Jaws of Darkness

Twelve

Istvan proved less unhappy as a captive on Obuda than he’d expected to. He lived in a barracks no worse than the one where he’d lived while a Gyongyosian soldier on that same island. He was a good deal more comfortable than he’d been in the forests of western Unkerlant or in the trenches on the island of Becsehely. The food his Kuusaman captors fed him and his comrades wasn’t especially good, but it wasn’t especially bad, either, and there was plenty of it. He had no work harder than chopping firewood under the watchful eyes of the Kuusaman guards. It could have been far worse.

When he said as much in line for breakfast one morning, Kun nodded and replied, “Aye, I thought they’d send us off to the mines or some such.

This-it’s as if they’ve made Obuda into a crate, and they’ll keep stowing captives here till it fills up.”

“Nothing to do but sit around and get fat,” Istvan agreed. “I’ve been a soldier for a long time. I don’t much mind being an old soldier for a while, if you know what I mean.”

“I’m with you,” Szonyi said from behind him. “Nobody’s trying to blaze me or drop an egg on my head. Anyone who thinks I’m sorry about that is plumb daft.”

“Well, the two of you get no arguments from me,” Kun said. Watery island sunshine glinted off the gold frames of his spectacles. “I’ve never been what you’d call eager to have people trying to kill me. I leave all that up to you fierce country lads.”

If he hadn’t fought bravely every time he had to, he would have condemned himself out of his own mouth there. Even as things were, Istvan spoke a little stiffly: “Weare a warrior race.”

Corporal Kun said nothing to that but, “Aye, Sergeant.” Istvan couldn’t possibly call him to account for two unexceptionable words. But then Kun looked around, the sun sparkling off his spectacles once more. His glance took in the captives’ camp, the palisade around it, the brisk, alert Kuusaman guards on the palisade, and the bedraggled Gyongyosians moving forward one at a time to be fed.

Ears burning, Istvan said, “Well, weare”

“Aye, Sergeant,” Kun repeated, which finished the job of demoralizing Istvan. The one-time mage’s apprentice made as if he didn’t even know what he’d done. He fights, Istvan thought. He just doesn’t fight fair. He didn’t say that out loud. It would have made Kun unbearably smug.

An Obudan-a medium-sized, dark-haired man with light reddish-brown skin-slapped oatmeal mush into Istvan’s mess tin. “Here you is,” he said in bad Gyongyosian. Gyongyos had held Obuda, been driven off by the Kuusamans, retaken the island, and then been driven off again. The locals had had their chances to learn the languages of both occupiers.

“Thanks.” Istvan turned away and started spooning up the mush. His own people flavored oatmeal with butter and salt. The Kuusamans put in sugar and spices and raisins instead. It wasn’t what he was used to, but it wasn’t too bad.

When he’d finished, he took his tin over to a basin of water to wash it. He was sloshing it around in the basin when another captive came up beside him. He blinked. “Hello, Major Borsos,” he said. “I didn’t know the stars-accursed slanteyes had got you, too.”

He’d fetched and carried for Borsos back in the days when Gyongyos still held Obuda. He’d seen the mage again in the vast forests of Unkerlant. Borsos had had trouble remembering him then, and plainly had trouble remembering him now. After a moment, he said, “Ah, hello, Sergeant. Aye, I’m among the unlucky, too. Gyongyos hasn’t had much luck lately.”

“Couldn’t you use your magecraft to do… something?” Istvan’s voice trailed away. Here on an island now far away from any that Gyongyos held, what could even a true mage do?

And Borsos hissed, “Shut up, by the stars. The Kuusamans don’t know what I am, and I don’t want them finding out, either, or they’ll send me somewhere worse than this.”

“Oh.” Till then, Istvan hadn’t noticed Borsos wasn’t wearing his sorcerer’s badges along with his emblems of rank. As in most armies, Gyongyosian mages held officer’s rank not so much by virtue of their blood as to give them the privilege of telling common soldiers what to do. Real aristocratic officers-most of them-would look down their noses at Borsos, but they probably wouldn’t tell the Kuusamans what he was. In fact… “It might be nice, having a real wizard in here on our side.”

“I’m hardly even that,” Borsos said. “I’m just a dowser. You ought to remember, if you hauled my gear around for me.”

“Better than nothing,” Istvan said. Better than Kun, he thought. Kun had been an apprentice before going into Ekrekek Arpad’s army. Borsos, at least, was fully trained in one specialty of magic.

From behind Istvan, someone asked, “Is this man bothering you, sir?” Istvan turned. There stood Captain Frigyes, as stiff and erect and formal as if still in command of soldiers in the field. He might have been even more stiff and erect and formal here in the captives’ camp, to try to hold his men together.

Borsos said, “No, Captain. We’ve known each other for a while.”

Frigyes still looked dubious. Leaning toward him, Istvan spoke in a low voice: “He’s a mage, sir.”

“Is he?” Frigyes answered, also quietly. He eyed Borsos’ collar tabs. Unlike Istvan, he didn’t need an explanation from Borsos. “You don’t want the enemy to know your skill, eh?”

He didn’t bother calling Borsossir any more. Officers-real officers- didn’t take seriously mages’ claims to rank. Borsos didn’t get angry; a good many mages didn’t take those claims seriously, either. The dowser replied, “That’s about the size of it, Captain.”

“All right.” Frigyes nodded briskly. “I can understand that. And it might be useful for us to have a sorcerer here. Who knows? Maybe we can find a way to hit back at the Kuusamans yet.”

“Maybe.” But Borsos didn’t sound as if he believed it. “They have strong wards up around the camp, though. They’re the enemy, Captain, but they’re not fools. If they were fools, they wouldn’t be moving forward.”

They wouldn’t be beating us, was what he surely meant, but no Gyongyosian soldier-not even a mage in military uniform-would come right out and say that. The traditions of a warrior race died hard.

“Wards can do only so much,” Captain Frigyes said, and led Major Borsos aside. He spoke to the mage too softly for Istvan to make out what they were saying. Istvan didn’t even bother resenting it. That was how officers were; as best he could tell, the stars had made them that way.

The cry of horror Borsos let out a moment later wasn’t too soft to hear. It made Istvan jump, and he wasn’t the only one. “No!” Borsos said a moment later, and wagged a finger under Captain Frigyes’ nose as if he were a real major and not just an officer by courtesy. That was enough to put Frigyes’ back up; he stalked off like an offended cat.

“What on earth?” Istvan said. He wasn’t really asking Borsos what Frigyes had proposed; it was more an exclamation of astonishment.

“By the sweet, pure, and holy light of the stars, Sergeant, you don’t want to know.” Borsos’ face was pale as milk. A back-country man-a herder, say, from the valley from which Istvan sprang-might have looked that way after seeing a ghost. Borsos didn’t strike Istvan as a man likely to see a ghost, or to panic if he did. But the dowser went off in the direction opposite the one Frigyes had taken. He staggered once, plainly a man shaken to the core.

“What on earth?” Istvan said again.

Again, he got an answer, this time from Kun: “Can’t you figure it out for yourself, Sergeant?”

Istvan whirled. The sorcerer’s apprentice and corporal was right behind him, dirty mess tin in hand. “If I could figure it out, would I be going, ‘What on earth?’ “ Istvan asked in some irritation. “And I know bloody well that you didn’t hear as much of it as I did, so what makes you so fornicating smart?”

“Your friend there is a mage of sorts, aye?” Kun said. He waited for Istvan to nod, then went on, “What was Captain Frigyes doing with us when all the Kuusamans in the world jumped on our company?”

“Huh?” The jump there was too wide for Istvan to follow him across it. “Whatare you talking about?”

Patiently, Kun guided him across: “Our company commander was good and ready to sacrifice us all, to let the mages make the magic that would have thrown the slant-eyes off Becsehely, remember? But they captured us before he got us to wherever the wizards were. And so…” He waited.

He needed to wait a while; Istvan had trouble with the jump even with a guide. At last, though, Istvan’s mouth fell open. “You think he was talking with Borsos about making that same kind of sorcery here!” Once the words were out of his mouth, they made a horrid kind of sense. He wished they hadn’t.

And Kun nodded. “That’s just what I think. Captain Frigyes wants to go on fighting the war. How else can he do it?”

“CouldBorsos make that kind of magic here?” Istvan asked. “He’s a dowser, mostly. Does he even know enough to cast that kind of spell?”

“Ask him,” Kun answered. “I can’t tell you.”

With a shudder, Istvan shook his head. “I don’t think I want to know.”

Kun clicked his tongue between his teeth in sharp disapproval. “You should always want to know. Knowledge is bad, but ignorance is worse.”

“Is that a fact?” Istvan said, and Kun nodded as if it most assuredly were. Istvan put his hands on his hips. “If knowing is such a great thing, how come we both wish the mages had never figured out how to use the magic they get from killing people? Answer me that, O sage of the age.”

“It’s not the same,” Kun said stiffly. “The only reason our mages turned toward that spell was that the Unkerlanters used it against us. We have to be able to fight back.”

Istvan shook his head again. “You’re not really answering me. You’re just pushing it back one step. Don’t you wish the Unkerlanters hadn’t worked out how to use that spell, then? You can’t be real happy about it, or you wouldn’t have been so very thrilled to volunteer to help power the sorcery.”

Now Kun winced. “Volunteer to have my throat cut, you mean. No, may the stars turn their light from me if I was happy about that. And I suppose you’ve made your point. Huzzah for ignorance!” He held his hands in front of his face, as if playing a fanfare on a trumpet.

I got him to admit I was right, Istvan thought proudly. The pride was in proportion to how seldom that happened. But then he wondered what Captain Frigyes would do, and what he could make Major Borsos do. He didn’t know, and wished he did. As soon as the wish crossed his mind, he realized Kun wasn’t entirely wrong. He thought about admitting as much, but in the end did no such thing. He gained such triumphs too seldom not to want to savor them to the fullest.

Leudast had got used to life in the bridgehead on the eastern bank of the Fluss. The Algarvians kept pounding away, trying to drive the Unkerlanters back over the river and seal off the bridgehead. They kept throwing in attacks every so often, too, going at the Unkerlanter regiments on the east side of the Fluss as if the whole war depended on wiping them out.

After Swemmel’s men had beaten back one such assault, a trooper in Leudast’s company said, “Isn’t this the worst fighting you’ve ever seen in all your days, Lieutenant?”

The fellow couldn’t have been above seventeen. Unkerlanter soldiers in the field didn’t get to shave very often, but his cheeks remained smooth and beardless even when he was nowhere near a razor. Leudast wanted to laugh in his face. Instead, he just shook his head. “Sonny, I was wounded down in Sulingen. They fixed me up in time to let me fight in the Durrwangen bulge. After those scraps, anything the redheads have done to us here is like a walk in the meadow with a pretty girl.” He thought of Alize, back in the village of Leiferde.

Sergeant Kiun shook his head. “Oh, it’s not so easy asthat, sir,” he said. “More like a walk through the meadow with anugly girl, if you want to know what I think.”

“Who wants to know what you think?” Leudast returned. They grinned at each other. Why not? Between the two of them, they’d captured the Algarvian noble who’d called himself King of Grelz. Just as Leudast wasn’t quite an ordinary lieutenant, so Kiun wasn’t an ordinary sergeant.

The young soldier was unimpressed. “You’re making fun of me!” he said, and his voice broke in the middle of the sentence, going from the baritone he would have as a grown man to the squeaky treble he was just escaping.

“Well, what if we are, Gilan?” Leudast asked. “You said something silly. If you don’t expect people to make fun of you after you say something silly, you’re making a big mistake.”

“But I didn’t know it was silly,” Gilan protested.

“That makes it more silly, not less,” Leudast said. Had he been that naive when King Swemmel’s impressers pulled him into the army? If he had, how in blazes had his sergeants and officers put up with him? He thought of Sergeant Magnulf, who’d died in the first year of the war with Algarve. They’d shared a hole in some village they were trying to defend. Had he looked out of the hole when the egg burst in front of it, he would be dead now and Magnulf might still be alive. It had happened the other way round. He knew neither rhyme nor reason for it.

As if the mere thought of eggs were enough to conjure them up, they started bursting not far from the trench in which he and Kiun and Gilan stood. They weren’t quite close enough to make the soldiers throw themselves flat, but they weren’t much farther off than that. “Powers below eat the redheads,” Kiun said. “I thought they were supposed to be moving everything north to fight our push there.”

“Lots of odds and sods in the men they’re throwing at us,” Leudast said. “Those Forthwegian whoresons are almost as bad as Grelzers-you can’t tell they’re the enemy till too late. And now these blond Kaunian buggers.”

“They fight hard,” Kiun said.

“Aye.” Leudast nodded. “There were a few Kaunians not so far from my village. I grew up pretty close to the border with Forthweg, you know. They’re just… people who don’t look like us. What I don’t get is how come they’ll fight for the Algarvians when the redheads kill ‘em to make their magic.”

“These aren’t Kaunians from Forthweg,” Kiun said. “They’re from way the demon off in the east somewhere. I hardly even know the names of the kingdoms on the other side of the world.”

“They’re Valmierans,” Leudast said. Before Kiun could put in a jab, he held up his hand. “Only reason I know is because Captain Recared told me. He knows all that stuff. But still, they’re blonds, and so are the Kaunians from Forthweg. So why would they help Mezentio’s bastards?”

“Have to take some prisoners, squeeze it out of’em,” Kiun said.

“I suppose so,” Leudast allowed.

Unkerlanter egg-tossers started answering the Algarvians. They still didn’t respond as fast as the redheads, but they were there in numbers in the bridgehead. Nothing the Algarvians or the foreigners fighting for them had done had stopped Unkerlant from bringing egg-tossers and behemoths forward, which was not the least of the reasons they still held the foothold on this side of the Fluss.

Dragons flew by, dragons painted rock-gray. “They’ll drop their loads on the Algarvians’ heads, too,” Leudast said. “Serves the redheads right-this is what they used to do to us all the time.”

Before long, the Algarvian egg-tossers fell silent. “That’s more like it,” Kiun said. “Maybe they’ll learn not to try that anymore.”

“Here’s hoping,” Leudast said. “That’s one lesson I wish they’d learned already, as a matter of fact.” Kiun chuckled and nodded, for all the world as if Leudast were joking. They’d both been in the front lines a long time. If you didn’t joke, you’d go mad sooner or later-unless the redheads killed you, which was rather more likely.

Here, though, the Algarvians really did seem to learn a lesson. Things stayed very quiet for the next couple of days. They were so quiet, in fact, that Leudast almost lost the feeling of being stuck in a bridgehead.

He remarked on that the next time he saw Captain Recared, adding, “If we hit them hard enough to make them stay this quiet, maybe we can break out of this cramped little place and start pushing them back again.”

Recared shook his head. “Not yet, Lieutenant. I’d like to just as much as you would, but not yet. We’ll have to see how things go up in the north before we find out what we can do here. All the spares we have, and all the reserves, are going into that push. If it goes well, then we can try pushing here, too. Or that’s my guess, anyhow-askMarshalRathar if you want a better notion.”

“Oh, of course, sir.” Leudast laughed. Unlike most junior lieutenants, he’d met the marshal, and Rathar might, if reminded, remember who he was. None of that meant he could go asking questions of Rathar. None of it meant Rathar was anywhere within a thousand miles of the River Fluss at the moment, either.

Recared laughed, too, and said, “You’ve got attitude, Leudast.”

“Do I?” Leudast shrugged. “I don’t know anything about that. All I know is, I’m still here, and that makes me luckier than a lot of people.” Poor Magnulf crossed his mind again. He asked, “Howare things going up in the north, sir?”

“Better than we expected. As well as we hoped,” Recared answered. Leudast blinked; he hadn’t really looked for a reply quite so optimistic. The regimental commander went on, “That whole Algarvian army up there is getting smashed to pieces. With any luck at all, wewill be able to start moving here pretty soon-but not just yet.”

“I’m in no hurry, sir, not as long as the redheads and the whoresons who fight for them leave us alone, the way they have lately.” Leudast snapped his fingers. “That reminds me-Kiun and I were talking about the Kaunians who fight on Algarve’s side. Has anybody figured out why they’re daft enough to do it?”

“We’ve caught a few,” Recared said. “We haven’t found any answers that tell us a whole lot. Best guess so far is, they’re about like the buggers in Plegmund’s Brigade: ne’er-do-wells and men down on their luck and a few just looking for a fight and taking one anywhere they can find it.”

Leudast grunted. “Bunch of cursed fools, if anybody wants to know what I think. You’d have to be, wouldn’t you, to fight for somebody who was doing that to your own people?”

“Well, I think so,” Captain Recared said. Then he changed the subject, and then, sooner than Leudast had expected, he left. Leudast scratched his head for a while, wondering if he’d somehow offended the regimental commander. He ran the conversation over in his mind. He couldn’t see how.

And then, as he was drifting toward sleep that night, he did. After all, King Swemmel was killing powers above only knew how many Unkerlanters to fuel the sorcery that thwarted the Algarvians’ murderous magic and helped beat the redheads and their allies out of Unkerlant. Even though he was doing that, Leudast didn’t hesitate to fight for him. Neither did countless other Unkerlanters.

Maybe the Valmieran Kaunians felt the same way. If they do, they‘re wrong, Leudast thought, and dozed off.

After black bread and sausage the next morning, he led Kiun’s squad out on a patrol through the woods. He could have stayed back in camp and let the sergeant take charge of the patrol himself; a lot of officers would have. But he’d been on plenty of patrols himself. If he went on this one, he thought-he hoped-he gave everyone a little better chance of coming back in one piece.

A jay screamed. A woodpecker drummed on the trunk of a birch. A flock of waxwings flew from one wild plum tree to another. No one who’d ever heard them could mistake their soft, metalliczreel zreel for the call of any other bird. “All seems pretty quiet,” Kiun said. “No sign the redheads are trying to sneak in and make trouble.”

“You sound disappointed,” Leudast said.

“Not me.” Kiun shook his head. “Surprised, maybe, but not disappointed. I haven’t seen the Algarvians back on their heels like this for a long time.” He shook his head again. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Algarvians back on their heels like this. Doesn’t seem natural, you know what I mean?”

“I think so.” Leudast nodded. “They’re not doing anything themselves. They’re waiting for us to do something. They never used to do that. We used to wait for them, especially in the summertime. It’s not the same fight it was a couple of years ago.”A good thing, too, he thought. If the Algarvians were still kicking us around like that, we’d have long since lost the war.

Kiun started to answer, then silently toppled, his stick falling from hands that would no longer hold it. He didn’t even twitch; he was dead before he hit the ground. A patch of leaves near his feet started smoldering.

“Sniper!” Leudast called, and dove for cover. “Sniper up a tree!” he added-the trajectory of the beam that had slain Kiun proved as much.

If the whoreson stayed quiet, how were they supposed to find him? He’d got Kiun through the head. Kiun had been aboutthere, and the patch of plants on the ground that had caught fire was aboutthere, so the enemy had to be over inthat direction. “There!” Leudast pointed northeast. “One of those trees there. Work carefully, boys-he’ll be looking for us.”

The Unkerlanters slid from tree to bush to rock, trying to show themselves as little as possible. And the sniper evidently knew what he was about, for he sat tight in whatever tree he’d chosen for himself. If the Unkerlanters didn’t spot him, he was free to get away, free to wait for the next unlucky soldier to come within range of his stick. But then a trooper shouted, “There he is!” and pointed to a big, leafy oak-a tree so big and leafy, the mere sight of it had made Leudast suspicious.

Once seen, the sniper didn’t last long. He wounded one more man-not badly-before tumbling, dead, out of the tree. He was a trouser-wearing Kaunian with an Algarvian banner sewn to the sleeve of his tunic. Leudast kicked the body. “One more down,” he said, and the patrol moved on.

Colonel Spinello stumbled south and east, trying to pick his way through a marsh east of Sommerda. He was weary and filthy and unshaven. He hoped he wouldn’t meet any Unkerlanter soldiers, for he wasn’t at all sure whether his stick held enough sorcerous energy to blaze. At that, he reckoned himself better off than most of the soldiers in the regiment he’d commanded. He remained alive and able to go on retreating. Most of them were either dead or captive.

He missed a step and went into muck up to his knees. Before he could sink any deeper, Jadwigai, who remained on firm ground, grabbed him and helped him get back to decent footing himself.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” he said, and gave her a kiss. She was every bit as worn and dirty as he, but still contrived to look good to him. It wasn’t just that she didn’t grow whiskers to add to a raffish appearance. She’d been so pretty starting out, grime and exhaustion only gave her beauty more sharply sculpted edges.

“You’re welcome.” She pointed toward a clump of man-high bushes a couple of hundred yards ahead. “If we can get there, we’ll have a pretty good hiding place for the night.”

“Aye, I think you’re right.” Spinello’s bones creaked when he started moving, but move he did. Unkerlanters were bound to be prowling in this swamp. If they caught up with him, he’d never make it out the other side to reconnect himself to the Algarvian army. He wondered if any Algarvian army remained in northern Unkerlant to be reconnected to. He couldn’t prove it, not at the moment, not by the way Mezentio’s forces had collapsed under the hammer blow the Unkerlanters dealt them.

He went into muddy water again before reaching the bushes. This time, he pulled himself out without help from Jadwigai. The water was also stagnant and smelly. The last time he’d risked a fire, he’d used a lighted twig to get a leech off his leg. Mosquitoes hovered in buzzing, thrumming clouds.

As he and Jadwigai had hoped, the bushes marked slightly higher ground. He stretched out, almost ready to fall asleep right there where he lay. Jadwigai sat down beside him. Maybe she was still full of luck-he was still breathing, after all. Or maybe he’d broken the regiment’s luck, and the whole northern army’s as well, when he first brought her to his bed.

“Or maybe that’s nonsense,” he muttered.

“What?” Jadwigai asked.

“Nothing,” he told her. “Or I think it’s nothing, anyway.” He rolled onto his side and leaned on one elbow, studying her. “Ask you something?”

“Go ahead,” she said.

“Why are you still here with me? You might do better to let the Unkerlanters catch up with you. Especially…” Spinello’s voice trailed away. Especially since we’re killing Kaunians, and they’re not didn’t strike him as the most politic thing to say, no matter how true it was. He sometimes wondered why she hadn’t cut his throat while he lay sleeping. Asking her that didn’t seem politic, either. Last thing I need is to put ideas in her head if she hasn‘t got ‘em already.

Jadwigai shook her head. “I’d just be a body to them, I think. They don’t care about Kaunians. We always made jokes about them in my village-it wasn’t that far from the border with Unkerlant.”

She might well have been right. Both sides here in the west fought the war without restraint. Algarvian soldiers did as they pleased with Unkerlanter women in villages they’d overrun. The Unkerlanters sometimes killed Algarvians they captured in lingering, painful ways and left their bodies where their comrades could find them.

“Besides,” Jadwigai went on, “I know you’ll keep me safe when we find the rest of the army.”

“I’ll do my best.” Spinello wondered how good that best would be. A colonel normally would have no trouble getting whatever he wanted for his mistress. But times weren’t normal, and most mistresses weren’t Kaunians. More urgent worries reared their head at the moment. “What have we got left to eat?”

“Bread. Hard and stale, but bread,” Jadwigai answered. “And spirits. If we mix the spirits with swamp water, we can drink the swamp water, too.” She was right again. Spinello shuddered all the same. The swamp water tasted as nasty as it smelled, and that remained true regardless of whether it would give him a flux of the bowels.

The bread wasn’t just hard; it could have done duty for a brick. Spinello and Jadwigai shared. “If I had bad teeth, I’d starve,” he said.

Before Jadwigai could answer, eggs burst off in the distance. “What’s happening to the army?” she asked. “Have you got any idea?”

“In detail? No,” Spinello said. “In general? Aye. They threw more at us than we could stand up against, and they broke us. I was afraid they were going to do that, but they’ve done more than I thought they could. They used columns of behemoths to smash through our lines, then turned in so they’d either surround us or make us fall back… and they did it over and over and over. I didn’t know they had that many behemoths-or dragons, either. I don’t think anybody in Algarve knew what all Swemmel had before this fight started.”

“You might have done better if you had known,” Jadwigai remarked.

“Aye, that’s so.” Spinello admitted what he could hardly deny. “But it’s too late to dwell on it now. Now we have to hope we can stay alive”-when he saidwe, he meant not only himself and Jadwigai, but every Algarvian in the north of Unkerlant-”and somehow stop the enemy.”

More eggs burst. “Do you think we can?” Jadwigai asked.

“Sooner or later, we have to,” Spinello replied. “They’ll run out of men and beasts and supplies. If we have anything at all left by then, we’ll stop them. But when? Where?” He shrugged an elaborate Algarvian shrug. The answer was important, but he couldn’t do much to influence it, not as a harried fugitive he couldn’t. He took off his hat and laid it under his head for a pillow.

Jadwigai lay down beside him in the bushes. They’d made love a few times during the grinding retreat, but they were both too weary now. Spinello reached out to pat her hand. Then he dove headlong into oblivion.

He woke a little before dawn. Jadwigai still slept. With care and worry gone from her face, she looked improbably young. Spinello shook his head. She was as tough as she was pretty. She’d done as well as she could for herself in a situation as near impossible as made no difference. She’d done far better than most of the rest of the Kaunians from Forthweg. And if she stayed with him now, that was bound to be hard self-interest.

He shook her awake, ready to clap a hand to her mouth if she made more noise than she should. She’d done that once or twice. Not now, though. Reason came into her eyes almost at once. “Let’s get going,” Spinello said quietly.

“Aye.” Jadwigai nodded. “Maybe you can blaze some of these marsh birds.”

“Maybe.” But Spinello remembered a coot he’d killed. It hadn’t been worth eating once dead. Of course, when you got hungry enough.. .

The sun was still low in the southeast when they came on a couple of squads’ worth of soldiers. For a moment, Spinello thought himself a dead man. Then he realized they were Algarvians, stragglers like himself. No, not stragglers: just defeated men in full retreat. They even had a crystallomancer with them. “We’re supposed to have a strongpoint in Volkach,” the fellow said. “If we can get there, maybe we’ll get back to the real war.” Under his breath, he added something like, “If there’s any real war left up here.” But he didn’t say it loud enough to make Spinello ask him to repeat it.

As they fought their way through the swamp, one of the troopers asked, “Where’d you pick up the twist, Colonel?” He sounded curious and a little jealous, as he might have had Spinello carried a knapsack full of smoked pheasant and fine wine.

Unlike a knapsack, Jadwigai could speak for herself. “I’m not a twist, you-” What she called him proved she’d learned soldierly Algarvian. “I was-Iam -the luck of the Alberese Regiment.”

“Oh!” To Spinello’s surprise, the soldier bowed to her as if to an Algarvian duchess. “I’ve heard about you. A lot of folks up here have heard about you.”

“Aye, that’s right.” Another soldier nodded. He turned to Spinello. “Anybody gives you a hard time about her, Colonel, you just yell. There’s plenty of people won’t let anything happen to her.”

“That’s good to hear,” Spinello said.

He sounded less happy when they came out of the swamp and up onto solid ground. The vast plains of northern Unkerlant were ideal ground for behemoths. Back in the early days of the war, that had all been to Algarve’s advantage. Now, when the Unkerlanters could put three, four, five beasts in the field for every Algarvian animal, moving across the plains made sweat trickle from his armpits and down the small of his back.

Swemmel’s men had been through here, on their way farther east. Bloated, stinking corpses, many of them still wearing kilts, lay here and there. But no Unkerlanters were in sight now. “Get your bearings on this Volkach place,” Spinello told the crystallomancer. “Is it still holding?”

After squatting over his crystal, the mage nodded. “About ten miles, they tell me,” he said. “We can do it.”

“We have to do it,” Spinello said, and the other worn, beaten, dirty Algarvians nodded. Actually, there was one alternative. If they didn’t get to Volkach, they would die. For that matter, if the Unkerlanters had a tight perimeter around the town, they were in trouble.

But they stumbled into Volkach late that afternoon, though nervous pickets almost blazed them for enemy soldiers. They’d had to hide a couple of times while Unkerlanter columns went by. Swemmel’s men, though, were after bigger game than a few handfuls of holdouts, and kept right on hurrying east. Back when the war was new, Algarvian soldiers had stormed west the same way.

The officer in charge in the Unkerlanter town was a major. He commanded most of a regiment of soldiers, a few egg-tossers, and half a dozen behemoths-not enough to do anything with, but too much for the Unkerlanters to gobble down at a gulp. It was the biggest Algarvian force Spinello had found in one place in a couple of weeks. The major seemed relieved to see him there, and cared not at all that a Kaunian girl sat beside him.

“What will we do, sir?” the fellow asked, as if Spinello had any answers. “Whatcan we do? We can’t hold on here much longer-Volkach isn’t anything but a shield that lets our men farther east retreat. And everything in the north is ruined. Everything, I tell you!”

“I know.” After all Spinello had been through since the Unkerlanter blow fell, he thought he knew better than the major did, but what point to saying so? “Sooner or later, we’re bound to stop them.” He hoped he wasn’t whistling in the dark. He wanted a bath and food and clean clothes.

Before he could ask for any of them, the major said, “If only the islanders hadn’t invaded Jelgava. We’d get the reinforcements we need then.”

“Maybe,” Spinello said, and then, in spite of everything, he fell asleep where he sat.

Leino saluted Captain Brunho and spoke in classical Kaunian: “Sir, I request your leave to transfer fromHabakkuk to the forces now on the ground in Jelgava.”

Brunho studied him: a tall, somber Lagoan staring down at a stubby little Kuusaman. “May I ask why?” he said, also in the old language-the only tongue the two of them had in common.

“Of course, sir.” Leino had to stay polite. If he affronted the captain, he wouldn’t get what he wanted. “I want to have the chance to give the Algarvians what they deserve. We have largely won the war at sea, and my duties onHabakkuk these days have more to do with maintenance than anything else. This ship is not new anymore. It is proved. It no longer needs me. The land war does.”

“You want to do something you have not done before,” Brunho said.

Though Leino couldn’t tell whether the captain approved of his lust for novelty, he nodded. “Aye, sir.” And it was true. But it wasn’t the whole reason. The other side of the coin was that he wanted to get away from Xavega. Volunteering to go forward into battle would let him break clean without hurting her and without making her angry. However much he enjoyed his time in bed with her, he couldn’t spend all his time with her in bed, and he still found her annoying when they weren’t in bed. She also intimidated him enough that he didn’t want to come right out and tell her so.

Brunho stroked his chin. “You are not the first mage aboardHabakkuk to make this request.”

“You see, sir?” Leino said. “We have the chance to strike directly at Algarve now. I am not surprised I am not the only one who wants to take it.”

“If we lose too many mages fromHabakkuk, our ship here will abruptly cease to be a ship,” Captain Brunho said. “An iceberg in the warm waters off the coast of Jelgava would not last long.”

“You have plenty to keepHabakkuk safe, and the margin for security is large.” Leino knew that was true; he’d made the staffing arrangements for sorcerers himself. “And I repeat, maintaining the ship is now routine. For most of the tasks involved, you do not need mages of the highest rank. The fight on the mainland, though…”

“These are almost the same arguments the other mage used against me,” Brunho said with a wintry smile. “Since I had a difficult time disagreeing then, I am not surprised at having a difficult time disagreeing now. Your request for transfer is approved.” He reached into his desk. “I have some forms for you to fill out.”

“I thought you might,” Leino said dryly. The forms were printed in both Kuusaman and Lagoan. Like any cooperative project, Habakkuk produced twice as much paperwork as it would have had one kingdom undertaken it. With a sigh, the Kuusaman mage inked a pen and set to work. Escaping from Xavega appeared nowhere on any leaf of paper, no matter how large it loomed in his mind.

When Leino finally finished the forms, he pushed them across the desk at Captain Brunho. The Lagoan officer just accepted them; for all the sense he could make of them, they might have been written in demotic Gyongyosian. “I thank you for your services,” he said in the one tongue he and Leino did share. “Gather your effects and report to the starboard bow. I already have a boat scheduled to take the other mage ashore. You may share it.”

“Thank you, sir,” Leino said. After saluting-by Captain Brunho’s upraised eyebrow, he might have done it better-he hurried away.

His effects, as Brunho called them, fit into a duffel bag. It was a heavy bag, because a lot of those effects were sorcerous tomes. Walking with the bag over his right shoulder and with a list to the left, he made his way to the starboard bow.

To his surprise, he found Xavega there, the sea breeze blowing her coppery hair out behind her and also blowing at her kilt so she had to use one hand to hold it down. He hadn’t intended to say good-bye, just to go. Better that way, he’d judged. Now he had no choice.

Or so he thought, till Xavega said, “Farewell, Leino. I am leavingHabakkuk.”

Leino gaped. Then he started to laugh. “So you’re the other mage!” he exclaimed. Xavega looked blank, and he realized he’d been startled into Kuusaman. He translated his words into classical Kaunian.

“The other mage?” Xavega still looked puzzled.

“I am leavingHabakkuk, too.” Leino set down his duffel onHabakkuk ’s ice-and-sawdust deck. “We have just been sailing here. It is all routine. I wanted the chance to fight the Algarvians on the mainland.”

Xavega threw her arms around him and kissed him. A nearby Lagoan sailor whistled enviously. Squeezed against Xavega’s firm, soft warmth, Leino couldn’t imagine why he’d wanted to leave her. He knew he would remember as soon as he no longer felt her breasts pressing against him, but that would be later. Now… Now he wanted to go back to his cabin with her.

No time for that. They got into the boat, and sailors lowered it down to the sea. Another mage, a Lagoan, stood at the stern to seize the sorcerous energy in the ley line and propel the boat toward the distant shore. Xavega said, “When I volunteered to go to the mainland, I did not think I would see you again.”

“Why not?” Leino asked. He hadn’t expected to see her, either, but he didn’t care to come right out and say so.

“Well…” Xavega hesitated, but then spoke with her usual frankness: “You are a Kuusaman, after all.”Her usual frankness and her usual ignorance,

Leino thought as she went on, “I did not know if you would be eager to see the fighting up close.”

“My dear, we do not revel in war the way Algarvic folk do,” Leino replied with a sigh. “That does not mean we cannot fight well. We are fighting Gyongyos by ourselves, as near as makes no difference, and two out of every three soldiers from the island in Jelgava are Kuusamans.”

Xavega made a sour face. She had to know Leino was telling the truth. No one, not even the most ardent Lagoan patriot, could deny that. Liking it was another matter. At last, she said, “It is not my fault that your kingdom is bigger than mine.”

“I never said it was your fault. But you must not think that we Kuusamans cannot fight, or that we are afraid to fight.” Leino raised an eyebrow of his own, perhaps imitating Captain Brunho. “Your King Vitor did not think we were afraid to fight. When he went to war against Algarve, he was afraid we would go to war… against Lagoas.”

He remembered some of the hotheads at a party at his brother-in-law’s wanting to do just that. Mezentio’s men wouldn’t have attacked Yliharma then-not in this war, anyhow. But an Algarve bestriding Derlavai would surely have looked across the Strait of Valmiera before long, regardless of whether the kingdom dominant there was a nominal ally.

The boat skimmed up to the edge of the beach. The mage said something in Lagoan, then condescended to translate it into classical Kaunian for Leino: “All out.”

Out Leino went, into calf-deep water. He was glad he didn’t get his duffel wet. Xavega splashed down beside him. The boat slid away towardHabakkuk. As so many soldiers had before, the two mages squelched up onto the Jelgavan sands. Few signs of the fight were left close by the sea, though a handful of sticks, some with Kuusaman hats tied to them, others with Lagoan headgear, had been thrust into the sand to mark soldiers’ final resting places.

A Kuusaman soldier came up to Leino and Xavega and said, “You are the mages we were told to expect?”

“No, just a couple of tourists, a little early in the season,” Leino answered. The trooper grinned. Xavega squawked. That was when Leino realized he’d spoken his own language. He translated for her. She rolled her eyes. Out of bed, she didn’t believe in foolishness.

“Just over that rise is a ley-line caravan depot where you can go forward, up toward the front,” the soldier said.

Again, Leino turned his words into classical Kaunian. After he’d done that, he asked the fellow, “How close to Balvi will the caravan take us?”

“About fifteen miles. That’s where the front is,” the soldier answered. “King Donalitu is practically pissing himself on account of he can’t get back into his precious palace.” He set a hand on his chest. “Breaks my heart, it does.”

“I’ll bet,” Leino said, which made the other Kuusaman laugh out loud. When he translated for Xavega, she laughed, too. Leino did a little laughing himself. He wasn’t angry, or wasn’t too angry, at Donalitu. Without the bad-tempered Jelgavan monarch, he wouldn’t have found himself in Xavega’s arms.

And you wouldn‘t have leftHabakkukto get away from her, he told himself. See how well that worked.

He and Xavega trudged along with the Kuusaman soldier till they got to the depot, which was canvas over bare timbers. A sergeant there checked their names off on a list. Leino threw down his duffel bag with a groan of relief after climbing into a car. Xavega’s didn’t seem to bother her. She sat down beside him, showing a lot of leg and not bothering to fuss with her kilt to show less.

A few soldiers boarded the ley-line caravan, and a couple of men, one Kuusaman, the other Lagoan, with the green sashes of healers. Then the caravan, still not very full, began to glide west, away from the sea and toward the fighting. The country rose rapidly; much of the interior of Jelgava was a high plateau, none too well watered and very hot-especially by Kuusaman standards. Few mountains towered above the plateau. It was as if, having got that high, the land refused to do much more.

Before long, Leino saw fresh signs of war: craters from bursting eggs scarring fields; a grove of apricots ravaged by more eggs and half burned; the carcass of a dragon, with buzzards all over it; a group of men working to get the armor off a dead behemoth. The behemoth was Kuusaman, the armor the ceramic-and-steel composite Leino’s own sorcery had helped create. It was stronger against beams than regular chainmail, but hadn’t saved this particular beast. He hoped the crewmen had managed to escape.

The caravan car glided past trenches, and past hastily dug graves-red-brown lines on green. Still… Leino turned to Xavega and spoke in classical Kaunian: “The Algarvians have not put up the hardest of fights.”

“No. The Lagoans have rolled over them.” She coughed a couple of times, then grudgingly added, “And the Kuusamans as well.” It was more like the Kuusamans and the Lagoans as well, but Leino didn’t bother correcting her.

They also glided past dragon farms and fields full of grazing behemoths and unicorns and horses and rows of egg-tossers and piles of eggs ready to fling and endless files of tents, some Lagoan brown, others-more- Kuusaman green: all the appurtenances of modern war.

And, when they arrived at the sorcerers’ encampment, they found another Kuusaman sergeant. This one used classical Kaunian so well Leino wondered what he’d done before becoming a soldier: “Ah, the pair fromHabakkuk. I have you assigned to the same tent.”

Xavega smiled and nodded. The smile was full of promise, so much promise that Leino nodded, too. So much for your good intentions, he thought. Well, you’ll enjoy yourself… till the quarrels start again. He sighed. Odds are, it won’t be long.

Marshal Rathar’s headquarters had moved east, out of Pewsum. Had he stayed there, the front in northern Unkerlant would have left him behind, as the sea leaves bathers behind when the tide goes out. Now he directed the attack against Algarve from a village just west of Sommerda, a village whose name he hadn’t bothered to learn. As things stood, he didn’t think he would ever know it.

He turned to General Gurmun and said, “You know, we’re going to have to move again soon.”

“Looks that way,” Gurmun agreed. “The troopers are getting ahead of us, sure enough. By the time we’re through, this Algarvian army will be gone from the board. Powers below eat all the redheads. I won’t miss ‘em a fornicating bit.”

“Neither will I.” As it had a way of doing, Rathar’s gaze fell on the map pinned to a table undoubtedly stolen from a fancier hut than this one. He shook his head in slow wonder. “It’s going just the way we drew it up back in Cottbus. If anything, we’re ahead of the timeline we drew up back in Cott-bus. Who would have imagined that would happen against the Algarvians?”

Dispassionate as if he had clockwork in his belly, Gurmun answered, “We broke the buggers last year in the Durrwangen bulge. Now it’s just a matter of kicking down the door and charging through.”

Rationally speaking, Rathar supposed he was right. Still, he said, “This is the fourth summer of the war against them. It’s the first time they haven’t tried an attack of their own. Do you wonder that I’m happy at how things are going?”

“No, lord Marshal,” Gurmun said. “You can be happy. Just don’t be surprised.” He sounded like what he was: an officer tough, competent, and altogether confident. Unkerlant hadn’t had many officers like that when the war against Algarve started. She still didn’t have enough, but one Gurmun made up for a lot.

“How are the behemoths holding up?” Rathar asked.

“Losses are within the range we expected,” Gurmun answered. “The farms in the west are sending enough fresh beasts forward. The redheads’ dragons never could fly that far, not even when things looked worst for us. And the Gongs never have put a whole lot of dragons in the air against us. I wouldn’t want to try flying over the Elsung Mountains, either.”

“Something to that,” Rathar agreed.

“A week-maybe even less-and we’ll be swarming over the Forthwegian border,” Gurmun said. “What was the Forthwegian border, I mean.”

Marshal Rathar started to call him a mad optimist. Then he took another look at the map, and at what the Algarvians could put between his behemoths and the old Forthwegian frontier. “You may be right,” he said.

“You bet I’m right,” Gurmun declared.

“Getting more footsoldiers on horseback helps, too,” Rathar said. “Even though they fight on foot, moving ‘em mounted helps ‘em keep up with the behemoths. The redheads used that trick, too, whenever they could scrape up the mounts.”

“Powers below eat the redheads,” Gurmun said again. “The powers beloware eating the redheads, and we’re serving them up. The first couple of years of this fight, they taught us lessons. Now we’re better than our schoolmasters.”

Rathar doubted that. The Algarvians still had more flexible arrangements than the soldiers of his own kingdom. They coordinated better among foot-soldiers and behemoths and dragons. Each of their regiments or squadrons had more crystals than its Unkerlanter counterpart, which made them more responsive to trouble. An Algarvian regiment was probably worth close to two Unkerlanter units.

But if King Swemmel’s soldiers threw three or four or five regiments at each Algarvian formation… Here in the north, the Unkerlanters had thrown a lot more than that at each Algarvian regiment at the spearpoint of the attack. And the redheads, however fiercely they’d fought, couldn’t stand up against such an overwhelming weight of numbers. This time, they’d really and truly broken.

“Our way of putting out a fire is throwing bodies on it till it smothers,” Rathar said. “Sorry, Gurmun, but I don’t think that’s the most efficient way to do things.”

“It works,” Gurmun said. “It’s worked.”

“So it does,” Rathar agreed. Again, if it hadn’t worked, Unkerlant would have lost the war. But the price the kingdom was paying… Every ruined, empty village he rode through as his countrymen fought their way east tore at him. How would Unkerlant rebuild once the fighting finally ended? Where would the peasants to fill those villages come from? He had no idea.

Before he could say as much-not that General Gurmun would have worried about such a thing; his mind focused solely on using his beloved behemoths against the Algarvians-the sound of many marching feet came to his ear. His head swung toward it: toward the eastern side of the village, the side closest to the fighting. Gurmun’s head swung the same way. A grin spread over his blunt-featured face as he said, “How much do you want to bet those are captives?”

“I’d sooner keep my silver, thanks,” Rathar answered.

Gurmun’s grin got wider. “Let’s go have a look at the whoresons.” Without waiting for a reply, he hurried out of the peasant hut. Rathar followed a little more slowly. He’d seen captive Algarvians before.

Still, being reminded what these attacks were doing to the enemy wouldn’t hurt. And the column of captives coming through the village represented more than a regiment’s worth of men. The guards in their rock-gray tunics wore grins a lot like Gurmun’s. Some of the Algarvians were grinning, too: the nervous grins of men glad to be alive and unsure how much longer they would stay that way. More of them looked glum. They might be alive, but they didn’t want to be in Unkerlanter hands. Their light brown tunics and kilts were shabbier than Algarvian uniforms had been when the war was new. It wasn’t just that they were filthy and worn; the cloth itself was thinner and cheaper and flimsier than what they’d used then.

Despite everything, a few redheads strode along as if they owned the world. They towered over their captors, as Algarvians usually did tower over Unkerlanters, and gave the impression that the guards were actually escorts, taking them someplace where more Unkerlanters would serve them. Rathar admired Algarvian arrogance and despised it at the same time. Regardless of their true situation, Mezentio’s men still reckoned themselves the masters of Derlavai. Some of them almost made even their foes believe it.

Rathar held up a hand. When the Marshal of Unkerlant gave even an informal order, his mean leaped to obey. “Column halt!” the guards screamed, some in their own language, others in fragments of Algarvian.

“Who here speaks Unkerlanter?” Rathar asked. He had a little Algarvian himself, but only a little, and knew no classical Kaunian, the language that tied together educated men of all kingdoms in the east of Derlavai and on the island Kuusamo and Lagoas shared.

A redhead stepped toward him: one of the ones who’d kept his spirit in spite of captivity. “I being in your kingdom three years,” he said, trilling his words in a way no Unkerlanter would. “I learning your speech, some. What you wanting?”

“Your head on a plate,” Gurmun growled.

But Rathar waved him to silence. “What do you think of things now that we have beaten Algarve in the summer as well as the winter?”

The redhead’s shrug was a masterpiece of its kind. “I being in your kingdom three years,” he repeated. “No Unkerlanters in Algarve. No Unkerlanters ever in Algarve. Sooner or later, we winning war.”

Gurmun wasn’t the only one who growled then. So did all the guards who heard the Algarvian. Rathar waved for quiet again. He got it, but he suspected the captive would have a hard time once out of his sight. “How can you say that,” he demanded, “when we’ve driven your countrymen out of most of what they held here in the north in just a few weeks?”

With another shrug, the Algarvian replied, “We having secret sorceries. We using them soon. Turning Unkerlant upsydown, insyout. You seeing.” He sounded like a man who knew exactly what he was talking about.

And Unkerlant had already known too much horror from Algarvian sorceries. Some of the guards muttered among themselves. A couple made signs the peasants used to turn aside evil omens. And now, instead of growling, Gurmun barked: “What kind of sorceries?”

“Not knowing.” The captive shrugged yet again. “If likes of me knowing”- he had a corporal’s pips on his shoulder boards-”not being secret, eh?”

“I think you’re lying,” Gurmun said in a deadly voice.

“Thinking how you liking.” The Algarvian’s voice made it plain he didn’t care what an Unkerlanter, even an Unkerlanter general, thought. “KingMezentiosaying these things so. I believing he.”

Marshal Rathar gestured once more, waving the captives on. The guards screamed at them. They got moving. Before long, the arrogant redhead was lost in the throng. Not soon enough, though, Rathar thought.

“Do you believe the son of a whore?” Gurmun asked, sounding unwontedly nervous.

“I believe he believes himself,” Rathar answered. “Whether Mezentio is telling lies… That’s a different question.”

“It’s not the first we’ve heard of these secret sorceries.” Aye, Gurmun was unhappy. “A lot of the captives we’ve taken lately go on about them. Where there’s smoke, there’s liable to be fire.”

“Where there are Algarvians, there’s liable to be trouble,” Rathar said, and his general of behemoths nodded vigorously. He went on, “Reports have gone back to Cottbus, though, andKingSwemmel doesn’t seem to worried about this.”

“Good,” Gurmun said.

Although Marshal Rathar nodded, he wondered whether it was good. True, Swemmel saw plots behind ever chair and under every rug. If he didn’t think these worrisome reports true, it was a good sign he judged them an Algarvian bluff. That was fine-if he proved right. Every once in a while, though, his instinct let him down badly, as when he’d judged that the Algarvians wouldn’t expect an Unkerlanter attack three years before. Maybe the redheads hadn’t expected such an attack, but if not, it was only because they’d been so far along with plans for their own, which had gone in first. No mistake now could cost as much as that one had-or so Rathar devoutly hoped- but he didn’t want to have to deal with the king’s mistakes under any circumstances.

A crystallomancer burst out of the hut next to the one in which Rathar made his headquarters. “Lord Marshal!” the young man shouted. “We’ve got men inside Forthweg, sir!”

“Told you so.” General Gurmun went from anxious to smug in a heartbeat.

“This is even faster than you thought it would happen,” Rathar said, and Gurmun nodded. The marshal went on: “We have to move east, we truly do.

We’re getting too far behind the line again.” Gurmun nodded once more. Rathar laughed. “Plenty of worse problems to have, by the powers above.” Gurmun chuckled, too. To the men in charge of an advancing army, life looked good.

Talsu set silver on the grocery counter. Since Gailisa’s father was in the shop, she put the money in the cash box before sliding the jar of green olives in a brine flavored with garlic and fennel across the counter. He spoke in a low voice, so her father wouldn’t hear: “With luck, we won’t have to look at Mainardo’s pointy-nosed Algarvian face too much longer.”

“That would be good,” she agreed, also quietly. Then she raised her voice to tell her father, “I’m going home with Talsu now, Papa.”

“All right,” he answered. “I’ll shut the place up myself. You don’t need to worry about that.” He’d stopped trying to persuade her and Talsu to spend their nights there instead of in the tent on the outskirts of Skrunda.

Gailisa took Talsu’s hand as she emerged from behind the counter. They walked out of the grocer’s shop and into the warm twilight of a Jelgavan summer evening. A couple of news-sheet vendors were still waving leaves of paper and shouting their news: “Invaders thrown back before Balvi! King Mainardo’s heroic Algarvian allies triumph in savage righting!”

When one of the vendors waved his sheet at Talsu, he shook his head and kept walking. To Gailisa, he said, “The redheads keep right on telling lies.”

“I know.” She nodded. “You’ll never believe what I heard from one of the women who came into the shop today, though.”

“Will I want to believe it, though?” Talsu asked. When Gailisa nodded again, he said, “Then tell me!”

“Well, what she said was…” Gailisa paused, either for dramatic effect or just to take a breath. “What she said was, either Mainardo’s already run away from Balvi or he’s just about to. He doesn’t want to end up like what’s-his-name, his cousin, did over there in Unkerlant.”

“Boiled alive, you mean,” Talsu said. The news sheets had screamed of Unkerlanter barbarism when that happened. His wife nodded once more. He scratched his head. That was a rumor he wanted to believe. But no matter what he wanted, he saw certain basic difficulties. “How did this woman here in Skrunda know what was going on with the Algarvians way over in Balvi?”

“I don’t know,” Gailisa answered. “I’m telling you what she told me, that’s all. I hope it’s true, don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” Talsu said with a nod of his own. “The only thing better would be having the Lagoans or the Kuusamans catch him and give him to King Donalitu. He’d envy his cousin by the time Donalitu was through with him.”

“He would, wouldn’t he?” Gailisa smiled, but then shook her head. “The things I’m imagining, the things I’m hoping for-even thinking about them would have made me sick a few years ago.”

“It’s the war.” Talsu had seen things and done things and had things happen to him that he never would have imagined before the war, either. One of the things that had happened to him was only too obvious right now. Pointing to the ruins past which he and Gailisa were walking, he said, “Aye, it’s the cursed war. We used to live here.”

Gailisa squeezed his hand. “Your father will find a way to rebuild. He would have already if it were an ordinary fire and not eggs from the sky. We can’t go on living in a tent too much longer.” She sounded more hopeful than sure of that, but Talsu didn’t argue with her. He thought the same thing.

He started to say so, but then exclaimed in surprise instead. Someone had been hurrying up the sidewalk toward them. Now, despite the deepening dark, Talsu recognized him. “Father!” he said. “What are you doing here? It’s close to curfew time, and you know how jumpy the redheads are.”

“Powers above be praised,” Traku said, panting a little. “I found you before you got in. I just hope they haven’t followed me.”

“What are you talking about?” Talsu asked, though he had a horrid fear he knew.

Traku said, “Someone-never mind who-came by today and warned me the Algarvians were going to come after everybody they’d ever caught before. I don’t know why. Maybe lock ‘em up again, maybe do something worse. But for all I know, they’ve got somebody-probably a Jelgavan, too, curse the bugger-watching the tent waiting for you to get there so they can drop on you.”

“Something worse,” Talsu repeated. People whispered about what the Algarvians did to people of Kaunian blood off in the west. If they were in trouble in Jelgava, what would keep them from doing the same thing here? Nothing he could think of. He said, “No, I can’t go home, not with that waiting. I have to disappear.”

“I think you’re right,” his father said. Gailisa nodded.

“Willyou be all right if I don’t come home tonight?” Talsu asked Traku.

“We’ll find out,” Traku answered with a shrug. “If it’s not quite all right, I’ll make my getaway, too.”

Traku knew it was liable not to be that easy. He didn’t say anything for fear of alarming Gailisa. He clasped Traku’s hand, then clutched his wife to him. He kissed her for a long time. When at last he had to let her go, he said, “I’ll come back. If I made it back from the dungeon, I can make it back from this.”

He knew that was liable not to be so easy, too. Again, he kept quiet. Gailisa said, “Don’t tell us where you’re going. If we don’t know, the redheads can’t tear it out of us.”

“Good luck, son,” Traku said gruffly. He held out a small cloth sack. It was heavy in Talsu’s hand, and clinked softly. Traku went on, “Get going now. Maybe that’ll buy you a little luck. Hope so, anyhow.”

With a wordless nod, Talsu started up a side street. When he looked back, he couldn’t see his father and Gailisa anymore. He stuffed the sack of coins into a pocket. He didn’t know how long it would last, but having it was ever so much better than going into exile with no more than a couple of coppers.

He wished Gailisa hadn’t been carrying the olives. They would have given him a snack, if nothing else.

In the old days, Skrunda, like most towns, had had a wall around it. No more. Hardly any of the wall remained; once Jelgava became a united kingdom, builders started making the most of all that ready-cut stone. Why not, when the town was unlikely to have to stand siege? These days, Skrunda had long since outgrown the old walled-in area, anyhow.

As Talsu got to the outskirts, then, he wasn’t in town one minute and out in the countryside the next. He kept passing houses, but less and less often, with more and more open space between them. Presently, he started going past little almond orchards and groves of fragrant lemons and oranges.

At first, all he wanted to do was put distance between himself and Skrunda. The longer the Algarvians had to chase him and the farther into the country they had to go, the better. “If they want to catch me, they’d better work for it,” he muttered. An eagle owl let out a couple of deep hoots, as if agreeing with him.

But once he was well away, he started wondering where he should go and what he could do. Head for Dobele, the next town farther west? What would he do when he got there? The redheads knew he was a tailor, so looking for work with a needle would be asking to get caught. Could he work as a day laborer? He supposed so, but the idea roused no enthusiasm in him.

What I really want to do is fight the Algarvians, not run from them, he thought. If I had a stick in my hands, I wouldn‘t be running now. All he’d ever wanted to do was fight Mezentio’s men. Trying had landed him in the dungeon. Trying again might land him in something worse. He didn’t care. That was what he wanted, more than anything else in the world.

And so, instead of staying on the road and making for Dobele, he turned down a little path that led up toward low, rolling hills south of the two towns. He didn’t know whether bandits lurked in them; what he did know was that, were he a bandit, he would have lurked up there.

He didn’t get to them that night, but fell asleep in bushes by the side of the track. That was uncomfortable, but not too bad on a summer’s night in Jelgava. He wouldn’t have cared to try it in some southern kingdom.

When he came to a farm the next morning, he asked the farmer, “If I give you a day’s work, will you give me a couple of days’ food?” The farmer just stood in the yard, tossing feed to his hens. His eyes measured Talsu. After the silence stretched for a while, Talsu said, “Or, if you want, you can turn me in to the redheads. They’d thank you.” He hadn’t wanted to roll the dice so soon, but seemed to have little choice.

And it worked. The farmer said, “Well, I’ll find something for you to do.” He went into the house and came out with barley bread and hard white crumbly cheese and some olives much like the ones Talsu had bought at the grocery and a flask of wine sharpened with citrus juices. Talsu ate and drank. Then he chopped wood till his palms blistered, and pulled weeds in the vegetable garden after that. The farmer and his wife gave him bread and ham and olive oil and more wine for lunch, and a stew of mutton and grain and almonds and apricots for supper. He slept on straw in the barn.

The following morning, the farmer brought him a couple of loaves of bread, a small flask full of a paste of garlic and olives and oil, and a large flask full of wine. He even gave him a knapsack that had seen better days in which to carry the food. Talsu came to attention and saluted as he might have to an officer.

He wasn’t altogether astonished when the farmer returned the salute. The fellow said, “If you go six or eight miles south, you’ll come to a track that heads southwest into some of the steeper country. It’s the one with a milepost from the old Kaunian days just in front of it. Follow it, if you care to.”

“Why?” Talsu asked. The farmer just shrugged. After a moment, Talsu shrugged, too. He slung the knapsack over one shoulder and started south. His hands hurt. His joints ached, and his muscles were stiff and sore; he wasn’t used to the work the farmer had set him. After a while, though, walking along under the warm sun eased the kinks.

There was the milestone, its gray-streaked marble much weathered but the inscription still legible. And he could make sense of that classical Kaunian inscription, thanks to Kugu the silversmith. He’d had other, less pleasant, things for which to thank Kugu, and he’d had his revenge. He turned right and walked down the track the farmer had mentioned.

Sure enough, the country did get rougher. Anyone with a stick on one of those bluffs could have potted him before he knew where danger lurked. But the fellow with a stick-Algarvian military issue; Talsu recognized it at once-stepped out from behind a tree. “You may have made a mistake, coming along this track,” he said. A fatal mistake, he meant.

“Not if you’re fighting Mezentio’s buggers. A farmer”-Talsu described the man and his farm as well as he could-”sent me on this way. I was in the army till we quit. I know what to do.”

“Do you?” The bandit-or was diehard a better name?-rubbed his poorly shaved chin. He lowered the stick, but not by very much. “Come along with me. We’ll see what we find out.” Talsu gladly came.