Darkness Descending

Eighteen

Not even snowshoes helped behemoths make their way through the bottomless mud of the spring thaw. Leudast wished the thaw would have come later than it did--exactly the opposite of what he would have wished back in his village. An early thaw meant an early planting and a long growing season. But a late thaw meant the Unkerlanter army could have kept pushing the Algarvians eastward across solid ground. Solid ground, for the next few weeks, would be hard to come by.

His company was still moving eastward, one laborious step at a time. Paved roads in Unkerlant being few and far between, the highways down which they advanced were as muddy as the fields to either side. Sometimes, because so many men and horses and unicorns and behemoths and wagons moved along them and tore up the dirt, they were muddier than the fields.

During the thaw, ordinary wagons were useless. No matter how many horses pulled them, they bogged down. But every village had a wagon or two useful in the mud or in deep snow, one with tall wheels and a curving bottom almost like that of a boat. Mud wagons could bring supplies to soldiers at the front line where everything else got stuck.

The Unkerlanter army had its own fleet of mud wagons and confiscated any it found in reconquered villages. Such confiscations were few and far between, though, because the Algarvians stole the wagons, too.

Looking back over his shoulder, Leudast saw a couple of mud wagons making their way back toward the company he led. He waved to the driver of the lead wagon. The fellow waved back, calling, “You part of Captain Hawart’s outfit?”

“That’s right,” Leudast answered. He would have said the same thing had the driver asked him if he were part of some regiment he’d never heard of. Supplies didn’t come forward so often that he could afford to let them slip through his fingers. Lying to get his hands on them seemed no sin at all.

These, which were actually meant for his unit, didn’t come forward in a hurry. Mud wagons didn’t move quickly; what set them apart from every other vehicle was that they could move at all during the thaw. Leudast had plenty of time to shout for soldiers to help unload them before they actually arrived.

“What have you got for us?” he asked as his men swarmed over the wagons.

“Oh, some of this, some of that,” the lead driver answered. “Bandages, potted meat, charges for your sticks so you won’t have to cut a captive’s throat to keep blazing, all sorts of good things.”

“I should say so,” Leudast exclaimed. Such bounty hadn’t come his way in quite a while. “Powers above, we’ve been living hand-to-mouth for so long, I don’t know what we’ll do with all this stuff.”

“Well, pal, if you don’t want it, I figure there’s plenty who do,” the driver said. He laughed to show he didn’t intend to be taken seriously. A good thing for him, too: several of Leudast’s soldiers were about to turn their sticks in his direction. They weren’t going to let him and his fellow drivers get away before they’d gone through the wagons, either.

Captain Hawart himself squelched up before the plundering was quite complete. “You can’t keep all the goodies for your own company, you know,” he told Leudast. He wasn’t laughing as he said it.

“Sir, I wouldn’t do that,” Leudast assured him.

“Of course you wouldn’t,” Hawart answered. “I’ve got my eye on you. Amazing how well people behave when somebody’s watching, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Leudast did laugh. So did Hawart, now. They understood each other pretty well.

Hawart said, “You are going to share this stuff, Leudast, because we’re ordered forward against the redheads in Lautertal up ahead past the woods there.” He pointed.

“Are we?” Leudast said tonelessly. “They’ll have had a deal of time to get ready for us, won’t they? And we won’t be able to come at ‘em quick and flank ‘em out, like we did so often in the snow.”

“That’s all true, every word of it,” his superior agreed. “But we’re ordered in anyhow, and so we’ll go. They aren’t supposed to have that many men holed up in the place. That’s the word coming back to us, anyhow.”

He didn’t sound as if he believed it. He didn’t look as if he believed it, either. Casting about for ways to ask how big a fiasco the ordered assault was likely to be, Leudast found one: “How hard are you going to push the attack, sir?”

“We’re going forward till we can’t go forward anymore,” Hawart answered. Spoken one way, that meant one thing; spoken another way, it meant something altogether different.

Leudast had no great trouble figuring out Captain Hawart’s tone. “Aye, sir,” he said. “You don’t need to worry about my company. We always do our best.”

“I know you do,” Hawart said. “If they haven’t killed us yet, they probably can’t kill us at all, don’t you think?”

“Aye,” Leudast said, knowing he was lying, knowing Hawart knew he was lying. But if he lied to the captain, maybe he could lie to himself, too. He went on, “What help can we count on when we go at this Lautertal place? Egg-tossers? Behemoths? Magecraft?” Magecraft was a euphemism for slaughtered Unkerlanters, but he might be able to lie to himself about that, too.

In any case, Hawart shook his head. “Tossers are mostly stuck in the mud ten miles behind us. Same with the behemoths. And this isn’t a big enough attack to deserve magecraft. Can’t say I’m too sorry about that.” He was probably lying to himself, too.

“Now we hope the Algarvians feel the same way about holding the place,” Leudast said, and Hawart nodded. Leudast went on, “I’ll let my men know what they’ll be doing. No wonder the powers above”--by which he meant the Unkerlanter quartermasters, not the abstract powers beyond the sky--”decided to let us have enough supplies for a change.”

After Hawart left, Leudast broke the news to the company he commanded. His veterans nodded in resignation. The new recruits exclaimed and grinned excitedly. They knew no better. They would, those who didn’t pay an irredeemable price for the instruction the Algarvians were about to give them.

As soon as Leudast advanced out of the trees and on toward Lautertal, he knew the attack was in trouble. The town had a couple of buildings with tall spires that hadn’t been knocked down. That meant the Algarvians would have lookouts in those spires, men who could see a long way.

They also proved to have egg-tossers in the town. Eggs began bursting among the Unkerlanters slogging across the liquid fields toward the town. The mud absorbed some of the sorcerous energy those eggs released--some, but far from all. Men shrieked as they were burned, or as bits of the egg casings scythed into them.

“Keep going!” Leudast shouted. “We can do it!” He didn’t know whether the Unkerlanters could do it or not, but he did know they couldn’t if they didn’t think they could. “Urra!” he yelled. “Swemmel! Urra!”

“Urra!” the Unkerlanters shouted. They were game. They’d stayed game all through the dreadful summer and fall, when the Algarvians pushed them back almost at will. Leudast still marveled at that. Throwing down his stick and throwing up his hands would have been so easy. But he’d kept fighting, and so had his countrymen. Ever since fall gave way to winter, they’d been the ones advancing. That was enough to keep a man going all by itself.

But it wasn’t enough to let the Unkerlanters take Lautertal. The Algarvians had indeed had some time in which to get ready and they’d used it well. They’d dug and then cleverly concealed blazing pits all around the town. They must have reinforced them, too, or the pits would have turned to muck during the thaw. The pits hadn’t; King Mezentio’s men took a steady toll on the Unkerlanters from them. And the egg-tossers kept dropping death on Leudast and his comrades.

He saw an egg spinning through the air toward him, saw it and flung himself face down in the muck before it burst. Fragments of the casing hissed malignantly over his head. The soggy ground under him shuddered as if in torment. But he’d known worse than that when the Algarvians started slaughtering Kaunian captives. Then the ground didn’t merely shudder: trenches and holes closed on the soldiers unlucky enough to shelter in them, and flames burst up to catch men scrambling free. Algarvian magecraft was nothing to despise.

Since they had so many other defenses cunningly prepared, Leudast feared King Mezentio’s men would also be ready to use Kaunians’ life energy against the Unkerlanter attack. If they were ready, they didn’t bother killing the captives. They had no need for anything so drastic. Leudast and the other Unkerlanters had no chance to break into Lautertal, let alone to run the Algarvians out of it.

Wiping mud from his eyes, Leudast looked around. During the winter, King Swemmel’s soldiers had taken to using the Algarvian tactic of flanking die enemy out of his position rather than smashing straight into it. With behemoths on snowshoes adding punch and speed to Unkerlanter attacks, the ploy had worked well. Now . . .

Leudast shook his head. Soldiers half drowned in muck were not going to produce a powerful flanking maneuver, not around Lautertal, not even if the Algarvians had no further unpleasant surprises waiting for them. The Unkerlanters couldn’t go around, they couldn’t go forward, and they were having an even harder time staying where they were.

“What do we do, sir?” one of Leudast’s men cried, as if certain he would have the answer. “What can we do?”

Nothing, was the first thought that sprang into Leudast’s mind. Stay where we are and keep getting pounded, was the second. He liked it no better, though doing it would have meant obeying orders to the letter.

He looked around again, trying to find any way in which the attack on Lautertal might succeed. Had he seen one, he would have ordered his men to keep trying: no war ever got won without casualties. But no war ever got won by throwing men into a meat grinder to no purpose, either. As far as he could see, that was all the Unkerlanters were doing here.

“Fall back!” he shouted. “Back to our own lines! We’ll take another blaze at these buggers later on.” He didn’t know whether the Unkerlanters would or not. He did know this attack had failed.

Getting away from Lautertal proved almost as expensive as assailing the place had been. The Algarvians, fortunately, could no more pursue than the Unkerlanters had been able to attack, but their egg-tossers punished the retreating soldiers all over again. Back at the soggy trenches from which they’d begun the assault on Lautertal, King Swemmel’s men reckoned up their losses. Leudast had seen worse, which was the most he could say.

“Who ordered the withdrawal?” Captain Hawart demanded.

“I did, sir,” Leudast answered, and wondered if an avalanche of official wrath would fall on his head.

But Hawart only nodded and said, “Good. You waited long enough.” Leudast let out a long, weary sigh of relief.

In all his years as a dragonflier, Count Sabrino had never faced such determined enemies in the air as the ones he met here in the land of the Ice People. Try as he would, he could not escape them. And all the wing he led suffered from their ferocious onslaughts.

He turned to Colonel Broumidis, who commanded the handful of Yaninan dragons on the austral continent. “Can we do nothing against them?” he cried out in torment. “Are we powerless?”

Broumidis’ shrug had none of the panache an Algarvian would have given it. The Yaninan officer, a short, skinny man with an enormous black mustache that didn’t suit his narrow face, seemed rather to be suggesting that fate had more to do with it than he did. All all he said was, “What can we do but endure?”

“Go mad?” Sabrino suggested, no more than a quarter in jest. He slapped, then cried out in triumph. “There’s one mosquito dead. That leaves only forty-eight billion, as near as I can reckon. The cursed things are eating me alive.”

Colonel Broumidis shrugged again. “It is spring on the austral continent,” he said, sounding even more doleful in his accented Algarvian than he would have in his own language. “All the bugs hatch out at once, and they are all hungry. What can we do but slap and light stinking candles and suffer?”

“I’d like to drop enough eggs on all the swamps to kill the wrigglers before they grow up, that’s what,” Sabrino said savagely. Broumidis raised a bushy black eyebrow and said nothing. Sabrino felt himself flush. He knew he’d been absurd. When the ice down here finally melted, half the countryside turned into a bog. And, as the Yaninan colonel had said, the bugs swarmed forth, intent on packing a year’s worth of life into the few weeks of mild weather the austral continent gave them.

Sabrino looked back over his shoulder at Heshbon, the Yaninan outpost he and his dragonfliers had to help protect. Miserable little place, he thought. I’ve flown over plenty of Unkerlanter peasant villages where I’d rather settle down, and I wouldn’t be caught dead in an Unkerlanter peasant village.

“Cinnabar,” he muttered under his breath, making it into a curse.

“Aye, cinnabar,” Broumidis agreed, mournful still. “It draw warriors as amber draws feathers. Us, the Lagoans--may the powers below swallow those wide-arsed whoresons--and now you.”

“I would have been just as well pleased to stay on the other side of the Narrow Sea, I assure you,” Sabrino said.

Colonel Broumidis sent him a hurt look. The Yaninan’s large, dark, liquid eyes were made for such expressions. Sabrino sighed. He could have said a good deal more, but he didn’t want to offend his ally. Shouting, If you buggers had done any fighting on your own, I could have stayed on the other side of the Narrow Sea, struck him as impolitic.

“Well, we shall have to carry on the war as best we can.” Broumidis sighed, too. The Yaninans were hardly happier witJh the Algarvians than the other way round. They were a proud and touchy folk, and all the more touchy because of their failures in the field. Broumidis pointed. “Here comes the food for our dragons.”

Several camels bore panniers full of chunks of meat. The meat came from other camels; cutting them up struck Sabrino as the best thing that could happen to them. They were almost as disagreeable as dragons. Sabrino know no higher dispraise.

Mosquitoes didn’t care about cut-up meat. They wanted theirs live. Flies and gnats and midges weren’t so fussy. They swarmed round the panniers in buzzing, swirling clouds. They were perfectly willing to torment the camels carrying the panniers, too. And, because the camels had started shedding their heavy winter coats, they suffered badly.

Not so the Ice People who led them. The natives of the austral continent remained swaddled in furs and robes, and offered the bugs few targets. Sabrino rather wished he were wearing something that covered more than a kilt; his legs looked hardly better than the meat the dragons were getting. And. ... “Before I came here, I thought the Ice People were hairy because that helped keep them warm. Now I wonder whether their being so hairy helps keep the mosquitoes away, too.”

“It does,” Broumidis said with assurance. “I have seen as much in my service here.” He inhaled, choked on a gnat, and spent the next minute or so coughing. When he could speak again, he went on, “Even so, I would not care to be among their number.”

“No indeed, my dear fellow!” Sabrino exclaimed. His own groundcrew men took the camel meat from the Ice People. They dusted it with brimstone and lavishly with cinnabar before feeding it to the dragons. Sabrino said, “We need not stint here, at any rate. That’s all to the good.”

“Aye, dragons down here burn hot and flame far,” his Yaninan counterpart agreed. “Not for nothing do we need what the Ice People trade us.”

Before Sabrino could answer, an insect bit him on the back of the neck. It wasn’t a mere mosquito; it felt as if it had driven a red-hot nail an inch into his flesh. He yelled and leaped in the air and slapped at himself, all at the same time. Something squashed under the palm of his hand. When he looked, he saw blood and bug guts. He scrubbed his palm on the new green grass shooting up now that the snow had melted. Like the bugs, like everything on the austral continent, the grass was speeding through its life as if it knew it had not a moment to waste.

Another camel approached from out of the east. This one was a riding beast, with a man of the Ice People perched atop the curious padded bench that served it for a saddle. Seeing Broumidis, the fellow steered the camel toward him. As soon as he came into earshot, he began shouting in his own throaty language, pointing back over his shoulder as he did so.

“You understand what he’s saying?” Sabrino asked. His neck still throbbed.

“Aye,” Broumidis replied, “or I do when I don’t have to try to understand you, too.” Sabrino shut up. The Yaninan spoke in the language of the Ice People, listened, and spoke again. After he got another set of answers, he turned back to Sabrino. “The Lagoans are coming. Pathrusim here spied them fording the Jabbok River, about forty miles east of here. They’ll be across it now, of course, but not so far across it--they’re mostly footsoldiers, and couriers camels ride like the wind. We can strike them. We can smite them.”

He sounded quiveringly eager. Had all the Yaninans been so eager to go into action against King Vitor’s men, Sabrino could have stayed in Unkerlant, in a fight he was convinced mattered more to his kingdom than this sideshow. The best way to escape the sideshow, though, was to smash the Lagoans. If they were beaten off the austral continent, he could go back to Derlavai.

He shouted for his bugler. The fellow came running up, horn in hand. “Blow the call to combat,” Sabrino told him. “We fly against the Lagoans!”

Familiar martial music rang out. His dragonfliers burst from their tents and ran for their beasts, which screamed in fury at having their meals interrupted. They were going off to a fight, which they liked as well as eating, but they hadn’t the brains to figure that out.

A couple of minutes later, a Yaninan trumpeter also started blaring away. Broumidis’ men moved more slowly than the Algarvians despite their commandant s shouts and curses. Poor bugger, Sabrino thought--a good officer trapped in a bad service. Sabrinos whole wing was in the air and speeding east before the first Yaninan dragons left the ground. Sabrino sighed: This was why King Mezentio s men had had to come give them a hand. With Yaninans for allies, Algarve hardly needed enemies.

Peering down from his perch at the base of his dragon’s neck. Sabrino spied a couple of Lagoan behemoths lumbering ahead of the enemy’s army. The Lagoans spotted his wing, too, and started blazing at the dragons with the heavy stick mounted on one behemoth. The wing, fortunately, was flying high, and even that powerful beam couldn’t knock any dragons out of the sky. It did keep Sabrino from ordering his dragons to swoop down on the Lagoan behemoths, though. They would pay a high price if they tried that.

A few of the Algarvian dragonfliers did drop eggs on the behemoths. Down here on the austral continent, the wing had to carry eggs as well as fighting with flame and the fliers’ sticks. Sabrino didn’t see whether they knocked the Lagoan beasts down. He was looking ahead, trying to spot the Lagoans’ main force.

He was also worrying. He’d flown against Lagoan dragons over the Strait of Valmiera; their fliers knew what they were doing. And the Lagoans, unlike the Unkerlanters, used crystals as freely as did his own kingdom. Those behemoths would let the rest of the Lagoan army know the dragons were coming.

And they did. The Lagoans might not have brought along many dragons, but they had lots of behemoths. Some of those beasts carried egg-tossers, but the ones with heavy sticks all started blazing at the wing of Algarvian dragons.

Captain Domiziano’s face appeared in Sabrino’s crystal. “Sir, shall we dive on them?” the squadron commander asked. By his tone, he would have liked nothing better.

But Sabrino shook his head. “No--it would hurt us too much. We can’t afford to throw ourselves away--no telling if any more dragons will be able to come here if we do, and dragons can’t stop a whole army on the march by themselves anyhow.”

“The Yaninans won’t be able to stop them, either,” Domiziano predicted. “Are we going to have to send soldiers here, too?”

“I don’t know. Do I look like King Mezentio? You’d better not say aye, by the powers above.” Sabrino added the warning before Domiziano could say anything at all. “What I do know is, we’re not going to give the Lagoans anything easy.”

Eggs rained down on King Vitor’s men at a height beyond that at which the foe’s heavy sticks could harm the dragons. The only trouble was, it was also a height beyond that at which the dragonfliers could aim accurately. Here and there, a bursting egg flung Lagoans in all directions. More often than not, though, the eggs only cratered the ground.

After a while, there were no more eggs left to drop. “Back to the dragon farm, boys,” Sabrino ordered. “We’ll load up again and then hit these miserable whoresons another good lick.”

The rest of the dragonfliers obeyed his command. As he spiraled down to a landing outside of Heshbon, the mosquitoes and flies and gnats he’d escaped in the upper air began to plague him once more. He cursed and slapped, neither of which did much good. Colonel Broumidis’ few dragons were landing alongside their Algarvian allies. They’d done well enough, or so Sabrino supposed. He cursed them anyhow for not stopping the Lagoans by themselves. If they’d managed that, he wouldn’t have had to come to the austral continent and get nibbled to death by gnats.

Now that the land of the Ice People was no longer frozen hard as stone, Fernao could dig a hole for himself when eggs began dropping all around him. He got filthy when he dove into the muddy hole, but he vastly preferred getting filthy to getting killed.

Overhead, the Algarvian dragons wheeled unchallenged. They stayed high above the Lagoan army, not daring to swoop down and flame soldiers or behemoths. Fernao supposed that represented a moral victory of sorts. Moral victories, though, went only so far when measured against the real article. The Algarvians could hurt his comrades--and him, though he tried not to think about that-- while the men on the ground could do little to the dragons as long as they stayed high.

As if to underscore that, a Lagoan soldier not far away started shrieking. With a curse--he wasn’t thrilled about exposing himself to danger--Fernao scrambled out of the hold where he sheltered and hurried to the wounded man’s side. The soldier writhed, clutching at his belly. Blood rivered out from between his fingers. Either a fragment of egg shell or a sharp stone propelled by a nearby blast of sorcerous energy had laid him open as neatly as a butcher might have done.

Even as Fernao readied the spell that would slow the man down and give the physicians a chance to work on him, the fellow groaned one last time. He shuddered and went limp; his eyes rolled up in his head. When Fernao felt for his pulse, he found none. That might have been a mercy. The soldier would have known nothing but torment after coming out from under the shadow of the magic; and fever, against which even mages had little power, might well have carried him off anyhow. Fernao jumped back into his hole again.

The Algarvian dragons seemed to stay in the air over the army forever. Part of that feeling came from being under attack; Fernao knew as much. And part sprang from the nature of daylight on the austral continent. When he’d first come, in winter, the sun had hardly peeked above the horizon. Not so very much farther south, it would never have risen at all. Now that spring had come, though, days grew longer with astonishing speed. Before long, the sun would spend almost all day in the sky. On the far side of the Barrier Mountains, it would never set.

At last, no doubt because they were out of eggs, the Algarvian dragons flew off toward Heshbon. Fernao shook his head to get rid of the echoing roar of bursting eggs. Mosquitoes buzzed malignantly; he could still hear those. When he inhaled, a tickling in his nose warned him he’d breathed in a couple of midges. He exhaled sharply, and got ride of them before he started to choke.

All over the field, Lagoans were emerging from the holes they’d dug for themselves. Like Fernao, his countrymen were worn and muddy. A lot of them had a look in their eyes that he didn’t like: the look of men who’d had to take a beating without being able to hit back. A few officers were calling for them to push on toward the west, but Fernao could see at a glance that the soldiers were in no shape to advance.

Someone waved to him: Affonso. “You’re still alive,” the other mage called.

“Aye, I think so,” Fernao said. “And you as well--congratulations.”

Affonso bowed. “Thanks. I wish I could take credit for it, but it had more to do with luck or the powers above--your choice--than with me.” He slapped at the back of his leg, just above the top of his wool stocking. “Stinking bugs.”

“When I was here before, they’d already passed their peak,” Fernao said. “Now it’s a miracle they don’t suck the blood out of everything.”

“If they don’t, the Algarvians are liable to,” Affonso said gloomily.

To that, Fernao could only nod. Algarve had a much easier time sending men and supplies across the Narrow Sea to the austral continent than did Lagoas. The same held true for Yanina, but King Mezentio’s men, unlike KingTsavellas’, took war seriously. Fernao said, “If they ship over footsoldiers and behemoths, we’re liable to be in a bad way.”

“Aye,” Affonso agreed, more gloomily still. “The dragons are bad enough. Even when they aren’t dropping eggs on our heads, they’re looking down to see just where we’re going. Even Yaninan footsoldiers can put up a fight when they have an edge like that. Algarvians ... I don’t want to think about the bloody Algarvians.”

“We have to have dragons of our own--that’s all there is to it,” Fernao said. He turned away.

“Where are you going?” Affonso asked.

“To tell Lieutenant General Junqueiro what I just told you,” Fernao answered. “Maybe he hasn’t figured it out for himself yet. The more I see of soldiers, the worse I think they are at trying to deal with things they’ve never met before.”

He found Junqueiro in the middle of a heated argument with the hostages the chieftain of the Ice People named Elishamma had left with the Lagoan army. Since the general and the hostages had no language in common, the exchange of ideas was necessarily limited, but both sides seemed most sincere.

One of the hostages, a fuzzy fellow named Abinadab, spoke some Yaninan, even if he hadn’t admitted it when Elishamma handed him over to the Lagoans. Seeing Fernao, he rounded on him. “You tell your big man to let us go,” he cried. “Our chief not know mangy Yaninans have strong mangy friends when he give us.”

“Too bad,” Fernao said. “We are not without power ourselves. We have marched a long way. Now we are almost in sight of Heshbon. Soon we will take it. Then the Algarvians will have a harder time fighting us.”

“You dream,” Abinadab said, and scornfully turned his back.

“What is he havering about?” Junqueiro demanded. “What are they all havering about? Powers above, they’re ugly--and smelly, too.” Fernao translated for him. The Lagoan general clapped a hand to his forehead. “Tell them that, if they don’t like being hostages, they can be victims. I doubt their worthless lives have much energy, but they might keep a few sticks charged.”

No matter what Fernao thought of Junqueiro, that was exactly the right line to take with the Ice People. If the mage enjoyed putting it into Yaninan so Abinadab could translate it for the rest of the nomads, no one but he had to know that. The men of the Ice People cried out in furious indignation, but when Fernao and Junqueiro both ignored them, they went off shaking their heads and muttering.

“Teach them the fear of the powers above,” Junqueiro muttered, glaring at their backs.

“They don’t believe in the powers above--only their foolish gods,” Fernao said, the last word necessarily being in the language of the Ice People. “But they do know strength, and they know weakness, too. If we don’t get some dragons here, strength will not lie on our side.”

He waited for Junqueiro to burst like an egg. No dragon could fly all the way from Lagoas even to the eastern edge of the land of the Ice People, let alone all the way to the neighborhood of Heshbon. But, to his surprise, the commanding general only nodded and said, “It’s being taken care of.”

“It is?” Fernao blinked. “How?”

Junqueiro chuckled. “Ah, so you mages don’t know everything there is to know, eh?” Fernao gave him a dirty look: while talking with Affonso, he’d accused the general of being none too bright and didn’t enjoy having the charge flung back in his face. Junqueiro went on, “While you weren’t looking, sorcerous sir, the Kuusaman navy built ley-line transports to haul dragons out to where they needed them. They used them against the Gongs out in the Bothnian Ocean. Now we have some, too, and a couple of them are on their way to the Narrow Sea, to give us a hand against Mezentio’s dragons.”

“We have? They are?” Not for the first time, Fernao found he really didn’t know everything. The discovery never failed to annoy him. “When will they get here? Have they made it past Sibiu safe?”

“Aye, they have, or so my crystallomancer tells me,” Junqueiro answered. “Now that a good deal of the ice has melted, they could follow ley lines farther south than any we dared use in dead of winter. No Algarvian dragons or leviathans out of Sibiu spied them. They’ll be here in a couple of days, and then we’ll have dragons of our own, powers above be praised.”

“Powers above be praised indeed,” Fernao agreed. “Nothing like giving Mezentio’s men a nasty surprise the next time they come calling.”

“Aye.” Looking pleased with himself, the Lagoan general whuffled out air through his white-streaked mustachios. “They may have made us stop for a little while, but we’re not down for good.” He puffed out his chest and looked strong and brave. Fernao had always thought he was strong and brave. What the mage had wondered was whether Junqueiro had any brains. Now Fernao began to hope he did.

But the Lagoan dragons didn’t get there to give the Algarvians a nasty surprise the next time the Algarvians flew overhead, for Mezentio’s dragonfliers returned later that evening, not long before sunset would usher in the brief spring night. This time, they had more eggs than on their first visit. Huddled in a hole in the ground, Fernao hurled curses at them that he knew would not bite. He also cursed the mosquitoes that kept harassing him. The mosquitoes bit. Again, the curses didn’t.

This time, a couple of dragons did swoop low to flame the Lagoan soldiers. A heavy stick on a behemoth’s back blazed one of them out of the sky. Fernao cheered himself hoarse, even though the dragon’s thrashing death throes did as much damage to the Lagoans on the ground as had its fiery breath.

After the Algarvians flew off again, a runner came shouting Fernao’s name. On following the man, he discovered that three of the hostages had taken advantage of the chaos to flee. The ones who hadn’t got away looked as if they expected to be blazed for their comrades’ transgressions. Fernao wondered whether they were grateful to be spared or despised the Lagoans for their mercy.

When morning returned, so did the Algarvian dragonfliers. Going forward while eggs fell was impossible for the Lagoans. Scattering to minimize the damage from the enemy’s eggs was a better ploy. It wouldn’t have been had Junqueiro feared an attack from Yanina’s footsoldiers, but the Yaninans had shown they had no stomach for such assaults.

The Algarvians came back twice more that day, keeping the Lagoans from advancing against Heshbon. The scouts Junqueiro did send forward showed that the Yaninans, despite their unwillingness to attack, were strengthening positions that covered the approaches to their coastal base. The commanding general cursed when he got the news, though he could hardly have expected anything different.

And then, that evening, Lagoan dragons did come flying into the army’s unhappy camp--eleven of them, no more, and all in the last stages of exhaustion. The men who flew them were hardly in better shape. “Leviathan,” one of them said, gulping at the flask of spirits a soldier pressed into his hand. “Cursed leviathan, or more likely a pod of them. We never knew we were in any trouble, either dragon transport, till the eggs they planted against our sides burst. By then they were long gone underwater. And not long after that, both our ships went under the water, too. Most of the dragons, most of the fliers, never made it out.” He swigged again, tilting the flask so he could drain it dry.

“What will we do without enough dragons to fight the Algarvians?” someone asked. The question hadn’t been aimed at Fernao, but he saw only one thing the Lagoans could do: they would have to retreat.

“We are not satisfied,” King Swemmel told Marshal Rathar. “By the powers above, how can we be satisfied, with the cursed redheads still infesting so much of the richest part of our kingdom?”

Rathar bowed his head. Had he been in Swemmel’s audience chamber, he would have gone down on his belly, but the king had come to his office, and so that indignity was spared him. He said, “Your Majesty, we may not have done so much as you’d hoped, but we have done a great deal. Even after the mud fully dries, the Algarvians will be hard pressed to mount another assault on Cottbus. The last one cost them dear, and we have new fortifications protecting the way west toward thie capital.”

He’d hoped his words would please the king, but Swemmel’s eyes blazed angrily. “We care little for what the Algarvians may seek to do to us,” he growled. “We care far more for what we can do to the Algarvians.”

Within limits, that was a good attitude for a soldier to have. King Swemmel had never recognized limits, not for himself, not for those he commanded. Rathar said, “We will hit back at Mezentio’s men in the south. But we must also make sure the capital is safe. When the ground lets the redheads move, they won’t stand idle, waiting to be attacked.”

The marshal of Unkerlant wondered how big an understatement that was. The previous summer and fall’s campaign had proved the Algarvians had taken too big a bite to swallow at once. It hadn’t proved they couldn’t swallow it in several gulps rather than one. And Rathar remained uneasily aware that, man for man, Mezentio’s soldiers were better than Swemmel’s. He thanked the powers above that Unkerlant had more men.

Swemmel said, “We had better not rest idle, either. As soon as the ground dries, we want us to move first, before the Algarvians can.” He walked over to the map on the wall by Rathars desk. “You are always talking about flanking attacks. If we can flank them out of Aspang here, their whole position in Grelz crumbles.”

Rathar nodded. The king had been furious for some time because the Unkerlanters hadn’t driven King Mezentio’s men out of Aspang. Having the redheads there didn’t thrill Rathar, either. He’d managed to talk Swemmel out of a headlong assault on the city; Unkerlant had already tried that and bloodily failed. The marshal had no compunction about spending lives but wanted to buy something with what he spent.

And if he’d managed to get the king thinking about flanking maneuvers, he’d accomplished something as important as winning a major battle. “I believe you’re right, your Majesty. I would like to go south and prepare that attack myself. . ..”

But King Swemmel shook his head. “From your own mouth came the words: the Algarvians will not stand idle when the ground dries. What will they do, Marshal? What would you do, did you wear Mezentio’s kilt?”

Swemmel was having a good day. He couldn’t have found a more pertinent question to ask. Rathar did his best to think his way into King Mezentio s mind. One answer emerged: “I would strike again for Cottbus, here in the center. It’s still as important as it ever was. No matter how well we’ve fortified the ground in front of it, the Algarvians will still want it.”

“We agree,” Swemmel said. “And, because we agree, we are going to keep you here in front of the capital, to defend it against the redheads.”

“I obey, your Majesty,” Rathar said glumly. He wished he could fault Swemmel’s logic. But if he was the best general Unkerlant had and Cottbus the vital place likeliest to be endangered, where better to station him than here?

“Of course you obey us,” Swemmel said. “Did you not, we should have got ourselves a new marshal some time ago. Now--ready this assault against the Algarvians around Aspang, pick a general who will run it well, and set it in motion as soon as may be.” The king swept out of the office.

Major Merovec looked inside. When Rathar nodded, his adjutant came in. “What now?” Merovec asked cautiously.

Rathar told him what now. The marshal did not try to hide his frustration. Even if Merovec reported him to the king, Swemmel would have a hard time blaming him for wanting to go out and fight. That wasn’t to say Swemmel couldn’t blame him, but the king would have to work at it.

“Whom will you choose to command in the south, since you may not go yourself?” Merovec asked.

“General Vatran has fought as well as anyone could reasonably expect down there,” Rathar answered, which was true: not even King Swemmel had complained of Vatran. “I’ll leave him there till he proves he can’t do the job--or till a more important one comes along and I promote him into it.”

Merovec thought that over, then nodded. “He seems capable enough. Not like the early days of the fight with the redheads, when generals got the sack about once a week.”

“They got what they deserved,” Rathar said. “One thing war does in a hurry that peace can’t do at all: it sorts out the officers who know how to fight from the ones who don’t. And now, since I can’t go south to lead the attack there, I am going to go to the lines in front of Cottbus, to see what we can do to help Vatran when the attack goes in.”

The lines were a good deal in front of Cottbus these days. A finger’s breadth between two pinholes on the map translated into three hours’ travel in a ley-line caravan car through some of the most ravaged countryside Rathar had ever seen. Neither the Unkerlanters nor their Algarvian foes had asked for or given quarter. Every town and village had been fought over twice, first when the Algarvians advanced towards Cottbus and then when they fell back from it. A wall that hadn’t been knocked down was unusual, a building unburnt and intact a prodigy.

About two-thirds of the way to the front, the caravan halted. “I’m afraid you’ll have to get out now, Marshal,” an apologetic mage said. “We haven’t cleared all the Algarvian sabotage from the ley line east of here. We can’t afford to lose you.”

“You’d better have a horse waiting for me, then,” Rathar growled.

“Oh, aye, sir, we do,” the mage said. Sure enough, a groom held a peppy-looking stallion not far from where the caravan car had halted. Rather, no splendid equestrian, would have preferred a gelding, but expected he could manage a more headstrong beast. He was a pretty headstrong beast himself.

The stallion must have been at the front for a while. It shied neither at the sharp stink of wood smoke as it trotted past one more burned-out village nor at the reek of dead meat, which seemed to be everywhere, sometimes faint, sometimes sickeningly strong.

One reason the horse was able to trot, as opposed to sinking hock-deep in mud, was that it stuck to a roughly corduroyed path leading east. Rather rode past a gang of Algarvian captives laying boards in the roadway under the sticks of a squad of Unkerlanter guards. He wished every one of the soldiers who served King Swemmel could have looked at these filthy, scrawny, thoroughly cowed Algarvians. The redheads sometimes seemed to go forward for no better reason than that both they and the Unkerlanters they fought were convinced they could. This gang of Algarvians would never raise that particular awe in their enemies again.

At last, as the sun set behind him and evening twilight began to gather, the marshal heard the rumble of bursting eggs ahead. When he entered the next village, a couple of Unkerlanter sentries popped out of the ruins and barked, “Halt! Who goes there?”

“I am Marshal Rathar,” Rathar said mildly. “Before you blaze me for not knowing the password, take me to your commander. He will vouch for me.” He wondered just which colonel or brigadier was in charge in these parts. If it was a man whose career he’d blighted, the fellow might deny any knowledge of him and have him blazed for a spy. It wasn’t likely, but stranger things had happened in Unkerlanter history.

In the event, Rathar wasted some perfectly good worries. The officer to whom the wide-eyed sentries led him, Colonel Euric, saluted so crisply, Rathar thought his arm would fall off. He gave Rathar his own battered chair, fed him a big bowl of boiled buckwheat groats, onions, and what was probably horsemeat, and poured him a heroic nip of spirits.

“I may live,” Rather said when he’d got outside of the meal and the drink. “All of me but my backside hopes I will, anyhow.”

“They don’t pay you to be a cavalryman, lord Marshal,” Euric answered with a grin. “They pay you to tell cavalrymen what to do.”

“I can’t very well do that if I don’t know what’s going on myself,” Rathar said. “That’s why I like to come up to the front when I get the chance.” He pointed at Euric, much as King Swemmel was in the habit of pointing at him. “What is going on up here, Colonel?”

“Not a whole lot, to tell you the truth, not right this minute,” Euric answered. “We’re waiting for things to dry out, and so are the stinking redheads. Meanwhile, we toss some eggs at them, they toss some at us, a few soldiers on both sides get killed, and it won’t change the way the war turns out one lousy bit.” He stuck out his chin, as if defying Rathar to come down on him for his frankness.

Rathar instead got up, walked over to him, and folded him into a bear hug. “I always praise the powers above when I run into a man who speaks his mind,” he said. “It doesn’t happen all that often, believe you me.”

Euric laughed. He was young to be a colonel--not far past thirty. Rathar wondered how many men above him had been killed or disgraced to let him get where he was. Outspoken captains were common enough. Most of them never advanced past captain. Euric was likely to be good at what he did and had surely been in the right place at the right time.

The colonel said, “I tell you this, too: we’ll lick the buggers unless we do something stupid. And we’re liable to.” He raised an eyebrow and grinned at Rathar. “Nothing personal, of course.”

“Of course.” Rathar grinned back. He slapped Euric’s shoulder. “You’ll go far. No telling who’ll chase you while you’re going, but you’ll go far.”

Both men laughed. They shared a bond, the same bond that joined so many Unkerlanter officers: So far, they’d survived the worst both King Swemmel and the Algarvians could do to their kingdom. Rather felt he was ready for anything now. By Euric’s jaunty expression, they had that in common, too.

Algarvian dragons started dropping eggs on the village. Both Euric and Rather jumped down into a hole in the ground behind the battered hut where Euric made his headquarters. “What will they diink of you in Cottbus when you come back all covered with mud?” Euric asked.

“They’ll think I’m earning my keep,” Rathar replied. “Either that or they’ll think I’m a cursed fool for taking chances I don’t have to.”

“As opposed to the rest of us poor sods, who do have to take chances,” Euric said. Rathar shrugged. That had no answer, nor had it since the beginning of time. But Euric laughed and added, “You took your share before--I know that for a fact.” An egg burst close by, showering Rathar with mud that stank of corpses. Even so, he felt. . .forgiven was the word he finally found.

“You do good work,” Ethelhelm said to Ealstan as they sat in the band leader’s flat sipping wine. “If I’d had you casting accounts for me since the days before the war, I’d’ve had a lot more money for the Algarvians to take away from me.”

“Heh,” Ealstan said. Ethelhelm’s wit always had a bite to it. Rubbing his chin, Ealstan went on in musing tones: “Before the war ... It was only two and a half years ago, but it seems like forever.”

“Oh, longer than that.” Ethelhelm cocked his head to one side, waiting to see how Ealstan took his reply. Ealstan laughed. A lot of people, he supposed--his cousin Sidroc assuredly among them--would have stared in blank incomprehension. Ethelhelm nodded, as if he’d passed an obscure test. “You’re hardly old enough to piss without wetting yourself, but you’ve got an old head on your shoulders, don’t you?”

“People say so,” Ealstan answered. “I’m cursed if I know. I take after my father is what I think it is.”

“I took after my father, too, once upon a time,” Ethelhelm said. “Took after him with a carving knife, as a matter of fact. Didn’t catch him, though.”

Ealstan couldn’t imagine going after his father with a knife. Uncle Hengist? That was a different story. Ealstan wondered how Sidroc was doing, if he was hale, whether he’d gone off to fight for the Algarvians yet. He rather hoped Sidroc had. That would be the easiest on everyone--except perhaps Sidroc.

“I’d better get back,” Ealstan said, rising to his feet. He couldn’t suppress a pang of disappointment at leaving Ethelhelm’s large, airy, elegantly decorated flat and having to go back to his own, which was none of those things. Ethelhelm was a wealthy young man; Ealstan knew to the copper just how wealthy the musician was. He’d made a fortune before the war broke out and had managed to hold onto most of it despite Eoforwic’s occupation first by the Unkerlanters and then by the Algarvians.

What with the business Ealstan had, not only from Ethelhelm but also from his other clients, he could have afforded better than the nasty little flat in which he and Vanai were living. He could have afforded better, but he didn’t dare move. If he went to a better neighborhood, Vanai would draw more notice. That was the last thing he wanted, especially now that the redheads had herded all the Kaunians into one cramped bit of Eoforwic.

Ethelhelm came with him to the door and set a hand on his arm. “You’re a good fellow, Ealstan. I wouldn’t mind seeing more of you--or meeting your lady, either.”

“Thank you,” Ealstan said, and meant it. Not all his father’s clients--probably not even half his father’s clients--dealt with Hestan socially, as opposed to on business matters. And for Ethelhelm to say that about Vanai. . . Ealstan bowed. “We’d like that, too. But with things the way they are, I don’t know how we’d manage it.”

Ethelhelm had never seen Vanai in person, and Ealstan made a point of not referring to her by name. But the musician had shown, as much by what he didn’t say and didn’t ask as by what he did, that he had a good notion she was a Kaunian. “With things the way they are,” he echoed. “Well, here’s hoping they don’t stay that way forever, my friend. You be careful, do you hear me?”

Ealstan laughed; it might have been his father’s laugh coming out of his mouth. “You’re talking to a bookkeeper, remember? If I weren’t careful, what would I be?”

“Who knows what you’d be?” Ethelhelm answered. He hesitated; maybe he was wondering how much he ought to say or whether to say anything. At last, he decided to: “You aren’t careful all the time, or you’d be somebody with a different lady, or with no lady at all.”

“I suppose so,” Ealstan said. “But I’m careful now, by the powers above. I have to be.” He didn’t wait for Ealstan to reply but stepped out into the hallway and closed the door behind him. Then he hurried downstairs. These stairs were carpeted, not bare, battered boards. They didn’t smell of cabbage and beans and occasionally of urine. Ealstan sighed. He liked comfort. He’d grown up in comfort. He’d thrown it aside for love--and if that wasn’t the hoariest cliché in bad romances, he didn’t know what was. Vanai made him happy--made him joyful--in ways he’d never imagined before, but that didn’t mean he was immune to missing his comforts.

Out on the streets, Eoforwic had the pallid, threadbare look of every other Forthwegian town in the third year of a war long lost. But Eoforwics was a more genteel, more splendid shabbiness than, say, Gromheorts. The white-bearded man who strode past Ealstan wore a herringbone wool tunic shiny with age at the elbows and seat and with a frayed collar, but a garment that would have cost a lot new.

All the capital was like that. Buildings ruined in one round of fighting or another still showed fine bones. Buildings that hadn’t been ruined also hadn’t been kept up. Brickwork was filthy; weeds pushed their way into the sunlight between paving slabs. But the memory of what had been persisted. If Ealstan let his eyes drift a little out of focus, he could imagine Eoforwic with King Penda ruling it, not an Algarvian governor general.

When he got back to his own neighborhood, he didn’t need to let his eyes go unfocused. This part of town had been grimy and unkempt during King Penda’s reign. Of that he had no doubt whatever. Even the stray dogs on the narrow, winding streets moved warily, as if afraid of having their belt pouches slit.

Sure enough, the stairwell in his block of flats stank of piss. He wondered which neighbor had got drunk and been unable to hold it in. It was curiosity of the most abstract sort; he didn’t really want to find out.

He knocked on the door to the flat he shared with Vanai in the rhythm of a Forthwegian children’s verse. She unbarred the door, which she wouldn’t have done had he knocked in an ordinary way. An ordinary knock meant a stranger, and strangers, these days, were deadly dangerous to Kaunians.

“Hello, sweetheart,” Ealstan said, and quickly slipped inside. He barred the door again before Vanai could. The bar was reinforced with iron. The brackets on which it rested and the screws that secured those brackets to the wall were the strongest Ealstan could find, far stronger than the ones the landlord had used in the flat. Anyone who wanted to come in after Vanai wouldn’t have an easy time of it.

“Tell me everything you did,” Vanai said after they’d kissed. “Everything, from the moment you went out the door.” Cooped up in here, she relied on him to be her eyes and ears on the outside world, as a blind man might rely on a cleverly trained dog to take him through streets he could not see.

His arms still around her, Ealstan obliged. Not only did he have a good memory for detail, he also had a most appreciative audience. And, as he talked, his hands wandered, now to the small of Vanai’s back, now farther down, now straying upward to cup her breast. Touching her got him as drunk as wine did, with never a hangover afterwards.

She snuggled against him, too. He’d discovered she didn’t like being surprised by touch. Her face would go hard and tight, and she would stand as stiff as if carved from wood. Something bad must have happened to her back in Oyngestun, but she’d never said what it was, and he didn’t have the nerve to ask. But when she wasn’t taken aback, he pleased her as much as she pleased him.

And what he had to say pleased her this evening. “Ethelhelm said that about me?” she demanded, and made Ealstan repeat it. “He said that? Really? He is a good fellow, isn’t he?” She paused and lost a little of her glow. “Of course, he’s also supposed to be part Kaunian himself.”

“Aye--but I think he would have said the same thing even if he weren’t,” Ealstan answered. “You don’t have to be part Kaunian to like Kaunians--I ought to know.” He stroked her hair. She tilted her face up. They kissed for a long time.

At last Vanai broke away. “Let me go take the pot off the fire so supper doesn’t scorch,” she said. She was gone only a moment. Then they went into the bedchamber together.

When they’d finished, they lay side by side for a while, one of her legs hooked over his. He leaned over, taking his weight on an elbow, so he could caress her with his free hand. He knew he would rise again pretty soon; at seventeen, he could make love about as often as he wanted to. But his stomach had other things on its mind, and growled loud enough for Vanai to hear.

She giggled. Ealstan’s ears heated. She said, “Shall we eat now? We can always come back.” With so little else to do and with both of them so young, they spent a lot of time in the bedchamber.

As if to leave no possible doubt about its opinion, Ealstan’s stomach rumbled again. He laughed, which was the easiest way to hide his embarrassment. “All right,” he said. “I’d better, or my belly will shake the building down.”

He spooned up barley and onions and chopped almonds and a few tiny bits of smoked pork, thoughtfully smacking his lips. “You did something different this time.”

Vanai nodded. “You got me that fennel I asked for, so I used it.”

“Is that what it is?” Ealstan said. For Forthwegians, fennel was medicine, especially useful in hemorrhoid preparations. Kaunians did more cooking with it, a tradition that went back to the days of the Empire. Ealstan smacked his lips again. “Tastes better than I thought it would.” Listening to himself, he admired his own calm. He hoped Vanai did, too.

By the way the corners of her mouth twitched, she was trying not to smile, or maybe not to laugh out loud. “You shouldn’t have bought it if you didn’t expect me to put it in the food, you know.”

“I suppose not.” Valiantly, Ealstan kept eating. People did cook with fennel, and they didn’t perish as a result. He had bought this particular batch, and it hadn’t gone into a hemorrhoid cream. And when you got down to it, it wasn’t so bad. “Interesting flavor,” he admitted. This time Vanai did laugh.

They’d just finished supper when shouts down on the street made them both hurry to the window to find out what was going on. Night had already fallen, and the street was poorly lit, but Ealstan didn’t need long to make sense out of what was happening: a couple of men in kilts were forcing a fellow in trousers along the sidewalk. One of them took a bludgeon off his belt and walloped the luckless Kaunian, who cried out again. No one came to his rescue.

Gently, Ealstan pushed Vanai away from the window. “We have to be careful, sweetheart,” he said. “We don’t want them looking up here and seeing you.”

Two tears slid down her cheeks. By her expression, they were tears of rage. “No, of course we don’t,” she said, her voice quivering. “As long as I stay inside my trap here, I’m perfectly safe.”

Ealstan didn’t know how to answer her. He didn’t think there was any way to answer all the meanings she’d put into that. He did the best he could: “I love you.”

“I know you do,” Vanai said. “That just leaves the rest of the world out of the bargain.”

Once again, Ealstan found himself without a good reply.

Skarnu felt a certain amount of pride at going into Pavilosta by himself. He’d been staying on the farm once Gedominu’s for going on two years now: long enough for the locals to conclude he’d be around for a while, even if they’d call him things like the new fellow the rest of his days.

Silver jingled in the pockets of the homespun trousers Merkela had made for him. He needed a couple of drill bits. He knew more about them than Merkela did, and at least as much as Raunu, so he was the logical one to come and buy them. Even so, he felt small-boy enthusiasm for an outing of a sort he hadn’t enjoyed before.

Down in Priekule, he would have gone into an ironmonger’s, bought what he needed, and left with as much dispatch as he could. In a village like Pavilosta, he’d discovered, that was bad manners. A customer was supposed to pass the time of day rather than brusquely laying down his money. Skarnu found that peculiar, since the country folk were usually much more sparing of words than his old set back in the capital, but it was so.

After gossip about the weather, the way the crops were shaping, and a couple of juicy local scandals, Skarnu managed to make his escape. His time in and around Pavilosta had changed him more than he would have guessed, though, for instead of heading straight back to the farm, he ambled into the market square to see what he could see and hear what he could hear.

Maybe I’ll learn something to help in the fight against the redheads, he thought. But he was too honest with himself to let that stand for long. Maybe I’ll pick up something to make Merkela laugh or cluck. That came closer to the truth, and he knew it.

Somehow or other, he found himself gravitating toward the enterprising taverner who was in the habit of setting out a table at the edge of the square. If he stood around and soaked up a mug of ale, or even a couple of mugs of ale, he wouldn’t look the least bit out of place. So he told himself, at any rate.

As a lure to the men who were both thirsty and curious, the taverner had set out a couple of copies of a news sheet that had come in from some larger town-- from Ignalina in the east, Skarnu saw by the masthead. “Full of nonsense and drivel,” the taverner said as the noble picked up the sheet.

“Well, why do you have it, then?” Skarnu asked.

“To give people something to complain about, more than anything else,” the taverner answered. Skarnu laughed. The other fellow held out his hands. “What? D’you think I’m joking? See for yourself--you’ll find out.”

“I don’t need to read it to know it’ll be full of all the things the Algarvians want us to hear and empty of the ones they don’t,” Skarnu said.

“Right the first time,” the taverner said. “Some people believe the manure the news sheets print, if you can believe that, pal.” Skarnu nodded but said nothing. He would have bet that, while talking to people who got on well with the redheads, the taverner praised the news sheet to the skies. With him, the fellow went on, “Take a look at this here, for instance. Go on, just take a look at it.”

BALL IN THE CAPITAL CELEBRATES ALGARVIAN-VALMIERAN AMITY, the headline read. The subscription fees for the ball had gone to pay for relief for wounded Algarvian soldiers. Skarnu hoped die redheads needed to collect lots and lots of money for such a worthy cause.

The list of those who attended the ball showed what the Algarvians meant by amity, too. Pointing to it, Skarnu said, “It’s all their officers and our women.”

“Oh, aye--did you expect anything different?” the taverner said with a scornful sneer. “These noblewomen, they’re all whores, every cursed one of’em.”

Skarnu started to bristle at that slur against his class. He had to remind himself that he wasn’t, at the moment, a member of his class. His eyes kept sliding down the list. It was always Brigadier and Viscount So-and-so, a redhead, coupled with Countess What’s-her-name, a Valmieran. He had no doubt that most of the pairs named were coupled literally as well as metaphorically.

Colonel and Count Lurcanio and Marchioness Krasta. Skarnu almost missed that one pairing among so many. He stared and stared, wishing his eyes had gone on past without catching his sister’s name. What was she doing? What could she be doing? But that had an all too obvious answer.

He stared so hard, the taverner noticed. “What’s the matter, pal?” he asked. “See somebody you know?” He threw back his head and laughed uproariously at his own wit.

What would he do if Skarnu said aye? Call me a liar, I hope, Skarnu thought; every other possibility struck him as worse. “Likely tell,” was all he answered, which made the taverner chuckle, but not chortle again.

Worst was that Skarnu couldn’t just up and leave. He had to hang around and finish his ale and keep on chatting while he was doing it. Anything else would have been out of character and drawn notice.

Concealing his anguish was as hard as hiding a physical wound would have been. He’d always known Krasta was headstrong and willful, but what could have possessed her to take up with an Algarvian officer? He wondered if she knew; she’d never been long on self-examination.

After he could finally start back to the farm with propriety, he heaved a long sigh. His sister had made, or more likely unmade, her bed; now she would have to lie in it... with this Colonel Lurcanio. Skarnu sighed again. Whatever Krasta had done, he couldn’t do anything about it.

He walked on for a while before realizing that wasn’t true. If he and his comrades did somehow manage to expel the Algarvians from Valmiera, Lurcanio would go and Krasta, presumably, would stay. What would happen then? He couldn’t imagine. Nothing pleasant--he was sure of that.

“My own sister,” he muttered as he tramped along the road. It was safe enough; he could see a good long blaze in every direction. “My own sister?’ He’d never dreamt of being on opposite sides of a civil war with Krasta.

When he got back to the farm, he told Raunu and Merkela the news straightaway. He knew he didn’t have to; no one else was likely to associate his name and that of a noblewoman in Priekule. But he preferred not to take the chance: better they should hear it from him than from anybody else.

Raunu had been repairing the steps that led up to the farmhouse porch. He paused to pound in a couple of nails, using what struck Skarnu as needless force. Then he said, “That’s hard, sir. Aye, that’s about as hard to choke down as anything I can think of.”

Merkela took Skarnu by the hand. “Come upstairs with me,” she said. Raunu’s ears went red. He drove one more nail in a tearing hurry, then almost ran out of earshot of the farmhouse; Skarnu listened to the veteran’s footfalls fade as he himself followed Merkela up the stairs to her bedchamber. If this was how she wanted to make him feel better, he had no doubt she’d succeed.

In the bedchamber, she turned his way. He held out his arms to her. She stepped toward him--and slapped him in the face almost hard enough to knock him off his feet.

He staggered back, one hand coming up to his cheek, the other grabbing for the door frame to help him stay upright. “Powers above!” he exclaimed, tasting blood in his mouth. “What was that for?”

Merkela’s eyes blazed. “I’ll tell you what that’s for,” she snarled. “It’s for caring about your sister now that she’s an Algarvian’s whore.”

“She’s still my sister,” Skarnu mumbled. His cheek felt as if it were on fire. He probed the inside of his mouth with his tongue, trying to find out whether Merkela had loosened any of his teeth for him.

“You haven’t got a sister, not anymore.” Merkela spoke with great certainty--in that, at least, she was a lot like Krasta. “If she knew what you were doing, don’t you think she’d blab to this redheaded colonel and count, whatever his name was? Powers below eat him and eat his name, too.”

Skarnu started to say, Of course she wouldn’t. But the words clogged in his throat. He had no idea what Krasta would do if she found out he was one of the small, stubborn band of men--and women--keeping the war against Algarve sputteringly alive in the countryside. Maybe she would keep silent. But maybe she wouldn’t, too.

Merkela saw the doubt on his face. She nodded. “You aren’t trying to lie to me, anyhow. That’s something.”

“Lurcanio,” Skarnu said. “His name’s Lurcanio.”

“I told you, I don’t care what his name is,” Merkela answered. “He’s an Algarvian. That’s enough to know. Your sister gave herself to him, and now you have no sister.”

“Aye,” Skarnu said dully. Merkela viewed the world in very simple terms. He’d known that all along. This time, though, try as he would, he couldn’t find any way to believe she was wrong.

She eyed him. She nodded once more, in what looked like grudging approval. And then, in a swift, sudden motion, she pulled her tunic up over her head and threw it on the floor. She kicked off her sandals, yanked down her trousers and drawers, and took the couple of steps that brought her over to the bed. She lay down on it. Now she held out her arms to him. “You have no sister,” she repeated. “But you have me.”

Getting out of his own clothes was a matter of a moment. He lay down beside her, clutching at her flesh as fiercely as she grabbed for him. Very often, their lovemaking reminded him more of combat than of anything he’d ever known with other women. This was one of those times. She sank her teeth into his shoulder as if she meant to draw blood; her nails scored his back and flanks. He squeezed and pinched and prodded her. She pressed his hands to her, urging him to be rougher yet.

And when, not much later, he drove into her, he hardly cared whether he hurt her as well as pleasing her. By the way she moaned and bucked beneath him, she hardly cared, either, or knew the difference. His lips and teeth, jammed against hers, muffled her final cry. A couple of fierce thrusts later, he spent himself deep inside her.

Sweat made their bodies stick and slide against each other. Merkela pushed at him, to remind him to take a little weight on his elbows. He didn’t want to pull away; he hoped he’d get hard again inside her, so they could start again. Now that he was past thirty, though, such things didn’t happen very often. Sure enough, in a minute or two he flopped out.

Merkela reached for him. She wasn’t trying to make him rise; it seemed almost a gesture of respect for an admired foe. “Later,” she said. “There’s always later.”

“Aye,” Skarnu said, though he thought she was talking more to part of him than to all of him.

And indeed, Merkela started slightly, as if his voice reminded her all of him lay in this bed with her. Maybe she needed reminding; even more than a year after they’d started lying down together, she often called out her dead husband’s name at the moment of climax.

Her expression sharpened. She reached out and tapped Skarnu’s chest with a fingernail. “You have no sister,” she said once more, and he nodded again, admitting as much. She turned her head south, in the direction of Priekule. Her voice sank to a throaty whisper. “But oh, the vengeance you can take on her who was once your kin after the kingdom is free once again.”

Skarnu thought about it. What would he do if he ever saw Krasta face to face again? Colonel and Count Lurcanio and Marchioness Krasta. The words in the news sheet seared like vitriol. He nodded. “Aye.”