Darkness Descending

Six

Ealstan ate his porridge and gulped down his morning cup of wine. He looked across the table at Sidroc as he might have looked at an egg that had fallen from below a dragon’s belly but failed to burst. Sidroc ate stolidly, eyes down on his bowl. At last, Ealstan had to speak: “Come on. You know they’ll thrash us if we’re late.”

Sidroc didn’t say anything to that, not at first, Ealstan cursed under his breath. He stirred in his seat, ready to head for his first class without his cousin. Maybe Sidroc doesn’t care if they break a switch on his back. I do. But, just as he was gathering himself to go, Sidroc said, “I’m ready,” and got up himself.

They walked along in silence for a while. Every time Ealstan spied the broadsheet proclaiming Plegmund’s Brigade, he pretended he hadn’t. Sidroc must have seen the broadsheets, too, but he didn’t say anything about them. He strode toward the school with a set expression on his face that Ealstan didn’t like.

They had to pause to let a couple of companies of Algarvian soldiers march past along a cross street. “Remember how, the day the Duke of Bari died, we had to wait for our own cavalrymen?” Ealstan asked. “That spilled the chamber pot into the soup, all right.”

“We did, didn’t we?” Sidroc said. By the wondering look in his eye, he’d forgotten till Ealstan reminded him. Then he scowled again. “And a whole lot of good our cavalrymen did us, too. Fighting beside them”--he pointed to the Algarvians--”that’d be something. They’re winners.”

“Remember what my father said,” Ealstan answered. “If they were doing as well as all that, they wouldn’t need the likes of us to help them.”

Sidroc had his sneer back. “If your father were half as smart as he thinks he is, he’d be twice as smart as he really is. He knows numbers, so he thinks he knows everything. He doesn’t, you hear me?”

“I hear a lot of wind.” Ealstan wanted to punch his cousin. If he did, though, what would Sidroc do? Getting into a brawl was one thing when all they could do was beat on each other. It was something else again when Sidroc could betray Leofsig to the Algarvians--and Ealstan’s father with him. Ealstan’s eyes slid toward Sidroc again. If I ever get the chance, I’ll knock out one of your teeth for every time I’ve had to hold back. Then you can spend the rest of your days sipping supper through a straw.

They passed a couple of mushrooms pushing up through a gap between a couple of the slates of the sidewalk. As any Forthwegian--or, for that matter, any Kaunian who lived in Forthweg--would have done, Ealstan slowed to eye them. “They’re just scrawny little worthless toadstools,” Sidroc said. “Like you.”

“If you are one, you know one,” Ealstan retorted. Boys had probably been saying that to one another since the days of the Kaunian Empire. One glance at the mushrooms, though, told him that, but for the insult, Sidroc was right. He said, “Pretty soon, the ones worth having will start sprouting.”

“That’s so, and we’ll all go off to the fields and the woods with baskets.” Sidroc leered. “And maybe you’ll come home with that Kaunian wench’s basket again--or maybe you’ll stick your mushroom in her basket.” He guffawed.

One more tooth you’ll lose some day, Sidroc, Ealstan thought. Aloud, he said, “She’s not like that, so why don’t you drag your mind out of the latrine?” He did hope he would see Vanai again. And if she turned out to be a little bit--only the tiniest bit, he assured himself--like that, he didn’t think he’d mind.

By then, they were very close to the school. Ealstan braced himself for another day of meaningless lessons. Putting up with his masters, though, would be a pleasure next to putting up with Sidroc.

He endured the boredom. When called on to recite, he recited. He’d dutifully memorized all four assigned verses of the rather treacly poem from two hundred years before, and delivered the first one without a bobble. Sidroc got called on for the third verse, made a hash of it, and got his back striped. “Curse it,” he said as they went on to their next class, “I knew the first verse. Why didn’t I get chosen in your place?”

“Just luck,” Ealstan answered. He’d known the third verse as well as the first, so he wouldn’t have minded getting called in Sidroc’s place. With his cousin feeling abused and put upon, he decided not to mention that.

Sidroc got through the rest of the day without any more beatings, which left him in a somewhat better mood as Ealstan and he headed home. Ealstan, on the other hand, felt gloomier than he had in a while. It must have shown on his face like a fire in the night, for Sidroc--hardly the most perceptive fellow ever born--asked him, “Somebody go and steal your last bite of bread?”

“No,” Ealstan said, though the clichéd question for What’s wrong? had taken on a new and literal meaning in these hungry times in Gromheort. His wave encompassed the whole battered city. “It’s just that--I don’t know--everything looks so shabby and broken and gray. I’ve been thinking about how things were that day when we saw the Forthwegian cavalry and how they are now, and I keep wondering how anybody stands it.”

“What else can we do?” Sidroc said. They walked on a little farther. Sidroc kicked a small stone out of the way. As he watched it spin off, he went on, “Maybe that’s one of the reasons Plegmund’s Brigade doesn’t look so bad to me. It would get me away from--this.” His wave was as all-embracing as Ealstan’s had been.

Ealstan found himself too surprised to answer. He hadn’t imagined Sidroc could look so keenly at himself. He also hadn’t imagined his cousin might have such a sensible-seeming reason for thinking about fighting on King Mezentio’s side. As far as Ealstan was concerned, Plegmund’s Brigade remained the wrong answer, but now, at least, he understood the question Sidroc was asking. How can I escape? had crossed his own mind, too, many times.

An Algarvian constable threw up his hands to stop pedestrians and carts and riders. “Halting!” he shouted in halting Forthwegian.

“We’ve got stuck going to and from today,” Sidroc grumbled, sounding more like his usual self. Ealstan nodded. He hadn’t been happy about waiting for his own kingdom’s soldiers; he was far less happy about having to wait for the conqueror’s troopers.

But this procession held only a few Algarvians: guards, sticks at the ready. Most of the men who flowed past the intersection where Ealstan and Sidroc stood were Unkerlanter captives. As far as looks went, there was little to distinguish them from Forthwegians: they were most of them dark and stocky and hook-nosed. And their beards were growing out, which made them look even more like Ealstan’s people.

Sidroc shook his fist at them. “Now you know what it’s like to have your kingdom overrun, you thieves!” he shouted. Some of the Unkerlanters looked at him as if they understood. They might have; the northeastern dialects of their language weren’t far from Forthwegian.

Most of them, though, kept shambling on. Their stubbly cheeks were hollow, their eyes blank. They’d endured--how much? However much it was, they would have to endure more. “What do you suppose the redheads will do with them--to them?” Ealstan asked.

“Who cares, the stinking backstabbers?” his cousin answered. “As far as I’m concerned, the Algarvians can cut their throats to make sticks or work whatever other magic with their life energy they care to.” He shook his fist at the Unkerlanter captives.

“They won’t do that,” Ealstan said. “If they do, the Unkerlanters will start cutting the throats of their Algarvian captives, and then where will we be? Back in the red days after the Kaunian Empire fell, that’s where.”

“If you ask me, the Unkerlanters deserve it.” Sidroc drew his thumb across his own throat. Ealstan started to say something. Before he could, Sidroc went on, “If you ask me, the redheads deserve it, too. Powers below eat both sides.”

Ealstan pointed frantically toward the Algarvian constable. The redhead stood so close to them, he couldn’t have helped hearing. But he didn’t speak enough Forthwegian to understand what they were saying. The last few Unkerlanter captives tramped past, and the last couple of Algarvian guards. The constable gave a sweeping wave, as if he were a noble graciously granting peasants a boon. Along with the rest of the Forthwegians who’d been waiting for the procession to pass, Ealstan and Sidroc crossed the street.

“Why do you keep going on about Plegmund’s Brigade if that’s the way you feel about the redheads?” Ealstan asked his cousin.

Sidroc said, “I wouldn’t be joining for the Algarvians. I’d be joining for me.”

“I can’t see the difference,” Ealstan said. “I bet you King Mezentio wouldn’t be able to see the difference, either.”

“That’s because you’re a blockhead,” Sidroc said. “If you want to tell me Mezentio’s a blockhead, too, I won’t argue with you.”

“I know what I’ll tell you,” Ealstan said. “I’ll tell you I’m not the biggest blockhead here, that’s what.”

Sidroc mimed throwing a punch. Ealstan mimed ducking. They both laughed. They were still insulting each other, but not the way they had been lately. This was just schoolboys’ foolish talk, not the sort of business that could poison things between them for years to come. A little stretch of childishness felt good.

They hadn’t stopped tossing insults around, or laughing about it, by the time they knocked on the door of Ealstan’s house. Conberge unbarred it and stood in the entry hall looking from one of them to the other. “I think both of you stopped in a tavern on the way here,” she said, and Ealstan couldn’t tell whether she was joking or not.

Sidroc stepped up and breathed in her face. “No wine,” he declared. “No ale, either.”

Conberge mimed reeling away. “No, but when was the last time you cleaned your teeth?” she said. Considering how little love she bore for Sidroc, her voice should have had an edge. Had it borne one, it would have wrecked the moment like a bursting egg. Somehow, it didn’t. Sidroc breathed in Ealstan’s face. Not about to let his sister outdo him, Ealstan mimed falling over dead. He and Sidroc were laughing so hard, they had to hold each other up. Conberge could no more help laughing, too, than she could help breathing.

A door opened across the street. A neighbor stared at the three of them, wondering what could be so funny in grim, occupied Gromheort. Ealstan wondered, too, but not enough to stop laughing. Maybe part of him sensed that this little glowing stretch couldn’t last long no matter what.

The neighbor closed the door, shaking her head. That was funny, too. But then Conberge, who hadn’t been quite so immersed in giggles as Ealstan and Sidroc, said, “The two of you are later than you should be if you came straight home.”

“We did,” Ealstan said. “Really. We had to wait for a bunch of Unkerlanter captives to shuffle through the middle of town. I suppose they’re on the way to a camp.” As soon as he’d spoken, he knew he’d punctured the magic. Captives and camps didn’t go with heedless laughter.

From out of the south, a cloud rolled across the sun, plunging the street into gloom. Ealstan wondered how he could have let himself be so silly, even if only for a little while. By Sidroc’s expression, the same thought was in his mind. Ealstan sighed. “Come on, let’s go in,” he said. “It’s getting chilly out here.”

Bembo did not like marching along a road roughly paved with cobblestones and other bits of rubble, especially not when the cobbles and other bits of rubble were slick and wet with last night’s rain. “If I slip and fall, I’m liable to break my ankle,” the Algarvian constable complained.

“Maybe you’ll break your neck instead,” Oraste said helpfully. “That would make you shut up, anyhow.”

“Both of you can shut up,” Sergeant Pesaro growled. “We have a job to do, and we’re going to do it, that’s all. End of story.” He tramped along, full of determination, his big belly bouncing ahead of him at every stride, and set a good pace for the squad of constables he led.

In a low voice, Bembo told Oraste, “I’ve got silver that says he’ll be done in long before we get to this Oyngestun place.”

“I know you’re a fool,” the other constable answered, “but I didn’t know you thought I was one, too. I’m not stupid enough to throw my money away on a bet like that.”

They tramped past fields and almond and olive groves and little stands of woods. Here and there, Bembo saw Forthwegians and Kaunians, sometimes in small groups but more often alone, examining the ground and occasionally digging. “What are they doing?” he asked.

“Gathering mushrooms.” Pesaro rolled his eyes. “They eat them.”

“That’s disgusting.” Bembo stuck out his tongue and made a horrible face. None of the other constables argued with him. After a moment, he added, “It’s liable to be dangerous, too--to us, I mean. They could be sneaking around doing anything at all while they’re pretending to go after mushrooms.”

Pesaro nodded, then shrugged. “I know, but what can you do? The soldiers say these whoresons’d revolt if we tried to keep ‘em inside their towns this time of year. We’re stuck with a little trouble--I hope it’s a little trouble--but we stay out of big trouble. And we can’t afford big trouble here right now. We’ve got too much farther west.”

“Ah.” Trades like that made sense to Bembo. They were part of a constable’s life. “Maybe we ought to make ‘em pay to go out and hunt the cursed things, the way you get a free one from a floozy now and then so you won’t haul her in.”

Some sergeant would have pitched a fit to hear something like that. Pesaro only nodded again. “Not a half bad idea. Maybe we ought to pass it on up the line. Anything we can squeeze out of this miserable place puts us that much further ahead of the game.” He walked on for another few paces, then took off his hat and wiped at his sweaty forehead with his sleeve. “Long, miserable march.” Bembo gave Oraste an I-told-you-so look. Oraste ignored him. Pesaro went on, “This big, heavy stick doesn’t make things any easier, either.”

He was right about that. Bembo had long since got sick and tired of the army-style stick he’d been issued for this assignment. Carrying it made his hand tired and his shoulder ache. Carrying it also worried him. If his superiors didn’t think a short, stubby constabulary stick would be enough to keep him safe in Oyngestun, how much trouble was he liable to find there?

Pesaro, who had been slumping like suet on a hot summer day as the constables neared the village, rallied just before they got into it. “Straighten up, there,” he barked at his men. “We’re not going to let these yokels catch us looking like something the cat dragged in. Show some spunk, or you’ll be sorry.”

Bembo was already sorry, from the feet up. Nevertheless, he and his comrades did their best to enter Oyngestun with proper Algarvian swagger, shoulders back, heads up, faces arrogant. If they weren’t the masters of all they surveyed, they acted as if they were. As with any magic, appearance could easily be made into reality.

Oyngestun’s Forthwegians did their best to pretend the newly arrived constables did not exist. Most of the village’s Kaunians stayed behind closed doors. That would not do. Pesaro shouted for whatever Algarvian constables were already in Oyngestun. All three of them tumbled out. Pesaro handed the most senior one a scroll with his orders inscribed on it. After the fellow had read it and nodded, Pesaro said, “Turn out the Kaunians--all of ‘em--in the village square. We’ll help.”

“Aye,” the constable quartered in Oyngestun said. As he handed Pesaro’s orders back to him, he added, “I see what you’re doing, but I don’t see why.”

“You want to know the truth, I don’t see why, either,” Pesaro answered. “But they pay me on account of what I do, not on account of why I do it. Come on, let’s get moving. The sooner we’re done, the sooner we can get out of this place and leave it to you and the cobwebs.”

“Heh,” the senior-most constable in Oyngestun said. He couldn’t very well quarrel with Pesaro, who outranked him and was following orders to boot. Instead, he yelled at his own men while Pesaro instructed the squad who’d come with him from Gromheort.

The instructions were simple. They went through Oyngestun, especially the Kaunian section on the west side of the village, shouting, “Kaunians, come forth!” in classical Kaunian, in Forthwegian, and in Algarvian, depending on what they knew. “Come forth to the village square!”

And some Kaunians did come forth. Some doors, though, remained closed. Bembo and Oraste had picked up a stout length of timber and were about to break down one of those doors when a local constable called, “Don’t bother. I know those buggers went out first thing this morning with a basket. They’re even madder for nasty mushrooms than most folk round these parts.”

“Whoever wrote our orders had his head up his backside,” Bembo said. “How are we supposed to round up the stinking Kaunians if they’re all running through the woods with baskets?”

“Powers below eat me if I can tell you,” Oraste said. “Maybe they’ll cook up some bad mushrooms and keel over dead, the way King What’s-his-name in the story did when he ate bad fish.”

“Serve ‘em right if they did, sure enough,” Bembo agreed. He walked to the next house, pounded on the door, and shouted, “Kaunians, come forth!” in what he thought was Kaunian. He was about to pound again when the door opened. His eyebrows shot upwards. Behind him, Oraste let out a couple of short, emphatic coughs. “Hello, sweetheart!” Bembo said. The girl standing in the doorway was about eighteen and very pretty.

She looked at him and Oraste as if they’d crawled off a dungheap. An older man appeared behind her--a much older man, his hair thinning and gone from gold to silver. Oraste laughed coarsely. “Why, the dog!” he said. He looked the girl up and down. “Aye, a young wife with an old husband can have a baby, as long as there’s a handsome young fellow next door.” He laughed again, and Bembo with him this time.

Then the old Kaunian startled them both by speaking slow but very precise Algarvian: “My granddaughter does not understand when you insult us, but I do. I do not know if this matters to you, of course. Now, what do you want with us?”

Bembo and Oraste looked at each other. Bembo tried not to offend except on purpose. Roughly, he said, “Get along to the village square, the both of you. Just do as you’re told, and everything will be fine.” The old man spoke in Kaunian to his granddaughter. She said something in the same language; Bembo couldn’t make out what. Then they headed in the direction of the square.

On to the next house. “Kaunians, come forth!” This time, Oraste did the shouting.

After they had pounded on doors till they were good and sick of it, the two constables went back to the village square themselves. A couple of hundred Kaunians milled about there, talking in their own old, old language and in Forthwegian, no doubt trying to figure out why they’d been summoned. All at once, Bembo was glad to be carrying the full-sized, highly visible military stick about which he’d groused most of the way from Gromheort. The blonds he and his comrades had assembled badly outnumbered them. They needed to see they’d pay if they started anything.

Sergeant Pesaro was looking around the square, too. “Is that all of them?” he asked.

“All of them that weren’t out chasing mushrooms,” one of the constables said.

“Or hiding under the bed,” another added. He pointed to a Kaunian couple. The woman was tying a rag around the man’s bloodied head. “Those whoresons there tried that, but I caught ‘em at it. They won’t get gay again, I don’t suppose.”

“All right.” Pesaro turned to another constable. “Translate for me, Evodio.”

“Aye, Sergeant.” Unlike his fellows, Evodio hadn’t forgotten almost all the classical Kaunian he’d had rammed down his throat in school.

Pesaro took a deep breath, then spoke in a parade-ground bellow: “Kaunians of Oyngestun, the Kingdom of Algarve requires the services of forty of your number in the west, to aid, with your labor, our victorious campaign against vile Unkerlant. Laborers will be paid, and will be well fed and housed: so declares King Mezentio. Men and women may serve Algarve here; children accompanying them will be well cared for.”

He waited for Evodio to finish translating. The Kaunians talked among themselves in low voices. A man came forward. After a moment, a couple followed him, a man and woman holding hands. Two or three more unaccompanied men came out.

Pesaro’s frown was fearsome. “We require forty from this village. If we do not have forty volunteers, we will choose to make up the number.” As if on-cue, a ley-line caravan pulled into Oyngestun from the east. Pesaro pointed to it. “There is the caravan. See?--there are already Kaunians in some of the cars.”

“A lot of Kaunians in some of those cars,” Bembo murmured to Oraste. “They’re packed as tight as sardines in olive oil.”

“Sardines are cheaper than olive oil,” Oraste answered. “The cursed blonds are cheaper than space in caravan cars, too.” He spat on the cobblestones.

Three or four more Kaunians stepped out of the crowd. “This won’t do,” Pesaro said, shaking his head and setting hands on hips in theatrical dismay. “No, this won’t do at all.” In an aside to his own men, he added, “Hard to get this across when I can’t do it in Algarvian.”

Someone in the crowd of Kaunians asked a question. Evodio translated: “She wants to know if they can bring anything with them when they go west.”

Pesaro shook his head. “Just the clothes on their backs. They won’t need anything else. We’ll take care of them once they’re there.”

Another question, this one from a man: “How long will we be there?”

“Till the war is won, of course,” Pesaro said. Somebody shouted in his direction from the ley-line caravan. He scowled. “We haven’t got all day. Any more volunteers?” Another pair of Kaunians stepped forward. Pesaro sighed. “This isn’t good enough. We’ve got to have the full number.” He pointed to a man. “You!” He jerked his thumb. A woman. “You!” Another man. “You!” He pointed to the pair Bembo and Oraste had summoned. “You--the old hound and his young doxy. Aye, both of you.”

Bembo said, “She’s his granddaughter, Sergeant.”

“Is she?” Pesaro rubbed his chin. “All right, never mind. You two instead.” He pointed at a pair of middle-aged men. “Probably a couple of quiffs.” Before long, the selection was done. Under the sticks of the Algarvian constables and the guards already aboard, the chosen Kaunians squeezed into the ley-line caravan cars. “Go home!” Pesaro shouted to the rest of the blonds. Evodio translated, for the ones who were dense. The Kaunians left the square a few at a time, some of them sobbing for suddenly lost loves. The caravan glided away.

“There’s a good day’s work done,” Oraste said.

“How much work do you think we’ll get out of them, hauled off the street like that?” Bembo asked. Oraste gave him a pitying look, one Sergeant Pesaro might have envied. A lamp went on in Bembo’s head. “Oh! It’s like that, is it?”

“Got to be,” Oraste said, and he was surely right; nothing else made sense.

Bembo was very quiet on the long tramp back to Gromheort. His conscience, normally a quiet beast, barked and snarled and whined at him. By the time he got back to the barracks, he’d fought it down. Somebody far above him had decided this was the right thing to do; who was he to argue? Tired as he was from marching, he slept well that night.

Autumn in Jelgava, except up in the mountains, was not a time of great swings in the weather, as it was in more southern lands. People went from wearing linen tunics and cotton trousers to cotton tunics and trousers of wool or wool and cotton mixed. Talsu’s father had his business pick up a little as men and women bought replacements for what had worn out during the last cool season.

“I need more cloth, though,” Traku grumbled. “Thanks to the cursed Algarvians, I can’t get as much as I could use. They’re taking half of what we turn out for themselves.”

“Everybody needs more of everything,” Talsu said. “The redheads are stealing everything that isn’t nailed down.”

His father glowered. “This is what happens when a kingdom loses a war.”

“Aye, it is,” Talsu agreed. “But powers above, I wish you’d get over the notion that I lost it all by myself.”

“I don’t think that for a moment, son,” Traku said. “You had help, lots of help, starting with the king and going straight on down through your officers.” He did not bother to lower his voice. In the old Jelgava, that would have been insanely dangerous. But the Algarvians didn’t mind if the common people reviled King Donalitu--on the contrary. They didn’t even seem to mind too much if the common people reviled them. Talsu wouldn’t have wanted to try such tolerance too far, though.

He was very pleased for a moment, thinking his father didn’t blame him for the kingdom’s defeat after all. Then he listened again in his mind to what Traku had said, and realized he hadn’t said anything of the sort. All he’d said was that Traku hadn’t been the only one who lost it.

Before Talsu could start the argument up again, Dustbunny trotted into the tailor’s shop, tail held high and proud. The small gray cat, who had thus far managed not to become roof rabbit at the butcher’s shop, carried in her mouth a large brown rat. She dropped it at Talsu’s feet, then looked up at him with glowing green eyes, waiting for the praise she knew she deserved.

Talsu bent down and scratched her ears and told her what a brave puss she was. She purred, believing every word of it. Then she pushed the dead rat with her nose so it half covered one of his shoes. Traku laughed. “I think she expects it to go into the stew pot tonight.”

“Maybe she does.” Mischief kindled in Talsu’s eyes. He called up the stairs to the living quarters over the shop: “Hey, Ausra, come down here a minute.”

“What is it?” his sister called back.

“Present for you,” Talsu answered. He winked at his father, and held a finger to his lips to keep Traku from giving him the lie. Traku rolled his eyes but kept quiet.

“A present? For me?” Ausra hurried down the stairs. “What is it? Who gave it to me? Where did he go?”

“So you think you have boys leaving you presents all the time, do you?” Talsu said, relishing his joke more than ever. “Well, I have to tell you, you’re not quite right. A little lady delivered this one, and it’s all yours.” He brought his foot forward, shying the rat in Ausra’s direction.

She disappointed him. Instead of screaming or running off, she picked up the rat by the tail, called Dustbunny, and told her what a fine kitty she was. Then she tossed the deceased rodent back to Talsu. “Here. If you liked it well enough to get it for me, you can be the one who gets rid of it, too.”

Now Traku laughed loud and long. Talsu gave his father a dirty look, but could hardly deny Ausra had outdone him this time. He picked up the rat rather more gingerly than she had, carried it outside, and dropped it in the gutter. When he came back into the tailor’s shop, he was wiping his hands on his trouser legs.

Dustbunny spoke up in feline reproach. Maybe she really had thought the rat would make the main course at supper that night. “Go catch me another one,” Talsu told her. “We’ll serve it up with onions and peas, or maybe with olives. I like olives a lot.” The cat cocked its head to one side, as if contemplating the possible recipes. Then she meowed in approval and departed with purposeful stride.

“If you want rat with peas and onions, you can cook it yourself,” Ausra told Talsu. She waved a finger at him. “And if you try doing this to Mother, she’ll make you cook it and she’ll make you eat it, too.”

Since Talsu thought his sister was right, he didn’t answer. He hoped Dustbunny wouldn’t come back with another rat too soon. If she did, Ausra was liable to have some unfortunate ideas about what to do with it.

Before he could take that worrisome thought any further, someone came through the door. He started to put on the automatic smile of greeting he gave any customer. So did Traku. So did Ausra. The shop did not have so many customers as to let them omit any courtesy, no matter how small.

Even so, the smile froze half formed on Talsu’s face. His father and sister also looked as much stunned as welcoming. The man standing before them wore tunic and kilt, not tunic and trousers. His coppery hair streamed out from under his hat. His mustache was waxed out to needle-sharp spikes; a little vertical strip of hair--not really a beard--ran up the center of his chin. He was, in short, an Algarvian.

“Hello. A good day to you all,” he said in accented but understandable Jelgavan. He swept off that hat, bowed to Traku, bowed to Talsu, and bowed more deeply to Ausra.

Slower than he should have, Traku answered, “Good day.” Talsu was content--more than content: relieved--to let his father do the talking.

“This is the shop of a tailor, is it not so?” the redhead said. He was, Talsu saw by his rank badges, a captain. That no doubt meant he was a noble. Coming out and telling him to take his business elsewhere was bound to cause trouble.

Traku must have reached the same unhappy conclusion. “Aye, it is,” he admitted.

“Excellent!” The Algarvian sounded as delighted as if Talsu’s father had told him he was about to win his weight in gold. His eyes, green as Dustbunny’s, sparkled with glee. Algarvians, Talsu thought, were funny people. The fellow went on, “For I require the services of a tailor. I would not come here for a cabinetmaker, is it not so?” He thought he was the funniest fellow around.

“You want me ... to make clothes... for you?” Traku sounded as if he didn’t believe it or, even, more as if he didn’t want to believe it.

But the Algarvian nodded. “You understand!” he cried, and bowed again. “You are, you must be, a man of great understanding. You will make for me a set of clothes, I will pay you, and all will be well.”

Talsu doubted that last. So, evidently, did his father, who said, “What kind of clothes... sir? How much will you pay me ... sir? When will you want them ... sir?

“You do not trust me?” The Algarvian sounded as if that had never crossed his mind. After a shrug suggesting the world was a crueler place than he’d imagined, he went on, “I want a good wool tunic and kilt, in civilian style, to wear for the coming winter. I will pay you silver, the price we agree by dickering, in the coin of either King Donalitu or King Mainardo--both circulate at par.”

“They shouldn’t,” Traku said. “Mainardo’s coins are lighter.”

“By law, they are at par,” the captain said. Talsu’s father kept quiet. He was a formidable man in a haggle, as Talsu knew. Talsu also knew his father had never made a kilt in his life. Traku didn’t let on about that, either. He just waited. At last, the Algarvian threw his hands in the air. “All right! All right! I will pay in Donalitu’s coin, or in silver by weight to match the price in Donalitu’s coin. There! Are you happy now?”

“Happy? No, sir. I haven’t got a lot to be happy about.” Traku shook his head. “But fair’s fair. Now then, if we come to a price--and you’ll pay me half beforehand and half when you get the clothes--when will you need this outfit?”

“Ten days,” the Algarvian said, and Traku nodded. That much, at least, proved easy. The redhead went on, “Price will depend on the cloth, is it not so?”

Traku nodded again. “Wool, you said? I can show you some samples, if you care to take a look. You’ll have to tell me how long you’ll want the kilt, and how full, and how many pleats and how deep. That will let me know how much material I’ll need.”

“Aye. I understand.” The Algarvian waggled a finger at Traku. “You are not to change for cheaper goods afterwards, mind.”

Traku’s father glared at him. “If you think I’d do that, you’d better find yourself another tailor. I’m not the only one in Skrunda.” Talsu knew how much Traku needed the business, but Traku said not a word about what he needed. Talsu was proud of him.

“Let me see your samples,” the Algarvian captain said. Presently, he pointed to one. “This weight and grade, in a forest green. Can you get it?”

“I think so,” Traku answered. “If I can’t, you get your half-payment back, of course.” He turned to Talsu. “Measure him, son. Then we’ll talk about the kilt”--he muttered something that might have been barbarous garment under his breath--”and then we’ll talk price.”

The Algarvian inclined his head. Talsu grabbed the tape measure. The redhead stood very still while he measured and took notes. Only after he’d finished did the fellow raise an eyebrow and remark, “I think you would sooner be measuring me for a coffin, is it not so?”

“I didn’t say that, sir,” Talsu answered, and gave the notes to his father.

Traku and the redhead talked about the kilt: its length, its drape, its pleating. Traku looked up at the ceiling and mumbled to himself. When he got done calculating, he named a price. The Algarvian screamed as if he’d been scalded--Talsu and Ausra both jumped, while the fur on Dustbunny’s tail puffed up in alarm. Then the Algarvian named a price, too, one less than half as high.

“Nice talking with you,” Traku said. “Close the door after you go out.”

They haggled for the best part of an hour. Traku ended up getting what struck Talsu as a good price; despite noisy histrionics, the Algarvian yielded ground more readily than the tailor. The redhead was muttering to himself when he did leave.

“Forest green,” Traku said. “I think I can get that. I ought to short him on the goods, though, just on account of that crack.”

He did get the cloth in the right color and the proper weight, then set to work. The tunic was straightforward: it had a higher, tighter collar than Jelgavan fashion favored, but presented no new problems. For the kilt, Traku worked much more carefully. After he’d made the waistband and hemmed the garment, he sewed two pleats by hand. Then, sweating with concentration, he set thread along the kilt where the other pleats would go and used a tailoring spell based on the law of similarity. Talsu watched in fascination as the rest of the pleats formed, duplicating the first two in spacing and stitchery.

Traku held up the finished kilt with a somber sort of pride. “Ready-to-wear can’t come close to a good tailor’s work,” he said. “The big makers use cheap originals and they stretch the spells too thin, so the clothes they make aren’t even properly similar to the originals.” He sighed. “But they’re cheap, so what can you do?”

When the Algarvian captain came in to try on his outfit, he kissed his fingertips, he blew a kiss at Ausra, and for a horrid moment Talsu thought he and Traku were going to get kissed, too. But the redhead restrained himself, at least from that. He paid the second half of the price and left the shop a happy man.

“Good thing he liked it,” Traku said after he’d gone. “If he didn’t, what in blazes would I do with a cursed kilt?”

“Sell it to another Algarvian,” Talsu said at once.

His father blinked; maybe that hadn’t occurred to him. “Aye, I suppose so,” he said. “I wouldn’t get as much for it, though.”

Talsu rang coins on the counter. The music was sweet. “You don’t need to worry. We don’t need to worry.” He checked himself. “We don’t need to worry for a little while, anyhow.”

Vanai was glad to be out of the house she shared with her grandfather and even gladder to be out of Oyngestun. With so many Kaunians shipped off to the west to labor for the redheads in the war against Unkerlant, the village felt as if it had a hole in it, like a jaw with a newly pulled tooth. She and Brivibas might have been among those taken for labor. Remembering what a few days of work on the roads had done to her grandfather, Vanai knew she was lucky to escape.

She also remembered, all too well, the price she’d paid to get Brivibas back from the labor gang. She had no great love for the Unkerlanters--they struck her as being even more barbarous than their Forthwegian cousins--but she hoped with all her heart that they gave Major Spinello a thin time of it.

Meanwhile, she had mushrooms to find. With rain coming a little early this year, she thought the crop would be fine. And, at last, she’d persuaded her grandfather to let her search by herself. That had proved easier than she’d thought it would. He didn’t cling to her as he had before she gave Spinello what he wanted.

And so, while Brivibas went south, Vanai headed east, in the direction of Gromheort. When they separated, her grandfather coughed a couple of times, as if to say he knew why she was going in that direction. She almost walloped him with the mushroom basket she was carrying. Before she swung it, though, she noticed it was the one that belonged to Ealstan, the Forthwegian from Gromheort. Brivibas would surely have noticed, too, and would have taken a certain satisfaction in being proved right in his suspicions.

“But he’s not right,” Vanai said--most emphatically, as if someone were about to contradict her. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He never knows what he’s talking about.”

A troop of Algarvians on unicorns came trotting up the road from Gromheort toward Oyngestun. The redheaded riders leered at Vanai. They whooped as they passed her and called out lewd suggestions, some of which she understood because of Spinello. She breathed a silent sigh of relief when they kept on riding. Had they decided to ravish her one after another and then cut her throat, who could have stopped them? She knew the answer to that: no one. They were the occupiers, the conquerors. They did as they pleased.

Along with sighing in relief, Vanai cut across fields instead of staying close by the road. The going was harder that way, and her shoes soon got wet and muddy. She didn’t care. The next Algarvians who came along the highway--three crews mounted on their behemoths--could have seen her as nothing more than a blond-headed speck in the distance. Not one of them waved or called out to her. That suited her fine.

She came across a nice patch of meadow mushrooms, and put some in her basket--Ealstan’s basket, actually--to make sure she wouldn’t go back to Oyngestun empty-handed. A little later, she clapped her hands in glee when she found some chanterelles, yellow and vermilion growing together. She like the yellow ones better--vermilion chanterelles tasted acrid to her--but gathered some of each.

And then, at the edge of an almond grove, she almost stepped on some bright orange imperial mushrooms. They were still small, but unmistakable because of their color. As she plucked them from the ground, she recited a snatch of ancient poetry: they’d been favorites back in the days of the Kaunian Empire.

But her pleasure at picking them evaporated a moment later. The mushrooms remained, but the Kaunian Empire was only rubble. Even the Kaunian kingdoms of the east had fallen into the Algarvians’ hands these days, and as for Forthweg .. . The Forthwegian majority despised the Kaunians still living among them, and the Algarvians delighted in showing the Forthwegians the Kaunians were even worse off than they.

After Vanai discovered the imperial mushrooms, she had no luck for quite a while. She saw three or four Forthwegian men down on their hands and knees in the middle of a field, but did not go over to them. They were unlikely to be willing to share whatever they’d found, and not so unlikely to try to make sport with her as the Algarvians might have done. She put some bushes between herself and them and went on her way.

The sun was nearing its high point in the north when she came into the oak wood where she and Ealstan had accidentally exchanged baskets--and where they’d met the year before that, too. With her grandfather miles away, she could at last admit to herself that she hadn’t come there altogether by accident. For one thing, she did want to give him his basket if she saw him again. And, for another, he’d been a sympathetic ear, and she hadn’t had many of those lately.

She walked among the trees. Her muddy shoes scuffed through leaves and acorns. Some of the oaks’ gnarled roots lay close to the surface. She wondered if she ought to try digging for truffles. In the days of the Kaunian Empire, rich nobles had trained swine to hunt the precious fungi by scent. Without such aid, though, finding them was a matter of blind luck. She shook her head--she didn’t have time to waste, and not much in the way of luck had come her way lately.

She wandered through the wood, finding a couple of puffballs, which she picked, and quite a few stinkhorns, which she avoided with wrinkled nose. She saw no sign of Ealstan. She wondered if he was out hunting mushrooms at all. For all she knew, he could have been back in Gromheort or out searching in a different direction. It wasn’t as if she could make him step out from behind a tree by wishing.

No sooner had that thought crossed her mind than Ealstan stepped out from behind a tree--not the one she’d been looking at, but a tree nonetheless. Her eyes widened. Had she turned into a mage after all?

If Ealstan had been conjured up, he didn’t realize it. “Vanai!” he exclaimed, a grin stretching itself across his face. Instead of using Forthwegian, he went on in his slow, careful Kaunian: “I had hoped I would see you here. I am very glad to see you here. And look--I remembered your basket.” He held it up.

Vanai laughed. She did that so seldom these days, each time stood out as an occasion. “I remembered yours, too,” she said, and showed it to him.

“Now my family can wonder at me if I bring back my own basket, as they did when I brought back yours last year,” Ealstan said with a chuckle. But the good humor quickly slipped from his face. “I am very glad to see you here again,” he repeated. “The Algarvians took many Kaunians out of Gromheort and sent them west. I was afraid they had done the same in Oyngestun.”

“They did,” Vanai answered, “but my grandfather and I were not among them.” She remembered how close they’d come to being chosen. “For his sake, I’m glad; he couldn’t have done the work.” She’d seen he couldn’t do it. That made her think of Spinello again, and then wish she hadn’t.

“In Gromheort, they did not seem to care,” Ealstan said. “They scooped up young and old, men and women, till they had enough to satisfy them. Then they herded them into caravan cars and sent them west with only the clothes on their backs. How can they hope to get any proper work from anyone like that?”

“I don’t know,” Vanai answered in a small voice. “I’ve asked myself the same question, but I just don’t know.”

“I think they are lying about what they want. I think they are doing something. ...” Ealstan shook his head. “I do not know what. Something they do not want to talk about. Something that cannot be good.”

He kept on using Kaunian. Because it was not his birthspeech, he paused every now and then to search for a word or an ending. To Vanai, that deliberation made him sound more impressive, not less. And he sounded more impressive still because he obviously did care about what happened to the Kaunians in Gromheort and Oyngestun.

Vanai wasn’t used to sympathy from Forthwegians. Vanai, lately, wasn’t used to sympathy from anybody, though her own people were less harsh to her now than when Spinello had been visiting Brivibas rather than her. Tears stung her eyes. She looked away so Ealstan wouldn’t see. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“For what?” he said--she’d startled him into Forthwegian.

How was she supposed to answer that? “For worrying about my folk when you don’t have to,” she said at last. “Most people these days have all they can do to worry about themselves.”

“If I do not worry about anyone else, who will worry about me?” Ealstan said, returning to Kaunian.

“When you speak my language, you sound like a philosopher,” Vanai said; she meant his delivery as much as what he said. Whatever she meant, she made him laugh. She laughed, too, but persisted: “No, you truly do.” To emphasize the point, she reached out with her free hand and took his.

Only after she’d done it did she realize she’d astonished herself. Since Spinello began taking advantage of her, she hadn’t wanted anyone male, even her grandfather, to touch her. And now she’d touched Ealstan of her own accord.

His hand closed on hers. That was almost enough to make her pull away--almost, but not quite. Even if she didn’t finish the motion, though she must have begun it, for he let go at once, saying, “You must have enough things to worry about without putting a Forthwegian you scarcely know on the list.”

Vanai stared at him. They were much of a height, as was often true of Kaunian women and Forthwegian men. Slowly, she said, “You care what I think.” By the way she said it, she might have been announcing some astonishing discovery in magecraft.

He heard her surprise. “Well, of course I do,” he said, surprised in turn.

Plainly, he meant it. Having been used and scorned and condescended to so much, Vanai hardly knew what to make of caring. She astonished herself again, this time by leaning forward and brushing her lips across Ealstan’s.

He wasn’t too swarthy to keep her from watching him flush. Something sparked in his eyes. He wants me, she thought. Seeing that should have disgusted her. It always had with Spinello. Somehow, it didn’t. At first, she thought that was because Ealstan didn’t forthwith try to grope her, as Spinello would have. Then, belatedly, she realized the warmth inside her had nothing to do with the weather, which, was on the chilly side. I want him, she thought, and that was most astonishing of all: she’d been sure Spinello had curdled desire within her forever.

“Vanai. . .” Ealstan said in a hoarse voice.

She nodded and, much later than she should have, set down her basket of mushrooms. “It will be all right,” she said, not pretending she didn’t know what he had in mind. Then she found something better to add: “We’ll make it come out all right.”

And, in spite of everything, they did. It was, clearly, Ealstan’s first time. Had it been Vanai’s, too, it probably would have ended up a clumsy botch. As things were, what Spinello had made her learn came in handy in ways she hoped the redhead would not have appreciated. She guided Ealstan without being too obvious about it.

But, after a while, she began to enjoy what they were doing for its own sake. Ealstan didn’t come close to Spinello as far as technique went; maybe he never would. It turned out not to matter too much. The Algarvian’s touch, no matter how knowing--perhaps because it was so knowing--had always made her want to cringe. Ealstan cared for her as Vanai, not as a nicely shaped piece of meat. That made all the difference. How much difference it made she discovered when she gasped and arched her back and squeezed Ealstan tight with arms and legs, Major Spinello utterly forgotten.

Ealstan stared down into Vanai’s face, only a hand’s breadth below his own. His heart thudded as if he’d just run a long way. Next to the delight that filled him, the pleasure he’d got from touching himself hardly seemed worth remembering.

He started to lean down to taste the sweetness of her lips again, but she said, “You’re not as light as you think you are. And we’d better get dressed before somebody who’s looking for mushrooms comes along and finds us instead.”

“Oh!” Ealstan exclaimed. He’d forgotten about that, and was glad Vanai hadn’t. He scrambled to his feet, yanked up his drawers, and threw on his tunic. Vanai’s clothes were more complicated, but she got into them about as fast as he did.

“Turn around,” she told him, and brushed leaves off him. Then she nodded. “No stains on your tunic. That’s good. Now you take care of me.”

“Aye,” Ealstan said. Despite what they’d just finished doing, he hardly dared touch her. Warily, he picked bits of dry leaf from her hair. Even more warily, he brushed some from her backside. Instead of slapping him, she smiled thanks over her shoulder. “Your clothes are all right,” he told her.

“That’s good,” she said again. Slowly, her smile faded. “I didn’t come here . . .expecting to do this.” The expression her face took on alarmed Ealstan. It would have alarmed him more had he thought it aimed at him.

“I did not, either,” he said, which was nothing but the truth. He might have imagined it once or twice, but he’d told himself he was being foolish. He felt foolish now, delightfully foolish, as if he’d had too much wine. Trying not to wear an idiotic grin, he went on, “I did hope I would see you, though.” Speaking Kaunian helped. It made him sound serious, even if he wasn’t.

Vanai’s face softened. “I know. You brought my basket.” She looked down at the dead leaves on the ground. “And I brought yours.”

Ealstan felt like cutting capers. Instead, very much his practical father’s son, he said, “Shall we trade some of what we have found?” As long as they were doing that, she wouldn’t go away. He didn’t want her to go away.

They sat down where they’d lain together, sat down and swapped mushrooms. They sat very close together. Their hands clung as they passed the mushrooms back and forth. Every so often, they paused to kiss. Ealstan discovered how quickly desire revived at his age. But when he reached for one of the toggles on her tunic, she set her hand on his and kept him from undoing it. “We were lucky once,” she said. “I don’t know if we would be again.”

“All right,” he said. It wasn’t quite, but he would make the best of it. He took his hand away. Vanai’s face showed he’d passed a test. “Shall we take back our old baskets?” he asked, and then answered his own question before Vanai could: “No, we had better not. That would tell people we had met. This way, no one has to know anything--no one except us.”

“Aye, you’re right: better if we don’t,” Vanai agreed. She studied him. “It’s good you think of things like that.”

He shrugged, pleased and embarrassed at the same time. “I do my best,” he said, and again had no idea how much he sounded like Hestan. He looked at Vanai. Regardless of what they’d just done, they hardly knew each other. He coughed. “I do want to see you again, though; before next mushroom season.” He hoped that didn’t sound too much like, I want to lie with you again, as soon as I can. He did, but that wasn’t what he meant, or wasn’t all of what he meant, anyhow.

“I want to see you again, too,” Vanai said, and once more Ealstan had all he could do to keep from jumping up and turning handsprings. She went on, “Tomorrow is market day, so I don’t think I can get away, but I can come here the day after.”

His heart leaped--and then fell. “My schoolmasters will beat me,” he said glumly, “the ones not out gathering mushrooms themselves, at any rate.” He could think the switchings he got worthwhile as long as he lay in Vanai’s arms--but not, he feared very long afterwards.

To his relief, he saw his unwillingness to drop everything for her sake hadn’t offended her. Instead, she was nodding. “You have a head on your shoulders,” she remarked. Anyone who knew him would have said the same. But she didn’t, not yet, not with the mind as well as the body.

Out beyond the oak grove, someone called to someone else. It wasn’t aimed at either Ealstan or Vanai, but both their heads came up in alarm. Nervously, Ealstan asked, “Did your grandfather come hunting mushrooms with you?” Brivibas, that was the old man’s name. If Ealstan had to be polite in a hurry, he could.

But Vanai shook her head. “No. He’s searching by himself.” Her voice went cold and distant. She hadn’t talked about her grandfather like that before. Something must have happened between them. Ealstan wondered what. He saw no way to ask. Vanai found a question of her own: “What about your cousin--Sidroc?” She’d remembered things about Ealstan, too. He felt outrageously flattered.

“He went off to the north awhile ago. We are supposed to meet back at the city gate at sunset.” Ealstan leaned over and kissed Vanai. She clung to him. The kiss went on and on. They started to lie back on the leaves again, but whoever was outside the little wood called out again, louder and closer this time. “We had better not take the chance,” Ealstan said, and heard the regret in his own voice.

“You’re right.” Vanai slipped out of his embrace and got to her feet. “You can send me letters, if you like. I live on the Street of Tinkers in Oyngestun.”

Ealstan nodded eagerly. “And I live on the Avenue of Countess Hereswith, back in Gromheort. I willwrite to you.”

“Good.” Vanai nodded, too. “My grandfather will wonder when I start getting letters from Gromheort, but I don’t much care what my grandfather wonders, not any more.” Something had indeed happened between her and Brivibas. Maybe she would tell him what in a letter.

“I had better go,” he said, though he didn’t want to leave her.

But she nodded once more. “And I,” she said, and then, as an afterthought, “I will address my letters to you in Forthwegian. I wouldn’t want to put you in danger by letting anyone know you’re friendly to Kaunians.”

He was grateful, and ashamed of himself for being grateful. “If I can do anything for you--or for your grandfather,” he remembered to add, “let me know. My father is not a man without influence.”

“I thank you,” Vanai said, “but would he use that influence for the cursed blonds?” She didn’t try to hide her bitterness.

“Aye,” Ealstan said, and nothing more.

He saw he’d startled her. “Well,” she said, “if he’s your father, perhaps he would.”

“He will,” Ealstan said, though he didn’t know if Hestan’s influence reached tOiOyngestun. “And so will I.” He had no influence at all and did know that. But he would have promised Vanai anything just then. By the way her eyes shone, she believed him, too, or at least was glad he’d said what he had.

Ealstan kissed her one last time, then started back to Gromheort. He kept looking over his shoulder at Vanai, and almost walked into a good-sized oak. Feeling silly, he waved to her. She was looking over her shoulder, too, and waved to him. Only when they couldn’t see each other any more did Ealstan turn forward and walk straight.

As he walked, he wondered what to say to Sidroc. He laughed. The easiest thing might be to tell his cousin the truth; Sidroc would surely call him a liar. But what Sidroc would call Vanai didn’t bear thinking of. He’d been making lewd jokes about her since the day Ealstan met her. Now .. .

She’d given herself to Ealstan without hesitation. By everything people in Forthweg--Forthwegians and Kaunians alike--said, that made her a slut, almost as much a slut as the Kaunian girl who’d tried to get Leofsig to go to bed with her for money.

“But it wasn’t like that,” Ealstan said, as if someone had declared it was. Whatever had brought Vanai into his arms, he got the idea that raw lust was only a small part of it. Loneliness and a desire to escape, if only for a little while, had probably played bigger parts. That didn’t flatter him, but flattery wasn’t so important to him. Seeing clearly counted for more.

And calling Daukantis’ daughter a slut wasn’t easy, either, not when the Algarvians had left her with the choice between whoring and starving. From the height of his seventeen years, Ealstan saw that the older he got, the less the world looked like the things everybody said.

He hoped the redheads hadn’t swept up the oil merchant’s daughter (he couldn’t remember her name, though Leofsig had mentioned it) when they gathered laborers in Gromheort. Something was strange there, though he couldn’t see what. But had the Algarvians only been after laborers, they would have chosen differently and let the Kaunians they did choose bring along more than they had.

He shrugged. He couldn’t do anything about that. His features softened as his thoughts returned to what he and Vanai had done. He spent most of the walk back to Gromheort trying to fix in his memory every kiss, every murmured endearment, every caress, every caress, every incredible sensation. Remembering wasn’t as good as lying down with her again, but it was all he could do now.

Gromheort’s gray stone wall loomed higher and higher as he neared the city. Behind the wall, the sky was gray, too, gray as lead. It looked as if it would rain again soon. Autumn was shaping up as wet and nasty, which meant winter probably would be, too. He wondered if it would snow. That didn’t happen every year, not this far north.

Someone standing by the wall waved. Ealstan squinted. Aye, that was Sidroc. Ealstan waved, too, and tried to bring his mind back from Vanai to mushrooms. Sidroc came toward him. He pointed to the basket Ealstan was carrying. “Ha!” he said. “That’s the one you brought home last year, not yours. Didn’t run into the little Kaunian bitch this time, eh? Too bad for you. You might have had a good time.”

The only thing that let Ealstan get through was having been sure Sidroc would make some such crack. “No, I didn’t see her,” he answered, hoping he sounded casual. “Even if I had, we’d have just traded some mushrooms.” That would have been true the year before. It wasn’t any more.

Sidroc gestured derisively. “She’s got to be sweet for you, Ealstan,” he said. “Powers above, if I’d found her out there in the woods, I’d have got her trousers down faster than you could say King Offa.”

“In your dreams,” Ealstan said.

“Aye.” Sidroc grabbed his own crotch. “In my wet dreams.” Ealstan managed to laugh at that, which seemed to convince Sidroc nothing unusual had happened out in the oak grove. Sidroc chaffed him as they went into Gromheort, but not too hard. They both chaffed the Algarvian constable at the gate when the fellow looked disgusted at the baskets of mushrooms they showed him.

“More for us,” Ealstan said to Sidroc. The constable must have spoken some Forthwegian, for he made as if to retch. Ealstan and his cousin both laughed. Ealstan kept laughing all the way through the city, all the way back to his house. If Sidroc wanted to think he was laughing at the Algarvian, he didn’t mind a bit.

Rain beat into Colonel Sabrino s face as he led his wing east from the front toward the miserable excuse for a dragon farm at which they were based. His dragon didn’t like the rain, not even a little. It flew heavily, laboring much more than it would have had the weather been good.

Sabrino didn’t like the rain, either. He had a demon of a time keeping track of the dragonfliers under his command, and had to rely on his squadron leaders more than he wanted. He couldn’t see far enough to do anything else. Nor could he see far enough to spy Unkerlanter dragons and thanked the powers above the enemy couldn’t see very far, either.

He had a demon of a time finding the dragon farm, too. Flying low to glimpse the ground through the curtain of rain, he almost flew his dragon into the side of a hill. The beast screeched protests when he made it pull up. It would have liked hitting the hillside even less but was too stupid to know that.

He might not have found the dragon farm at all had he not flown over the victory camp that had gone up just north of it. Seeing the Kaunians huddled in dripping misery behind their palisade made him wonder what they thought of the name some clever clerk nad come up with. He doubted the Algarvian guards on the palisade were any too happy, either. In this weather, their sticks wouldn’t carry very far before raindrops attenuated their beams.

But that was their worry, not his. His worries shrank, because spotting the victory camp told him where he was. He swung his dragon into a sharp turn. The beast screamed at him, not wanting to obey. He whacked it with his goad, and shouted into the crystal he carried as he did so. The dragons he could see through the rain were conforming to his movements, but he wanted to make sure the rest of the wing didn’t keep on flying back toward Forthweg and Algarve.

And there was the farm, too, with the dragon handlers waving and shouting to keep him from missing them. He brought his dragon down to a landing that splashed muck over the keepers who came running up to chain the beast to a stake. How they made stakes hold in this muddy morass was beyond him, but they did.

“What’s it like at the front?” one of the keepers asked as Sabrino slid down from the base of the dragon’s neck and into the mud.

“By everything I saw, we’re stuck,” Sabrino answered. “Hard for us to go forward--and harder than it might be, because the Unkerlanters are still wrecking bridges and ley lines and everything else they can. That gives them an edge of sorts, because they’re bringing up their reinforcements on ground that’s not quite so badly chewed up.”

“Aye.” The keeper wiped his eyes with a sleeve, an utterly useless gesture. “Cursed Unkerlanters are tougher than we figured they would be, too.”

“So they are.” Sabrino remembered General Chlodvald, then wished he hadn’t. The retired soldier had been right when he said his countrymen would fight as hard as they could and would keep on fighting.

More dragons splashed down into the muck. Seeing to his fliers and their beasts gave Sabrino an excuse not to think about General Chlodvald. After a while, he splashed past the keeper with whom he’d been talking. The fellow jerked a thumb toward the north. “If all else fails, those Kaunian whoresons in there’ll make sure we give King Swemmel what he deserves.”

Sabrino’s stomach lurched, as if his dragon had sideslipped and dove without warning. “I hope it doesn’t come to that,” he said. “If it does, though . . .” He shrugged uneasily.

At least with the whole wing down and safe--a minor miracle, in that ghastly weather--he could get under canvas. The ground was no drier inside his tent than outside, but the oiled canvas did keep water from pouring down onto his head. After he’d changed into a fresh tunic and kilt, he invited his squadron commanders to sup with him.

He had no idea what they’d get. It turned out to be fried trout, boiled beets, and a jar of clear spirits that kicked like a mule--more nearly Unkerlanter fare than Algarvian. “Phew!” Captain Orosio said after a pull at the spirits. “If Swemmel’s boys drink this stuff all the time, no wonder they’re mean.”

After a swig of his own, Sabrino wheezed, “Aye. I think I’ll send my gullet out for copper plating.” But that didn’t stop him from taking another swig a little later.

He’d never been fond of beets, especially plain boiled ones. He was still picking at them when a commotion outside penetrated the noise of the rain drumming on his tent. “Have the Unkerlanters managed to sneak raiders past our lines?” Captain Domiziano said, half rising from his seat.

But then one of the shouts out there in the night came clear: “Your Majesty!” A moment later, a dragon handler burst into Sabrino’s tent. “Sir, the king honors us with his presence!” he exclaimed.

“Powers above,” Sabrino said softly. “I wish I were better placed to honor him in turn than in this miserable bog. Well, it can’t be helped. See if you can delay him long enough for the cooks to bring in another serving of supper, anyhow.”

As things worked out, King Mezentio and the servitor bringing more fish and beets arrived at the same time. “Go on,” Mezentio told the cook. “I can’t very well eat that till you set it down, now can I?”

The wind had blown his umbrella inside out. He was almost as wet as the dragonfliers had been. Sabrino and his squadron commanders sprang to their feet and bowed. “Your Majesty!” they said in unison.

“Save the ceremony for later, can’t you?” Mezentio said. “Let me eat, and if you’ll pour me some of that, whatever it is, I’ll thank you for it, too.” He knocked back a slug of the spirits as if his gullet were already lined with metal.

After the king had demolished his supper--beets fazed him no more than the spirits had--Sabrino presumed to ask, “What brings you to the front, your Majesty? And why this particular part of the front?”

“Not just the pleasure of your company, my lord Count,” Mezentio answered. He poured from the jar again, then drank. “Ah, that warms me, curse me if it doesn’t. No, not the pleasure of your company. I probably wouldn’t have come if the Unkerlanters hadn’t stalled us.” His lips pulled back from his teeth in what was more nearly snarl than smile. “But they have, and so I’m going to watch what we do with a victory camp.”

“Ah.” Orosio beamed. “That’s fine, your Majesty. That’s very fine.”

Sabrino’s stomach lurched again. “Has it truly come to that?”

“It has.” King Mezentio’s voice brooked no argument. “If we delay, we risk not taking Cottbus. And if we fail to take Cottbus, the war grows longer and harder than we ever thought it would be when we embarked on it. Is that true, or is it not?”

“Aye, your Majesty, it is,” Sabrino answered, grimacing, “but--”

Mezentio made a sharp chopping gesture with his right hand. “But me no buts, my lord Count. I did not come to this miserable, cursed place to argue with you, and nothing you can say will change my mind. The mages are here, the soldiers are here, the stinking Kaunians are here, and I am here. I came here to see it done. We shall go forward, and we shall go forward to victory. Is that plain, sirrah?”

Sabrino’s squadron commanders were staring with wide eyes, as if wondering how he presumed to argue with his sovereign. With King Mezentio glaring at him, he also wondered how he presumed. “Aye, your Majesty,” he said. But then, being the descendant of a long line of freeborn Algarvian warriors, he added, “It had better do all we--you--hope it will, or we’d be better off never having tried it.”

“You leave such worries to the mages and me,” Mezentio growled. “Your duty to the kingdom is to fly your dragons, and I know you do it well. My duty to the kingdom is to win the war, and I aim to do exactly that. Need I make myself any plainer?”

“No, your Majesty,” Sabrino said. He took another swig from his glass of spirits--he needed fortifying. As the spirits mounted to his head, he reflected that he’d done everything he could; more, probably, than he should have. King Mezentio had overruled him. He inclined his head, “I shall obey.”

“Of course you shall.” For a moment, Mezentio sounded very much the way King Swemmel was supposed to sound. But then he softened his words: “After we parade through Cottbus in triumph, I am going to say, ‘I told you so.’ “ He grinned engagingly at Sabrino.

“I’ll be glad to hear it then,” Sabrino said, and grinned back.

Mezentio did his best to set his battered umbrella to rights. “And now I have to go find the tent they’ve got waiting for me--somewhere. Always a pleasure to see you, my lord Count, even if not always to argue with you.” He nodded to Sabrino’s squadron commanders. “Gentlemen.” Without waiting for a reply, he went out into the wet, wet night.

“You don’t live dangerously, sir,” Captain Domiziano said to Sabrino. “Not half you don’t.”

“It’s war, sir,” Orosio added. “Anything we can do to kick the lousy Unkerlanters’ teeth down their throats, we’d better do it.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Sabrino said. “I have no choice but to suppose you’re right. His Majesty made that clear enough, didn’t he?” Discovering he could still laugh at himself came as something of a relief. All the same, he drank himself to sleep.

King Mezentio did not visit the dragon farm again. Sabrino told himself that was because his sovereign had come to Unkerlant for other reasons, which was no doubt true. But he knew he hadn’t endeared himself to Mezentio. Men seldom found favor by questioning kings.

Whether or not Mezentio was there to watch it, Sabrino’s wing kept on fighting the Unkerlanters. In that miserable weather, they did less than they might have earlier in the year, but the Unkerlanter dragons were similarly hampered. Sabrino began using the victory camp full of Kaunians as a landmark. It was far larger and easier to spy from the air than his own dragon farm.

And then, about the time he began wondering if decent weather were gone for good, the sun returned to the sky. Days remained chilly, but the ground began to dry. Behemoths were once more able to move at something more than a squashy, heavy-footed walk. The Algarvians wasted no time in going over to the attack.

But the Unkerlanters wasted no time counterattacking. They had been gathering men and beasts and dragons against the day of need, and threw them into the fight without seeming to worry about how many came out again, if only they stopped their foes. They didn’t quite stop the Algarvians, but slowed their advance from gallop to crawl.

Sabrino and his wing spent as much time over the front as their dragons could stand to stay in the air. They attacked Unkerlanter soldiers and behemoths on the ground and fought hard to keep the Unkerlanter dragons from savaging their own countrymen.

One fine, bright, almost springlike morning, the dragonfliers were over the Unkerlanter lines when the world changed below them. The earth shook, a roar Sabrino could hear even high in the air. Trenches and holes closed on the Unkerlanter soldiers in them. Flames burst from the ground, consuming men and behemoths, unicorns and horses. Not all perished, but the greater part did, up and down the front as far as Sabrino could see. He shouted into his crystal: “Now we slaughter the ones who are left!”

As the dragons stooped on their horrified, bewildered foes, Algarvian foot-soldiers and behemoths and cavalry erupted from their lines and joined in the assault. Their exultant shouts reached high into the sky; the disaster that smote the Unkerlanters had not hurt them in the least. They tore through the gutted enemy positions and swarmed westward.

When Sabrino flew over the victory camp, bringing the dragons back to their farm in triumph at the end of the day, he saw what he knew he would see: a camp full of corpses.