyeing him, his father nodded. Syrivald, by now, was used to keeping his mouth shut. Before the redheads swept through this part of the kingdom, people hadn’t wanted Waddo to hear a lot of what they said. That became especially true after Zossen got a crystal of its own, a direct connection between the village and King Swemmel’s vast corps of inspectors and impressers. Now different people might betray things to the redheads, but the principle remained the same. Garivald was glad Syrivald understood it.

Outside, boots crunched on snow. Garivald grew alert. Visitors in dead of winter weren’t that common. People stayed indoors most of the time. He didn’t care to leave the house, to go outside in the cold and wind. He wondered who among his fellow villagers would.

When he heard the knock, he knew. Unkerlanter knocks, even worthless Waddo’s, were casual, friendly things. This one served notice: if he didn’t come to the door right away, whoever was on the other side would break it down.

Annore’s lips shaped a soundless word: “Algarvians.”

“Aye,” Garivald agreed. “But I’ve got to let them in.” He regretted saying they weren’t so bad. When they pounded on his door, they were very bad indeed.

Reluctantly, he went to the door. Even more reluctantly, he opened it. Sure as sure, three Algarvian soldiers stood there shivering and trying to look fierce. Their own kingdom hadn’t given them proper cold-weather gear; they’d added hats and cloaks stolen from villagers to their short tunics and kilts. That made them look less uniform and, somehow, less ferocious. It didn’t make them look much warmer.

“We coming in,” one of them said in bad Unkerlanter. The other two pointed their sticks at Garivald, as if to tell him he’d better not complain.

He already knew that. “Well, come in if you’re coming,” he said gruffly. “Don’t stand there letting all the heat out.” Cold flowed over his feet and legs in waves. As soon as the tall redheaded soldiers were inside, he shut the door behind them.

One of them wrinkled his nose and spoke in his own language. The other two grinned. Garivaid didn’t know what they were grinning about and didn’t want to find out. These garrison soldiers had been in Zossen since the village was captured. Not all of them were bad fellows, not as people. He’d come to know them. That didn’t mean he wanted them in his house.

They were looking around. He didn’t like it when their eyes settled on Annore. The garrison troops lived up to the Algarvians’ name for lechery. Regardless of whether they carried sticks, if they aimed to torment his wife they’d have to kill him first. But, after a couple of leers, their gaze showed what they really had in mind.

“You giving us a pig,” said the one who spoke Unkerlanter. “You giving us a sheep, too. Or--” He gestured with his own weapon.

“Take them,” Garivaid said in disgust. Aye, he shouldn’t have said anything about how the Algarvians weren’t so good at robbing peasants as Unkerlanter inspectors were. The words came back to mock him. But even if he had to eat peas and beans and pickled cabbage till spring, he wouldn’t starve and neither would his family. “Take them,” he repeated. The sooner the Algarvians were out of the house, the smaller the chance they’d start looking toward Annore again.

They’d come prepared. One tied a rope around the sheep’s neck. The other two had a harder time catching the pig, but they managed. Both animals let out piteous sounds of protest when the redheads took them out into the snow, but they went. Garivaid closed and barred the door once the Algarvians were gone.

“Well,” he said with peasant fatalism, “the house isn’t so crowded now.” But fatalism went only so far. “Powers below eat the stinking thieves as they’ll eat my beasts!” he burst out.

“Aye, and may their bellies gripe,” Annore agreed.

A couple of days later, new Algarvian troops came stumbling into Zossen out of the west. They were leaner, tougher-looking men than the little squad of garrison soldiers: wolves rather than dogs. But they were sadly battered wolves, a couple of them wounded, all of them half frozen and weary unto death. After they’d paused to get warm and to eat--maybe some of Garivald’s pork and mutton--they went on, heading east. The soldiers they’d left behind began looking like worried dogs.

Dagulf came to visit in a state of high excitement. “Maybe our own men’U be coming back in a few days,” he said, sipping the mug of spirits Garivaid gave him. That was a thought worthy of getting a man out of his own house--and Dagulf’s wife nagged. He went on, “Maybe they’ll chase these raggedy kilted buggers back to Algarve where they belong.”

“That’d be good.” Garivaid was halfway to being drunk himself, and would have agreed to almost anything.

Dagulf had a scar on his cheek. It twisted his smile. “Aye, it would,” he said. “And then we can let people know who played along with the redheads. You know names. So do I. Not as bad here as some places, they say. Some places, lots of people are willing to lick Raniero’s Algarvian arse.”

But the folk of Zossen did not get the chance to inform on their collaborationist neighbors. No Unkerlanter soldiers fought their way into the village to slaughter the garrison or drive King Mezentio’s men back toward the border. Instead, struggling forward through the snow, half a dozen Algarvian behemoths and a company of footsoldiers camped in Zossen.

One of their officers, a young lieutenant, spoke Unkerlanter pretty well. At his order, the villagers had to assemble in the central square. “You wish we were gone, don’t you?” he said with an unpleasant smile. “You wish Swemmel’s men were here instead, don’t you? If they do come, how glad will you be to see them after they cut your throats to power their magecraft against us? Eh? Think on it.”

By the next morning, the Algarvians were gone, heading west to get into the fight. Garivald feared more would be coming, though. “He was lying, wasn’t he?” Annore said. Garivald only shrugged. He remembered the convicts who’d been sacrificed for the sorcerous energy to power Zossen’s crystal. He wished he didn’t, but he did. Who could say what Swemmel would or wouldn’t do to drive the redheads back?

When Krasta walked through the west wing of her mansion, the wing given over to the Algarvians who helped rule occupied Priekule, she knew at once that things were not as they should have been. On any normal day, the clerks and spies and military constables who labored there would have leered and muttered among themselves as she walked past. They were redheads. Leering at good-looking women was in their blood. The only thing that kept them from reaching out and fondling her as she went by was in their blood. The only thing that kept them from reaching out and fondling her as she went by was her being Lurcanio’s mistress. The count and colonel could punish anyone who go to gay with his hands.

Today, though, the Algarvians scarcely seemed to notice her, though she was wearing a pair of green velvet trousers cut like a second skin. Mezentio’s men talked in low voices, but not about her. The looks on their faces put her in mind of those the servants had worn after her parents died. They’d had a shock, and they were wondering what would come next.

When she strode into the anteroom where Captain Mosco worked, she demanded, “Nothing’s gone and happened to your precious king, has it?”

Colonel Lurcanio’s aide looked up from his paperwork. “To Mezentio?” he said. “No indeed, milady--as far as I know, he’s hale as can be.” But his face had that pinched, pained expression on it, too, and his voice was full of things he wasn’t saying. Setting his pen in the inkwell, he rose from his desk. “I’ll tell the colonel you’re here.” He returned a moment later. “Aye, he’ll see you.”

Krasta went into Lurcanio’s office. The Algarvian was, as always, courteous as a cat. He got to his feet, bowed over Krasta’s hand, and gallantly raised it to his lips. He handed her into the chair across from his desk. But it all struck Krasta as a performance, and not a very good one at that. “What is the matter with you people today?” she fumed.

“Have you not heard?” Lurcanio asked. Even his accent seemed thicker than usual, as if he wasn’t trying so hard to shape the sounds that went into Valmieran.

“If I’d heard--whatever there is to hear--would I be asking you?” Krasta said. “By all the long faces out there, I thought something was wrong with your king. Mosco said that wasn’t it, but he didn’t say what was.”

“No, Mezentio is hale,” Lurcanio said, echoing his aide. “But, against all expectations, we have been thrown back before Cottbus, which naturally pains us.”

“Oh,” Krasta said. “Is that all?”

Lurcanio stared at her from under gingery eyebrows going gray. “You may not think it so much of a much, milady, but there are those who will tell you it is no small thing. Indeed, I fear I am one of them.”

“But why?” Krasta asked in genuine perplexity. “By the powers above, Lurcanio, it’s on the other side of the world.” Few things outside Priekule, and next to none outside Valmiera, carried much weight with her.

Lurcanio perplexed her by rising and giving her another bow. “Ah, milady, I almost envy you: you are invincibly provincial,” he said. By his tone, it was a compliment, even if Krasta didn’t quite understand it.

“As far as I’m concerned,” she said with a sniff, “King Swemmel is welcome to Cottbus. A nasty place for a nasty man.”

“He is a nasty man. It is a nasty place,” Lurcanio agreed with a sniff of his own. “But Unkerlant has a great many nasty places, and none of them so strong or so strongly held as Cottbus. It should have fallen. That it did not fall will mean . . . complications in the war ahead.”

To Krasta, tomorrow was a mystery, a week hence the far side of the moon. “You will beat the Unkerlanters,” she said. “After all, if you beat us, you can beat anyone.”

For a moment, what looked uncommonly like a smirk lit Lurcanio’s face. It vanished before Krasta could be sure she’d seen it. He said, “Actually, the Unkerlanter army has given us a rather better fight than Valmiera’s did.”

“I can’t imagine how that could be,” Krasta said.

“I know you can’t. I almost envy you that, too,” Lurcanio said; he might have been speaking Gyongyosian for all the sense he made to her. “But whether you can imagine it or not, the thing is there, and we have to see what comes of it.”

Krasta tossed her head. “I know what will come of it. No one will be having any parties worth going to until you people decide you can be happy again, and powers above only know how long that will take.” Before Lurcanio could answer, she spun on her heel and stalked out of his office.

She swung her hips more than usual when she headed back toward the part of the mansion that still belonged to her. Even so, hardly any of the Algarvians looked up from their work as she went by. That only made her unhappier. If no one was watching her, she hardly felt she was alive.

“Bauska!” she shouted when she got back into her own section of the mansion. “Curse it, you lazy slut, where are you hiding?”

“Coming, milady,” the maidservant said, hurrying down the stairway and up to her. She was very pale and gulped as if hoping her stomach would stay quiet. As far as Krasta was concerned, she’d been next to useless since Captain Mosco put a loaf in her oven. Gulping again, she said, “How may I serve you?”

“Fetch me my wolfskin jacket,” Krasta said, enjoying the prospect of sending Bauska back upstairs. “I am going to go for a walk on the grounds here.”

“You are, milady?” Bauska sounded astonished. Walking the grounds was not Krasta’s usual idea of amusement. The only good Krasta usually saw in having wide grounds, as a matter of fact, was in keeping neighbors at a nice, respectful distance. But she was feeling contrary today, all the more so after than unsatisfactory conversation with Lurcanio.

And so she snapped, “I certainly am. Now get moving.” With a sigh, Bauska trudged up the stairs to get the jacket. She gave it to Krasta and gave her a reproachful look with it. That was wasted; Krasta never noticed it.

Fastening the wooden toggles on the wolfskin jacket, Krasta went outside. She exclaimed as the cold bit at her cheeks and nose, but neither of the Algarvian sentries at the front door stirred an inch. She cursed their indifference under her breath.

The skins in the jacket came from Unkerlant; few wolves survived farther east in Derlavai. Krasta patted the soft gray sleeve. At the moment, she quite enjoyed wearing something from Swemmel’s kingdom. She wished she could throw that in Lurcanio’s face, but knew she didn’t dare. He got quite stuffy where what he saw as Algarve’s honor was concerned.

Snow crunched under her shoes. It was a couple of days old; soot from the countless coal and wood fires in Priekule had already streaked it with gray. Everything was cold and quiet, so quiet she could hear the scream of a dragon high overhead. The Algarvians kept a couple of them in the air above Priekule all the time, to give warning of Lagoan raiders. The Lagoans didn’t fly north very often. Krasta sniffed. She scorned Valmiera’s former allies even more than she did its conquerors. The Algarvians, at least, had proved their strength.

She walked on, getting chillier with every step in spite of the wolfskin jacket. The Algarvians had to be mad to want to fight a war in Unkerlant in the wintertime. They should have settled down where they were and waited till spring. Next time I meet a general at some feast or other, maybe I’ll tell him so, Krasta thought. Some people just can’t see what’s in front of them.

What was in front of her were more snow-covered grounds and bare-branched trees. In the summer, the trees screened Priekule from her sight. For the most part, that suited her fine; the city had altogether too many commoners in it for her to want to look at it very much.

Now, though, the spires of the royal palace and the taller, paler shaft of the Kaunian Column of Victory were plainly visible. Inside the palace, King Gainibu drowned his humiliation in spirits. Krasta didn’t care to dwell on Gainibu. A king, as far as she was concerned, shouldn’t be a sot.

That left the Column of Victory to draw her eye. There it stood, as it had since the days of the Kaunian Empire, proud and fair and beautifully carved . . . and Algarvian soldiers patrolled the park whose centerpiece it was, and all of Priekule, and all of the Kaunian kingdom of Valmiera.

Sudden unexpected tears stung her eyes. Her eyelashes started to freeze together. Angrily, she knuckled them. Foolishness, she thought. She was getting by. She was doing better than getting by. With an Algarvian protector, the hardships that had hold of the kingdom hardly touched her.

She nodded. She was looking at things the right way. The redheads had won the war, and nothing that happened in far-off Unkerlant could have anything to do with that. She was certain she was right there. Why, then, did the tears keep trying to come back?

Before she could find an answer--or, more likely, stop looking for one--a couple of Algarvians mounted on unicorns came trotting up the road from Priekule. One of the unicorns still bore some splotches of the dun-colored paint that had made it harder to spot during the fighting. The other was the white to which even clean snow could only aspire.

Both riders slowed to leer at Krasta. Most times, she would have withered them with a glance colder than .the weather. Now, oddly, she welcomed their attention. She welcomed any attention. The smile she gave them was just this side of an invitation to a lewd act in the snow.

“Well, hello, sweetheart!” one of them said in accented Valmieran. “Whose girl you being? You being anybody’s girl?”

“My companion is Colonel Lurcanio,” Krasta answered before she thought. That would kill the unicorn riders’ interest in her, and she didn’t want it killed.

But it was. Both redheads grimaced. The one who’d spoken gave her a formal salute, as if she rather than Lurcanio were his superior officer. “Meaning no offense,” he said, and spurred his unicorn toward the mansion. The other cavalryman followed close behind.

Krasta stooped and scooped up a snowball and threw it after them. It fell short. They had no idea she’d flung it. The snow stung her hands. She rubbed them on the fur of her jacket, opening and closing them to get the blood flowing and make them less icy.

The two Algarvians tied their unicorns in front of the mansion and went inside. They don’t even know it’s my house, Krasta thought. Oh, they might suspect, because Colonel Lurcanio’s woman wouldn’t be anyone ordinary, but they didn’t know. They would have leered at Bauska, too.

“And I’ve come out of the war better than most,” Krasta murmured. “Powers above!” She looked over toward the Kaunian Column of Victory once more. The triumphs it celebrated were vanished now. The emperor who’d won them was only a name in history books, history books she hadn’t read. Pretty soon, the Algarvians would write the history books, and then no one would ever hear his name again.

She headed back toward the mansion. Even after she went inside, she was a long time feeling warm.

Ice was forming in Count Sabrino’s waxed mustachios. Snow lay on the plains of Unkerlant far below. The Algarvian colonel’s dragon had carried him into air colder still.

He reached up with his right hand to knock the ice away. He used the goad in his left to whack the side of the dragon’s long neck, swinging its course more nearly southwest. The dragon let out an immense, furious hiss. Stupid like all its kind, it wanted to do what it wanted to do, not to follow its dragonflier’s commands.

Sabrino whacked it again, harder this time. “Obey, curse you!” he shouted, though the freezing wind blew his words away. The dragon didn’t hiss this time; it screamed. He wondered if it would twist its head back and try to flame him off it. That was a dragon’s ultimate sin. He waited, ready to whack it on the sensitive end of its nose if it so forgot its training.

But, screaming again, it took the course he wanted. He looked back over his shoulder to make sure the wing he commanded was following. Sure enough, thirty-seven dragons painted in stripes of green, white, and red--the Algarvian colors--matched his change of course. His mouth twisted; like any man of his kingdom, he showed what he thought. His wing should have numbered sixty-four. But fighting had been desperately heavy these past few weeks--men and dragons were dying faster than replacements could reach the front.

A burning peasant village sent smoke high into the air, almost as high as Sabrino flew. He eyed the column of smoke in mild surprise; he’d thought most of the Unkerlanter villages hereabouts had gone up in flames during the Algarvian advance on Cottbus. Now, down there on the ground, the Unkerlanters, at home in winter, were the ones moving forward.

No sooner had that thought crossed Sabrino’s mind than he spied a group of Unkerlanter behemoths tramping east. They skirted the village, which might still have Algarvian defenders holed up in it. Over the drifts came the great beasts--literally. Some bright Unkerlanter had had the idea of fitting them with outsized snowshoes. Those let them cope with deep snow far better than Algarvian behemoths could. Sabrino grimaced--what an embarrassment, to be outthought by Unkerlanters!

When it came to cold-weather fighting, King Swemmel’s men had out-thought the Algarvians several different ways. Sabrino was nearly sure Unkerlanter footsoldiers accompanied those behemoths. He couldn’t see them, though, not from this height. The Unkerlanters wore white smocks over the rest of their clothes, and were nearly invisible in the snow. That sort of need hadn’t occurred to Sabrino’s countrymen. With thick wool tunics and stockings, with heavy felt boots, with fur hats and fur-lined capes, the Unkerlanters had an easier time staying warm than the Algarvians, too.

The dragons flew over another village, this one wrecked in the earlier fighting. Lumps in the snow around it might have been dead behemoths. Sabrino flew too high to spot snow-covered human corpses. In any case, they were too common to attract much notice.

There ahead lay the shattered town of Lehesten, north and slightly east of Cottbus. Algarvian troops had briefly held it, just as they’d fought their way into Thalfang south of the Unkerlanter capital. Sabrino had heard they’d spied the spires of King Swemmel’s palace from Thalfang. He didn’t know whether that was true. If it was, they hadn’t seen them for long. Fierce Unkerlanter counterattacks had shoved the Algarvians out of Thalfang, and out of Lehesten, too.

Now the Unkerlanters were pouring footsoldiers and behemoths and even horse and unicorn cavalry through Lehesten, using the town as a marshaling point for their counterattack. Sabrino whooped to spot a column of behemoths hauling heavy egg-tossers toward the fighting front. Even with snowshoes on the behemoths’ feet, even with skids under the egg-tossers, that column wasn’t going anywhere fast.

Activating the crystal attached to his harness took only a muttered word of command. The faces of his three surviving squadron leaders, tiny but perfect, appeared in the crystal. “We are going to tear up that column,” Sabrino told them.

“Aye, Colonel!” Captain Domiziano exclaimed.

“Aye, Colonel,” Captain Orosio agreed. “Let’s hurt the whoresons.” He was perhaps five years older than Domiziano in the flesh, thirty years older in the spirit.

Sabrino spoke to the newest squadron leader, Captain Olindro: “Your men and dragons will fly top cover for us. If the Unkerlanters come against us, you’ll hold them off till we can get some height and join you.” You’ll do that, or you’ll die trying, Sabrino thought. Olindro’s predecessor had.

As Domiziano and Orosio had before him, Olindro said, “Aye, Colonel.” If he thought about his predecessor’s fate, he didn’t let on. A good soldier couldn’t let his fears and worries show, though Sabrino had never known a fighting man without them.

“Let’s go!” he shouted, and whacked his dragon again, this time in the command to dive. For once, the dragon obeyed with alacrity. Even its tiny brain had come to associate diving with fighting, and it liked fighting better than feeding, perhaps even better than mating. Domiziano and Orosio’s squadrons followed Sabrino down. The icy wind thrummed in his face. Had he not worn goggles, it would have blinded him.

Behemoths and egg-tossers swelled from specks to toys to real things in what seemed no time at all. Sabrino led the dragons against the column from the rear, hoping to put off for as long as he could the moment when the Unkerlanters realized they were under attack.

He always used that tactic. Sometimes, as today, it worked very well indeed. Secure in their possession of Lehesten, secure also in their possession of the initiative, the enemy soldiers paid the air no attention till Sabrino ordered his dragon to flame.

A sheet of fire, fueled by brimstone and quicksilver, burst from the dragon’s mouth. It engulfed a behemoth, the men riding on the beast, and the egg-tosser perhaps ten feet in front of it. The behemoth never made a sound. It might have been inhaling when the fire rolled over it. It simply toppled, dead before its flank hit the snow.

A couple of men in white smocks trudging along beside the egg-tosser did shriek as flames devoured them. The egg-tosser’s carriage, being made of more wood than metal, caught and began to burn. So did the casings of some of the eggs on the carriage. Mages made them to stand up to a good many things, but not to dragonfire. Bursts of sorcerous energy from the unleashed eggs finished the work of wrecking the tosser the flame had begun.

The rest of the dragons in the two squadrons Sabrino had ordered into action flamed the column with him. Only a handful of men and a couple of behemoths escaped their first onslaught.

No one had ever said the Unkerlanters lacked courage--or, if anyone had said it, he’d been a fool. The survivors of the Algarvian attack promptly started blazing at the men and dragons who’d tormented them so. Only luck would let a footsoldier bring down a dragon: the beasts’ bellies were painted silver to reflect beams, and even a blaze through the eye might not pierce their small, bone-armored brains.

Dragonfliers were more vulnerable. A beam hissed past Sabrino. He used the goad to hit the dragon in the throat, urging it to climb. It didn’t like that; it wanted to go back and use more flame. In the end, bad-tempered as usual, it obeyed him.

He was willing to go round and make another pass at the Unkerlanters. But before he could give the order, Olindro’s tiny image appeared in his crystal. “Dragons!” the squadron leader said, face twisting in alarm. “Unkerlanter dragons--lots of them!”

Sabrino looked up. Sure enough, Olindro’s squadron was under assault from perhaps twice its number of dragons, all painted the rock-gray of Unkerlanter military tunics.

His dragon saw the enemies, too. It didn’t much care for the beasts on its own side, but had--slowly--learned not to quarrel with them. Screaming with fury, it flew hard toward the dragons the Unkerlanters rode. The great muscles that powered its wings pumped hard.

As Sabrino drew near, he unslung his stick and aimed it at an Unkerlanter flier. His forefinger went into the activating hole at the base of the stick. A beam blazed forth from the other end. It missed the Unkerlanter. Good blazing was hard from dragonback, with both target and blazer moving so swiftly.

Cursing even so, Sabrino forced his dragon up through and past the enemies attacking his men and beasts. Most of the two squadrons he led followed his example. They were, almost to a man, veteran dragonfliers; they knew what needed doing. Dragonfights were war in three dimensions. Height mattered.

By the way the Unkerlanters flew, a lot of them were new aboard their bad-tempered mounts. They didn’t try to keep Sabrino’s men from gaining altitude; they were intent on destroying Olindro’s squadron. Under that waxed mustache--which was icing up again--Sabrino’s lips skinned back from his teeth in a savage grin. Inexperience could and, he vowed, would be an expensive business.

He chose the enemy dragon he wanted, then urged his own beast into a dive. The Unkerlanter dragonflier had no notion he was there. Without the slightest twinge of conscience--the Unkerlanter would have exulted at doing it to him--he blazed the fellow in the back.

The Unkerlanter threw out his hands. His stick flew from one of them. He slumped down onto his dragons neck. The beast, no longer under his control, showed its true nature: it struck out wildly at friend and foe alike, then flew off to prey on the frozen countryside below. The war had left it plenty of carrion on which to feed.

Sabrino blazed at another Unkerlanter dragonflier. He missed again, and cursed again. But his dragon was flying faster than the enemy’s mount. Nearer and nearer he drew. This Unkerlanter was a little more wary than the other one had been, but not wary enough. He’d only started to swing his dragon around to face Sabrino when the count ordered his own dragon to flame.

Again, fire burst from the dragon’s jaws. It caught the Unkerlanter beast in the flank and, more important, in the membranous wing. Bellowing horribly, flaming back with fire falling short, the Unkerlanter dragon fell out of the sky toward the ground far below. Sabrino thought he heard the dragonflier’s fading scream.

More Unkerlanter dragons were plummeting to earth or flying off under no man’s control. So were some of his own. He howled his fury at the losses. Algarve couldn’t afford them--and the men were friends as well as comrades.

But, before long, the Unkerlanters had had enough and fled back toward the west, the direction from which they’d come. Sabrino didn’t order a pursuit. He didn’t care to face the fresh squadrons King Swemmel’s men might send up with his own beasts tired. Instead, he waved back toward the east, toward the Algarvians’ own chilly makeshift of a dragon farm.

When they flew over the front, he quietly thanked the powers above that he wasn’t down there fighting on the ground. One reason he’d started flying dragons--and the best one he’d ever found--was that it beat the stuffing out of the footsoldier’s life.

Bembo wished he were back in Tricarico. Walking a constable’s beat in a provincial town in northeastern Algarve hadn’t been the most exciting job in the world, but now he realized he hadn’t appreciated it enough while he had it. Compared to some of the things he had to do here in Gromheort and in the surrounding villages, that beat seemed like paradise.

The plump constable didn’t mind--well, he didn’t mind too much--being plucked out of his comfortable home and sent west to help keep order in one of the kingdoms Algarve had conquered. Somebody had to do it. And besides, serving as a constable in occupied Forthweg, while harder than doing it in his own home town, was in most ways infinitely preferable to being issued a stick and sent off to the front in Unkerlant.

In most ways, but not in all. Along with the rest of a squad of constables from Tricarico, Bembo led several dozen trousered Kaunians through the streets of Gromheort toward the towns ley-line caravan depot. Some of the blonds walked along as if they had not a care in the world. But most had trouble hiding the fear they surely felt. Husbands comforted wives; mothers comforted children. Even as they did so, though, those husbands and mothers were biting their lips and fighting back tears themselves.

A man turned toward Bembo and stretched out his hands. “Why?” he asked in Algarvian; a fair number of people in Gromheort spoke some of the constable s language. “What did we do to deserve this?”

“Keep moving,” was all Bembo said. “Keep moving, or you’ll be sorry.” He was always sorry to draw this duty, but the Kaunian didn’t have to know. The people over me know what they’re doing, Bembo thought. If we’re going to win the cursed war, we have to do what we have to do. It’s only Kaunians, after all. Can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. At the thought of an omelette, his stomach rumbled hungrily.

“Aye, you’d better keep moving, you buggers, or you’ll get what for,” Sergeant Pesaro said, also in Algarvian. Pesaro was a good deal plumper than Bembo. Evodio translated the sergeant’s warning into classical Kaunian for the blonds who couldn’t follow Algarvian.

The Kaunians and their guards tramped past a young Forthwegian man in a long tunic coming the other way. Like most Forthwegians, the fellow was blocky and dark, with a big tuber of a nose right in the middle of his face. He would have looked just like his Unkerlanter cousins farther west had he not let his beard grow out. He shouted something in his own language at the Kaunians. Bembo didn’t understand a word of it, but the way the Forthwegian drew a thumb across his throat could mean only one thing. So could his coarse laughter.

Oraste laughed, too. “The Forthwegians are happy as clams that we’re cleaning the Kaunians out of their kingdom for them,” he said, and spat on the cobblestones. “It’s good riddance, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Powers above know I don’t especially love Kaunians, but...” Bembo’s voice trailed away. He watched a pretty young mother--if he was going to watch Kaunians, he preferred to watch their women--keeping a boy of about six walking along. The child seemed happy enough. The mother’s face was set tight against a scream. Bembo ground his teeth. No, parts of this duty weren’t what he would have wanted.

Oraste had no doubts, for which Bembo envied him. Oraste seldom had doubts about anything. Like a hound, like a hawk, the veteran constable brought in whatever his superiors aimed him at. He said, “Weren’t for the cursed Kaunians here and in Valmiera and Jelgava, we wouldn’t have a war now. Far as I’m concerned, the whoresons deserve whatever happens to ‘em. Sneaks and sluts, the lot or em.

“Aye,” Bembo said abstractedly, but he was still watching that nice-looking blond and her little boy.

Another Forthwegian passerby jeered at the Kaunians on the way to the caravan station. Maybe nine out often people in the shattered Kingdom of Forthweg were actually of Forthwegian blood, the tenth being the blonds who’d dwelt in this part of the world since the long-vanished days of the Kaunian Empire. As Oraste had said, most of the Forthwegians had scant use for their trousered neighbors.

“Keep moving,” Sergeant Pesaro called again. “You’d better keep moving, if you know what’s good for you. This isn’t stinking Eoforwic, you know. Not a single bloody soul in these parts believes your lies.” Again, Evodio translated his words into classical Kaunian: the Empire’s language had changed very little here.

Like almost all Algarvians, like almost everyone in the west of Derlavai, Bembo had studied classical Kaunian in school. Like most people, he’d forgotten just about all of it as soon as he didn’t need it any more. Evodio was an exception. He didn’t look scholarly, he looked almost as much like a bruiser as Oraste did.

One of the Kaunians spoke in his own tongue. Evodio translated what he said for Pesaro: “He asks why you say they’re lies. Everyone knows they’re true. You must know it, too, he says.”

“I don’t care what he says,” Pesaro growled. “Anybody who riots on account of a pack of lies is fair game, and that, by the powers above, goes for Kaunians and Forthwegians both.”

Only rumors about the riots in Eoforwic had drifted east to Gromheort. Some Kaunians seemed to have escaped--or to have been released by Unkerlanter raiders; the rumors weren’t clear on that--from the labor camps the Algarvians had set up for them near the western front. They claimed their folk were being used not for labor but for their life energy, with the Algarvians slaying them so mages could use that energy to power great sorceries against King Swemmel’s soldiers.

Bembo was pretty sure those claims were true, but most of the time did his resolute best not to think about it. “Even Forthwegians went up in smoke when they heard what we were up to out in the west,” he said--very quietly--to Oraste.

“Always a few hotheads,” Oraste answered with a fine, indifferent Algarvian shrug. “We’re back in the saddle in Eoforwic, and that’s what counts.” No, he didn’t waste time on doubts. Instead, he pointed ahead. “Almost there.”

Gromheort’s ley-line caravan depot, a massive pile of gray stone not far from the count’s palace, had taken considerable damage when the Algarvians seized the city. Nobody’d bothered repairing it since; so long as the ley lines themselves were clear of rubble, everything else could wait till victory finally came. Pesaro said, “Step it up.” Evodio translated for the Kaunians’ benefit--though that wasn’t really the right word.

Inside the depot, Bembo’s boots made echoes kick back from the walls as he strode across the marble floor. No lamps burned, leaving the depot a dank and gloomy place. The roof leaked. It had rained a couple of days before--Gromheort rarely got snow--and little puddles dotted the floor. A cold falling drop got Bembo in the back of the neck. He cursed and wiped it away with his hand.

An Algarvian military policeman carrying a clipboard came up to Pesaro. “How many of these blond whoresons have you got?” he asked.

“Fifty,” the constabulary sergeant answered. “That was the quota they gave me, and I deliver.” He puffed out his chest, but, however much he puffed it, it would never reach out past his protruding belly.

“Fine,” the other Algarvian said, obviously not impressed. He studied his clipboard, then scribbled something on it. “Fifty, eh? All right, take ‘em over to platform twelve and load ‘em onto the caravan there. Twelve, you hear?”

“I’m not deaf,” Pesaro said with dignity. He would have scorched a constable who sassed him, but had to be more careful around soldiers. Since he couldn’t tell the military policeman off, he shouted instead at the Kaunians the squad had rounded up: “Come on, you lousy buggers! Get moving! Platform twelve, the man said!”

“Likes to hear himself make noise, doesn’t he?” Oraste said under his breath.

“You just noticed?” Bembo answered, and the other constable chuckled. But then, more charitably, Bembo added, “Well, who doesn’t?” He knew he did, and knew very few Algarvians who didn’t. The Forthwegians and Kaunians he’d met since coming to Gromheort seemed less given to display. Sometimes, he just thought that made them dull. Others, though, he got suspicious--what were they hiding?

No one could have hidden anything out on platform twelve, which stood open to a chilly breeze blowing out of the west. Once upon a time, the platform had had a wooden roof; the stumps of a few charred support pillars were all that remained of it.

There by the edge of the platform, the cars of the caravan floated a couple of feet above the ley line from which they drew their energy and along which they would travel. Looking at those cars, Bembo said, “Where are we going to fit this lot of blonds? I don’t think there’s room for ‘em.” He didn’t think there was room for about a third--maybe even half--of the Kaunians already jammed in there.

“We’ll shoehorn ‘em in somehow,” Oraste said. “Where there’s a will, there’s a lawyer.” He chuckled nastily. “And we can feel up the broads as we shove ‘em in.”

The blond man who knew Algarvian turned to him and said, “I already knew better than to expect mercy from you. Is the smallest decency too much to ask for?”

“You Kaunians spent years and years and years grinding a foot down on Algarve’s neck, and nobody ever heard a word about mercy or decency from you,” Oraste said. He chuckled again. “Now you’re going to get it in the neck and see how you like it.”

Guards opened doors on some of the cars. They and the constables herded the Kaunians into them. It did take a lot of pushing and shoving. The seat of the trousers was one obvious place to shove. Oraste enjoyed himself. Bembo confined his shovings to the back, though he couldn’t have said why he bothered.

Even before the last of the Kaunians were inside the cars, workmen--Forthwegians with an Algarvian boss--began nailing over the windows wooden grates with only the narrowest of openings between the slats. “What’s that all about?” Bembo asked.

At last, the job was done. The guards forced the caravan-car doors closed, then barred them from the outside. From within, Bembo could still hear the moans and cries of the Kaunians as they sought whatever comfort they could find. He doubted they would find much.

Oraste waved to the cars, though with those grates on the windows the men and women inside could hardly have seen him. “So long,” he called. “You think it’s bad now; it only gets worse later. Off to Unkerlant with the lot of you!” He threw back his head and laughed.

A couple of the Forthwegian carpenters must have understood Algarvian, for they laughed, too. But Sergeant Pesaro rounded on Oraste, growling, “Shut up, curse you! They won’t want trouble on the caravan while it’s going west, so don’t stir up the stinking Kaunians.”

“He’s right,” said Bembo, who as usual on roundup duty wished he were doing anything but. Oraste nodded to Pesaro and gave Bembo a dirty look.

As soon as the carpenters had nailed a grate over the last window, the ley-line caravan silently glided away. For a moment, Bembo simply watched it. Then he gaped. “It’s going east!” he exclaimed. “East, toward Algarve! Why are they sending Kaunians that way?” No one had a good answer for him; all the Algarvians on the platform looked as surprised as he was.

Skarnu laughed softly as he strode through Pavilosta toward the market square. Merkela, who walked beside him, sent him a curious look. “What’s funny?” she asked. “The town hasn’t changed much, not that I can see.”

“No, the town hasn’t changed,” Skarnu agreed, “but I have. I’ve been on your farm so long now, and spent so much of my time there, that Pavilosta’s starting to look like a big city to me.”

“It looks big to me,” she answered, matching him stride for stride. She wasn’t far from his height or from his strength; she’d done farm work all her life, not just over the past year and a half. Looking first to one side of the street and then to the other, she murmured, “Buildings all around, and some of them three, four stories high. Aye, it looks plenty big enough.”

“It does to me, too--now,” Skarnu said. “I grew up in Priekule, though. Pavilosta didn’t used to seem so much of a much, not after the capital. It’s all what you get used to, I suppose.”

An Algarvian soldier carrying several links of sausage looked Merkela up and down and gave her a saucy smile as he walked by. Her answering stare would have chilled live steam to ice on the instant. It didn’t chill the soldier, who went on up the street laughing.

“Some things you never get used to,” Merkela said. “Some things you keep on fighting, even if they slay you for it.”

“Aye,” Skarnu said. Unlike most of Valmiera, Merkela and he were still fighting.

“Vengeance,” Merkela murmured softly. It was, these days, the most important thing she lived for. One reason she favored Skarnu these days was that he lived for it, too.

They walked past a broadsheet pasted on a wall. FOR THE KILLER OF COUNT SIMANU, 1,000 GOLD PIECES, it proclaimed. Merkela reached out and squeezed Skarnu’s hand. He’d slain Simanu, after all. And if he hadn’t, Merkela might have.

A greengrocer’s was quiet, while the rest of the shops on the street bustled. Painted across the window were half a dozen words: REVENGE FOR SIMANU--NIGHT AND FOG. Skarnu’s shiver had nothing to do with the weather. Whoever met night and fog vanished off the face of the earth. He’d found that out when he visited a comrade’s farm. Dauktu was gone, and all his family with him.

Skarnu didn’t want to think about that. As he and Merkela neared the square, he remarked, “Do you know what I miss from Priekule?” She shook her head. Her straight blond hair, even fairer than his, flew back and forth. Skarnu said, “I miss news sheets.”

Merkela shrugged. “Pavilosta never had one of its own. It isn’t big enough for that, I suppose. Sometimes they bring them in from other towns. These days, a news sheet would be full of Algarvian lies, anyhow.”

“Aye, so it would,” Skarnu agreed. “The biggest news is, the redheads have to keep on fighting in Unkerlant. If they’d taken Cottbus, we’d all be singing a sorry tune right now.”

“Good they didn’t,” Merkela said fiercely. “The only thing wrong is, the Unkerlanters won’t give Mezentio’s men everything I would.” Skarnu wasn’t so sure of that; the soldiers who followed King Swemmel were anything but gentle. Then Skarnu glanced over to Merkela. On second thought, she was probably right. Whatever Swemmel’s men did to the Algarvians, it wouldn’t match what she’d do if only she could.

He didn’t remark on that. Whatever he said, Merkela would come back with something like, Well, of course. One of the reasons she’d been drawn to him, even before the Algarvians killed her husband, was that he’d refused to quit fighting them. He didn’t think it was the only reason--he hoped not--but he was a long way from sure it was the smallest one.

Instead of a daily or a weekly news sheet, Pavilosta had the market square. People gathered to gossip as much as they did to buy and sell. Algarvian soldiers walked through the square, but not so many as had walked it before fall turned into winter. That wasn’t the cold keeping them indoors so much as it was the war in the distant west pulling them out of Valmiera. Skarnu wished it would pull them all out of his kingdom.

Merkela went off to buy pins and needles, which she couldn’t make for herself on the farm. Skarnu cared nothing about pins and needles. He wandered over to the table from which an enterprising Pavilosta taverner sold ale. The taverner nodded to him as he came up. He would never be a proper local, not if he stayed on the farm near town till his hair went from gold to silver. But he’d been here long enough--and kept his mouth shut well enough--to win a little respect. He laid coins on the table. The taverner poured him ale from a big stoneware jug.

He sipped, then nodded. “Good,” he said. His accent still announced that he came from the capital, not the provinces. Imitating the local dialect only made him sound like a bad actor. Imitating peasant taciturnity worked better.

“Aye, it is, though the weather’s too cold for the proper tang to come through,” the taverner answered. He was no peasant, and the hinges of his jaws worked fine. He looked around for the closest Algarvians. Not seeing any kilted soldiers within earshot, he leaned forward across the table and asked, “Have you heard the latest?”

“Don’t think so.” Skarnu leaned forward, too, till their heads almost touched. “Tell me, why don’t you?”

“I’ll do that. I will indeed.” Had the taverner brought his mouth any closer, he could have given Skarnu a kiss. “They say--I can’t prove it’s true, but they do say it, and nobody says anything different, not that I’ve heard--they say the redheads are going to knock over the Column of Victory down in Priekule.”

“What?” Skarnu jerked as if stung by a wasp. “They can’t do that!” His memories of the column went back to earliest childhood, back to the days before his parents had died in a ley-line caravan collision, orphaning him and Krasta.

“They can,” the taverner said. “Pretty rotten piece of business, anybody wants to know what I think . . . which isn’t too likely, especially if you listen to my wife go on.”

Skarnu was only half listening. He picked up the mug of ale, gulped it down, and shoved it and coins across the table for a refill. He took a long pull at that, too, trying to imagine the capital’s skyline without that pale stone needle thrusting up from the middle of the park. He couldn’t do it; he had an easier time visualizing the royal palace gone. “Powers above,” he said at last. “They wouldn’t just knock down a monument. They’re trying to make us forget who we are.”

Now the taverner gave him a blank look. The fellow might be shrewd in business, but how much education did he have? Not much, probably. That wasn’t so for Skarnu, who’d always been a better student than his sister. Valmiera’s roots, like those of Jelgava to the north, were anchored in the soil of the long-ago Kaunian Empire. Monuments survived all over both kingdoms; the Column of Victory was just one of the more spectacular. If the Algarvians were trying to destroy them . . .

“They’re trying to kill our Kaunianity,” Skarnu said.

Intelligence kindled in the taverner’s eyes. He understood what that meant, all right. “Hadn’t thought of it so,” he said, “but curse me if I’ll tell you you’re wrong. No, curse the redheads.”

“Aye, curse the redheads,” Skarnu agreed.

“Aye, curse the redheads,” Merkela said, coming up beside him. “Buy me some ale and tell me why we’re cursing them this time.” She didn’t bother keeping her voice down. Both Skarnu and the taverner looked around the square in alarm. Fortunately, none of the Algarvians seemed to have heard. Skarnu explained--in a voice hardly above a whisper--what Mezentio’s men spoke of doing. Merkela nodded. “Powers below eat them,” she snarled.

“May it be so,” Skarnu said, and did his best to change the subject: “Have you got what you need?”

Such ploys failed more often than they worked. This time, he got lucky. “I do,” Merkela answered, “and for a better price than I thought I would, too. Every copper counts these days.” That set her cursing the Algarvians again, but in a more restrained way. “What about you?”

“Oh, I just came along to keep you company and get out of a morning’s work,” Skamu answered. And to keep you out of trouble, he added to himself. As for the work, only in winter could a farmer--or even someone turning into a farmer--say such a thing and get away with it.

Even at this season of the year, Merkela reproachfully clicked her tongue between her teeth. “Work shouldn’t wait,” she said, which might have been a peasant’s creed all over Derlavai. She drank the mug of ale Skarnu had got her, then slipped her arm into his. For a moment, he thought that was fond possessiveness. Then she declared, “Come on, let’s go. You can finish most of the chores this afternoon and not leave so much for tomorrow.”

She was in deadly earnest. She usually was. Skarnu wanted to laugh it off, but didn’t quite dare. Meek as any henpecked husband, he let her lead him out of the square, out of Pavilosta, and back toward the farm. He was chuckling inside, but made sure it didn’t show.

Like most towns, Pavilosta had gone up at a power point, which let mages work there without fueling their sorcery with sacrifices. Pavilosta’s power point was small and feeble, one reason the place remained no more than a village.

Another reason was that it did not lie on the ley line connecting two stronger local power points. That line lay between Pavilosta and Merkela’s farm. Most times going to and from the village, Skarnu hardly noticed it. The Algarvians kept the brush down along it, as had the Valmierans before them; but in winter there was no brush to keep down.

Today, though, he and Merkela had to pause at the ley line because a long caravan was passing by; it was heading southeast, in the direction of Priekule and, beyond the capital, the Strait of Valmiera. Merkela stared at the cars as they silently slid past. “Why are all the windows covered with those wooden grates?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Skarnu answered. “I’ve never seen anything like that, either.” But, after the caravan had passed, a stench lingered in the cold, crisp air. It put him in mind of the smell of the trenches--unwashed men and undisposed-of waste--but it was stronger and even more sour. “Maybe it’s a prison caravan,” he suggested.

“Maybe.” Merkela looked along the ley line. “If those are prisoners of the Algarvians, I hope they get away.” Skarnu peered after the caravan, too. Slowly, he nodded.

When Ealstan fled Gromheort, he’d though everything would turn out fine after he got to Oyngestun. Vanai lived there, after all. If he hadn’t fallen for her, he wouldn’t have fought with his cousin and had to flee the city. Falling for a Kaunian girl would have been hard enough for a Forthwegian even in peacetime. With the redheads occupying the kingdom ...

I wonder if I killed Sidroc? Ealstan thought for the hundredth, or maybe the thousandth, time. Sooner or later, he would hear from his family. Leofsig would know where he’d gone. Leofsig or their father would find a way to get in touch with him. Ealstan didn’t dare write back to Gromheort; that would tell the local constables, and maybe the Algarvians, too, where he was staying.

Of course, if Sidroc wasn’t dead and didn’t have his wits scrambled when he hit his head after Ealstan punched him, he would likely know where Ealstan was, too. But if Sidroc wasn’t dead and didn’t have his wits scrambled, he and Uncle Hengist would have gone to the Algarvians because of the fight. That constable coming up the Street of Tinkers might have Ealstan’s name and description. He might take out his stick and threaten Ealstan with death if he didn’t come along quietly.

He did nothing of the sort. He walked past Ealstan without even noticing him. For all he knew, Ealstan’s ancestors might have lived in Oyngestun for generations uncounted. The Forthwegians whose ancestors had lived in the village for generations uncounted knew better, of course. But a stranger here wasn’t such a prodigy as he would have been before war stirred the countryside like a woman stirring soup in a pot above a kitchen hearthfire.

Ealstan walked the Street of Tinkers from one end to the other, as he had every day since coming to Oyngestun. Vanai lived in one of the houses along the street. Ealstan knew that from the letters they’d sent back and forth. But he didn’t know which one. They all looked much alike, presenting only walls--some whitewashed, some painted--and doorways and tiny windows to the street. Most Forthwegian houses were like that: built around a central courtyard, and not showing the outside world whatever ostentation lay within.

He kicked at the cobblestones in frustration. He hadn’t dared ask after Vanai. That might have involved her in his trouble--and it might have got back to the constables or the redheads. Even had he known which house was hers, she shared it with her grandfather. Ealstan had no doubt Brivibas was as appalled at the notion of his daughter’s falling in love with a Forthwegian as most Forthwegians would have been at the idea of one of their kind’s loving a Kaunian.

“Powers above,” Ealstan muttered to himself. “Doesn’t she ever come outside? Doesn’t she even look outside?”

As best he could tell, Vanai didn’t. He couldn’t spend every waking moment pacing up and down the Street of Tinkers, however much he wanted to. That would get him noticed, the last thing he wanted.

“I ought to go away,” he murmured. “I ought to go far away, go someplace where nobody’s ever heard of me, and wait for things to blow over.”

He’d said that before. Logically, intellectually, it made good sense. No matter how much sense it made, he couldn’t do it. Vanai was here . . . somewhere. Of course she drew him now, as a lodestone drew bits of iron.

Shaking his head, he went back to the tavern where he was renting a nasty little chamber above the taproom. The drunken racket below made his nights hideous, but he couldn’t very well complain. The taverner made more from the noisy drunks than he did from Ealstan.

A few doors up the street from the tavern was an apothecary’s shop run by a plump Kaunian named Tamulis. Ealstan had been in there a couple of times, in search of a nostrum to knock down the headaches he got from not sleeping enough. He hadn’t had much luck.

He was just coming up to the apothecary’s door when it opened and someone came out of the shop. He had to step smartly to keep from running into her. “I’m sorry,” he said in Forthwegian. Then he stopped in his tracks, his mouth falling open. “Vanai!”

She hadn’t recognized him, either, not for a moment. Her jaw dropped, too; her blue-gray eyes opened enormously wide. “Ealstan!” she exclaimed, and flung herself into his arms.

They separated almost at once, as if each found the other burning hot. To be seen embracing was to court danger from Algarvians, Forthwegians, and likely Kaunians as well. But the memory of Vanai pressed against him warmed Ealstan better--deeper--than his long, heavy tunic and the wool cloak he wore over it.

“What are you doing here?” Vanai demanded. She spoke Forthwegian as readily as Kaunian; Ealstan could use Kaunian, but only more slowly. She held a green glass bottle in her hand. Ealstan had an identical bottle of willow-bark decoction up in his room. It might have helped fight fever from the grippe; he couldn’t tell that it did any good against a headache.

In a few terse sentences, he explained what he was doing in Oyngestun, finishing, “After Sidroc wouldn’t wake up, I knew I had to get out of Gromheort. There was only one place I wanted to come, and here I am.”

Vanai flushed; with her fair skin, far paler than Ealstan’s, the progress of the blush was easy--and fascinating--to watch. She knew why he wanted to come to Oyngestun. “But what will you do now?” she asked. “You can’t have a lot of money.”

“More than you think,” he answered. “But I’ve been doing odd jobs, too: anything I can to get my hands on some extra cash so I don’t go through what I’ve got so fast.” As a bookkeeper’s son, he understood he needed income to balance his expenses.

“All right. Good.” Vanai nodded; she had a briskly practical streak. Then she repeated the question she’d asked before: “What will you do now?”

Ealstan knew what he wanted to do. Holding Vanai would have put the thought in his mind had it not been there already. But that wasn’t what she meant. And he’d had time to think, pacing along the Street of Tinkers. He said, “If you want, we could go to Eoforwic together. From all I’ve heard, there are more mixed couples there than in the rest of Forthweg put together.”

Vanai flushed again. “Maybe there were, back before the war--in fact, I know there were, back before the war,” she said. “But now, under the Algarvians... Do you want to put yourself through that?”

“Why else would I have come to Oyngestun?” Ealstan asked. Vanai murmured something too low to hear and looked down at her shoes. Ealstan said, “You aren’t talking about your grandfather, the way you always did before.”

“No, I’m not talking about my grandfather,” Vanai agreed wearily. “I think I may have said everything there is to say about him, and done everything there was to do for him. And he’s certainly said everything there was to say about me.” Her jaw set. Ealstan thought she was a year or so older than he. Suddenly, she looked a good deal older than that and harder than he’d dreamt she could.

He started to ask what her grandfather had said about her. A second glance at her face convinced him that wouldn’t be a good idea. Instead, he said, “Will you come with me?”

Her laugh had a raw edge to it. “This is only the fourth time we’ve ever set eyes on each other. We haven’t spent more than a few hours together, and we’ve sent a few letters back and forth. And because of that, you want me to leave behind everything and everybody I’ve ever known and go off with you to a place neither one of us has ever seen?”

Dull embarrassment filled Ealstan. He’d let his hopes run away with him. Life as you lived it wasn’t really much like what it was once the writers of romances got through with it. Kicking at the cobbles once more, he began, “Well, I--”

“Of course I’ll come with you,” Vanai broke in. “By the powers above--the powers above who are deaf and blind to everything we Kaunians have suffered--how could whatever happens to me there be worse than what’s happened to me here?”

He knew he didn’t know everything that had happened to her here in Oyngestun. Once more, he realized asking wouldn’t be smart. In any case, joy and astonishment left him little room to worry about such things. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to you,” he said. “Not ever.”

To his astonishment, her face worked. She bit her lip, plainly fighting back tears. “Nobody but you has ever said anything like that to me,” she whispered.

“No?” Ealstan shook his head in bewilderment. “A lot of people have wasted a lot of chances, then.” He saw he’d flustered her again. Since he didn’t want that, he asked, “Will your grandfather be all right if you leave him alone?”

“I hope so. In spite of everything, I hope so,” Vanai answered. “But the redheads are as likely to scoop me up on the way to Eoforwic as they are to grab him here. I can’t do anything about that. I managed to keep him from going out and having to work himself to death on the road, but those days are gone now.”

“How did you stop the Algarvians from sending him out to do road work?” Ealstan asked.

“I managed,” Vanai repeated, and said no more. Her face went hard and closed again. None of the pictures that flooded into Ealstan’s mind was any he wanted to see. He asked no more questions, which seemed to relieve Vanai.

Now she tried to break the tension: “How can we go to Eoforwic? I don’t think they’ll let us ride together in a caravan car, and I wouldn’t feel safe in one, anyhow. Too easy for the Algarvians to stop the caravan and haul away everybody with yellow hair.”

Ealstan nodded. “I think caravans are dangerous, too. That leaves walking, unless we find someone to give us a wagon ride for part of the way.” He grimaced. “With the two of us, I don’t know how likely that is.”

“Not very,” Vanai said succinctly, and Ealstan nodded again. She went on, “Let me take this to my grandfather and get a heavier cloak and some stouter shoes.” She sighed. “I’ll leave him a note to tell him some of what I’m doing, so he wont think the Algarvians got me. He’ll have some learning to do, but I think he can. He’s not stupid, even if he is a fool. Wait for me here. I’ll be back soon.” She hurried away.

Instead of waiting, he went up to his room and gathered his own meager belongings, then returned to the apothecary’s shop. Good as her word, Vanai came up a few minutes later. She was wearing the heavier cloak, and had a cloth bag slung over her shoulder. “Let’s go,” Ealstan said. Side by side, they started out of Oyngestun, heading east.

As soon as a grove of pale-leaved olive trees hid the village behind them, they began holding hands. They leaped apart when a Forthwegian on a mule came past them, but then resumed. Not long after that, they were kissing. Not too much longer after that, they went off the road into another, thicker grove. It wasn’t perfect privacy, but it was good enough. When they started walking again, they both wore foolish smiles. Ealstan knew he was in trouble, but had a hard time worrying about it. He was, after all, only seventeen.