Into the Darkness

7.

Dragons swooped low over Trapani. Marching in the triumphal procession through the streets of the Algarvian capital, Colonel Sabrino hoped none of the miserable beasts would choose the moment in which it flew over him to void. Long and intimate experience informed his mistrust of dragons.

No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than he had to step smartly to keep from putting his foot down on a pile of behemoth dung. Squadrons of the great beasts were interspersed among the marching troops, to give the swarms of civilians who packed the sidewalks something extra at which to cheer.

Sabrino marched with his shoulders back, his head up, his chin thrust forward. He wanted everyone who saw him to know he was a fierce fighting man, one who would never take a step back from the foe. Algarvians made much of appearances. And why not? Sabrino thought. Have the mages not proved that appearances help shape reality?

He also wanted people, especially pretty women, to notice. He was happy with his wife, he was happy with his mistress, but he would not have been broken-hearted had some sweet young thing adoringly cast herself at his feet. No, he would not have been broken-hearted at all.

Whether he would find himself so lucky after the end of the parade, he did not know. He was pretty sure a good many soldiers would, though. Women kept running out to kiss them as they tramped past. A lot of the cheers that washed over them weren’t the sort of cheers soldiers usually got. They sounded more like the ones excited followers usually gave popular balladeers or actors.

Behind Sabrino, Captain Domiziano must have been thinking along similar lines, for he said, “If a man can’t get laid today, sir, it’s only because he’s not trying very hard.”

“You’re right about that,” Sabrino answered. “You are indeed.” He kept eyeing women, though he told himself that was foolish: the ones he passed here would be long gone by the time the parade ended. But his eyes were less disciplined than his mind—or, to put it another way, he enjoyed watching regardless of whether or not he could do anything but watch.

People held up signs saying things like GOODBYE, FORTHWEG! and ONE DOWN, THREE TO GO! and ALGARVE THE INVINCIBLE! It hadn’t been like that in the Six Years’ War, Sabrino remembered. The kingdom had fought only reluctantly then. Now, with her neighbors declaring war on her after she had done no more than retrieve what was rightfully hers, Algarve was united behind King Mezentio—and behind the army that had won this triumph.

The parade ended at the royal palace, men and behemoths tramping by under the balcony from which King Mezentio had announced that Algarve was at war with Forthweg and Sibiu, Jelgava and Valmiera. Mezentio stood there now, reviewing the troops who had won such a smashing victory. Sabrino doffed his hat and waved it in the direction of his sovereign. “Mezentio!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, his cry one of hundreds, thousands, aimed at the king.

Around the palace to the far side, the side opposite the Royal Square and also out of sight of the crowd, the triumphal procession disintegrated. Behemoth riders took their beasts off through alleys so narrow, they had to go in single file. Martinets led their companies and regiments back toward their barracks. Officers with more heart gave their men liberty. The released soldiers hurried back toward the Royal Square to see what arrangements they could make for themselves.

Sabrino had just turned his men loose, and was about to follow them back toward the square and try his luck when someone tapped him on the shoulder. He spun, to find himself facing a man in the green, red, and white livery of a palace servant. “You are the Count Sabrino?” the servitor asked.

“I am,” Sabrino admitted. “What do you desire of me?”

Before answering, the servant made a mark on the list, probably checking off his name. Then he said, “I have the honor, my lord, of inviting you to a reception in an hour’s time in the Salon of King Aquilante V, wherein his Majesty shall express his gratitude to the nobility for supporting him and Algarve during our present crisis.”

“I am honored,” Sabrino said, bowing. “You may tell his Majesty that I shall certainly attend him.”

He wondered if the servant even heard; the fellow had already turned away to look for the next man on his list. He must have assumed Sabrino would accept the invitation. And why not? Who in his right mind would refuse a summons from his sovereign? Sabrino hurried toward the nearest palace entrance.

Guards there unsmilingly examined his uniform, his dragonflier’s badge, and his badge of nobility. They ticked off his name as the servitor who’d tendered him the invitation had done. Irritated, Sabrino snapped, “I am not a Sibian spy, gentlemen, nor a Valmieran assassin, either.”

“We believe you, my lord,” one of the guards said. “Now we believe you. Pass on, and enjoy the pleasures of the palace.”

Sabrino knew his way to the Salon of King Aquilante V; he had attended several other gatherings there. Nonetheless, he did not object when a serving woman stepped forward to guide him. He would have liked it even better had she guided him to her bedchamber, but walking along flirting with her was pleasant enough.

“Count Sabrino!” a herald cried in a great voice when he entered the salon. To his disappointment, the pretty serving girl went off to escort someone else. Faithless hussy, he thought, and laughed at himself.

Tables piled high with refreshments stood against one wall. He took a glass of white wine and a slice from a round of flatbread piled high with melted cheeses, salt fish, eggplant slices, and olives. Thus equipped, he sallied forth on to the social battlefield.

Naturally, he did his best to put himself in the way of King Mezentio, who circulated through the reception hall. Being a resourceful man, he soon succeeded in drawing the king’s notice. “Your Majesty!” he cried, and bowed low enough to gladden a protocol officer’s heart without spilling a drop of wine or losing a single olive from his flatbread.

“Powers above, straighten up!” Mezentio said irritably. “Do you think I’m King Swemmel, to need all that head-knocking nonsense? He thinks it makes people afraid of him, but what does an Unkerlanter know? Nothing to speak of—Unkerlanters grow like onions, with their heads in the ground.”

“Even so, your Majesty,” Sabrino said, nodding. “If only there weren’t so many of them.”

“By the hamhanded way he’s fighting that war against Zuwayza, Swemmel is doing his best to make them fewer,” the king answered. “And my congratulations, by the way, on how well you and your wing fought above Wihtgara. I was very pleased by the reports I read of your exploits.”

“I shall pass on your praise to my dragonfliers,” Sabrino said with another bow. “They, after all, are the ones who earned it for me.”

“Spoken as a good officer should speak,” Mezentio said. “Tell me, Count, in your fighting above Forthweg, did you find many of Kaunian blood opposing you on dragons painted in Forthwegian colors?”

“Speaking solely from my own experience, your Majesty, that’s hard to say,” Sabrino replied. “One often doesn’t get close enough to the foe to see exactly who he is. When the dragons fly high, going up there’s a chilly business, too, so the men who fly them are often bundled against the cold. I’m given to understand, though, that the Forthwegians set a good many obstacles in the way of Kaunians who seek to fly dragons, the same as they do against Kaunian officers of any sort.”

“I know for a fact that last is true.” Mezentio frowned. “Curious how the Forthwegians look down their beaky noses at the Kaunians inside their own borders, but follow like lapdogs when the Kaunians in the east seek to savage us.”

“They’ve paid for their folly,” Sabrino said.

“Everyone who harms Algarve shall pay for his folly,” Mezentio declared. “Everyone who has ever harmed Algarve shall pay for his folly. We lost the Six Years’ War. This time, come what may, we shall win.”

“Certainly we shall, your Majesty,” Sabrino said. “The whole world is jealous of Algarve, of what we are and of the way we’ve pulled ourselves up by the bootstraps even after everyone piled on to us in the Six Years’ War.”

“Aye, the whole world is jealous—the whole world, and especially the Kaunian kingdoms,” Mezentio said. “You mark my words, Count: those yellow-haired folk still hate us for destroying their cozy little empire more than a thousand years ago. If they could kill us all, they would. Since they can’t, they seek to crush us so we may never rise again.”

“It won’t happen.” Sabrino spoke with great sincerity.

“Of course it won’t,” Mezentio said. “Are we as stupid as Unkerlanters, to let them scheme and plot to destroy us without making plans of our own?” The king laughed. “And the Unkerlanters are stupid indeed, with Swemmel always bellowing ‘Efficiency!’ at the top of his lungs and then blundering into one idiotic war after another.” He turned away from Sabrino toward a noble who stood waiting to be recognized. “And how are you, your Grace?”

Sabrino went back for another goblet of wine. That was more time than he’d enjoyed with the king in any other meeting. And Mezentio not only knew who he was—which he’d expected—but also where his wing had served—which he hadn’t. He didn’t fight to gain royal notice, but he wouldn’t turn down royal notice if it came his way.

He drifted through the room, greeting men he knew, flirting with serving women and the companions of nobles who happened to live in Trapani, and keeping his ears open for gossip. There was plenty; the only trouble was, he didn’t always know to what it referred. When one white-goateed general said to another, “We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down,” what door was he talking about? Whoever was standing behind it wouldn’t care to have it kicked in on him. Of that Sabrino was certain.

A commodore in naval black spoke to a colleague: “Well, this ought to set the history of warfare on the sea back about a thousand years.”

Laughing, his friend answered, “They pay off on what you do. They don’t pay off on how you do it.” Then he noticed Sabrino was listening. Whatever he said after that was in a voice too low for the dragonflier to hear. Annoyed at having been caught, Sabrino took himself elsewhere.

A woman put a hand on his arm. She wasn’t a servant; the green of her silk tunic was darker than that of the national banner, and she wore more gold and emeralds than a servant could even have dreamt of. As Algarvian women sometimes did, she came straight to the point: “My friend’s drunk himself asleep, and I don’t want to go back to my flat alone.”

He looked her up and down. “Your friend, my dear, is a fool. Tell me your name. I want to know whose fool he is.”

“I am Ippalca,” she answered, “and you are the famous Count Sabrino, the man in all the news sheets.”

“My sweet, I was famous long before the news sheets ever heard of me,” Sabrino said. “When we get back to your flat, I will show you why.” Ippalca laughed. Her eyes glowed. Sabrino slid an arm around her waist. Together, they left the Salon of King Aquilante V.

“Efficiency.” Leudast made the word into a curse. It had already doomed a lot of Unkerlanter soldiers. He looked around. After the homelike fields of western Forthweg, this Zuwayzi waste of sunbaked rock and blowing sand seemed a particularly cruel joke.

He checked his water bottle. It was full. He’d filled it at the last water hole, only half a mile or so south of where he was now. The Zuwayzin hadn’t poisoned that one. He’d seen men drink from it, and they’d taken no harm. The naked black savages hadn’t missed many water holes. They weren’t perfectly efficient themselves—just far too close for comfort.

Sergeant Magnulf trudged by. His boots scuffed through sand. His shoulders slumped, ever so slightly. Even his iron determination, which had never faltered during the war against Gyongyos, was wearing thin here. “Tell me again, Sergeant,” Leudast called to him. “Remind me why King Swemmel wants this land bad enough to take it away from anybody. Remind me why anybody who’s got it isn’t happy to give it to the first fool who wants it.”

Magnulf looked at him. “You need to be more efficient with your mouth, soldier,” he said tonelessly. “I know you didn’t mean to call King Swemmel a fool, but somebody else who was listening might get the idea you did. You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?”

Leudast considered. If they arrested him for disloyalty to King Swemmel, they’d take him out of this Zuwayzi wilderness. He wouldn’t have to worry about black men who wanted to blaze him—or, as army rumor had it, to cut his throat and drink his blood. On the other hand, he would have to worry about Swemmel’s interrogators. He might escape the Zuwayzin. The interrogators… no.

“Thank you, Sergeant,” he replied at last. “I’ll watch what I say.”

“You’d better.” Magnulf wiped his forehead on the sleeve of his tunic. The Unkerlanters called the tunic’s color rock gray, but it didn’t match any of the rocks hereabouts, which were various ugly shades of yellow. That also struck Leudast as inefficient, but he kept his mouth shut about it. Magnulf went on, “I’ll even answer your question. The king wants this land back because it used to belong to Unkerlant, and so it ought to again.

And the Zuwayzin don’t want us to have it on account of it blocks our path toward better country farther north.”

“Is there better country farther north?” Leudast asked, again speaking more freely than he should have. “Or does this miserable desert go on forever?”

“There’s supposed to be better country,” Magnulf said. “I suppose there must be better country—otherwise, the Zuwayzin couldn’t raise so many soldiers against us.”

That made sense. Along with the rest of the men in his company, Leudast slogged north. Thornbushes grew here and there among the rocks. Very little else did. Very little lived here, either—snakes and scorpions arid a few little pale foxes with enormous ears. Scavenger birds circled overhead, their wings looking as wide as those of dragons. They thought the Unkerlanter army would come to grief in the desert. Leudast remained far from sure they were wrong.

He tramped past a dead behemoth. The big beast hadn’t been blazed; its corpse bore no mark he could see. Maybe it had just keeled over from trying to haul the weight of its armor and weapons and riders through the desert. Since he felt like keeling over himself, Leudast knew a certain amount of sympathy for the poor brute. The army had its own scavengers; they’d already taken away the ironmongery the behemoth had carried on its back.

Magnulf pointed. “There’s the line,” he said: Unkerlanters crouching and sprawling behind stones, blazing away at the Zuwayzin who blocked their path. As Leudast got down behind a rock himself so he could crawl forward, one of his countrymen shrieked and clutched at his shoulder. This terrain was made for defense. A handful of men could hold up an army here—and had.

“Come on, you reinforcements, take your places,” an officer shouted. “We’ll get those black bastards out of there soon enough—see if we don’t.” He ordered some of the soldiers already in line forward to flank out the Zuwayzin who’d stalled the advance.

Leudast blazed away at the rocks behind which the enemy sheltered. He had no idea whether his beams hit anyone. At the least, they made the Zuwayzin keep their heads down while his comrades slid around by the right flank.

But more Zuwayzin waited on the right. They hadn’t been blazing, perhaps hoping to draw the very attack the officer had commanded. They broke it. After a few minutes, Unkerlanters came streaming back to the main line, some of them helping wounded comrades escape the enemy’s beams.

When the Zuwayzin attacked in turn, the Unkerlanters threw them back. That cheered Leudast—till he heard an officer say, “We’re the ones who are supposed to be moving forward, curse it, not the black men.”

“Tell it to the Zuwayzin—maybe they haven’t heard,” somebody not far from Leudast muttered. That struck him as dangerously inefficient speech, but he wasn’t inclined to report it. For the moment, he was content to be able to hold his position and not have to retreat.

He swigged from his water bottle. That wouldn’t last indefinitely, and, except for the known water holes, the dowsers hadn’t had any luck finding new supplies. Leudast found himself unsurprised: if no water was out there to find, the best dowsers in the world couldn’t find it. That meant the army had to depend on the familiar holes and on what ley-line caravans and animals could bring forward. By the knots of mages Leudast had seen working along the ley lines, the Zuwayzin had done their best to make them impassable. That did nothing to add to his peace of mind.

And then he stopped worrying about such minor details as perhaps dying of thirst in a few days. Off to the left, the west, eggs smashed against stone. Leudast automatically hugged the ground. Hard on the heels of those roars came exultant cries in a language he did not know and despairing ones in a language he did: “The Zuwayzin! The Zuwayzin are on our flank!”

“Camels!” Sergeant Magnulf used the word as vilely as Leudast had used efficiency before. “Bastards snuck around our cavalry again.” He bit out a few curses of a more conventional sort, then gathered himself. “Well, no help for it.” He looked westward to gauge how close the attackers were. “Fall back!” he shouted. “Fall back—form a line so we’re not enfiladed any more. Whatever happens, we have to hang on to that water hole back there.”

He was thinking about water, too, though in a more immediate sense than Leudast had been. In this sun-baked country, not thinking about water was impossible. No doubt the Zuwayzin were also thinking about it, and making for that water hole themselves. At least Magnulf was thinking, which seemed to be more than any of the Unkerlanter officers could say.

Leudast scrambled back toward a stone that offered good shelter against attack from the west. As happened whenever a force found itself outflanked, some soldiers panicked and fled toward the rear. As often happened when they did, they paid the price for panic: Zuwayzi beams cut them down.

Howling with triumph, the Zuwayzin stormed forward. Leudast blazed a black man who showed too much of himself. Several other Zuwayzin also went down, dead or shrieking in pain. Then the enemy started flitting from rock to rock again, having learned a good many Unkerlanters still held fight.

More eggs crashed down around Leudast. The Zuwayzin must have taken apart some light tossers and carried them on camelback. Sand and shattered rock pelted him. He wanted to claw a hole in the ground, jump in, and pull the hole shut over him. He couldn’t. And, if he stayed curled up behind this rock, the Zuwayzin could move forward and blaze him at their leisure.

Understanding that was easy. Making himself get up on one knee and blaze at the enemy was much harder, but he did it. He thought he wounded another Zuwayzi, too. But he could not stay where he was any more, for the Zuwayzin were still advancing. He slipped away to another stone, and then to another.

“We have to save the water hole!” an officer shouted, realizing only now what Magnulf had seen at once. “If we lose that water hole, we lose our grip on this whole stretch of desert.” He shouted orders pulling more men from what had been the advance and shifting them to the turned flank.

It wasn’t going to be enough. Leudast could see it wasn’t going to be enough. The Zuwayzin could see it wasn’t going to be enough, too. They knew what forcing the men of Unkerlant away from the water hole would mean. They were more clever than the Gongs, probably more clever than the Forthwegians, too. When they struck, they struck hard, and straight for the heart.

Leudast wondered if he had enough water to make it back to the next clean hole. It was, he knew, a long way to the south—a dreadfully long way, if a man was retreating with the enemy nipping at his heels. Maybe he could fill up the bottle before the black men reached this water hole.

More eggs fell—but these fell on the Zuwayzin. Dragons overhead had made the scavenger birds fly off. As the dragons wheeled, he saw their upper bodies were painted rock-gray: the color Unkerlant used. Now he shouted in triumph and the Zuwayzin in dismay. Unkerlanter egg-tossers well back of the line began adding their gifts to the ones the dragons were delivering.

A man in a rock-gray tunic took shelter behind the rock next to Leudast’s. “How’s it look, soldier?” he asked, an officer’s sharp snap in his voice.

“Not too bad, sir—not now,” Leudast answered, glancing over at the newcomer. That tunic was one a common soldier might have worn, but the collar bore a large star. Leudast’s eyes widened. Only one man in Unkerlant was entitled to wear that emblem. “Not too bad, my lord Marshal,” he corrected himself, wondering what a man like Rathar was doing at the front.

Rathar answered that question without his asking it: “Can’t find out what’s going on if I don’t see for myself.”

“Uh, aye, sir,” Leudast said. The marshal hadn’t just come to see. He’d conic to fight, and carried a stick like any other footsoldier’s. He used it, too, popping up to blaze at the Zuwayzin. Of course, he’d fought in the Six Years’ War and the Twinkings War, which meant he’d been around combat longer than Leudast had been alive. His happy grunt had to mean he’d got a beam home.

Looking around, Leudast saw Rathar had also brought his crystallomancer with him. The marshal barked out a stream of orders, which the mage relayed to his colleagues back with the reserves. Those orders sent men and egg-tossers and dragons up toward the battle. Anyone who disobeyed them or delayed by even a heartbeat speedily regretted it.

For the first time since plunging into the Zuwayzin desert, Leudast began to feel hope. Up till now, the Unkerlanters’ campaign had been bungled. Listening to Rathar’s crisp commands, he didn’t think the bungling would go on much longer.

It was Count Brorda’s birthday, a holiday in Gromheort. An Algarvian dwelt in Brorda’s castle these days, but he hadn’t bothered canceling the holiday. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to antagonize the Forthwegians over whom he sat in judgment, although Ealstan had a hard time imagining an Algarvian who cared a fig about what the folk of Gromheort thought.

More likely, the occupiers were just too lazy to bother changing what they’d found when they overran the city.

Whatever the cause, Ealstan was glad to escape school. He’d grown as sick of Algarvian irregular verbs as he had been of their classical Kaunian equivalents. And besides, the first fall rains had brought out the mushrooms.

Forthwegians were mad for mushrooms—not surprising, when so many good ones grew in their kingdom. They ate them fresh, they ate them dried, they ate them pickled, they ate them in salads, they ate them with olives: they ate them with any excuse, or none.

Markets were always full of mushrooms, but Ealstan, like most Forthwegians, was convinced the ones he picked himself were better than any he could buy. Like most Forthwegians, he knew the differences between the edible varieties and the ones that were poisonous; like his schoolmasters, his father had operated on the principle that a warmed backside made blood flow more freely to the brain. And so, armed with a cloth sack, he sallied forth with his cousin Sidroc to see what he could find.

“It will be good to get out of the city,” Sidroc said. Lowering his voice, he went on, “It will be good to get away from the cursed redheads, too.”

“I won’t say you’re wrong, because I think you’re right,” Ealstan said. “I just hope they let us out. All their checkpoints are still up.”

But the Algarvian soldiers at the checkpoint on the west side of town, seeing the sacks they carried, waved them through. “Mushrooms?” a soldier asked. Ealstan and Sidroc nodded. The Algarvian stuck out his tongue and made a horrible face to show what he thought of them. He spoke in his own language. His comrades laughed and nodded. They didn’t fancy mushrooms, either.

“More for us,” Ealstan said as soon as he was out of earshot of the guard who spoke Forthwegian. Sidroc nodded again.

Before long, the two cousins split up. That way, they would bring a wider assortment of mushrooms back to the house they still shared. That way, too, they wouldn’t quarrel if they both spotted a fine one at the same time. They’d quarreled over mushrooms before, more than once. Now they knew better.

Every so often, Ealstan would see someone else digging in a field or at the base of a tree. He didn’t offer to go and help any of these people. Some folks loved to chat and share. Rather more, though, were inclined to be surly, to say nothing of greedy. He learned that way himself. If a pretty girl came along and wanted to give him a hand, he might let her. He laughed at himself. He liked the idea, but knew better than to find it likely.

He worked his way north, getting his shoes soggy and his knees dirty.

One of the reasons he enjoyed hunting mushrooms—aside from the pleasure of eating them later—was that he never knew ahead of time what he’d find. He tossed a few meadow mushrooms into his sack, just to make sure he didn’t come home empty-handed. They were good enough, but no better than good enough.

Chanterelles were better than good enough. He picked some egg-yellow ones because of their fine flavor, and some vermilion ones because his father enjoyed them, even if he himself found them acrid. Then, in some open woods he found a clump of orange Kaunian Imperial mushrooms. He studied them with care before plucking them from the ground; they were related to death caps and destroyers, both deadly poisonous. Only after he made sure they were safe did they go into the sack. They would be delicious.

And he felt like cheering when he stumbled upon an indigo milky mushroom. It wasn’t one of his favorites as far as flavor went, but his mother always clapped her hands when he came home with one because the exotic color made any dish in which she used it more interesting.

Then he came to a stand of trees with oyster mushrooms and ear mushrooms growing on their trunks, especially on the southern sides where sunlight did not reach them. The oyster mushrooms were particularly fine: fresh and grayish white, not old and tough and yellow. He went from tree to tree picking all he could; some grew higher than he could reach, even by jumping. He wondered what Sidroc would bring home—probably a mix altogether different from his.

He was so intent on harvesting those mushrooms, he didn’t notice anyone else was picking from the same stand of trees till they came round from opposite sides of the same big oak and almost bumped into each other. Nearly dropping his sack of mushrooms, Ealstan jumped back in surprise.

So did the other gatherer, a Kaunian girl not far from his own age.

They both laughed shakily. “You startled me,” they both said at the same time, with identical pointing forefingers. That made them laugh again.

“There are plenty for both of us,” Ealstan said, and the girl nodded. She might have been a year or so older than he was. Doing his best not to be too obvious about it, he eyed her figure, which her Kaunian-style tight tunic and trousers revealed in more detail than the long, loose tunics Forthwegian women wore. The knees of those trousers were dirty; she’d come out for the same reason he had, all right.

“Aye, there are.” She nodded again. She was looking at his dirty knees, too. Then, suddenly, she pointed to the sack he carried. “What have you got in there? Maybe we can trade a little, so we each have more different kinds.”

Kaunians in Forthweg were no less fond of mushrooms than any other Forthwegians. “All right,” Ealstan said. He grinned at her and dug out some of the orange mushrooms he’d found. “What will you give me for those Kaunian Imperials here? They ought to suit you.”

She studied him before answering, her blue eyes hooded. Kaunians, he knew, got touchy if you said what they thought was the wrong thing, or even the right thing in the wrong tone of voice. He must have passed the test, for she nodded and showed him some dull brown mushrooms from her sack. “I found these horns of plenty under dead leaves, if you’d like some of them.”

“All right,” he said again, and they made the trade. He went on, “You must have had sharp eyes to spot them. Sometimes you can walk through a big patch and never even know it, because they’re the same color as the leaves.”

“That’s true. I’ve done it.” The Kaunian amended her words with the precision of her people: “I’ve done it a couple of times and then seen them, I mean. Who knows how many times I’ve done it without even noticing?”

After that, they started talking about mushrooms and, almost coincidentally, about themselves. He found her name was Vanai, and that she lived in Oyngestun; she’d come east to hunt mushrooms, while he’d gone west from Gromheort. “How are things there?” he asked. “Are the redheads any better than they are in the city?”

“I doubt it,” Vanai answered bleakly. She added a word in Kaunian, a word Ealstan knew: “Barbarians.” Kaunians sometimes applied that word to Forthwegians. Hearing it slapped on the Algarvians made Ealstan chuckle and clap his hands together. Vanai looked sharply at him. “How much Kaunian do you speak?” she asked in that language.

“What I have learned in school,” he said, also in Kaunian. It was the first time he’d ever been glad he’d paid attention to his lessons. Only a couple of hours before, he’d laughed at himself for imagining he might meet a pretty girl while out picking mushrooms. Now he’d gone and done it, even if she was a Kaunian.

“You speak well,” she said, falling back into Forthwegian. “Not quickly, as you would your birthspeech, but well.”

Ealstan appreciated the praise all the more because she measured it so carefully. “Thank you,” he said. Then he remembered the Algarvian soldier taking obscene liberties with the Kaunian woman in the rubble-clearing gang back in Gromheort. It suddenly occurred to him, almost with the force of getting spellstruck, that being a pretty girl could carry disadvantages. He picked his words with care, too: “I hope they haven’t… insulted you.”

Vanai needed only a moment to understand what he meant. “Nothing too bad,” she said. “Shouts, jeers, leers—nothing I haven’t known from Forthwegians.” She turned red; with her fair skin, the blush was easy to see. “I don’t mean you. You’ve been perfectly polite.”

“Kaunians are people, too,” Ealstan said, repeating a phrase his father was fond of using. Ealstan sometimes wondered if that was why his father used it. Kaunians had dwelt in Forthweg since the days of their ancient Empire, even if Forthwegians greatly outnumbered them these days. His own distant ancestors had known nothing of stone keeps and theaters and aqueducts when they entered this country. He wondered if one of the reasons they despised Kaunians was that, somewhere down deep, Kaunians made them wonder if they were people themselves.

“Well, of course,” Vanai said. But it wasn’t of course, and they both knew it. A lot of Forthwegians didn’t think of Kaunians as people, and a lot of Kaunians returned the favor. Vanai changed the subject: “Your brother, you said, is a captive? That must be hard for your family. Is he well?”

“He says he is well,” Ealstan replied. “The Algarvians only let their captives write once a month, so we’ve not heard much. But he is alive, powers above be praised.” He didn’t know what he would have done had he learned Leofsig was dead.

He was about to add something more when, from not far away, a man called out in Kaunian: “Where are you, Vanai? Look! I’ve found a—” Whatever he’d found, it wasn’t a word Ealstan knew. Ealstan wondered if he’d found trouble himself. Was that Vanai’s father? Her brother? Maybe even her husband? He didn’t think she was old enough to wed, but he might have been wrong, disastrously wrong.

Then Vanai answered, “Here I am, my grandfather,” and Ealstan’s worry eased: a grandfather seemed unlikely to be dangerous. Nor did the man who came up a minute later look dangerous. He carried a fat puff-ball in his left hand; puffball, no doubt, was the Kaunian word Ealstan hadn’t understood. In Kaunian, Vanai said, “My grandfather, this is Ealstan of Jekabpils”—the classical name for Gromheort. “We have traded mushrooms.” She shifted to Forthwegian: “Ealstan, here is my grandfather, Brivibas.”

Brivibas looked at Ealstan as if he were a stinkhorn or a poisonous leopard mushroom. “I hope he has not troubled you,” he said to Vanai in Kaunian. He was, Ealstan saw at a glance, one of those Kaunians who automatically thought the worst of Forthwegians.

“I have not troubled her,” Ealstan said in the best Kaunian he had.

It was not good enough; Brivibas corrected his pronunciation. Vanai looked mortified. Making a point of speaking Forthwegian, she said, “He has not troubled me at all. He speaks well of our people.”

Her grandfather looked Ealstan up and down, then looked her up and down, too. “He has his reasons,” Brivibas said. “Come along with me. We must wend homeward.”

“I will come,” Vanai said obediently. But then she turned back. “Goodbye, Ealstan. The talk was pleasant, and the trade was good.”

“I also thought so,” Ealstan said in Kaunian. “I am glad I met you—and you, sir,” he added for Brivibas’s benefit. That last was a lie, but one of the sort his father called a useful lie: it would show up the older Kaunian’s rudeness. Vanai would see it. Even Brivibas might.

He didn’t. He stomped off toward the west, toward Oyngestun. Vanai followed. Ealstan watched till trees hid her from sight. Then he started back in the direction of Gromheort. He laughed to himself. The day had ended up a lot more interesting than it would have been had he spent it hunting mushrooms with Sidroc.

“Well, this is more like it,” Talsu said to whomever would listen as the Jelgavan forces pushed through the eastern foothills of the Bratanu mountains. Before long, he thought, he and his comrades really would get past the foothills and down into the plains of southern Algarve. If things kept going well, they’d be able to start tossing eggs into Tricarico.

He wished the Forthwegians had put up a better fight against the redheads. Then their army would have joined the one of which he was a tiny part and cut Algarve in half. That had been the plan—well, the hope—when Jelgava went to war. Now King Donalitu and his allies would have to settle for less.

Smilsu banged Talsu in the ribs with his elbow. “Which do you mean is more like it? Having a colonel who knows what he’s doing or moving forward instead of standing around all the time?”

“You don’t think there’s a connection?” Talsu returned.

“I’m not the one to ask,” his friend said. “Why don’t you find out what Vartu over there thinks about it?”

“I’m still here,” Vartu said, grinning a leathery grin. After Colonel Dzirnavu’s untimely and embarrassing demise, his servant might have gone back to the family estate to tend to the needs of Dzirnavu’s heir. He’d chosen to stay on as a common soldier instead. What that said about the character of Dzirnavu’s son was a point on which Talsu preferred not to dwell: how unfortunate that the new count should take after the old. Vartu went on, “There’s one of the reasons I’m still here, too.” He pointed to one side with his chin.

“Come on, men, keep moving,” Colonel Adomu called cheerily. He was a marquis himself, but wore the title more lightly than most Jelgavan nobles. He was just in his early forties, and not only kept up with the soldiers in his regiment but urged them to a better clip. “Keep moving—and spread out. We don’t want the cursed redheads to hit us when we’re all bunched together.”

Even marching in loose order, Talsu was nervous. The Algarvians had harvested these fields before their soldiers retreated through them, and the low stubble left behind offered little concealment for a prone man, let alone one up and walking. Algarvian civilians had fled along with the soldiers, and taken their livestock with them. But for the sound of boots crunching through dry grass and stubble and the occasional rustle of leaves in the breeze, the day was eerily quiet.

Colonel Adomu pointed to a pear orchard half a mile away. “That’s where they’ll be waiting for us, the sons of a thousand fathers. We’ll have to see if we can find a way to flank them out—going straight at them will be too expensive.”

Talsu dug a finger in his ear to make sure he’d heard right. Dzirnavu would have sent his men lumbering straight at the redheads. They’d have paid for it, too, but that wouldn’t have bothered Dzirnavu. Well, now he’d paid for it himself.

Adomu sent the company to which Talsu belonged off to the right, to find a way around the pear orchard. “Come on, step it up,” Talsu called to Smilsu as they trotted along. “The faster we move, the harder we are to hit.”

“We’re hard to hit anyway, at this range,” Smilsu answered. “You have to be lucky to blaze a man with a footsoldier’s stick out past a couple-three furlongs. You have to be even luckier to hurt him very bad if you do hit him.”

As if to make him out a liar, one of his comrades fell, clutching at his leg and cursing. But most of the Algarvians’ beams went wide or had dispersed too widely to be damaging. A couple of them started fires in the grass. That made Talsu want to cheer: Smoke weakened beams, too.

But then, with a roar and a blast of fire, an egg buried in the ground burst under a Jelgavan soldier. He had time for only the beginning of a shriek before the energies consumed him. The rest of the Jelgavans skidded to a halt. Talsu dug in his heels and stood panting where he was. “They don’t hide those things by ones and twos,” he said. “They put ’em down by the score, by the hundred.” All the ground on which he was not standing at the moment suddenly seemed dangerous. Had he just trotted past an egg? If he took one step back or to either side, would he suddenly go up in a sheet of fire?

He didn’t want to find out. He didn’t want to stay where he was, either. If he kept standing here, the redheads in the pear orchard would blaze him sooner or later. He threw himself down on the ground, and didn’t touch off an egg doing it. Slowly and carefully, he crawled forward, examining every stretch of ground before he trusted his weight to it. If it looked disturbed in any way, he crawled around it.

Colonel Adomu didn’t take long to notice his flanking maneuver had slowed. Colonel Dzirnavu, had he bothered making a flanking maneuver—in itself unlikely—wouldn’t have kept such close ley of it once it got going. But the energetic Adomu not only saw the slowing but realized what had caused it. He sent an egg-dowser forward to find a clear way through the stretch of ground filled with hidden peril.

Talsu watched the dowser—a tall, skinny man who managed to look disheveled despite uniform tunic and trousers—with the fascination any man gives to someone who can do something he cannot. The fellow held his forked rod out before him as if it were a pike. Dowsing was an ever more specialized business these days. Talsu’s ancestors had found water with it in the days of the Kaunian Empire. Now people all over Derlavai dowsed for water with it in the days of the Kaunian Empire. Now people all over Derlavai dowsed for water, for metals, for coal, for rock oil (not that the latter had much use), for things missing, and everywhere and always for things desired.

And soldiers dowsed for dragons in the air and for eggs hidden under the ground. “How did you learn to find buried eggs?” Talsu called to the dowser.

“Carefully.” The fellow’s lips skinned back from his teeth in a humorless grin. “Now don’t jog my elbow any more, or I’m liable not to be careful enough. I wouldn’t like that: in my line of work, your first mistake is usually your last one.” His rod dipped sharply downward. With a grunt of satisfaction, he took from his belt a sharp stake with a bright streamer of cloth at the unpointed end. He plunged it into the ground to show where the egg lay. The soldiers in the company followed him in as near single file as made no difference as he marked out a path of safety.

Smilsu said, “I wonder what happens when the Algarvians come up with a new kind of egg, or with a new way to mask the eggs they have already.” He kept his voice down so the dowser wouldn’t hear him.

Also quietly, Talsu answered, “That’s when they start teaching a new dowser how to do the job.” His friend nodded.

Had the Algarvians been present in large numbers, sergeants would have needed to start teaching a lot of new Jelgavan soldiers how to do the job. But the redheads could not take advantage of the way they had stalled their opponents. Before long, the dowser stopped finding eggs to mark. The company started moving faster again. The dowser went along in case the men ran into—literally and metaphorically—another troublesome belt of land.

But they didn’t, and soon began blazing into the pear orchard from the side. The Algarvians had been protecting themselves behind trees against an attack from the front. And, as soon as Colonel Adomu realized his flanking force finally was doing what he’d intended it to do, in went that attack from the front.

That made the Algarvians stop paying so much attention to Talsu and his friends. Vartu let out a whoop, then howled, “Now we’ve got ’em!”

Talsu hoped Colonel Dzirnavu’s former servant was right. If he was wrong, a lot of Jelgavans would end up dead, Talsu all too probably among them. He howled, too, as much to hold fear at bay as for any other reason.

Then he and the rest of the Jelgavans got in among the pear trees themselves, flushing out the Algarvians like so many partridges. Some of the redheads, their positions overrun, threw down their sticks and threw up their hands in token of surrender. They were no more anxious to die than their Jelgavan counterparts.

Smilsu cursed. “My beam’s run dry!” he shouted angrily. A moment later, nothing happened when Talsu thrust his finger into the touch-hole of his own stick. Like Smilsu, he’d used up all the power in it while reaching the pear orchard. Now, when he needed it most, he did not have it.

“Where’s that cursed dowser?” he called. “He can give us a hand. We haven’t sent all the captives to the rear yet, have we?”

“No,” Vartu said from behind him. “We’ve still got a few of them left with us.” He raised his voice to a furious bellow, a good imitation of that of the late, unlamented (at least by Talsu) Colonel Dzirnavu: “Stake ’em out! Tie ’em down! Let’s get some good out of ’em, anyway, the filthy redheads.”

Some of the Algarvian captives understood Jelgavan, either because they came from near the border or because they’d studied classical Kaunian in school and could get the drift of the daughter language. They howled fearful protests. The Jelgavans ignored those, flinging a couple of redheaded soldiers down on to their backs and tying their arms and legs to stakes and tree trunks.

“You’d do the same to us if your sticks were running low,” a Jelgavan soldier said, not without some sympathy. “You know it cursed well, too.”

“Where’s that dowser?” Talsu called again. The fellow shambled up just then, still looking very much like an unmade bed. Seeing the spread-eagled Algarvians, he nodded. He was no first-rank mage, but he didn’t need to be, not for the sorcery the Jelgavan soldiers had in mind.

“Set your dead sticks on them,” he said, and Talsu and the others who could not blaze obeyed. The dowser drew a knife from his belt and stooped beside the nearer Algarvian captive. He yanked up the Algarvian’s chin by the coppery whiskers that grew there, then cut his throat as if butchering a hog. Blood fountained forth. The dowser chanted in classical Kaunian. When he was through—and when the Algarvian soldier he’d sacrificed had quit writhing—some of the Jelgavans snatched up their sticks from the dead man’s chest.

Talsu’s stick lay on the second Algarvian. The dowser sacrificed him, too. Such rough magic in the field wasted a good deal of the captives’ life energy. Talsu cared not at all. What mattered to him was that enough of the energy had flowed into his stick to recharge it fully. As soon as the dowser nodded, he grabbed the stick and hurried forward to do more fighting. It blazed just as it should have.

Before long, the two-pronged Jelgavan attack drove the Algarvians from the pear orchard. But, just as victory became assured, a cry rose from the men who’d made the assault on the front of the orchard: “The colonel’s down! The stinking redheads blazed Colonel Adomu!”

“Powers above!” Talsu groaned. “What sort of overbred fool will they foist on us now?” He didn’t know. He couldn’t know, not yet. He was afraid of finding out.

Brivibas gave Vanai a severe look, as he’d been doing for the past couple of weeks. “My granddaughter, I must tell you yet again that you were too forward, much too forward, with that barbarian boy you met in the woods.”

Vanai rolled her eyes. Brivibas had trained her to dutiful obedience, but his carping was wearing thin. No: by now, his carping had worn thin. “All we did was swap a few mushrooms, my grandfather. We were polite while we did it, aye. You have taught me to be polite to everyone, have you not?”

“And would he have stayed polite to you, had I not happened to come up when I did?” Brivibas demanded.

“I think so,” Vanai answered with a toss of her head. “He seemed perfectly well behaved—better than some of the Kaunian boys here on Oyngestun.”

That distracted her grandfather, as she’d hoped it would. “What?” he said, his eyes going wide. “What have they done to you? What have they tried to do to you?” He looked furious. Was he, could he possibly have been, remembering some of the things he’d tried to do to girls before he met Vanai’s grandmother? That was hard to imagine. Even harder was imagining him doing things like that with her grandmother.

“They’ve tried more than that Ealstan ever did,” she said. “They couldn’t have tried less, because he didn’t try anything at all. He spent a lot of time talking about his brother, who’s an Algarvian captive.”

“I do pity even a Forthwegian in Algarvian hands,” Brivibas said. By his tone, he pitied Kaunians in Algarvian hands far more. But, again, he found himself distracted, this time by a historical parallel: “The Algarvians have always been harsh on their captives. Recall how, under their chieftain Ziliante, they so cruelly sacked and ravaged the city of Adutiskis.” He spoke as if the sack had happened the week before rather than in the waning days of the Kaunian Empire.

“Well, then!” Vanai tossed her head again. “You see, you don’t need to worry about Ealstan after all.”

She’d made a mistake. She knew it as soon as the words were out of her mouth. And, sure enough, Brivibas pounced on it: “I would worry far less had you forgotten the young barbarian’s name.”

Had he stopped nagging her about Ealstan, she probably would have forgotten the Forthwegian’s name in short order. As things were, he looked more attractive every time her grandfather made a rude comment about him. If such a thing had happened to Brivibas during his long-ago youth, it had fallen from his memory in the years since.

“He was very nice,” Vanai said. Even handsome, in the dark, blocky Forthwegian way, she thought. Having made one mistake, she did not compound it by letting her grandfather learn of that thought.

He did not need to learn of it to keep on carping. After a while, Vanai got tired of listening to him and went out to the courtyard around which the house was built. She didn’t stay as long as she’d thought she would. For one thing, a raw breeze made her shiver. The sun ducked in and out from behind gray, nasty-looking clouds. And the courtyard, no longer bright with flowers as it had been through spring and summer, seemed a far less pleasant refuge than it would have been then. The alabaster bowl into which the fountain splashed was a genuine Kaunian antiquity, but it too failed to delight her. Her lip curled. Living with her grandfather was living with an antiquity. She needed no more examples.

She wished she could have gone out on to the streets of Oyngestun. These days, though, with Algarvian soldiers patrolling the village, she went out as seldom as she could. The Algarvians had committed relatively few outrages: fewer, certainly, than she’d expected when they occupied the place. But she knew they could. She might speak well of a Forthwegian, but of a redhead? About Algarvians, she completely agreed with Brivibas.

Why not? Indeed, how could she have done otherwise? He’d taught her. But that thought never crossed her mind, no more than the thought of water disturbed a swimming fish.

“My granddaughter?” Brivibas called from his study, where they’d been quarreling. Far more slowly than he should have, he realized he’d really irked her. If only some ancient Kaunian had written a treatise on how to bring up a granddaughter! Vanai thought. He’d do a better job.

She didn’t want to answer him. She didn’t want to have anything to do with him, not just then. Instead of returning to the study, she went into the parlor through a different door. Brivibas had set his mark there, too, as he had through the whole of the house. Bookshelves almost overwhelmed the spare, classical—and none too comfortable—furniture. All the ornaments were Kaunian antiquities or copies of Kaunian antiquities: statuettes, painted pottery, a little glass vial gone milky from lying underground for upwards of a thousand years. She’d known them her whole life; they were as familiar to her as the shapes of her own fingernails. Now, suddenly, she felt like smashing them.

On the wall hung a print of an old painting of the Kaunian Column of Victory in faraway Priekule. Vanai sighed. Thinking of Kaunians victorious didn’t come easy now. Neither did thinking of a kingdom nearly all Kaunian, as Valmiera was. What would living in a land where everyone looked more or less the way she did be like? Luxurious was the word that sprang to mind. The Kaunians of Forthweg, remnants left behind when the tide of ancient empire receded, enjoyed no such luxury.

She went into the kitchen. A terra-cotta low relief of a fat little demon with a big mouth and a bigger belly hung on the wall there. Her imperial ancestors had fancied the demon of appetite looked like that. Sorcerous investigation had long since proved there was no such thing as the demon of appetite. Vanai didn’t care what sorcerous investigation had proved. She liked the relief. Had there been a demon of appetite, he would have looked like that.

Had there been a demon of appetite, he would have turned up his nose at what he saw in that kitchen. Cheese, a little bread, mushrooms, strings of garlic and onions and leeks, an ever-shrinking length of sausage… not much to keep a spirit dwelling in a body.

Brivibas hardly cared what he ate, or sometimes even if he ate. His mind ruled; his body did strictly as it was told. Vanai sometimes wished she were the same way. Her grandfather assumed she was, though he would have been angry at others who judged people using themselves as a touchstone. But Vanai enjoyed good food. That was why, as soon as she grew big enough, she’d taken over the kitchen. Till the war came, she’d done as well as she could without much money.

Now… Now there wasn’t much food of any sort to be had. Ley-line caravans carried what the Algarvians told them to carry, not what the towns and villages of Forthweg needed. The redheads plundered what they would. Fighting had wrecked many farms and left many farmers dead or captive.

Vanai wondered where it would end. Forthweg hadn’t known famine during her lifetime, but she’d read of it. If this went on …

The wood bin and the coal scuttle weren’t so full as they should have been, either. Coal, especially, was hard to come by. She might reach the point where she had food but no fuel with which to cook it.

With such gloomy reflections filling her, she didn’t hear Brivibas come into the kitchen. “Ah, here you are, my granddaughter,” he said.

“Here I am,” Vanai agreed resignedly.

“I try my best to do what is right for you,” her grandfather said. “I may not always be correct, but I do have your interest at heart.” With no small surprise, she realized he was, in his fusty way, trying to apologize.

“Very well, my grandfather,” Vanai said; arguing with Brivibas was more trouble than it was worth. In any case, she would see Ealstan again only by accident. Sooner or later, Brivibas would realize that for himself, and then, with luck, he would stop bothering her. Hoping to get his mind off the subject of the Forthwegian, she asked, “Can I cut you some bread and cheese?”

“No, never mind. I have no great appetite,” Brivibas said. Vanai nodded; that was true most of the time. Then, to her surprise, her grandfather brightened. “Did I tell you the news I had yesterday?”

“No, my grandfather,” Vanai answered. “What news is this? So little gets into Oyngestun these days, I’d be glad to hear any.”

“Well, I had a note from the Journal of Kaunian Studies in Jekabpils,” her grandfather said, using the classical Kaunian name for Gromheort. “They tell me the Algarvian occupying authorities will allow them to resume publication before long, which means I shall have an outlet for my scholarship.”

“That is good news,” Vanai said. If he could not publish his articles, Brivibas would grow even more peevish than usual. He would also have more leisure in which to try to oversee every facet of her life, which was nothing she wanted.

“On the whole, it is good news,” he said, donning an indignant expression. “The drawback is, all submissions must henceforth appear in either Forthwegian or Algarvian. Those offered in classical Kaunian, the language of learning, must be rejected unread, by order of the occupiers.”

Vanai shivered, though the kitchen was warm enough. “What right have the redheads to say our language is not to be used?” she asked.

“The conqueror’s right: the right they understand best,” Brivibas answered bleakly. He sighed. “I have not attempted serious composition in Forthwegian for many years. Who would, with Kaunian to use instead? I suppose I must make the effort, though, if I am to continue setting my researches before any part of the scholarly community.” Not setting his researches before the scholarly community plainly never occurred to him.

Before Vanai could reply, shouts and the sound of running feet came from outside. She peered through the kitchen window, a narrow slit intended to give a little fresh air, not any great view: for views, all folk of Forthweg, regardless of their blood, far preferred their courtyards to the streets. She got a glimpse of a yellow-haired man running as if his life depended on his feet. And so it might have, for a couple of Algarvian soldiers pounded after him, sticks in hand.

They shouted again, first in their language, then in Forthwegian: “Halt!”

One of them dropped to a knee to take dead aim at the fleeing Kaunian. The fellow must have ducked around a corner before he could blaze, though, for he sprang to his feet once more with what sounded like a curse. “Halt!” his comrade yelled again. They both pounded after the fugitive.

“I wonder what he did,” Vanai said. “I wonder if he did anything.”

“Probably not.” Her grandfather’s voice was weary and bitter. “Having done something is by no means a requirement for punishment, not where the Algarvians are concerned.” Vanai nodded. She’d already seen as much for herself.

Bembo tramped up and down the meadow outside Tricarico’s municipal stadium. Though the day was on the chilly side, sweat ran down his face and threatened to leave his mustache as limp as if he’d forgotten to wax it. The constable, a pudgy man, hadn’t done much in the way of marching for a good many years.

Not that the drill sergeant cared. “Powers below eat all of you!” he screamed, in a temper extravagant even by Algarvian standards. “I bite my thumb at you! I bite my thumb at your fathers, if you know who they are!” From a civilian, that would have provoked a flock of challenges. But a soldier in the service of King Mezentio enjoyed even broader immunity from having to defend his honor than did a constable.

The sergeant waved the shambling column to a halt. Bembo had all he could do not to collapse on the grass. His legs felt like overcooked noodles. He could smell himself. Beneath their perfumes, he could smell the men around him.

“We’ll try it again,” the drill sergeant grunted. “I know you’re stupid, but try and work at remembering which is your left foot and which is your right. If those stinking towheads from Jelgava break out of the mountains, you get to go into line to throw ’em back. Maybe you’ll be able to fool them into thinking you’re soldiers, at least for a little while. I doubt it, but maybe. Now… forward, march!”

Along with the rest of the men of Tricarico dragooned into this makeshift militia, Bembo started marching. The Jelgavans hadn’t broken out of the Bradano Mountains yet, though they’d come close a couple of times. Bembo hoped the regulars could hold them. If they couldn’t, if Algarve had to rely on the likes of him to fight, the kingdom was in a lot of trouble.

“Left!” the drill sergeant roared. “Left!… Left-right-left! Sound off!”

“One! Two!” Bembo called, as he’d learned to do.

“Sound off!”

“Three! Four!”

“Left-right-left!” The sergeant gathered himself for the next order: “To the rear, march!” Raggedly, the militiamen obeyed. The drill sergeant clapped a hand to his forehead. “You don’t execute commands better than that, you’ll all get fornicating executed if you have to go up to the line. Aye, the Jelgavans are a pack of trouser-wearing scum, but they know what they’re doing, and you, you milk-fed virgins, you haven’t got a clue. To the left flank, march!”

The fellow puffing along beside Bembo wheezed, “I’d like to see that loudmouthed oaf try to make pastries with no training, that’s all I have to say.”

“That’s your line of work?” Bembo asked, and the pastry chef nodded. With a calculating smile, the constable found another question: “Whereabouts in the city is your shop at?”

Before his comrade could answer, the drill sergeant screamed, “Silence in the ranks! Next man who squeaks out of turn will squeak soprano for the rest of his days, do you hear me?” Bembo was convinced the whole town of Tricarico heard him. The Jelgavans in the western foothills of the Bradano Mountains probably heard him, too. And the pastry chef certainly heard him, for he shut up with a snap.

Bembo sighed. A constable who strolled into a pastry shop would surely come away with dainties full of almond paste and sweet cream and raisins and cherries, and he wouldn’t have to set a copper on the counter to get them, either. And now he wouldn’t be able to find out into which shop he should stroll. Life was full of small tragedies.

At last, after what seemed like forever but couldn’t have been longer than half that, the drill sergeant released his captives. “I’ll see you again day after tomorrow, though,” he threatened, “or maybe sooner, if the enemy does break through. You’d better hope he doesn’t, on account of they haven’t dug enough burial plots to hold all of you lugs yet.”

“Cheerful bugger, isn’t he?” Bembo said, but the pastry chef had already turned away. Bembo sighed again. He’d have to stay ignorant of where the fellow labored, at least till two days hence. With another sigh, he started back toward the constabulary station. He didn’t get time off for the militia drill; it was piled on to everything else he had to do. That struck him as monstrously unfair, but no one had asked his view of the matter. He’d received orders to report to that bellowing fiend in human shape, and he’d had to obey.

A street vendor waved a news sheet. “Black men throw Unkerlanters back again!” he shouted. “Read all about it!”

“Has King Swemmel started killing some of his generals yet, to persuade the rest to fight harder?” Bembo asked. He approved of killing Unkerlanter generals—on general principles, he thought with a grin at his own cleverness. For that matter, he approved of executions on general principles. He had trouble imagining a constable who didn’t.

“Buy my sheet here, and see for yourself,” the vendor answered. Bembo didn’t feel like buying a news sheet. He felt like having the fellow tell him what he wanted to know. He and the vendor traded insults, more good-natured than otherwise, till he rounded a corner.

A couple of men on the next street corner, one of them fair enough to have a good share of Kaunian blood, saw him coming and made themselves scarce. He wasn’t wearing his uniform tunic and kilt. Maybe one of them recognized his face. Maybe, too, both of them smelled him out as a constable even without seeing his uniform, even without recognizing his face. It wasn’t quite sorcery on the part of the bad eggs, but it wasn’t far removed, either.

When he walked up the stairs and into the station, Sergeant Pesaro greeted him with, “Ah, here is another one of our heroes!” No one had thrown Pesaro into the militia. He might have been able to march. On the other hand, he might as readily have fallen over dead from an apoplexy.

“A worn-out hero,” Bembo said mournfully. “If I have to do too much more of this, I’ll be a shadow of my former self.” He looked down at his belly. It wasn’t the size of Pesaro’s, but he still made a pretty substantial shadow.

“You complain so much, you might as well already be in the army, not the constabulary,” Pesaro said.

“Oh, and you’ve never grumbled in all your born days,” Bembo retorted, wagging a forefinger at the fat man behind the desk. Pesaro coughed a couple of times and turned red, perhaps from embarrassment, perhaps just because he was a fat man who sat behind a desk all day: even coughing was an exertion for him. Bembo went on, “I see in the news sheet that Zuwayza’s giving Unkerlant another clout in the head.”

“Efficiency,” Pesaro said with a laugh. “Don’t know how long those naked burnt-skins can keep doing what they’re doing, but it’s pretty funny while it’s going on.”

“So it is.” Bembo hid his disappointment. He’d hoped Pesaro would tell him more than he’d heard from the news-sheet vendor. Maybe the sergeant hadn’t felt like springing for a sheet today, either.

Then Pesaro said, “Only trouble is, I heard on the crystal this morning that we’re not the only ones who think so. Jelgava and Valmiera have sent messages to the Zuwayzi king, whatever his cursed name is, congratulating him on giving King Swemmel a hard time.”

“Can’t say I’m surprised,” Bembo answered. “When Swemmel jumped on Forthweg’s back, that meant we wouldn’t have to worry about our western front any more—or not about the Forthwegians there, anyway.”

“Oh, aye,” Pesaro said. “Not that Unkerlant’s any great neighbor to have. We’ve fought more wars with those bastards than anybody likes to remember, and it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if they were thinking about another one.”

“That wouldn’t surprise me, either,” Bembo said. “Everybody’s always plotting against Algarve. It’s been like that since the days of the Kaunian Empire.”

“A lot you know about the Kaunian Empire,” Pesaro said. Before Bembo could make an irate reply to that, the sergeant went on, “Talk about inefficiency—we might as well be Unkerlanters ourselves, the way we’re using constables for militiamen.”

“Make up your mind,” Bembo said. “You just called me a hero not five minutes ago.”

“I remembered something else I heard on the crystal,” Pesaro answered placidly. “A dozen captives broke out of a camp in Forthweg, and they’re on the loose in the countryside. What do soldiers know about keeping captives? About as much as constables know about fighting campaigns, that’s what. If they’re going to use constables to help the war along, they ought to use us to take captives and guard them, not to blaze away on the front line. That’d be proper efficiency.”

“Not a bad idea at all,” Bembo said. Pesaro preened as if he were a writer of romances suddenly receiving critical acclaim. With a sly chuckle, Bembo added, “I never would have expected it from you.”

“Funny,” Pesaro said. “Funny like a man walking with two canes, that’s what it is.” He could take ribbing, could Pesaro, but only so much. Bembo, evidently, had gone over the line. “Here’s another idea that isn’t bad at all,” Pesaro growled: “you getting into your uniform and doing some real work instead of hanging around and banging your gums with me.”

“All right, Sergeant. All right.” Bembo raised a placating hand. “I’m going, I’m going.” As he went, he muttered under his breath: “Fat old fraud wouldn’t know anything about real work if it paraded past him naked.”

After donning the regulation tunic and kilt, he paused in the recording section, where Saffa was sketching a portrait of a haggard-looking miscreant. Bembo thought of the little artist parading past him naked, definitely a more attractive prospect than real work. What he was thinking must have shown, too, for Saffa snapped, “Drag your mind out of the latrine, if you please.”

Bembo’s ears heated. He glared over toward the wretch whose image Saffa had been committing to paper. Had the fellow said a word—had he even smiled—Bembo would have taken out his rage on him. But the captive, wiser than Martusino, kept his mouth shut and his expression blank. Doubly baulked, Bembo walked fuming to his desk.

Plenty of forms and reports awaited him there, as was true for most constables most of the time. Bembo ignored them. He worked diligently enough when he felt like it, but not when work was forced upon him. As most Algarvians would have done, he avenged himself by disobeying. He pulled a historical romance out of his desk and started reading. “I’ll show you what I know about the Kaunian Empire,” he mumbled in Pesaro’s direction, though not loud enough for the desk sergeant—or anyone else—to hear.

Mercenaries’ Revolt, the cover screamed in lurid red letters, with a smaller subhead reading, Mighty Ziliante sets an empire afire! The book showed a stalwart Algarvian, his coppery hair washed with lime to give him a leonine mane, brandishing a sword. Clinging to him was a Kaunian doxy wearing no more clothes than she’d been born with. Her hand was poised, as if about to reach under his kilt and caress what she found there.

The text lived up to, or down to, the cover. Bembo couldn’t remember a romance he’d enjoyed more.

The Kaunian Emperor had just ordered Ziliante made into a eunuch. Bembo was sure that wouldn’t happen; the virile hero had already got too many blond noblewomen’s drawers down. Which of them would rescue him, and how? Bembo read on to find out.