Darkness Descending

Four

From the air, the battle below had for Sabrino the perfect clarity granted to footsoldiers only on maps after the fact. He watched with some anxiety the development of the Unkerlanter counterattack toward Sommerda, a city from which King Mezentio’s men had driven the enemy a couple of days before. The Unkerlanters lost fight after fight, but seemed too stupid to understand they were losing the war. They kept hurling new soldiers into the fray and striking back as best they might.

Nor could Sabrino blithely hurl his wing of dragonfliers at the men in rock-gray on the ground, as he had in the first days of King Mezentio’s assault on Unkerlant. Dragons painted an unromantic rock-gray were in the air, too, their fliers intent on doing to Algarvian soldiers what Sabrino and his comrades had done to the Unkerlanters since the war was new.

Those boring gray paint jobs made Unkerlanter dragons cursed hard to spot, especially against cloudy skies or smoke coming from the ground. A squadron had got below Sabrino’s wing before some sharp-eyed Algarvian flier spied them and spoke into his crystal, alerting the whole wing.

“They’ll pay for that!” Sabrino whooped. “Domiziano, your squadron, and yours, too, Orosio. The rest of you, stay on top to make sure they don’t try to bring any more of their little friends down on us.”

He urged his dragon into a dive. He was wing commander, but he was also a fighting man. The dragon screamed in anger at being ordered about, but then screamed in fury at sighting the Unkerlanter dragons. Its great muscles surged beneath Sabrino, almost like an ardent lover’s; its wings beat hard.

Unkerlanters, whether on the ground or in the air, carried far fewer crystals than did the Algarvians. If any of their fliers spotted Algarvians dragons dropping out of the sky on them, he could do little to alert his fellows. It might not have mattered much anyhow. The Unkerlanters were outnumbered close to two to one.

Sabrino flew out of the westering sun down onto the tail of an Unkerlanter dragon. He didn’t bother raising his stick, but let his own beast have the pleasure of flaming the foe from the sky. The Unkerlanter flier had no notion of aught amiss till fire washed over him. He and his dragon tumbled toward the ground.

More rock-gray dragons plummeted, too. So did a couple of Sabrino’s men and their mounts. He cursed when that happened. He cursed again when a few of the Unkerlanters managed to escape his trap, flying off toward the west with the last desperate energy their dragons had in them.

“Pursuit, sir?” Captain Domiziano asked, his image tiny in the crystal.

Regretfully, Sabrino shook his head. “No. We did what we came down here to do: We held them off our men on the ground. And night’s almost on us. We’d better head back toward the farm. We’ll want our beasts fresh come morning, because the powers above know we’ll be flying again.”

“Aye, sir.” Domiziano seemed regretful, too, but obedient. Sabrino approved of the combination. He wanted aggressive subordinates, but not so aggressive as to set their will above his.

He led the wing back to the latest temporary dragon farm, which lay at the edge of a good-sized estate a little east of Sommerda. The manor at the heart of the estate hadn’t suffered; the Algarvians had taken it by surprise, overrunning the area before King SwemmePs men could decide to use it for a strongpoint. They’d fought hard in Sommerda itself. Spiraling down toward the farm, Sabrino could see how his own countrymen had had to level half the town before finally clearing it of the stubborn Unkerlanter defenders.

On the ground, he was glad to let the handlers tend to his dragon. The beast liked them better than him, anyhow; he worked it hard, while they gave it the meat and brimstone and quicksilver it craved. It liked no one very much, though. Sabrino knew dragons too well to have any doubts on that score.

He ate hastily roasted mutton himself, along with hard bread, olives, and a nasty white wine the cooks who ran the field kitchen should never have bothered stealing. “Too sweet and too sour at the same time,” he said, staring at his cup in dismay. “Tastes like a diabetic’s piss.”

“If you say so, sir,” Captain Domiziano said innocently. “Myself, I wouldn’t know.” Sabrino made as if to throw the mug at him. He almost did it for real; it wouldn’t have been a waste of the wine. But he was laughing even as he reared back, and so were the officers who ate with him.

“Hello!” Captain Orosio pointed toward the manor house. “Looks like the old boy in there has finally decided to come out and see what we’re up to.”

Sure enough, an elderly Unkerlanter approached the dragonfliers. Sabrino had ordered the manor house and whoever lived in it left alone, except for taking what he needed from the flocks to keep men and dragons fed. Until now, the Unkerlanter noble--for such Sabrino assumed him to be--had also ignored the Algarvians.

He was straight and spry and, for an Unkerlanter, tall. He wore a bushy white mustache, a style outmoded in his clean-shaven kingdom since the middle of the century, the days before the Six Years’ War. And he proved to speak excellent Algarvian, saying, “I never expected to see your folk come so far into my land.”

Sabrino got to his feet and bowed. “Here we are, sir, nonetheless. I have the honor to be the Count Sabrino; very much at your service.” He bowed again.

A small, bitter smile crossed the Unkerlanter’s face as he returned the second bow. “In my younger days, I had some considerable experience with Algarvians,” he said. “I see the breed has changed little during my retirement.”

“And you are, sir?” Sabrino asked politely.

“I doubt my name would mean anything to you, young fellow,” the Unkerlanter replied, though Sabrino was not so young as all that. “I am called Chlodvald.”

Not only Sabrino but some of his officers exclaimed at that. “Powers above!” the wing commander said. “If you are that Chlodvald, your Excellency”--and he had no doubt the old man was--”you were the best general your kingdom had during the Six Years’ War.”

“You compliment me too highly. I had good fortune,” Chlodvald said with a shrug. In his place, an Algarvian would have preened and boasted.

“Will you give us the privilege of dining with us?” Sabrino asked. Several of the junior officers added eager agreement.

Chlodvald raised an eyebrow. “Generous of you to offer to share with me what is mine.”

“Sir, it is war,” Sabrino said stiffly. “Did you never feast from the fruits of victory?”

“There you have me,” the retired general admitted, and sat down among the dragonfliers. His kingdom’s enemies fell over one another to give him food and drink. When he tasted the wine, that eyebrow rose again. “This did not come from my cellars.”

“Your Excellency, with all my heart I should hope not,” Sabrino said. After Chlodvald had eaten and drunk, the wing commander asked him, “How is it that you live quietly here, sir, and are not engaged in helping Unkerlant against us?”

“Oh, I have lived quietly here a good many years, and I did not expect King Swemmel to call me into his service even when war broke out anew,” Chlodvald replied. “You may not recall, but I fought for Kyot in the Twinkings War.”

“Ah,” Sabrino whispered.

Captain Orosio blurted what was in Sabrino’s mind: “Then how come you’re not dead?”

Chlodvald smiled that bitter smile again. “King Swemmel didn’t spare many. I’d known both the young princes well back in Cottbus, of course, before their father died and they went at each other. Maybe that had something to do with it. I don’t know; he slew others he knew as well as me. But he said he was letting me live because of my earlier service to Unkerlant, which partly excused my madness. Anyone who opposed him was and is in his mind mad.”

“What is in himself, he sees in others,” Sabrino said. Chlodvald did not disagree.

Captain Domiziano said, “Algarve is the broom that will sweep him away. King Mezentio will arrange this kingdom as it should be.”

For the third time, the strange smile appeared on Chlodvald s face. “If only you had come twenty years ago, we should have welcomed you with open arms. But now it’s too late. We were just getting back on our feet after the Six Years’ War and the Twinkings War, and now you come and throw us back so we shall have to start all over again. Now we are fighting for Unkerlant, and in that cause we are all united.”

Sabrino eyed his officers. They all looked amused, as he felt amused. Politely inclining his head to Chlodvald, he said, “Your Excellency, Unkerlant may be united, but we would not be here by Sommerda were that doing King Swemmel any enormous amount of good.”

“Perhaps not,” the retired--forcibly retired--Unkerlanter general replied. “But then again, while you are winning, you have not yet won. Tell me: has the fight been easy for you?”

Sabrino started to nod. In some ways, the fight had been very easy. The Unkerlanters weren’t skilled, either in the air or on the ground. They blundered into traps that would have fooled no Valmieran or Jelgavan officer. Sometimes, though, they battered their way out of those traps, too, as the Valmierans or Jelgavans would not have even tried to do. They fought hard all the time; if they were doomed to defeat, they did not admit it even to themselves.

“You have not answered me, Count Sabrino,” Chlodvald said.

“Easy enough,” Sabrino said, and tossed an egg of his own: “How is it that all of Unkerlant’s neighbors have joined against her? That speaks volumes about how well King Swemmel is loved throughout Derlavai.”

“All of Algarve’s neighbors joined against her, too,” Chlodvald observed. “And what does that say about King Mezentio?”

“Yanina marches with us!” Captain Domiziano blurted.

Chlodvald raised his snowy eyebrow and said not another word. After a moment, Domiziano turned red. Sabrino had all he could do not to laugh at his squadron leader. He still wasn’t sure having the Yaninans as allies helped Algarve more than it helped Unkerlant.

Chlodvald got to his feet. Rather stiffly, he nodded to Sabrino. “You Algarvians were a polished lot when you fought us in the Six Years’ War. I see that has not changed. But I will take the liberty of telling you one thing more before I leave you: Unkerlant is a kingdom--Unkerlant is a land--that rubs the polish from invaders no less than from its own folk. Good night.” He turned away.

“Good night,” Sabrino called after him. “We may not meet again: before long, we shall be advancing once more.”

Chlodvald did not reply; Sabrino wondered if the old man heard. He watched Chlodvald walk through deepening twilight back toward the manor house and go inside. No lamps showed at the windows; the Unkerlanter general was too courteous to try to betray his foes in such a way. Even so, Unkerlanter dragons came over that night, dropping eggs all around the Algarvian dragon farm. They killed only a couple of dragons and no fliers, but their stubbornness made Sabrino thoughtful.

Lalla stamped her foot. The angry gesture set her bare breasts bouncing prettily. “But I already ordered that emerald necklace!” she said. “What do you mean, I can’t have it? The jeweler will deliver it soon.”

“No, he won’t,” Hajjaj said wearily. “As for you can’t,’ my dear, don’t you speak Zuwayzi? I told you before you went and ordered it that you might not have it, for it cost too much. If you ignore my instructions, you must expect me to ignore your desires. I have had too many of these scenes with you.”

His third wife set her hands on her hips. “Old man, you have been ignoring my desires since our wedding night. You might expect me to minister to the pleasure of your body, but you will not even let me adorn mine. Please?” She went from vicious to cajoling in the space of a couple of sentences.

Hajjaj eyed her body. It was well worth adorning: broad-hipped, wasp-waisted, full-breasted. He’d wed her in the hope of sensual pleasure, and he’d had more than a little from her. But he’d also had more than a little--too much more than a little--aggravation from her. Because she pleased him in the bedchamber, she’d grown convinced he was assotted of her and would grant her every wish, no matter how extravagant. Anyone who had such ideas about the Zuwayzi foreign minister knew him less well than she imagined.

With a sigh, he said, “I am an old man. Whether you grasp it or not, however, I am not necessarily a fool. If I were a fool, I would let you buy that necklace even after I told you not to do it. Instead, I shall send you back to the head of your clan. You may see how well you cajole him.”

Lalla stared, realizing too late that she’d gone too far. “Have mercy, my lord, my husband!” she cried, and threw herself down on her knees before him, beseeching and inviting him at the same time. “Have mercy, I beg!”

“I have shown you too much mercy--and too much cash,” Hajjaj replied. “I shall pay out your divorcee’s allowance till you remarry--if you do. If you want more than that, you may either earn it or pry it loose from your clan chief. Since custom and law forbid him from touching you, you will have fewer inducements than you did with me.”

“You wicked old scorpion!” Lalla cried. “I curse you! I curse the powers above for setting me in your hands! I--”

She scrambled to her feet, snatched a vase from a wall niche, and threw it at Hajjaj. Rage made her aim poor; he didn’t even have to duck. The vase shattered against the wall behind him. The crash brought servants running to see what had happened. “Do escort her away,” Hajjaj said, “and make everything ready to return her to the house of her clan head.”

“Aye, lord,” the servants said. By the way they smiled, they’d hoped for that order for some time. Lalla saw as much, too. She cursed them and then kicked one of them. They escorted her away much less gently than they might have otherwise.

Tewfik made his slow way into the chamber. He bowed as well as age and decrepitude allowed, then said, “My lord, Marquis Balastro of Algarve awaits without. He craves audience with you.”

“By all means, Tewfik, let him in.” Hajjaj s joints clicked as he stretched; he knocked one of the pillows on the floor aside with his foot. “I suppose you have a kilt and tunic waiting for me somewhere. Gauzy ones, I hope.”

The longtime family retainer coughed. “Mufflings will not be necessary today, sir, the count having chosen to affect the habiliments of Zuwayza: hat--an Algarvian hat, but the brim is wide enough--sandals, and only himself between.”

“And he’s waiting outside, you said? Powers above, he’ll bake! He’s light-skinned and not hardened against the sun.” Hajjaj hurried toward the entrance-way. He was not so nimble as he once had been, but still easily outdistanced Tewfik.

From behind him, the majordomo called, “A suggestion, my lord.”

As usual, Tewfik’s suggestions had the force of commands. “And that is?” Hajjaj asked over his shoulder.

“Until the wench Lalla returns to her clan head’s house, she ought not to be alone, lest valuables of this house go thither with her,” Tewfik told him.

Till that moment, Lalla had been junior wife in Tewfik’s mouth and used as respectfully as either of the wives senior to her. Hajjaj wondered whether the majordomo was finally expressing his own opinion or echoing what he presumed to be his master’s. Then he wondered if Tewfik saw any difference between those two. Either way, he gave good advice. “Aye, see to it,” Hajjaj said.

“As you say,” Tewfik replied, though he’d done the saying. “I presume you will entertain the Algarvian minister in the library?” He did not bother waiting for an answer to that, but continued, “I shall have tea and cakes and wine sent there directly.”

“I thank you,” Hajjaj said, still over his shoulder. Almost to the entranceway, he paused. “Algarvian vintages for the minister, not date wine.”

“Of course.” Tewfik sounded offended that his master should judge he needed reminding.

Hajjaj threw open the strong-barred door--like many clan centers, his home could double as a fortress. Sure enough, there stood Balastro, bare and pale and sweating in the sun. With a jaunty gesture, he swept off his hat and bowed. “I am pleased to see you, your Excellency,” he said.

“I am pleased to see you at least had the sense to travel here in a closed and covered coach,” Hajjaj said. “Come inside, before my cooks decide you’re done and put you on a serving platter.”

“You follow my customs when you call on me at the ministry,” Balastro said. He did sigh with relief when he stepped into the shade; the thick mud-brick walls fought the heat as well as anything could. “I thought it the least I could do to follow yours while visiting you.”

“Aye, you’ve been known to do it before,” Hajjaj agreed. “You are the only diplomat who ever does--Algarvian panache, I daresay. But truly, your Excellency, you are not equipped with a hide of the proper color . . . and yours will turn several improper colors if you stay out too long.” He could not quite take Balastro’s nudity for granted, as he did nudity among his own people. Not only was Balastro the wrong color, as Hajjaj had said, but he also displayed the distinctive Algarvian mutilation. Hajjaj’s eyes kept coming back to it; it made the redhead look deformed. To cover his queasy fascination, the Zuwayzi foreign minister added, “All your hide.”

“Ah.” Balastro took the point. “Can’t have him sunburned, can we? He’s got better things to do.”

He followed Zuwayzi custom in the library, talking about books with Hajjaj instead of coming straight to his real business. He did not read Zuwayzi, but was as apt to choose a classical Kaunian title as one written in Algarvian. He seemed to have as much regard for Kaunians of imperial day as his kingdom had little for modern ones. That puzzled Hajjaj, who longed to ask him about it, but could not: it was too serious to discuss before the rituals of hospitality were completed.

No sooner had Balastro sunk to the cushions tJian serving wenches brought in die inevitable refreshments. As part of his perfect care for his master’s guest, Tewfik had chosen a couple of the prettiest women to wait upon Balastro and Hajjaj. They eyed the Algarvian minister with no small curiosity, and looked to be fighting giggles, perhaps because of his race, perhaps because of the ritual of manhood he’d endured.

He eyed them, too, with interest that soon became visible. That made them giggle more. After they’d left the room, he asked Hajjaj, “Powers above, your Excellency, how do you keep from, ah, rising to die occasion whenever you see a comely wrench?”

“I am old,” Hajjaj answered, remembering Lalla’s taunt.

Balastro sipped wine. “Not so old as that, and you know it cursed well.”

Hajjaj inclined his head; the Algarvian was right. “If you see something often enough, it loses its power to excite.”

“I suppose that’s so,” Balastro said. “Seems a pity, though.” He nibbled at a cake. “These are the nuts called cashews, aren’t they? Tastier than walnuts and almonds, I think.”

“Generous of you to say so,” Hajjaj replied. “Not many of your countrymen would agree. I think you are right, but I grew up with cashews.” He chuckled. “Of course, I grew up with date wine, too, but I know better than to serve you that.”

Balastro’s fastidious shudder could have played on the stage. “For which mercy, your Excellency, I thank you.”

Presently, with tea and wine drunk and cakes diminished, with books and nudity talked dry, Hajjaj could with propriety inquire, “And what brings you up into the hills today, sir?”

“Past the desire for good wine and good company, you mean?” Balastro asked, and Hajjaj nodded. The Algarvian minister answered, “I was hoping we might get more aid from you 2’uwayzin for the assault on Glogau than we’ve had thus far.”

Hajjaj frowned. “And you come to me for this? Surely it is a matter for your military attache to work out with his Majesty’s officers down in Bishah.”

Now Balastro looked annoyed, a genuine expression rather than the play-acting he’d used before. “I pray you for both our sakes, your Excellency, do not be disingenuous with me. You must know that your officers have dissembled and delayed and done their best to keep from answering aye or nay. This reluctance must spring from the king or from the foreign ministry: from you, in other words, in either case.”

“If you think I lead King Shazli around by the nose, I must tell you that you are very much mistaken,’’ Hajjaj said.

“Aye, you must tell it to me, for your honor’s sake and your sovereign’s, but must I believe it?” the Algarvian minister to Zuwayza returned: a toss with a good deal of justice in it. “Let us here--merely for the sake of argument, if you like--imagine that you are the author of your kingdom’s treatings with its neighbors.”

“For the sake of argument, as you say.” Hajjaj steepled his fingers and fought against a smile. He liked Balastro, which made the fight harder. “I might say, in that case, that Zuwayza, by now, has avenged herself in full against Unkerlant--in full and more. Glogau has never been ours; few if any Zuwayzin dwell there, or ever have.”

“Zuwayza is our ally, and needs must aid our cause,” Balastro said.

Hajjaj shook his head. “No, your Excellency. Zuwayza is your cobelligerent. We war against Unkerlant for our own reasons, not yours. And, since this discussion is hypothetical, I might add that the vengeance you are wreaking on your neighbors leaves me somewhat relieved not to be one.”

“We have been foes to the cursed Kaunians for time out of mind,” Balastro said with a shrug. “Now that we have the whip hand, we shall use it. Tell me you love the Unkerlanters. Go ahead--I need a good laugh today.”

“We have been known to live at peace with them,” Hajjaj said, “even as you Algarvians have been known to live at peace with the Kaunians.”

“Peace on their terms.” Balastro had no bend in him (and was, Hajjaj knew, forgetting long stretches of his homeland’s history). “Now it is peace on our terms. That is what victory earned us. We are the valiant. We are the strong.”

“Then surely, your Excellency, you will not need much in the way of help from Zuwayza in reducing Glogau, will you?” Hajjaj asked innocently.

Balastro gave him a sour look, got to his feet, and departed with much less ceremony than was customary. Hajjaj stood in the doorway and watched his carriage start back toward the Algarvian ministry back in Bishah. As soon as it rounded a corner--but not an instant before--the Zuwayzi foreign minister let himself smile.

Istvan eyed the pass ahead with something less than delight. “There’ll be Unkerlanters up yonder,” he said, with as much gloomy certainty as a man eyeing dark clouds billowing up from the horizon might use in saying, There’s a storm on the way.

“Aye, no doubt.” That was Szonyi. “And we’ll have to pay the bill for digging them out, too.”

“There won’t be very many of them.” Kun, of all people, was looking on the bright side of things.

“There won’t need to be very many of them.” Istvan waved a hand at the steep-sided jumble of rocks to right and left. “This is the only way forward. As long as they hold it, we aren’t going anywhere.”

Szonyi nodded, looking no more happy than Istvan felt. “Aye, the sergeant’s right, Kun. Ever since the Unkerlanters decided they were going to fight after all, this is the game they’ve played. They aren’t trying to stop us. They’re trying to slow us down, to give us as little as they can till winter comes.”

“And winter in this country won’t be any fun at all.” Istvan eyed the sun. It still stood high in the northern sky at noon, but a tiny bit lower each day. Winter was coming, as inexorably as sand ran through the neck of a glass and down into the bottom half.

Trouble was coming, too. From the strong position they’d set up for themselves in that pass, the Unkerlanters started tossing eggs at the advancing Gyongyosians. Their aim wasn’t particularly good; many of the eggs, instead of bursting on the paths Istvan and his countrymen were using, smote the mountainsides above them. Before long, Istvan discovered the Unkerlanters knew what they were doing after all. One of those bursts touched off an avalanche that swept several soldiers and several donkeys off a path and down to their doom.

“Whoresons!” Istvan shook his fist toward the east. “That’s a coward’s way to fight.”

“They have no honor,” Kanizsai said. “They do nothing but toss eggs and blaze at us from ambush.”

“That’s because there aren’t very many of them here,” Kun said, as if explaining things to an idiot child. “They can’t afford a big standup fight with us, because they’re in the middle of a big standup fight with Algarve.”

“No honor,” the young recruit repeated.

“Whether they do or whether they don’t, we still have to shift the goat-buggers,” Istvan said. As if to underscore his words, an egg burst close by, hurling a big chunk of stone past his head.

Kun asked a question Istvan wished he would have kept to himself: “How?”

Since the whole squad was looking at him, Istvan had to answer. Since he didn’t know, he said, “That’s for the officers to figure out.”

“Aye, but it’s for us to do,” Szonyi said. “We do the work, and we do the bleeding, too.”

“We are warriors,” said Kanizsai, who, not yet having been in any big fights, didn’t realize how quickly most of them could become dead warriors if they rushed a strong position manned by stubborn troops.

The officers set over them did seem to realize that, for which Istvan blessed the stars. Instead of the headlong rush he’d dreaded, the commanders in charge of the advance into Unkerlant sent dragons against the enemies blocking the pass ahead. Eggs fell from under the bellies of the great beasts. Having endured more rains of eggs on Obuda than he cared to remember, Istvan knew a sort of abstract sympathy for the Unkerlanters there to the east.

Szonyi had endured attack from the air, too. If he knew any sympathy for the Unkerlanters, he concealed it very well. “Ball the whoresons,” he said, over and over again. “Smash ‘em up. Squash ‘em flat. Don’t leave enough of any one of’em to make a decent ghost.”

Kun cleared his throat. “The notion that a ghost resembles a body at the moment of its death is only a peasant superstition.”

“And how many ghosts have you seen with your beady little eyes there, Master Spectacles?” Szonyi demanded.

“Stuff a cap in it, both of you,” Istvan said, rolling his eyes. “We’re supposed to be fighting the Unkerlanters, not each other.”

And the Unkerlanters, to his dismay, kept fighting back. They must not have saved all their heavy sticks for the fight against Algarve: they blazed a pair of Gyongyosian dragons out of the air as the beasts stooped low to drop their eggs precisely where their fliers wanted them to go. The rest of the men flying the brightly painted dragons urged them higher into the sky.

“Stars guide the souls of those two,” Szonyi murmured, and glanced over to Kun as if expecting the mage’s apprentice to argue with him. Kun simply nodded, at which Szonyi relaxed.

Eggs did keep falling on the Unkerlanter strongpoint, if not with the accuracy the Gyongyosians could have got by going lower. But eggs also kept falling on the footsoldiers waiting to assault the strongpoint, for the dragonfliers had not been able to wreck all the Unkerlanter egg-tossers.

A whistle shrilled. “Forward!” shouted Captain Tivadar, the company commander. He went forward himself, without hesitation. A commander who was not afraid to face the foe brought his men with him.

“Forward!” Istvan called, and trotted after the captain. He did not look back over his shoulder to see if his men followed. He assumed they would. If they didn’t, their countrymen would do worse to them for cowardice than the Unkerlanters would for courage.

Here, at least, he could see the position he was attacking. Back on Obuda, he’d often blundered through the forest without the faintest notion of where the Kuusamans were till he or his comrades stumbled over them. The disadvantage here was that the Unkerlanters knew where he was, too. He used what bushes and boulders he could for cover, but felt as if he were under the eyes of King Swemmel’s men at every stride.

Still under assault from the air, the Unkerlanters were slower than they might have been to shorten the range on their egg-tossers. That made life easier for Istvan and his companions . . . for a little while. But then flashes of light began winking from behind the piled-up stones at the mouth of the pass as the Unkerlanters brought their sticks into play.

Istvan blazed back at them. “By squads!” Captain Tivadar shouted. “Blaze and move! Make them keep their heads down while we advance on them!”

He wasn’t the only officer shouting similar orders. The Gyongyosian soldiers who’d seen war before, either in the mountains against Unkerlant or on the islands of the Bothnian Ocean, obeyed more readily than the new recruits. Running past a corpse with tawny yellow hair, Istvan shook his head. Living through a couple of fights improved your odds of living through more than a couple.

A moment later, he shook his head again. If you didn’t live through your first couple of fights, you were unlikely to live through any after that.

“Swemmel!” the Unkerlanter soldiers shouted. “Swemmel!” They shouted other things than their king’s name, too, but Istvan couldn’t understand those. To his ears, the Unkerlanter language sounded like a man in the last stages of choking to death.

A beam hissed past his head, so close that he could feel the heat and smell the sharp lightning reek it left behind in the air. He threw himself flat and scrambled toward the closest rock he could find. He peered out from behind it. In their gray tunics, the very color of the mountainside, the Unkerlanters were cursed hard to see.

When he did spot one, he took careful aim before blazing and then whooped as the fellow slumped bonelessly, stick falling from his fingers. “Good blazing, Sergeant,” Tivadar called, and Istvan puffed out his chest: nothing like doing well when a superior was watching.

Then he had no more time to dwell on such trivia, for he and his comrades were in among the Unkerlanters, forcing the enemy back more by weight of numbers than by skill at arms. Some of King Swemmel’s soldiers seemed glad to flee, running east down the valley toward the distant land where most of them were born. Others, though, iield their ground as stubbornly as if they too sprang from a warrior race. And, indeed, it was not through want of courage that some of the defenders finally did give way, but only through being overwhelmed by the swarming Gyongyosians.

“By the stars,” Istvan said, shaking his head in wonder as he finally made his way toward the end of the Unkerlanters’ defensive works, “if this were great army against great army and not a regiment of ours thrown at a couple of companies of theirs, Gyongyos and Unkerlant would both run out of men.”

“Aye.” That was Kun, who limped along after him, having taken a light wound from a stick. The mage’s apprentice still had his spectacles on, whether through some protective magic of his or thanks to an out-and-out miracle Istvan couldn’t have said. Kun pointed ahead. “One more little fortress of theirs up there, and then we can go on.”

“So we can,” Istvan said. “And then, a few miles farther east, they’ll choose another pass we have to go through, and they’ll entrench themselves there. At five miles a day, how many years are we from Cottbus?”

Kun wore a faraway expression as he calculated. “Three,” he said, “or rather a bit more.”

Istvan, who had only sketchy schooling, did not know if he was right or wrong. He did know the prospect struck him as gloomy. And he also rapidly realized that the Unkerlanters in the little fortress ahead had no intention of letting his comrades go any miles farther that day. They blazed away at the Gyongyosians with such ferocity across such level ground that to approach or to try to go around their strongpoint was an appointment with death.

Only after Gyongyosian dragons returned and dropped great swarms of eggs on the fortress did the blazing from it ease enough to let the footsoldiers mount an assault. Even then, Unkerlanter survivors kept fighting in the wreckage until, at last, almost all of them were slain. Only a couple of dark-haired men came out of the works with their hands held high.

And when Istvan went into the battered fortress, he discovered something that set him shouting for Captain Tivadar. After a while, the company commander picked his way through the wreckage and stood beside his sergeant. “Well,” he said at last, “now we know why they were able to blaze so well for so long.”

“Aye, sir,” Istvan said. “So we do.” Ten Unkerlanters lay side by side, each of them with his throat cut. The Gyongyosians had not done that; the Unkerlanters’ own countrymen had. “Do you suppose they volunteered, or did their officers draw straws, or would they just pick the men they liked least?”

“I don’t know,” Tivadar answered. “Maybe the captives will be able to tell us.” He gulped, looking for something more to say. At last, he managed, “It was bravely done, though. See?--none of them has his hands tied. They gave themselves up so their comrades would have plenty of sorcerous energy in their sticks to keep blazing at us.”

“So they did.” Istvan looked down at the neat if bloody row of corpses. He gave them the best tribute he could: “They died like warriors.” He wondered how many Gyongyosians would have yielded themselves up for their fellows’ sake like that. Then he wondered what the Unkerlanters would do at the next position they chose to defend with all their strength. And then he wondered if he’d be lucky enough to see the Unkerlanter stronghold after that.

Seen from Setubal, the Derlavaian War had a curious feel, almost as if it were happening in a distant room. The Strait of Valmiera protected Lagoas from invasion. So did Algarve’s enormous fight with Unkerlant; thus embroiled, King Mezentio’s men could not afford to do much against the Lagoans. Occasional dragons dropped eggs on Setubal and the other towns of the northern coast. Occasional warships tried to sneak in and raid the shoreline. Rather more Lagoan dragons flew against the Algarvian-held ports of southern Valmiera. Other than that. . .

“They fear us,” a second-rank mage named Xavega said to Fernao as the two of them sat drinking fortified wine in a dining room of the Grand Hall of the Lagoan Guild of Mages.

Fernao bowed in his seat, an almost Algarvian courtesy. “I thank you, milady,” he said. “You have proved, without leaving the tiniest particle of room for doubt, that being a woman does not keep one from being a fool.”

Xavega glared at him. She was in her early thirties, a few years younger than he, and had a fierce scowl somehow made fiercer by her being quite good-looking. “If Algarve did not fear us,” she said, “Mezentio would have tried settling accounts with us before turning his eye westward.”

“You’ve never traveled outside Lagoas, have you?” Fernao asked.

“As if that should make a difference!” Xavega tossed her head. Her mane of auburn hair flipped back over her shoulders.

“Ah, but it does,” Fernao said. “You may not believe me, but it does. People who’ve never left Lagoas have no sense of... of proportion--I think that’s the word I want. It’s true of anyone who hasn’t traveled, but more so with us, because our kingdom is only the smaller part of an island, but we naturally think it’s the center of the world.”

By Xavega’s expression, no other thought had crossed her mind. And, by her expression, she wasn’t interested in having other thoughts cross her mind. The thought of bedding her later in the evening had crossed Fernao’s mind; he suspected he’d just dropped an egg on his chances. She said, “Setubal contains the world. What need to go farther?”

That held some truth--some, but not enough. “Proportion,” Fernao repeated. “For one thing, Mezentio couldn’t very well jump on us when Swemmel was ready to jump on him from the west. For another, if he did jump us, he’d bring Kuusamo into the war against him, and he can’t afford that.”

“Kuusamo.” Xavega waved her hand, as Lagoans had a way of doing when they thought of their neighbors on the island.

“Kuusamo outweighs us two or three to one,” Fernao said, an unpleasant truth his countrymen preferred to forget. “The Seven Princes look east and north for gain more than they do toward us or toward the mainland--easier pickings in those directions--but they don’t have to.”

“They’re Kuusamans,” Xavega said with a sneer, as if that explained everything. For her, evidently, it did. Pointing to Fernao, she went on, “Just because you have their eyes, you don’t need to take their part.”

Fernao got to his feet and bowed stiffly. “Milady, I think you would find yourself more at home in Mezentio’s kingdom than in your own. I give you good evening.” He stalked out of the dining room, proud he hadn’t flung the last of his wine in Xavega’s face. By her looks, she might have been of pure Algarvic stock. But, like most Lagoans, she also probably had Kaunians and Kuusamans somewhere down the trunk of her family tree. Scorning people for their looks was bad manners in most Lagoan circles--although not, evidently, in hers.

He wondered how many did share her views. If Lagoas became a kingdom where a man with narrow eyes or a woman with blond hair couldn’t go out on the streets without fear of being insulted or worse, would it be the sort of kingdom in which he cared to live? No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than another followed it: Where else could I go?

Nowhere on the continent of Derlavai, that was certain. He’d been to the austral continent, and heartily hoped never to have anything to do with it again. He hadn’t visited equatorial Siaulia, but had no interest in doing so. It was as backward as the land of the Ice People, and the war that blazed through Derlavai sputtered there, too, as Derlavaian colonists and their native vassals squabbled among themselves.

The scattered islands in the Great Northern Sea were even less appealing, unless a man aimed to forget the world and make sure the world forgot him, too. That was not what Fernao had in mind. If Lagoas went bad . . .

As he left the Grand Hall, his head turned, almost of itself, toward the east. Odd to think of Kuusamo as a bastion of sanity in a world gone mad. It was odd for most Lagoans to think of their short, dark, slim neighbors any more than they had to.

Fernao hurried up the street to the caravan stop. Because of his own interests, he was not like most Lagoans. Maybe his interest in Kuusaman magecraft:--and his curiosity over whatever the Kuusamans weren’t talking about--had led him to take Xavega’s crack about his looks more to heart than he would have otherwise.

A ley-line caravan glided up. A couple of passengers got off; a couple got on. Fernao stayed at the stop--this wasn’t the route he needed. And maybe she’s just a nasty bitch, the mage thought sourly. He glanced at the people hurrying past him: regardless of the hour, Setubal never slept. One in five, maybe one in four, had eyes like his. If Xavega didn’t care for them, too cursed bad.

Another caravan car came to the stop. Fernao climbed aboard and tossed a coin in the fare box: this car would take him to within a street of his block of flats. He sat down next to a yawning woman who looked to have a good deal more Kuusaman blood than he did himself.

Coming into his building, he paused at the pigeonholes in the lobby to see what the postman had brought him. Along with the usual advertising circulars from printers, dealers in sorcerous apparatus, nostrum peddlers, and local eateries, he found an envelope with an unfamiliar printed franking mark. He held it up to his face so he could read the postmaster’s blurry handstamp over the mark.

“Kajaani,” he muttered. “Where in blazes is Kajaani?” Then he laughed at himself. He’d been guilty of the crime for which he’d taxed Xavega: he’d thought of Lagoas first, to the exclusion of everyplace else. As soon as he stopped doing that, he knew perfectly well where Kajaani was. And, with only a little more thought, he knew who was likely to be writing him from the Kuusaman town, though the envelope bore no return address.

He almost tore that envelope open there in the lobby, but made himself wait till he’d gone upstairs to his flat. There he flung the useless sheets of paper onto the sofa and opened the one that mattered. Sure enough, the letter--written in excellent classical Kaunian--was on the stationery of Kajaani City College, and from the theoretical sorcerer named Pekka.

My dear colleague, she wrote, I thank you for your interest in my work and your inquiries into my research. Unfortunately, I must tell you that much of my recent silence in the journals has sprung from nothing other than the demands on my time my son takes. I do eventually hope to publish more, but when that may be I cannot say. Meanwhile, my life is busy in many different ways. Hoping this finds you well and your own work flourishing, I remain--Pekka, Professor of Theoretical Sorcery.

Fernao’s excitement dissolved like a little ink in a lot of water, leaving his mood duller and darker than it had been before. He had to fight to keep from crumpling the letter and tossing it over with the rest of the mail he’d received. He’d got similar bland missives from other Kuusaman theoretical sorcerers to whom he’d written. Had the letters been identical and not merely similar, he would have known for a fact that the mages were acting in concert. As things were, he had to infer it, but it wasn’t the subtlest inference he’d ever drawn.

“They know something, all right,” he muttered. “They don’t want anyone to know they know it, either. That means it’s big, whatever it is.” So much had been obvious since his meeting with Ilmarinen, the meeting that should have been with Siuntio. It was even more obvious now.

He wondered what the Kuusamans had found. Something that had to do with the relationship between the laws of contagion and similarity, plainly. But what? Lagoan mages, more often than not of a more practical bent than their Kuusaman counterparts, hadn’t explored the question in depth.

“Maybe we should have,” Fernao muttered under his breath. If the Guild of Lagoan Mages were to try to catch up with the Kuusamans, to discover whatever they were hiding, how best to go about it? The only answer that occurred to Fernao was getting some talented sorcerers together and having them proceed from the point where Siuntio and Pekka and the rest of the Kuusamans had, for whatever reason, fallen silent.

He laughed an unhappy laugh. Even Grandmaster Pinhiero would have a hard time getting a group of Lagoan mages to work on a project he proposed rather than on whatever they felt like doing themselves. Fernao was about to throw the notion into his mental trash bin when he suddenly stiffened. He wondered if, in Trapani or some other Algarvian town, another group of mages was already hard at work going down that same path. If so, how could Lagoas afford to ignore it?

He glanced at Pekka’s note again. Maybe, just maybe, she was telling the truth and he’d been starting at shadows all along. With the note in his hand, he could--or maybe he could--make a fair stab at finding out. He set the note on the table and went to the cabinet of sorcerous gear that stood next to the stove in the kitchen. Had he been a better cook, he would have had a cabinet full of spices there instead. From the cabinet, he took a lens mounted in a polished brass ring and a dried lapwing’s head: the lapwing, being a sharp-eyed bird, was to a mage a sovereign remedy against deception.

Holding the lapwing’s head between a lamp and the lens that focused its power on the note, he chanted a cantrip in classical Kaunian. If the writing on the note was true, he would see the black ink as bright blue. If the writing was false, he would see it as burning red.

But he continued to see it simply as black. Frowning, he wondered if he’d somehow botched the charm. He didn’t think so, but ran through it again, this time with special care. The ink continued to seem black to his eyes. It shouldn’t have, not after that spell, not unless. . . .

“Why, the tricksy minx!” Fernao exclaimed. “If she hasn’t magicked the note against this very sorcery, I’m an addled apprentice.”

Shaking his head at Pekka’s forethought, he put away the lens and the bird’s head. Now he couldn’t be sure whether the Kuusaman theoretical sorcerer had been lying or telling the truth, not by any objective means. But he could still draw inferences. That Pekka hadn’t wanted him to know whether or not she was telling the truth strongly suggested she wasn’t. If she wasn’t, the Kunsamans were indeed likely to be hiding something important.

He’d already believed that. “One more bit of evidence,” he murmured, and then kicked at the carpet. Evidence of what? Something. That was as much as he knew. He wondered if some dapper, clever young mage in Trapani, a fellow with waxed mustachios and a hat worn at a jaunty angle, knew more.

For his sake, for his kingdom’s sake, he hoped not. But when he looked north and west, toward the Algarvian capital, he knew he had fear in his eyes.

East of Cottbus, a half ring of dowsers did their best to detect Algarvian dragons so they could give the capital of Unkerlant some warning against attack from the air. Marshal Rathar swung off his horse at one such post, a crude hut in the middle of a forest of birch trees. Letting soldiers see him, letting them see he was still in the fight and still thought Unkerlant could win, was one reason he went out to the field as often as he could. Another reason was learning as much as he could about all aspects of the war.

Still another was escaping King Swemmel for a while. Soon enough, he’d have to go back to the palace and see what sort of advice the king would give. Sometimes, Rathar was convinced, Swemmel saw further than any other man living. Sometimes he could not see past the end of his pointed nose. Telling which was which on any given day, though, was anything but easy, and King Swemmel remained as convinced about the virtues of his bad ideas as he was about his good ones.

Rathar shook his head as a horse bedeviled by flies might flick its tail. He’d come out here to get away from Swemmel, and the king had come with him in his mind. Where was the relief in that? When the dowsers came tumbling out of their hut to salute him, he was glad to nod to them. As long as he talked with them, he could get away from the mental presence of his sovereign.

“Aye, lord Marshal,” said one of the off-duty dowsers, a lieutenant named Morold, “we’ve had pretty good luck feeling out the redheads so far.” He hefted his forked rod. “A dragon’s wings will disturb the air, you know, and that’s what we sense. But the Algarvians are getting better at masking what they’re up to, curse ‘em.”

“I’ve read somewhat of this in the reports coming back to Cottbus,” Rathar replied. “But, as you say, a dragon must flap its wings now and again. How do the Algarvians propose to prevent that?”

Morold’s strong-nosed peasant face crinkled into a grin of reluctant admiration. “The sneaky buggers don’t even try, sir, may the powers below swallow ‘em down. What they do instead is, they have some of their dragons carry baskets full of folded-up strips of paper. When they get close enough that we’re right on the edge of spotting ‘em”--he held up the dowsing rod again--”they spill the baskets out into the air, and these thousands of strips of paper all start fluttering down. The rods pick up those flutters, too, so trying to tell what’s dragons and what isn’t is like trying to see a white horse in a blizzard. Do you follow what I’m saying?”

“Aye,” Rathar said, “and I thank you. You’ve made it clearer than the reports ever did. You still can find the dragons, then?”

“We know something’s up, sir,” Morold told him, “but not exactly what or exactly where, the way we would have before.”

“You must do better. Unkerlant must do better,” Rathar said. “If you’d been into Cottbus lately and seen the burnt-out blocks, you would know Unkerlant must do better.” He did not want to blame the dowsers, who were trying as hard as they could--and whose work had led to a good many Algarvian dragons knocked out of the sky. Something else occurred to him: “Are our dragons using these strips of paper, too, to confuse the Algarvian dowsers?”

“Lord Marshal, you’d have to ask the dragonfliers, for I’m sure I can’t say,” Morold replied.

“I’ll do that,” Rathar said. Maybe I’ll do that. If I remember, I’ll do that. He scrawled a note. He’d scrawled a lot of notes on the little pad of paper he carried in his belt pouch. Eventually, he hoped to do something about each and every one of them. The way things had been going lately, he wrote new notes faster than he could deal with old ones.

The dowsers’ spirits seemed high, which cheered the marshal of Unkerlant. As long as the soldiers thought the war could be won, it could. That was not to say it would be won, not with the Algarvians still advancing in the north, the south, and in the center--in the direction of Cottbus. But if the Unkerlanter army despaired of throwing back the redheads, the fight was lost without hope of recovery.

Morold said, “We need more crystals, lord, and more heavy sticks to blaze down the enemy’s dragons. The Algarvians talk back and forth among themselves more than we do, and it shows in all the fighting.”

“I know that.” Rathar did not take out the little pad again. He’d scribbled that note before. “The mages are doing everything they can. We need too many things at the same time, and have not enough mages to make all of them at once.”

Morold and the other dowsers looked unhappy to hear that. Rathar was none too happy to say it, either. But he did not want to lie to them, either. News sheets put out plenty of pleasing lies, and put the best face they could on the truth. That was fine for townsmen. Soldiers, Rathar thought, deserved the truth unvarnished.

He commandeered a fresh horse from among those tied near the dowser’s hut and rode back toward Cottbus. A single bodyguard rode with him. He would have done without even the one retainer, but the idea scandalized every other general--and Rathar’s adjutant. At least he’d made sure he had a solid veteran at his side, not a relative he was holding away from the fighting or some pretty boy.

Heading to Cottbus, he passed a troop of behemoths trotting east, toward the battle lines. They kicked up a great cloud of dust. Because they were still far from the fighting, they did not wear their heavy mail, but carried it in carts they pulled behind them. Whatever color their long, shaggy hair had been before, it was dust-brown now. A couple of the soldiers mounted on them waved to Rathar. Coughing, he waved back. His tunic was scarcely fancier than theirs; they more likely thought him just another soldier than the highest-ranking officer in the Unkerlanter army.

He rode past a dead Algarvian dragon. An old man--too old to go to the front--was stripping the harness from it. Rathar nodded. Anything his kingdom could steal from the redheads was one thing fewer its artisans would have to make.

Few people, and most of them women, were on the streets of Cottbus. As he trotted through a market square, he saw a long queue to buy pears and plums, and an even longer one in front of a stern-faced woman with a basket of eggs. There looked to be plenty of fruit; the eggs were going fast, and the people at the end of that line would have to do without.

When Rathar strode into his office, his adjutant hurried up to him with a worried look on his face. “Lord Marshal, his Majesty urgently requires your presence,” Major Merovec told him.

“Of course the king shall have what he requires,” Rathar replied. “Do you know why he requires me?” Merovec shook his head. Rathar let out a silent sigh. He wouldn’t know whether King Swemmel intended merely to confer with him or to sack him or to take his head till he got to the audience chamber. “I shall go see him at once then.”

Swemmel’s guardsmen in the antechamber were as meticulous as ever, but did not seem hostile to Rathar. The marshal took that as a good sign. No more guards awaited him in the audience chamber. He took that as a better sign.

“Arise, arise,” King Swemmel said after Rathar completed the ritual prostrations and acclamations before his sovereign. Swemmel sounded impatient and angry, but not angry at the marshal. “Do you know what that swaggering popinjay of a Mezentio has done?” he demanded.

King Mezentio had done any number of things to Unkerlant’s detriment. Evidently, he’d just done one more. Rathar answered with simple truth: “No, your Majesty.”

“Curse him, he has raised up a false King of Grelz down in Herborn,” Swemmel snarled.

Ice ran through Rathar. That was one of the nastier things Mezentio might have done. A good many people in the Duchy of Grelz still resented the Union of Crowns that had bound them to Unkerlant even though it was almost three hundred years old. If Algarve restored the old Kingdom of Grelz under a pliant local noble, the Grelzers might well acquiesce in Algarvian control. “Which of the counts or dukes did the redheads pick as their pretender?” Rathar asked.

“Duke Raniero, who has the dishonor to be Mezentio’s first cousin,” King Swemmel answered.

Rathar stared. “King Mezentio named an Algarvian noble to be King of Grelz?”

“Aye, he did,” Swemmel said. “None of the local lickspittles seemed to suit him.”

“Powers above be praised,” Rathar said softly. “He could have struck a harder blow against us with a Grelzer than with a man the folk down there will see as ... a foreign usurper.” He’d almost said another foreign usurper. Swemmel would not have been grateful for that, not even a little.

“You may be right.” Swemmel sounded almost indifferent to what was in Rathar’s eyes a blunder big as the world. A moment later, the king explained why: “But the insult is no less here. If anything, the insult is greater, for Mezentio to presume to set an Algarvian as king on Unkerlanter soil.”

“He did the same thing in Jelgava, when he made his brother Mainardo king there,” Rathar said. “The Algarvians have always been an arrogant lot.”

“Aye,” King Swemmel agreed. “If the Jelgavans are spineless enough to take Mezentio’s worthless brother as their sovereign, they deserve him. Unkerlanters will never accept an Algarvian for a king.” He looked sly; Rathar knew from long experience that he was never more dangerous--to his foes or sometimes to himself--than when he wore that expression. “We shall make certain that Unkerlanters do not accept an Algarvian for a king.”

“May it be so, your Majesty.” Rathar thought the course of the fighting itself more urgent than any political machinations. He pointed to a large map in the audience chamber. “We had better make sure Mezentio has no chance to proclaim a redheaded King of Unkerlant in Cottbus.”

“Even if he does, we will fight on from the west,” Swemmel said.

Would anyone follow orders from a king who’d fled to a provincial town one jump ahead of the Algarvians? Rathar had no idea. He didn’t want to have to learn by experiment either. He looked toward the map himself. The bites Gyongyos was taking in the far west were annoyances. In the north, Zuwayza hadn’t gone far beyond the borders she’d had before her first clash with Unkerlant. But the Algarvians aimed to tear the heart from the kingdom and keep it for themselves.

“We also have to hold Cottbus because of all the ley lines that converge here,” Rathar said. “If the capital falls, we’ll have a cursed hard time moving caravans from north to south.”

“Aye,” Swemmel said. “Aye.” His nod was impatient, absent-minded; ley-line caravans weren’t the topmost thing in his thoughts, or anywhere close to it. He walked over to the map. “We still have a corridor open to Glogau. The Lagoans have sent us some prime bull behemoths to improve our herds, and they came through.”

“So they did.” Rathar had heard that. It still left him faintly bemused. “The Zuwayzin could have pressed their attack on the port’s defenses harder than they have.”

“They love Mezentio little better than they love us,” Swemmel said, which evidently seemed clear to him but did not to his marshal. The king went on, “Were the black men but a little wiser, they would love Mezentio less than they love us.

“Had we treated them a little better, that might also be true,” Rathar remarked.

“We did not give them a tenth part of what they deserve,” Swemmel said. “Nor have we yet given the Algarvians a tenth, nor even a hundredth, part of what they deserve. But we shall. Aye, we shall.” Whatever else one said of Swemmel, he had no yielding in him. Maybe Unkerlant, or what remained of Unkerlant, would go right on obeying him even if the Algarvians ran him out of Cottbus. Marshal Rathar still hoped with all his heart he wouldn’t have to find out.

Dressed in holiday finery--ordinary trousers worn under embroidered tunics--Skarnu, Merkela, and Raunu came into the village of Pavilosta to witness the installation of Simanu, the late Enkuru’s son, as count over the local countryside. Neither Skarnu nor Raunu had a tunic that fit as well as it might; both theirs had formerly belonged to Gedominu. Merkela had altered them, but they remained tight.

“Waste of our time to come here,” Raunu grumbled, as a true farmer might have. “Too much work to do to care who’s over us. Whoever it is, he’ll take too cursed much of what we make.”

“Aye, that’s so,” Merkela agreed. “And Simanu’s been squeezing as hard as Enkuru ever did. He sucks up to the Algarvians as hard as his father did, too. That’s the only reason they finally decided to let him take over as count instead of putting in one of their own men.”

She didn’t bother keeping her voice down. People who heard her shied away. One of them hissed, “Powers above, you fool of a woman, put a shoe in it before Simanu’s men or the redheads drag you up into the count’s keep. Going in is easy. Coming out’s a different story--aye, it is.”

She lifted her chin. “It wouldn’t be, if the men around here deserved the name.”

Skarnu set a hand on her arm. “Easy, darling,” he murmured. “The idea isn’t to show how much we hate the redheads and the traitors who do their bidding. The idea is to hurt them without letting them know who did it.”

Merkela looked at him as if he were one of the enemy, too. “The idea is also to make more people want to hurt them,” she said in a voice like ice.

“But you’re not doing that. You’re just frightening folk and putting yourself in danger,” Skarnu said. Merkela’s glare grew harder and colder still. The next thing she said would be something they’d all regret for a long time. Seeing that coming, Skarnu quickly spoke first: “Simanu and the Algarvians do more in a day to make people want to hurt them than we could do in a year.”

He watched Merkela weigh the words. To his great relief, she nodded. To his even greater relief, she kept quiet or talked of unimportant things as they made their way into Pavilosta’s central square. Raunu muttered, “The Algarvians don’t want anybody starting trouble today, do they?”

“Not even a drop,” Skarnu muttered back. Redheads with sticks prowled the rooftops looking down into the square. More Algarvians guarded the double chair in which Simanu would be installed. “They aren’t stupid. They wouldn’t be so cursed dangerous if they were stupid.”

A small band--bagpipe, tuba, trumpet, and thumping kettledrum--began to play: one sprightly Valmieran tune after another. Skarnu watched some of the Algarvian troopers make sour faces at the music. Their own tastes ran more toward plinkings and tinklings that were, to Valmieran ears, effete. And then he watched one of their officers growl something at them in their own language. The sour faces disappeared. The smiles that replaced them often looked like bad acting, but were unquestionably smiles. The redheads didn’t offend except on purpose. No, they weren’t stupid, not even slightly.

After a little while, the band struck up a particularly bouncy tune, the drummer pounding away with might and main. “That is the count’s air,” Merkela murmured to Skarnu and Raunu. Had they grown up around Pavilosta, as she had, they would have heard it on ceremonial occasions all their lives. As things were, it was new to both of them. Skarnu assumed an expression that suggested it wasn’t.

“Here he comes,” someone behind him said. People’s heads turned toward the left: They knew from which direction Simanu would come. Skarnu didn’t, but again couldn’t have been more than half a heartbeat behind everyone else--not far enough (he hoped) for even the most alert Algarvian to notice.

Dressed in a tunic stiff with gold thread and trousers of silk with fur at the cuffs, the late Count Enkuru’s son advanced toward the double chair in which he would formally succeed his father. Simanu was somewhere in his mid-twenties, with a face handsome and nasty at the same time: the face of a man who’d never had anyone tell him no in his whole life.

“I’ve served under officers who looked like that,” Raunu muttered. “Everybody loved ‘em--oh, aye.” He rolled his eyes to make sure no one took him seriously.

Simanu bestowed his sneer impartially on the Valmierans over whom he was being set and the Algarvians who were allowing him to be set over those townsmen and villagers. Just for a moment, the cast of his features reminded Skarnu of his sister Krasta’s. He shook his head. That wasn’t fair. . . was it? Had Krasta ever really worn such a snide smile? He hoped not.

After Simanu came more Algarvian bodyguards and a peasant obviously cleaned up for the occasion. The fellow led two cows, one fine and plump, the other a sad, scrawny, shambling beast. Raunu muttered again: “Have to find out who that bugger is and make sure something bad happens to him.”

“Aye, we will,” Skarnu agreed. “He’s as much in bed with the redheads as Simanu is.” He turned to Merkela. “Why the beasts?” He held his voice down--one more thing a proper peasant from around Pavilosta would have known from childhood.

“Only watch, and you’ll see,” Merkela answered. She might not have seen this ceremony before--Enkuru had been the local lord for a long time--but it was second nature to her. It probably figured in tales the peasants in this part of the kingdom told their children. For all Skarnu could tell, diligent folklorists back in Priekule had composed learned dissertations about it.

Simanu strode up to the double chair, one side of which faced east, the other west. “People of Pavilosta, people of my county,” he called out in a voice as poisonously sweet as his face, “I now come into my inheritance.” He sat down facing west, toward Algarve. That was, no doubt, intended to symbolize his defense of the region against the kilted barbarians who had so often troubled the Kaunian Empire and the later Kaunian kingdoms. His facing west now, with Algarvians surrounding and upholding him, felt cruelly ironic.

The scrubbed peasant, still holding the lead ropes for the two cows, took his seat back-to-back with Simanu. Then he rose again, and led the beasts around the double chair to the new count. He held out both ropes, one in each hand.

“Now you’ll see how it goes,” Merkela murmured to Skarnu. “Simanu has to choose the skinny cow, and he has to let the peasant give him a box on the ear--just a little one, mind--to show he governs here not for his own sake but for the sake of his people.”

But when Count Simanu got to his feet to face the peasant, his smile had grown nastier still. “People of Pavilosta, people of my county, the world has changed,” he said. “Vile brigands slew my father, and still have not got their just deserts because their wicked fellows conceal them and keep them safe from harm. Very well, then: if you will not give, you will not get.”

Speaking thus, he seized the fat cow’s rope in his left hand and with his right dealt the peasant a buffet to the side of the head that sent the fellow sprawling with a cry of pain and surprise. Simanu threw back his own head and laughed loud and long.

For a moment, his laughter was almost was almost the only sound in Pavilosta’s central square. The peasants and townsfolk simply stared, having trouble believing anyone would pervert their ancient ceremony. Maybe the Algarvians had trouble believing it too. Their officers gaped like the Valmieran peasants around them--gaped and then started to curse. In their shoes, Skarnu would also have cursed. Their chosen puppet had just chosen to outrage the people they wanted him to control.

Someone threw an apple at Simanu. It missed, and smashed against the double chair. The fat cow took a couple of steps forward and crunched it up. Then someone else threw a cobblestone. That one didn’t miss: it caught Simanu in the ribs. He let out a yell louder than the cleaned-up peasant had.

More stones and fruits and vegetables whizzed past Simanu. Some of them didn’t whiz past, but thumped against him. He yelled again. So did the Algarvian officer in charge of the Valmieran noble’s kilted bodyguards: “You cursed idiot! Why did you not do the ceremony as it should be done?”

“They did not deserve it,” Simanu said, wiping blood from his face. “By the powers above, they still do not deserve it, not with how they treat me.”

“Fool!” the Algarvian started. “Make them happy in the small things and you can rule them in the large ones. This way--” He raised his voice to a shout that filled the square: “You Valmierans! Stop this riotous nonsense at once and peacefully go back to your ho--oof!” That last came when a cleverly aimed stone hit him in the belly and he folded up like a concertina.

“Nicely thrown,” Skarnu remarked.

“I thank you, sir,” Raunu answered. “Nice to know the arm still works.”

“Aye.” Skarnu looked around. He stood near the front of the crowd, but not so near that any Algarvian could easily see who he was. Drawing in a deep breath, he let it out in a shout of his own: “Down with the vicious count and the Algarvian tyrants!”

No redhead could have identified him in the moments following that cry, for Merkela grabbed him, pulled his face down to hers, and gave him the most savage kiss he’d ever had, a kiss that left the taste of blood in his mouth. Because of that kiss, he hardly noticed the Valmierans surging past him toward the scapegrace Count Simanu and his Algarvian protectors.

“Back!” the Algarvian officer shouted in Valmieran. “Back, or you will be sorry for it!” He had mettle; no man without it would have found his voice so fast after making the acquaintance of Raunu’s stone. But the townsfolk and peasants, roused by tradition flouted as perhaps by nothing else, did not go back. More stones flew--Skarnu flung one himself. It missed, which made him curse.

“Down with Simanu!” the Valmierans roared, a cry that echoed through the square. “Down with Simanu! Down with--”

“Blaze!” the Algarvian officer shouted, not about to let the outraged Valmierans overrun his men. “Blaze them down!”

Blaze them down the redheads did. A few men got in among the kilted soldiers, but they did not last long. Both the Algarvians around Simanu and those on the rooftops turned their sticks on the furious Valmierans. As men--and women--began to fall, the rest broke and fled.

Skarnu had to drag Merkela away by main force. “Let me go!” she kept shouting. “I want my crack at them!”

But he would not let her go. “Come on,” he said. “I don’t want you dead, curse it.” As if to underscore his words, a man beside them fell with a groan. Skarnu went on, “The Algarvians and Simanu have just done us a favor. Before, people would put up with them. No more--now they’ve found out what they get when they do. We’ll have five people willing to fight them for every one who would before. Do you see?”

Merkela must have, for she let him lead her out of Pavilosta. But she never admitted he was right, not out loud.