Jaws of Darkness

Sixteen

Leudast had served in the Unkerlanter army for a long time. He’d been fighting in the Elsung Mountains in what was thenKingSwemmel ’s desultory border war with Gyongyos when the Derlavaian War first broke out between Algarve and most of her neighbors. He’d been part of the Unkerlanter force that gobbled up western Forthweg while the redheads were smashing most ofKingPenda ’s army. And he’d spent a demon of a lot of time fighting the Algarvians himself.

Two leg wounds weren’t so very much to show for all that. He’d started out a common soldier, with no hope of rising higher, and here he was, a lieutenant.

In all those years in the army, he’d never been particularly eager to go into a fight. In fact, he’d always been happiest during the brief spells of quiet he’d found. And here he was now, forced to stay quiet as he recovered from this second wound well behind the fighting front.

He hated it. He hated every minute he had to lie on his back. He hated every minute the healers used to poke and prod at his blazed leg, and hated the wise things they muttered back and forth in a language that hardly seemed to be Unkerlanter at all.

“When will you let me go?” he demanded. “When will you let me get back to my men? When will you let me get back to the fighting?”

Am I really saying that? But he was. Now, at last, after so much terror, he could begin to smell victory against the Algarvians. They still fought bravely. They still fought cleverly-more cleverly than his own countrymen, most of the time. But there weren’t enough of them to hold back the rising Unkerlanter tide no matter how bravely and cleverly they fought. And, having gone through all the black days when the Algarvians seemed sure to overwhelm Unkerlant, Leudast wanted to be there to help beat them. How much he wanted that amazed him.

But the healers shook their heads. “You will not be ready for some weeks, Lieutenant,” one of them said, and they went on to their next patient.

Alone in his cot, Leudast quietly laughed to himself. The last time he’d been wounded, down in Sulingen, his treatment had been a lot rougher than this. As soon as he could hobble around, they’d put a fresh stick in his hands and thrown him back into the fight.

Of course, he’d been only a sergeant then. Even the Unkerlanter army took better care of its officers than of its other ranks. And Sulingen had been as dreadful a struggle as any the war had seen. They’d needed everybody they could find. But even so…

He asked the healers again the next day when he could go back to the fight. They gave him another evasive answer. “Count your time here as a leave of sorts, Lieutenant,” one of them said.

“I don’t want this sort of leave,” Leudast said, whereupon all the healers looked at him as if he were daft. “If I get leave, I want it to be with my sweetheart.” They nodded then, but they still didn’t take him seriously. I’ve got strings to pull, he thought. I’m not quite an ordinary lieutenant, even if they think I am. Time to remind them otherwise. “Please get me pen and paper. I want to write toMarshalRathar and request an immediate return to duty.”

Now the healers looked at him as if he might be dangerous. Cautiously, one of them asked, “How do you knowMarshalRathar?”

“He commissioned me after I captured falseKingRaniero of Grelz,” Leudast replied. Take that.

The healers didn’t seem to know how to take it. They put their heads together and muttered among themselves. At last, one of them said, “You really are not fit to return to duty yet, you know. That leg will not support you.”

“Well, all right,” said Leudast, who could not disagree with what was obviously true. “But it doesn’t seem to me like you people are doing much to get me back to duty. You’re just letting me lay here.”

“You do need to rest and recuperate, you know, Lieutenant,” the healer said.

“If I got any more rested, I’d be bored to death,” Leudast returned. “You’re a bunch of mages. Isn’t there anything you can do to send me back faster?”

They put their heads together again. Leudast hadn’t really expected anything else. They seemed unable to do anything without consulting among themselves. The one who served as their spokesman said, “You mean, use more sorcerous energy to expedite your recovery?” He sounded faintly scandalized.

Leudast didn’t care how he sounded. “That’s just what I mean,” he said.

“You’re healers, aren’t you? What the demon good are you if you won’t do any real healing?”

They all looked indignant. He wanted to laugh. They thought that would impress him. After all the time he’d spent in the field, nothing this side of a stick aimed at his face impressed him. The fellow who did their talking said, “I hope you realize we have only so much sorcerous energy to expend.”

“Aye, I’ve noticed that.” Leudast sounded as sardonic as he could. “Common soldiers get next to nothing, officers get as little as you think you can get away with giving. Fetch me that paper. Ido need to write toMarshalRathar.”

He knew he was being unfair. The healers were desperately overworked men. But he’d told a good-sized chunk of truth, too. A man who wasn’t important or well-connected-often the same thing-or whose wound wasn’t either as easy as possible to treat or in some way interesting got short shrift.

Once upon a time, Leudast had been a man without connections. He wasn’t any more, though, and he intended to keep hitting the healers over the head with such importance as he had till they did what he wanted.

They knew it, too. Glaring, their spokesman said, “You wish us to give you preferential treatment.” He might have been a Gyongyosian accusing Leudast of wanting him to eat goat.

“That’s right,” Leudast said cheerfully. “You do it all the time. I want you to do it for me.”

They put their heads together yet again. When they separated, the man who did the talking said, “You realize this may cause you some considerable pain?”

Leudast shrugged. The healers blinked. They didn’t know what to think of a man whom pain didn’t horrify, which only went to prove they’d never been up to the front. He said, “How much pain do you think you’ll get once I tell the marshal you wouldn’t treat me even after I asked you to?”

They winced. Leudast didn’t think he’d prove able to do much to them, but they didn’t have to know that. Plainly, they didn’t feel like taking chances. In their shoes, Leudast wouldn’t have felt like taking any, either. “Let us review your case,” said the one who spoke for them. “If we find some sorcerous therapy that might help you, we shall apply it tomorrow.”

“I hope you do,” Leudast said, which seemed to him wiser than, You’d cursed well better.

Then he had another day of waiting flat on his back. He would sooner have been in a trench waiting to start an attack, which proved how bored he was. Either that or it does prove I’ve lost my mind, he thought.

The next morning, the healers appeared with a wheeled chair and a couple of muscular attendants who manhandled Leudast into it. Other wounded soldiers stared curiously at him as they took him off. The healers had a tent of their own, well away from the wounded they attended. It was almost alarmingly quiet in there.

“What are you going to do to me?” Leudast asked, wondering if browbeating them had been such a good idea after all.

Before any of them answered, their attendants hauled Leudast out of the wheeled chair and propped him up on a table. Then the mages draped his leg-all of it except the area of the wound-with gauze made from a glistening fabric he had never seen before.

“What are you going to do?” he asked again.

“Treat your leg-or rather, the wounded portion of it, and no other- thus the insulating cloth,” a healer told him, which left him no wiser. Then the fellow condescended to explain: “We are going to age the flesh that has been blazed, so that, being a month older than the rest of you, it will also have already healed.”

“That’s wonderful!” Leudast exclaimed. “I didn’t know you could do such things.”

“You will not enjoy it so much while it is happening,” the healer replied. “Also, once the month has passed, you would be very wise to have the sorcery reversed. I will give you a letter authorizing the reversal. Hold on to it and do not forget to have the second sorcery done.”

“All right,” Leudast said. “But why?”

The look the healer gave him was anything but cheery. “Because if you fail to have it done, if you should forget, that flesh will die a month before the rest of you-and I promise you, it will make your last month alive much less pleasant than it would have been otherwise.”

Leudast thought about that. He gulped. “Oh,” he said in a small voice.

“We begin,” the healer declared. He and his colleagues started to chant. Burning heat coursed through Leudast’s wound. He gasped and tried to jerk away. The attendants grabbed him, making sure he couldn’t move. “This is what you asked for,” the healer told him. “This is what you get.”

And you’ll enjoy every moment of giving it to me, won’t you? Leudast thought. But he refused to give the healer the satisfaction of knowing he understood that. In a voice as steady as he could make it, he said, “Get on with it, then.” The healer eyed him and nodded in reluctant approval.

Before long, Leudast was panting and trying not to curse or scream. The healers hadn’t told him he would feel all the pain of a month’s worth of healing, distilled down into the few minutes the sorcery took. He clenched his fists. The smaller hurts of nails digging into palms and of biting down hard on the inside of his lower lip helped distract-a little-from the torment in his leg.

Then, suddenly, that torment eased. Leudast let out a long, astonished sigh of relief. The healer said, “You were brave. We do few such procedures where the patient does not cry out.”

“I believe it.” Leudast sounded shaky, even to himself. But the gnawing pain in his leghad eased. That was what he’d wanted. “Can I put my weight on it?”

“You may,” the healer replied, precise as a schoolmaster. “I hope you can-that was why we performed the sorcery.”

“Well, let’s find out.” Leudast swung down off the table. One of the attendants who’d hauled him up onto it reached out to steady him. He waved the man away. The leg wasn’t perfect, but it would do. He could use it. He nodded to the healers. “Thanks. I’m ready to go back into the line.”

“We shall fill out the necessary papers,” one of them said. Another very carefully peeled the shining cloth from Leudast’s leg. The healer who was doing the talking went on, “Make sure you have this sorcery reversed in a month’s time. As I said, if you forget, your last month will be nothing but torment to you.”

“I understand,” Leudast said, and he did. The mere idea of knowing a month ahead of time that he would be dead… He shuddered. Even war against the Algarvians seemed clean next to that. And he was suddenly more eager than ever to get back to the field. If he died in battle, at least it would be over fast-he hoped.

Merkela glared at Skarnu and at the underground fighter who called himself “Tytuvenai” after the town where he was based. She said, “I don’t think you ought to be talking with the Algarvians. I think you ought to be blazing them.”

“Oh, we’ll do some of that even yet,” “Tytuvenai” said lightly. He winked at Skarnu. “Eh, ‘Pavilosta’?”

“Aye, no doubt,” Skarnu answered. He glanced over to Merkela. “Like it or not, we have to talk with them now.”

“Give me one good reason,” she snapped.

“They hold the towns. They hold the roads. If they want to, they can start slaughtering Valmierans the same way they’ve been slaughtering the Kaunians from Forthweg,” Skarnu said. “They can do it any time they please.

Merkela winced. Reluctantly, she nodded. “There is that.”

“Aye, there is,” “Tytuvenai” agreed. “If we want to have a kingdom left when this cursed war finally ends, we have to walk a little softer than we might like right now. And so…” He nudged Skarnu. “We’d better get moving.”

“Right,” Skarnu said without any great enthusiasm. Whether he recognized the need or not, he wasn’t thrilled at the idea of talking with the Algarvians, either. But he kissed Merkela and went out to the horses “Tytuvenai” had waiting outside the farmhouse. As he mounted and rode off, he grumbled, “Why don’t the people up in the north handle this themselves?”

“They do,” “Tytuvenai” answered. “But we have to do our part, too.” As usual, he was cheerfully cynical: “You can’t expect those fellows up there to count on their fingers and get the same answer twice running.” Skarnu laughed, though he was sure the northern Valmierans said the same thing about him and “Tytuvenai” and the other irregulars here in the south.

He and his comrade rode for about three hours. Skarnu’s backside started to hurt; he wasn’t used to so much equestrianism. By the way “Tytuvenai” started grunting every so often, Skarnu suspected he was feeling it, too.

After a while, “Tytuvenai” grunted again, this time in relief. “We’re supposed to meet the redheads in that apple orchard ahead. I’ve got a flag of truce in the saddlebag here. Demon of a thing to have to use with the Algarvians, isn’t it?”

“It’s war,” Skarnu answered with a shrug. “There’s nothing dishonorable about it.” But he was trying to convince himself as much as “Tytuvenai.”

They tied their horses to a couple of the apple trees. Skarnu didn’t fancy going into the orchard armed with nothing more than a white flag on a little pole. If the Algarvians grab us, they’ll be sorry, he thought. They’ve got to know they ‘II be sorry… don’t they?

A tall man in his later middle years stepped out from between a couple of trees. He, too, carried a flag of truce. “Good day, gentlemen,” he said in fluent if accented Valmieran, and gave the two irregulars a courteous bow. “I have the honor to be ColonelLurcanio, administrator of Priekule underGrand DukeIvone. And you are…?”

“Tytuvenai,” “Tytuvenai” said.

“Pavilosta,” Skarnu said. He eyed Lurcanio. Till now, he’d had only one brief look at the redhead who was his sister’s lover. He hoped Lurcanio wouldn’t recall the name of the hamlet he used as a sobriquet.

No such luck. Lurcanio’s cat-green eyes kindled. He bowed again, this time to Skarnu alone. “So pleased to meet you at last. We have

… an acquaintance in common.”

“I know,” Skarnu said, and said no more.

“You may be interested to learn she is expecting a child,” Lurcanio remarked.

“Is she?” Skarnu said tonelessly. But that wasn’t quite enough. And so, loathing Krasta, he asked the question he had to ask: “Yours?”

To his surprise, the Algarvian didn’t smirk and nod. Indeed, the fellow’s voice was cautious as he answered, “So I have been given to understand.”

What was that supposed to mean? Before Skarnu could ask-before he could even decide whether he ought to ask-”Tytuvenai” said, “Let’s get down to business, shall we?”

“An excellent suggestion,” Lurcanio said. “You would be wise to bear in mind that we are still strong enough to punish acts of madness aimed against us.”

“We would reckon some of your punishments acts of madness, you know,” Skarnu said.

“No doubt. One day, perhaps, we can discuss the role perspective plays in human affairs.” Lurcanio was a cool customer. Skarnu wondered what Krasta saw in him. The Algarvian resumed: “We have other business before us at present, however.”

“So we do,” “Tytuvenai” said. “Such as making us believe we shouldn’t do more to hold up the ley-line caravans you’re using to ship your soldiers out of here.”

“Go ahead.” Lurcanio gave him a smile half charming, half coldly vicious. “The people of Valmiera will not be happy with the choice you make, but go ahead. Do as you feel you must, and we shall do as we feel we must.”

“A lot of the people of Valmiera will be happy with anything that gets you people out of our kingdom,” Skarnu said. “Anything at all. And you know why. ‘Night and Fog.’ “ That was what the Algarvians or their henchmen scrawled on buildings whose occupants had vanished for good-usually into the camps where the redheads kept Kaunians they killed.

“The people most intimately concerned with our vengeance will not be happy,” Lurcanio said. “On that you may rest assured.”

“Why, you-” “Tytuvenai” began.

“Wait,” Skarnu said. The other irregular looked at him in some surprise. Skarnu seldom spoke like a nobleman giving a servant an order; that tone more often appeared in Krasta’s mouth. Here, though, he made an exception-and “Tytuvenai”did fall silent.

“You own some glimmering of sense,”ColonelLurcanio said.

“I wonder if you do,” Skarnu answered. “Tell me, do you really think Algarve still has any hope of winning the war?”

“WithKingMezentio ’s leadership, with our strong sorceries, one never knows,” Lurcanio said.

Skarnu laughed in his face. He waited for Lurcanio to get offended, but the Algarvian just waited to see what he would say next. What he said was, “Do you think Algarve has anyrealistic chance of winning the war?”

Lurcanio shrugged one of the elaborate shrugs in which his countrymen delighted. After a few heartbeats, Skarnu realized that was as far as the redhead would go. He didn’t suppose he could blame Lurcanio-for that, anyhow. He hadn’t wanted to talk, or even think, about Valmiera’s troubles back in the days before Algarvian behemoths and dragons leveled his kingdom’s hopes.

“You might want to bear one thing in mind,” Skarnu said. “If you do lose this war, your enemies will remember everything you did while you held their kingdoms down. How large a price do you want to pay after your armies can’t fight any more?”

For once, ColonelLurcanio had no quick answer, no snappy comeback. He eyed Skarnu with no liking, but with wary respect nonetheless. “There is enough between your ears for sparks to strike, is there not?” he remarked. “Your sister is prettier than you, but her head is empty.”

With a shrug of his own-he didn’t want to show Lurcanio he agreed with him-Skarnu said, “That’s also something to talk about some other time. But if you start killing Valmierans for the sport of it, think what will happen when Valmieran soldiers march into Algarve.”

Lurcanio raised an eyebrow. “And if our best chance to keep Valmieran soldiers from ever marching into Algarve lies in killing all the Valmieran civilians we can lay our hands on?”

This time, “Tytuvenai” spoke before Skarnu could: “If you try something like that, Algarvian, you’d better be sure you do win. Can you do that? Trying and losing anyhow will be worse than not trying at all.”

ButColonelLurcanio shook his head. “By the powers above, nothing would be worse than not trying at all.” He and the two Valmierans eyed one another in perfect mutual incomprehension.

“We will not attack ley-line caravans taking your soldiers out of Valmiera if you don’t take our civilians out with you and if you don’t start killing them for your magecraft,” Skarnu said. “If you do, everything is fair game. And we reckon any caravan bringing your soldiersinto Valmiera is fair game, too.”

“That is not right. That is not just,” Lurcanio said. “Many-most, even-of the men we bring here do not come to fight. They come for leave from the fight they have been making in the west.”

“They’re still soldiers,” Skarnu said. “If you give them sticks, what will they do? Start to dance?”

He surprised a laugh out of the Algarvian colonel. “There may perhaps be something to that,” Lurcanio said. “I speak for myself when I say so, however, not forGrand DukeIvone. You were an officer. You will understand the need for following orders.”

Skarnu started to nod. “Tytuvenai” broke in, saying, “Some orders are wicked. No one should follow those. Anyone who follows an order to murder people deserves whatever happens to him.”

“Anyone who lets his kingdom lose a war it might win deserves whatever happens to him,” Lurcanio answered. They glared at one another once more, at a fresh impasse. Lurcanio said. “Can we agree to anything?” he asked.

“Leave our civilians alone, and we’ll let your caravans leave in peace,” Skarnu said.

“We had that bargain before, or so I thought,” Lurcanio said. “SoKingGainibu hinted, at any rate.”

Maybe he thought the king’s name would fill the Valmierans with overwhelming awe. And maybe it would have… before the war. Skarnu said, “These past four years, we’ve been on our own. We haven’t paid much attention to his Majesty-and that’s the fault of you Algarvians. Why should we start over now?”

He hadn’t seenColonelLurcanio taken aback till then. “Why? Because he is your sovereign, of course,” the redhead-actually, he’d gone quite gray-replied.

“He’s welcome to reign,” “Tytuvenai” said. “Why should he rule? What has he done for us lately?”

Lurcanio wagged a finger at him, a very Algarvian gesture. “If we should ever leave this kingdom, you will find that he still intends to rule, mark my words. May you have joy of it.” He paused. “I think we have said everything that wants saying.” He paused again, then nodded to Skarnu. “Have you any message for your sister?”

“I have no sister,” Skarnu said stonily. “No point even telling her you saw me.”

“You take this business altogether too seriously,” Lurcanio said. Skarnu did not reply. The Algarvian shrugged. “It shall be as you wish, of course.” He turned and strode away.

Skarnu started to call something after him, but didn’t. What point to it? What was Lurcanio but an enemy? He might be-Skarnu thought he was- an honest enemy, but an enemy he remained. Skarnu turned to “Tytuvenai.” He nodded once. “Let’s go,” he said.

After a long, deep, restful night’s sleep, ColonelSpinello yawned, stretched, and finally opened his eyes. The mattress was large and soft; the house not far outside of Eoforwic had, he thought, belonged to a Kaunian before Kaunians in Forthweg fell on hard times. It was ever so much more comfortable than lying down on bare dirt, which he’d done far too often while escaping the disaster that had overtaken the Algarvian armies in northern Unkerlant.

“Not so bad, eh, sweetheart?” he said.

When Jadwigai didn’t answer, Spinello rolled over toward her. She wasn’t lying in bed beside him, either. He shrugged. No law said she couldn’t get up before him, though he wouldn’t have minded pinning her to that soft, resilient mattress just then: why not start the day with pleasure, when it was all too likely to end in death or some other disaster?

Spinello pulled on his tunic and kilt and ambled out into the kitchen to see what Jadwigai had put together for breakfast, or what he could. Some Algarvians-the ones who’d never gone west to fight in Unkerlant-complained about how miserable things were in Forthweg. Spinello and the others who’d been driven out of Swemmel’s kingdom only laughed-they knew better.

“Jadwigai?” Spinello called when he didn’t see her. She didn’t answer. He shrugged again, and went to get himself some food. Bread and olive oil and wine wasn’t his favorite breakfast, but it beat the blazes out of bugs and nasty, sour berries and swamp water.

A leaf of paper lay on top of what was left of the loaf of black bread. Spinello picked it up. He hadn’t seen Jadwigai’s script before, but this couldn’t belong to anyone else. His own name was written on one side of the paper. He turned it over to the other.

By the time you read this, Jadwigai had written in classical Kaunian, Iwill be gone. I do thank you for saving me in the fight and flight through Unkerlant. I know you did not do it all for my sake, but also for your own. Even so, you did it, and I am grateful.

But I also know what happens to Kaunians in Algarvian hands. I know it could happen to me if you get hurt or get tired of me. I have learned that Kaunians, these days, have little trouble looking like Forthwegians. I would rather do that than live the way I have been living. Even if Unkerlant conquers Forthweg, I would rather do that.

I do not wish you ill, not in your own person. I do not wish ill on any of the men of the Albarese Regiment who still live. They could have killed me or kept me to give their bodies relief until I died, and they did not. But I do not want Algarve to win this war. I find I cannot forget after all that I am a Kaunian. Farewell.

She’d scrawled her name under the note.

Spinello plucked at his chin beard (he’d neatened up after returning to civilized company). Jadwigai had been naive to leave the leaf of paper. If he wanted to, he could give it to a mage to use the law of contagion to track her through it. Should I do that? He stroked his chin again. She wouldn’t be happy, or anything close to it.

Of course, he’d enjoyed bedding Vanai precisely because she hadn’t been happy about it. But things would be different with Jadwigai. He’d be breaking a bond of trust if he hauled her back. He’d never had one with Vanai, only a bargain: her body in exchange for keeping her grandfather from getting worked to death on a road gang. Jadwigai could have killed him or betrayed him to the Unkerlanters more times than he could count.

And so… He was, in his own way, an honest man. There were live ashes in the hearth. He got a little fire going and tossed the note into it. The paper charred, blackened, and burst into flames. He ate his bread and oil, and washed them down with not one mug of wine but two.

When he walked outside, the sentry in front of the house stiffened to attention. Spinello’s resolution wavered a little, perhaps under the influence of wine. “Have you seen Jadwigai?” he asked.

“Your wench? No, sir. I would’ve remembered.” The Algarvian soldier’s eyes lit up, as any man’s would when he thought of Jadwigai. “I thought she was in there with you.”You lucky whoreson. He didn’t need to say it. Again, Spinello could read it in his eyes.

“No.” Spinello let it go at that. Jadwigai would know when sentries went off duty and when they came on. If she’d timed her disappearance to just before the last fellow went off, he wouldn’t wonder that she hadn’t returned and his replacement wouldn’t know she was gone. The only risk would have been waking Spinello when she got out of bed. And if she had wakened him, she would have just had to put up with him one more day before trying again.

“Is something wrong, sir?” Like any Algarvian, the sentry had a nose for scandal.

“No, not a thing.” Spinello lied without hesitation. “She went off somewhere without telling me, that’s all.”

“That’s liable not to be healthy, the way things are around here these days,” the sentry remarked.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Spinello said dryly. The sentry chuckled. Spinello went on, “Next to Unkerlant, this is a fornicating walk in the fornicating park.” The sentry laughed again. He wore the ribbon for a frozen-meat medal, the decoration King Mezentio had given out by the tens of thousands to the men who’d come through the first winter’s fighting in Unkerlant. Spinello had one, too.

Smoke rose from Eoforwic, where the Forthwegians still battled desperately to drive back the Algarvian armies. The Unkerlanters across the Twegen still stayed quiet, though Spinello could see distant smoke in the south, where Swemmel’s men had forced a bridgehead over the river. They weren’t trying to break out of it yet, but the Algarvians hadn’t been able to crush it, either. When Spinello let himself think about that, he worried.

But he had plenty of other things to worry about, too. The sentry spelled out one of them: “Are we going back into Eoforwic today, sir? I wouldn’t mind a holiday, and that’s a fact.”

With a chuckle, Spinello said, “I wouldn’t, either, old man. Neither would Algarve, come to that. When the Forthwegians and Unkerlanters and islanders decide to give us one, though-that’s another question. So aye, we’ll be going back into town.”

“I thought you were going to tell me that.” The corners of the sentry’s mouth turned down; like so many Algarvians, he wore his heart on his sleeve. “I’d just as soon sit this one out, if it’s all the same to you.”

“I’m going in,” Spinello said. “I could use the company.” He and the sentry grinned at each other. They were both going in, and they both knew it. They both hoped they would both come out again when the day was done.

Spinello found himself in charge of a force he would have laughed at if he were throwing it against the Unkerlanters. A lot of the soldiers he led had sat out most of the war on occupation duty in Valmiera. They were both older and fatter than they might have been. Some of them held their sticks as if not quite sure what to do with them. But they went forward when he told them to go, and he didn’t suppose he could ask for more than that.

He was none too thrilled about going forward himself. He’d fought block by block, house by house, in Sulingen till he took a beam through the chest. He’d been lucky, in an odd, painful way: that was early enough in the fight there to let a dragon take him out of the city. Had he stayed unhurt till the end, he wouldn’t have come out of Sulingen alive.

Eoforwic hadn’t been knocked about quite so badly as Sulingen, not yet. Most blocks of flats still stood, though window frames gaped bare like the eye sockets of countless skulls. Spinello wasn’t so sure he wouldn’t rather have seen rubble. Anyone could be watching from those upper stories. They made perfect sniper’s nests.

He couldn’t read the Forthwegian warning whitewashed on walls here and there, but he knew about what it said: anyone blazes from a building, the building gets wrecked, and we won’t bother clearing out the people who live there first. That kind of warning hadn’t stopped the sniping, but had slowed it down. Ordinary Forthwegians didn’t want to be driven from their homes, or killed in them, any more than anyone else did.

He wondered how many people in those flats weren’t Forthwegians at all, but sorcerously disguised Kaunians. He wondered if Jadwigai had been foolish enough to go into the city, or if she’d had the sense to flee out into the countryside where she was less likely to get killed.

And then he remembered that that constable back in Gromheort had told him Vanai was supposed to have come to Eoforwic. He laughed to himself. He wouldn’t recognize her if he saw her-he was sure of that. If she looked like a Kaunian, his countrymen would long since have seized her. And if she didn’t, he wouldn’t know her from any other dumpy Forthwegian girl.

Even a dumpy Forthwegian girl is better than a cold, empty bed, he thought. But then girls, Forthwegian or Kaunian, dumpy or elegantly lean, slipped out of his mind. Ahead lay enough rubble to satisfy even the most ambitiously destructive wrecker of all time.

“Fan out, men,” he called. “There’ll be rebels in there, sure as we’re all missing foreskins.” He watched the troopers take cover and slowly shook his head. No, most of them hadn’t spent the past three years honing themselves against the Unkerlanters. Even against the Forthwegians, more would fall than might be true with better soldiers.

As he ducked behind a tumbledown wall himself, a beam charred wood a couple of feet above his head. Part of a broadsheet still clung to the brickwork: a bearded Forthwegian strangling a dragon painted in Algarvian colors. Spinello snorted. Nothing subtle there. Nothing very interesting, either. Even the Unkerlanters turned out better broadsheets.

Eggs started bursting on the rubble. Now Spinello nodded. Unlike foot-soldiers, the men who handled egg-tossers had to know what they were doing. And the Unkerlanters, as they had for some weeks, just kept sitting quietly on the far side of the Twegen River. Spinello thought that was funny. He suspected the Forthwegians weren’t laughing.

“Forward!” he called, and blew his shiny new officer’s whistle. He’d lost the old one in an Unkerlanter swamp.

Forward his men went. They weren’t so young or so dashing as the soldiers he’d led in Unkerlant, but they cleared the surviving Forthwegians from the wreckage and lost only a couple of men doing it. Crouched in amongst the reconquered rubble, Spinello felt proud of them till a question crossed his mind: now that we’ve got it, what the demon good is it?

He shrugged a fancy Algarvian shrug. If soldiers spent all their time worrying about things like that, how would they fight their wars?

Talsu peered down at the road leading toward Skrunda from behind a rock most of the way up a low hill. Another irregular shared the cover of the boulder with him. “By the powers above, it’s good to haveKingDonalitu back in Jelgava, back in Balvi, again,” the other fellow said.

“It’s good to have the Algarvians getting kicked out of Jelgava.” Talsu didn’t quite agree with his comrade, but didn’t want to cause a quarrel, either.

“It’s the same thing, near enough,” the other man said. He was older than Talsu, and leaner, with a scar seaming his left cheek. He looked like a murderer. From what he’d said, he’d been a dyer before the war. The skin of his hands still bore strange mottling.

“Not quite.” Talsu couldn’t let that go unchallenged.

“What’s the difference, then?”

“Well… when I was in the dungeon, the fellow who squeezed me wasn’t an Algarvian. He was as Jelgavan as we are. He’d worked for the king before he worked for the redheads, and I’ll bet he goes back to working for the king once the redheads run away or get beaten. Some of our troubles’ll go with ‘em-some, but not all. People like that interrogator will still be here.”

“You can’t help people like that,” the other Jelgavan said.

“Why not?” Talsu asked.

“Because they’re part of the way things work,” his comrade said. “You can’t get rid of them, any more than you can get rid of the pits in olives.”

“You can do that,” Talsu said. “It just takes work.”

He started to add something to that, but the other irregular gave him a shot in the ribs with an elbow and pointed west, toward Skrunda. Talsu’s head swung that way. A column of Algarvian soldiers-a couple of regiments’ worth-was coming east along the road, along with three or four behemoths and a motley collection of wagons.

“They’re still moving men forward to fight the Lagoans and Kuusamans,” Talsu said.

“They’re trying to,” his companion answered. “Our job is to make sure they don’t have an easy time of it.”

How many men were hidden here and there along these hills? Talsu didn’t know. How had the irregulars’ leaders heard the redheads would move soldiers along this road? He didn’t know that, either, though he could make guesses he thought good. Some Jelgavans sold out their fellows to the Algarvians. Why shouldn’t others sell out the redheads to their countrymen?

Maybe some of the Algarvians there were the ones who’d seized him when he went with Kugu the silversmith for what he’d thought would be his introduction to the underground but turned into his introduction to the dungeon. Talsu knew that was wildly unlikely, but hoped it was true just the same. Do you really need that kind of help to want vengeance? he wondered. A moment later, he shook his head. No, I don’t need it, but it would be nice.

Somewhere on a hilltop not far away, the irregulars had an egg-tosser or two. Talsu didn’t see the first egg fly through the air, but he did watch it burst just in front of the Algarvian column. The next egg, better aimed, landed among the redheads. The burst of sorcerous energy flung men and pieces of men high into the air.

“Let’s see how they likethat, by the powers above!” the Jelgavan next to Talsu said with a fierce whoop of glee.

The Algarvians, of course, liked it not at all. Talsu had been away from real war for close to four years. He’d forgotten how quickly trained men could react-and he wondered if soldiers from the Jelgavan army could ever have reacted so quickly. Mezentio’s men spread out even before the third egg hit. Then they swarmed up the hills on either side of the road, blazing as they came.

Talsu stuck his head out from behind his side of the boulder for a quick blaze at the enemy. A beam zipped past his own head, close enough for him to feel the heat and smell the lightning in the air. He ducked back into cover in a hurry.

Over on the other side of the boulder, the dyer was cursing. “Some of the bastards blaze while the rest run,” he complained. “How are we supposed to blaze at them?”

“You weren’t in the army during the war, were you?” Talsu said with a dry chuckle, which startled a nod from the other Jelgavan. “That’s just one of the chances you take in this business.”

Another quick blaze from Talsu. The Algarvian at whom he aimed went down, but he didn’t know whether he’d hit the man: like the redhead, he dove for the dirt, too, whenever somebody started blazing at him. He turned to his comrade, intending to tell him something on the order of, That’s how it’s done.

Whatever he’d been about to say, he didn’t. The other irregular sprawled bonelessly in the dust, blazed through the head. Blood pooled beneath his body. He was still twitching a little, but Talsu had seen enough men killed to know another one.

He snapped off another blaze. But the Algarvians were coming hard and fast. Before long, they’d be on his flank if he didn’t fall back. Keeping the boulder between himself and most of them, he scurried back over the crest of the hill. He wasn’t the only one in full retreat, either. He didn’t think the irregulars’ leaders had expected Mezentio’s men to hit back so fiercely. He wasn’t particularly surprised himself. The Algarvians had always been aggressive, even back in the days of the Kaunian Empire.

Talsu threw himself down behind a bush and watched the crestline. Aye, I still remember a trick or two, he thought with somber pride. Now if one of those cursed redheads forgets…

And one of Mezentio’s men did. He charged over the top of the hill. He couldn’t have done a better job of exposing himself if he’d tried for a week. Not a smart thing to do, Talsu thought, and blazed him. The redhead wore a look of absurd surprise as he crumpled.

But not all of Mezentio’s men were fools. The Algarvians couldn’t have done nearly so much harm if they had been fools. Many more of them came over the rise with proper care. Talsu fell back again, and then again. He saw more of his comrades who weren’t so lucky.

He got away into the deeper hills where the irregulars had been sheltering for a long time. The Algarvians didn’t pursue so hard as they might have. Some of the raiders were jubilant about that. “They know better than to stick their noses in here too far,” one of them said. “If they tried it, they’d be sorry.”

Although Talsu didn’t argue with those bold spirits, he didn’t think they were right, either. The redheads had been on their way east to fight the Kuusamans and Lagoans. Once they’d broken up this harassing attack, wouldn’t they get back to their chief business as fast as they could? If they had any sense, they would. And anyone who looked at things with an ounce of sense would see the same thing.

Maybe the irregulars didn’t have a whole lot of sense. Maybe they’d been so starved for victories for so long, anything looked bigger than it really was. Maybe… Maybe all sorts of things, Talsu thought, laughing at himself. Whatever the truth was, he couldn’t do anything about it.

Later that evening, the Algarvians did something about it, or tried to.

They sent a few dragons over the hills. A few eggs came hissing down out of the sky. A couple of them burst near the irregulars’ camps. None of them did any harm. That raised the Jelgavans’ spirits, too.

“Hardly even worth being afraid of the stinking Algarvians anymore,” somebody said. Somebody else nodded. Several men clapped their hands. Maybe they’re right, Talsu thought hopefully.

A couple of nights later, the Algarvians showed they still deserved fear.

The night was very black, one of those late-summer nights when the air was so warm, so clear, so still, the stars in the sky hardly twinkled. On sentry-go, Talsu kept staring up at them.

Somewhere between midnight and dawn, not long before a replacement was supposed to come and he was supposed to go back to camp, he felt something wrong. For the first moment or two, he didn’t know what it was. Earthquake? he wondered. Jelgava got them from time to time, though Skrunda’s neighborhood hadn’t been hit hard in his lifetime.

When the ground quivered beneath his feet, he thought at first he was right. But the shaking didn’t build, as an earthquake did; it just went on for a while. Looking back in the direction of the camp, he saw purple flashes, as if lightning were striking close by. But where would lightning come from, out of as clear a sky as he’d ever seen?

Fear ran through him in the wake of that thought. Replacement or no replacement, he hurried off toward the camp. By the time he got there, everything was over. If it were an earthquake, it had struck the irregulars alone. Their fires were thrown higgledy-piggledy; a couple of small shrubs burned close by.

There were rents in the ground from which smoke still rose. At first, when Talsu smelled burnt meat, he thought the odor was left over from cooking earlier in the evening. Then he realized what it was really coming from, and his stomach did a slow lurch. That was burnt meat, all right, but some of the burnt meat still shrieked and begged to die.

That could have been me, he thought numbly. If I hadn‘t been out, standing sentry, that could have been me.

“Powers below eat the Algarvians!” someone not far away shouted. “Powers above curse their sorcery!”

Talsu’s stomach lurched again. He knew what kind of sorcery Mezentio’s men used. People had been whispering about it for a couple of years, maybe longer. But… “How are they getting Kaunians from Forthweg into Jelgava?” he said, as much to himself as to anyone else. “They have trouble moving their own soldiers around this kingdom.”

Bitter laughter answered him. “Who says it has to be Kaunians from Forthweg? If they need bodies bad enough, they can start pulling people out of Skrunda or any other town and bloody well killing them.”

That hadn’t occurred to Talsu. Take people out of his home town, line them up, and kill them to tap their life energy? Take, say, his wife, his father, his mother, his sister?

“No,” he said, again largely to himself.

“Why not?” the other surviving irregular said. “They’re Algarvians. They hate all Kaunic peoples as much as we hate them. If they can’t get Kaunians from Forthweg here, you think they won’t grab Jelgavans?”

However much Talsu wished he thought that, he didn’t, not down where it mattered. “We might not have a kingdom left by the time they’re through with us,” he exclaimed.

“That’s why we’ve got to keep fighting the bastards,” the other irregular said. “Whatever they do to us, may it come back on their heads ten times over.”

“A hundred times over,” Talsu said. He couldn’t get the picture of Algarvians seizing his family out of his mind no matter how hard he tried, and he tried as he’d never tried before in all his days.

Vanai had known fear a good many times in the course of theDerlavaianWar. Anyone in Forthweg who hadn’t known fear surely had something wrong with him. This, though, this was terror. And terror, she discovered, was a very different beast from mere fear.

“I saw him,” she told Saxburh in classical Kaunian. She held out her hand in the posture of one taking an oath. “By the powers above, Idid see him.”

Her daughter thought it was funny, and laughed the pure, clean laugh of a happy baby. To Vanai, it was no laughing matter. She knew Spinello’s stride when she saw it, even if the Algarvian officer had acquired a slight limp since going off to fight in Unkerlant. And if that wasn’t he leading soldiers up the street past her block of flats, her eyes were useless.

He wouldn’t recognize her, not when she looked like a Forthwegian these days. Thelberge, she thought, shivering. I can be Thelberge and he’ll never know me. Of course, he might not care, either. He might blaze her any which way. After all, the rebels in Eoforwic were for the most part Forthwegians.

He might blaze me, but he’ll never bed me again, she thought fiercely. Never, by the powers above!.

Logically, bedding her might be-was almost bound to be-the last thing Spinello had in mind at the moment. Logic had nothing to do with anything, though, when she remembered the Algarvian coming again and again to her grandfather’s house in Oyngestun and taking her to bed instead of taking Brivibas into a labor gang. He’d known she despised him. He hadn’t cared-or maybe he had, for sometimes she thought her resentment only excited him more.

Iwant to kill him, she thought. Iwant to kill him with my own hands. Maybe then I’ll feel clean again. There were a good many stories from before the days when the First Kaunian Kingdom grew into the Kaunian Empire about ravished women avenging themselves on the men who’d abused them. Brivibas had taught her those tales with scorn in his voice: they were legends, maybe even myths, and not sober history. But teach them to her he had; legends or not, they were part of the underpinnings of Kaunianity.

What made things harder was that she couldn’t talk to Ealstan about this. He knew nothing of Spinello, and Vanai wanted to keep it that way. And so, whenever he did manage to come home, filthy and exhausted, she forced the Algarvian to the back of her mind. But she couldn’t force him out of it, any more than she could have pretended a bad tooth didn’t really ache.

Once, after Ealstan kissed her good-bye and patted her on the backside and went out to try to cause the redheads more trouble, a really horrible thought ran through her mind: What if he and Spinello come up against each other? Spinello has all the might of Algarve behind him. What if he…?

Vanai violently shook her head. Shewouldn ‘t think of that-so she told herself. And so, of course, the thought kept coming back again and again, each time more dreadful than the one before. She cursed as foully as she knew how. If only I hadn‘t picked the wrong time to look out the window!

But she had to go into the kitchen, and when she went into the kitchen she couldn’t very well help looking out the window. Seeing Algarvian soldiers prowling through this part of Eoforwic would have been enough of a jolt even without recognizing Spinello. The Forthwegian rebels had securely held it only days before. Little by little, the redheads were pounding the uprising to bits.

Across the Twegen River, the Unkerlanters sat and waited. Vanai had never thought much about them one way or the other. Now she hated them. Had they come to the Forthwegians’ aid, Eoforwic wouldn’t have an Algarvian left in it. Ealstan was surely right-Swemmel’s men were letting the redheads solve their Forthwegian problem for them.

When Vanai went into the kitchen again, she found she had problems of her own: problems in the larder. Last time she’d ventured out, she’d got as much food as she could carry back. Now she would have to do it again.

She went over to the cradle and looked down at Saxburh. The baby smiled to see her, smiled and laughed. Vanai smiled, too, but she had to work at it. She didn’t like the idea of taking Saxburh out with her when she sallied forth to get food, but she liked leaving her behind even less. Saxburh might cry every minute till she got back. Or, worse, she might not be able to come back. Taking the baby out was dangerous, but so was leaving her behind. There were no safe places, no safe choices, in Eoforwic these days.

Vanai scooped the baby out of the cradle. “Come along, you little nuisance,” she said. Saxburh thought that was very funny. Vanai, unfortunately, didn’t. If she had to carry Saxburh, that was so much less food she could bring back. Before setting out, she renewed the masking spell on herself and cast it on her daughter. On Saxburh, she could see it take effect; the baby looked plumper and a little darker. On her ventures out of the house, Vanai had seen a handful of Kaunians bold enough to look like themselves. She admired their courage without wanting to imitate it.

Carrying Saxburh downstairs was easy. Carrying her and a lot of groceries back up to the flat would be a lot more work. I ’llworry about that once I get the food, Vanai thought. She’d managed before. She expected she would be able to do it again.

She paused inside the lobby near the door to make sure everything was quiet before venturing out. Algarvian soldiers wouldn’t know her for a Kaunian now, but they or their Forthwegian counterparts were liable to blaze anyone who appeared unexpectedly.

No redheads were in sight when she stepped out onto the street, only a couple of Forthwegians-people who looked like Forthwegians, anyhow, just as she did. One, a woman, smiled toward Saxburh. The other, a fighter as unkempt and grimy as Ealstan was these days, paid neither Vanai nor the baby any attention after a quick glance to make sure she wasn’t an Algarvian.

Satisfied as to that, he tramped on down the middle of the street, a stick in his hands and ready to blaze.

No matter howForthwegianVanai looked, she couldn’t match that display of self-assurance. She stayed close to the walls as she hurried toward the market square where she’d gone so often before Mezentio’s men seized her and flung her into the Kaunian quarter. People still bought and sold things there, but it was a smaller, more furtive place than it had been.

Getting there wasn’t quite so simple as it had been, either. She had to skirt or climb over piles of rubble that had been houses and shops and blocks of flats. That would have been easier without carrying Saxburh, too. Coming back with food, again, would be even more delightful. You do what you have to do, Vanai thought. You do it, and then you think about how you did it. One thing at a time, that’s all.

Worried-looking Forthwegians scurried around the market square, getting what they could and cursing the prices they had to pay. The people who sold, most of them, were as hard-faced as the Forthwegian fighter Vanai had seen. Several of them had guards with sticks at their backs to make sure they got paid for their goods.

Vanai winced when she heard the prices they were asking. “That’s twice as much for flour as I paid the last time I was here,” she complained.

With a shrug, the man from whom she was buying said, “That’s on account of I used to have twice as much to sell. If you don’t want to pay it, sweetheart, somebody else will.”

He was doubtless right about that. Vanai paid. She did have plenty of silver. She paid for cheese and beans and almonds and peas, too. Nothing exciting there, only stuff that would keep and could go into easy stews and porridges. She wasn’t worrying about fancy meals these days, only about holding starvation at bay.

Saxburh started to cry when Vanai was about halfway back to her block of flats. Vanai didn’t know whether the baby was hungry or wet or just sick of being toted around like-quite literally-one more sack of beans. She didn’t care, either. She couldn’t do anything with Saxburh till she got back to the flat, not unless she wanted to put all the food down. And that was about the last thing she wanted to do. In a city at war, getting back out of sight was far and away the smartest course.

She soon found out just how true that was. Something-noting motion in the sky, perhaps-made her look up in spite of the constant struggle to keep her feet. She gasped in horror. Flying straight toward her, hardly higher than the housetops, were half a dozen dragons, all of them painted in gaudy, crazy patterns of red, green, and white-Algarvian beasts. They carried eggs slung under their bellies.

Vanai shrank back against a wall, not that that would have done the slightest bit of good had they decided to flame her or drop those eggs close by. But they swept on past, so low that their wings kicked dust up from the ground into her eyes. Without a free hand to rub at them, she blinked frantically.

A moment later, eggs burst in the market square. The noise smote her ears. Saxburh’s wails grew louder. She heard screams behind her, too. “I can’t do anything, sweetheart,” Vanai said, jiggling the baby up and down in the crook of her elbow. “I’m just glad we went out early.”

Saxburh wasn’t glad, and didn’t care who knew it. Vanai couldn’t do anything about that without slowing down, and she wasn’t about to slow down for anything or anybody, Saxburh included. Getting home was the most important thing she could do. She’d already had that thought. It was especially true now. And she did it, wailing baby or no wailing baby.

Getting the door to the block of flats open without putting anything down proved another adventure, and getting up the stairs another one still. But she did what needed doing, and she was able to set some of her bundles on the floor in the hallway in front of her flat so she could use a key to open the door. That done, she hustled groceries inside and closed and barred the door behind her.

By then, Saxburh wasn’t just red in the face; she was a nasty, blotchy purple. “I know,” Vanai said soothingly. “I know. Nobody was paying enough attention to you. Now I can.” She cuddled the baby and nursed her. Saxburh settled down and quickly went to sleep. Vanai wished somebody could calmher down as easily as that.

She put the grain and nuts and vegetables and cheese in the kitchen cupboards. Then she turned the tap. Only a trickle of water came out. She said something in classical Kaunian that surely would have shocked Brivibas, then something even more incendiary in Forthwegian. Up till now, she’d always been able to rely on the water. If she couldn’t…

Cursing again, she put a pot under the tap to catch as much water as it would give. Where could she get more? The fancier parts of Eoforwic had a good many fountains. This grimy district? No. She would have to get some from somewhere. You could live a lot longer without food than without water.

The trickle stopped. Vanai stared in dismay. Maybe people would repair the mains, and the water would come back on again soon. Maybe they wouldn’t, and it wouldn’t. However things turned out, she had to do her best. If I can, she thought. If I can.

MarshalRatharcould look east across the Twegen River and watch Eoforwic burn. The sight didn’t make him unhappy-not in the least. On that side of the river, Algarvian soldiers were fighting and dying and using up uncounted eggs and behemoths and sorely needed sacks of cinnabar for their dragons- and none of it cost him so much as a single soldier.

GeneralGurmunwas looking east, too, through a spyglass. Lowering it, he said, “I’ve never been one to have much use for delay, but I’ve got to admit that just sitting here serves us pretty well right now.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” Rathar agreed. “I was thinking the same thing, as a matter of fact. KingSwemmel is shrewd, no doubt about it.”

“That he is,” Gurmun said enthusiastically. “The redheads could be fightingus street by street in Eoforwic. Can you imagine how expensive that would be? Instead, they’re fighting the Forthwegians. It saves lots of wear and tear on us, and it gets rid of troublemakers we would have had to worry about later on.”

“True enough.” Rathar suspected-no, he was certain-the Forthwegians didn’t think of themselves as troublemakers. In their own minds, they were surely patriots. Of course, what they were in their own minds mattered only so much to Rathar. He had to look at them as his sovereign would.

Gurmun asked, “Do you know what the king plans to do here in Forthweg? He’s not going to let that son of a whore of a Penda come back and king it, is he?”

“His Majesty has not told me what he plans for Forthweg,” Rathar said carefully. “The only order he has given me in that regard is to make no settlement on my own. He holds everything in his own hands.”

“As a king should do.” Gurmun was one of Swemmel’s men in a way even Rathar wasn’t: he’d been a boy, not a man, when the king came to power, and had no standards of comparison. Whatever Swemmel decided was automatically right for him.

AndMarshalRathar dared not show he disagreed. Even if Gurmun didn’t betray him in the hope of becoming Marshal of Unkerlant in his place, someone else was liable to. Unkerlant-especially Unkerlant underKingSwemmel -ran on betrayals and denunciations.

“What would you do here if you were king?” Gurmun asked.

Watch my back, Rathar thought. Aloud, he answered, “I’m not king. I don’t want to be king. How about you, Gurmun? What wouldyou do?”How do you like the boot on the other foot, Gurmun?

“Me? I don’t know anything about running a kingdom. I don’t much care, either,” Gurmun answered, as any Unkerlanter who wanted to live to a ripe old age had to do. “All I want is the chance to let my behemoths loose and smash on through the Algarvians again.” He pointed across the river once more. “And I can see my odds of doing that will be better later on than they are right now.” He wasn’t smooth as a courtier, but he got the job done: he didn’t criticize Swemmel and he didn’t show ambition, at least not of the dangerous sort.

“You’ll get your wish, I expect,” Rathar said. “We’ve got that bridgehead over the Twegen north of Eoforwic, and the other one south of the city. The Algarvians haven’t a chance of breaking either one of those, not with the Forthwegians inside Eoforwic keeping them so busy.”

“That’s right.” Gurmun nodded. “And we can really use the lull, to get our supply lines straightened out. We outran everything when we chased the Algarvians out of Unkerlant this summer, and the redheads did a cursed good job of sabotaging the ley lines and burning the fields and planting eggs in the roads as they fell back. Powers above only know how we managed to keep bringing things forward.”

“We did it,” Rathar said. “That’s what matters. I’ll tell you something else, too: I’d rather manage moving things forward than moving them back.”I had too much practice doing that the first two years of the war. He almost said so out loud, but held back. He would have told that toGeneralVatran, whom he trusted, but not to Gurmun. Gurmun was probably a better soldier-Rathar wondered if even the Algarvians had a finer commander of behemoths-but Vatran knew a confidence when he heard one, while the younger officer didn’t.

Strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, Gurmun’s thoughts ran on an almost parallel ley line: “Vatran’s moving forward down in the south, too. He’s into Yanina here and there, isn’t he? I betKingTsavellas is pissing on his pompom shoes.”

Picturing that, Rathar laughed out loud. “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”

“And we’re giving the Zuwayzin what they deserve,” Gurmun added.

“They should never have caused us so much trouble the last time we fought them.”

“You’re probably right,” Rathar said. If the king hadn’t insisted on attacking them before we’d made ail our preparations, they might not have, either. That, of course, was one more thing he couldn’t say. No one who blamedKingSwemmel out loud for any of Unkerlant’s shortcomings could look forward to anything save prison or hard labor or, things being as they were in this war, becoming a sacrificial victim. Rathar knew he enjoyed no more immunity from that rule than did the lowliest common soldier in the Unkerlanter army.

Gurmun said, “Pity we’ve never bothered going up into the mountains of central Ortah and teaching the Ortahoin a proper lesson, too. They deserve it, perching up there and trading with both sides and thinking they can just sit out the whole war.”

“No.” Now Rathar shook his head. “Concentration, Gurmun. We hit what’s troubling us. The Ortahoin aren’t going to come down out of their mountains and give us a hard time. We took enough of a bite out of their kingdom to get men through the lowland swamps. We don’t need more trouble with them, not with two pushes going against the redheads and another one up in Zuwayza.”

“And the war against the Gongs out in the far west,” Gurmun added. “Fair enough, lord Marshal. I see your point.” Getting Gurmun to admit that to anyone was no small feat.

“The war against the Gongs is like a one-legged fat man walking,” Rathar said. “It’s not going anywhere any time soon. We’ve made sure they can’t break out of the woods, and they’re not really trying any more, either. Their big fight is against the Kuusamans in the islands of the Bothnian Ocean.”

“They’re losing that one, too,” Gurmun said with somber satisfaction.

“Good. If they were winning in the island war, they would have more energy to put into the fight against us,” Rathar said. “And the Kuusamans and Lagoans are really running the Algarvians out of Jelgava.”

“Of course they are-the cursed Algarvians are fighting us a lot harder than they’re fighting the islanders,” Gurmun said.

“We owe them more than the Kuusamans and Lagoans do,” Rathar said. “They know it, too, and they don’t want to pay off. Look at it from their eyes, and their strategy makes pretty good sense.”

Gurmun screwed up his face. “I don’t want to look at anything from Algarvian eyes. Powers below eat all the redheads.”

“Powers below eat ‘em, aye,” Rathar said. “But sometimes you have to try to see things through their eyes. If you don’t, you won’t understand what they’re trying to do, and you’ll have a harder time beating them.” That made Gurmun look thoughtful. He did want to beat the Algarvians. Rathar could fault him for a few things, but never for lack of desire.

“The next interesting question-” Gurmun began.

Before he could say what he thought the next interesting question would be, a crystallomancer came running into the headquarters calling, “MarshalRathar! MarshalRathar!”

“I’m here,” Rathar said. “What in blazes has gone wrong now?” By the young mage’s tone, something had.

Sure enough, the fellow said, “Sir, we’ve just lost two of the bridges into the bridgehead south of Eoforwic. We almost lost the third one, too.”

“What?” Rathar and Gurmun said together, in identical tones of angry disbelief. Rathar went on, “How the demon did the redheads get so fornicating lucky?”

“Sir, it wasn’t luck,” the crystallomancer said. “They’ve got some new sorcery that’s letting them really aim some of the eggs they drop from dragons. The people down at the bridgehead don’t know just how they’re doing it, but they’ve watched eggs swerve in midair and land on the bridges or right by them in the river.”

MarshalRatharspent the next little while cursing Algarvian ingenuity. Then he turned toGeneralGurmun and said, “We have to let Addanz know about this. If the redheads can figure out a way to steer dropping eggs, our mages can figure out a way to stop them.”

“They’d better be able to, anyhow,” Gurmun said. “If they can’t, KingSwemmel will find himself a new archmage in one demon of a hurry, and Addanz will likely find himself down in the cinnabar mines in the Mamming Hills: the king’ll squeezesome use out of him, anyhow.”

Rathar reckoned the commander of behemoths almost surely right. Swemmel had a low tolerance for failure. Swemmel, come to that, had a low tolerance for almost everything. Rathar and Gurmun followed the crystallomancer down the street to the house where he and his comrades worked. With Rathar in overall command of all of Unkerlant’s fighting fronts, the crystallomancers didn’t fit into the house where he worked and slept.

When Addanz’s image appeared in a crystal, Rathar explained what had happened. The Archmage of Unkerlant nodded. “I have heard somewhat of this from the Kuusamans,” he said. “Apparently, even Mezentio’s men have trouble doing what they do. Only a handful of their mages are capable of such rapid kinetic sorcery. It may prove a nuisance, but no worse.”

“If they knock down our last route into that bridgehead, it’ll be a lot worse than a nuisance,” Rathar growled. “And if you know what Mezentio’s mages are up to, why aren’t you trying to stop it?”

“We have already begun work on countermeasures,”ArchmageAddanz said. “But these things do take a certain amount of time, and-” He blinked. “Powers above, what was that?”

Rathar didn’t answer him. That had been an egg bursting close by, close enough to startle him into biting his tongue. He tasted blood. He andGeneralGurmun dashed out of the crystallomancers’ headquarters, leaving it to the mages to break the etheric connection. Rathar needed only an instant to see what had happened: an egg had burst squarely on the building where he’d been living.

“Was that one of their steered eggs?” Gurmun asked.

“How should I know?” Rathar trotted toward his headquarters. “Let’s see if anyone’s left alive in there.

“They don’t wantyou left alive,” Gurmun said.

“That’s all right,” Rathar told him. “I don’t want them left alive, either- and I’m going to get my wish.”