Jaws of Darkness

Fifteen

At some point in his life, Sidroc had surely heard the phraseMisery loves company. If he had, the exact meaning of that phrase had escaped him till he found himself not far from the town of Mandelsloh, in the extreme east of Unkerlant, surrounded byKingSwemmel ’s soldiers.

He didn’t know how many men who fought forKingMezentio were surrounded with him, but he did know the number wasn’t small. And he knew that the miserable men in the Mandelsloh pocket came from just about every kingdom that had followed Algarve into war against Unkerlant. Had he not known, the men sitting and lying around the fire with him would have done a good enough job of teaching the lesson.

Even in the chaotic, desperate fighting that marked the Algarvian response to the Unkerlanters’ latest blow here in the south, he hadn’t lost touch withSergeantWerferth or Ceorl, though he wouldn’t have particularly missed the ruffian had something happened to him. A young, exhausted Algarvian lieutenant sprawled on the ground close by them. He’d been attached to Plegmund’s Brigade, but not to Sidroc’s company of Forthwegians in Algarvian service.

A couple of Grelzers in dark green tunics by now had beards that would have let them pass for Forthwegians-except that Sidroc understood very little of what they said. One of them was roasting some meat: probably a chunk of dead unicorn, but possibly dead behemoth. Not far from them, a blond from the Phalanx of Valmieran lay snoring. A Yaninan in leggings and the funny shoes the soldiers of his kingdom wore changed the bandage on a minor wound.

Unkerlanter dragons flew by overhead. They ruled the skies these days. They didn’t bother dropping an egg on the campfire: they were after bigger targets. Before long, eggs burst half a mile or so away. Sidroc didn’t even stir. If a burst wasn’t close enough to put him in danger of his life, he didn’t intend to worry about it. Even if it was that close, he wouldn’t worry about it much. Next to what would happen if Swemmel’s soldiers got their hands on him alive, dying didn’t look so bad.

“Where do we go from here?” he said-in Algarvian, the one language all the weary, frightened, battered soldiers nearby might understand.

Sure enough, the Yaninan answered in the same tongue: “East.”

“Plenty of Unkerlanters east of us, too,” Werferth said fatalistically.

That lieutenant sat up. “But our comrades are there to the east.” He was worn and filthy, not at all the proper, dapper Algarvian officer. “We have to break through. If we don’t break through, we’re all dead.”

“And if we do break through, we are still all dead.” That was one of the Grelzers, the one who wasn’t roasting meat. “It will take a little longer, that is all.” His Algarvian was so heavily accented, Sidroc had a hard time understanding him. But, once Sidroc did make sense of the words, he had a demon of a time disagreeing with them.

The Yaninan finished fiddling with his bandage. He pointed to the Grelzers. “You not have to go east,” he said, also haltingly. “You take off tunics, you just peasants.”

They both shook their heads. “I will not live underKingSwemmel,” said the one who’d spoken before. “He kills his whole kingdom.”

When the other Grelzer took his meat off the fire, Ceorl pointed to it and said, “You want to share that?” As usual, he had his eye on the main chance. The Grelzer plainly wanted nothing of the sort. He glared at Ceorl as a dog with a bone might glare at another dog who’d looked at it. But, unlike a dog, he thought before he fought, and reluctantly nodded. He started cutting up the gobbet so everyone could get a couple of bites from it.

Sidroc wolfed down his portion. He had some bread in his pack, but he didn’t take it out. What he showed, he would have to share. If he went hungry now, he might be able to eat more a little later. Meanwhile, the Yaninan shook the Kaunian from Valmiera awake so he could get his little portion.

“Thank you,” the blond said around a yawn. He’d been asleep when the other trapped soldiers talked about what to do next, but he had the same idea: “We had better get moving.” The accent he gave to Algarvian was even stranger than that of the Grelzers. But he still thought straight, for he went on, “The longer the Unkerlanters have to tighten the noose around us, the more trouble we will be in.”

Ceorl said, “I’m sick to death of marching.”

“If you stay here, you’ll get your death whether you’re sick or not,” Sidroc said. Ceorl glared at him. They still didn’t like each other. Had they not had worse worries, they might have fought.

With a groan, the Algarvian lieutenant heaved himself to his feet. “He’s right,” he said. “We’ve got no good chances, but moving fast is our best one.”

Sidroc groaned, too, as he made himself stand. He wanted to sleep, with luck for about a week. But he wasn’t ready to sleep forever, not yet, and so he trudged off with the rest.

Everything inside the Mandelsloh pocket painted a picture of the disintegration of the army trapped there. Unkerlanter dragons had caught a column of supply wagons out in the open and smashed it to bits. The wagons lay burnt and scattered like savaged toys; the animals that had drawn them were bloated and starting to stink.

A battery of Algarvian egg-tossers had suffered a similar fate. The engines made to fling death at the Unkerlanters wound up on the receiving end of what they were supposed to dish out. Their tumbled and broken disarray argued that this fight would not be won, not by the Algarvians.

And a ley-line caravan had taken an egg and now blocked the line it was intended to travel. Soldiers struggled to move it aside so other caravans might pass. How much good will that do? Sidroc wondered. They still can’t get through the ring Swemmel’s buggers have around us.

The lieutenant leading the motley little group of which Sidroc was a part must have had the same thought. He didn’t let them get close enough to the wrecked caravan to be ordered to help shift it. They just went on their way, one band among many without much hope but without much choice, either. With only one choice, in fact: Break out or die.

More dragons appeared overhead. Sidroc promptly dove into the crater a bursting egg had left behind. His comrades took cover, too. He waited for more eggs to fall, for the earth to shake at their bursts, for the screams of wounded men to start. Nothing of the sort happened. After a moment, the blond from the Phalanx of Valmiera said, “Those are Algarvian dragons.”

Algarvian dragonshad flown over the Mandelsloh pocket before, but not very often. When they did, they sometimes dropped food or medicines for the soldiers. Sidroc looked, up to the sky with sudden hope. The thought of getting his hands on a food package made his belly growl and his mouth water.

But no food parcels plummeted down. In a way, they were only cruel hoaxes, since the dragons couldn’t possibly bring in enough even to come close to supplying all the men trapped around Mandelsloh. Every little bit helped someone, though.

Instead of food packets, leaves of paper fluttered in the air, slowly dancing toward the ground. Sidroc grunted. “What sort of lies are they telling us?” he asked nobody in particular. The Unkerlanters sometimes dropped leaflets urging their foes to surrender and promising them good treatments if they did. The leaflets would have been much more persuasive had those foes not known what had happened to Raniero of Grelz.

Sidroc didn’t even have to climb out of his hole to get his hands on a leaflet. Two of them swirled down into the crater; one hit him in the shoulder. He grabbed it and turned it right side up.

Soldiers of Algarve, help is on the way! it read. A strong counterattack from the east has been launched to regain contact with you and reestablish the front in this area. We expect your rescuers to fight their way through the forces of the barbarous foe and join you within two days’ time. You are urged to break out toward the east to aid this movement and to insure that it is crowned with success no matter what the result of the attack fom the rescuing units.

He read it through twice. He spoke Algarvian better than he read it. But there still didn’t seem any room for doubt. “They’re going to try,” he said as he came out of the crater. “They’re going to try, but they don’t think they can do it.”

“That’s what it sounds like to me, too,”SergeantWerferth said. The Algarvian lieutenant nodded. He read Algarvian perfectly well. And he also had no trouble reading between the lines.

The Kaunian from Valmieran was holding a leaflet, too. “This attack of theirs will make the Unkerlanters turn away from us,” he said in his odd accent. “This will give us a better chance.”

He was probably right. He was, in fact, almost certainly right. But his being right didn’t turn the better chance into a good one. Nevertheless… Sidroc started tramping east. “We’d better get moving,” he said. “We want to break out while they’re still trying to break in.”

No one argued with him. The other soldiers emerged from their holes and slogged east, too. They weren’t any sort of formal unit, just a double handful of men thrown together by chaos. They clung to one another now, though, as if they’d fought shoulder to shoulder for years.

Until, that is, they tramped past the wreckage of what the Algarvians called a special camp. Eggs had hurled the neat rows of sacrificed corpses this way and that. Several days in the sun had turned them black and bloated and stinking. But they were all unquestionably blond.

Sidroc stared at the Kaunian from the Phalanx of Valmiera. What was he thinking? Whatcould he be thinking? Had Sidroc been the Algarvian lieutenant, he wouldn’t have waited around to find out. He would have run for his life.

The blond looked at the stick he carried. Sidroc thought about running for his life even though he wasn’t the Algarvian lieutenant. Slowly, the Valmieran said, “Algarve gave me this stick to fight Unkerlant. Fighting Unkerlant is the most important thing.”

Everybody relaxed. Sidroc realized he hadn’t been the only anxious trooper. He glanced over at the Valmieran. His private opinion was that the fellow was a little bit crazy. But then, if he weren’t a little bit crazy himself, why the demon had he signed up for Plegmund’s Brigade?

Crazy or not, he’d read that leaflet right. However hard the Algarvians farther east were trying to break into the Mandelsloh pocket, the Unkerlanters were holding them away. That meant his comrades and he had to break out, to make their own way toward the men fighting to link up with them. It meant the army in the pocket had to leave most of their weapons behind. It meant, in the end, that Sidroc had to throw away his stick and his uniform and swim fifty yards across a freezing river.

But there were Algarvians on the other side of it. They hauled him out of the water and gave him spirits and dry clothes-a short tunic and kilt, but that couldn’t be helped. And they did the same for the blond from the Phalanx of Valmiera. Exhausted, shivering, half drunk-the spirits went straight to his head-Sidroc stuck out a hand. The Kaunian clasped it.

Ealstan didn’t need long to discover that raising a revolt against the Algarvians in Eoforwic was not so simple as sorcerously disguising himself as a redhead and going off to assassinate somebody. Maybe his comrades and he had hurt the Algarvians with that murder. He hoped so. But Mezentio’s men had found somebody else to put in the dead man’s slot, and they went right on about the business of grinding the rebellion into the dust.

Reporting to Pybba one morning, Ealstan pointed west across the Twe-gen and angrily demanded, “What in blazes are the Unkerlanters waiting for? We’re tying up powers above only know how many brigades of Algarvians for them. Why don’t they cross the river and help us?”

Since the uprising started, Pybba looked to have aged ten years. His voice was grim as he answered, “There’s no good reason. I can think of a couple of bad reasons, if you want ‘em.”

“Go ahead,” Ealstan said.

“All right. First thing that springs to mind is that they’re letting the Algarvians solve their Forthwegian problem for ‘em. A Forthwegian who’d fight the redheads’d fight Swemmel’s buggers, too, so they may reckon a lot of us are better off dead.”

Ealstan grunted. That made entirely too much sense. He said, “The same way we let the Algarvians solve our Kaunian problem for us, eh?”

“Aye, just like that,” Pybba answered, before realizing exactly what Ealstan had said. When he did, he glared. “Funny fellow. Ha, ha.”

“I wasn’t joking,” Ealstan said. “How is it different?”

“Shut up,” the pottery magnate said in a flat, hard voice. “Just shut up. I don’t have time to argue with you. If you want to be a Kaunian-lover once we don’t have the stinking Algarvians on our hands, fine, go right ahead. For now, though, you’d cursed well better keep in mind which is more important.”

In that moment, Ealstan hated him: hated him with a hatred all the more bitter because Pybba was his own countryman and they would never, ever see eye-to-eye on this. Ealstan had to take a deep breath to keep from telling the pottery magnate exactly what he thought of him. By the look on Pybba’s face, he thought the same thing of Ealstan.

“Tell me what you need from me,” Ealstan said at last. “I’ll go do it, and then we won’t have to have anything to do with each other for a while.”

“A bargain,” Pybba said at once. “You’re a stubborn whoreson. You’re almost as stubborn as I am, I think-the only difference is, you’re a fool.”

Ealstan, of course, reckoned Pybba the fool. “Never mind,” he said. “You got in a last insult. Huzzah for you. Now give me my orders, so I can go do them.”

“Right.” Pybba pointed toward the center of the city. “We’ve got a force building in a park, getting ready to cut the Algarvians’ corridor to the palace and to the ley-line terminal. Go make sure they’re ready to move. Tell ‘em the attack is still on. The fellow in charge there already knows what time.”

“Fine. Shall I join it?”

“If you want to.” Pybba spoke with relentless indifference. A moment later, though, he checked himself and shook his head. “No, you know too cursed much. Can’t have the redheads nabbing you and tearing it out of you.”

“Right,” Ealstan said tightly. He turned on his heel and strode-almost stomped-out of Pybba’s office and out of the pottery works that was now the headquarters for the rebellion. As he left, he laughed a little. One thing the uprising had done: it had cost the Algarvians their source of Style Seventeen sugar bowls. They would have to use something else instead of hold their little eggs.

Eoforwic looked like what it was, a city torn by war. Smoke thickened the air. Ealstan hardly noticed; he’d got very used to it. Eggs burst not far away.

He’d got used to that, too. And he’d got used to glassless windows, to buildings with chunks bitten out of them, and to charred beams sticking up like leafless branches from the wreckage. The Forthwegian capital hadn’t suffered too badly when the Unkerlanters seized it, or when the Algarvians took it away fromKingSwemmel ’s men. It was making up for lost time.

He found the park without much trouble. Finding the man in charge of the attack took more work, but he finally did. The fellow nodded brusquely. “Aye, I know what we’re supposed to do,” he said. “We’ll bloody well do it, too. You can go back and tell Pybba he doesn’t need to hold my hand. I’m not a baby.”

“Keep your tunic on.” Ealstan hid a smile. He had that same reaction to the pottery magnate, usually a couple of times an hour. He knew he was here more to get him out of Pybba’s hair than for any other reason. He didn’t care. Right this minute, he couldn’t think of anything he wanted more than to be out of Pybba’s hair.

When he didn’t say anything more, the local commander nodded again, as if he’d passed a test. “All right, kid. We’ll feed the powers below plenty of dead Algarvians. Don’t you worry about a thing.”

Thatkid made Ealstan bristle, but he didn’t show it. When you showed things like that, people just laughed. “Right,” he said again, and walked away, almost as fast as he’d walked away from Pybba.

The park didn’t look like a place where an attack was building. The Forthwegian fighters didn’t gather out in the open. That would have shown them to redheads on dragons overhead or with spyglasses up in tall buildings, and would have invited massacre. Instead they crouched under trees and in the buildings around the park, waiting for the order to go forward. They all wore armbands that said free forthweg, so the Algarvians couldn’t claim they were fighting out of uniform and blaze them on the spot if they caught them.

As Ealstan was going by, one of the Forthwegian fighters under the oaks called his name. He stopped in surprise. He didn’t recognize the other man. But then, after a moment, he did. It was the fellow who’d been playing drums in another park-the fellow who played so much like the famous Ethelhelm. Now that Ealstan heard him speak, he sounded like Ethelhelm, too.

“Hello,” Ealstan said. “The face is familiar”-which wasn’t quite true- “but I can’t place your name.” He didn’t know which name Ethelhelm was using. If Ethelhelm had even a dram of brains, it wouldn’t be his own.

And, sure enough, the musician said, “You can call me Guthfrith.”

“Good to see you again,” Ealstan told him. “Getting your revenge on the Algarvians, are you, Guthfrith?”

“It’s about time, wouldn’t you say?” Ethelhelm answered.

“Probably long past time,” Ealstan said, and the Kaunian half-breed nodded. Ealstan went on, “What have you been doing with yourself lately?”

“Odd jobs, mostly,” said Ethelhelm-no, I should think of him as Guthfrith, went through Ealstan’s mind. “Did you recognize me, there in that other park? I saw you, and I thought you might have.”

“I thought I did,” Ealstan replied, “but I wasn’t sure. You didn’t look just the way I thought I recalled you”-you were sorcerously disguised-”but your hands hadn’t changed at all.”

Ethelhelm-no, Guthfrith-looked down at the hands in question as if they’d betrayed him. And so, in a way, they had. Even now, they looked more as if they should be poised over drums than holding a stick. With a chuckle, he said, “Not everyone has ears as good as yours. I’m not sorry, either. I’d be in trouble if more people did.”

“You would have been in trouble,” Ealstan said. “Not any more. Now you’re getting your own back.”

“No.” Guthfrith shook his head. “The thieving redheads have taken away everything I had. I can’t get it back. The most I can get is a piece of revenge. I wasn’t very brave before. Now…” He shrugged. “I try to do better.”

“That’s all anyone can do,” Ealstan said.

“Took me a long time to figure it out,” Guthfrith said. “How’s your lady? What was her name? Thelberge?”

“That’s right.” Ealstan nodded. “She’s fine, thanks. We’ve got a little girl.”

“Do you?” Guthfrith said, and Ealstan nodded again. Then Guthfrith reminded Ealstan he was also Ethelhelm, for he went on, “You used to go with a blond woman before that, didn’t you? Do you know what happened to her?”

“Uh-no.” Ealstan’s ears heated in dull embarrassment, but he was not about to tell the musician that Vanaiwas Thelberge. He wished he hadn’t had to tell Pybba about his family arrangements. The more people he told, the more Vanai found herself in danger, for there was no guarantee that the Forthwegians would succeed in ousting the Algarvians from Eoforwic. And if Mezentio’s men won this fight, they would surely take the most savage vengeance they could.

“No, eh?” Guthfrith’s voice was toneless as he added, “Too bad.”

Ealstan wanted to explain everything to him. He wanted to, but he didn’t. Aye, the fellow who had been Ethelhelm was a half breed, but he’d got much too cozy with the Algarvians, and stayed that way much too long. If they ever captured him now, he was liable to feed them a genuine, full-blooded Kaunian to save his own neck.

He looked at Ealstan with something like loathing, though they’d been friendly while Ealstan was casting his accounts for him. Ealstan looked at him in much the same way. Neither of them, plainly, would ever trust the other again. When Ealstan said, “I’ve got to go,” he knew he sounded relieved, and Guthfrith looked the same way.

“Take care of yourself. Take care of your little girl, too.” By the way Guthfrith sounded, Ealstan was welcome to walk in front of a ley-line caravan.

“You take care, too.” Ealstan sounded as if he wished the same for Guthfrith. He hurried off toward Pybba’s headquarters, and didn’t look back once. Whatever warmth he’d known for the man who’d been one of the most popular musicians in Forthweg, was dead now.

He needed a while to get back to the pottery magnate’s place. Algarvian dragons appeared overhead and dropped load after load of eggs on Eoforwic, forcing Ealstan into a cellar. No Unkerlanter dragons flew east from over the Twegen to challenge the beasts painted in green, red, and white. The enemy could simply do as he pleased, and he pleased to knock down big chunks of the Forthwegian capital. He doubtless assumed anyone still inside the city opposed him. Had he been wrong in that assumption, the destruction he wrought helped make him right.

“Took you long enough,” Pybba growled when Ealstan finally did get back. “I didn’t send you out to buy a month’s worth of groceries, you know.”

“You may have noticed the Algarvians were dropping eggs again,” Ealstan said. “I didn’t want to get killed on my way back, so I ducked into some shelter till they quit.”

Pybba waved that aside, as if of no account. Maybe, to him, it wasn’t. “Will the attack go through on time?” he demanded.

Ealstan nodded. “Aye. The fellow in charge of it told me to tell you he didn’t need any reminders.”

“That’s my job, reminding,” Pybba said. His job, as far as Ealstan could see, was doing everything nobody else was doing and half the jobs other people were supposed to be doing. Without him, the uprising probably never would have happened. With him, it was going better than Ealstan had thought it would. Was it going well enough? Ealstan had his doubts, and did his best to pretend he didn’t.

Leino had been in Balvi, or rather, through Balvi, once before, on holiday with Pekka. Then the capital of Jelgava had impressed him as a place where the blond locals did their best to separate outsiders from any cash they might have as quickly and enjoyably as possible.

Now… Now, with the Algarvian garrison that had occupied Balvi for four years fled to the more rugged interior of Jelgava, the city was one enormous carnival. Jelgavans had never had a reputation for revelry-if anyone did, it was their Algarvian occupiers-but they were doing their best to make one. Thumping Kaunian-style bands blared on every corner. People danced in the streets. Most of them seemed drunk. And anyone in Kuusaman or Lagoan uniform could hardly take a step without getting kissed or having a mug full of something cold and wet and potent thrust into his hand.

Even though Leino walked through Balvi hand in hand with Xavega, Jelgavan women kept coming up and throwing their arms around him. Jelgavan men kept doing the same thing with Xavega, who seemed to enjoy it much less. When one of the blond men let his hands wander more freely on her person than he might have, she slapped him and shouted curses in classical Kaunian. By his silly grin, he didn’t understand her and wouldn’t have cared if he had.

Looking around at the way most of the Kuusaman and Lagoan soldiers were responding to this welcome, Leino spoke in classical Kaunian, too: “They seem to be having a good time.”

“Of course they do-they are men,” Xavega answered tartly in the same tongue. “And, nine months from now, a good many half-Jelgavan babies will be born. I do not care to have any of them be mine.”

“All right,” Leino said, reflecting that any Jelgavan man who tried to drag Xavega into a dark corner-not that every couple was bothering to look for a dark corner, not in the midst of this joyous madness-would surely get his head broken for his trouble, or else have something worse happen to him.

And then he and Xavega rounded a corner, and he discovered that not all the madness was joyous. There hanging upside down from lampposts were the bodies of several Algarvians and the Jelgavans who had helped them run the kingdom under puppet king Mainardo. The crowd kept finding new horrid indignities to heap on the corpses; everyone cheered at each fresh mutilation. Leino was glad he didn’t speak Jelgavan: he couldn’t understand the suggestions that came from the onlookers.

He glanced toward Xavega. What they were seeing didn’t seem to bother her. She caught his eye and said, “They had it coming.”

“Maybe,” he answered, wondering if anyone could ever have… that coming to him. Or to her: he pointed. “That one, I think, used to be a woman.”

“I daresay she deserved it, too,” Xavega snapped. Leino shrugged; he didn’t know one way or the other. He wondered if the people who’d hung the woman up there with those men had known, or cared.

And then a fierce howl rose from the Jelgavans, for a wagon bearing a blond man with his hands tied in front of him came slowly up the street through the crowd. Leino needed no Jelgavan to understand the roars of hatred from the people. The captive in the wagon shouted something that sounded defiant. More roars answered him. The crowd surged toward the wagon. The fellow with his hands tied had guards, but they didn’t do much-didn’t, in fact, do anything-to protect him. The mob snatched him out of the wagon and beat him and kicked him as they dragged him to the nearest wall. Some of them had sticks. They blazed him. He fell. With another harsh, baying cry-half wolfish, half orgasmic-they swarmed over his body.

“When they find some more rope, he will go up on a lamppost, too,” Leino said. Classical Kaunian seemed too cold, too dispassionate, for such a discussion, but it remained the only tongue he had in common with Xavega.

“Good riddance to him,” she said. “These people knew him. They knew what he should have got, and they gave it to him.”

“I suppose so,” Leino said, and then, after a moment, “I wonder how many in that mob have things of their own to hide, and how many names that Jelgavan did not get to name because they killed him so fast.”

Xavega gave him a startled look. “I had not thought of that,” she said. But then she shrugged. “If they do not get the names from him, they will surely get them from someone else. A lot of these Jelgavans collaborated with the Algarvians.”

That was also likely-indeed, almost certain-to be true. “Some of the same ones will probably end up collaborating with us,” Leino said. The thought saddened him. He wondered why. He’d never labored under the delusion that war was an especially clean business.

A couple of blocks farther on, a fat Jelgavan rushed out of his tavern to press mugs of wine in Leino and Xavega’s hands. Quite impartially, he kissed them both on the cheek and shouted out something in which Leino heard a word that sounded a lot like the classical Kaunian term forfreedom. Then he bowed and went back into his place, only to emerge again a moment later to give wine to a couple of Kuusaman soldiers. By the way they staggered, they’d already had a good deal.

Xavega let out a scornful sniff. “If the Algarvians knew what things were like here, they could run us out of Balvi with about a regiment and a half of men.”

“Maybe.” Leino raised an eyebrow. “Would you have said the same thing if you had seen a couple of drunken Lagoan soldiers?”

“Our men have too much discipline for…” But Xavega’s voice trailed away. Not even she could bring out that claim with a straight face. Too much evidence to the contrary was not just visible but blatantly obvious. Leino laughed. She contented herself with giving him a sour look. That only made him laugh more.

More shouts of savage glee came from up a side street. They’ve caught another collaborator, Leino thought with something between joy and alarm. Watching a man, even an enemy, die as that one Jelgavan had done was nothing to face with equanimity.

But these collaborators-there were about a dozen of them-were not going to their end, only to their humiliation. They were women who must have had Algarvian lovers. They’d been stripped to the waist and had red paint smeared in their hair. People shouted curses at them and pelted them with eggs and overripe summer fruit, but no one aimed a stick their way.

“Little whores,” Xavega said.

“Most of them are taller than I am,” Leino said.

Xavega snorted again. “You know what I meant,” she said, and this time he had to nod.

They passed an empty square half overgrown with rank grass, not something Leino would have expected to see in the middle of a large, crowded city like Balvi. At the edge of the square sprouted a small brickwork of memorial tablets, all of them obviously new. Leino tried his classical Kaunian on a few of the locals: “Excuse me, but whom do these tablets remember?”

On his third try, he found a man who could answer him in the old language. “Not ‘whom,’ man from another kingdom, but ‘what,’ “ the fellow said, his accent odd in Leino’s ears but understandable. “Once an assembly hall from the days of the Kaunian Empire stood here. But the Algarvian barbarians, may the powers below eat them, destroyed it. We could not mourn it as we should have while falseKingMainardo ruled here. Now that he is gone, we show we remember.”

“Thank you,” Leino said. He’d heard about Algarvian wrecking in the Kaunian kingdoms, but this was the first he’d seen of it himself.

“I thank you, man from another kingdom,” the Jelgavan replied. In classical Kaunian, the usual word forforeigner also meantbarbarian -that was the word the man had applied to the Algarvians. He found a politer substitute for Leino. After bowing, he added, “I thank you for setting us free and for giving us back our own true and rightful king.”

“Er-you are welcome,” Leino said, and got away in a hurry. From everything he’d seen ofKingDonalitu aboardHabakkuk, the Jelgavans were welcome to him.

Here and there in Balvi, signs in the Algarvians’ slithering script remained; no doubt they told garrison troops and soldiers on leave from the horrors of the west how to get about in the city. Even as that thought crossed Leino’s mind, he noticed a couple of Jelgavans busily tearing down one of those signs.

A Lagoan soldier wearing the silver gorget that marked a military constable held up his hand. He spoke in his own language. Xavega angrily answered. He shrugged and said something else. She answered even more angrily.

“What does he want?” Leino asked: he had next to no Lagoan of his own, just as Xavega had never bothered learning Kuusaman.

In classical Kaunian, she replied, “He says all mages are to report to a center they have set up near the palace. He says we cannot enjoy ourselves here even for a day, but that we have to report at once so we can return to duty once more.”

“It makes sense,” Leino said. Xavega kept right on grumbling; whether it made sense or not, she didn’t like it.

Perhaps noting as much, the military constable came up and spoke in Lagoan. Then, to Leino’s surprise, he added a few words in Kuusaman: “Come with me. I take you there.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Leino said.

This time, the Lagoan surprised him by laughing. “I think maybe I do have to do that. You come with me.” Leino shrugged and nodded. Xavega looked ready to bite nails in half once the military constable put that into Lagoan, but she nodded, too.

At the center, a bored-looking Kuusaman clerk checked their names off a duty roster. In his own language, he said, “The two of you haven’t had the special training, isn’t that right?”

“Aye, that’s so,” Leino answered. He translated for Xavega, who looked miffed at not hearing Lagoan or at least classical Kaunian. She grudgingly nodded again.

“All right.” The clerk went right on speaking Kuusaman, and made a couple of more check marks. “I’ll assign you to the training center north of here. Shall I billet the two of you together?”

“What’s he saying?” Xavega asked. Leino translated again. She nodded once more and told the clerk, “Aye, put us together,” in classical Kaunian. He evidently followed that language even if he chose not to speak it, for he made more checks still.

Leino had leftHabakkuk to find a painless way to break things off with Xavega. He still didn’t know exactly why she’d left-to get at the Algarvians, he supposed. And she’d seen having him around as one more comfort she’d grown used to.

And you-you really hate the idea of going to bed with her, Leino thought. He didn’t care for most of Xavega’s opinions or for large chunks of her rather bad-tempered character, but when they lay down together…

If I had any gumption, I would say, “No, put us apart. “He said not a word. He let the clerk finish the paperwork. The fellow pointed to a bench. “Wait there. Before long, a carriage or a wagon will take you to the ley-line caravan depot for your trip to the center. Things are a little crazy now.” Leino went over and sat down. Xavega perched beside him. With an inward sigh, he slipped his arm around her waist and drew her close. For once most obliging, she snuggled up against him.

“Are you almost ready?”ColonelLurcanio called up to Krasta from the foot of the stairs. “This is a reception at the royal palace, remember. KingGainibu will probably behead you if you are late.”

Krasta looked at herself in the bedchamber mirror. She tugged at the waistband of her trousers. Her pregnancy still didn’t show, not quite, but she knew she was heavier than usual. Her trousers should have been snug, but notthis snug. But they would have to do.

“I’m coming,” she said. She and Lurcanio hadn’t been invited to the palace for some months. She didn’t want to offendKingGainibu by being late, even if she didn’t worry about the headsman’s axe. As she grabbed a handbag, she wondered if she was fretting over nothing. Probably. Odds were, Gainibu would be too drunk to care, or even to notice, who arrived when. He’d stayed drunk most of the time since the Algarvians occupied Priekule.

By the way Lurcanio’s eyes lit up, she knew the trousers weren’t too snug the wrong way. And she also knew that she had rather more on top than she’d had before Lurcanio (or, curse it, was it Valnu?) put a baby in her. With men, that never went to waste.

Lurcanio handed her up into his carriage. His driver-another redhead, of course-picked his way through evening twilight and then through darkness toward the palace. No lights showed. Lagoan and Kuusaman dragons flew over the capital of Valmiera all too often these days. If patrolling Algarvians or the Valmieran constables who served them saw lights, they would sometimes start blazing without warning.

After getting lost a couple of times and grumbling in his incomprehensible language, the driver finally found the palace. Lights gleamed inside, with dark curtains making sure no stray beams leaked out.

“Colonel theCountLurcanio!” a flunky bawled out. “His companion, theMarchionessKrasta!” On Lurcanio’s arm, Krasta strode into the reception hall.

She’d gone into that reception hall on Lurcanio’s arm a good many times. At first, everything seemed the same as usual: Algarvian officers with their good-looking Valmieran companions, along with the Valmieran nobles who inclined toward Algarve and their ladies. KingGainibu stood in a receiving line withGrand DukeIvone, the redhead who really ran Valmiera these days.

But something in the hall was different tonight. Krasta sensed it at once, though she needed a little while to realize just what it was. Far fewer Valmieran nobles had come than would have been true a couple of years before: only those who’d most closely tied their fate to the occupiers. Krasta hadn’t paid a great deal of attention to the news sheets-she never did-but she knew the war news for Algarve wasn’t good.

The fair-weather friends are flying, she thought. She almost said it aloud, but caught herself in time. Lurcanio would not have taken it kindly; his temper had a way of slipping when some Algarvian position in Unkerlant or Jelgava did some slipping of its own.

Krasta got her second surprise when she and Lurcanio greeted the King of Valmiera in the receiving line. As usual, Gainibu had a glass in his hand. But it held only wine, not the stronger spirits he’d preferred since yielding to the redheads.

“Good evening, Colonel,” Gainibu said when Lurcanio made his polite bow. Krasta dropped a curtsy. “And a good evening to you, Marchioness,” the king added. His voice and his eyes seemed clearer than they had for years. As Lurcanio started to go on, Gainibu remarked, “There are a few things I should like to discuss with you tonight, Colonel.”

“Of course, your Majesty,” Lurcanio said, cat-courteous as usual. But he couldn’t quite keep the faintest hint of astonishment-or was it alarm?- from his voice. And he couldn’t keep from glancing over toGrand DukeIvone. Ivone’s smile looked as if it were held in place with carpet tacks.

“This may be an interesting reception after all,” Krasta said as they made their way toward the tables piled high with food and drink.

“So it may.” Lurcanio sounded anything but happy at the prospect. “What in blazes is wrong with Gainibu?”

“He seemed better than he has in a long time,” Krasta said.

“That is what I meant,” Lurcanio snarled. He took a glass of something potent and knocked it back at a gulp. Krasta chose a mug of ale for herself. She had less of an urge to drink herself blind at these affairs than she’d had before she found herself expecting a baby. She couldn’t decide whether that was good or not.

On a raised platform in one corner of the reception hall sat several musicians softly playing. They were Valmierans themselves, but played soft, delicate, tinkling, Algarvian-style music rather than the more emphatic rhythms and more raucous instruments-bagpipes and thumping drums-of their own kingdom. Krasta had got used to hearing the occupiers’ music in the royal palace. Now, for some reason, she noticed it again.

ColonelLurcaniodidn’t need long to notice it, either. “They must have got drunk up there,” he growled, pointing to the men (and one woman) on the low platform. “Either that or they are making a hash of things on purpose just to annoy us.”

“Why would they do that?” Krasta asked.

“It is called kicking a man when you think he is down,” her Algarvian lover answered. His eyes glittered; his smile seemed more carnivorous than usual. “You had better be right, or you will be very sorry.”

But Krasta hardly heard those last few words. Kicking a man when you think he is down. Much suddenly became clear: things she was seeing here, and things she had seen elsewhere. The Valmierans thought their occupiers were in trouble, and so they could afford to show insolence.

Some of them thought that way, anyhow. But a big, swag-bellied man with a provincial accent came up toColonelLurcanio and boomed, “Ho! Congratulations on your armies’ bold, brave defensive stand along the Twegen River.” By his tone, the Algarvians were still cocks o’ the walk.

Lurcanio bowed. “For which I thank you, your Excellency.”

Krasta had never heard of the Twegen River. She’d never heard of a lot of the western places that found themselves written into the chronicles of the war with letters of blood. She stared down into her mug of ale, wishing she felt like drinking more, while Lurcanio and the Valmieran noble from the back of beyond talked endlessly about the fighting and how it was going. After a while, she yawned and found a chair and sat down. Carrying a baby gave her an excuse for showing she was tired and bored.

The Valmieran baron or whatever he was talked loud enough to let the whole reception hall know his opinions-as if anyone cares, Krasta thought acidly. Still booming like a courting grouse, he went on, “Surely the Unkerlanter hosts will break themselves on the rock of your might.”

“May it be so,” Lurcanio answered with another bow. “And now, if you will excuse me-” He hurried off to get himself another drink.

By the time he got back, the Valmieran had gone off to boom in someone else’s ear. Lurcanio poured down the drink even so. “Whatwas he going on about?” Krasta asked.

“Something about which he knows much less than he thinks he does.” A certain amused malice in his voice, Lurcanio went on, “There are, I suspect, a great many things about which he knows much less than he thinks he does.”

Even though Krasta still hadn’t emptied her first mug of ale, that made her giggle. She might have said the same sort of thing herself. Then she quickly got to her feet and curtsied once more: KingGainibu was coming toward her and Lurcanio. The king’s walk had more purpose and less wobble in it than she’d seen for years.

Lurcanio noted the same thing, as he’d noted Gainibu’s unusual steadiness in the receiving line. His bow was politeness personified, but hard suspicion ruled his voice as he murmured, “Your Majesty.”

“Good evening, Colonel… and milady, of course,” Gainibu said. But after that, he might have forgotten Krasta was there. It irked her less than it would have from a lesser personage; the king was the king, and did as he pleased. Swinging his attention back to Lurcanio, he continued, “I told you earlier in the evening that we should have somewhat to discuss.”

“So you did, your Majesty,” the Algarvian replied. “By all means, say on.”

“I shall. You need not worry about that.”KingGainibu ’s wave somehow encompassed not only the reception hall but the whole kingdom of Valmiera. “At some point or other, probably sooner rather than later, you will have to evacuate this land to fight elsewhere.”

“It could be,” Lurcanio said. “It is, on the other hand, anything but certain.”

“Don’t bandy words with me.” Gainibu’s voice was sharp, peremptory- the voice of a king. “You are already moving men out of Valmiera, moving them through Priekule, to fight in the west and the north. Before long, parts of the kingdom will be all but bare of Algarvians.”

“We shall hold what we need, your Majesty.” Lurcanio, for his part, spoke with studied self-assurance. “If you think we shall let ourselves be dispossessed of the main cities and the roads and ley lines between them, I must say I believe you to be mistaken.”

“This may come to a test,” Gainibu said. They’re bargaining, Krasta realized in sudden surprise. The Algarvians hadn’t had to bargain in Valmiera for some time.

She looked around forViscountValnu, but didn’t see him. She shrugged. Even if she had, he probably would have been in the company of one Algarvian officer or another, and she really didn’t want to see him like that. Her free hand went to her belly for a moment. All at once, she hoped Valnu had sired her child. He’d had the first chance, after all. And a Valmieran father might prove much more… convenient than she’d thought only a few weeks before.

She’d missed a little of what the king and Lurcanio were saying. “-would regret it,” came from Lurcanio’s mouth.

“Both sides would regret it,” Gainibu answered. “Do you doubt that? And so, my proposal: if there are no outrages-and you know the sort I mean-you will find your withdrawal easier than it would prove otherwise. If not…” He shrugged. “It will not be withdrawal, but a running fight.”

“Words. Rhetoric.” But Lurcanio sounded uneasy. “How can you hope to make your promises good?”

“I have ways,” the king said. “Remember what Algarve managed after the Six Years’ War despite being beaten and occupied. We can do the same, especially as you will be busy elsewhere. I told Ivone as much. He said you were the man for the details. Good evening, Colonel.” He nodded and walked off.

“What sort of details?” Krasta asked. “What exactly was he talking about?”

“The sort of details, my sweet, that are all too likely to put me in charge of combat troops once more, however tedious that may prove,” Lurcanio answered. Careless of who might be watching, he closed his hand on her breast. “I shall have to make the most of things while I can.”

Hajjaj woke to the sound of distant thunder. That was his first thought. His second thought was that the first was idiotic-thunder in Bishah might have been more likely than snow there at that season (or at any season), but it wasn’t a great deal more likely.

Beside him on the low bed, Tassi stirred and muttered. After a particularly loud roar, she stiffened and sat up and said something or other in Yaninan. Hajjaj spoke in Algarvian, the only language they had in common: “The Unkerlanters have sent dragons against Bishah again. Their eggs should not burst close to here, not when we’re up in the hills.”

“Oh,” she said, now fully awake. “I thought it was a storm.” She snuggled against him. He enjoyed the touch of her soft, bare skin. He would have enjoyed it more had sweat not sprung out wherever their bodies touched. Zuwayzi summer nights were not really made for lovers who craved clasping each other close.

“In winter, it might have been a storm,” Hajjaj replied. “At this season… I hope our dragonfliers and the Algarvians do a proper job of punishing the raiders.”

“May it be so,” Tassi said, and then, “As long as we are awake, would you like to…?”

Hajjaj chuckled. “Ask me again in a couple of days and I’ll gladly say aye. You pay me the compliment of treating me as if I were younger than I am. Itis flattering; far be it from me to deny that. But I know what this old carcass can do and what is beyond its powers these days.”

“Do you?” Tassi said, mischief in her voice. She slithered down toward the foot of the bed. “Maybe I can surprise you.”

Maybe she could have, too. She’d pleasantly surprised Hajjaj once or twice before. Kolthoum had been right, as usual; Tassi made a splendid amusement. But she hadn’t even begun when someone tapped on the bedchamber door. She let out a startled squeak. Hajjaj was a little startled, too; he always slept lightly, and his retainers knew better than to bother him in the night without urgent need. “What is it?” he called out in Zuwayzi.

“Your Excellency, you are wanted at the crystallomancer’s.”Tewfik ’s voice came from the other side of the door. “It isGeneralIkhshid.”

Despite the summer heat, ice ran up Hajjaj’s back. “I’ll come, of course,” he said, and got out of bed.

“What’s wrong?” Tassi asked in Algarvian, not following the quick conversation between the two Zuwayzin.

“I don’t know,” Hajjaj answered in the same tongue, though he feared he did. “But I had better go and find out.”

“I’m sorry to disturb you, lad,”Tewfik said as Hajjaj stepped out into the dimly lit hallway. The wrinkled old majordomo’s laugh had a leer in it. “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”

“No,” Hajjaj said, and let it go at that. “You can go back to bed now yourself, Tewfik. I’ll take care of whatever needs doing.”

ButTewfik shook his head. “I’m up. I’ll stay up. You may need more from me before the morning comes.”

How much did he know? How much did he guess? Hajjaj had no time to find out. Whatever his majordomo knew, Tewfik would keep it to himself. Hajjaj did know that. He hurried down the hall toward the chamber where the crystallomancers kept this isolated clanfather’s house in touch with the wider world.

Sure enough, GeneralIkhshid ’s image stared out at him as he sat down in front of one of the crystals there. As soon as Ikhshid saw him, the Zuwayzi officer began to speak: “Well, your Excellency, the whoresons have dropped the other boot.”

“The Unkerlanters?” Even now, Hajjaj could hope he was wrong.

But Ikhshid nodded grimly. “I’m afraid so. This isn’t just another raid on Bishah. They’re pounding us all along the front-pounding us hard, I mean. They aren’t playing games any more, your Excellency. They’ve got a demon of a lot of men and behemoths and dragons and egg-tossers.”

“Are we holding?” The Zuwayzi foreign minister asked the question he had to ask, and asked it with more than a little dread.

“For now-mostly,” Ikhshid said. “That’s by the reports I have right this minute, mind you. I don’t have reports from the whole line yet, and that worries me. Some of our brigades may not be reporting because they aren’t there to report any more. And if they aren’t…” His bushy white eyebrows came down and together in a frown.

“If they aren’t, Swemmel’s soldiers are liable to be pouring through the gaps,” Hajjaj said. “That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

Most unhappily, GeneralIkhshid nodded. “Aye. And if they are, powers above only know how we’re going to stop them.”

“We gave them a good fight when they attacked us almost five years ago,” Hajjaj said. That was true. Also true was that the Unkerlanters had prevailed in the end.

And Ikhshid said, “What worries me most, your Excellency, is that they’re a lot better than they were back then. We haven’t changed all that much, but they’ve had three years of lessons from the Algarvians. You don’t get any better schoolmasters than Mezentio’s men.”

That didn’t sound good. No, it doesn’t sound good at all, Hajjaj thought gloomily. He asked, “Have you toldKingShazli yet?”

“I don’t mind so much waking you up,” Ikhshid said. “I thought I’d let his Majesty sleep till morning-if the Unkerlanter eggs will.”

“Wake him. He is the sovereign, and he needs to know,” Hajjaj said. “Don’t tell him you’ve told me first. Tell him you’re about to let me know, and that he doesn’t have to. I’m going to head down into the city right now.”

“All right. I’ll do it just as you say.” Ikhshid nodded to someone Hajjaj couldn’t see-presumably his crystallomancer, for the crystal flared with light and then went inert as the etheric connection was broken.

Hajjaj went out into the hall. He wasn’t surprised to findTewfik waiting. “I’m going to need a driver right away, I’m afraid,” he said.

The majordomo nodded. “I’ve already got him out of bed. He’s harnessing up the carriage.”

“Thank you, Tewfik,” Hajjaj said. “You are a wonder.” The ancient retainer nodded, accepting the praise as no less than his due.

By the time Hajjaj got down into Bishah, the Unkerlanter dragons had flown off to the south. A bit of smoke hung in the air. The moon was down, or Hajjaj judged he would have seen dark columns rising into the sky. Eggs had fallen close to the royal palace, but not on it. A few minutes after Hajjaj got to the foreign ministry, Qutuz came in.

“DidGeneralIkhshid have a crystallomancer get hold of you, too?” Hajjaj asked his secretary.

Qutuz shook his head. “No, your Excellency. The attack seemed bigger than usual, so I thought I should be here in case something was going on. I gather it is?”

“You might say so,” Hajjaj answered. “The Unkerlanters have struck the lines down by our southern border, and they’ve struck hard.”

“Are we holding?” Qutuz asked anxiously.

“We were when I spoke to Ikhshid,” Hajjaj said. “I hope we still are.”

GeneralIkhshidhimself strode into Hajjaj’s offices a little past sunrise. As he had on the crystal, he wasted no time: “They’ve broken through in several places. I’ve ordered our men back to the next line of positions farther north. Ihope we can hold them there.”

“You hope so?” Hajjaj said, and Ikhshid nodded. Like a man picking at a sore, Hajjaj elaborated: “You may hope so, but you don’t think so, do you?”

“No,” Ikhshid said bluntly. “We may slow ‘em up there, but I don’t see how we can stop ‘em. The next line north ofthat is on our old frontier. That’s a lot deeper, because we spent years building it up between the Six Years’ War and the last time Swemmel’s buggers hit us.”

“Can we stop the Unkerlanters there, then?” Hajjaj asked.

“I hope so,” Ikhshid answered, in much the same tones he’d used the last time he said that.

Hajjaj ground his teeth. That wasn’t what he’d wanted to hear, nor anything close to it. He hadn’t thought he would ever wish Ikhshid weren’t quite so honest. “What should the kingdom do if the soldiers can’t hold along that line?” he asked.

“Make peace as fast as we can, and get the best termsKingSwemmel will give us.” Again, GeneralIkhshid spoke without the least hesitation. “If the Unkerlanters break through at the old frontier, powers below eat me if I know how we can stop them-or even slow them down very much-this side of Bishah.”

“It’s summer,” Hajjaj said, looking for hope wherever he might find it. “Won’t the desert work for us?”

“Some,” Ikhshid said. “Some-maybe. What you have to understand, though, and what I don’t think you do, is that the Unkerlanters are alot better at what they’re doing than they were the last time they struck us a blow. We’re some better ourselves: Thanks to the Algarvians, we’ve got more behemoths and dragons than we did then. But curse me if I know whether it’ll be enough.”

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a young captain hurried past Qutuz and saluted. “Sir,” the junior officer said to Ikhshid, “I’m sorry to have to report an enemy breakthrough atSabAbar .”

Ikhshid cursed wearily. Odds were he hadn’t slept all night. He said, “That’s not good. SabAbar is in the second defensive line, not the first. If they’ve got through there already… That’s not good at all.”

“How could they have reached the second line so fast?” Hajjaj asked. “How could they have broken through it so fast?”

“They probably got there about as fast as we did,” Ikhshid said unhappily. “It’s not a neat, pretty fight when both sides are moving fast, especially if the whoresons on the other side have got their peckers up. And the stinking Unkerlantersdo, powers below eat ‘em. They think they can lick anybody right now, and when you think like that, you’re halfway to being right.”

Qutuz asked the next question before Hajjaj could: “If they’ve broken through at thisSabAbar place, can we hold the second line, even for a little while?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to see.”GeneralIkhshid sounded harried. “We’ll do everything we can, but who knows how much that will be?” He bowed to Hajjaj. “If you’ll excuse me, Your Excellency, I’d better head back. In fact, unless I miss my guess, I’ll be going down south before too long. As I say, we have to do what we can.” With another bow, he tramped away, the young captain in his wake.

“What are we going to do, your Excellency?” Qutuz asked.

“The best we can,” Hajjaj answered. “I have nothing better to tell you, any more than Ikhshid had anything better to tell me. What I have to do now, I think, is letKingShazli know we have… difficulties.”

He didn’t know what Shazli could do. He didn’t know what anyone could do. It was up to Zuwayza’s soldiers now. If they did what he hoped, the Unkerlanters still had their work cut out for them. If they didn’t… If they didn’t, Zuwayza might not need a foreign minister much longer, only an Unkerlanter governor ruling from Bishah, as one had back before the Six Years’ War.

One of the nice things about serving as an Algarvian constable, even an Algarvian constable in occupied Forthweg, was that Bembo hadn’t had to go to war. It was always other poor sods who’d had to travel west and fight the Unkerlanters. They’d hated him for his immunity, too. He’d known they hated him, and he’d laughed at them on account of it.

Now that laughter came home to roost. The war had come home, too, or at least come to Eoforwic, which he had to call home these days. For one thing, the Forthwegians in the city kept on fighting as if they were soldiers. And, for another, Swemmel’s men sat right across the Twegen from Eoforwic. If they ever swarmed across the river…

Bembo clutched his stick a little tighter. These days, he always carried an army-issue weapon, not the shorter one he’d used as a constable. For all practical purposes, he wasn’t a constable any more. All the Algarvians still in Eoforwic came under military command nowadays.

Ever so cautiously, he peered out from behind a battered building. He ducked back again in a hurry. “Seems all right,” he said. “No Forthwegian fighters in sight, anyhow.”

Oraste grunted. “It’s the buggers who aren’t in sight you’ve got to watch out for,” Bembo’s old partner said. He and Bembo and half a dozen real soldiers had been thrown together as a squad. “You never see the one who blazes you.”

“Or if you do, he’s thelast thing you see,” a trooper added cheerfully.

“Heh,” Bembo said. If that was a joke, he didn’t find it funny. If it wasn’t a joke, he didn’t want to think about it.

Running feet behind him made him whirl, the business end of his stick swinging toward what might be a target. The Algarvians held-and held down-this section of Eoforwic, but their Forthwegian foes kept sneaking fighters into it and making trouble. Bembo had no desire to find himself included in some casualty report no one would ever read.

But the fellow heading his way was a tall redhead in short tunic and kilt: an Algarvian constable like himself. Relaxing a little-relaxing too much was also liable to land you in one of those reports-he asked, “What’s up?”

“Nothing good,” the newcomer answered. “You know how a bunch of our important officers have come down with a sudden case of loss of life?” He waited for Bembo and the men with him to nod, then went on, “Well, the brass-the ones who’re still left alive, I mean-think they’ve figured out what’s gone wrong.”

“Tell, tell!” That wasn’t just Bembo. Several of his comrades spoke up, too. Disliking the men in command was one thing. Wanting to see all of them dead was something else again-at least, Bembo supposed it was.

With the self-importance of a man who knows he has important news, the other constable said, “Well, what happened is-or the big blazes think what happened is-the fornicating Forthwegians have worked out a spell that makes them look like us. What could be better for assassins?”

“Like the cursed Kaunians looking like Forthwegians, by the powers above!” Bembo exclaimed.

“Aye, it sounds wonderful,” Oraste said. “Now all we need is a spell that makesus look like Kaunians, so we can go off and cut our own throats and save the Forthwegians and the Unkerlanters the trouble.”

“That isn’t much of a joke,” one of the soldiers said, echoing Bembo’s thought.

“Who says I was joking?” Oraste’s face and voice were cold as winter in the south of Unkerlant.

The soldier glared back at him. That was enough to intimidate most Algarvian constables pressed into combat duty. It would have been plenty to intimidate Bembo, who knew perfectly well that he was softer than the men who went to real war. But Oraste glared right back-anyone who reckoned himself the harder man would have to prove it by beating him. And the soldier looked away first. Bembo was impressed.

He was also worried. “How in blazes are we supposed to know the whoresons with us are proper Algarvian whoresons and not disguised Forthwegian whoresons just waiting to cut our throats?” he asked the fellow who’d brought the bad news.

“They’re still working on that,” the other constable answered. “Some of the Forthwegians don’t trim their beards enough before they go into disguise, so they end up looking fuzzier than we usually do. And some of them have that foul accent of theirs when they try and speak Algarvian. But some of em… We wouldn’t have so many dead men if they were all easy to spot. If you don’t know the fellows around you, keep an eye on ‘em.” He sketched a salute and hurried off to spread the news further.

“Well, that’s jolly,” Bembo said. “Can’t trust the Forthwegians, can’t trust the Kaunians”-and didn‘t we do that to ourselves? he thought-”and now we can’t trust each other, either.”

“Probably just what the stinking rebels want-us blazing us, I mean,” one of the soldiers said. Bembo wished he could have argued with that, but it seemed pretty self-evidently true.

He would have said so, but the Algarvians chose that moment to start tossing eggs at the Forthwegians just in front of his companions and him. He’d found out in a hurry that a certain number of such eggs were liable to fall short of where they were aimed. He threw himself into a hole some earlier burst had made and hoped none would land on him.

“I hate this!” he shouted to anybody who would listen. But how likely was it that anybody would? And even if somebody would, how likely was it that he could hear one man’s cry of protest through the endless roar of bursting eggs?

As soon as that roar let up, someone shouted, “Forward!” Bembo scrambled to his feet and went forward with the rest of the soldiers and constables. He was no hero. He’d never been a hero. But he couldn’t bear to have his comrades reckon him a coward.

Would you rather have them reckon you a dead man? he asked himself as he advanced. The answer was evidently aye, because he kept going. Sometimes saving face counted for as much as saving his neck.

The houses and blocks of flats ahead had been battered before. They were more battered now, with smoke and dust rising from them in great clouds. Broken glass glittered in the streets and on the slates of the sidewalks. It could slice right through a boot. Bembo noticed it as he ran, but it was the least of his worries. That thunderstorm of eggs hadn’t got rid of all the Forthwegian fighters up there: someone was blazing at the Algarvians from a building ahead.

Bembo threw himself flat behind what had been a chimney before it came crashing down in ruin. He was used to going after people who tried to get away from him, not after men who stood their ground and blazed back. No one cared what he was used to. He stuck up his head and waited to see where the Forthwegian’s beam came from. When he did spot it, he blazed, and was rewarded with a howl of pain.

More eggs started bursting ahead. Bembo hunkered down again. Every block of Eoforwic the Algarvians took from the rebels had to get pounded flat before they could be sure of holding on to it.

“Forward!” That hateful shout again. Forward Bembo went, cursing under his breath.

From a doorway twice its natural size, somebody stepped out and flung what looked like a cheap sugar bowl. The Forthwegian fell an instant later, blazed by three beams. But then the bowl landed among the oncoming Algarvians, and the burst of sorcerous energy trapped inside flung pottery fragments in all directions.

Something bit Bembo’s leg. He yelped and looked down at himself. Blood trickled along his calf, but the leg still bore his weight. He ran on toward a doorway. When he dashed into the meager shelter it gave, he discovered he shared that shelter with Oraste. “I’m wounded!” he cried dramatically.

His old partner glanced down at the cut on his leg. “Go home to mama when this is done,” Oraste said. “She can kiss it and make it better.”

“Well! I like that!” Bembo struck a heroic pose-carefully, so as not to expose any of his precious person to lurking foes. “Here I am, injured in service to my kingdom, and what do I get? Mockery! Scorn!”

“About what you deserve,” Oraste said. “I’ve seen people get hurt worse if they scratch themselves while they’ve got a hangnail.”

“Powers below eat you!” Bembo cried. “I’m going to put in for a wound badge when we come off duty.”

“You’ll probably get one, too. From what I’ve seen, the only way you can keep from getting a wound badge is if you get killed-and then they probably give the bastard to your next of kin.” Oraste’s cynicism knew no bounds.

Before Bembo could let out another indignant squawk, somebody up ahead yelled, “Forward!” again. Oraste left the shelter of the doorway without the least hesitation. Bembo had to follow him. On he ran, puffing, marveling that the fear of looking bad in front of his comrades once more proved stronger than the fear of death.

A Forthwegian’s head appeared in a second-story window. Bembo blazed at the Forthwegian, who toppled. Bembo ran on. He had no idea whether the man he’d just blazed was a fighter or an innocent bystander. He didn’t care, either. The fellow had shown up in the wrong place at the wrong time. He had to pay for that. If the penalty was death, too bad. Better his than mine or one of my pals’, Bembo thought.

More Forthwegians were holed up in a furniture shop not far ahead. No chance they were innocent bystanders: they blazed at the oncoming soldiers and constables. Bembo wasted no time ducking for cover. He wasn’t ashamed to do it, for he was far from the only one doing it.

Then several eggs crashed down around the furniture shop, and one right on it. “Surrender!” an Algarvian yelled to the Forthwegians still inside. “You can’t win!” He switched to Forthwegian so rudimentary, even Bembo could follow it: “Coming out! Hands high!”

“You no to kill we?” one of the Forthwegians called back in equally bad Algarvian.

“Not if you give up right now,” the soldier answered. “Make it snappy- this is your last chance.”

To Bembo’s surprise, half a dozen Forthwegians did come out of the wrecked shop, their faces glum, their hands up over their heads. When more eggs burst not far away, they all flinched. Not one of them tried to take shelter, though. They must have been sure the Algarvians would blaze them if they did. And they were, without a doubt, right.

“You constables!” one of the Algarvians soldiers said to Bembo and Oraste. “You know what to do with captives. Take these buggers away.”

“Right.” Bembo grunted as he got to his feet. Thatwas something he knew how to do. And, while I’m away from the lines, I’ll see how I go about asking for that wound badge, too.