Jaws of Darkness

Eleven

WhenColonelSpinello went east to Waldsolms to report his brigade’s condition to Brigadier Tampaste, who commanded his division, he was not a happy man. “Sir,” he said, “I’ve got my men dug in east of Pewsum like so many moles. And if I had three times as many of them, and five times as many behemoths, and ten times as many dragons to back them up, I might be able to hang on when the Unkerlanters come down on me. Imight, sir. I wouldn’t guarantee it.”

Tampaste couldn’t have been much more than Spinello’s age himself. “Do you know what, Colonel?” he said. “Over the past few days, our scouts and mages have concluded the Unkerlanters may be planning an attack here in the north after all.”

Spinello rolled his eyes. “About fornicating time… sir. We’ve been worrying about it for weeks.”

“All we are is the folk on the spot,” Tampaste answered. “If that doesn’t prove we can’t possibly know what we’re talking about, I don’t know what would.”

“How big an attack do they think is coming?” Spinello asked.

“They don’t know,” Tampaste said, and Spinello rolled his eyes again. The brigadier went on, “Swemmel’s boys have been doing their best to mask whatever it is they’re up to, so we’re having a hard time telling.”

“If it weren’t something bigger than we’d like, they wouldn’t be trying to hide it.” Spinello hoped Tampaste would tell him he was wrong, he was worrying too much. Instead, the brigadier solemnly nodded. Spinello said, “I don’t suppose there’s any hope of reinforcements?”

At that, Tampaste threw back his head and laughed as if at the best joke in the world. “Tell me another one, Colonel,” he said. “The odds would have been bad before the cursed islanders invaded Jelgava. Now? Well, my dear fellow, what can I say?” He spread his hands.

That said all that needed saying, or almost all, anyhow. Spinello asked, “Howare things back in the east?”

“They’ve been on the ground in Jelgava for more than two weeks now. We haven’t thrown them into the sea,” Tampaste replied. “I’ve heard they’re moving on Balvi, the capital. That’s not official-all the reports from Trapani say the fighting is still by the beaches. But I’ve got a brother in Jelgava.”

“Oh.” Spinello whistled tunelessly. “Things can’t be going any too well if they think they’ve got to lie to us.”

“You have a nasty, suspicious mind,” Tampaste said. “I would have more to say about it if the same thought hadn’t occurred to me.” He nodded to Spinello. “Go back and set your men digging again. The more holes they have, the better their chances are. Good luck, Colonel. Powers above go with you.”

Spinello didn’t know what sort of dismissal he’d expected. Whatever it was, it was nothing so abrupt as that. He rose, saluted, and went out onto the dusty streets of Waldsolms. Here in the town, the streets were paved. Once the buildings stopped, though, the cobblestones did, too, and the wind blew hard across the endless plains. He climbed into his carriage. “Back to Gleina,” he told the driver.

The village between Waldsolms and Pewsum didn’t pretend to be anything it wasn’t. None of its streets had ever been paved. Spinello doubted any of them ever would be. A sergeant tramping along one of those dirt tracks called, “What’s the word, Colonel?”

“They’re going to hit us,” Spinello answered. “Don’t know how hard, don’t know how soon, but they’re going to hit us. If I had to guess, I’d say they won’t wait long and they won’t give us a little tap. Take it for what you think it’s worth.”

He could have said a lot of other things, but they would have amounted to more pungent versions of what he had said, so he didn’t see the point. He hopped down from the carriage. His wounded leg protested. He tried to ignore it, though he limped a little going to the hut that did duty for brigade headquarters.

Inside the hut sat a jar of raw Unkerlanter spirits that did duty for the fine brandy Spinello would have preferred. As he lifted it, he asked himself, Do you think the Unkerlanters will hit us before you can sober up? When the answer to that turned out to be no, he poured a mug’s worth out of the jar and started the serious business of getting drunk.

He hadn’t got too far when somebody knocked on the door. Muttering a curse, he set down the mug and threw the door open. “Well?” he growled.

Jadwigai flinched. “I-I’m sorry, Colonel,” the Kaunian girl stammered, turning red. “I’ll come another time.” She turned to go-more likely, to flee.

All at once, Spinello was ashamed of himself. “No, come back. Please, come in,” he said. “I’m sorry. There are plenty of people I don’t want to see, but you’re not any of them.”

Still wary, Jadwigai asked, “Are you sure?” When Spinello vigorously- just how vigorously proved he had some spirits in him-nodded, she said, “All right,” and walked past him into the hut. “I just wanted to ask how your meeting with Brigadier Tampaste went.”

“It went so well, I’m getting drunk to celebrate.” Spinello took another swig from the mug. “Want some?” Without waiting for an answer to match his own. “I’m glad you’re here, sweetheart. I can tell you more of the truth than I can my own men. Isn’t that funny?”

“I don’t know.” The brigade’s mascot took a small sip. She made a face, but then sipped again. “What is the truth?”

“The truth,” Spinello said grandly-aye, he’d poured down some spirits, all right-”is that we’re in trouble. They’re going to try to smash us flat, and they have a pretty bloody good chance of doing it.” He emptied the mug and then filled it again.

“Oh.” Jadwigai took a longer pull from her own mug of spirits. She looked west, sighed, and drank again. When she spoke once more, it was to herself, and in the classical Kaunian that was her birthspeech: “Well, I bought myself a little extra time.”

Spinello eyed her profile, the way her pale lashes fluttered, the pulse in the hollow of her throat. She thinks the luck is gone, went through him. So do I. And if it is… He used classical Kaunian, too: “Will you do something for me?”

“What?” she asked, but her eyes said she already knew before he asked the next question.

He did ask it, but, for some reason, in Algarvian: “Will you sleep with me? I won’t touch you if you say no-by the powers above, Iwon’t -but I want you, and I don’t think we’ve got much time.”

Jadwigai set the mug down on a stool. “Aye,” she whispered. “You could force me. We both know all about that. Since you don’t, since you haven’t- why not?”

It wasn’t much of a recommendation, but Spinello decided he would take it-and Jadwigai. Altogether sober, he might not have. He might have thought that, no matter what he said, she couldn’t very well tell him no, not unless she wanted to go from pampered mascot to cursed Kaunian in the blink of an eye. With spirits coursing through him, with Jadwigai unbuttoning her Algarvian-issue tunic, such thoughts never once entered his mind.

When she was naked, she lay down on the Algarvian-issue cot he used in lieu of the benches lining the walls of the hut. He shed his own uniform in a hurry. “I’ll do my best to make you enjoy it, too,” he promised.

Rather to his surprise, his best turned out to be good enough. He’d never managed to kindle Vanai. Of course, she’d despised him, which was half the fun of bedding her. The only time she’d shown any warmth was the last time, when he told her he’d been sent to Unkerlant-and that, without a doubt, was because itwas the last time.

Jadwigai might have feared him, but she didn’t hate him. Maybe that made the difference. “You see?” he said, grinning at her after she let out a gasp that sounded distinctly startled.

She nodded. “Aye. I do see.” Sure enough, she seemed astonished.

“My turn now.” Spinello mounted her. He’d wondered if he would find her a maiden, as he had Vanai, but no. What had happened there in western Forthweg before she became the brigade’s pet? Maybe-no, certainly-such questions were better left unasked. Considering how much pleasure she gave him, Spinello didn’t want to ask any questions just then.

Afterwards, she said, “You were gentle. You were kind. You have been, all along. All the soldiers here have been kind to me. And yet…”

“What?” Spinello asked lazily. He felt too pleased with the world, too pleased with himself, to worry about any question Jadwigai might put.

Or so he thought, till she said, “How can you be like this with me and… the other way with so many Kaunians?”

Spinello shrugged. “It’s war. It’s revenge. It’s just one of those things.” He could afford to answer like that. His people built the special camps. They didn’t have to dwell in them.

Jadwigai might have had something sharp to say about that. She’d never been shy, and letting him have her might have made her think she could be frank-and she’d been drinking, too. But, before she could reply, thunder rolled in from the west. Only it wasn’t thunder. It was countless eggs, all bursting at once.

“Oh, by the powers above!” Spinello exclaimed, and sprang from the cot. He dressed with frantic haste. Jadwigai clothed herself almost as fast as he did. Even so, he hadn’t finished buttoning his tunic before eggs started bursting in and all around Gleina, too.

“It’s the attack, the one we’ve been waiting for,” Jadwigai said.

“It certainly is.” Spinello didn’t think he’d ever heard so many eggs burst all at the same time-it might have been a continuous wall of noise, and it went on and on. He’d never imagined he would hear worse than what he’d known in Sulingen, but this fit the bill.

Someone pounded on the door to the hut, shouting, “ColonelSpinello! ColonelSpinello, sir!”

“I’m here.” Spinello opened the door. The crystallomancer outside looked as if he’d just taken a punch in the jaw: he was wobbling, glassy-eyed. “Are you all right? What’s going on?”

“Sir, there are at least three breakthroughs on our brigade’s front, and I’m getting shouts for help from the north and south,” the mage answered.

“Tell ‘em no,” Spinello said. “We’ve got nothing to give.”

“I know that, sir,” the crystallomancer said. “One of the mages. .. one of ‘em got killed while I was talking with him, sir. The energy, it’s… hard for a man to take.” That no doubt explained his punch-drunk state.

More eggs burst, all over Gleina. Spinello smelled smoke and heard flames crackling. A metal fragment of eggshell buried itself in the doorframe a few inches from his head. He hardly even flinched. “We’ve got to fight back as hard as we can,” he said. “If the Unkerlanters break through our lines, the powers below will eat our whole army in the north.”

The crystallomancer nodded, but just then a man on a unicorn splashed with green and brown paint galloped through the village shouting, “Behemoths! Unkerlanter behemoths! There’s millions of’em, and they’re all heading this way!”

Spinello peered west. The cloud of dust there wouldn’t hold millions of behemoths, but it would hold dozens or hundreds. And it wasn’t the only such cloud he saw. “We aren’t going to hold Gleina,” he said, and then, “I wonder if we can hold Waldsolms.” One more thought flashed through his mind: Iwonder if we can hold anywhere. He looked back over his shoulder at Jadwigai. “You ready to move fast, sweetheart?” She nodded, her eyes enormous but less afraid than they had been before Spinello first lowered his mouth to her pink-tipped breasts. “Good,” he told her. “Now we have to see if we can stay ahead of Swemmel’s little chums till we’re able to throw them back. If we ever are. Come on.” More dragons painted in Unkerlanter rock-gray flew low over Gleina as they fled the burning village.

News-sheet vendors cried their wares as Ealstan came home from Pybba’s pottery works. “Heavy fighting in northern Unkerlant!” they shouted. “Algarvians inflict heavy losses on Swemmel’s savages in fierce defensive battles!”

Ealstan fumbled in his belt pouch and came up with a couple of coppers for a sheet. The redheads had occupied Forthweg for close to five years now. He’d learned to read between the lines of their lies to get some notion of the truth hiding behind them. When they talked about “fierce defensive battles,” that meant the Unkerlanters were hitting them hard. He was always willing-no, eager-to read about anybody hitting the Algarvians hard.

With his nose in the news sheet, he almost walked past his block of flats. He almost broke his neck going upstairs, because he kept trying to read and climb steps at the same time. He almost walked too far down the hall and gave the coded knock on the door to the wrong flat. And he still had the news sheet in front of his face when Vanai opened the right door.

She looked indignant when he finally lowered the sheet. Kissing her didn’t mollify her much. But when he said, “I think the redheads are really in trouble this time,” she was suddenly all smiles.

“Tell me,” she urged. “Tell me right now.”

“They’re talking about defensive battles,” Ealstan said. “Whenever they talk about defensive battles, that means they’re taking a pounding. And they’re talking about fighting in Sommerda, and Sommerda was a long way behind their line not so long ago. They think people are too stupid to look at a map to find out where these places are, but they’re wrong.”

“We can look at a map.” Vanai went and pulled an atlas from a bookshelf. “You got this for me when I had to hide here all the time.” She made a face and corrected herself: “The last time I had to hide here all the time, I mean.” She didn’t leave the flat these days. Her sorcerous disguise still worked, but for shorter and shorter-and ever less predictable-stretches of time.

Ealstan flipped the atlas open to a map of Derlavai. He started to laugh. “I didn’t realize it wasthis old.”

“I did,” Vanai told him. “It dates from back before the Six Years’ War.” No kingdom of Forthweg showed on the map; Algarve ruled the eastern half of the land, with Unkerlant holding the west. She went on, “This map doesn’t show where Sommerda is. Go to the one of Unkerlant.”

“All right.” Ealstan turned pages till he found it. When he did, he whistled in surprise. “Even I hadn’t realized it wasthat far east of the Cottbus River. Powers above, the Algarviansare in trouble if the Unkerlanters have come that far this fast.”

“Good.” Vanai wrapped her arms around her enormous belly. Surely the baby couldn’t wait more than another few days. “I hope they take back all their own kingdom. Then I hope they come into Forthweg and take it away from the Algarvians, too. I hope they do it fast. It’s the only way I can think of to have even a few Kaunians left alive here.”

Ealstan nodded. He couldn’t deny that. He had his own worries about the Unkerlanters. If they overran Forthweg, wouldKingPenda ever return? Or wouldKingSwemmel try to rule the kingdom as his father had in the distant days when the atlas was printed? That mattered a great deal to him. But he had to admit that Vanai’s concern was more urgent.

Kaunian-lover. In Forthweg, even before the Algarvians overran it, that had been a name with which to tar a man. Ealstan didn’t care. He reached out and touched Vanai’s hand.

She looked up, startled; she’d been studying the map hard. But she’d been thinking along with him, too, as she often did. She said, “I wonder if the Kaunians who are left will have to go on disguising themselves- ourselves-as Forthwegians. That would be the end of Kaunianity in Forthweg.”

“I know,” Ealstan said quietly. He didn’t know what to do about it. He didn’t think anyone could do anything about it. He also didn’t think he could say that to Vanai. What he did say was, “Turn to the map of Jelgava. I want to see where the fighting’s moved there.”

“All right.” Vanai turned pages with what looked like relief.

“The news sheet says there’s fighting in Salacgriva, and says that’s an oceanfront town,” Ealstan said. He and Vanai bent over the map, their heads close together. “Why, those lying whoresons!” he exclaimed. “Salacgriva is more than halfway from the sea to Balvi.”

“Theyare in trouble,” Vanai said softly. “I’ve dreamt for so long that they would be, and now they finally are. But will anything still be standing by the time they’re finally beaten?”

That was another question with no good answer. Instead of trying to answer it, Ealstan kissed her. She smiled at him, which made him think he’d done about as well as he could do.

When he went off to work the next morning, the news-sheet vendors were yelling about the terrible price the Unkerlanters had paid for overrunning Sommerda. Ealstan smiled and walked on without buying a sheet. He could figure out what that meant: Sommerda had fallen. The news sheets were putting the best face they could on it, but they couldn’t deny the brute fact.

Pybba waited for Ealstan when he walked into the pottery. “Do you sleep in your kilns?” Ealstan asked him. As far as he could tell, Pybba was always there. He talked about having a home, but that seemed talk and nothing else.

“Only when I’m in my cups. Get it-my cups?” Pybba laughed uproariously. “Now that you’re finally here, you lazy good-for-nothing, come on into my office. We’ve got things to talk about, you and I.” He pointed with a stubby finger, much scarred from old burns, toward the door to his sanctum.

With that door slammed shut behind them, Ealstan spoke first: “Mezen-tio’s bastards really are taking it on the chin now.”

“Aye, they are,” Pybba agreed. “That’s one of the things I want to talk to you about: won’t be long, if things keep going the way they are, before we’ll be able to rise up against the redheads, throw ‘em out of Eoforwic, maybe throw ‘em out of the whole of Forthweg, too.”

Excitement blazed through Ealstan. “That would be wonderful,” he breathed. “And about time, too.”

Voice dry, the pottery magnate answered, “It does help to have the Algarvians distracted, you know. But we’ve got to rise up before the Unkerlanters do all the work for us, or else we’ll never get our own kingdom back again.”

Ealstan nodded. How not, when the same thought had gone through his mind the night before? “What can I do to help?” he breathed.

“Well, you’ve already done this and that,” Pybba allowed. “That little spell you came up with to let you look like an Algarvian and get your wife out of the Kaunian quarter-we’ve used that a couple of times, and it’s worked.”

“Good,” Ealstan said.

“The redheads are looking for Kaunians who look like Forthwegians,” Pybba said. “They aren’t looking for Forthwegians who look like them. One of their special constables, a whoreson who had to be part bloodhound by the way he sniffed out everything we did, isn’t among those present any more thanks to that little spell, and we don’t miss him one bloody bit, either.”

“Good,” Ealstan said again, this time with savage gusto.

“Aye, not so bad.” Pybba raised a shaggy eyebrow. “I almost forgive you for taking up with a Kaunian girl.”

“That’s nice.” Ealstan raised an eyebrow, too. “And I almost forgive you for just almost forgiving me.”

He’d hoped to anger Pybba. Instead, he made him laugh. “If you were as pure as you think you are…” the pottery magnate began, but then he checked himself. “Maybe you are, by the powers above. When you come down to it, that’s a scary thought. Go on, get back to work.” His voice rose to a familiar bellow. “You think I pay you for sitting around doing nothing?”

Ealstan always had plenty of work to do, even when dealing with Pybba’s legitimate business. When he added on the rest, he wondered how he ever slept at night. But he didn’t stay late, as he had so often in the dark days when Vanai was a captive in the Kaunian quarter. With her so close to her time, and with no one but him she could trust, he wanted to be there as much as he could. If Pybba didn’t like it, he would have thrown his job in the pottery magnate’s face. But Pybba hadn’t said a word.

On the way home, Ealstan walked through the park where he’d gone with Vanai just after she worked out the spell that let her look like a Forthwegian. He’d named her Thelberge there, when he’d run into Ethelhelm the drummer and singer, whose books he’d once kept. Poor Ethelhelm, he thought. Poor, cursed Ethelhelm. A man of half-Kaunian blood, the musician had been putty in the Algarvians’ hands. He’d liked his riches too well, and had got much too involved with the redheads, though he’d finally used the sorcery to escape their clutches.

Iwonder why I thought of him. Maybe it was just going through the park. Maybe it was the musicians playing on the grass-although Ethelhelm wouldn’t have had much to do with the trumpeters or the viol player. The drummer, now, the drummer wasn’t bad.

The drummer, in fact, was good enough to make Ealstan pause and listen for a little while and toss some silver into the bowl the band had set in front of them. A nondescript, stocky fellow, the drummer could have made much more money playing in clubs or even in theaters. He sounded… He sounded like someone doing an excellent impression of Ethelhelm.

After a bit, the drummer’s eyes met Ealstan’s. That wasn’t surprising; only eight or ten people were standing around listening. What was surprising was that the drummer’s eyebrows rose slightly, as if he recognized Ealstan. If he did, he had the advantage, for Ealstan was sure he’d never set eyes on the fellow before.

He’d almost got back to the block of flats when he stopped so suddenly, the woman behind him bumped into him and let out a torrent of shrill complaint. He apologized, but too absentmindedly to suit her.

Up in the flat, though, he said, “I’m sure that was Ethelhelm, sorcerously disguised to look all Forthwegian. He can hide the way he looks, but he can’t hide the way he plays the drums. And he knew who I was-I’m sure of that, too.”

“For his sake, I hope you’re wrong,” Vanai said. “You told him as much yourself: if he wants to stay safe, he has to stay away from music. If you recognized who he was, someone else will, too, and then the Algarvians will have him.”

“I know. That would be too bad.” Ealstan had had his quarrels with Ethelhelm-he’d had quarrels with most of his employers-but he wouldn’t have wished falling into Algarvian captivity on anyone, especially on anyone of even partly Kaunian blood.

Looking back on it, Vanai had trouble defining exactly when she went into labor. Her womb had been squeezing now and again throughout the last couple of months of her pregnancy. She thought that was normal, but had no one she could ask. Over the couple of days after Ealstan saw, or thought he saw, Ethelhelm, the squeezes grew stronger and came more often.

Are these labor pains? she wondered as she walked around the flat. They didn’t keep her from walking, or from doing anything she needed to do. And they didn’t hurt. How could they be pains if they didn’t hurt?

She lay down beside Ealstan, wriggled till she found the least uncomfortable position-finding a comfortable one, with her belly so enormous, was impossible these days-and fell asleep. When she woke, right around dawn, it was to the sound of a snap. She also discovered she needed to use the pot, but she couldn’t stop herself before she got there, and dribbled on the floor.

“What is it?” Ealstan asked sleepily.

“I think… my bag of waters just broke,” Vanai answered. She hoped that was what it was. If it wasn’t that, it was something worse.

“Does that mean this is it-I mean, that you’ll have the baby pretty soon?” The mattress creaked as Ealstan sat up in bed.

“I don’t know,” Vanai said irritably. The truth was, she didn’t know much more about it than he did. But it was happening to her, not to him. It hardly seemed fair. He’d been there at the beginning. Why shouldn’t he be there at the end, too? She went on, “I think-oof”

“What’s the matter?” Ealstan could hear that something was.

“Now I know… why they’re called… labor pains.” Vanai got the words out in small bunches. This time, when her womb clenched, she really felt it. Maybe the water in there had shielded her from the worst of the squeezes. Nothing was shielding her any more. She’d been looking forward to having the baby. Now, all at once, she wasn’t so sure.

“Pybba won’t get his accounts cast today,” Ealstan said. “I expect he’ll figure out why I’m not there.”

“I expect so,” Vanai agreed-once the pang eased, she could speak freely. She also seemed to have stopped dribbling. She got up off the pot and waddled back to bed. She hadn’t been there long before her womb clamped down again. She grunted. This one was stronger than the last.

“Can I get you anything?” Ealstan asked anxiously.

Vanai shook her head. “I’m going to do this till I’m done,” she said. “I can tell. It’s real now.” She wanted to laugh at herself-she made it sound as if she were going into battle. But the laughter wouldn’t come. Thiswas a battle, and some women didn’t come back from it. She wished she hadn’t thought of that.

To keep from thinking, she got out of bed and started walking. It wasn’t so easy now, not with the pangs coming every few minutes. When the third or fourth one caught her in the middle of a step, she almost fell. That would not be a good thing to do, not now, she told herself. She stood there, waiting for the labor pain to end and her belly to ease back from rock hardness. That seemed to take a very long time. She was gasping by the time it finally happened. Moving slowly and with great care, she walked back to the bed and lay down.

“Are you all right?” Ealstan looked faintly green. But he stayed by the bed and clutched her hand, and she didn’t suppose he could do much more than that.

“I’m as well as I can be,” Vanai answered. “I don’t think I’ll do any more walking, though, thank you all the same.”

Before very long, her womb squeezed in on itself again. The baby didn’t like that, and kicked and wiggled as if in indignation. Because there was very little room in there and the walls of the womb were tight, that hurt, too, where it usually hadn’t before. Vanai hissed, which made Ealstan jump.

When the tension eased, she said, “This is all supposed to happen, I think.” Both of them had read as much as they could about what happened when a baby was born, but the Forthwegian books on the subject told less than Vanai would have liked. Back in Oyngestun, her grandfather had had classical Kaunian gynecological texts in his library, but they might as well have been a mile beyond the moon for all the good they did her now.

And the Kaunians of imperial times had known a lot less about medicine than modern folk did-even the Forthwegians whom the descendants of those Kaunians reckoned barbarians. A lot of what was in Brivibas’ texts was probably wrong.

Ealstan suddenly said, “You look like yourself again, not like a Forthwegian.”

Vanai started to laugh again, only to break off in the middle when another pang hit. She started to say something in spite of the labor pain, only to discover she couldn’t. What her body was doing took charge now, and her mind had to wait till her body gave it leave to work once more. In the time between pains, she said, “That’s the least of my worries.” Sweat ran down her face; her hair, newly re-dyed black, felt wet and matted. She might have been running for hours. People called giving birthlabor for a reason, too.

And it went on and on. The pangs came closer together, and each one seemed a little stronger, a little more painful, than the one just before. After what felt like forever, Vanai asked, “What time is it?”

“Midmorning,” Ealstan answered.

She almost shouted that he had to be lying to her, that it had to be mid-afternoon at the very least. But when she looked at the light through the windows, she realized he was right. In a small voice, she asked, “Would you get me a little wine?”

He frowned. “Should you have it?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “I don’tthink I’ll puke it up if I drink it, and my mouth is dry as the Zuwayzi desert right now.”

“All right.” Ealstan brought it to her. He also brought in a wide-mouthed basin in case she proved mistaken. But the sweet red wine went down smoothly and stayed down, and she felt better for it. Her mouth no longer seemed caked with dust.

Another eternity that might have been an hour or two dragged by. Ealstan stayed by the side of the bed, squeezing her hand, running a cool, damp cloth over her forehead and neck every so often, occasionally holding up the wine-cup so she could take another sip. She was glad to have him there, gladder than she would have been to have a midwife, even if a midwife knew more.

And then, all at once, she wasn’t. “You-you-youman, you!” she said furiously, in between two pangs that hardly left her room to breathe, let alone talk. “If it weren’t for you and your lousy prick, I wouldn’t be in this mess now.”

Ealstan looked stricken. After a moment, though, his face cleared. “One of the books said that when you started calling me names, it was a sign the baby would come soon,” he told her.

Vanai called him more names then, all the names she could think of, in both Forthwegian and classical Kaunian. She hated to stop when the next labor pang took her, but had very little choice; just breathing through it was quite hard enough. But she resumed when it finally ebbed.

After a few more pangs, she felt the urge to use the pot again, as if her bowels badly needed to move. When she said so-her sudden storm of anger against Ealstan had passed away as fast as it blew up-he answered, “That means you’re ready to push the baby out.”

That wasn’t what it felt like. It felt as if she were straining to pass a stool the size of a football. She’d heard that a couple of times, from women talking back in Oyngestun before the war. She hadn’t imagined it could be true-how could having a baby be so crude? Now she found out for herself.

But, no matter how hard she bore down, the baby didn’t seem to want to move. “I’m trying to shit a boulder,” she panted as Ealstan ran that cloth across her face. “I’m trying to, but it’s stuck.”

“Keep trying,” he said. “It’s what you’re supposed to do.”

She had very little choice. Her body kept straining to force out the baby. It would have kept on doing that whether she wanted it to or not. The most she could do was concentrate, take a deep breath, and try to help it along. She pushed with all her might-and this time felt movement. That made her push harder than ever. She let out a noise half squeal, half groan, and all effort.

“Oh, by the powers above,” Ealstan said softly. “Here comes the head.” He let out a startled squawk. “No-here comes the baby.”

Once Vanai had pushed out the head, everything else was easy. That was the hard part, both figuratively and literally. Shoulders, torso, and legs followed in short order. So did the afterbirth. Ealstan made gulping noises. “You’ll have to throw away these sheets,” Vanai said, before asking the question she should have asked first: “Is it a boy or a girl?”

“A girl,” Ealstan answered. “Here-I’m tying the cord with one hank of dark brown yarn and one of yellow. Now I’m cutting it. Now…” He held up the baby. She started to cry, and quickly went from purple to pink.

“Give her to me,” Vanai said. “Give me Saxburh.” That was the girl’s name-the Forthwegian girl’s name-they’d picked. Vanai also thought of her as Silelai-her own mother’s name. If things in Forthweg ever improved for Kaunians, perhaps the baby could use that name, too.

Ealstan handed her to her mother as if he had in his hands an egg that might burst at any moment. Saxburh had a little hair, incredibly fine. What there was of it was dark. Her eyes were dark blue, but that meant nothing: all babies’ eyes were that color at first. Whether her skin would prove fair or swarthy, whether she’d be lean like a Kaunian or blocky like a Forthwegian- who could say? Too soon for such guesses.

“Here,” Vanai said, and set the baby on her breast. Saxburh knew what to do; she began sucking right away. That made Vanai’s womb contract painfully. She let out a hiss and began to realize how worn she was. She felt as if she’d been run over by a wagon full of logs.

And then Ealstan had the nerve to say, “Move a little.” But when, after a groan, she did, he swept off the fouled bedclothes and gave her a pair of drawers and a cloth pad of the sort she wore when her courses came. She set Saxburh down for a moment so she could put them on. The baby’s high, thin wail made Vanai pick her up again in a hurry.

As Saxburh went back to nursing, Vanai asked Ealstan, “Could you get me something to eat, please? I feel like I haven’t had anything in years.”

“Of course.” He hurried away and came back with bread and sausage and olives and cheese and two big mugs full of wine. As Vanai fell to like a famished wolf, he raised his mug high. “To our baby!”

“To our baby!” Vanai echoed with her mouth full. After she swallowed, she took a long pull at her own mug. She wanted to bathe. She wanted to sleep for a year. For the time being, she was content to lie there with Saxburh and try to rest.

Major Scoufas looked up from his mug of ale at Colonel Sabrino. “Well, your Excellency, now I know you are truly in bad odor at King Mezentio’s court,” the Yaninan dragonflier said.

Sabrino’s mug held spirits, not ale. He hadn’t got very far down it, though, not yet. “I told you that the day my wing got here,” he replied. “Why do you say you know it now?”

“Because if your superiors cared for you at all, they would have sent you north to try to stem the Unkerlanter tide there,” Scoufas replied. “But no- they have left you here to keep us Yaninans company. And I happen to know they are sending everything they can possibly spare to the north.”

That called for a long pull at the mug of spirits. Sabrino wished he could have contradicted Scoufas. Unfortunately, the Yaninan was right. Sabrino said all he could say: “I am a soldier. I can only go where my orders take me. I can only do what my superiors tell me.”

“I understand that, and the answer does you honor,” Major Scoufas said. “But is it not true that something very like a catastrophe is taking shape for Algarve in the north?” He spoke with a certain avid interest. If Algarve went down to defeat against Unkerlant, Sabrino didn’t see how Yanina could avoid also going down to defeat. That didn’t stop some Yaninans from enjoying Algarve’s misfortune. Having tasted defeat so often themselves, they enjoyed seeing the once-invincible Algarvians learn what the dish tasted like.

“Disaster?” Sabrino shrugged. “I don’t think it’s so bad as that, Major. Sooner or later-probably sooner-Swemmel’s men will run out of soldiers, and we’ll mend the front, the way we’ve done here in the Duchy of Grelz.”

He realized, too late, he should have called it the Kingdom of Grelz. Scoufas raised a dark, elegantly arched eyebrow to show he realized the same thing. Using the Unkerlanter name for the region showed how much ground the Algarvians had lost in the past year.

And he realized he was liable to be talking through his hat when he claimed things would soon get better in the north. The Algarvian army defending that long and vital stretch of front seemed simply to have disappeared. Algarvian reports from the north grew more tight-lipped day by day. Swemmel’s men, by contrast, declared victory after victory and claimed the recapture of town after town. If those claims were lies, the Algarvians might have done a better job of denying them.

Scoufas said, “If you were truly a lucky man, Colonel, or a well-favored one, you might have been sent off to Jelgava and escaped from Unkerlant altogether.”

That held some truth, too, but rather less. Not many Algarvian formations were leaving Unkerlant to fight in the east. Mezentio didn’t have enough men in Unkerlant to hold back Swemmel’s soldiers as things were. The east would just have to take care of itself.

And if it doesn‘t? Sabrino wondered. If it can’t? He finished the spirits at a gulp. Then we‘re in even more trouble than we were before.

He eyed Major Scoufas. “You may not like Algarvians all that well, but I suggest you remember one thing: before the Unkerlanters get into Algarve- if we’re so unlucky as to have that happen-they have to go through Yanina.”

Like most Yaninans, Scoufas had an expressive face. The emotion he expressed wasn’t delight, nor anything close to it. Sabrino smiled. Maybe Scoufas thought he was allowed to snipe at Algarvians but they couldn’t say anything about his kingdom. That wasn’t how things worked, no matter what he thought.

Before either wing commander made the occasion more unpleasant, a Yaninan crystallomancer burst into the peasant hut where they were drinking and spoke rapidly in his own language. Yaninan always put Sabrino in mind of wine pouring out of a jug, glug glug glug. But he didn’t speak it, and had to ask, “What’s he saying?”

“The Unkerlanters seem to be stirring down here after all,” Scoufas replied. “They’re trying to cross the Trusetal River and set up a bridgehead on the east side.”

“Can’t have that.” Sabrino sprang to his feet. “If they get a company over today, it’ll be a brigade tomorrow, complete with behemoths.”

Scoufas dipped his head in the Yaninan equivalent of a nod. “Aye, that is so,” he said. “We may not love each other, but there is nothing like a common foe to point out where our interests lie.”

“True enough,” Sabrino said. “Shall we go pay a call on the common foe and try to make him extinct rather than common?”

“Extinct?” Scoufas frowned; he needed a moment to understand the wordplay, which robbed Sabrino of half his pleasure in it. But then the Yaninan smiled. “Oh, I see. Aye, indeed it would be well if the Unkerlanters were extinct.” They both hurried out of the hut, shouting for their men.

The Yaninan dragon handler with the big black mustache had taken it upon himself to minister to Sabrino’s dragon. He was as good as any Algarvian could have been. His name was Tsaldaris. He had no breeding to speak of; had he come from a notable family, he would have been flying dragons, not handling them. He spoke Algarvian after a fashion: enough to talk about dragons, at least. As Sabrino mounted the screeching, bad-tempered beast, Tsaldaris said, “Careful. Cinnabar-pfuifHe made a disgusted noise and held thumb and forefinger close together to show he’d had little to give the dragon.

“Any hope of getting more any time soon?” Sabrino asked, fastening his harness so the dragon couldn’t pitch him off no matter how much it wanted to.

Tsaldaris tossed his head, as Yaninans did when they meant no. “Supply got unicorn’s prick up arse,” he said, which, Sabrino feared, summed things up altogether too well.

Sabrino waved to Major Scoufas. Scoufas waved back. Sabrino looked to his own men. They were ready. He’d known they would be. And so were the Yaninans. They made perfectly good dragonfliers. Their trouble was, they had not enough dragons and not enough men trained to fly them, especially when facing a foe who came in such great numbers as the Unker-lanters did.

At Sabrino’s nod, Tsaldaris loosed the chain that held his dragon to its stake. Screaming fury at the world, the dragon leaped into the air with a great thunder of wings. Algarvian dragons painted in varying patterns of green and white and red rose with it. So did their Yaninan counterparts, those beasts painted simply red and white. Some carried eggs slung beneath them; others would protect those dragons and do what damage they could with their flames. Sabrino cursed the dearth of cinnabar. “The land of the Ice People,” he muttered. “The Mamming Hills.” Plenty of cinnabar both places. The Algarvians would never get to use any of it, not any more.

Flying west, though, always made him feel better. When he was flying west, he was going on the attack. He’d had too much of the Unkerlanters’ coming to him. He was, he’d always been, a man who wanted to make things happen, not one who sat back and waited for them to happen to him.

He didn’t need long to spot the Unkerlanter bridgehead. Eggs were bursting all around the edges of it. Most of them looked to be Unkerlanter eggs-King Swemmel’s soldiers had far more tossers than did the Yaninans facing them, too. And… Sabrino started cursing again, this time in good earnest. The Unkerlanters had thrown a plank bridge across the Trusetal River-their artisans were clever at such things-and were sending behemoths across to the eastern bank.

Sabrino had two crystals with him-one to link him to his own squadron leaders; the other, with somewhat different emanations, to Major Scoufas. He spoke into both of them at the same time: “Those behemoths are our target. If we can slay them and wreck that bridge, the footsoldiers on the ground ought to be able to close out the rest of the Unkerlanters this side of the river.”

Had they been Algarvian soldiers, he would have been sure of it. With Yaninans, one could only hope. However good their dragonfliers were, their footsoldiers had singularly failed to cover themselves with glory. No, plurally, for the Yaninans had failed again and again. But Sabrino couldn’t say that, no matter how true it was, for fear of offending Major Scoufas, who was as touchy as any Yaninan.

The dragons carrying eggs dove on the bridge. The Unkerlanters had heavy sticks mounted nearby to protect it, of course. One dragon-an Algarvian beast-went straight into the Trusetal. Sabrino cursed yet again: one more comrade he would never see again. But eggs burst in large numbers, in the river and on both banks. Then one struck the bridge, square in the center. The burst of sorcerous energy pitched two behemoths into the water and set the bridge afire. Sabrino whooped.

Whooping still, he gave new orders: “Now we attack the behemoths on the east bank of the Trusetal.”

“Cover us, if you would be so kind,” Major Scoufas said. “My men and I will show you what your allies can do.”

Although Sabrino had been about to order his own dragonfliers to swoop down on the Unkerlanter behemoths, he was willing to salve Scoufas’ pride, and so he answered, “Let it be as you say.”

“My thanks,” the Yaninan told him, and gave his own orders in his own language. Sabrino understood not a word of them, but what they were was hardly in doubt. And, almost as if diving on targets in a practice field, the Yaninans carried out the attack. The behemoths below scattered, as targets would not and could not, but that mattered little, for what was a behemoth’s speed when measured against a dragon’s? If Scoufas and his men had to get a little closer to flame the behemoths than they would have needed to do with more cinnabar in them, what difference did that make?

But, just as Sabrino began to gloat in good earnest, Captain Orosio’s face appeared in the crystal that kept the wing commander in touch with his fellow Algarvians. “Enemy dragons!” the squadron leader shouted. “A whole great swarm of them, coming out of the west!”

They were painted rock-gray, of course, and Sabrino hadn’t seen them against the clouds. I’m getting old, he thought. If he wanted to get much older, he would have to fight hard now. “Melee!” he ordered. “If we break up their formation, we have the edge.” The Unkerlanters did fine as long as they acted in accordance with someone else’s plan. If they had to think for themselves, to decide quickly, they had trouble.

A wild melee it was, too, once the Algarvians got in amongst the Unkerlanters. Dragons spun crazily through the sky. Sabrino tried to flame one of Swemmel’s sparrowhawks-that was the name the Algarvians gave the Unkerlanters’ best dragonfliers-but couldn’t come close enough to do it.

When an Unkerlanter dragon got on his tail, he had to fly like a man possessed to keep from getting flamed himself. But he managed to blaze the enemy dragonflier with his stick-a lucky blaze, but he was glad to take it- and the rock-gray beast went wild, attacking every dragon around it. Since the Unkerlanters had far more dragons in the air than he did, that helped his side more than theirs.

It didn’t do enough to help the Yaninan dragonfliers down below, though. The Unkerlanters had enough dragons to assail the Algarvians and Yaninans at the same time. Major Scoufas’ image appeared in Sabrino’s crystal. “We have to pull out!” he shouted.

“We haven’t got rid of the bridgehead,” Sabrino said, blazing at another Unkerlanter dragonflier and missing.

“If we stay, we still will not be rid of the bridgehead-and the Unkerlanters will be rid of us,” Scoufas replied.

Sabrino cursed as he pondered. Had he not judged Scoufas right about the first part of that, he would have ignored the second; men and dragons fought to be used up at need. As things were… “Aye,” he said bitterly, and began the tricky business of getting his wing free. They’d hurt the Unkerlanters, but Swemmel still had men-and, worse, behemoths-on this bank of the Trusetal.

All things considered, Garivald was pleased with the crop he and Obilot had managed to plant. They’d started late, with the mule they’d hired from Dagulf. But, looking over the soft green of growing barley and rye, he thought they should end up with plenty to get them through the winter.

“Not so bad,” he told her after a long day of weeding.

“No, not so bad,” she agreed. “The farther we are from anybody else, the better, too.” She dipped a horn spoon into the porridge of barley and leeks they were eating for supper.

Garivald grunted. “That’s true enough, by the powers above. I didn’t think I’d end up a hermit, but you never know, do you?”

“No.” Obilot’s eyes went far away. Back to whatever she’d had before the Algarvians swarmed into the Duchy of Grelz? Maybe. Garivald had never had the nerve to ask such questions, and she’d never said what drove her into the irregulars. All she said now was, “You never know.”

Sooner or later, they would have to go back into Linnich. The farm had no salt lick; they could trade herbs and vegetables from the garden plot for salt, and for tools, and maybe for some chickens or ducks, too. When spring came again, they would need a draught animal for the plowing. Garivald was in no hurry. Not even the thought of seeing Dagulf cheered him. His friend reminded him of all he’d lost when Zossen vanished off the face of the earth.

And he wasn’t sure he could trust Dagulf, not any more. They hadn’t seen each other for a couple of years. A lot had happened in that time. A lot could have happened, too. The only way to find out would be the hard way.

Filled with such gloomy thoughts, Garivald was glad to lie down on the benches against the wall of the hut he and Obilot had taken for their own and go to sleep. As usual, a day in the fields made him sleep as if he were stuffed into a rest crate till the next morning.

When he woke, he ate more barley porridge and went out to the fields to begin all over again. He might not do exactly the same thing day after day, but he always had plenty to do. No one who lived on a farm ever complained of too little to do, not between planting time and harvest.

He’d just thrown a rock at a rabbit-and, to his disgust, missed, for it would have gone into the pot had he hit it-when three men came up the path leading to Linnich. They were the first men he’d seen on the path since he and Obilot found this farm. Now that spring had come, it was hardly a path at all, being much overgrown. Whoever had used this place before he came hadn’t had much use for company, either.

Those three men saw him, too. One of them waved. Without thinking, Garivald waved back. He cursed himself for a fool afterwards, but it probably wouldn’t have mattered one way or the other. Two of the men carried sticks slung on their back; the third had his in his hand. If they were bandits, Garivald was in trouble. If they served King Swemmel, he was liable to be in more trouble still.

“Hail!” called the one who’d waved. “Are you Fariulf?”

“Aye, that’s me,” Garivald answered with something approaching relief. If they were using his false name, they didn’t want him for the crime of fighting the Algarvians without doing it under King Swemmel’s auspices. He hadn’t done much as Fariulf to get into trouble. “What do you want?” he added as the men came forward.

Obilot was watching from the garden. He wondered if she would get a stick from inside the farmhouse and start blazing. But he stood between her and the three oncoming men, who’d got very close by then.

“Are you hale?” asked the fellow who was doing the talking. He answered his own question: “Aye, I can see you are. Come along with us.”

“Come along with you where?” Garivald asked.

“Someplace you should have been long before this: King Swemmel’s army,” replied the-the impresser, Garivald realized he had to be. “You think you can sit out the war here in the middle of nowhere? That’s not how things work, pal. Come along quiet-like and nothing bad’ll happen to you till the cursed Algarvians have their chance at your worthless hide.” By then, all three aimed their sticks at him.

Considering what they could have done to him, considering what they surely would have done to him had they known his real name, going into the Unkerlanter army didn’t strike Garivald as such a bad bargain. All he said was, “Let me tell my woman good-bye.” He pointed back toward Obilot.

He expected them to refuse; impressers had an evil name. Maybe they were relieved he didn’t put up more of a fuss, for the man who talked for them replied, “Go ahead, but make it snappy.”

“I will.” Garivald beckoned Obilot forward. She came with obvious reluctance, but she came. Her face was hard and closed, showing nothing to the impressers but nothing to him, either. He made the best of things he could: “Bringane, they’re taking me into the army.”

“How will I get the crop in without you?” she cried. But her voice, like his, held a note of relief. This wasn’t good, but it could have been worse. In the army, at least, he’d have a chance to fight back.

With a certain rough sympathy, the impresser said, “Things are hard all over the kingdom, lady.”

“Why are you making them harder for Fariulf and me?” Obilot demanded.

“Because we need men if we’re going to whip the Algarvians,” the impresser replied. “Now let’s get going. We haven’t got all day.”

Garivald squeezed Obilot. He kissed her. He said, “I’ll come back.” She nodded. He hoped she believed him. He tried to believe himself. The impressers snickered. He wondered how often they’d heard the same promises. Then he wondered how often those promises came true. Having done that, he wished he hadn’t.

The impressers led him away. He shook his head at Obilot as he went, warning her not to try to blaze them. One against three-even two against three-wasn’t good odds. Her shoulders went up and down in a sigh, but she finally nodded.

By the time he got into Linnich, Garivald wondered if he shouldn’t have let Obilot try to stop the impressers. He was hungry and tired, and wanted nothing so much as to go back to the farm, forget about the world, and have the world forget about him, too.

Most of the people on the streets in Linnich were women and old men. He wondered who’d told the impressers he was out there on that farm away from the village. If he ever found out, if he ever got his hands on that person… He hoped it wasn’t Dagulf. That would be a terrible thing to think of a man who had been his friend. But he knew he would wonder for a long time to come.

More impressers stood in the market square, along with the men they’d rounded up. He didn’t see Dagulf there, which raised his suspicions. Some of the men who would be going into King Swemmel’s army were hardly men at all, but youths. Others had gray hair and gray stubble on their cheeks. Only a couple were, like Garivald, somewhere in the prime of life.

“Let’s get moving,” an impresser said. He was in the prime of life; Garivald resentfully wondered why he wasn’t out there trying to blaze Algarvians instead of rounding up his own countrymen. The impresser went on, “We’ve got a long way to go to the closest ley-line caravan depot.”

Wherewas the closest ley-line caravan depot? Garivald didn’t know. Ley lines weren’t so dense in this stretch of the Duchy of Grelz. He didn’t think there was one within half a day’s walk of Linnich, though. That gave him a certain amount of hope. With a little luck, he might slip away during the night. He’d had plenty of practice slipping away in his days as an irregular.

But if he knew tricks, the impressers knew tricks, too. Sure enough, they had to halt by the side of the road for the night. They proved to have light leg irons in their packs, and fastened their recruits together before doling out black bread and sausage to them. Garivald sighed. That was the sort of efficiency King Swemmel surely approved of.

Garivald never found out the name of the town with the caravan depot. He was formally taken into the army-as Fariulf son of Syrivald-inside the depot, before boarding the caravan. A bored-looking clerk asked, “Do you take oath to defend the Kingdom of Unkerlant and King Swemmel from all foes, as directed by those set over you?”

“Aye,” Garivald answered, as everyone else surely did. What would Swemmel’s men do to someone who refused to swear that oath? Garivald knew he didn’t want to find out.

Riding the ley-line caravan was something new and exciting. He’d sabotaged them, but he’d never ridden in one before. By the way some of the other new recruits exclaimed, he wasn’t the only one aboard a caravan car for the first time. How the countryside whizzed past as the caravan glided northwest! That was the first thought that struck his mind. The second was how devastated the countryside looked. It had all been fought over at least twice, parts of it more often than that. As he went through one wrecked village after another, he began to realize just how vast the war against Algarve really was.

More recruits-again, mostly boys and older men-boarded at each stop, till they filled his caravan car and, presumably, the others. Food was more black bread; drink was water. He’d never tried to sleep sitting up on a hard bench. He didn’t think he could. When he got tired enough, though, he did.

He stayed on the caravan for two and a half days, rising from that seat only to ease himself in a privy that stank and soon began to overflow. By the time the caravan stopped somewhere far outside the Duchy of Grelz, ever so much farther from home than Garivald had ever gone before, he could barely hobble from the car.

No one waiting for him seemed to care. He got a rock-gray tunic and socks and a knapsack and a pair of stout boots. He got a stick. When the sergeant who issued it to him asked if he knew how to use it, he just said, “Aye.” The sergeant made a mark on a leaf of paper and sent him to the right. Those who said no went to the left.

A mage came before the group of tired, confused men on the right and began chanting spells over them. Someone asked what they were for. “They’ll ward you against Algarvian wizardry-some of it, anyway,” a watching soldier answered. Garivald thought of Sadoc the irregular and hoped this mage knew his business better than Sadoc had.

Once the magic was done, the new soldiers got back onto a caravan car. This one had a bad privy, too. After another day and a half, the ley-line caravan stopped again. As Garivald got out, he asked, “Is this where we train?”

“Train?” Somebody already on the ground laughed. “We haven’t got time to waste on training you. We gave you a stick, right? If you live long enough, you’ll get trained, by the powers above.” And with no more fanfare than that, Garivald trudged off to battle against the Algarvians.

Sidroc couldn’t remember the last time he’d been on a quiet stretch of front. There were Unkerlanters west of him: he knew that. But Plegmund’s Brigade, for once, wasn’t in the midst of desperate righting at every hour of the day and night. Patrols went out with some reasonable expectation that they wouldn’t come back chopped to pieces or fail to come back at all.

“Enjoy it while it lasts,” Sergeant Werferth said to anyone and everyone who would listen. “Before long, the Algarvians are going to ship us north. That’s where they’re in trouble, so that’s where we’ll go.”

“Not fair,” Sidroc said. “They’ve been loafing in the north for the past two years. Let them worry about Swemmel’s whoresons, and leave us alone.”

“Life isn’t fair, sonny.” Werferth looked around to make sure no redheads were in earshot, then went on, “Besides, they may really need us. From what I hear, the powers below have got their teeth into that whole Algarvian army up there.”

“That’s not good,” Sidroc said slowly.

“Did I say it was?” Werferth answered. “Of course, there’s another reason they might send us up there, too. If they run into much more trouble, the fight’ll be heading back toward Forthweg. They might figure we’d fight harder trying to keep Swemmel’s bastards out of our own kingdom.”

“They might be right.” Sidroc had seen enough of the war in Unkerlant to know what both sides did to villages they overran. He winced at the idea of that happening inside Forthweg. It mostly hadn’t when the redheads conquered his kingdom; the Forthwegians had been overwhelmed too fast.

“My arse,” Ceorl said. The ruffian had been scraping mud from his boots with a knife. Looking up, he went on, “Far as I’m concerned, the powers below are welcome to Forthweg, and so are the Unkerlanters. I joined Plegmund’s Brigade to get the demon out of there. I don’t give a flying futter if I never see the stinking place again as long as I live.”

Plenty of people up in Forthweg would probably be glad never to see Ceorl again, either. Sidroc didn’t say that. It held true for him as well. It held true for a lot of the men in Plegmund’s Brigade.

Sergeant Werferth, Sidroc judged, was one of the few for whom it might not hold true. Werferth hadn’t joined the Brigade because everyone hated him. He’d joined because he liked being a soldier, and this gave him the chance to keep doing what he liked and what he was good at.

Before Sidroc could say anything along those lines, a runner came trotting up and spoke in Algarvian, which meant Brigade business: “Brigadier Polinesso orders everybody who’s not on patrol to report to the village of Ossiach at midafternoon. He’s got something special to say.”

“Must be special,” Sidroc said. “He’s never done anything like this before.”

“Do you know what it is?” Ceorl asked the runner, who shook his head. Ceorl cursed the fellow as he went off to spread the word elsewhere.

“Something special,” Werferth repeated in musing tones. “I wonder what it could be. You don’t suppose the war’s over, do you?”

Sidroc and Ceorl both laughed. “Fat chance,” Sidroc said. Werferth looked rueful. After a moment, he laughed, too. Sidroc didn’t think the war would ever end.

Ossiach wasn’t far away. The rough-looking, bearded men of the Brigade filled the market square to the bursting point. If any Unkerlanters remained in the village, they prudently stayed out of sight.

Brigadier Polinesso climbed up onto a crate so the soldiers he commanded could see him. “We have a special new regiment alongside of us on the left, men,” he said. “You need to know this, so you will not take them for the enemy. They will wear the flag of Algarve on their left tunic sleeves. We expect them to fight like tigers-like tigers, do you hear?”

“Aye, Brigadier,” the assembled men of the Brigade chorused.

“Good. Very good. You are dismissed,” Polinesso said.

Sidroc scratched his head all the way back to his squad’s encampment. “What in blazes was he talking about? Who’s coming in next to us? We know about the Algarvians. We know about the Yaninans.”

“I’d like to kill the Yaninans, the way they run,” Ceorl said.

“They had some regiments of Sibians,” Werferth said, “but I think the Sibs went into Sulingen and never came out. Besides, Mezentio’s lost Sibiu, so he won’t get any more regiments there.”

“Black Zuwayzin?” Sidroc suggested.

Ceorl howled laughter. “I’d like to see those naked whoresons down here, especially in the wintertime. They’d freeze their balls off, and that’s no joke.”

“Besides,” Werferth added, “they don’t wear tunics. How can they put flags on the sleeves of tunics they aren’t wearing?”

“All right, not Zuwayzin,” Sidroc said. “But who, then?”

“They’d better not be Yaninans,” Werferth said. “Ceorl’s right about that. I don’t want them on our flank, not with the itchy feet they’ve got. If they bug out, they leave us naked as a Zuwayzi for the Unkerlanters.”

‘‘Polinesso wouldn’t say the Yaninans fight like tigers.” Sidroc scratched his head again. “Powers above, hewouldn’t. The redheads haven’t got any use for Yaninans, either.”

Werferth and Ceorl both grunted, but neither one argued, from which Sidroc concluded they thought he was right. Werferth said, “Maybe they’re Grelzers.”

“Since when are Grelzers special in Grelz?” Sidroc asked, and again got no good answer.

He found the truth two days later, coming in from another blessedly uneventful patrol. He paused to fill his water bottle in a stream not far from where his squad was camped. When he looked up, another soldier was filling a bottle on the other side of the stream. In careful Algarvian, the other fellow said, “You are from Plegmund’s Brigade, is it not so? We were told we would have Plegmund’s Brigade on our right hand.”

“Aye, I’m from Plegmund’s Brigade.” Sidroc gave his own name, and added, “Who in blazes arejyow?”

The other man’s uniform was dark green, almost the color of those the Grelzers who fought on Algarve’s side wore. But this fellow was no Grelzer: he was tall and slim and blond and wore trousers and short tunic with, sure enough, the Algarvian flag sewn to the left sleeve. He’s a Kaunian, Sidroc thought dazedly. He’s got to be a Kaunian. But that’snot what the redheads use Kaunians for…

“I am Brusku,” the stranger said, which both did and did not sound like a Kaunian name-the ending was different from thes Forthwegian Kaunians used. Then he went on, “I am a soldier in the Phalanx of Valmiera.”

“Ahh.” Sidroc slowly nodded. Now things grew clearer. The Algarvians didn’t massacre blonds from Valmiera and Jelgava, maybe for fear of touching off revolts in the east. But they were getting some use from them, anyway. Sidroc nodded again in a more friendly way than he’d thought he would show to any Kaunian. “Welcome to Unkerlant. You can’t go home again either, can you?”

Brusku’s pale stare suddenly sharpened. “No,” he said after a moment. “So it is the same for you, is it? I did what I wanted to do. It is enough.”

Sidroc had done what he wanted to do, too. Was it enough? Whether it was or not, he was stuck with it. He said, “Come back to my camp with me.” He pointed north. “You can meet my pals.”

“All right.” Brusku splashed across the stream, which was no more than ankle deep. As Sidroc led the way, he thought about how strange it was to be fighting alongside a Kaunian. A few years before, though, he would have thought it strange to be fighting alongside Algarvians, too.

“Greetings,” Ceorl called when he walked up to the fire. The ruffian pointed behind him. “Who in blazes is that?”

“His name’s Brusku,” Sidroc answered-in Algarvian, so Brusku could follow. “He’s from the Phalanx of Valmiera-that’s the outfit Brigadier Polinesso said was going in on our left.”

He wondered if Ceorl would make a crack about Kaunians escaping from Algarvian camps. That wouldn’t do anybody any good. Maybe the Valmieran Kaunians didn’t know what happened to their blond brethren from Forthweg. Maybe they knew and tried not to think about it. By the way the ruffian’s lips pursed, he thought about it. But then, visibly, he thought better of it. He said, “Let’s kill some Unkerlanters,” and let it go at that.

“Aye,” Brusku said. “That is what we came for.”

Sergeant Werferth passed the Valmieran his flask. “Here. Try this.”

Brusku drank. He coughed a couple of times. “Unicorn piss and fire,” he said. “Is that what you Forthwegians drink?”

“We drink wine and plum brandy when we’re home,” Werferth answered. “Down here, we drink anything we can get our hands on. I think the Unkerlanters brewed this stuff out of turnips.”

Brusku looked at the flask as if he wanted to throw it away. Instead, he took another pull and handed it back to Werferth. Then he said, “I had better go, or my sergeant will come down on me.” He nodded to Sidroc and headed off in the direction from which he’d come.

Once he was gone, Ceorl spat into the fire. “Fighting side by side with Kaunians? I’ve thought of a lot of strange things, but never any like that.”

“I’ll tell you something, though,” Sidroc said: “I’d rather have them on my left hand than a pack of jumpy Yaninans.” He watched Ceorl weigh that. The ruffian didn’t take long to nod.

Werferth said, “A good thing you boys didn’t talk about what happens to Forthwegian Kaunians. I’m going to tell everybody to keep quiet about that.”

“What happens when the Phalanx of Valmiera-what in blazes is a phalanx, anyway?-finds out about it?” Sidroc asked. “Sooner or later, they will. They’re bound to.”

“Good question,” Werferth said. “We’ll probably see before too long, like you say. And when we do… You know what it’s like when an egg bursts almost close enough for the sorcerous energy to kill you?” He waited. Sidroc nodded. Everybody who’d been in battle for a while knew what that was like. Werferth went on, “When they find out, it’ll be like that, only more so.

Sidroc thought it over. How would he feel if the Algarvians started slaying Forthwegians to make their magic stronger? He could think of some Forthwegians he wouldn’t miss, starting with Ealstan and Hestan. Still… “Aye, you’re likely right.”