Darkness Descending

Three

Pekka was beginning to hate knocks on her office door. They always seemed to come in the middle of important calculations. And the last thing she wanted was to discover Ilmarinen, or even some other theoretical sorcerer, standing on his head in the hallway, as she had once before. Maybe it would be a Kajaani City College student. She could, she hoped, get rid of a student in a hurry.

She got up and opened the door. That done, she had to fight back a gasp of dismay. The smile that appeared on her face was an excellent job of conjuring. “Professor Heikki!” she exclaimed, for all the world as if she were delighted to have her department chairman visit her at that moment. “Won’t you come in?”

Maybe Heikki would say no. Maybe knowing Pekka was here and working would satisfy her. But she said, “Aye, I thank you,” and strolled in as if it were her office and Pekka the visitor. Pekka, in fact, waited for her to sit down behind the desk. But Heikki planted her rather broad bottom in the chair in front of it.

Retreating--and it felt like a retreat--to her own chair, Pekka brushed a strand of coarse black hair away from her narrow eyes and asked, “What can I do for you this afternoon?”

Whatever Heikki wanted, Pekka was sure it had nothing to do with the project that had engrossed her for so long. Heikki had got to be the chairman of the Department of Sorcery more for her bureaucratic talents than for her magecraft. Her specialty was veterinary sorcery. In unkind moments, Pekka thought she’d chosen it to make sure she knew more than her patients.

“I am disturbed,” Heikki said now.

“In what way?” Pekka asked. By the chairman’s expression, it might have been dyspepsia. Pekka knew she would get herself in trouble if she suggested stomach bitters. Knowing just made the temptation harder to resist.

“I am disturbed,” Heikki repeated. “I am disturbed at the amount of time you are spending in the laboratory of late and at the expense of your recent experiments. Surely theoretical sorcery, being, uh, theoretical, requires less experimentation than other forms of the art.”

In lieu of picking up a vase and smashing it over the department chairman’s head, Pekka replied, “Professor, sometimes theory and experiment have to go hand in hand. Sometimes theory proceeds from experiment.”

“I am more concerned about our budget,” Heikki said primly. “Suppose you tell me what the nature of your experiments are, so that I may judge whether they are worth the time and money you are expending on them.”

Pekka had not told her about the assault on the relationship between the laws of similarity and contagion. No one without the most urgent need to know heard anything about that project. All the theoretical sorcerers working on it agreed that was too dangerous. And so, doing her best to look regretful, Pekka murmured, “I’m very sorry, but I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

“What?” Heikki leaned forward. Had the matter been less important, she might have succeeded in intimidating Pekka. As things were, Pekka had to fight hard not to giggle. The department chairman spoke in portentous tones: “When I ask a simple question, I expect an answer.”

You don’t know any other kind of question, Pekka thought. She smiled sweetly. No.

“What?” Heikki said again. “How dare you refuse?” Though her skin, like Pekka’s, was golden rather than pink, a flush darkened her cheeks. Pekka said nothing more, which seemed to disturb the chairman further. “If that is your attitude, your laboratory privileges are hereby revoked. And I shall bring your insubordination to the attention of the academic council.” She got to her feet and made a stately exit.

That vase sprang into Pekka’s mind again. But chasing Heikki down the hall and braining the department chairman would only get her talked about. A different revenge, more vicious if less bloody, occurred to her. A distant ancestor might have smiled that smile just before he sneaked into an enemy clan’s camp to slit a warrior’s throat. Pekka activated her crystal, spoke briefly, and then went back to work.

She had not been working long when another knock on the door made her set down her pen. The fellow waiting in the hall was Professor Heikki’s secretary. “And how may I help you today, Kuopio?” Pekka asked with another of those sweetly bloodthirsty smiles.

“The chairman would see you in her office right away,” he answered.

“Please tell her I’m busy,” Pekka said. “Perhaps day after tomorrow would do?”

Kuopio stared at her as if she’d suddenly started speaking one of the clicking, coughing languages of tropical Siaulia. She looked back without another word. Shaking his head, the secretary departed. Pekka returned to her sheet of numbers and abstruse symbols.

If she’d miscalculated--not on the problem of the two laws, but on the knottier one of the Kajaani City College bureaucracy--she’d be in hot water. When a third knock came, she jumped, then hurried to the door. There stood Professor Heikki. “Hello again,” Pekka said. She’d know in a moment.

Heikki licked her lips. She looked even more dyspeptic than she had earlier in the afternoon. From that, Pekka knew she’d won even before the department chairman said, “Why did you not tell me your experiments had Prince Joroinen’s patronage?”

“I could not tell you anything about them,” Pekka answered. “I cannot tell anyone anything about them. I tried to tell you that, but you would not hear me. I wish you did not know I was experimenting at all.”

“So do I,” Heikki said bitterly. “Such ignorance would have spared me a great deal of the abuse I suffered just now. I have been instructed to tell you”--she spat out each word as if it tasted bad--”that the department is to offer you every possible assistance in your work and--and to accept unchallenged any budgetary requisitions you submit.” Plainly, that hurt worse than anything else.

No one this side of the princely mints had such untrammeled access to money. For a heady moment, Pekka wished she were a woman of extravagant tastes. But Joroinen would not have given what he gave had he reckoned her likely to abuse it. She said, “What I want most is to be left alone to do what I need to do.”

“Then that is what you shall have.” Heikki backed away, as if from a dangerous animal. And Pekka was a dangerous animal. Had she not been, could she have caused one of the Seven Princes of Kuusamo to turn on the department chairman, who reckoned herself a princess within her realm?

Pekka stood in the doorway and watched Heikki retreat. That helped turn the retreat into a rout. By the time Heikki reached a corner, she was all but running--and was looking over her shoulder as she went, so she nearly slammed into the far wall.

After Heikki did successfully negotiate the corner, Pekka went back to her desk and got some of her calculations to an interesting point before yet another knock on the door, this one from her husband, ended the day’s work. When she opened the door, Leino looked at her with curiosity flashing in his dark eyes. “What did you do to our distinguished chairman?” he asked as he and Pekka walked across the campus to the caravan stop.

“Kept her out of my hair,” Pekka answered. “These are modern times. There are cures for head lice.”

Leino snorted. “I think your cure was to drop an egg on her. I saw Kuopio in the hall. He flinched as if he thought I’d hit him, too.”

“I didn’t hit him. I just told him no. He’s not used to that.” Pekka smiled again. “I did hit Heikki--with Prince Joroinen.”

“Ah, so you did drop an egg on her,” Leino said, and then he said no more. Pekka blessed him for having better sense than Heikki--not that that made much of a compliment. But Leino, himself a mage of a more practical bent than Pekka’s, could not help knowing she was working on an important project. Her trips to Yliharma proved it. Ilmarinen’s recent visit to Kajaani proved it. But he hadn’t asked questions. He knew her well enough to know she’d tell him what she could. If she didn’t tell him anything, she couldn’t tell him anything.

They bought a news sheet from a hawker at the caravan stop. Leino frowned at the lead story. “Curse the Gongs, they’ve sunk half a dozen of our ships off Obuda. We’ve thrown more into that fight than they have, but they keep hanging on.” With reluctant admiration, he added, “They are warriors.”

“They’re stubborn,” Pekka said, and then wondered if there was any difference between her words and her husband’s. She pointed to a smaller story about a bigger battle. “The Unkerlanters are counterattacking against Algarve.”

“They say they’re counterattacking, anyhow,” Leino answered. “They’ve said that before, too, but they keep getting driven back.” He turned the news sheet over to read the rest of the story. “The Algarvians say there’s heavy fighting, but they’re still going forward.” As the caravan came gliding up the ley line toward them, he asked, “Who do you hope wins that fight?”

Pekka considered. “I hope they both lose,” she said at last. “Unkerlant is Unkerlant, and Algarve is bent on taking vengeance on everyone who ever wronged her. As best I can tell, that means the rest of the world.”

Leino laughed, then shook his head. “That’s one of those things that would be funny if only it were funny, if you know what I mean.” He stepped aside to let Pekka get into the caravan car ahead of him.

The sun still stood high in the southwest as they walked from the caravan stop up the hill toward their house and that of Pekka’s sister. In high summer, it dipped below the horizon only very late, and briefly. Even then, no more than the brightest stars came out, for twilight would linger till it rose again early the next morning. Kuusaman poets wrote verses about the pale nights of Kajauni.

High summer did not incline Pekka toward poetry. It inclined her toward tearing her hair. Her six-year-old son was never easy to get to bed at any season of the year. With the house light at almost all hours of the day and night, getting Uto to bed turned as near impossible as made no difference.

Elimaki handed him over to Pekka and Leino with every sign of relief. Leino’s laugh was rueful; he knew what his sister-in-law’s frazzled expression meant. “The house is still standing,” he remarked, as if that were some consolation.

Some, perhaps, but not enough, not by the way Elimaki rolled her eyes. “I didn’t stuff him in the rest crate,” she said, as if that proved her extraordinary virtue. “I was tempted to, but I didn’t.”

“And we thank you for that,” Pekka said, giving Uto a glare that bounced off him like a beam from a stick off a dragon’s silvered belly.

“I don’t thank her,” Uto said. “I want to see what it’s like in there.”

“Aunt Elimaki keeps her rest crate locked when she isn’t using it for the same reason we keep ours locked when we aren’t using it,” Leino said. “The magic in there is to keep food fresh. It isn’t to keep little boys fresh.”

“Aye--you’re fresh enough already,” Pekka told her son. As if to prove her right, Uto stuck out his tongue.

Leino swatted him on the bottom, more to gain his attention than to punish him. Elimaki rolled her eyes again. She said, “He’s been like that all day long.”

“We’ll take him home now,” Pekka declared. Uto hopped off the porch and down the walk like a frog. Pekka’s knees ached just watching him. With a sigh, she turned to Leino. “Some kinds of magic haven’t got anything to do with mage-craft.” Leino considered, then solemnly nodded.

In days gone by, Cornelu had strolled through the streets of the shore town of Tirgoviste in his uniform or in tunic and kilt of the latest style and the softest linen, always perfectly pressed and pleated. He’d been proud to put himself on display, to show off who and what he was: a commander in the island kingdom’s navy.

Coming into Algarvian-occupied Tirgoviste now, he still wore his best clothes, such as they were: a much-patched sheepskin jacket over a sleeveless undertunic, with a wool kilt that had long since lost whatever shape it might once have owned. He looked like a shepherd from the inland hills down on his luck. Three days of ruddy stubble on his cheeks and chin only added to the impression. The first Algarvian soldier who saw him tossed him a coin, saying, “Here, you poor beggar, buy yourself a mug of wine.”

By his accent, he came from the far north of Algarve; Algarvian and Sibian were closely related tongues, but a real shepherd from back in the hills probably wouldn’t have understood him. But the small silverpiece carried its own meaning. Cornelu bobbed his head and mumbled, “My thanks.” Laughing, nodding, King Mezentio’s soldier went on his way, for all the world as if Tirgoviste were his own town.

Cornelu hated him for that despite his causal kindness. Cornelu hated him all the more because of his casual kindness. Toss a Sibian dog a bone, will you? He thought. Not showing what he felt ate at him. Algarvians played at feuds, made them into elegant games. Sibians nursed them, cherished them, never let them go.

A broadsheet pasted on a brick wall drew Cornelu’s eye. It showed two bare-chested, sword-swinging warriors from ancient days. One was labeled ALGARVE; the other, younger and half a head shorter, SIBIU. Below them was the legend, SIBIANS ARE AN ALGARVIC FOLK, TOO! JOIN THE STRUGGLE AGAINST UNKERLANTER barbarism! Below that, a line of smaller type added, SEE THE RECRUITER, 27 DUM-BRAVENI STREET.

Fury filled Cornelu. After a moment, it leaked away. A slow smile spread over his face instead. If Mezentio’s minions were trying to get Sibians to fight for them, how many men were they losing? More than they could afford, evidently.

But men hawking news sheets did their best to tell a different story. They shouted about one Algarvian victory in Unkerlant after another. By what they said, Herborn, the biggest city in the Duchy of Grelz, was on the point of falling. Even if that proved a lie, that the Algarvians had come far enough to make the claim did not speak well for the fight King Swemmel’s men were putting up.

Another Algarvian soldier strolled by, this one arm in arm with a girl who spoke Sibian with a Tirgoviste accent like Cornelu’s. They didn’t always understand each other, but they were having fun trying. The girl’s face shone as she looked up at the man who had helped bring her kingdom to its knees.

Again, Cornelu had to fight to keep from showing what he felt. He’d already come into the city a couple of times since swimming ashore after Eforiel, his leviathan, was killed, and had seen the same kinds of things then. They tore at his heart. Some--too many--of his countrymen were willing to accept that they had been conquered.

“Not I,” he muttered under his breath. “Not I. Not ever.”

He made his way along the hilly streets till he came to an eatery that had been fine once but had gone down in the world. He nodded as he set his hand on the latch. He’d gone down in the world himself.

Inside, the place was cool and dim. It smelled offish and the oil in which the cook fried them. A couple of old men sat at one table nursing glasses of pear brandy. A fisherman was demolishing a platter of fried prawns at another. The rest were empty. Cornelu sat down on a stool at one of those.

A waiter came over with an expectant look. Cornelu glanced at the bill of fare chalked on a board behind the bar. “Fried cod, boiled parsnips and butter, and a mug of ale,” he said.

“Aye.” The waiter went into a back room. He didn’t come out right away; maybe he was the cook, too. He didn’t have so much trade that he couldn’t be both.

Presently, the door from the street opened. Cornelu started to leap to his feet. A tired-looking fisherman came in and sat down with the fellow eating prawns. Cornelu sank back onto his stool.

Out came the waiter, with his supper on a tray. He set it down, then took his new customer’s order. That fellow wanted prawns, like his friend. Cornelu started eating his fish. It wasn’t bad. He’d had better, but also worse. He sipped the ale. Like the fish, it was middling good.

He ate slowly, stretching out the meal, making it last. That wasn’t easy. He felt hungry as a wolf. He’d come up onto the island without a copper banu to his name and stayed alive doing odd jobs. He really had herded sheep for a while. He’d spent a lot of time hungry.

Coins clinked as the old men paid for their brandy. They got up and left. The waiter scooped their money into a leather pouch he wore at the front of his kilt. Cornelu raised a forefinger and asked for another mug of ale. The waiter looked him over, then raised an eyebrow. He understood the challenge, and set silver on the table. Mollified, the waiter gave him what he wanted.

He’d almost finished the parsnips and was halfway down that second ale when the door opened again. A worn woman pushing a baby carriage paused in the doorway and looked at the handful of customers in the eatery.

A worn woman pushing a carriage ... for a moment, to his shame, that was all Cornelu saw. He salved his conscience by noting she’d needed a moment to recognize him, too. Then he did leap up, as he’d started to do before. “Costache!” he exclaimed.

“Cornelu!”

He’d expected his wife to run to him. In his dreams, that was how it had been. His dreams, though, had left out the carriage. Carefully pushing it ahead of her, she made her way to his table. Then he embraced her. Then he kissed her. As if from very far away, he heard the fishermen sniggering. He didn’t care. As far as he was concerned, the powers below could swallow them both.

At last, Costache asked, “Do you want to see your daughter?”

What he wanted was a chance to start another child then and there. He knew he couldn’t have that. As naturally as he could, he looked down into the carriage. “What is her name?” he asked. He’d been able to write to his old address, to the house where Costache still lived, but he’d had no address of his own, drifting from one place to another. Till this moment, he hadn’t known whether his child was boy or girl.

“I called her Brindza, after your mother,” Costache answered.

Cornelu nodded. It was good. It was fitting. He wished the baby could have been named Eforiel, but that would have been wrong. The leviathan had still been living when she was born.

“And what would milady care for today?” the waiter asked. He might have been standing there for some time, waiting to be noticed. Had he not spoken up, he would have kept on waiting quite a while, too.

“Whatever my husband had there will be fine for me, too,” she answered, sitting down on the stool next to Cornelu’s. She sounded dazed, as if she didn’t want to think right now. Cornelu understood that; he felt dizzier, drunker, than if he’d swallowed a tun of ale. The waiter shrugged and went ofT to the back room.

Costache pointed a finger at Cornelu, as if in accusation. “I thought you were dead.”

“I was out to sea when the Algarvians came,” he answered. “They’d already taken the harbor when I got back.” He spoke in a low voice so the fishermen couldn’t overhear: “I didn’t want to surrender, so I took Eforiel over to Lagoas. I’ve been there ever since, along with the rest of the exiles, doing what we could to fight Mezentio.”

Now that Costache wasn’t in his arms anymore, wasn’t pressed against the flesh that had missed her so, he took a longer look into the carriage. The baby sleeping in there had a thin, short fuzz of reddish hair. “She looks like you,” Costache said softly.

“She looks like a baby,” Cornelu said. As far as he was concerned, all babies looked more or less alike--oh, maybe not Kuusamans or Zuwayzin, but the rest. And yet, even as that thought went through his mind, he was trying to find his nose, his chin, on those small smooth features.

The waiter set down Costache’s supper. If he found anything remarkable about a father staring at a daughter more than a year old as if he’d never seen her before, he kept it to himself. Costache ate absently. She kept staring from Cornelu to Brindza and back again, as if reconnecting the two of them in her mind.

“How have you been?” Cornelu asked her.

“Tired,” she answered at once. “If you have a baby, you’re tired. You can’t be anything else. And times have been hard. No pay, no pension, no money to hire a nurse to take care of Brindza so I could make money on my own.” She shook her head. “Tired,” she repeated.

“I wish I could have let you know sooner that I was all right,” Cornelu said. “Some . . . friends of mine were finally able to post that note.” He wondered if the Lagoan raiders were still on the island. He had no way to know, not now.

“I almost fell over in a faint when I recognized your script,” Costache said. “And then the other notes started.”

“They wouldn’t have, but I got stranded here.” Cornelu shook his head. “Poor Eforiel took all the energy from an egg.”

“Ah, too bad.” Costache also shook her head. She sounded sad. But she did not understand, not really. No one but another leviathan-rider could have understood. Cornelu had been more intimate with his wife, but not a great deal.

Intimate with his wife ... It had been so long. He took a last swig from the second mug of ale. “Can we go home now?” he asked, confident he knew the answer.

But, to his astonished chagrin, Costache shook her head again. “I dare not bring you home,” she said. “I have three Algarvian officers billeted on me. They have been correct in every way,” she added hastily, “but if you came there, you’d go into a captives’ camp the instant you walked through the door.”

“Three Algarvian officers?” Cornelu echoed in tones that couldn’t mean anything but, Three men I have to kill. He thought pain and outrage would choke him. Clapping a hand to his forehead, he exclaimed, “Has it come to this, then? Do I have to make an assignation to sleep with my own wife?” He barely remembered to keep his voice too low for the fishermen to hear him.

“Aye, I fear it has come to that, and even assignations won’t be easy,” Costache answered. Cornelu felt the veins of his neck tighten with fury: fury at the Algarvians, fury at her, fury at everything that kept him from taking what he’d wanted so much for so very long. Before he could bellow like a bull, Brindza woke up and started to cry. Costache gave Cornelu a weary smile. “And here you have one of the reasons assignations won’t be easy.” She scooped the baby out of the carriage.

Cornelu stared at his daughter. He did his best not to see her only as an obstacle standing between him and taking Costache to bed. She looked back at him out of eyes that might have been her mother’s. With some effort, he smiled. She turned her face back toward Costache, as if to ask, Who is this person? What she did say was, “Mama?”

“She’s shy with strangers right now,” Costache said. “People say they all are at this age.”

I am not a stranger! Cornelu wanted to shout. I am her father! That was true, but Brindza had no way of knowing it. A new thought cut him like a dagger from out of the night: I wonder if she’s shy with the Algarvians living, in my house.

“I’d better go,” Costache said. “They will be wondering where I am at this hour.” She leaned forward and brushed Cornel us lips with her own. “Keep writing to me. We’ll meet again as soon as we can.” Brindza up on one shoulder, she pushed the carriage with the other, as she’d obviously had practice doing. She used the carriage to butt the door open. It closed behind her. She was gone. Cornelu sat by himself in the eatery, more alone in his hometown than he had been in exile in Setubal.

As soon as Bembo walked into the constabulary station in Tricarico, Sergeant Pesaro’s face warned him something was wrong. The plump Algarvian constable searched his conscience like a man ransacking his belt pouch for spare change. Rather to his surprise, he found nothing.

But, no matter how innocent he was, or thought he was, Pesaro--who was much rounder than he--pointed a fleshy finger at him and growled, “You had to be so cursed smart, didn’t you?”

“What? When?” Bembo asked. “Usually you call me an idiot.” The only time he could remember being smart lately was catching Kaunians with their hair dyed. He hadn’t got in trouble for that; he’d earned a commendation. Even pretty little Saffa had liked him--for a bit.

“You are an idiot,” Pesaro said. “Even when you’re smart, you’re an idiot.”

“Tell me what you’re talking about, anyhow,” Bembo said, starting to get angry now. “I’d like to know what kind of idiot I am.”

Pesaro shook his head. His flabby jowls wobbled. “I’ll leave it to Captain Sasso. No patrols today, except for a few lucky bastards. The rest of us have to assemble at midmorning. Then you’ll find out.”

Wondering if Sasso was going to order him executed before the assembled constables, Bembo tried to pry more out of the sergeant but had no luck. Cursing under his breath, he went back to the offices to see if anyone there knew and would talk. Saffa sneered at him and tossed her fine head of fiery red hair when he walked in. He ignored her, which no doubt left her disappointed. He ended up disappointed, too; if anyone did know what Sasso would say, he wouldn’t admit it.

Nothing to do but wait and worry and fume till midmorning. Then, along with the rest of the constables, Bembo trooped out to the scruffy lawn in back of the station. The summer sun beat down on him. Sweat rolled down his face and started to darken his tunic. Stewing in my own juices, he thought.

Captain Sasso strutted up to the front of the assembled men. Without preamble, he announced, “King Mezentio is taking a contingent from every constabulary force in Algarve into his service, to control captives, to round up criminals and undesirables in the newly conquered lands, and to free up more of our soldiers for the fight against the kingdom’s foes.”

A low murmur ran through the constables. Pesaro mouthed, Now do you remember? at Bembo, and Bembo had to nod. He’d seen the need a year before the authorities had, but his opinion of the authorities’ cleverness was low.

Sasso hadn’t finished. “From Tricarico, the following constables have been selected for the aforementioned service. . . .” He pulled a list from a breast pocket and began reading names. Pesaro’s was on it, which explained why he was irate. And then, a moment later, Bembo heard his own name. Sasso went through the whole list, then continued, “Men named here will report in uniform to the caravan depot at noon tomorrow for transportation to your new assignment. Bring all necessary constabulary gear, but no more personal effects than will fit into your belt pouches and one small pack. I know you will acquit Tricarico well, men.” He spun on his heel and marched away without so much as calling for questions.

“Tomorrow?” Bembo howled. His was far from the only cry of amazement and dismay. He raised his hands to the uncaring sky. “How can we go tomorrow? Powers above, how can we go at all?”

“Southern Unkerlant is lovely in the wintertime,” said a constable who was staying in Tricarico. He kissed his fingertips. “So white! So fair! And winter there doesn’t last more than three-fourths of the year.”

“Your wife is lovely in a whorehouse bed,” Bembo snarled. He kissed his fingertips, too. “So white! So fair! And your daughter the same. They both charge more than they’re worth, though.”

With a curse, the other constable hurled himself at Bembo. Normally no braver than he had to be, Bembo was ready to brawl. Before either of them could throw more than a punch or two, though, their comrades got between them. “When you come home, wretch, our friends will settle where we can meet,” the other constable said.

“You haven’t got any friends,” Bembo retorted. “Ask your wife to help. She has dozens. Hundreds.”

Sergeant Pesaro shoved Bembo away before the fight could flare again. “Let it go,” he said. “Getting in trouble won’t keep you off the caravan.” Bembo hadn’t thought of that and wished he had. Pesaro went on, “We aren’t going to Unkerlant, anyhow. Some other poor whoresons get stuck with that. We’re heading for Forthweg. The weather will be better, anyhow.”

“Huzzah,” Bembo said sourly. He cocked his head to one side. “How do you know where we’re going?”

Pesaro only smiled. After a moment, Bembo realized it was a foolish question. Pesaro was fat and slow and a long way from young. If he didn’t know things, what good was he? He thumped Bembo on the shoulder. “Go on. Go home. Get ready. We’re stuck with it. If you’re not on the caravan car with me tomorrow, you’re a deserter during wartime.” He sliced a thumb across his throat.

Thus encouraged, Bembo went back to his flat. Packing didn’t take long, not with the limits Captain Sasso had imposed. He drank his dinner. For good measure, he drank his supper, too. With nothing better to do, he went to bed early.

He woke with a pounding head and a taste in his mouth like the river downstream from the sewage works. A glass of wine helped dull both complaints. He still felt lethargic and abused, but he’d felt that way before. Shouldering the few belongings he could bring, he made for the depot.

He got there at the same time as his frequent partner, Oraste. Pesaro checked off both their names. Oraste was quiet and looked somewhat the worse for wear, too. Maybe he’d spent his last night in Tricarico the same way Bembo had.

Bembo was climbing up into the caravan car when someone--a woman--called, “Wait!” Saffa came running up. She threw herself into his arms and gave him a kiss that made him forget his headache. Then she slipped away and said, “There! Is that because I’m sorry you’re going or because I’m glad? You’ll never know.” She headed back toward the constabulary station, putting everything she had into her walk.

“Don’t stand there gaping with your tongue hanging out,” Pesaro told Bembo. “Go on; get aboard.” Bembo didn’t move till Saffa was out of sight. Then, as if a spell were broken, he shook himself and obeyed.

But for the constables from Tricarico, the ley-line caravan carried no passengers. As soon as the last man climbed into the car--with curses from Pesaro for being the last--the caravan began its long glide west. The Bradano Mountains sank below the horizon. Wheatfields, meadows with cattle and sheep grazing in them, vineyards, and groves of almonds and olives and citrus fruit slid past outside the windows. Before long, Bembo got into a dice game and stopped worrying about the scenery.

Just after noon, the caravan stopped in a medium-sized town along the ley line. Half a dozen irate-looking men in constable’s uniform filed aboard. “Hello!” Bembo said. “Misery loves company, looks like.”

The caravan stopped several times during the afternoon. At each stop, another contingent of disgruntled constables got on. By the time the caravan began to near what had been the Forthwegian border, all the cars were full. Bembo doubted there was a happy man in any of them.

Pesaro pointed out the window. “Look at all the behemoths feeding there. And we saw even more unicorns a little while ago.”

“Behemoths. Unicorns. Constables.” Bembo shrugged. “All animals that get ridden off to war whether they want to or not.”

At what had been the border with Forthweg, the caravan halted again. By then, lamps--dim ones, in case the Unkerlanters managed to sneak a few dragons through--were shining in every car. An Algarvian army officer bounded up into the car in which Bembo rode. “On behalf of his Majesty, King Mezentio, I thank you for entering his service,” he said. “With you to patrol the towns and villages of Forthweg, we can use the soldiers who were on garrison duty as soldiers should be used in the fighting. If constables are constables, then soldiers can be soldiers.”

That sounded good. It even impressed Bembo--till he remembered that the officer was as far behind the lines as he was. “Where in blazes are we bound, anyway?” he asked. He saw no need to treat the officer as he would have a superior in his service, in spite of the fellow’s fancy talk.

A scowl said the officer realized that, too. But he answered mildly enough: “Constables in this car will get off at Gromheort, not far from here.” He coughed. “Some of them may be fortunate they are replacing the army there and not elsewhere. On the other hand, army discipline might improve them.”

Bembo did not rise to that. One narrow escape was enough. The caravan slid along the ley line toward Gromheort. He tried to remember if he’d ever heard of the place. He didn’t think so. It would have been under Algarvian rule before the Six Years’ War, so it might not prove too bad, but he wouldn’t have bet more than a copper on that.

Nor did his first glimpse, by moonlight, send him into raptures. The depot was battered, and about one building in four between it and the barracks where the constables would spend the night had been wrecked. “The Forthwegians fought hard here,” explained the officer, who guided them to the barracks.

“Why haven’t they repaired it since?” Bembo asked, safely anonymous in the darkness.

“They have,” the army officer answered. “If you think it’s bad now, you should have seen it just after we took it.” He pointed ahead, to a low, squat building that once must have housed cattle or Forthwegian soldiers. “Go through the curtains one man at a time, to keep light from spilling out.”

Inside, the barracks were as bad as Bembo had expected. After a day spent traveling across northern Algarve, he didn’t care. He hurried to a pallet, set his pack under his head in lieu of a pillow (he labored under no delusions about his fellow constables, who were bound to have some light-fingered souls among them), and went to sleep.

Next morning, glum-looking Forthwegians served up bread and olive oil and harsh red wine. Another Algarvian army officer came in and distributed maps of Gromheort to those constables who would patrol it. “Things are pretty quiet,” he told the newcomers. “Just keep ‘em that way and everything will be fine.” He offered no suggestions on how to achieve that laudable end.

Without enough breakfast to suit him, without a bath, without really knowing his way around, Bembo was thrust out onto the streets of Gromheort. Forth-wegians in long tunics glared at him or tried to pretend he didn’t exist. Kaunians got out of his way in a hurry. That, at least, felt right and proper.

No one did anything in the least untoward. All the same, he walked far more warily than he would have back in Tricarico. There, only the rare desperate fool would take on a constable. Here, in a sullen conquered kingdom, who could say? He didn’t want to find out the hard way.

At midmorning, feeling peckish, he stepped into an eatery and demanded an omelette. The proprietor made as if he didn’t understand Algarvian. Bembo’s gut told him the fellow was bluffing. He hefted his club and growled--and got his omelette. He didn’t care for the cheese the Forthwegian used, but it wasn’t too bad. Patting his belly, he walked out.

“You pay!” the proprietor exclaimed--he knew some Algarvian, all right.

Bembo only laughed. If he wouldn’t have paid for a meal back in Tricarico--and he wouldn’t--he was cursed if he’d do it here in a land Algarve had won by the sword. What could the Forthwegian do if he didn’t? Not a thing. He snapped his fingers and went on his way.

In summer, a cold bath looked better to Leofsig than at other seasons of the year. After a day of building roads in the sun, he took himself to Gromheort’s public baths to wash off the sweat and dirt before he went home. He paid the attendant at the door a copper, hung his tunic on a peg in the antechamber, and, naked, hurried toward the pools and plunges beyond. He tested the water of what had been the warm plunge with a toe.

“Not too bad,” said an older man already in there. “Could be chillier than this and feel good on a day like today.”

“Aye, that’s so.” Leofsig slid into the water himself. He rubbed at his hide. By the time he got through, he was three shades lighter than when he’d begun. The plunge wasn’t so warm as to make him want to linger, though, as it would have been in happier times. He climbed up the steps and headed for the soaping room.

The liquid soap in the troughs wasn’t what it had been before the war, either. It was cheap and harsh with lye and smelled nasty. When he rubbed it into a little cut on his arm, it burned like fire.

An enormous rub stood in the rinsing room. He grabbed a bucket with a pierced bottom, filled it in the tub, and hung it from a hook at a level above his head. As the water in it streamed out through the holes, he stood under it and let the soap run off down the drain. A man in a hurry could make do with one bucket. Tonight, Leofsig used two.

On the other side of the brick wall, women were rinsing. As every man of Gromheort had surely done, Leofsig imagined that wall suddenly made transparent. Imagining Felgilde, his almost-fiancee, bare and wet and slick made the water seem warmer than it was. Imagining the screech she’d let out if the wall did turn transparent made him laugh. He set the bucket back by the tub for another bather to use, then got a towel from a Kaunian attendant who’d been there as long as he could remember--and as long as his father could remember, too.

When Leofsig was younger, he’d once said, “Maybe he’s been handing out towels since the days of the Kaunian Empire.”

Hestan had laughed, but then, precise as always, he’d shaken his head and said, “No. People bathing together is a Forthwegian custom, and an Unkerlanter one, too, but not a Kaunian one.”

Dry and clean now, Leofsig threw his towel into a wickerwork basket and went up to the antechamber to get his tunic. He hated to put it back on; it was grimy and smelly. But he was no Zuwayzi, to walk unconcerned through the streets of Gromheort without a stitch on. I’ll change when I get home, he thought.

He’d gone only a block or so when a chubby Algarvian in tunic and kilt of cut somewhat different from the army’s spoke to him in Algarvian. “I don’t know your language,” he said in Forthwegian. That wasn’t quite true, but, unlike his brother Ealstan and cousin Sidroc, he hadn’t had to learn it in school. Plainly, the redhead didn’t follow him, either. Leofsig tried classical Kaunian: “Do you understand me now?

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he wondered if he’d made a bad mistake. The Algarvians despised everything in any way connected to Kaunians. But this fellow, after frowning, answered in halting, thickly accented Kaunian: “Understanding little. Not using when . . . after . . . since school.” He beamed at coming up with the right word.

Leofsig nodded to show he understood, too. “What do you want?” he asked, speaking slowly and clearly.

“Not finding,” the Algarvian said. After a moment, Leofsig realized he meant lost. The redhead pulled a sheet of paper out of a tunic pocket. It turned out to be a map of Gromheort. He pointed. “Going here, please?” Here was a barracks where soldiers had been garrisoned. The Algarvian waved, one of his people’s extravagant gestures. “I now where?” He made a comic display of frustration and embarrassment.

“I will show you,” Leofsig said. He’d started to help before remembering he hated the conquerors. He had trouble hating this particular one, who was rumpled and funny and had asked for help instead of demanding it. And so, instead of sending him the wrong way, Leofsig traced the route back to the barracks on the map.

“Ah.” The Algarvian swept off his hat and bowed as deeply as his rotund frame would allow. “Thanking.” He bowed again. Leofsig nodded in return; Forthwegians were a less demonstrative people. Peering at the map, the redhead went off down the street. Maybe he would find the barracks. He was headed in the right direction, anyhow. He looked back to Leofsig and waved. Leofsig gave him another nod and headed on toward his own home.

He mentioned the affable Algarvian over supper. His father nodded. “That must be one of the constables they’re bringing in,” Hestan said. “If they use constables to keep order hereabouts, they can put more soldiers into the attack on Unkerlant.” He glanced over to Uncle Hengist, as if he’d just proved a point.

By the way Hengist fidgeted, maybe Hestan had. Hengist said, “They’re still moving forward. By the news sheet, they’ve trapped a big army west of the capital of the Duchy of Grelz--forget the cursed place’s name. After a while, Unkerlant will run out of armies.”

“Herborn,” Ealstan put in.

“Unless Algarve runs out first,” Hestan added. Hengist snorted and gestured dismissively, almost as if he were an Algarvian himself. Hestan sipped from his cup of wine, then turned back to Leofsig. “And what was this constable like, son?”

“He didn’t seem too bad a fellow,” Leofsig answered: about as much as he would say for any Algarvian. “He thanked me when I showed him where he ought to go. None of their soldiers would have.”

“All their soldiers were good for were pinches on the bottom,” Conberge said.

“I never had that happen to me,” Leofsig observed.

“You’d best be glad you didn’t,” Sidroc said archly. Everyone laughed. It was easier and more comforting to think of the Algarvians as woman-chasers--which they were--than as warriors who had overwhelmed all their opponents--which, unfortunately for their neighbors, they also were.

“Would anyone like more of this beans-and-cheese casserole?” Leofsig’s mother asked, reaching out to touch the spoon in the bowl. “There’s plenty, for once; I went to the markets early, and got the cheese before it all disappeared.”

“I’ll take more, Elfryth,” Hestan said. Leofsig and Sidroc pushed their plates toward her, too. If his mother hadn’t said there was plenty and plainly meant it, Leofsig would have made do with one helping. He’d grown resigned to being hungry a lot of the time. Feeling full, as he did after his seconds, seemed strange, almost unnatural.

After supper, Ealstan came to him for help with a bookkeeping problem their father had set him. Leofsig looked at it, then shook his head. “I know I ought to know how to solve it, but I’m cursed if I can remember right now.” He yawned enormously. “I’m so tired, I can’t even see. That’s how I am most nights. You don’t know how lucky you are that Father decided to keep you in school.”

“It doesn’t teach much, not any more,” his brother answered. “I’m learning a lot more from Father than from the masters.”

“You’re missing the point,” Leofsig said. “You could be out hauling rocks instead. Plenty your age are. Then you’d be too tired to think, too.”

“Oh, I understand that,” Ealstan said. “What makes me sizzle is watching Sidroc not even working at the watered-down pap the Algarvians still let the schoolmasters teach.”

“If Sidroc wants the masters to stripe his back, that’s his affair,” Leofsig said. “If he wants to try to get through life on gab, that’s his affair, too. I don’t know why you’re wasting your time worrying about it.”

“Because he goes off and does what he pleases, and I have the masters’ work and Father’s, too, that’s why,” Ealstan snapped. Then he paused and looked sheepish. “It could be worse, couldn’t it?”

“Just a bit,” Leofsig said dryly. “Aye, just a bit.” But he paused, too. “It could be worse for me, too, now that I think on it.”

This time, Ealstan did not miss the point even for a moment. “Of course it could,” he said. “You could be a Kaunian.” He lowered his voice. “At least you know. So many people don’t even want to, or else say the blonds have it coming.” He looked around, then spoke more softly still: “Some of those people are right in this house.”

“Aye, I know that,” Leofsig said. “If you ask me, Sidroc wishes he were an Algarvian. Uncle Hengist, too, though not so bad.”

Ealstan shook his head. “That’s not it--close, but not right. Sidroc just wants to be on top, and the Algarvians are.”

“If he wants to be on top--” Leofsig broke off. Ealstan hadn’t been through the army, and didn’t take crudity for granted. Leofsig shrugged. “You know him better than I do--and you’re welcome to him, too, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Thanks,” his younger brother said in a way that wasn’t thankful at all. They both chuckled. Then Ealstan grew serious once more. “I’d like to pop him right in the face for the way he rides me about the problems Father sets me, but I don’t quite dare.”

“Why not?” Leofsig asked. “I think you can thump him--and if you have trouble, I’ll pitch in. A set of lumps’ll shut him up.”

“Maybe I can, maybe I can’t, but that’s not it,” Ealstan said. “And if I ever do mix it up with him, I want you to stay out of it.”

Leofsig frowned. “I’m not following this. What are big brothers for, if they’re not for thumping people who give little brothers trouble?”

Ealstan licked his lips. “If you thump him, he’s liable to go to the redheads and remind them nobody ever let you out of that captives’ camp. I don’t know that he would, but I don’t know that he wouldn’t, either.”

“Oh.” Leofsig pondered that. Slowly, he nodded. “When you lift up a rock, you find all sorts of little white crawling things under it, don’t you? That he’d do such a thing to his own flesh and blood . . . But he might, curse it. You’re right. He might.” He rubbed his chin. His black beard was a man’s now, thick and coarse, not soft fuzz like Ealstan’s. “I don’t want him having that kind of hold on me. I don’t want anyone having that kind of hold on me.”

“I don’t know what we can do about it,” Ealstan said.

“I’ve frightened him once or twice already, when he started blowing in that direction,” Leofsig said. “If I put him in fear of his life . . .” He spoke altogether matter-of-factly. Before going into King Penda’s levy, he’d been as mild as anyone would expect from a bookkeeper’s son. Now the only thing holding him back was doubt about how well the ploy would work. He clicked his tongue between his teeth. “The stinking worm might just run straight to the Algarvians.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Ealstan said. “I don’t know what to do.

Maybe sitting tight and waiting would be best. It’s always worked pretty well for Father.”

“Aye, so it has.” Leofsig gnawed at the inside of his lower lip. “I don’t like it, though. Powers above can’t make me like it, either.” He pounded a fist down onto his thigh. “I wonder if Uncle Hengist would sell me, too.”

Ealstan looked startled. “He’s never said anything--”

“So what?” Leofsig broke in. “Sometimes the ones who don’t blab beforehand are more dangerous than the ones who do.”

In Skrunda, as in so many Jelgavan towns, ancient and modern lived side by side. A couple of blocks beyond the market square stood an enormous marble arch from the later days of the Kaunian Empire celebrating the triumph of the Emperor Gedimainas over the Algarvian tribe known as the Belsiti. Below a relief of kilted barbarians being led away in chains, Gedimainas’ inscription declared to the world what a hero and conqueror he was.

Talsu took the arch and its inscription as much for granted as he did the oil-seller’s shop next to it on the street. He’d walked under it a couple of times a week ever since he’d got big enough to go so far from home. He rarely bothered looking up at the relief or at the vaunting inscription below it. He could barely make sense of the inscription, anyhow; he hadn’t studied classical Kaunian in school, and Jelgavan, like Valmieran, had drifted a long way from the old language.

He headed toward the arch this particular morning because he was carrying four pairs of trousers his father, Traku, had made for a customer who lived half a mile down the street the monument straddled. A crowd had gathered under the arch. Some were Jelgavans, some Algarvians in their broad-brimmed hats, tight tunics, kilts, and knee stockings.

“You can’t do that,” one of the Jelgavans exclaimed. Several ofTalsu’s countrymen nodded. Somebody else said, “That arch has stood there for more than a thousand years. Knocking it down would be an outrage!” More Jelgavans nodded.

“Why do they want to knock down the arch?” Talsu asked somebody at the back of the little crowd. “It’s not doing anything to anybody.” He consciously noticed it for only the third or fourth time since coming home to Skrunda after the Jelgavan defeat the year before.

Before the fellow could answer, one of the Algarvians did, in Jelgavan accented but clear: “We can destroy it, and we will destroy it. It is an insult to all the brave Algarvians of ancient days, and to the Algarvic kingdoms of today: to Algarve, to Sibiu, and even to Lagoas, that is misguided enough to be our foe.”

From the middle of the crowd, a woman called, “How is it an insult if it tells the truth?”

“Algarvians went on to triumph,” the redheaded officer replied. “That proves all the vile things this Kaunian tyrant said about our ancestors were false. They have stood too long. They shall stand no more.” He turned to a mage. Looking over the people in the crowd, Talsu saw that eggs had been affixed to the pillars upholding the arch. All of a sudden, he didn’t want to stand right there.

The oil seller didn’t like his shop standing right there, either. Bursting out of it, he cried, “You people are going to drop a million tons of rock right through my roof!”

“Calm yourself,” the officer said, a startling bit of advice from an excitable Algarvian’s mouth. “Buraldo there is very good at what he does, very careful. You should come through fine.”

“And if I don’t?” the oil seller shouted. The Algarvian shrugged one of his kingdom’s extravagant shrugs. The oil seller shouted again, wordlessly this time.

Talsu shouldered his way through the crowd. A couple of Algarvian soldiers swung their sticks in his direction. They were only alert, though, not dangerous. He’d seen the difference on the battlefield. Holding up the trousers, he said, “Before you do whatever you’re going to do, can I get by to deliver these?”

“Aye, go on,” the officer said, and waved him through witli a laugh. He was glad of the arch’s shade against the summer sun; that was about as much attention as he usually paid it. More Jelgavans stood on the far side, some of them also grumbling about what the redheads were on the point of doing to the monument. He pushed his way past them and up the street.

“How can you be so uncaring?” a woman with yellow hair like his demanded.

“Lady, I don’t want the redheads to knock it down, either,” Talsu answered. “But I can’t do anything about it, and neither can you. If you have the time to stand around and moan, fine. Me, I’ve got work to do.”

She stared at him. By the cut and cloth of her clothes, she had more money than he. A tailor’s son, he could make a good guess at how much anyone made by what he wore on his back. These days, her wealth only meant the Algarvians could steal more from her than from Traku and his family.

Behind Talsu, the redheads started shouting, “Back! Everyone back! If you don’t go back, it’s your own cursed fault!”

“Shame!” somebody shouted. One by one, the crowd of Jelgavans took up the chant: “Shame! Shame! Shame!”

If the Algarvians felt any sense of shame, they didn’t let it stop them from doing what they had orders to do. Talsu hadn’t gone more than another few steps when a roar of bursting eggs made him want to dive for cover--again, reflexes honed in the field. An instant later, chunks of masonry thundered down like an avalanche in the mountains.

He turned to see what the redheads had wrought. Wind from the falling marble rustled his hair. The familiar square shape was gone. A cloud of dust kept him from seeing any more than that. When the dust settled, the street would be as unfamiliar to the eye as his lower jaw might be to the tongue after losing a couple of teeth. No one was shouting “Shame!” any more. He wondered if the collapse of the arch had caught any Jelgavans in it, or, for that matter, any of the Algarvian soldiers. He shrugged. He’d find out on the way back. Delivering the trousers came first.

Silver jingled in his pockets as he headed home. By then, the dust was gone, and so was the arch. The Algarvians had been clever about dropping it; the marble lay in the street, but did not seem to have wrecked the houses and shops nearby. Talsu couldn’t see the oil-seller’s place, which lay on the far side of that great pile of rubble. Small boys had already started playing king of the mountain on top of it.

Their game did not last long. The Algarvian officer who spoke Jelgavan shouted, “Get off!” He followed that with some choice colloquialisms that set the children giggling as they scampered down. Then, to Talsu’s dismay, the officer and his soldiers (none of whom seemed to be missing) started pulling men off the street to get rid of the hill debris. One of the troopers nabbed him before he could make himself scarce.

He called, “Is this a paying job?” to the officer.

After a moment, the Algarvian nodded. “Aye, we’ll make it so.”

For the rest of the day, Talsu carried baskets of broken marble under the broiling summer sun. He dumped them into freight cars on the ley-line caravan that could get nearest the arch. That meant going halfway across town; people hadn’t known about ley lines in the days of the Kaunian Empire, and so hadn’t set their big buildings near them. The Algarvians didn’t stop him when he went into a tavern to buy a mug of ale, but one came in after him to make sure he didn’t linger or slip out the back door. He muttered curses under his breath; he’d had something like that in mind.

As evening twilight fell, he lined up to get his pay. He was worn and battered. Bruises covered his legs; he walked with a limp because a stone had done its best to smash his right foot. He had a couple of mashed fingernails, too, and half a dozen cuts and scrapes on his hands. “By the powers above, we earned whatever they give us,” he said.

When he got to the head of the line and held out an abused hand, the Algarvian officer slapped a couple of shiny new coppers into it. They bore the sharp-nosed image of King Mainardo, King Mezentio’s brother and now, by grace of Algarve, lord of Jelgava. Talsu looked from them to the redhead. “Go on,” the officer snapped. “Go on, and count yourself lucky you’re getting anything.”

Talsu stared at the coppers. They might have paid for an hour’s labor. Most of a day’s? He shoved them back at the officer. “Keep ‘em, pal,” he said. “Looks like you need ‘em worse than I do.”

“Do you know what I could do to you?” the Algarvian demanded.

“It might last longer than what you just did, but it couldn’t hurt much more,” Talsu answered with a shrug. “You had a chance to make people like you--like you better than our own nobles, anyway. This isn’t how you go about it.”

“Like us? What difference does that make?” the redheaded officer asked in surprise. “All that matters isthat you obey us.” He offered Talsu the coins once more. “Take them. You earned them.”

“I earned six times that much,” Talsu said, and walked away. He waited for the Algarvian to order him seized. It didn’t happen. He scurried around the first corner he came to, trembling from fatigue and reaction both. He’d been a fool to talk back to the occupiers. He’d got away with it, but that made him no less a fool.

“Where have you been?” Laitsina, his mother, cried when he came into the shop above which the family lived and slept. Then she got a good look at him and cried out again, this time in horror: “And what were you doing while you were there? Have the Algarvians beaten you with sticks?”

“No. They just caught me in the street and set me hauling broken rock--one of their sorcerers wrecked the old arch past the market square.” Talsu scowled. “Hard work, and then they cheated me at the end of it. About what you’d expect from the cursed redheads. I didn’t even bother taking their lousy coppers.” He didn’t bother telling his mother how he’d rejected the coins, either.

His father slammed a pair of shears down on the counter beside which he was working. “They wrecked the imperial arch?” Traku said. At Talsu’s nod, the older man muttered something pungent under his breath.

“That must have been the crash we heard this morning,” Laitsina said. “I wondered what it was. If business were better, somebody who knew about it would have come in before this and told us.”

“If the Algarvians weren’t here, business would be better,” Traku said. By the look he sent his son, he still blamed Talsu for the collapse of the Jelgavan armies. “And if the Algarvians weren’t here, they wouldn’t have been able to knock down the arch, either. Curse them, it’s stood since imperial times. They’ve got no business wrecking things that have stood for so long.”

“They won the war,” Talsu said. At the moment, he regretted that more than he had at any time since he’d marched off to oppose the redheads. “That lets them do as they please. And they’re turning out to be a worse bargain than our own nobles. Who would have thought anyone could be?”

Laitsina and Traku both glanced around nervously, though they were the only ones who could have heard what Talsu said. His sister chose that moment to come downstairs. “Who would have thought anyone could be worse than what?” Ausra asked.

“Worse than our nobles,” Talsu answered defiantly. “The Algarvians are.” He repeated the story of what they’d done to him and to the monument.

“That’s terrible!” Ausra said. “Are they doing the same thing all over the kingdom? If they are, there won’t be an arch or a column standing before long.”

“They’re jealous of us, that’s what it is,” Traku said. “We Kaunians were civilized while they still chased each other through the woods. They don’t want to be reminded of that, and they don’t want us reminded of it, either.”

“Some people may think more about things that are missing than they ever did about things that were there.” Talsu looked down at his battered, filthy, bloody hands. “I know I will.”

Garivald didn’t know why the impressers hadn’t marched him out of Zossen as part of the draft they took for King Swemmel’s army. Maybe they’d intended to scoop him and the other men they left behind into their net later. If so, they miscalculated, for the Algarvians overran the village before they could return.

Waddo kept reporting good news coming in over the crystal: Swemmel’s forces advancing, the Algarvians and Yaninans and Zuwayzin falling back in disorder. The firstman even brought the crystal out into the village square several more times so the peasants of Zossen could hear the news for themselves. He hadn’t misrepresented it; it always sounded good.

But then, one day, dragons painted in green and white and red flew by to the north of the village. They dropped no eggs, they did no harm, but they were there. They spread fear and, worse, they spread doubt as well. “If we’re kicking the Algarvians’ tails, how did those ugly flying things get here?” Dagulf asked Garivald as they were weeding in the fields outside of Zossen.

After looking around to make sure no one but his friend could hear him, Garivald answered, “If you expect the crystal to tell you the truth all the time, you probably think Waddo tells you the truth all the time, too.” Both men laughed, each warily. After a moment, Garivald added, “I wish the king would speak to us again. He pulled no punches. I liked that.”

“Aye.” Dagulf nodded. “Some of these city men with their fancy accents who lie straight-faced, though . . .” He spat into the rich, black soil.

Less than a week later, soldiers in rock-gray tunics started falling back through Zossen. Some of them had fancy city accents, some used the almost Forthwegian dialect of the northwest, and others talked like Garivald and his fellow villagers. However they spoke, they all told tales much different from those the villagers heard on the crystal.

“Aye, Herborn is fallen,” one of them said to Garivald as he gulped water and gnawed on a chunk of black bread Annore had given him. He was skinny and filthy and looked wearier than a peasant near the end of harvest time. “Powers above only know how many men the redheads cut off west of there, too. All I can tell you is, I’m cursed lucky I wasn’t one of them.”

“The crystal said we were still fighting hard there,” Garivald said. Losing Herborn, the capital of Grelz in the days when Grelz was a kingdom and not a subordinate duchy of Unkerlant, was like taking a knife in the chest. He didn’t want to believe it.

But the soldier said, “Bugger the crystal. If we still held Herborn, if the cursed Algarvians hadn’t nipped in behind us like a crayfish nipping with its pincers, you suppose I’d be here now?” He stuffed what was left of the bread into his pack, drained the mug of water, wiped his dirty face on his equally dirty sleeve, and trudged off toward the west. Other Unkerlanter troopers retreated through the fields, careless of the crops they were trampling.

A couple of peasants ran out into the fields to try to preserve those crops. One of them, the soldiers simply ignored. The other, a cousin of Waddo’s, might have thought his connection to the firstman gave him special authority. The soldiers thought otherwise. When he annoyed them--which didn’t take long--they knocked him down and beat him. He got up again sooner than they wanted. They knocked him down again and beat him some more. He lay there for quite a while then before rising and limping back to the village.

“They told me they’d blaze me if I said one more word,” he exclaimed in disbelieving tones.

After getting a good look at his bruised face, Garivald murmured to Dagulf, “You ask me, he’d already said too much by then.” His friend nodded.

Later that afternoon, a company came up the road from the east. They were retreating, too, but in good order. They paid for it. Garivald had seen Algarvian dragons flying by. Now he saw them in action, and wished he hadn’t. They dropped eggs on the Unkerlanter soldiers, then swooped low to flame those the bursts of sorcerous energy hadn’t slain. Shrieks rose. So did the stench of burnt meat.

A stray egg burst on one of the houses at the edge of the village. Nothing much was left of it, nor of the woman and three children who’d been inside.

Waddo stared at the carnage the space of a few minutes had seen. “We ought to bury the poor brave fellows,” he said, pointing out toward the slaughtered soldiers.

“What if they’d been in the village instead of just outside when the dragons came?” Garivald asked. “Who’d bury us then?” Waddo turned that horrified stare on him, then limped off without answering.

About noon the next day, four horse-drawn egg-tossers set up near the edge of the woods outside Zossen and started flinging death at the Algarvians farther east. For a little while, their solid presence cheered Garivald. Then he realized the enemy had drawn within egg-tosser range of the village. And then the Algarvians started tossing eggs back at that detachment.

Earth leapt skyward from the fields. Now Garivald watched in a different sort of horror: those were the crops on which Zossen would get through the winter--if it got through the winter. An older man, a fellow who’d fought in the Six Years’ War, shouted at him and the other gawkers: “Get down, you cursed fools! A burst close by’U pick you up and smash you flat against the closest wall that doesn’t fall over.” He lay on his belly--he believed what he was saying.

Garivald did, too. He got down flat. He wished he could dig a hole. That was what soldiers did. When an egg burst behind him, it rolled him over and battered him with its force. Others who hadn’t listened to the veteran were down and screaming--except for one woman who lay with her head twisted at an unnatural angle and would never get up again.

Before long, the Unkerlanter egg-tossers fell silent, beaten into submission by the redheads’. A couple of men from their crews ran off into the woods. Garivald had a hard time blaming them when all their comrades were slain or wounded.

More and more soldiers in rock-gray tunics streamed through and past Zossen. By then, the villagers had nothing left to give them but water from the wells. The next morning, an officer declared, “This is a good enough place for a stand. We’ll make the redheads pay high for it, by the powers above. You peasants head off to the west. If you’re lucky, you’ll get away.”

“But, my lord,” Waddo quavered, “that will mean the end of the village.”

The officer pointed his stick at the firstman’s face. “Argue with me, wretch, and it’ll mean the end of you.”

He started giving orders that would have turned Zossen into the best fortress he could make of it. Before he’d got far, though, his crystallomancer cried, “Sir, the redheads have broken through south of the woods. If we try to hold in the front, they’ll take us in flank.”

“Curse them!” the officer snarled. “That stretch of line should have held.” He ground his teeth; Garivald clearly heard the sound. The officer’s shoulders sagged. “Whoever was commanding down there ought to have his neck stretched, but no help for it. We’ve got to fall back again.”

His men had already begun trickling off toward the west. They’d been through this before. Garivald wondered if they’d been through anything else.

“Firstman!” the officer shouted. Waddo hobbled toward him, looking apprehensive. The officer’s lip curled. “Oh. You. Listen to me: if you’ve got a crystal in this miserable place, bury it deep. You won’t like what happens to you if the Algarvians find it.” Without waiting for an answer, he tramped off. He had more fight in him, but Garivald wasn’t sure whether he’d sooner take on King Mezentio’s men or his own side.

“Garivald!” Waddo called.

“Aye?” Garivald answered, all too sure he knew what was coming next. With his bad leg, Waddo couldn’t dig.

And the firstman did not surprise him. “Fetch a spade and come with me,” Waddo said. “We’d better get the crystal out of sight. I don’t think we have much time.”

Wishing Waddo had picked someone else, Garivald shouldered a shovel. The firstman went into his house--which eggs had left untouched--and came out with the crystal. Garivald followed him to a yard-deep hole in the middle of a vegetable plot where an egg had burst.

“Bury it at the bottom of that,” the firstman said, pointing. “With the ground already torn, some more digging won’t show.”

“Fair enough.” Garivald got into the hole and went to work. He might not like Waddo, but the firstman wasn’t stupid. Garivald kept looking over his shoulder as he dug. Some people in Zossen liked Waddo even less than he did. If they told the Algarvians what the firstman had done, the redheads would do something to Waddo. While they were about it, they were liable to do something to Garivald, too.

Thinking thus, Garivald hid the crystal, covered it over, and scrambled out of the burst hole as soon as he could. He hurried to put away the spade. He’d just come out of his hut again when the first Algarvian behemoth trotted into the village.

He stopped in the doorway and stared. He couldn’t help himself. He’d never seen a behemoth before, not in the flesh. The size and power of the beast astonished him. The iron sheathing its great horn and the heavy mail that protected it were rusty and had seen hard use. The mail jingled at every stride the behemoth took. The animal had a strong odor, something like a horse’s, something like a goat’s.

The behemoth bore on its back a heavy stick and four Algarvians--the first Algarvians Garivald had seen in the flesh, too. Two more behemoths followed close behind. They escorted a couple of squads of kilted footsoldiers. The Algarvians ran taller and leaner than Garivald’s countrymen; to him, it gave them the aspect of coursing wolves.

One of the men atop the lead behemoth shouted in what he thought was Garivald’s language: “Unkerlanti soldieri?”

“Not here.” Three peasants said it at the same time. Two of them pointed west, to show where King Swemmel’s men had gone.

Laughing and nodding, the Algarvian translated for his comrades. They grinned, too. They’re stupid, not to figure it out for themselves, Garivald thought. But the redheads weren’t so stupid as to take anything on trust. The footsoldiers fanned out through the village in pairs, searching every house--and seizing the chance to feel up any woman they found pretty. Several indignant squawks rose, but the Algarvians did nothing worse than let their hands roam free. Once they’d satisfied themselves no aiabushers lurked nearby, they relaxed and seemed friendly enough--for invaders.

Before long, an unmistakable Algarvian officer strode into Zossen. He owned even more arrogance than had marked his Unkerlanter counterpart not long before. He also owned a real command of the Unkerlanter language, barking, “Where is the firstman for this stinking, miserable pustule of a village?”

Leaning on his cane, Waddo limped forward. “Here I am, lord,” he quavered.

With a curse, the Algarvian pushed him over and kicked him. “You’re not Swemmel’s dog anymore. Have you got that? You’re King Mezentio’s dog now. And if you try any funny business, you’ll be a dead dog. Have you got that?” He kicked Waddo again.

“Aye, lord,” the firstman gasped. “Mercy, lord!”

Out of the side of his mouth, Garivald whispered to Annore, “So it’s going to be like that, is it?” His wife’s hand stole into his. They squeezed each other, hard.