Jaws of Darkness

Twenty

Somewhere not far ahead, the Algarvians waited. Leino knew it. Sometime soon, they would try to strike back. The Kuusaman mage didn’t know that, not for a fact, but he felt it in his boots. Mezentio’s men had already yielded half of Jelgava-more than half, farther to the south. If they were going to hold the armies of Kuusamo and Lagoas away from their own border, they would have to strike back soon.

He started to say as much to Xavega, but she picked that moment to look up from the grimoire she was studying and announce, “It’s too hot in here.”

“Well, so it is,” Leino said. “You could always go outside the tent for some air.”

“It will be too hot out there, too.” Even in clean, abstract classical Kaunian, Xavega had no trouble sounding querulous. “This is autumn. The weather should be changing.”

“It has changed,” Leino said. Xavega shook her head, sending copper curls flying, but he went on, “It was much too hot. Now it is only too hot. Jelgava is a warm kingdom, much warmer than either Kuusamo or Lagoas.”

“Disgusting,” Xavega said. “I am always as sweaty as if we had just finished making love.” She put the grimoire aside and glanced over at him. “Since I am already sweaty, shall we?” Without waiting for an answer, she started undoing the toggles of her tunic.

Leino went to her. Everything they had that was worth keeping, they had in bed: here in this tent, in a couple of narrow, lumpy, uncomfortable cots. He stroked her. Shewas sweaty. In short order, so was he. He might have been bloody, too; her nails had scored his back.

Afterwards, she dressed quickly-no lazing in the afterglow. And she went back to studying the grimoire with the same dour intensity. After a few minutes, she looked up and said, “This is the strangest sorcery I have ever had to learn.”

“I think it is fascinating,” Leino said. And, whenever he studied that sorcery, he saw Pekka’s handprints all through it. She hadn’t said much about what she was doing; ever since the war started, she’d been very close-mouthed about her work. But everything Leino saw in these spells corresponded to the little hints he’d got from her. He understood now why she’d kept so quiet. “This is a cleaner way to get more out of sorcery than the Algarvians do with all their murders. What could be better than that?”

“I will tell you what could be better,” Xavega answered at once. “The spells could be in Lagoan, or even in classical Kaunian. Because they are in Kuusaman, I have to learn them phonetically, and I do not see how anyone pronounces your language.”

“I have no trouble with it,” Leino said, laughing. “Now, the sneezes and sounds through your nose that go into Lagoan-I think no sensible language should have those.”

“Lagoan is a beautiful language,” Xavega said. “Lagoan is the most beautiful language in the world. Only Sibian and Algarvian even come close.”

You think so because they’re Algarvic languages, too, Leino thought. He didn’t raise the issue with Xavega. Some things simply weren’t worth arguing about. Before he could find some safe way of steering them away from the beauty or lack of some in Lagoan, a soldier outside did it for him by calling out in Kuusaman: “You wizards decent in there?”

How noisy had Xavega been? Leino hadn’t paid close attention to that. Doing his best not to sound embarrassed, he answered, “Aye. What needs doing?”

The soldier stuck his head into the tent. Xavega squawked; she hadn’t followed the brief conversation. Still speaking Kuusaman, the soldier said, “Sorry to bother you, but we’ve got a Jelgavan here. He speaks some classical Kaunian. Can you translate?”

“Aye, I’ll do that,” Leino replied in Kuusaman. He translated the exchange for Xavega, then added, “Unless you would rather?”

“No, you go ahead,” she said. “You would have to translate for me if I did it. This way, I can keep studying here. You see how efficient I am-just like our allies to the west.” By her expression, she didn’t mean that as a compliment to the Unkerlanters.

“Fair enough,” Leino said: no point discussing what he thought or didn’t think ofKingSwemmel and Swemmel’s kingdom, not right now. He returned to Kuusaman, telling the officer, “Take me to this Jelgavan, then.”

The blond proved bigger and younger than he’d expected. “Hail. I am Talsu son of Traku,” he said, and then had to stop and think. As the officer had said, he knew some classical Kaunian, but he wasn’t fluent in it, as an educated man would have been. After that pause, he went on, “Algarvian line am-uh, is-before the town of Skrunda, aye?”

“Of course,” Leino answered. And it was indeedof course; the islanders had been tapping at that line for most of a week, but hadn’t yet found a weak spot. Then he realized why the Jelgavan might have come, so he asked, “Do you know a way through it?”

Talsu son of Traku nodded. “I do. I am living in Skrunda all of mine life. I am-was-in army ofKingDonalitu ’s. Now I am irregular hereabouts.”

He could make himself understood, even if his grammar left something to be desired. But… Leino said, “Did not the irregulars in these parts suffer a great blow not long ago?”

“That am truth,” Talsu said grimly. “We not can to fight much. But I am knowing the of the barbarians position. I am knowing way past it. Men can to go. Behemothses can to go.” He murdered conjugations, declensions, and syntax.

Leino didn’t care. He liked what he was hearing, regardless of how it was phrased. When he translated for the Kuusaman officer, that worthy’s smile said he liked it pretty well, too. He said, “Tell this fellow we’ll find him an officer or two who can follow Kaunian, and he can lead them, and they can lead our men. We’ll flank those fornicating Algarvians right out of their boots.”

When Leino translated that quite literally, Talsu’s pale eyes lit up with a fierce fire. “Let us bring woe to the barbarians,” he declared, and then, with a grin that made him look even younger than he was, “Hortatory subjunctive. I remember how to make.”

“Good,” Leino said, not smiling so broadly as he would have liked. “Right now, I think remembering how to make trouble for the Algarvians is more important.”

“Even so,” Talsu agreed. When he stuck to stock phrases, he did well enough.

“I will come with you until we find a combat officer with whom you can talk,” Leino said. “I am only a mage. I fear I am not worth much in the field.”

“If you can stop the of the barbarians sorcery, you are worth of much,” Talsu said. “You can to save many of Kaunians blood.”

After Leino turned that into Kuusaman, the officer who’d got him nodded and said, “He’s right.” Leino nodded, too; he couldn’t very well disagree. The officer continued, “Well, let’s find some more overeducated types who call tell what this fellow’s going on about.”

“It would be handy if more of us spoke Jelgavan,” Leino said.

“It’d be even handier if this bastard spoke Kuusaman,” the officer said. “Come on with me. I have two or three fellows I can ask.” He had to go through five men before finding two who could handle classical Kaunian tolerably well. When he did, he gave Leino half a bow. “I think you can get back to whatever you were doing before, sir.” His eyes twinkled. “Maybe you’ll be ready to do it again.”

“That would be nice,” Leino said dryly, “but I don’t think I’d better. If you do go and outflank Mezentio’s men, they won’t stop at anything to push you back. I don’t know what that means as far as fighting goes, but I know just what it means when you talk about magecraft. I think Xavega and I ought to be ready to try to block it.”

“You’re right.” The officer’s lips skinned back from his teeth in what looked like a smile but wasn’t. “Here’s hoping you don’t have to do what you’re ready to try.”

“Please to translate?” Talsu said. Leino pretended he hadn’t heard. The Jelgavan already knew what the Algarvians might do. Leino didn’t feel like talking about it. He knew what he and Xavega were supposed to do if Mezentio’s men did start their sorcery-start murdering blonds, he glossed mentally. But he’d never tried the counterspells, and didn’t care to dwell on that, or even to admit it. Confidence counted for a great deal in a mage.

When he got back to the tent, he found Xavega so deeply immersed in the grimoire, she hardly noticed his return. That pleased him; they both needed to be ready to do what they could against the Algarvians. After a while, she did glance up from the book. “What did the Jelgavan want?” she inquired. Leino explained. Xavega nodded. “Let us hope he can do what he says he can.”

“Hortatory subjunctive,” Leino murmured. She looked puzzled. This time, he didn’t explain. Instead, he said, “If we do look like flanking them, they are liable to start killing people. When they do, we shall feel them. We cannot help but feel them. And we shall have to try to stop them and turn their accursed sorcery back on them.”

That made Xavega turn serious on the instant. She said, “You are right, of course. I think, the first time, you had better do the incanting. Draw on me for power; I will give you everything I have. But I am not positive I can cast a proper spell in Kuusaman.”

“Let it be as you say,” Leino replied. “If you are not positive you can, you should not try, not when you would be going into the teeth of the Algarvians’ conjuration.”

“My thought exactly,” Xavega said. “Thank you for seeing things the same way and not reckoning me a coward.”

What an Algarvic notion, Leino thought. We Kuusamans mostly have better sense than to try something we know is beyond us. Aloud, he said, “Anyone would have-everyone does have-good reason to worry about what Mezentio’s mages are doing.”

To his surprise, she kissed him. “Not many Lagoan men would be so understanding,” she said. She was probably right, too. Lagoans, as he’d thought only a little while before, were cousins to the Algarvians, and if any folk in this war had tried something beyond their power, it was the one Mezentio led.

With soft, muffled calls and the clank of armor on behemoths and their crewmen, a good-sized force of Kuusaman soldiers left the camp, heading west. Leino hoped Talsu knew what he was talking about. He also hoped Talsu wasn’t leading his countrymen into a trap. Some few Jelgavans loathedKingDonalitu enough to stay loyal to Mezentio no matter what his men did to blonds.

Then Leino stopped caring about politics, for Xavega kissed him again, more emphatically this time. Telling the Kuusaman officer he wouldn’t yield to temptation was one thing. But he and Xavega had both started getting undressed once more when they suddenly froze, him with her nipple between his thumb and forefinger.“Curse the Algarvians!” he said, his reasons now intimate along with the wider-ranging ones of the war. But that heaviness in the air, almost palpable to a sorcerer, meant Mezentio’s mages were murdering more Kaunians.

“Now we find out what we can do,” Xavega said, “aside fromthat, I mean.” She let her hand rest affectionately on his crotch for a moment, but then grabbed her tunic and started closing it once more.

Probably just as well that she is, Leino thought. Ican’t afford to be distracted, not now, not trying an important spell for the first time. Gathering himself, he began the charm he was sure his wife had helped shape. He tasted the irony once more, then set it aside-he had no time for it now. It too was a distraction.

So was Xavega, coming up behind him and setting a hand on his shoulder as he incanted. But she was a necessary distraction. Here with the magecraft, she gave unstintingly of herself, more than she did in bed. He felt power flowing from her into him as he chanted and made his passes. And he felt the powers within both of them building as he shaped the spell, building into a sorcerous lance he could aim at the redheads, could use to oppose the darker power they were unleashing.

Could-and did. With a groan almost like the one he would have made at the end with Xavega, he loosed the force pent up inside him. And he felt it strike home, felt it pierce the enemy’s own potent magecraft. Whatever they’d been doing with their murderous magic, it was ruined now-and so, he thought, were the wizards who’d attempted it.

Xavega felt the same thing. Eyes shining, she turned him toward her and kissed him. “We did it!” she exclaimed. Leino’s answering nod was dizzy for more reasons than one. How much had the conjuration taken out of him. Nottoo much, he hoped. Xavega dropped to her knees. “Where were we?” she asked, looking up at him with eyes full of mischief. They hadn’t been quitethere, but it seemed to Leino as good a place as any, and far better than most. He set a hand on the back of her head, urging her on.

“This way,” Talsu said to one of the Kuusaman officers who spoke about as much classical Kaunian as he did. “Do you to see? No barbarians here. Some onthat side of hills, others onthis side, but none here. They not to know of way through here.”

“I see,” the dark little slant-eyed man replied. “This is good. If we get through, this is very good. I think now that we get through.” He spoke in his own oddly rhythmic language to his countrymen. A couple of them answered in the same speech. Talsu understood not a word of it, but he still would have guessed the Kuusamans were pleased with the way things were going.

“We give the Algarvians right up the-” The Kuusaman officer used a phrase Talsu hadn’t heard before. He didn’t even know whether the last couple of words were Kuusaman or classical Kaunian. He didn’t care very much, either. Whatever language they were in, he got the message. He laughed out loud. He liked it, too.

He led the Kuusamans on the winding track past Skrunda. The Algarvians probably didn’t even know it was there. They couldn’t find out everything about the kingdom they’d occupied, and they wouldn’t have needed to do any fighting here since the earliest days of their invasion, if then. Plenty of people could have told the Kuusamans and Lagoans about it. Talsu happened to be the one who had.

If the Kuusamans get in behind Skrunda, the redheads will have to pull back, he thought. And if they pull back, they ‘II leave my family alone after that. They ‘II have to, because they won’t be able to reach them. Powers above grant that everyone is still safe. They wouldn ‘t have done anything to them… would they?

I’ll find out. Once the Algarvians are gone, I’ll find out. That’s what the Kuusamans and the Lagoans are good for: driving out Mezentio’s men. We couldn‘t do it for ourselves, but it’s still going to get done.

“There.” He pointed for the Kuusaman officer. “Do you to see? You are gone by Skrunda now. No Algarvian positions here. No barbarians here. Your men can to go ahead.”

“I see,” the foreigner said. Except for Algarvians, he was among the first foreigners Talsu had ever dealt with. He called out to his own men, and to the behemoths with them. Then he slapped Talsu on the back. He had to reach up to do it; he was a head shorter than the Jelgavan, and so were most of his countrymen. He was short beside Algarvians, too. But with a stick in his hands, what size he was didn’t matter much. He grinned and repeated himself: “Right up the-”

“Aye,” Talsu said fiercely.

The Kuusaman called out again in his own language. His men and behemoths went forward without the slightest hesitation. They shared that trait with the Algarvians: when they found an opening, they swarmed to take advantage of it. Talsu didn’t think any part of the Jelgavan army had ever moved so fast during this war. That was a good reason why there was no Jelgavan army any more, unlessKingDonalitu was reconstituting one in the lands the Lagoan and Kuusaman armies had regained for him.

From where Talsu stood, he could see a long way into the flat country west of Skrunda. He could see where the Algarvians suddenly realized a dagger had been thrust through their defenses. And he could see the Kuusamans rushing past the redheads’ handful of pickets, giving them enough attention to keep them from slowing things down and not a copper more. That was another lesson Mezentio’s men had taught, another lesson the Jelgavans hadn’t learned.

“What are you going to do about that, you stinking whoresons?” Talsu said, almost hugging himself with glee. “How do you like it when it happens to you?”

But then, almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth, the ground quivered under his feet like an animal in pain. He cried out in horror and in fear. The Algarvians wasted no time hitting back, either, and he knew just how they were doing it: with the life blood of Kaunians.

What would, what could, the Kuusamans do about that? He waited for disaster to strike them, as it had struck the band of irregulars of which he’d been a part after they did too good a job of harassing the redheads.

Talsu waited, but that didn’t happen. What did happen was a flash of light somewhere off to the west, almost at the edge of his vision. And after that, he felt no more of the sorcery that had wrecked his comrades in the steeper hills to the south.

Whathad the Kuusamans done? The first fellow he’d talked to, the one who’d spoken classical Kaunian really well, had worn a mage’s badge. Had he had something to do with whatever had just happened? How should I know? Talsu wondered. It didn’t really matter, anyhow. What mattered was that the redheads’ magic had failed them.

Did the Kuusamans here even know what their sorcerers had done? Talsu doubted it. That didn’t really matter, either. The redheads in these parts hadn’t been able to stop their foes through force of magecraft. Now they would have to try through force of arms. And I don’t think they’ve got the force of arms to do it, not when their flank s been turned.

He wasn’t, he didn’t have to be, part of the battle for Skrunda and the surrounding territory. Watching it unfold without risk to him was a rare luxury, like expensive wine or extra-soft wool for a pair of trousers. A steady stream of Kuusaman soldiers slogged past him, heading into the fight. He waved to the men of each company. They were doing his kingdom an enormous favor. He wondered if they thought of it that way, or whether they were as resigned to doing as they were told as he had been during his army days. The latter, he would have bet.

Dragons flew low overhead, dragons hard to spot because they were painted in Kuusaman sky blue and sea green. No Algarvian dragons that he saw rose to challenge them. He hadn’t seen many Algarvian dragons here in Jelgava, not at any time and especially not the past year or so. Where are they? he thought. Defending Algarve itself, I suppose, and trying to hold back the Unkerlanters. But Mezentio’s soldiers in these parts are paying a big price because the redheads don’t have enough. That left him something less than brokenhearted.

He trudged forward, sticking to the fields by the side of the track so the advancing Kuusamans would get the benefit of the best ground. Before he’d gone very far, he passed a crater in the ground and a corpse with nastily mangled legs. He gulped. Even if the Algarvians didn’t have soldiers covering this route, they’d buried eggs in the ground to slow up an enemy advance. Haifa mile farther on lay a dead behemoth with its right hind leg only a bloody mess. Talsu gulped again.

Here came some kilted Algarvians back toward him. They weren’t part of a counterattack. None of them carried a stick, and all of them held their hands high over their heads. They were captives, herded along by a couple of bowlegged little Kuusamans. When Jelgava fell, a handful of Algarvians had taken a battalion’s worth of Talsu’s countrymen into captivity. Now they were tasting the humiliation they’d dished out. Some of them looked weary. More had that beaten-dog grin of relief at being alive.

Going down onto lower ground meant Talsu couldn’t see Skrunda anymore. But he knew where it lay, and made for it without hesitation. He kept peering northwest, for fear he’d see a great column of greasy black smoke rising into the sky. That would mean the redheads were fighting there, or else that they’d fired the town to help cover their retreat. He hoped they would do no such thing, but knew he couldn’t be sure what they might try.

To the Kuusamans, he was just one more civilian now. He did his best to stay out of their way, too. Some of them were liable to blaze first and ask questions later.

Then the road rose and let him see his home town again. He felt like cheering-it looked more or less intact. He hurried toward it with the eagerness of a lover rushing toward his beloved. And he was rushing toward his beloved, too, for Gailisa was there-or he hoped with all his heart she was.

He trudged into Skrunda an hour or so later. The first thing he saw was two Jelgavan bodies hanging from lampposts. The placards tied round their necks said, they fought against algarve. Neither of them was anybody Talsu knew well. He let out a silent sigh of relief at that.

He made for the grocer’s shop his father-in-law ran. Maybe Gailisa would be there. If she wasn’t, her father would surely know where she was-and he would know about Talsu’s mother and father and sister, too.

But the grocer’s shop wasn’t there anymore. Talsu stared in startled dismay. He’d been away from Skrunda for a couple of months now. How many times had dragons come over the town and dropped eggs on it? In one of those visits, the grocer’s shop had gone up in flames, as his own family’s tailor’s shop had earlier. Now he had to hurry toward the tent city on the west side of town, where refugees like his family had been staying. Maybe he could find Gailisa’s father there, too.

Maybe Gailisa’s father and Gailisa herself had been in the grocer’s shop when eggs fell on and around it. Talsu tried not to think about that.

A couple of people who knew him nodded cautiously as he hurried past them. A couple of others turned their backs. Some folk in Skrunda still thought the Algarvians had let him out of their dungeon because he’d betrayed his countrymen for them. There was very little truth in that, but how could he prove it?

He was about the plunge into the tent city and make for the tent where he’d been sheltering before he had to flee when someone called his name: “Talsu!”

“Ausra!” he said, whirling toward his sister, recognizing her voice even before he saw her. She threw herself into his arms. He squeezed the breath out of her and kissed her on the cheek. “Are you all right? Is Gailisa? Are Father and Mother?”

“Aye, we’re all fine,” she answered, and he kissed her again, harder this time. But she went on, “Gailisa’s father…”

“Oh, powers above!” Talsu said. “I saw the shop on the way here. He didn’t get out?”

Ausra shook her head. “I’m afraid not. Gailisa’s taken it pretty hard.”

“I believe that,” Talsu said, though he’d always thought of his father-in-law as a plump, not particularly good-natured nonentity, one of the least interesting people he’d ever known. “When did it happen? The ruins looked pretty fresh.”

“Just last week,” his sister told him. He ground his teeth. Ausra took his arm. “But come on. I don’t think the redheads are looking for you anymore.”

“I didn’t see any Algarvians in town,” Talsu said, “and I think Skrunda is as good as free, because the Kuusamans have broken through beyond the town, and the redheads will have to pull back or be trapped.”

“How do you know that?” Ausra asked.

“Because I showed the Kuusamans the route they could use to break through,” Talsu answered proudly. This time, Ausra kissed him.

That was nice, but the looks on the faces of Traku and Laitsina and, best of all, Gailisa were finer still a couple of minutes later. And kissing his wife was ever so much finer than kissing his sister. “You’re home!” Gailisa said. “You’re safe!” She started to laugh and cry at the same time.

“I’m home. I’m safe,” he agreed. “And we’re free. We’re rid of the redheads for good.”

“Here you go, Sergeant,”Kun said as he and Istvan cut wood together in the captives’ camp on Obuda. “You might want these.” He took a few sickly-green leaves from his pocket and held them out to Istvan.

“Oh, I might, might I?” Istvan didn’t take the rather wilted leaves. “Stars above, why?”

Kunleaned closer and spoke in a hissing whisper: “Because they’ll give you a good two-day dose of the galloping shits, that’s why.”

Istvan gaped at him. “Are you out of your mind? Why would I want a dose of the shits? They’re too stinking easy to get here anyway, the kind of slop the slanteyes feed us.”

“Will you take the accursed weeds before the guards start giving us the fishy stares?”Kun snapped. Startled-Kundidn’t usually sound so vehement-Istvan did stick the leaves in his own pocket and go back to chopping. Kun started swinging his axe again, too. Nodding, he said, “That’s more like it.”

“More like what?” Istvan said plaintively. “I still haven’t got the faintest idea what under the light of the stars you’re talking about.”

CorporalKunrolled his eyes, as he had a habit of doing when sorely tried. “You’re such a natural-born innocent, who can guess how you’ve managed to live this long? But if you’ve got any sense at all, you’ll chew those leaves tonight right around suppertime.” His axe bit into a chunk of pine. Chips flew. He smote again. The chunk split in two.

“I’m not going to do any such thing till you tell me why and have it make sense,” Istvan said stubbornly.

That only madeKun roll his eyes again. “Just as you say, then.” He was most dangerous when most exquisitely polite. “Tonight, you’ve got yourself a choice. You can leak out your arsehole and go into the infirmary and feel better in a couple of days, or else you can leak out of a cut throat and not feel better ever again. That’s it. Depending on how you choose, it may be the last choice you ever get to make.”

“Oh!” No matter how naive Istvan was, he couldn’t very well misunderstand that. He attacked the chunk of pine in front of him with more violence than it really needed. “They’re going to do it tonight?”

“No, I just want to give you the shits,”Kun replied. “That way, when you get over them, you can come back and beat the stuffing out of me. I really enjoy having people beat the stuffing out of me, especially when they’re twice my size.”

“You have leaves of your own?” Istvan asked.

“Of course not,” the former mage’s apprentice said. “I really enjoy having my own throat cut, too, so I gave you all the leaves I had.”

Istvan’s ears heated. MaybeKun didn’t deliberately treat him as if he were an idiot. On the other hand, maybeKun did, too-and maybe he’d earned it with that particular question. But he didn’t worry about it for long. He asked, “Did you give Szonyi some of these precious leaves, too?”

If he’d hit the wood harder than he had to, Kun splintered the piece in front of him with his next couple of blows. At last, he answered, “I tried to give him some, but he wouldn’t let me. He’d rather take his chances withCaptainFrigyes. You can, too, if you think he and the Algarvians andMajorBorsos will really do anything worthwhile.”

Istvan wished he thought that. Dying for Gyongyos… What could be more fitting for a warrior from a warrior race? But he wouldn’t be dying for Gyongyos here; he was too mournfully sure of that. He would be dying forCaptainFrigyes, for no one and nothing else. Even if Frigyes and Borsos and the redheads made a sorcery to blast the island of Obuda down to the bottom of the Bothnian Ocean, how much would that help Gyongyos and Ekrekek Arpad in the war against Kuusamo? Not very much, not so far as Istvan could see.

“Never mind,” he said. Now that it came down to the sticking point, he couldn’t stomach betraying his countrymen’s plot to the Kuusamans, but he didn’t want to be part of it, either. Escaping with a sore belly seemed a better way out of the dilemma than most. “I just wish you could have got Szonyi to see sense.”

“So do I,”Kun told him. “But he’s not in the mood to listen. And he told me, ‘Don’t waste the sergeant’s time, getting him to nag me, either. I know what I’m doing.’ I don’t think he does, but…” He shrugged.

“I’m glad you tried,” Istvan said. He also resolved to try to talk to Szonyi himself, no matter what the trooper had toldKun. Wood-chopping seemed to take forever. At last, the guards released the labor detail. Istvan hurried off to try to find his longtime comrade.

But Szonyi wouldn’t talk to him, not about that. “I’ve made up my mind,” was all he would say. “I’d rather go out giving the enemy one more lick than spend the rest of my days rotting away here on Obuda.”

Istvan found no good reply to that. He finally set his hand on Szonyi’s shoulder and said, “May the stars enfold you in their light forevermore, then.”

“May it be so.” Szonyi gave him an anxious glance. “You andKun won’t betray us, will you? I know you’ve talked about it.”

“No, by the stars, neither one of us,” Istvan said. “May they leave us in eternal darkness if I lie. I just don’t think you’ll do as much asCaptainFrigyes thinks you will.”

“I think you’re wrong, Sergeant.” Szonyi turned away. Istvan started to argue some more, then saw it would do no good. He walked off, shaking his head.

When he sawKun a few minutes later, the one-time mage’s apprentice raised a questioning eyebrow. Istvan shook his head. Kun sighed and shrugged.

Along with their suppers, both of them ate the leaves. Istvan had expected, or at least hoped for, a little leisure before they acted and a little dignity while they were working. He got neither. The effect put him in mind of having an egg burst in the middle of his guts. Both he andKun raced for the latrines at a dead run. Kun ’s face was pale as milk. Istvan had no doubt he looked the same way.

Neither of them made it to the slit trenches. They both had to yank down their leggings and squat in the middle of the compound while guards cursed them in Kuusaman and Gyongyosian. Istvan stayed on the ground, clutching at his belly. Kun tried to get to his feet, then sank down again. “Must be something we ate,” he moaned. That was true, too, if not quite in the way he meant it.

The guards had to drag them to the infirmary. They threw them onto cots in a room of their own and gave them chamber pots. That suited Istvan perfectly. He spent a lot of unpleasant time squatting over his as night replaced day.

“When?” he askedKun when they chanced to be squatting side by side.

“I don’t know,”Kun answered. “We’ll find out when it happens. In the meantime, shut up.” That was doubtless good advice. Istvan tried to tell his guts the same thing. They wouldn’t listen to him.

At some point that evening, Istvan asked, “What time is it now?” Since things had started for him, he’d lost a good deal of interest in the outside world, but that still mattered.

Not toKun, not at the moment. “I don’t know, and I don’t care,” he grunted. That he was squatting again no doubt made him even shorter with questions than he would have been otherwise. After a bit, he added, “And I already told you to shut up. Who knows who’s liable to be listening?”

Istvan guessed-and it was only a guess-he fell into an exhausted sleep somewhere around midnight. He knew he hadn’t been asleep very long before getting jolted awake by a short, sharp earthquake. He dove under his bed, as he would have done back in his home valley, and hoped the roof wouldn’t come down on his head.

AlthoughKun came from Gyorvar, he knew enough to dive under his cot, too; most of Gyongyos was earthquake country. Through the roar of the ground and the shudder of the infirmary all around them, he shouted, “This isn’t just a regular earthquake.”

“So what?” Istvan shouted back. “That doesn’t mean it can’t kill us.”Kun didn’t answer that. Istvan concluded that, for once, he’d out-argued his clever comrade.

Even after the ground stopped shaking, rending and tearing noises went on and on, most of them from outside the captives’ camp. Kun stayed right where he was. Istvan started to come out, but seeingKun on his belly made him decide not going anywhere might be a good idea. Kun said, “Well, they managed to get the spell to work, no doubt about it.”

“So they did,” Istvan said. “Now, what have they done with it? If they’ve done enough…”If they’ve done enough, maybe I should have let them cut my throat. Maybe the stars will turn away from my spirit and leave it in eternal darkness. Am I accursed for cowardice?

Kunsaid, “We won’t find out till morning at the earliest.” If he felt the least bit guilty about remaining alive where his comrades had perished, he showed no sign that Istvan could see.

And a Gyongyosian captive in the next chamber of the infirmary proved him wrong a moment later, calling, “By the stars, half the walls have fallen down!”

“We could escape!” Istvan exclaimed.

“Go ahead,”Kun said. “If you want to skulk through the woods up on the slopes of Mount Sorong till the Kuusamans hunt you down with dogs, go right ahead. Me, I don’t see much point to it. If I thought we could get back to an island we still held, or even one where we were still fighting, that’d be different. As things are…” He shook his head. “No, thanks.”

That made more sense than Istvan wished it would have. Some of his countrymen thought otherwise. Outside the infirmary, booted feet pounded across dirt toward what had been the palisade. A Kuusaman shouted in bad Gyongyosian: “To halt! To halt or to blaze!” Those feet kept running. A moment later, a shriek rang out, and then another one. After that, Istvan heard no more running feet inside the captives’ camp.

And then, a few minutes later-after he andKun had cautiously emerged from their shelter-he did. All the shouting this time was in Kuusaman, which he didn’t understand. “The slanteyes will have found the bodies,”Kun said.

“Do you know that, or are you just guessing?” Istvan asked. It did strike him as a good guess.

“I can understand some of what they’re saying,”Kun answered. “Not a lot-Kuusaman is a peculiar language, if anyone wants to know what I think: much worse than Unkerlanter-but enough.”

All Istvan had ever learned of either were such phrases as, Hands high! andCome out of there! “I’ll take your word for it,” he said.

A Kuusaman guard charged into their chamber, stick at the ready. He looked at them, saw they were where they were supposed to be and not making trouble, and relaxed a little. Sounding innocent, Kun asked, “What happened?”

“Magic,” the guard answered. “Bad magic. Many to be dead.” His Gyongyosian was halting but understandable. “To kill themselves to make magic. Bad. Very bad.” Shaking his head, he backed out of the room.

Istvan sniffed. “I smell smoke.”

“Aye, something’s burning,”Kun agreed. He sniffed, too. “Not close, I don’t think. Nothing we have to worry about.” He paused, then went on, “That guard was right, you know. Itwas bad magic, and I don’t care that our allies used it first.”

“Neither do I,” Istvan said, and did his best to believe he was telling the truth.

When the sun rose, he peered eagerly out the window. Sure enough, most of the walls were down, but the Kuusamans had posted an armed man every ten feet or so to prevent escapes. The ley-line depot was also wrecked, and the smoke, he found, came from the direction of the port the Kuusamans had built: he could see as much through the gaps in what had been the palisade. But he could also see that the Kuusamans remained in firm control of the island of Obuda, regardless of what Frigyes and Borsos and the redheads and-most important-Szonyi and the other Gyongyosians who’d laid down their lives had done.

“It was a waste of magic,” he said, and would have felt vindicated if he hadn’t felt so bad.

“Halt!” Garivald called. “What are you doing?” Seeing any movement was enough to make him swing his stick toward it.

What he saw in the bridgehead by Eoforwic wasn’t an Algarvian soldier, but a gray-bearded Forthwegian with a stooped back. When the old man smiled a placating smile, he showed a mouth full of bad teeth. “Nothing, sir,” he said. “I’m only… mushrooms.”

Garivald didn’t know the missing word, but had no trouble figuring out what it meant. Even a Grelzer could follow bits and pieces of Forthwegian, just as the locals could understand a little of what he said. “Come with me,” he commanded. “Come with me to my lieutenant.”

“Why?” the Forthwegian asked. His smile got wider. He said something else. Garivald couldn’t understand it, but could make a good guess-probably something like, Iwasn‘t doing any harm.

He shrugged. “Come,” he repeated. “Orders. All civilians to be questioned when they’re found where they’re not supposed to be.”

“Only mushrooms,” the Forthwegian said. He held up his basket, then held it out to Garivald. “I’ll give them to you.”

“No.” Garivald liked mushrooms, but not so much as the locals did- certainly not enough to let himself be bribed with them. “Come along right now, or you’ll be sorry.”

Muttering under his breath, the old man came. None of what he said sounded like a compliment. As they went deeper into the bridgehead, he spoke a few words Garivald could understand: “Need to piss.”

“Later.” With a stick in his hand, Garivald could afford to be heartless.

But the old man whined, “Need topiss,” again with such dramatic urgency that Garivald relented. He pointed to a stout tree somehow still standing despite all the eggs that had landed on the bridgehead.

The old man disappeared behind it. Perhaps a heartbeat slower than it should have, that roused Garivald’s suspicions. “Hey! What are you doing back there?” he barked, and hurried over to find out for himself. The old man wasn’t standing there easing himself. He was loping toward a fallen tree not far away, keeping the still-standing one between himself and where Garivald had been. “Halt!” Garivald shouted again.

The old man ran harder than ever. Nobody, though, nobody could outrun a beam. Garivald’s caught him in the middle of the back just as he was about to dive behind the tree trunk. He shrieked and went over on his face.

He was still moving feebly when Garivald trotted up to him. With a glare, he said something Garivald couldn’t understand: the blood running from his mouth garbled it. Whatever it was, it didn’t sound like Forthwegian. Garivald wished he hadn’t blazed to kill-but that, he’d found, was almost always what a soldier intended to do. He hadn’t thought of doing anything else till much too late.

With a last unintelligible mumble, the old man died. Garivald knew the exact instant life left his body, for his looks changed in that instant. Suddenly, he no longer looked like a Forthwegian, but like an Algarvian who’d let his beard grow out, as Forthwegians were in the habit of doing.

“Magic!” Garivald exclaimed. His hands twisted in the sign Grelzers used when they ran across magecraft where they didn’t expect to. In an abstract way, he admired the redhead’s thoroughgoing imposture. It wasn’t just the beard: the fellow had spoken good, maybe perfect, Forthwegian, and had even acted as if he liked mushrooms, which Mezentio’s men weren’t in the habit of doing.

“What have you got, Corporal?” somebody called from behind Garivald: an Unkerlanter. At least, I think he’s an Unkerlanter, Garivald thought dizzily. Nothing in the world seemed so certain as it had a moment before.

“What have I got?” he echoed. “I’ve got a spy, that’s what. Go fetchLieutenantAndelot right away. He needs to see this, and to hear about it, too.” The Unkerlanter soldier’s eyes widened. He took off at a run. Garivald was only a corporal, but common soldiers obeyed him as if he wereMarshalRathar. Of course, he had to obey sergeants and real officers the same way, while Rathar had to obey only the king, with everyone else in Unkerlant obeying him. The marshal has it easy, Garivald thought.

Andelot came trotting back with the trooper. “A spy?” he said, and stared down at the dead Algarvian. “How in blazes did he get so far inside our lines, Fariulf?”

“Because he looked just like a fornicating Forthwegian till I blazed him, sir,” Garivald answered, and explained what had happened.

“I’ve heard of such sorcery,” Andelot said when he was finished. “Some of the Kaunians here in Forthweg used it to keep the redheads from finding them and killing them. But this is the first time I’ve heard that the Algarvians are using it to try to make themselves look harmless while they come snooping around.”

“I hadn’t heard of it at all, sir,” Garivald said. “Like I told you, I was taking this fellow back to you so you could question him-he wasn’t supposed to be inside the perimeter.”

“He must have thought we had a wizard waiting to test him,” Andelot said. “He panicked, and got himself killed, and gave the game away. If he looked like an old Forthwegian, probably I would have just cursed him and told him to make himself scarce. I wouldn’t have guessed he was anything but what he seemed to be.”

“I sure didn’t, sir,” Garivald said. “I was never so surprised in my life as when I saw him change as soon as he died.”

“But you did what you were supposed to do by bringing him in,”LieutenantAndelot said. “And you did what you were supposed to do by blazing him when he tried to escape. No one could possibly have asked for more from you, SergeantFariulf.”

“Serge…” Garivald saluted. “Thank you very much, sir!” He didn’t much want to be promoted. The higher he rose, the more likely people were to take a long look at him, a look he couldn’t afford. But he would also draw long looks if he seemed unhappy about getting a higher rank.

“You’re welcome. You’ve earned it. Eventually, your pay will show that you’re getting it, too.” Andelot made a wry face. The men who gave out money in the Unkerlanter army plainly didn’t think efficiency was anything they had to worry about. “Do you think you could write me a report of everything that happened here, Sergeant?”

“Write you a report?” Garivald was more alarmed than he had been when he saw the sorcerously disguised Algarvian trying to get away from him. “Sir, you only showed me my letters a few weeks ago. How in blazes am I supposed to write a report?”

“Just write down what happened, the same as if you were telling it to me,” the company commander answered. “Don’t worry about your spelling, or anything fancy like that. You would be amazed at how many men who went to good schools can’t spell some simple words to keep the powers below from eating them. Believe me, you would. I won’t care about that, I promise. But you are the eyewitness. I want the facts down on paper in your words, not mine.”

“I’ll try, sir,” Garivald said dubiously. He pointed to the Algarvian’s body. “What do we do with that?”

“Leave him here,” Andelot answered. “I’ll want a mage to look at him just the way he is. I don’t know if he’ll be able to learn anything, but I want to give him a chance.”

“All right, sir. That makes sense,” Garivald said.

“Get some paper, Sergeant-I’ll give you some if you can’t find it anywhere else-and go write that report,” Andelot told him. “Get everything down while it’s still fresh in your mind. Don’t leave anything out. Maybe it’ll help if you pretend you’re talking to me instead of writing.”

“Maybe.” Garivald knew he still didn’t sound convinced. He did have to get paper from the lieutenant. Once he got it, he sat apart from his men and started to work. He wrote awkwardly, as a child might have. That annoyed him. It also made his writing harder to read, he knew. He guessed at the spelling of about every other word, and found he had to imitate a conversational style, as Andelot had suggested: it was the only one within his grasp. He couldn’t very well imitate other things he’d read, because he hadn’t read anything to speak of.

At last, after what seemed like forever and was in fact two leaves of paper, he finished. When he broughtLieutenantAndelot the report, he trembled even more than he had when first going into battle. No man relishes the feeling that he’s just made a fool of himself. He had to force his voice to steadiness to say, “Here you are, sir.”

“Thank you, Sergeant,” Andelot replied. His mention of Garivald’s new rank made Garivald feel better and more nervous at the same time. “Let’s see what we’ve got here.” He began to read, then looked up and nodded. “You make your letters very clearly.”

“You’re too kind,” Garivald muttered. He had the feeling that was the kind of compliment you got when no others seem to present themselves.

And, sure enough, Andelot said, “Anyone would know, though, that you haven’t had much in the way of formal schooling.”

“I haven’t had any, sir, and you know it,” Garivald said.

“Well, so I do.” Andelot kept reading. He put down the first leaf and methodically worked his way through the second. When he finished that one, too, he glanced up at the nervously waiting Garivald. He tapped the report with his index finger. “This isn’t at all what I expected, Sergeant.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Garivald said. “I did the best I could.”

Andelot looked surprised. “Sorry? Powers above, what for? Do you think I meant you did a bad job?… Oh, I see you do. No, no, no, Sergeant-just the opposite, in fact. This is splendid work. Except for the spelling-which you can’t help, of course-I would be sure you’d been writing reports for years.” He shook his head. “No, that’s not true. I would think you’d been writing romances or poems, not reports. Reports aren’t made to be interesting, and most of them aren’t. This, though”-he tapped again-”this makes me feel it happened to me, not to you. Only a real storyteller, a born storyteller, has that gift. You’ve got it.”

“I-I don’t know what to say, sir,” Garivald said. Maybe I really can write down my songs, or write new ones. That would have been a safer ambition in almost any other kingdom besides Unkerlant, but he had it even so.

“You don’t need to say anything,” Andelot told him. “You do need to know that I’m going to have you write more reports whenever you happen to need to. That will give you good practice writing, and I’ll have the fun of reading them.”

He had to mean it. He wouldn’t say something like that just to make Garivald feel good. Real officers didn’t much care how underofficers felt. Why should they? They could tell underofficers what to do, and what else mattered? Garivald said, “I’ll try it again, sir, but I don’t want the kind of surprise that stinking redhead gave me.”

“I don’t blame you a bit, Fariulf,” Andelot said. “The cursed Algarvians have given us too many surprises, all through this fight. That’s the way Algarvians are. They always come up with new things. But we gave them a surprise, too, you know. We did-we stodgy old Unkerlanters.”

“We did?” Garivald asked in honest amazement. “What kind of surprise?”

“We didn’t fall over and die when they hit us, and they thought we would,” Andelot said. “The Forthwegians did, and the Sibs, and the Valmierans, and the Jelgavans-and they chased the Lagoans right off the mainland of Derlavai with their tails between their legs. But they hit us, and we kept hitting back-and look where we are now.”

Garivald didn’t particularly want to be in a bridgehead in the middle of Forthweg. Even so, though, he nodded. Andelot had a point.

Fernao plowed through a Kuusaman news sheet as he ate an omelette for breakfast. By now, after a couple of years reading Kuusaman, he took it almost as much for granted as he did Lagoan. Some of the mages from his kingdom grumbled about it, but Lagoans always grumbled whenever they had to pay more attention to Kuusamo and its ways than they wanted to.

“Anything interesting?” Ilmarinen asked from across the table. He was working his way through a plate of smoked salmon and onions and capers and pickled cucumbers.

“I don’t know about interesting, but this report on something that went wrong on the island of Obuda is strange,” Fernao answered. He passed the sheet to Ilmarinen, who put on spectacles to read it. “It sounds like something happened there that was too big to ignore, and bigger than the writer really wanted to admit.”

“Oh. That.” The Kuusaman master mage’s voice went hard and flat. “I know about that.” Fernao believed him; he knew all sorts of things he had no business knowing. “Some of the people who ran our captives’ camp for the Gongs made a big mistake there. Most of them are too dead to court-martial now, but we would if we could. Stupidity is usually its own punishment. It was here.”

“Now you’re going to have to tell me, you know,” Fernao said.

“Or else what?” But Ilmarinen was grinning. He loved to gossip, and made no bones about it. After an odorous bite of salmon and onions, he went on, “Well, for one thing, they let some sort of mage get in with the ordinary captives.”

“Uh-oh,” Fernao said.

“Uh-oh, indeed,” Ilmarinen agreed. “And then they put some Algarvian leviathan-riders into the camp, too. And, just in case you haven’t heard, the Gongs have figured out how to work the sorceries that make me hope Algarve and Unkerlant end up destroying each other-but we’re never that lucky, are we?”

“Er-no,” Fernao said. “From what I know of the Gyongyosians, that surprises me. They’re warriors, aye, but not murderers.”

“You’re right. They aren’t murderers-not that kind of murderers, any- how. But so what?” Ilmarinen paused for another bite. Fernao remembered to eat, too. The Kuusaman master mage continued, “They’re warriors, sure enough-and they volunteer, they really and truly do volunteer, to put their necks to the knife for the greater glory of Gyongyos and for the stars that don’t give a fart about them.”

“Oh.” Fernao wished he hadn’t started eating again. “And that’s what happened on Obuda?”

“That’s what happened on Obuda, all right,” Ilmarinen said. “Smashed things up pretty well-about like a real earthquake, say.” He shrugged. “Now we’re putting the pieces back together, and we won’t let it happen again. A bad nuisance, but only a nuisance.”

“And a lot of dead Gyongyosians,” Fernao said. “Dead for nothing.”

Ilmarinen nodded. “For nothing much, anyhow. I gather the officer who led this thought doing something was better than sitting around doing nothing and waiting for the war to end. Only goes to show that sometimes sitting around isn’t so bad.”

“You should have thought of that before you went to the blockhouse by yourself,” Fernao said.

After impressive deliberation, Ilmarinen made a face at him. “If we were all as smart as we knew how to make everyone else… very likely the world would be as much of a mess as it is right now.”

“Aye, very likely.” Fernao had wondered if the old man would be able to get an aphorism out of his cynical start. He’d had his doubts when Ilmarinen paused there, but the theoretical sorcerer had come through. “Are you ready for the experiment tomorrow?”

“I am always ready for experiments,” Ilmarinen answered. “Sometimes, unfortunately, experiments are not ready for me.” He popped more onions and capers and soft pink-orange fish into his mouth. “I tell you this: I’d a hundred times sooner experiment than stand in front of a chamber full of eager second-raters and tell them what I know.”

“I rather like to teach,” Fernao said.

“I haven’t minded teachingyou” Ilmarinen said; Fernao realized only later the size of the compliment he’d got. The old man went on, “But these people who want it spelled out and have to have it that way because they can’t see it if it isn’t… They’d make a lovely rock garden, don’t you think? Don’tthey think? They don’t, and that’s the trouble.”

Fernao finished his own breakfast and went off to teach a class of mages-mostly Lagoans, with a few Kuusamans to fill out the twenty. Sure enough, the questions he got were of the sort Ilmarinen disliked: “Show me how these two verses work.” “What does this formula mean?” “Do we really need to know that?”

“No, you don’t really need to know that,” he answered, his own temper fraying. “If you want to kill yourself when you try this spell, go ahead and forget it.”

“You’re not being very helpful,” complained the woman who’d asked the question.

“You’re not being very imaginative,” Fernao said. “Would I have talked about this if you didn’t need to know it?”

“Well, you never can tell,” the woman said.

Later, Fernao did some complaining of his own to Pekka: “I wanted to pound my head against the wall. We’ve made this as simple as we can. Have we really made it simple enough for the people who’ll have to use it? Can we make it simple enough for these people to use it?”

Instead of giving him the sympathy he craved, she annoyed him by laughing. “I’ve spent years trying to pound sorcery into the heads of people who don’t much want to learn it,” he said. “The ones we have here are pretty bright.”

“Powers above help our kingdoms!” he exploded.

“I hope they will. I hope they do,” she answered, and he found nothing to say to that. Then she added, “They must be looking out for me. Otherwise, how would I have met you?”

Fernao’s annoyance evaporated. His ears heated. That must have been visible from the outside as well as palpable from within, for Pekka giggled. Fernao bowed. “You do me too much credit, I think.”

Pekka shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she answered. “If I did, would you make me so happy?” Before his head swelled to the point where her chamber couldn’t hold it, she added, “If I didn’t think so, would I have let my life get so complicated when I didn’t intend to?”

He found nothing to say to that, either. His life wasn’t complicated. His life had been complicated before they found themselves together, because he’d wanted to be with her when she hadn’t wanted to be with him. Now, as far as he was concerned, everything was fine. Of course, he wasn’t torn in two directions at once. However much he wished Pekka weren’t, he knew she was.

They lay close together on her narrow bed after making love that night when she suddenly said, “It’s snowing.”

“How can you tell?” he asked.

“The way the air feels-all still and quiet,” she said, and turned on the bedside lamp. “There-you see?” Sure enough, the light showed snowflakes softly striking the double-glass window that helped hold cold at bay.

“It doesn’t have to be still and quiet for snow,” Fernao said. “Down in the land of the Ice People, it blows like this.” He held his forearm parallel to the mattress. Then he added, “And I’d sooner look at you than at snow any day.” Pekka kissed him. He gathered her in. Before too long, he sighed. “Ten years ago, I could have promised you twice in a row. Now I have to be lucky for that-not that I’m not lucky, you understand.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Pekka said. “The holding is fine, too, all by itself.” She reached out to turn off the lamp. They fell asleep in each other’s arms-and woke up a couple of hours later, Fernao with an arm asleep, Pekka with a leg that seemed dead below the knee. As they untangled themselves and Fernao got into his clothes to go back to his own room, he yawned and thought, So much for romance.

Something closer to romance came the next day, when they rode out to the blockhouse under furs in a sleigh, as they’d done when they first began experimenting down in the Naantali district. He’d been conscious of Pekka as an attractive woman even then. Now… If his hands wandered a bit, and if hers did, the furs kept the driver from noticing.

But when they and the other theoretical sorcerers got down from the sleighs and went into the blockhouse, Pekka was all business. “You know what we’re going to try today,” she said. “We’re going to use the energy from the sorcery we’ve developed to touch off a landslide and close off a pass in the Bratanu Mountains, to make the Algarvians have a harder time moving men and supplies from their kingdom east into Jelgava. I don’t think anyone has ever projected so much sorcerous power so far and so precisely in the history of the world.”

That’s bound to be true, Fernao thought. It’s a demon of a long way from here to the border between Jelgava and Algarve. Some of the excitement of what they’d been doing came back to him. Making everything cut and dried so people with no spark, no flair, of their own could use it had drained away a lot of that excitement. He was glad to feel it return; he’d wondered if it would.

“I begin,” Pekka said, and chanted the ritual phrases Kuusamans used before every conjuration. Fernao had snickered behind his hand when he first heard them. He’d heard them so many times by now, magecraft undertaken without them would have felt strange, unnatural.

He’d only half understood them when he first heard them. He’d understood hardly anything of the Kuusaman cantrips that followed. He did these days. He wouldn’t have wanted to try drafting an original spell in Kuusaman, but he had no trouble following one now. If anything went wrong, he knew much more than he had about how to repair it.

Ilmarinen and Piilis joined the incantation. So did Raahe and Alkio. Fernao felt the power build. Part of it was his, flowing from him through Pekka, whose hand he held. It put him in mind of pleasure building when they made love. But when his eyes flicked her way, her face was serious, intent, nothing at all like the way she looked when the two of them were alone. She didn’t glance at him. She kept on chanting, doing what she had to do. That’s all any of us are doing, he thought. What else is there?

If not for the world’s energy grid more commonly used in traveling along ley lines, they never could have located the mountain pass so precisely. An alert Algarvian mage somewhere between the Naantali district and the pass might have detected the sorcery when at last it burst forth. He might have detected it, but that would have done him no good. By the time he knew it was there, he would have been far too late to stop it.

Fernao felt the spell seize the stones and the already-drifted snow along the sides of the pass, felt it seize them and jerk them and send them crashing down onto the road and the ley line at the bottom. Mezentio’s mages might have achieved the same effect by killing a camp full of Kaunians, but never from this range: never, probably, from a quarter of this range. And this spell was clean-no murder attached to it.

Afterwards, all the mages sighed. Now Fernao could squeeze Pekka’s hand without distracting her. She smiled and nodded. “We did it,” she said. “I could feel that we did it.”

“Aye.” Fernao nodded, too. “The Algarvians will have harder work now in Jelgava.”And it’s likelier your husband will come through safe. Should I be happy about that? Aye, curse it, I should. Leino’s not my enemy. He’s fighting my enemies. He kept his face straight. Hedidn’t want Pekka to know what he was thinking there. We do have to be civilized about these things… curse it.

Ever since she’d spied Spinello stalking through the wreckage of Eoforwic, Vanai had known she would try to kill him if she ever saw even the slightest chance. She hadn’t known how badly she needed to go looking for that chance till the day before Pybba’s rebels surrendered to the Algarvians, the day the redheads agreed to treat the Forthwegians as proper war captives instead of butchering them for bandits.

Ealstan had slipped out of the pocket Pybba’s men still held. He’d slipped into and out of that pocket a good many times before then. Vanai had always hated it, but she couldn’t deny he knew what he was doing. And, when he’d come home full of gloom, she’d thought she understood. However foolish she reckoned Forthwegian patriotism, Ealstan felt it in his heart, in his belly, just as she felt her own Kaunianity.

But she hadn’t understood, or hadn’t understood everything, even if she’d thought she had. She’d found that out a couple of hours later, after putting Saxburh down for a nap. Ealstan, by then, had gone through a good deal of the wine in the flat. She hadn’t even worried about that, though Kaunians often sneered at Forthwegians for drunkenness. She’d long since seen Ealstan didn’t let wine and spirits rule him, and that day he’d had more sorrows to drown than usual.

He’d also had more sorrows to drown than she knew. He’d looked up from the mug when she walked into the kitchen, looked up from it and- voice not blurry in the least, he’d asked, “Did you ever run across a redhead named Spinello?”

The question had crashed into her like a lightning bolt from a clear sky. Her face must have given her away, for she’d seen his mouth tighten. After that, what point to lying? “Aye,” she’d answered quietly. “Back in Oyngestun. How did you know?”

Maybe that hadn’t been the perfect question, for it had made him gulp down all the wine left in his mug. “I heard him… mention your name talking to his men. How could he know I speak Algarvian?”

Mentioning her name undoubtedly meant going into obscene detail over all the things he’d made her do back there in her home village. With a sigh, Vanai had said, “He wanted to get my grandfather to collaborate with the redheads. That would have meant something in scholarly circles. You saw him once, when he was out looking at an imperial Kaunian site with my grandfather and me.”

“I remember,” Ealstan had said. He’d hesitated then; Vanai gave him credit for it. But he’d gone on: “He wanted something else from you.”

Vanai had nodded. What else could I have done? she wondered. Nothing. Nothing at all. “My grandfather said no,” she’d told Ealstan. “He kept saying no. You met him. You have some small idea what a stubborn man he was. And so Spinello threw him into a labor gang. He wasn’t young. He’d never done work like that in his life. It was killing him. I watched it happen for a little while. I couldn’t stand it. Whatever else he was, he was the only kin I had left in the world. And so I…” Up till then, she’d managed to sound as cool, as detached, as if she were talking about building a fence. But the last few words came out in a ragged gulp as tears spilled down her cheeks: “I made a bargain with Spinello.”

She’d stood there waiting once she got it out. What would Ealstan do? Slowly, he’d climbed to his feet. Is he going out the door? she remembered thinking. Will he come back? Will he even look back? Will he hit me? This once, I could bear it without hating him afterwards.

He’d come toward her. She remembered bracing herself, too. Then he’d put his arms around her and switched from the Forthwegian they’d been speaking to his slow, clear, classical Kaunian: “Brivibas, I think, was luckier in you than he realized-perhaps luckier than he deserved. And may the powers below eat that Spinello.”

Vanai really had burst into tears then, and buried her face in the hollow of his shoulder. They were very nearly of a height; she hadn’t had to stand on tiptoe to do it. She remembered whispering, “Thank you,” over and over again, but she still wasn’t sure if she’d said it loud enough for Ealstan to hear.

But she was sure what he’d said before she looked up again: “May the powers below have some help eating that Spinello.” He’d sounded thoroughly grim.

He’d sounded so grim, in fact, that he’d terrified her. She’d thought about killing Spinello. He’d sounded as if he intended to march out right that minute and do it. And so she’d clung to him and exclaimed, “No! He’s not worth the risk of you. By the powers above, heisn’t, Ealstan! And besides, before long the Unkerlanters are bound to do it for us.”

“They haven’t done it yet,” he’d grumbled. But he hadn’t gone charging out of the flat then, and, so far as Vanai knew, he hadn’t tried stalking Spinello since. She hoped that meant he’d listened to her as well as hearing her. She hoped so, but she wasn’t sure. He hadn’t seemed any different with her after that dreadful day, and he hadn’t seemed any different with Saxburh, either. Vanai dared take that for a good sign.

Even so, she knew that, if she was going to try to get rid of Spinello, sooner was definitely better. Ealstan, she feared, would also try-and even if he succeeded, he was all too likely to get caught. If he did try, he would pick the most obvious, most direct way. Vanai knew him too well to have any doubts on that score. But what Algarvian would pay any particular attention to a Forthwegian woman? Vanai wasn’t standing by a mirror to see her own smile, but suspected it showed a lot of pointed teeth. Every now and then, being Thelberge to the world had its advantages.

But being anyone in Eoforwic these days also had its disadvantages, and they were many and large. Few Unkerlanter eggs had burst close to the block of flats, but that didn’t mean Swemmel’s soldiers couldn’t start lobbing them this way whenever they chose. Staying in Eoforwic meant living with danger.

Staying in Eoforwic also meant living with hunger. Not a lot of food came into the Forthwegian capital, and the redheads kept more than their share of what did. People haunted the markets. They also pocked through the wreckage that made up so much of the city, looking for jars of olives and for smoked or salted meat and for wine and, most of all, for rest crates filled with sorcerously preserved food. Find one of those-and get it home without having it stolen-and you might eat well for a long time. Find silver or jewelry and you could pay the piratical prices in the markets.

And, as happened every fall, people hunted mushrooms over every inch of bare ground in Eoforwic. Sometimes Vanai would go out with Ealstan and they would pass the baby back and forth. No matter how dismal things were, Saxburh could make Ealstan smile. “If it weren’t for mushrooms, you wouldn’t be here,” he would tell her. She hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about, but she always gurgled with delight when he talked to her.

And sometimes Vanai would take Saxburh out by herself. Nobody in shattered Eoforwic seemed to need bookkeepers, but there were plenty of day-laborer jobs, and Ealstan took them without complaint, especially when he got paid in food instead of silver. Plenty of Forthwegian women took them, too, but Vanai couldn’t. Even if she’d had someone to take care of Saxburh, she didn’t dare stay out in public for the long shifts such work required. If her sorcerous disguise wore off… She didn’t want to think about that.

No one kept track of a mushroom hunter’s hours, though. Head down, the baby in the crook of her arm or sometimes in a cloth harness she’d made from scraps of old clothes, she eyed damp ground in the park where she’d first shown herself to the world as Thelberge-where, in fact, Ealstan had given her the name she’d used ever since.

Sometimes she had good luck, sometimes not so good. More people were harvesting a lot less space than had been true around Gromheort and Oyngestun. But mushrooms weren’t like gold or silver-getting some out of the ground today didn’t mean more wouldn’t spring up tomorrow. You couldn’t live on mushrooms alone, but they did help. And they made barley-often stale barley, sometimes moldy barley-much more bearable and less monotonous than it would have been without them.

Paying close attention to small patches of ground helped Vanai keep from noticing how ravaged the park was. Sometimes, though, as when a score of new craters from bursting eggs pocked its face like some ghastly disease, she couldn’t help it. Ealstan was along with her that morning. With a sad sigh, she said, “This place was shabby when you brought me here a couple of years ago. Now-now it’s like looking at a corpse.”

“A murdered corpse,” he agreed. “But if we’d been here when those eggs came down, we’d’ve been the ones who got murdered.”

“Maybe,” Vanai said. “But maybe not, too. I’ve had to jump into craters a few times when the Unkerlanters started tossing eggs across the river, or when their dragons came over the city. It’s just something we need to do these days, that’s all.” She wondered what her former self from Oyngestun-herself from before the war-would have made of that calm, matter-of-fact statement. She would have reckoned it madness. She was sure of that. What else could it possibly be?

But why, if it were madness, was Ealstan soberly nodding? “I’ve had to do the same thing myself,” he answered, and showed his teeth in a mirthless grin. “Life in the big city. It isn’t even what irks me these days. You know what is?”

“Tell me,” Vanai said, but then she stopped listening because she’d seen some meadow mushrooms peeping out from the edge of a clump of woods. She hurried over, picked them, and put them in her basket. “I’m sorry. Now tell me.”

“You know about Plegmund’s Brigade? Everybody knows about Plegmund’s Brigade,” he said, and Vanai nodded. Ealstan muttered something under his breath about his cousin Sidroc, then got back to things at hand:

“The Algarvians have cooked up something like that for Forthwegian women now, powers below eat them.”

“For women?” Vanai said. “Do they give them sticks?”

“No, no.” He shook his head. “They call themHilde ’s Helpers-you know, after Plegmund’s queen. And whatHilde ’s Helpers do is, they cook and they bake like maniacs, and then they give the redheads everything they make. They just ignore Forthwegian laborers-I’ve seen that, too, curse them. I heard one of them say the Algarvians deserve the best of everything because they’re defending us from Swemmel’s savages.”

“Do people really believe that? Can people really believe that?” Vanai asked.

“This gal did,” Ealstan said. He held Saxburh up in front of his face. “She didn’t even know as much as you do. She didn’t come close.” Saxburh laughed.

Vanai didn’t. No Kaunian, of course, could prefer Algarvians to Unkerlanters. But, even now, some Forthwegians evidently could. Fools, she thought. But there were also Forthwegians who preferred the Algarvians not in spite of what they’d done to the Kaunians of Forthweg but because of it.

She saw some ofHilde ’s Helpers a couple of days later. They wore blue-and-white armbands-Forthwegian colors-and, sure enough, carried baskets and trays of food. They all looked well fed themselves, too. Vanai quietly cursed them. And, had they known what she was, they would have cursed her.

She hoped Unkerlanter dragons would raid Eoforwic whileHilde ’s Helpers were serving Algarvian soldiers. If that wasn’t poetic justice, what was? “They would deserve it,” she told Saxburh. The baby smiled, showing a new tooth that had cost Vanai an almost sleepless night. Babies didn’t argue, except when you wanted them to go to bed.

And then Vanai smiled, too, and kissed Saxburh. Her daughter laughed out loud. A moment later, so did Vanai. She knew what she needed to do. She knew how to do it. “I’ll have to get another basket,” she said, “a little one. A special one. And I’ll need a bit of luck. But do you know what, sweetheart? For once in my life, I won’t need much.” Saxburh grinned, as if proud of that new tooth. So did Vanai.