Into the Darkness

2.

Hajjaj rode from King Shazli’s palace to the Unkerlanter ministry in Bishah with all the eagerness of a man going to have a tooth pulled. He, like King Shazli, like all Zuwayzin with a barleycorn’s weight of sense in their heads, regarded Zuwayza’s immense southern neighbor with the wary attention any house cat might give a lion living next door.

The sun blazed down almost vertically from a blue enamel sky: Zuwayza projected farther north than any other kingdom of Derlavai. Despite that tropic brilliance, most of the men and women on the streets wore only sandals and broad-brimmed hats, with nothing in between. With their dark brown skins, they took even the fiercest sun in stride.

In deference to Unkerlanter sensibilities, Hajjaj had donned a cotton tunic that covered him from neck to knee. He’d never seen any sense to clothes till his first winter at the university in Trapani, before the Six Years’ War broke out. He still didn’t see any sense to them in Bishah’s climate, but reckoned them part of the price he paid for being a diplomat.

Unkerlanter soldiers stood guard outside the ministry. They wore tunics, too, dull gray ones jarringly out of place in a city of whitewash and glowing golden sandstone. Sweat stained and darkened the tunics under the men’s arms and across their chests. Though suffering in what was for them dreadful heat, they held themselves motionless—all but their eyes, which hungrily followed every pretty young Zuwayzi woman walking past. Hajjaj laughed, but only inside, where it did not show.

King Swemmel’s minister to Zuwayza was a dour, middle-aged man named Ansovald. Maybe he had a magic that prevented sweat, or maybe he was just too stubborn to permit any such merely human failing. However he managed it, his tunic and his forehead remained dry.

“In the name of my king, I greet you,” he said to Hajjaj after a servant had escorted the Zuwayzi foreign minister to his chamber. “That you are so punctual shows your efficiency.”

“I thank you. And in the name of my king, I greet you in return,” Hajjaj replied. He and Ansovald spoke Algarvian, in which they were both fluent. Hajjaj thought Swemmel would have been efficient to send to Bishah a minister who spoke Zuwayzi, but saying as much struck him as undiplomatic. He himself understood more of the Unkerlanter language than he let on. As would any Zuwayzi in similar circumstances, he thought, I understand more Unkerlanter than I want.

“Well, what is the point of this meeting?” Ansovald demanded.

Abrupt as an Unkerlanter was a common Zuwayzi phrase. Had Hajjaj been visiting one of his countrymen, they would have shared tea and wine and cakes and small talk before eventually getting down to business. Had Ansovald come to the palace, Hajjaj would also have gone through the leisurely rituals of hospitality, as much to annoy Swemmel’s envoy as for the sake of form. Here, though, Unkerlanter rules prevailed. Hajjaj sighed, not quite invisibly.

“The point of this meeting, your Excellency, is to convey my sovereign’s displeasure with recent provocations along the border between our two kingdoms,” Hajjaj said. King Shazli was hopping mad and scared green, both at the same time. Displeasure suggested that as diplomatically as possible.

Ansovald’s massive shoulders moved up and down in a shrug. “I deny that any such provocations have taken place,” he said.

Hajjaj reached into a leather case and produced a short scroll. “Your Excellency, I have here a list of Zuwayzi border guards and soldiers killed, border guards and soldiers wounded, and Zuwayzi property on Zuwayzi territory destroyed during Unkerlanter incursions this season, and Unkerlanter buildings and encampments erected on land rightfully under the rule of King Shazli.”

Ansovald read through the document—written, like most diplomatic correspondence, in classical Kaunian—and then shrugged again. “All of these alleged incidents took place on Unkerlanter soil,” he said. “If anyone is the provocateur here, it is Zuwayza.”

“Now really, your Excellency!” Hajjaj exclaimed, indignation overcoming diplomacy for a moment. He pointed to the map of Zuwayza on the wall behind Ansovald. “Please look again. Some of these incidents occurred as much as ten or fifteen miles north of the border between our two kingdoms established by the Treaty of Bludenz.”

“Ah, the Treaty of Bludenz.” Ansovald’s smile was anything but pleasant. “Kyot the traitor dickered the Treaty of Bludenz with you Zuwayzin, thinking to be efficient: by not fighting your secession, he had more resources to use against King Swemmel. Much good it did him.” The unpleasant smile got broader. “Why should King Swemmel pay the least heed to anything the traitor did?”

Hajjaj was no longer indignant. He was appalled. He briefly wondered whether Unkerlant would have been a more pleasant neighbor had Kyot won the Twinkings War. He doubted it: Unkerlanters, worse luck, were Unkerlanters. Speaking now with great care, he said, “King Swemmel has conformed to the terms of the Treaty of Bludenz since gaining sole rule over Unkerlant. You would not be here as his minister, your Excellency, did he not recognize Zuwayza as a free and independent kingdom. Would it be efficient for him to overturn a policy that has given him good results?”

Not even the phrase that seemed so magic to Unkerlanter ears swayed Swemmel’s envoy. Shrugging yet again, Ansovald said, “What is efficient changes with circumstances. In any case, the protest you have conveyed from King Shazli is rejected. Have you anything more, or are we through?”

Even by Unkerlanter standards, that was brusque to the point of rudeness. “Please inform King Swemmel that we shall defend our borders,” Hajjaj said as he rose to go. He added a parting blaze: “Our legitimate borders.”

Ansovald yawned. Legitimacy did not concern him. Spitefully, Hajjaj wondered if it had concerned his father.

Outside on the street, the Zuwayzi foreign minister almost stripped off his tunic right there in front of the Unkerlanter ministry. That wouldn’t have shown the stolid, sweating guards anything they wanted to see, but it would have relieved his feelings. Not without regret, he restrained himself. As he rode back to the palace, he morosely watched sweat darken the cotton.

Once at the palace—a building whose thick walls of mud brick helped fight the heat—he did pull the tunic off over his head. King Shazli’s guardsmen grinned sympathetically as he sighed with relief. “Out of the funeral wrappings, eh, your Excellency?” one of them said, white teeth shining in his dark face.

“Even so.” Hajjaj rolled the tunic into a ball and stuffed it into his case. The breeze felt sweet on his skin. He waved to one of Shazli’s servitors. “Can his Majesty see me now? I’m just back from consulting with Ansovald of Unkerlant.” Neither by word nor by expression did he imply the meeting with Ansovald had gone anything but well. That was no one’s business but the sovereign’s.

“Of course, your Excellency,” the servant answered. “He has been awaiting your return.”

Shazli received his foreign minister in a chamber off the throne room. Hajjaj bowed low to the king of Zuwayza, who, without his golden circlet of rank, might have been anyone: in the absence of clothes, status could be hard to gauge. Shazli was a medium-sized, rather pudgy man in his early thirties, a bit less than half Hajjaj’s age. His father had regained Zuwayza’s freedom; some generations before, an Unkerlanter army that forced its way through the desert to Bishah had brought the land into the muscular embrace of its larger neighbor.

A serving woman carried in ajar of wine, a teapot, and a plate of honey cakes fragrant with cinnamon. She was comely; Hajjaj admired her as he admired the elegant ivory figurines adorning the chamber, and with hardly more desire. Being habitual to Zuwayzin, nudity did not inflame them.

Drinking and eating and chatting with the king helped Hajjaj relax; the thudding urgency he’d felt while meeting with the Unkerlanter minister receded, at least a little. After a while, Shazli said, “And how badly did Ansovald hurry you today? Efficiency.” He rolled his eyes to show what he thought of the term, or at least of the way the Unkerlanters used it.

“Your Majesty, I have never known worse,” Hajjaj said with feeling. “Never. And he rejected your protest out of hand. And he did something no Unkerlanter has ever done before: he questioned the legitimacy of the Treaty of Bludenz.”

The king hissed like a sand viper. “No, Unkerlant has never presumed to do that before,” he agreed. “I mislike the omen.”

“As do I, your Majesty, as do I,” Hajjaj said. “Up till now, we have been lucky in our relations with the Unkerlanters. They suffered hideously in the Six Years’ War and then, as if they were not satisfied, they warred among themselves. That gave your father of splendid memory the chance to remind them we still remembered how to be our own masters. Afterwards, they were busy picking up the pieces they themselves had dropped.”

“And after that, for good measure, they marched straight into a senseless war with Gyongyos,” King Shazli added. “Were King Swemmel half as efficient as he thinks he is, he would be twice as efficient as he truly is.”

“Even so, your Majesty, and elegantly phrased.” Hajjaj smiled and sipped at his wine. “Of course, Ekrekek Arpad also took advantage of Unkerlant’s internecine strife to make his own realm grow at Swemmel’s expense.”

“And Swemmel has spent the last several years trying to take his revenge,” Shazli said. His eyes narrowed; he looked very crafty indeed. “Now, I appreciate revenge as much as the next man—I could scarcely be a Zuwayzi did I not, eh? But a man who does not weigh what he spends against what he gets is a fool.”

“Seen through King Swemmel’s eyes, Gyongyos is not the only kingdom against which Unkerlant needs to be avenged,” Hajjaj said. “I suppose that explains some of Ansovald’s insolence.” He started to take another sip of wine, but paused with the goblet halfway to his lips. “I should attune my crystal to that of the Gyongyosian minister. No. I should pay a call on Horthy myself.”

“Why say you that?” King Shazli asked.

“Because, your Majesty, if Unkerlant is seeking to patch up a truce in the far west—or if King Swemmel has already patched up such a truce—we may be next on the list for a visit from our friends,” Hajjaj replied. “I don’t think even Swemmel is stupid enough to get into two wars at once. Should he abandon one …”

Shazli’s eyes widened. “Will Horthy tell you?”

“I don’t see why he shouldn’t,” Hajjaj said. “By the very nature of things, Gyongyos and Zuwayza can hardly be enemies. We are too far apart; all we have in common is a border with Unkerlant.” He opened his leather case and took out the tunic he’d stuffed into it. With a martyred sigh, he donned the garment once more. “I’d better go now, your Majesty. I don’t think this will wait.”

Skarnu stood against a tree to ease himself. Since the tree was a few miles inside Algarve, the young Valmieran marquis consoled himself by thinking he was pissing on the enemies of his kingdom. He would have felt more consolation, though, had the invasion pushed farther and done more.

After buttoning his fly, he rejoined his company. His noble birth made him an officer. Till he was mobilized, he’d thought his noble birth also prepared him for command. He was certainly used to giving orders, even if he didn’t enjoy it quite so much as his sister Krasta did. But he’d soon discovered the difference between giving orders in a mansion and giving them to soldiers: the former sort merely required obedience from the servants, while the latter also needed to make sense.

“Where now, Captain?” asked Raunu, the company’s senior sergeant. He was senior enough to have a lot of silver threads in the gold of his hair, senior enough to have fought as a youth in the Six Years’ War. But his father sold sausages for a living, so he was unlikely ever to rise above senior sergeant. If he resented that, he hid it very well.

After scratching his head, Skarnu pointed west and answered, “Forward to the edge of open country. If there are any more Algarvians lurking here in the woods, we need to flush them out.” He scratched again. He itched all the time. He wondered if he was lousy. The idea made his flesh crawl, but he knew it could happen to soldiers in wartime.

Raunu considered, then nodded. “Aye, about the best thing we can do, I reckon.” He turned Skarnu’s notion into precise, cautious reality, ordering scouts ahead and to either side and sending the rest of the company forward by sections along three different game tracks.

In fact, as Skarnu had quickly realized, Raunu ran the company. He knew how to do the job, whereas Skarnu’s presence, while ornamental, was anything but necessary. That had mortified the marquis, seeming an offense against both propriety and honor.

“Don’t fret yourself about it, lord,” Raunu had said when he broached the issue. “There’s three kinds of noble officers. Some don’t know anything and stay out of their sergeants’ way. They’re harmless. Some don’t know anything and give forth with all sorts of orders anyhow.” He’d shuddered. “They’re dangerous. And some don’t know anything and try and learn. Give ’em time, and they’re apt to make pretty fair soldiers.”

Skarnu had never before heard such a blunt appraisal of his class. None of the servants back at his mansion would have dared speak to him thus. But he was not Raunu’s master and employer; King Gainibu was. That made the sergeant’s relationship with a noble also serving the king different from that of a cook or butler. Skarnu was doing his best to fall into the third class of officer. He hoped he was succeeding, but hadn’t had the nerve to ask.

Now, stick at the ready, he paced along the gloomy track. The Algarvians hadn’t offered much resistance at the border, falling back before the advancing Valmierans toward the line of forts they’d built about twenty miles inside their territory. The Duke of Klaipeda, who commanded the Valmierans, was exultant; he’d published an order of the day reading, “The enemy, beset by many foes, ingloriously flees before our triumphant advance. Soon he must either give battle on our terms or yield his land to our victorious arms.”

That sounded splendid to Skarnu till he thought about it for a little while. If the Algarvians were ingloriously fleeing, why didn’t the illustrious Duke of Klaipeda put more pressure on them? Skarnu knew himself to be imperfectly trained in the military arts. He hoped the same did not hold true for the illustrious duke.

A beam from a stick struck the trunk of an elm a couple of feet above his head. Steam spurted from the tree, smelling of hot sap. Though imperfectly trained in the military arts, Skarnu knew what to do when people started blazing at him: he threw himself flat and crawled on his belly toward some bushes by the side of the track. If the Algarvian couldn’t see him, he couldn’t shoot.

Another Valmieran went down, too, this one with a harsh cry of pain. From cover, Skarnu shouted, “Hunt the enemy down!” He got up into a crouch and then dashed forward, diving down on to his belly behind a stout pine.

Another beam slammed into the tree. Its resinous sap had a tangy odor very different from that of the elm. Skarnu was. glad the woods were moist; the fight would have fired drier country. He peered up over the top of a gnarled root. Spying a bit of tan among green bushes, he stuck his finger into the stick’s recess and blazed away at it.

The leaves the beam touched went sere and brown in an instant, as if winter had come all at once to that corner of the world. An Algarvian soldier had been hiding in those bushes, too. He let out a horrible cry in his ugly, trilling native tongue. Another Valmieran blazed at him from off to one side of Skarnu. That cry abruptly cut off.

“Come on, men!” Skarnu shouted. “Forward! King Gainibu and victory!”

“Gainibu!” his men shouted. They did not rush straight at the Algarvians lurking among the trees. Such headlong dash was all very well in an entertainment. In real war, it brought nothing but gruesome casualties. The Valmierans darted from tree to tree, from bush to rock, one group blazing to make the enemy keep his head down while another advanced.

A couple of soldiers went staggering back with wounds, one with an arm over the shoulder of a healthy comrade. One or two men went down and would not get up again. The rest, though, drove the Algarvians, who did not seem present in any great numbers, before them. Once, by the shouts—no, the screams—the fighting came to such close quarters that it went on with knives and reversed sticks rather than with beams, but that did not last long. Valmieran voices soon rang out in triumph.

Pushing forward as he did, paying more heed to what the enemy soldiers in tan kilts were trying to do than to exactly where he was, Skarnu was surprised when he burst out of the woods. He stood a moment, blinking in the bright afternoon sun that beat into his face. Ahead lay fields of barley and oats going from green to gold, and beyond them an Algarvian farming village. The sturdy buildings would have looked more picturesque had he not been able to make out Algarvian troops moving among them.

Algarvian troops rather closer by could make him out. One of them blazed at him from the cover of the growing grain. The beam went wide. Cursing, Skarnu ducked back among the trees. He went some little distance along the edge of the forest before peering out again. This time, he was careful to keep a screen of leaves and branches in front of his face.

As if by sorcery, Sergeant Raunu silently materialized beside him. “Wouldn’t want to try crossing that without a lot of friends along,” Raunu remarked in matter-of-fact tones. “Truth is, I wouldn’t want to cross that even with a lot of friends along, but some of us might get to the other side if we did it like that.”

Skarnu’s voice was dry: “I hadn’t planned on ordering us to cross those fields and seize that village.”

“Powers above and powers below be praised,” Raunu muttered.

Not knowing whether he was supposed to have heard him, Skarnu pretended he hadn’t. He pulled a map out of a tunic pocket. “That should be the village of Bonorva,” he said. “It’s past those woods on the other wide that the Algarvians are supposed to have their main belt of fortifications.”

Raunu nodded. “Aye, that makes sense, lord. The forts are too far back for us to fling eggs at ’em from our side of the border.”

Skarnu whistled thoughtfully. That hadn’t occurred to him. Raunu might be a sausage-seller’s son, but he was no fool. Many Valmieran nobles assumed all those below them to be fools: Skarnu chuckled, thinking of his sister. He had less of that attitude in him, but he wasn’t free of it, either.

“They’ll have to bring everyone up for the assault on the forts,” he said. “That will make taking Bonorva look like a walk in Two Rivers Park by comparison.”

“It’ll cost a deal of blood, all right,” Raunu agreed. “I wonder how many who hit the forts from this side will make it through to the other.”

“However many they are, they’ll be in position to peel the shell off Algarve, the way you do with a plump lobster,” Skarnu said.

“I wouldn’t know about that, sir,” Raunu said. “It’s bread and sausage and fruit for the likes of me. But you can’t peel anything if you don’t get through. Anybody who fought in the Six Years’ War would tell you that.”

All of Valmiera’s generals, like those of any other kingdom, were veterans of the war a generation earlier. But Skarnu was not thinking of other kingdoms; he was thinking of his own. “That’s why we haven’t pressed our attacks harder!” he exclaimed with the air of a man who’d had a revelation. “The commanders dread the casualties they’d cost.”

“Commanders who don’t dread casualties don’t stay in command, either,” Raunu said. “After a while, the troops won’t stand any more. Jelgava had mutinies during the Six Years’ War. The Unkerlanter armies that were fighting Algarve mutinied so they could go off and fight each other—Unkerlanters are fools, you ask me. And finally the Algarvians mutinied, too. That’s what won the war for us, more than anything else.”

It was history to Skarnu; Raunu had lived it. Skarnu said, “May they mutiny again, then. If they didn’t want a war, they shouldn’t have gone tramping into Ban.”

“I suppose that’s so, sir.” Raunu sighed, then chuckled. “I’m an old soldier at heart, and I make no bones about it. I’d sooner be back in the barracks drinking beer than here in the middle of this powersforsaken country.”

“Can’t blame you for that, but when the king and his ministers order, we obey,” Skarnu said, and the sergeant nodded. Skarnu withdrew deeper into the woods, then scribbled a note describing his company’s position and called for a runner. When a man came up, Skarnu gave him the note and said, “Take this back to headquarters. If they plan on bringing reinforcements forward, hurry back to let me know. That will tell me whether to prepare another attack or to settle in and defend what we’ve gained here.”

“Aye, sir—just as you say.” The runner hurried off.

“The Algarvians will have something to say about whether we attack or defend, too, sir,” Raunu observed, pointing west.

“Mm, that’s true,” Skarnu said, not altogether happily. “That’s one reason I wish we’d pressed this opening attack harder: the better to impose our will on the enemy.”

Raunu grunted. “The Algarvians have plenty of will of their own. I’m surprised they haven’t tried imposing theirs on us.”

“They’re beset from four sides at once,” Skarnu said. “Before long, they’ll break somewhere.” Raunu grunted again. A few minutes later, the runner came back with orders for Skarnu’s men to consolidate their position. He obeyed, as he was obliged to obey. If he muttered under his breath, that was his business, and no one else’s.

High above Vanai’s head, a dragon screamed. She craned her neck, trying to find the tiny dot in the sky. At last, she did. The dragon was flying from west to east, which meant it belonged to Forthweg, not Algarve. Vanai waved, though the man aboard the dragon could not possibly have seen her.

Brivibas walked on for several steps before realizing she was no longer beside him. He looked back over his shoulder. “The work won’t wait,” he snapped, exasperated enough to speak Forthwegian instead of Kaunian without even knowing he’d done it.

“I am sorry, my grandfather.” Vanai spoke Kaunian. Her grandfather would have given her much more of the rough side of his tongue if she’d made his slip. He was so confident of his inalterable Kaunianity, he could slip its bounds now and then. If anyone younger slipped, though, he would fret for days about dilution.

Vanai hurried to catch up with him. Her short, tight tunic and close-fitting trousers rubbed at her as she ran. She envied the Forthwegian girls her age their comfortable, loose-fitting long tunics. Such clothes suited Forthweg’s warm, dry climate far better than what she wore. But the folk of the Kaunian Empire had worn short, tight tunics and trousers, and so their descendants perforce did likewise.

“My grandfather, are you certain you know where this old power point lay?” she asked after a long, sweaty while. “We’ve walked more than halfway to Gromheort, or so it seems.”

“Say not Gromheort,” Brivibas replied. “Say rather Jekabpils, the name the city knew in more glorious times.” On he went, tireless for an old man: he had to be nearly sixty. To Vanai, at sixteen, that certainly seemed ancient.

Her grandfather took from the pack he wore on his back an instrument of his own design: two wings of gold leaf suspended inside a glass sphere by gold wire. He murmured words of command in a Kaunian dialect archaic even when the Empire was at its height.

One of the wings twitched. “Ah, good. This way,” Brivibas said, and set off across a meadow, through an almond grove, and then into a nasty stretch of bushes and shrubs, most of which proved well equipped with spines and thorns. At last, after what seemed to Vanai far too long, he stopped. Both gold wings were fluttering, neither higher than the other, Brivibas beamed. “Here we are.”

“Here we are,” Vanai agreed in a hollow voice. She had her doubts anyone else had ever been here before. In lieu of stating them more openly, she asked, “Did the ancient Kaunians truly know of this place?”

“I believe they did,” Brivibas answered. “The evidence from inscriptions at the King’s University in Eoforwic strongly suggests they did. But, so far as I know, no one has yet performed the sorcery which alone can transform supposition into knowledge. That is why we are here.”

“Yes, my grandfather,” Vanai said resignedly. He was very good to her; he’d raised her since her parents had died in a wrecked caravan when she was hardly more than a baby. He’d given her a splendid education in both Kaunian and modern subjects. She found his work as an archaeological mage interesting, sometimes even fascinating. If only he didn’t treat me like nothing but an extra pair of hands when we’re in the field, she thought.

He set down his pack. With a sigh of relief, she did the same with hers. “Now, my granddaughter,” Brivibas said, “if you would be good enough to fetch me the green medius stone, we may begin.”

You may begin, you mean, Vanai thought. But she rummaged through the pack till she found the weathered green stone. “Here you are,” she said, and handed it to him.

“Ah, thank you, my granddaughter. The medius stone, when properly activated, removes the blindness from our eyes and lets us see what otherwise could no longer be seen,” Brivibas said. But, as he chanted, and as Vanai unobtrusively wiped her hands on her trousers—handling the stone irritated her skin—she wondered if, when the spell was complete, it would show only ancient thorn bushes as opposed to modern ones. No matter what the fluttering gold leaves declared, she doubted any power point had ever existed here.

Her mind was elsewhere, anyhow. When Brivibas paused between spells, she asked, “My grandfather, how can you so calmly investigate the past when all the world around you is going up in flames?”

Brivibas shrugged. “The world will do as it will do, regardless of whether I investigate or not. And so—why should I not learn what I can? Adding some small bits to the total of human knowledge may perhaps keep us from going up in flames, as you put it, some time in the future.” His mouth twisted. “I would have hoped it had done so already, but no one sees all his hopes granted.” After fiddling with the latitude screw and the leveling vernier on his portable sundial, he grunted softly. “And now, back to it.”

And now, Vanai, shut your trap, she thought. But her grandfather was expert at what he did. She watched closely as he evoked power from a power point forgotten since the days of the Empire. It was here after all, she thought. And then, at his word of command, the scene before her suddenly shifted. She clapped her hands together: she was looking back at the long-vanished days when the Kaunian Empire stretched over a great part of northeastern Derlavai.

Naturally, Brivibas’s use of power had summoned up the image of another time when power was used here. Vanai stared at ancient Kaunians. They went on about their business; they could not sense her or her grandfather. If she walked over the front edge of the stretch of cleared ground that had appeared before her, she wouldn’t be able to turn around and see the other side of the scene from long ago. She would just see the scrub through which she’d trudged to get here.

The ancient Kaunians wore woolen trousers, baggier than hers; some had on tunics of wool, too, others of linen. Some of the tunics and trousers were undyed, some dark blue or muddy brown: no bright colors anywhere. Almost all the clothes were visibly dirty, and so were a fair number of the Kaunians. People who’d worked with archaeological magic tended to be less romantic about the glories of the past than the bulk of the populace.

Brivibas sketched the scene, rapidly and accurately. Skill with a pencil was part of fieldwork. “The men are wearing beards,” he remarked, “and the women have their hair piled high on their heads with curls,” he remarked. “From what period would that make this scene date?”

Vanai frowned as she thought. “About the reign of Verigas II,” she replied at last.

Her grandfather beamed. “Very good! Yes, about two hundred years before the Algarvian Irruption—so-called—wrecked the Empire. Ah!” He readied a new leaf for sketching. “Here we have the action, I think.”

Four Kaunian men carried in a woman who was lying on a litter. She looked not far from the point of death. A fifth man, in cleaner clothes than the litter-bearers, led a sheep after them. He drew a knife from his belt and tested the edge with his thumb. Evidently being satisfied, he turned so that his back was to the modern observers and began magic of his own.

Brivibas exclaimed in frustration: “I wanted to read his lips!”

After raising one hand to the sky and pointing with the other—the one holding the knife—to the power point, the ancient medical mage cut the sheep’s throat. As blood poured down, the woman rose from the litter. She still seemed less than perfectly well, but far better than she had a moment before. As she was bowing to the man who had helped her, the scene faded away, to be replaced once more by modern underbrush.

“Even then, they knew life force helps make sorcery stronger,” Vanai said in musing tones. “But they didn’t know about ley lines: they still traveled on horseback and carried things in oxcarts.”

“Our ancestors were splendid intuitive sorcerers,” Brivibas said. “They had no true understanding of the mathematical relationships by which magic is harnessed though. Ley lines being a far more subtle phenomenon than power points, it is no wonder they failed either to discover them or to predict their existence.” He muttered something in Forthwegian that sounded angry, then returned to Kaunian: “A pity I could not learn more of the healing spell that fellow used.” With what looked like deliberate effort, he forced himself back toward calm. “At the very least, though, I can now definitively document this power point and its use in imperial times. And let us see what the learned Professor Frithstan thinks of that!” He held out his hands in appeal to Vanai: “I ask you, have Forthwegians any business meddling in Kaunian history?”

“My grandfather, they say it is also the history of Forthweg,” she answered. “Some of them, from the books and journals I have read, are scholars to be respected.”

“A few,” Brivibas sniffed. “A handful. Most write for the greater glory of Forthweg, a subject, believe me, of scant intrinsic value.”

He fumed all the way back to the village of Oyngestun, about ten miles west of Gromheort, where he and Vanai made their home. Only when he started tramping along the dusty main street of the village did he fall silent; Forthwegians in Oyngestun outnumbered people of Kaunian blood four or five to one, and failed to appreciate the way the elder folk looked down on them as barbarians.

Falling silent didn’t always help. A shopkeeper came out to stand on the board sidewalk in front of his sleepy place of business and call, “Hey, old man, have fun playing with your shadows and ghosts?” He set hands on hips and laughed.

“Yes, thank you,” Brivibas answered in reluctant Forthwegian. He stalked along stiff-backed, like a cat with ruffled dignity.

That only made the shopkeeper laugh louder. He reached out with one of his big, beefy hands, palm up, fingers spread and slightly hooked, as if he were about to grab Vanai’s backside. Rude Forthwegian men—often a redundancy—enjoyed aiming that gesture at trousered women of Kaunian blood. Vanai ignored it so ostentatiously, the shopkeeper had to lean against the whitewashed plaster of his front wall to keep from falling over with what he reckoned mirth.

Fewer young Forthwegian louts were on the streets and cluttering the taverns of Oyngestun than would have been true a few weeks earlier, though: the army had summoned them to fight the Algarvians. King Penda had also taken a fair number of men of Kaunian blood from Oyngestun into his service. As long as they dwelt in his realm and had blood in their veins, he didn’t care what sort of blood it was.

Brivibas’s house was in the middle of the Kaunian section, on the west side of the village. Not all Kaunians in Oyngestun dwelt there, and a few Forthwegians lived among them, but for the most part each of the two peoples followed its own path through the world.

Here and there, the two folk did mix. When Vanai saw a tall, lean man with a dark beard or a fair-haired woman who was built like a brick, she pitied their Kaunian ancestors. In a village like Oyngestun, such mingling was rare. It was not common in Gromheort, either. In worldly—Brivibas called it decadent—Eoforwic, though, from what Vanai had heard, it was in some circles taken for granted.

“My grandfather,” she said suddenly as they went inside, “you could be a scholar at the King’s University, did you so choose. Why have you been content to stay here in Oyngestun all your days?”

Brivibas stopped so abruptly, she almost ran into him. “Why?” he said, perhaps as much to himself as to Vanai. After a considerable pause for thought, he went on, “Here, at least, I know the Forthwegians who dis-^; like me because I have light hair. In the capital, I would ever be taken by surprise. Some surprises are delightful. Some, like that one, I would sooner do without.”

At first, Vanai thought that was the most foolish answer she’d ever heard. The longer she thought about it, though, the more sense it made.

All things considered, Istvan could have liked the island of Obuda. The weather was mild, or at least he thought so: having grown up in the domain of the Hetman of Zalaber in central Gyongyos, his standards of comparison were not stringent. The soil was rich—again, by his standards. He did not mind military discipline; his father had clouted him harder than his sergeant did. The Obudans were friendly, the women often delightfully so. They said they preferred Arpad, the Ekrekek of Gyongyos, to the Seven Princes of Kuusamo as their overlord.

When Istvan remarked on that in the barracks one morning, Sergeant Jokai laughed at him. “They’re whores, is what they are,” Jokai said. “Two years ago, before we bounced the Kuusamans off this rock, you’d better believe the natives were telling them how wonderful they were, too.”

“It could be, I suppose,” Istvan said.

“Could be, nothing—it is.” Jokai spoke with great assurance. “And if those slant-eyed whoresons throw us off of here again, the Obudans’ll tell ’em what great heroes they are. And if any of our boys didn’t get away, they’ll tell the Kuusamans where they’re hiding.”

Arguing with a sergeant wasn’t smart, not unless you were fond of latrine detail. Istvan wasn’t. He poured down his morning beer—that was brought from home, for the stuff the natives brewed wasn’t fit to drink; it was, in his view, barely fit for removing varnish—and went outside.

The barracks lay just outside of Sorong, the biggest town on the island, which didn’t boast more than three, plus a couple of smaller villages. Sorong was halfway up a hill the Obudans called Mount Sorong. That made Istvan want to laugh. If the natives ever saw a real mountain, like the ones that towered above his own home village, they’d take that name and throw it into the sea: the stubby little hill didn’t come close to deserving it.

But, since it was the highest ground on Obuda, though, Istvan could see a long way from where he stood. Down below were small patches of timber and long stretches of wheat and barley fields and vegetable gardens. Out past them, the surf rolled up the beach, then slid back down again.

Istvan had never seen the ocean before he went into the army. Its immensity fascinated him. He could spy a couple of other islands, blue and misty in the distance. Otherwise, the water went on forever: or as far as his eye could reach, which amounted to the same thing. He was used to looking up if he wanted to see the sky, not straight out.

When he did look up, he spied a couple of dragons circling overhead, so high that, even with their enormous wingspans, they seemed only dots, midges seen at arm’s length. They floated as high as any of the peaks serrating the skyline back home. Up there, the air got cold and thin. The fliers swaddled themselves in furs and leather, the way hunters did when they went after snow leopards or marauding mountain apes.

His reveries were rudely interrupted when Sergeant Jokai came out behind him. Sergeants were unlikely to know any other way to interrupt a reverie. “Time on your hands, eh?” Jokai said. “That’s a shame. That’s a crying shame. Why don’t you go police the dragon pens? The scouts won’t be back for a while, that’s plain.”

“Have a heart, Sergeant,” Istvan pleaded.

He might as well have asked for the moon. “Go draw your leathers and go get to work,” Jokai said implacably. He hated idleness in any form. Poor Istvan hadn’t yet perfected the art of looking busy even when he wasn’t.

Cursing under his breath, he went over to the dragon pens—at the prescribed brisk march, because Jokai was watching—and pulled on elbow-length leather gauntlets and leather shin protectors that fit over the tops of his shoes. He grabbed a rake and a broom and a pail.

Turul, the head dragonkeeper, chuckled as Istvan donned the protective gear. “And how did you win the prize?” he asked.

“I was breathing,” Istvan answered bitterly.

Turul chuckled again. “Don’t do too much of that while you’re working, or you’ll be sorry afterwards.”

“I’m already sorry,” Istvan said. All that did was make the dragon-keeper laugh louder than ever. Istvan himself was something less than amused. Mucking out after horses or unicorns was nasty, smelly work. Mucking out after dragons was nasty, smelly, dangerous work.

He shoveled dung and raked foul straw, doing his best not to let any of the fetid stuff—and it was far more fetid than what horses and unicorns produced—touch bare skin. The brimstone and quicksilver dragons ate along with their meat made their wastes not just odorous but corrosive. They also made their wastes toxic, for those who dealt with them over years. Mad as a dragonkeeper was a common expression, but not one Istvan had the nerve to use around Turul.

Istvan cursed when a couple of drops of dragon piss splashed up and caught him on the arm above the gauntlet. The stuff burned like acid. It was acid. He snatched up some clean straw from a corner of the pen and scrubbed it off. It left behind a nasty red welt.

A copper-skinned Obudan boy watched him, wide-eyed. Dragons fascinated the locals. Even wild ones were rare all through the long reach of islands between Kuusamo and the western mainland of Derlavai. None of the islanders had ever imagined taming them. That a man could ride one high into the heavens left the locals astonished and awed.

No matter how astonished and awed they were, Istvan didn’t feel like being watched right now. He grabbed a ball of dragon dung with his gauntleted hand and made as if to throw it at the Obudan boy. The boy fled, shrieking with laughter.

Istvan laughed a little himself, some of his good humor restored. He brought the tools back to Turul and dumped the contents of the pails in a special slit trench that had been dug even farther away from the streams than the Gyongyosian soldiers’ latrines. Then, with a sigh of relief, he stripped off the gauntlets and the shin protectors and hung those up, too.

He hadn’t even started to walk away when he saw one of the scout dragons spiralling down toward a pen he had just cleaned. He shook his fist at the great beast. “If you shit in there again, you can clean it up yourself,” he called. Turul thought that was pretty funny. Istvan didn’t. He meant it from the bottom of his heart.

Down came the dragon, with a great fluttering of wings as it landed. The blast of wind from them almost knocked Istvan off his feet. The flier sprang off the beast’s neck, secured its chain to the iron post in the center of the pen, and started to dash away. “Who set fire to your breeks?” Turul asked.

“We’re going to have company,” the flier answered, and pointed west. He said no more, but hurried away to give his superiors a detailed account of what kind of company and how soon.

Only one kind of company mattered, though: the Kuusamans. Several ley lines converged on Obuda. That was why Gyongyos and Kuusamo kept fighting over the island. The natives’ sorcerers hadn’t discovered ley lines. They sailed by wind and paddle; several fishing boats bobbed in the ocean off the island.

“If we weren’t fighting the Unkerlanters, too, we’d kick Kuusamo hard enough to make the Seven Princes leave us alone,” Istvan said hotly.

Turul shrugged. “If all seven of the Princes ever walked in the same line, they might do the same to us. Nobody’s giving this war everything he had—and a good thing, too, says I.”

Being young and from the back country, Istvan said, “Not bloody likely!”

“I’ll bet the recruiters smiled when they got their hands on you.” Turul smiled, too, but not altogether pleasantly.

Drums started thudding an alarm. Istvan forgot about the cynical dragonkeeper and ran to snatch up his stick and to assemble so an officer could send him to a battle station. He almost collided with several of his squadmates, who were also doing their best to seem seasoned soldiers. None of them had yet seen combat. Istvan was half eager, half terrified.

The Obudans had seen combat, even if they hadn’t taken part in it. They had their own strong opinion on the subject, and showed it by fleeing the town of Sorong. Some ran up toward the top of Mt. Sorong, others just headed off into the woods. A few carried sacks of coarse native cloth stuffed with their belongings; most didn’t bother, and took off with nothing but the robes on their backs.

“Have no fear, fierce warriors of Ekrekek Arpad!” Major Kisfaludy cried. Every tawny strand of his beard seemed to quiver from great emotion. “We have a surprise in store for the Kuusamans, if those little slant-eyed demons ever dare set foot on the soil of this island.” His grin was both fierce and conspiratorial. “They can have no notion of how many dragons we’ve flown into Obuda since we took it back from them.”

In his mind’s eye, Istvan saw dragons dropping eggs around and then on Kuusaman ships that presumed to approach Obuda. He saw some of those ships burning and others fleeing east down the ley lines as fast as they could go. He joined the rest of the squad, the rest of the whole unit, in a rousing cheer.

“And now, down toward the beach,” Major Kisfaludy said. “If any Kuusamans are lucky enough to land on Obuda, we shall drive them back into the sea.”

Along with his comrades, Istvan cheered again. Wings thundered, off in the distance, as dragons hurled themselves and their fliers into the air. Istvan laughed to think of the dreadful surprise the enemy would get when flame and raw energy consumed them. If they were rash enough to set themselves against the will of Arpad the ekrekek, they deserved nothing better, not as far as he was concerned.

He trotted down a path through the woods toward the beach. At the edge of the trees, sheltered among logs and rocks, stood egg-tossers and their crews, also ready to rain fire down on any Kuusamans who reached land. Istvan waved to the crews, then filed into a trench.

After that, he had nothing to do but wait. He watched the dragons wing their way east against targets they could see, but which the bulge of the earth hid from his eyes. And then he watched in some surprise as dragons came out of the east toward those that had flown from Obuda. He scratched his head. Was a flight returning already?

Sergeant Jokai cursed horribly. At last, the curses cooled to coherence:

“The slant-eyes have gone and loaded a ship full of dragons. Life just got uglier, aye, it did.”

Sure enough, while some of the Gyongyosian dragons arrowed down toward whatever Kuusaman ships lay below Istvan’s horizon, others wheeled in a dance of death with the enemy’s fliers. When a couple of the great beasts flew back toward Obuda, neither Istvan nor anyone else on the ground knew whether or not to blaze at them.

One was plainly laboring, doing more gliding than stroking with its left wing. It crashed down on to the sand not twenty feet in front of Istvan, which let him see how badly that wing was burned. The bloodied flier, a Gyongyosian, staggered toward the trench. “We drove ’em back!” he called, and fell on his face.

A couple of soldiers ran out and scooped him up. Sergeant Jokai cursed again. “We drove ’em back this time,” he said, “on account of we had a surprise to match their surprise, and because we spotted ’em early. But flying dragons off a ship! The Kuusaman bastards have gone and complicated the war, curse ’em to powerless.” Istvan was suddenly just as well pleased not to have received his initiation into combat, at least from the receiving end.

Pekka looked out at the students filing into the auditorium. It was hardly the biggest hall at Kajaani City College, but that did not dismay her. Theoretical sorcery, unlike the more practical applications of the art, was not a ley line to fame or riches. Without theoretical sorcery, though, no one would ever have realized ley lines existed, let alone figured out how to use them.

She set her hands on the lectern, took a deep breath, and began: before anything else, ritual. “Before the Kaunians came, we of Kuusamo were here. Before the Lagoans came, we of Kuusamo were here. After the Kaunians departed, we of Kuusamo were here. We of Kuusamo are here. After the Lagoans depart, we of Kuusamo shall be here.”

Softly, her students repeated the unadorned but proud phrases. A couple of the students were of Kaunian blood, from Valmiera or Jelgava; another handful were Lagoans. Their inches and beaky features and yellow and auburn hair set them apart from the Kuusaman majority (though some who served the Seven Princes, especially from the eastern part of the realm, might almost have been Lagoans by looks). Regardless of their homelands, they joined in the ritual. If they refused, they did not attend Pekka’s lectures.

“Mankind has used the energies manifested and released at power points since long before the beginning of recorded history,” she began. Her students scribbled notes. Watching them amused her. Most of them took down everything she said, even when it was something they already knew. For those who advanced in the discipline, that would end. Theoretical sorcery was, after all, about the essential, not the accidental in which it was surrounded.

“Only improvements in both the theoretical underpinnings of sorcery and in sorcerous instrumentation have enabled us to advance beyond what was known in the days of the Kaunian Empire,” Pekka went on. She held up an amulet of amber and lodestone, such as a mage might use at sea. “Please note that these phenomena have gone hand in hand. Improved instruments of magecraft had yielded new data, which, in turn, have forced improvements in theory, making it correspond more closely to observed reality. And new theory has also led to new instruments to exploit and expand upon it.”

She turned and wrote on a large sheet of slate behind her the law of similarity—similar causes produce similar effects—and the law of contagion—objects once in contact continue to influence each other at a distance. Like her body, her script was small and precise and elegant.

One of the students in the front row muttered discontentedly to her benchmate: “What does she think we are, morons? They knew that much back in the Kaunian Empire.”

Pekka nodded. “Yes, they did know the two laws back in the days of the Empire. Our own ancestors”—like her, the student was of Kuusaman blood—“knew them before the Kaunians crossed the Strait of Valmiera and came to our island. The ancestors of the Gyongyosians discovered them independently. Some of the savages in the distant jungles of equatorial Siaulia and on the island of the Great North Sea know them, too. Even the shaggy Ice People know them, though they may have learned them from us or from the folk of Derlavai.”

The student looked as if she wished she’d never opened her mouth. In her place, Pekka would have wished the same thing. But wishes had no place in theoretical sorcery. Pekka resumed:

“What we have here is qualitative, not quantitative. The laws of similarity and contagion state that these effects occur, but not how they occur or to what degree they occur. That is what we shall be contemplating during the rest of the term.”

She covered the sheet of slate with symbols and numbers a couple of times before the lecture ended, pausing to use an old wool rag to wipe it clean before cluttering it once more. When she dismissed the students, one of them came up to her, bowed, and asked, “Mistress Pekka, could you not have cleansed the slate by magecraft instead of bothering with that rag?”

“A mage with a stronger practical bent than mine would have had an easier time of it, but yes, I could have done that.” Pekka hid most of her amusement; she got this sort of question about every other term. She could see the followup gleaming in the young man’s eyes, and forestalled it: “I use the rag instead of magic because using the rag is easier than any magic I could make. One thing a mage must learn is, that he can do something does not necessarily mean he should do it.”

He stared at her, his eyes as wide as a Kuusaman’s could be, nothing but incomprehension on his face. “What’s the point of magic, if not doing things?” he asked.

“Knowing what things to do?” Pekka suggested gently. No, the student did not understand; she could see as much. Perhaps he would begin to by the end of the term. Perhaps not, too. He was very young. And, being a man, he was likelier to think of limits as things to be overcome than to be respected.

He went off shaking his head. Pekka permitted herself a small smile. She dealt with a couple of other questions of smaller import, though ones more immediately urgent to the students asking them: matters of text and examinations. And then, as a new group of chattering young men and women began coming into the auditorium for the lecture on crystallography that followed hers, Pekka neatly tucked her notes into a small leather valise and left the hall.

The sun had come out while she was speaking, and puddles from the previous night’s rain sparkled, sometimes dazzlingly. Even in summer, though, the sunlight had a watery quality to it. Kuusamo was a land of mists and fogs and drizzles, a land where the sky went from gray to grayish blue and back again, a land where the rich and brilliant greens of forest and meadow and hillside had to make up for the drabness overhead.

And they did. So everyone in Kuusamo proudly boasted. Pekka was no different from her countrymen in that. But, four or five years before—no, it had to be five, because the war with Gyongyos hadn’t started—she’d taken a holiday on the famous golden beaches of northern Jelgava. Her skin, not far from golden itself, withstood the fierce sun better than the pale hides of the Jelgavans who toasted themselves on the sand. That was one of the memories she’d brought home to Kajaani. Another—and she could still call it up whenever she chose, as if she lay naked on the beach again—was the astonishing color of the sky. Passages of Kaunian poetry that had been obscure suddenly took on new meaning for her.

Here, though, such colors, such heat, were only memories. Kajaani, on the southern coast of Kuusamo, looked out across the Narrow Sea southeast toward the land of the Ice People and straight south toward the endless ice floes at the bottom of the world. Pekka straightened her slim shoulders. She enjoyed remembering Jelgava. She would not have wanted to live there. Kajaani was home.

That mattered very much to a Kuusaman. Picking her way around the puddles, Pekka really noticed the buildings that more often just formed the backdrop before which she played out her life. Most of them were wooden: Kuusamo was a land of wide forests. Some of the timber was stained, some pale with weathering. Very little was painted, not on the outside; gaudy display was alien to her people. The handful of brick buildings harmonized with the rest. They were brown or yellow-brown or tan—no reds or oranges to jar the eyes.

“No,” she said softly, but with no less pride than that, “we are no branch from the Algarvic stem, nor the Kaunian, either. Let them swagger and preen. We endure.”

She hardly knew when she left the college grounds and went into Kajaani itself. The people on the streets here were a little older, a little more sober looking. The Lagoans and men from the Kaunian countries who leavened the mix were more apt to be sailors than students. Shops showed their wares, but the shopkeepers didn’t rush out, grab her by the arm, and try to drag her inside, as happened in Jelgava. That would have been gaudy display, too.

A public caravan hummed by her, the wind of its passage ruffling the rainwater in the gutters. The two coaches were also of wood, with their roofs overhanging the windows to either side to ward against the weather. In Lagoas or Sibiu, they would have been metal. In Valmiera or Jelgava, they would have been painted to look like marble, whatever they were made of.

Pekka paid a couple of coppers for a news sheet and walked along reading it. She made a clucking noise of dismay when she saw that the Gongs had thrown back the fleet trying to retake Obuda. Admiral Risto was quoted as saying, “They had more dragons up their sleeve than we expected. We’ll regroup and have another go at them sometime later.”

Swemmel of Unkerlant would have had Risto’s head for a failure like that. The Naval Ministry issued a statement over the signature of the Seven Princes expressing full confidence in the admiral. Lopping off heads was not the Kuusaman style. Pekka wondered, just for a moment, whether the war would have gone better if it had been.

In the war on the mainland of Derlavai, Valmiera and Jelgava and Forthweg all claimed smashing victories over the Algarvians. Algarve reported smashing victories over her foes, too. Somebody was lying. Pekka smiled wryly. Maybe everybody was lying.

She walked up into the hills that rose swiftly from the gray, booming sea. Gulls wheeled screeching, high overhead. A jay in a pine sapling screeched, too, on a different note. A bright yellow brimstone butterfly fluttered past. This time, genuine pleasure filled Pekka’s smile. Butterflies had only a brief stretch of summer to be on the wing, down here in Kajaani.

Pekka turned off the road and down a narrower one. Her sister and brother-in-law dwelt next door to her, in a weathered wooden house with tall pines behind. Elimaki opened the door when she saw Pekka coming up the walk. Pekka’s son dodged past her and ran to his mother with a shout of glee.

She stooped down and took him in her arms. “Were you good for Aunt Elimaki, Uto?” she demanded, doing her imperfect best to sound severe. Uto nodded with grave four-year-old sincerity. Elimaki rolled her eyes, which surprised Pekka not at all.

Pekka took the egg of terror disguised as a small boy by the hand and led him to their own home, making sure he did nothing too drastic along the way. When she went inside, she said, “Try to keep the house halfway clean until your father comes home from the college.” Leino, her husband, was also a mage. This term, his last lecture came several hours later than hers.

Uto promised. He always promised. A four-year-old’s oaths were written on the wind. Pekka knew it. She took a duck from the rest crate. The Kaunians had developed that spell, and used it for paralyzing their foes—till both they and their neighbors found countermeasures for it. After that, it lay almost forgotten for centuries until, with greater understanding of exactly how it worked, modern researchers began applying it both to medicine and to preserving food. In the rest box, the plucked and gutted duck would have stayed fresh for many weeks.

Glazed with cranberry jam, it had just gone into the oven when something fell over with a crash. Pekka shut the oven door, splashed water on her hands, and hurried off to see what sort of atrocity Uto had committed this time.

Garivald was weeding—exactly what he was supposed to be doing—when King Swemmel’s inspectors paid his village a visit. The inspectors wore rock-gray tunics, as if they were Unkerlanter soldiers, and strode along as if they were kings themselves. Garivald knew what he thought of that, but letting them know wouldn’t have been efficient. Very much the reverse, in fact.

One of the inspectors was tall, the other short. But for that, they might have been stamped from the same mold. “You!” the tall one called to Garivald. “What’s the harvest going to look like here?”

“Still a little too early to tell, sir,” Garivald answered, as any man with an ounce—half an ounce—of sense would have done. Rain as the barley and rye were being gathered would be a disaster. It would be an even worse disaster than it might have otherwise, because the inspectors and their minions would cart off Swemmel’s share no matter what, leaving the village to get by on the remainder, if there was any.

“Still a little too early to tell,” the short one repeated. His accent said he came right out of Cottbus, the capital. In Garivald’s ears, it was harsh and choppy, well suited to its arrogant possessor. Southerners weren’t in such a big hurry when they opened their mouths. By talking slower, they made asses of themselves less often, too—or so they said when their overlords weren’t around to hear.

“If this whole Duchy of Grelz were more efficient all the way around, we’d be better off,” the tall one said.

If Swemmel’s men, and Kyot’s, hadn’t burned about every third village in the Duchy of Grelz back around the time Garivald was born, Unkerlant would have been better off. Being efficient was hard without a roof over your head in a southern winter. It was even harder with your fields trampled and your livestock stolen or killed. Even now, a generation later, the effects lingered.

The short inspector glared at Garivald, who had stayed on his knees and so was easy to look down on. “Don’t think you can cheat us by lying about how much you bring in, either,” he snapped. “We have ways of knowing. We have ways of making cheaters sorry, too.”

Garivald had to answer that. “I am only one farmer in this village, sir,” he said, genuine alarm in his voice now. He knew villages had vanished off the face of the earth after trying to hold out on Cottbus: that was the excuse King Swemmel’s men used once the dirty work was done, anyhow. He went on, “I have no way of knowing how much the whole village will bring in. The only one who could even guess would be Waddo, the firstman.” He’d never liked Waddo, and didn’t care what the inspectors did to him.

They both laughed, nastily. “Oh, he knows what we can do,” the tall one said. “Never fret yourself about that. But we want to make sure everyone else knows, too. That’s efficient, that is.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Everybody needs to know King Swemmel’s will, not just that ugly lump of a Waddo.”

“Aye, sir,” Garivald said, more warmly than he’d expected. If Swemmel’s inspectors could see that Waddo was an ugly lump, maybe they weren’t asses after all. No. That, surely, gave them too much credit. Maybe they weren’t such dreadful asses after all.

“A lot of men in this village,” the short one remarked. “A lot of young men in this village.” He jotted a note, then asked Garivald, “When did the impressers last visit here?”

“Sir, I don’t really recall, I’m afraid.” The peasant plucked a weed from the ground with altogether unnecessary violence.

“Inefficient.” The inspectors spoke together. Garivald didn’t know whether they meant him or the impressers or both at once. He hoped the village wouldn’t have to try to bring in the harvest with half the young men dragged into the army to go off and fight Gyongyos. He hoped even more that he wouldn’t be one of those young men.

“Does this powersforsaken place boast a crystal?” the tall inspector asked. “I didn’t see one in your firstman’s shack.”

Waddo owned the finest house in the village. Garivald wished his own were half so large. Waddo had even added on half a second story to give some of his children rooms of their own. Everyone thought that a citified luxury—everyone but the inspector, evidently. Garivald answered, “Sir, we don’t. We’re a long way from the closest ley line, and—’

’We know that,” the short inspector broke in. “I’m so saddle-sore, I can hardly walk.” He rubbed at his left buttock.

And we like it just fine, Garivald thought. That was one reason impressers and inspectors didn’t come round very often. Nobody hereabouts missed them. Nobody hereabouts missed anyone from Cottbus. In the olden days, the Duchy of Grelz—the Kingdom of Grelz, it had been then, till the Union of Thrones—had been the most important part of Unkerlant. Now the men from the hot, dusty north lorded it over their southern cousins. As far as Garivald was concerned, they could go away and never come back. Bandits, that’s what they were, nothing but bandits.

He wondered if they were efficient bandits. If they happened to suffer unfortunate accidents, would anyone track them down and take the kind of revenge for which Swemmel had become all too famous? His shoulders worked in a large shrug. He didn’t think the chance worth taking, worse luck. Odds were no one else in the village would, cither.

The inspectors went off to inflict themselves on someone else. As Garivald kept on pulling weeds, he imagined their stems were the inspectors’ necks. That sent him back to the village at the close of day in a better mood than he would have thought possible while the inspectors raked him over the coals.

He never thought to wonder what the place looked like to the men from the capital. To him, it was simply home: three or four lines of wooden houses with thatched roofs, and a blacksmith’s shop and a couple of taverns among them. Chickens roamed the dirt streets, pecking at whatever they could find. A sow in a muddy wallow between two houses looked out at Garivald and grunted. Dogs and children roamed the streets, too, sometimes chasing chickens, sometimes one another. He swatted at a fly that landed on the back of his neck. A moment later, another one bit him in the arm.

In winter, the flies died. In winter, though, the livestock would stay in the house with him and his family. That kept the beasts warm, and helped keep him and his wife and his boy and baby girl warm, too. Winters in Grelz were not for the fainthearted.

Annore was chopping up parsnips and rhubarb and throwing them into a stewpot full of barley and groats when he came into the house. “I’ll put in the blood sausages in a little while,” she said. When she smiled, he still saw some of the pert good looks that had drawn him to her half a dozen years before. Most of the time, though, she just looked tired.

Garivald understood that; he was bone-weary himself. “Any beer left in the bucket?” he asked.

“Plenty.” Annore tapped it with her sandal. “Dip me up a mug, too, will you?” When her husband did, she murmured a word of thanks. Then she said, “People say the inspectors were buzzing around you out in the fields.” The words came out with the usual mixture of hate and fear—and, as usual, fear predominated.

But Garivald shrugged his broad shoulders. “It wasn’t too bad. They were being efficient”—he laced the catchword with scorn—” so they didn’t spend too much of their precious time on me.” He raised his wooden mug of beer to his lips and took a long pull. After wiping his upper lip on his sleeve, he went on, “The one bad part was when they asked if the impressers had been through this part of the Duchy any time lately.”

“What did you tell them?” Annore asked. Yes, fear predominated.

He shrugged again. “Told ’em I didn’t know. They can’t prove I’m lying, so that looked like the efficient thing to do.” Now he laughed at King Swemmel’s favorite term—but softly, lest anyone but his wife hear.

Slowly, Annore nodded. “I don’t see any better choices,” she said. “But not all inspectors are fools, even if they are bastards. They’re liable to figure out that I don’t know means haven’t seen ’em for years. If they do …”

If they did, sergeants would teach a lot of young men from the village the arcane mysteries of marching and countermarching. Garivald knew he was liable—no, likely—to be one of them. He’d been too young the last time the impressers came through. He wouldn’t be too young now. They’d give him a stick and tell him to blaze away for the glory of King Swemmel, which mattered to him not in the least. The Gyongyosians had sticks, too, and were in the habit of blazing back. He didn’t want to go to the edge of the world to fight them. He didn’t want to go anywhere. All he wanted was to stay with his family and bring in the harvest.

His daughter Leuba woke up and started to cry. Annore scooped her out of the cradle, then slid an arm out of her tunic, bared a breast, and put the baby on it. “You’ll have to chop the sausage,” she said above Leuba’s avid gulping noises.

“All right,” Garivald replied, and he did. He almost chopped off his finger a couple of times, too, because he paid as much attention to his wife’s breast as to what he was supposed to be doing. Annore noticed, and stuck out her tongue at him. They both laughed. Leuba tried to laugh, too, but didn’t want to stop nursing while she did it. She coughed and choked and sprayed milk out her nose.

When the smell of the vegetables and blood sausage made his stomach growl more fiercely than any inspector from Cottbus, Garivald went to the door and shouted for his son Syrivald to come in and eat supper. Syrivald came. He was covered in mud and dirt, and all the more cheerful because of it, as any five-year-old boy would have been. “I could eat a bear,” he announced.

“We haven’t got a bear,” Annore told him. “You’ll eat what we give you.” And so Syrivald did, from a child-sized wooden bowl, a smaller copy of the one from which his parents spooned up supper. Annore gave Leuba little bits of barley and groats and sausage on the top of her spoon. The baby was just learning to eat things that weren’t milk, and seemed intent on trying to get as messy as her big brother.

The sun went down about the time they finished supper. Annore did a little cleaning up by the light of a lamp that smelled of the lard it burned. Syrivald started yawning. He lay down on a bench against the wall and went to sleep. Annore nursed Leuba once more, then laid her in the cradle.

Before his wife could set her tunic to rights, Garivald cupped in his hand the breast at which the baby had been feeding. “Don’t you think of anything else?” Annore asked.

“What should I think of, the impressers?” Garivald retorted. “This is better.” He drew her to him. Presently, it was a great deal better. By the moans she tried to muffle, Annore thought so, too. She fell asleep very quickly. Garivald stayed awake longer. He did think of the impressers, whether he wanted to or not.