Out of the Darkness

Nine

Every now and then, Talsu began seeing men in Jelgavan uniform in Skrunda. He didn’t see many of them, not compared to the swarms of Kuusaman soldiers who kept going through his home town. The ones he did see roused mixed feelings in him. He was glad his kingdom showed signs of being able to defend itself again, at least with the help of its allies (he tried not to think of them as rescuers). For the Jelgavan soldiers, he felt nothing but pity. He’d been one himself. He knew what it was like.

For a while, he hoped things might have changed since the disaster that led to Jelgava’s collapse four and a half years before. After all, King Donalitu had spent most of that time in exile in Lagoas. The Lagoans had a pretty good notion of what was what. Maybe Donalitu had learned something in Setubal-though the edicts he’d issued since his return argued against it.

But the first Jelgavan officer Talsu saw strutting through the streets of Skrunda smashed his hopes. The major was young and slim and handsome, not fat and homely like Colonel Dzirnavu, Talsu’s old regimental commander. But the noble’s badge on his chest and the way he shouted and screamed at the luckless men who had to follow him made memories Talsu would sooner have forgotten come flooding back.

He didn’t say anything about the fellow to his father. Never having gone into the army, Traku didn’t know what it was like. He idealized it in his mind, too. Even after the way Jelgava collapsed proved its army anything but ideal, Talsu’s father didn’t want to hear criticism and complaints.

In whispers-the only sort of talk that gave even a hope of privacy in the crowded flat-Talsu spilled out his worries to Gailisa when they both should have been asleep. “Nothing has changed,” he said, despair in his voice. “Nothing. The same arrogant idiots still have charge of us. And if we ever have to do any fighting again-”

“Powers above keep it from happening,” his wife broke in, also whispering.

“Aye, powers above keep it from happening indeed,” Talsu agreed. “If we ever have to do any fighting again, whoever we go up against will roll over us, same as the Algarvians did. Our men will want their officers dead, and how can you fight like that?”

Instead of answering what was, Talsu was sure, an unanswerable argument, Gailisa twisted in the narrow bed they shared to kiss him. If she hoped to distract him, she succeeded. His arms went around her. Her breasts pressed against him through the thin fabric of their pyjama tunics. A moment later, she laughed very quietly. He was pressing against her somewhere, too.

He slid a hand under her tunic. She sighed, again softly, as he caressed her. His parents had the flat’s only bedroom to themselves. His sister lay sleeping in her own cot only a few feet away. If he and Gailisa wanted to make love, they had to do it stealthily. Ausra was good about staying asleep-so good, Talsu wondered whether she sometimes knew what was going on and simply pretended not to-but he didn’t want to bother her.

Gailisa stroked him, too. He kissed her and reached under her trousers. She rolled onto her back and let her legs slide open to make things easier for him. Then she slithered down the bed and unbuttoned his fly. Her mouth was warm and wet and sweet. Talsu set a hand on the back of her head, half stroking her hair, half urging her on. If she’d kept going till he exploded, he wouldn’t have minded at all.

But, after a little while, she turned her back on him. Still lying on his side, he hiked her pyjama bottoms down just far enough. She stuck out her backside, and he went into her from behind. “Ah,” she whispered.

He said her name as he began to move. She pushed back against him. The bed creaked, but less from the side-to-side motion than it would have with him atop her. And, when Gailisa shuddered with pleasure a few minutes later, she put her face against the pillow so only a tiny sound escaped. Talsu tried to stay as quiet as he could, too. The joy that filled him, though, made him have trouble noticing how little or how much noise he made.

Ausra didn’t stir in the other bed. Either he’d been quiet enough or she was more than polite enough. At the moment, Talsu didn’t much care which. He leaned up on an elbow and kissed Gailisa, who twisted back toward him so their lips could meet. They both set their clothes to rights. Talsu happily fell asleep a few minutes later. Thoughts of Jelgavan soldiers and Jelgavan officers never entered his mind.

He wished he could have gone on not thinking about them, too. But, two days later, a sharp knock on the door to the flat made both him and his father look up from their work. “Sounds like business,” Traku said hopefully.

“That would be nice,” Talsu said. “I’ll find out.”

When he opened the door, there stood the Jelgavan major he’d seen before. The fellow was an inch or two shorter than Talsu, but contrived to looked down his nose at him just the same. “Am I correct in being given to understand that this is a tailor’s establishment?” he asked in haughty tones.

“That’s right. . sir,” Talsu answered. Regretfully, he added, “Won’t you please come in?”

“Good morning, sir,” Traku said when the major did stride into the flat. He sounded friendlier than Talsu had; he could hardly have sounded less friendly than his son. “What can we do for you today?”

“I require a rain cloak,” the officer said. “I require it at once, as I shall soon be going into Algarve.”

“I’ll be happy to take care of you, sir,” Traku said. “There will be a small extra charge for a rush job-I have some other business I’ll have to put aside to take care of you right away, you understand.”

“No,” the major said.

Traku frowned. “I beg your pardon, sir?”

“No,” the fellow repeated. “I will not pay extra, not a copper’s worth. This is part of my uniform.”

“Sir, I’m sure you already have a uniform-issue rain cloak, just like every other officer,” Talsu said. “If you want something with a little extra style or quality, you do have to pay for it.” He’d been through the army himself; he knew what the rules were.

The Jelgavan noble looked at him as if he’d just found him in his peach. “Who are you to tell me what I must do and must not do?” he demanded. “How dare you show such cheek?”

“Your Excellency, even officers have regulations,” Talsu said.

“Do you want my business, or do you not?” the major said.

Talsu’s father spoke reasonably: “Sir, if you want me to put your business in front of everybody else’s, you’re going to have to pay for that, because it’ll mean other people’s clothes won’t get made as fast as they’d like.” It probably wouldn’t mean that. It would mean he and Talsu would have to work extra long hours to get the other orders done on time. Keeping things simple, though, seemed best.

“Other people?” The noble snorted. He plainly wasn’t used to the idea of worrying about whether what he did bothered anyone else. “Do these ‘other people’ of yours have the high blood in their veins?”

“Aye, sir, a couple of ‘em do,” Traku said stolidly.

And that, to Talsu’s amazement, turned the major reasonable in the blink of an eye. “Well, that’s different,” he said, still sounding gruff, but not as if he were about to accuse the two tailors of treason. “If it is a matter of inconveniencing folk of my own class. .” He cared nothing about inconveniencing commoners. Bothering other nobles, though-that mattered to him. “How large a fee did you have in mind?”

Traku named one twice as high as he’d ever charged an Algarvian for a rush job. The Jelgavan noble accepted it without a blink. He didn’t blink at the price Traku set for the rain cape, either. Maybe he had more money than he knew what to do with. Maybe-and more likely, Talsu judged-he just had no idea of what things were supposed to cost.

All he said on his departure was, “See that it’s ready on time, my good men.” And then he swept out, as if he’d been the king honoring a couple of peasants with the glory of his presence.

After the door closed, Traku said something under his breath. “I’m sorry, Father?” Talsu said. “I didn’t catch that.”

“I said, it’s no wonder some of our own people went off and fought on the Algarvian side after King Donalitu came back. That overbred son of a whore and all the others like him don’t make the redheads look like such a bad bargain.”

“I’ve had that same thought a time or two-more than a time or two- myself,” Talsu replied. “Aye, he’s one overbred son of a whore. But he’s our over-bred son of a whore, if you know what I mean. He won’t haul us off by the hundreds to kill us for the sake of our life energy.”

His father sighed. “You’re right. No doubt about it, you’re right. But if that’s the best we can say for him-and it fornicating well is-it’s pretty cold praise, wouldn’t you say?”

“Of course it is,” Talsu said. “But it’s no surprise, or it shouldn’t be one. Remember, you’ve just had nobles for customers. I’ve had them for commanders. I know what they’re like.” He almost said, I know what’s wrong with them. Even if he didn’t say it, it was what he meant.

“But the redheads have nobles, too,” Traku said. “These Kuusamans have them. They must. But they don’t act like their shit doesn’t stink the way ours do. Why is that? Why are we stuck with a pack of bastards at the top?”

“I don’t know,” Talsu said. He didn’t know any Jelgavans who did know, either. He grinned wryly. “Because we’re lucky, I guess.”

His father’s fingers twisted in an evil-averting gesture that went back to the days of the Kaunian Empire. “That’s the kind of luck I could do without. That’s the kind of luck the whole kingdom could do without.”

“Oh, aye,” Talsu agreed. “But how do we change it?” He answered his own question: “We don’t, not as long as Donalitu’s our king. He’s the worst of the lot.” He sighed. “They don’t have hardly any nobles in Unkerlant, people say.”

“No, but that’s on account of King Swemmel killed most of ‘em,” Traku said. “What the Unkerlanters have instead is, they have King Swemmel. Is he a better bargain?” Talsu didn’t answer; by everything he’d heard, Swemmel was about as bad a bargain as anybody could make. His father rammed the point home: “Do you want to live in Unkerlant?”

“Powers above, no!” Talsu used that same ancient gesture. “But it’s getting so I hardly want to live here anymore, either.”

“Where, then?” his father asked.

“I don’t know.” Talsu hadn’t been altogether serious. After some thought, though, he said, “Kuusamo, maybe. The slanteyes are … looser than we are, if you know what I mean. I had some dealings with them when I was with the irregulars. They don’t make a big fuss about rank and blood. They just do what needs doing. I liked that.”

“How would you like a Kuusaman winter?” Traku asked with a sly smile.

Talsu shivered at the mere idea. “I don’t suppose I would, not very much.” He bent over the tunic he’d been working on when the major came in. If he and his father were going to get the rain cape done along with everything else, they could afford only so much chatter. And what was Kuusamo but moonshine, anyhow?

This time, the sleigh carrying Fernao and Pekka glided west, not east. Every stride of the harnessed reindeer took Fernao farther not only from the blockhouse but also from the hostel in the Naantali district. The hostel had deliberately been built a long way from a ley line. That made getting to it difficult and leaving inconvenient.

As if picking the thought-and some of the things behind it-from his mind, Pekka leaned toward him and said, “This feels very strange.”

Fernao nodded. “For me, too,” he said. “Going to see Kajaani will be … interesting.”

Her laugh was nervous. “Bringing you there will be … interesting, too.”

Seeing her home town wasn’t what mattered, though. Meeting her sister, meeting her son-those were what counted. “I wonder what they’ll think of me,” he said.

He waited for Pekka to say something like, Of course they’ll think you’re wonderful. A Lagoan woman would have. Pekka just answered, “That’s why we’re doing this: to find out, I mean.”

“I know,” Fernao said. As a moderately resolute bachelor, he hadn’t gone through the ritual of meeting a woman’s family before. And, in his younger days, he hadn’t expected family to include a son.

Again halfway thinking along with him, Pekka said, “Uto will look up to you, I think.” She smiled. “How can he help it, when you’re so tall?” But the smile slipped. “I don’t know about Elimaki. I’m sorry.”

“It would be simpler if her husband hadn’t run off with somebody else, wouldn’t it?” Fernao said.

Pekka nodded. “It’s too bad, too. I always liked Olavin,” she said. “But these things do happen.” We ought to know, Fernao thought. He kept that to himself; he didn’t want to remind Pekka that she’d been carrying on with him before her husband got killed. And her thoughts hadn’t gone in that direction, for she added a one-word parenthesis: “Men.” Again, Fernao found it wiser to keep quiet.

The driver took them right up to the caravan depot at Joensuu, the little town closest to the hostel. As far as Fernao could see, Joensuu had no reason for existing except lying on a ley line. When the ley-line caravan glided into the depot, he was briefly startled to note it was northbound. Then Pekka said, “Remember? I warned you about this. We have to go around three sides of a rectangle to get to Kajaani.”

He snapped his fingers in annoyance, no happier than any other mage at forgetting something. “Aye, you did tell me that, and it went clean out of my head.” He put his arm around her. “Must be love.”

From a Lagoan, that was an ordinary sort of compliment. As Fernao had seen, though, Kuusamans were more restrained in how they praised one another. Pekka still seemed flustered as they climbed up into the caravan car.

They had to switch caravans twice, once to a westbound line and then to the southbound one that would finally take them to Kajaani. Fernao hoped his baggage made the switches, too. Pekka was going home. She would have more clothes there. If his things didn’t arrive, he’d wear what he had on his back till he could buy more-and he wasn’t sure Kuusaman shops would have many garments for a man of his inches.

What with the delays in changing caravans, they traveled all through the night. Their seats reclined, as was true in most caravan cars, but still made only poor substitutes for real beds. Fernao dozed and woke, dozed and woke, the whole night long. When he was awake, he peered out the window at the snow-covered countryside. The night was moonless, but the southern lights glowed in shifting, curtainlike patterns of green and yellow. He’d seen them brighter on the austral continent, but the display here was far more impressive than it ever got up in Setubal.

The sun was just coming up over the horizon when the ley-line caravan topped the last forested rise north of Kajaani and glided down toward the port city. Even with the bright sun of early spring on it, the sea ahead looked cold. Maybe that was Fernao’s imagination working overtime, and maybe it wasn’t. That sea led southwest to the land of the Ice People.

Pekka yawned and stretched. She’d had a better night than Fernao. Seeing familiar landscape and then familiar buildings slide past the window, she smiled. “Oh, good! We’re here.”

“So we are.” What Fernao saw didn’t impress him. Kajaani, to him, looked like a Kuusaman provincial town, and nothing more. He knew he was spoiled; to him, any city save Setubal was likely to seem just a provincial town. He asked, “Can we see Kajaani City College from here?”

Shaking her head, Pekka pointed across the car, to the right. “It’s on the western edge of town. If we get a chance, I’ll take you over there. Having an illustrious Lagoan theoretical sorcerer along with me will make Professor Heikki unhappy, and I do what I can to keep her that way.”

“Aye, you’ve told me about some of your squabbles,” Fernao said. “What’s your chairman’s specialty? Veterinary magic? Is that what you said?”

“That’s right,” Pekka said. “And she’s nobody of any consequence there. She’d make a splendid clerk, though. That’s why she’s been chairman so long,

I suppose. But she inflicts herself on people who do real work, so nobody in the department can stand her.”

“Kajaani!” the conductor called as the caravan, nearing the depot, slowed. “Everybody out for Kajaani, on account of this is the end of the line.”

End of the world, Fernao thought. The ley-line caravan eased to a halt. The conductor opened the door at the front of the car. Pekka got to her feet. So did Fernao, leaning on his cane to help himself up. His leg and shoulder both complained. He’d known they would. I’m lucky to have both legs, he thought, and then, if this is luck.

Pekka got down ahead of him. She watched anxiously as he came down the little portable stairway. She was, he saw, ready to catch him if he stumbled. Being somewhere close to twice her size, he made sure he didn’t, and reached the ground safely.

Someone-a woman on the platform-called Pekka’s name. She turned. “Elimaki!” she exclaimed. A moment later, she added, “Uto!”

“Mother!” The boy swarmed toward her. He was, Fernao saw, nine or ten, with a good deal of Pekka in his face. When he sprang into her arms for a hug, the top of his head came past her shoulder. The woman who followed him also looked a good deal like Pekka. Of course she does, you idiot, Fernao thought. She’s her sister, by the powers above. Elimaki was a couple of years younger, and a little stockier. She too hugged Pekka, but even as she did it she was eyeing Fernao with curiosity both undisguised and, he thought, more than a little hostile.

“I’m so glad to see both of you again,” Pekka said, kissing first Uto and then Elimaki. She took a deep breath. “And I want you both to meet my. . friend, Fernao of Lagoas.”

Uto held out his hand. “Hello, sir,” he said gravely. Sure enough, he added, “I didn’t think you would be so tall.” He was curiously studying Fernao, too.

Not a lot of Lagoans or other Algarvic folk got down here, Fernao suspected. He clasped Uto’s hand, not his wrist, as he would have with one of his own countrymen. “I’m very pleased to meet you,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot about you from your mother.”

Pekka rolled her eyes. Even Elimaki had trouble holding her face straight. Uto looked more innocent than he had any hope of being. “I don’t do that so much anymore,” he said, leaving that carefully unspecified.

“You do too, you scamp,” Elimaki said. She nodded to Fernao. “And I have heard a lot about you.”

“I probably don’t do that so much anymore, either,” he answered, deadpan.

Pekka’s sister gave him a sharp look, then smiled. “You’ll have a carpetbag, won’t you?” she said, looking back toward the caravan’s baggage car.

“I do hope so,” Fernao said. “I’d better find out.”

“Why do you have that cane?” Uto asked as he limped toward the baggage car.

“Because I got hurt in the war, down in the land of the Ice People,” he said.

“The Algarvians?” Uto asked, and Fernao nodded. The boy’s face worked. “They killed my father, too, those-” He called the Algarvians a name nastier than any Fernao had known at the same age. Then he burst into tears.

While Pekka comforted him, Fernao reclaimed his carpetbag. It was there, which made him think kindly thoughts about the people who ran the Kuusaman ley-line caravans. He carried it back to Pekka and her son and her sister. Elimaki said to him, “I was thinking. . The two of you might want to stay at my house tonight, not next door at Pekka’s.”

“I don’t know.” Fernao looked to Pekka. “What do you want to do? Either way is all right with me.”

“Aye, let’s do that,” Pekka said at once, and shot her sister a grateful glance. “I don’t want to go into my old house right now. It would tear me to pieces.” Once she said it, it made good sense-indeed, perfect sense-to Fernao. With all those memories of past times with her dead husband there, he would seem nothing but an interloper.

“Let’s go, then,” Elimaki said. They caught a local caravan going east through the city, then walked up a hill past pines and firs to the street where Elimaki’s house and Pekka’s stood side by side. Seeing Fernao labor on the way up the hill, Pekka whispered to Uto. He took Fernao’s carpetbag from him and carried it with pride.

Elimaki’s house struck Fernao as enormous. In Setubal, the biggest city in the world, people were crowded too close together to let anyone but the very wealthy enjoy so much space. An advantage to provincial towns I hadn’t thought of. “You’ll want something to eat,” Elimaki said, and disappeared into the kitchen. Pekka followed her. That left Fernao alone with Uto.

He didn’t know what to say. He’d never had much to do with children. If I want to stay with Pekka, though, I’ll have to learn. While he searched for words, Uto found some: “Aunt Eli says you’re Mother’s friend, her special friend.”

As gravely as Uto had on meeting him, Fernao nodded. “That’s true.”

“Does that mean you’re my special friend, too?”

“I don’t know,” Fernao said. “It’s not just up to me, you know. It’s up to you, too.”

Pekka’s son pondered that with the care his mother gave a new spell. At last, he nodded. “You’re right. I guess I have to think about it some more.” After another pause, he said, “I know I’m not supposed to ask you much about what you’re doing, but you’re helping Mother find magic to beat the Algarvians, aren’t you?”

Fernao nodded again. “I can’t tell you much about what I’m doing, either, but I can tell you that much. That’s just what I’m doing.”

A fierce light kindled in Uto’s eyes. “In that case, I do want you to be my special friend. I’m still too little to pay them back for Father myself.” However fierce he sounded, he started to cry again. Fernao held out his arms. He didn’t know whether the boy would come to him, but Uto did. Awkwardly, he comforted him.

“Breakfast’s ready,” Elimaki called from the kitchen. Uto bounded away. He still had tears on his cheeks, but he was smiling again. Fernao followed more slowly. As he came into the kitchen, Elimaki saw Uto’s tears. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” he answered carelessly, and turned to his mother, who was serving up plates of smoked salmon scrambled with eggs and cream. “I like your friend.”

“Do you?” Pekka said, and Uto gave an emphatic nod. She tousled his hair. “I’m glad.” Pekka looked toward her sister, as if to say, I told you so. Fernao pretended not to notice.

“I like him, too,” Elimaki said, and then tempered that by adding, “More than I expected to,” so Fernao wasn’t sure how much credit he’d earned. Some, anyhow: by the relief in Pekka’s eyes, perhaps even enough.

Vanai, these days, was a better housekeeper than she’d ever been, at least when it came to keeping the floor of her flat clean. She hadn’t really sought such neatness; she’d had it forced on her. Saxburh crawled all over the flat. She could go surprisingly-sometimes alarmingly-fast. If she found anything she thought was interesting, it was liable to end up in her mouth before Vanai could take it away from her. The cleaner the floor was, the fewer the chances she had to eat anything disgusting or dangerous.

Saxburh didn’t appreciate her mother’s vigilance. As far as the baby was concerned, everything she could reach was supposed to go into her mouth. How could she tell what it was if she couldn’t taste it? She fussed and squawked when Vanai took things away from her.

“Fuss all you like,” Vanai told her after one rescue in the nick of time. “You can’t eat a dead cockroach.” By the way the baby wailed, she was liable to be stunted for life if she didn’t get her fair share of dead bugs.

Keeping such things out of her hands and, more to the point, out of her mouth was Vanai’s second-biggest worry. It was the biggest one about which she could do anything. Ealstan was and remained somewhere far away to the east. She wondered if she’d even know if anything-powers above, forbid it! — happened to him. She’d heard not a word since he got dragooned into King Swemmel’s army. If he didn’t come back after the war ended, that would tell her what she needed to know-or it might, for the Unkerlanters could simply have hauled him off to the other end of their vast kingdom.

How would I be able to find out, one way or the other? she wondered. The answer there was painfully obvious: I wouldn’t. She pushed the worry to the back of her mind, as she did whenever she started fretting about what she couldn’t help.

If only Ealstan were here… If Ealstan were here, he would find life in Eoforwic easier than it had been at any time since he and Vanai came to the Forthwegian capital. It had been weeks since Algarvian dragons appeared overhead. Gromheort still held out, but the rest of Forthweg belonged to Unkerlant these days-and, nominally, to King Beornwulf as well.

Beornwulf seemed to be doing what he could (and, perhaps, what the Unkerlanters would let him) to be a good king. Broadsheets outlawing price-gouging in the marketplace went up alongside sheets singing the praises of Swemmel’s soldiers. Vanai looked out her kitchen window. A work crew was pasting up fresh broadsheets even now. I wonder if I could put glass in the window again, Vanai thought. It wouldn‘t get broken right away, not any more.

She couldn’t afford to look out the window for long. She looked back toward Saxburh instead. It wasn’t a dead cockroach this time-just a dust bunny. Vanai got it away from the baby. When Saxburh fussed, Vanai said, “Come on-let’s go see what the new sheets say.”

Scooping her daughter off the floor, she carried her down the stairs and out into the street. A few other people were looking at the new broadsheets, too, but only a few. There’d been too many broadsheets-from King Penda, from the Algarvians, and now from the Unkerlanters and their puppet king-for anybody to get very excited over one more. Vanai wasn’t very excited, just curious and looking for an excuse to get out of the flat for a little while.

A Forthwegian man reading one of the new broadsheets pasted to a fence turned away with a disgusted gesture. Another one said, “Well, here’s something else that won’t fly.”

The first fellow said, “And what if it did? Doesn’t hardly matter anymore, does it? I ask you, is this a waste of time or what?” Shaking his head, he walked off.

Vanai went up to a broadsheet. “Oh,” she said softly when she saw its title; the headline was CONCERNING KAUNIANS. She still wore her sorcerous disguise, and so still looked like a Forthwegian herself. Back before the war, Eoforwic had a name as the place where Forthwegians and Kaunians got on better than they did anywhere else in the kingdom. The reputation held some truth; Forthwegians and Kaunians here had rioted together on learning that the Algarvians were shipping blonds west to be murdered. But plenty of Forthwegians here despised Kaunians, too. Vanai had seen that along with the other.

And what would King Beornwulf have to say on the subject? She went up closer to the broadsheet so she could read the smaller print. The new edict came straight to the point, declaring, All laws, orders, and regulations imposed by the Algarvian occupiers of the Kingdom of Forthweg concerning persons of Kaunian blood are henceforth and forevermore null and void. Persons of Kaunian blood legally residing in the Kingdom of Forthweg are and shall remain citizens of the said Kingdom, with full rights and privileges appertaining thereto, including the right to publish works in the Kaunian language (subject to the same limits of taste and decency as hold for works in the Forthwegian language). The status of persons of Kaunian blood residing in the Kingdom of Forthweg shall be and shall remain precisely what it was before the obscene and vicious Algarvian occupation, which in law shall be judged never to have occurred. Issued this day by order of King Beornwulf I of Forthweg, with the concurrence of his Unkerlanter allies.

Unkerlanters didn’t care much one way or the other about Kaunians. Only a handful of blonds lived in the far northeast of Unkerlant, not enough to make anyone in Swemmel’s kingdom nervous about them. That was one of the few good things Kaunians from Forthweg had to say about Unkerlanters: they weren’t Algarvians.

Vanai read aloud from the edict: “… the obscene and vicious Algarvian occupation, which in law shall be judged never to have occurred.” She looked around at the wreckage and rubble of Eoforwic and laughed bitterly. And the wreckage of the city-the wreckage of the whole kingdom-wasn’t the worst of it. People could rebuild ruined shops and houses and schools. How to go about rebuilding the lives the redheads had stolen, to say nothing of those they’d wrecked?

Publishing in Kaunian was legal again. But would anyone bother? Maybe some scholars would: people who wanted to be read by a wider audience, an audience in Kuusamo or Jelgava or even Algarve that had never learned Forthwegian. But how many writers now would turn their hands to romances or poetry or plays or new sheets in classical Kaunian? How many people were left alive to read them?

“Powers below eat King Mezentio,” Vanai whispered. He hadn’t killed off all the Kaunians in Forthweg. But he was liable to have killed Kaunianity here. That black thought had crossed Vanai’s mind before. Having it come back after she read an edict favoring her people made tears sting her eyes.

Saxburh squirmed. She wanted Vanai to put her down and let her crawl around out here. It was a mild spring day. Birds chirped. A warm breeze blew down from the north. Vanai said, “No,” to her daughter anyway, adding, “You’re not going to get to eat any bugs out here.”

She wished for a park with smoothly trimmed grass. She would take Saxburh there. The closest park she knew might not have had its grass trimmed since before the Derlavaian War. The ground there was bound to be cratered by bursting eggs. And every other park in and around Eoforwic was sure to be in the same state. So much rebuilding to do …

A woman came up and stood beside Vanai to read the broadsheet. She said, “I don’t know why this new excuse for a king we’ve got even bothered with such a silly law. How many of these people are left, anyway? Not enough to waste anyone’s time over, that’s for sure.”

What would she do if I told her I was a Kaunian? Vanai wondered. She didn’t make the experiment. All she said was, “You may be right,” and thought, No, I won’t give up my sorcerous disguise any time soon. I could make people hate my Thelberge self for what she does, but they don’t hate her for what she is.

And then a really nasty notion struck here. What if the other woman were a disguised Kaunian herself and, thinking Vanai a real Forthwegian, spoke out against blonds because she reckoned that expected of her? How would I know? I wouldn’t, any more than she knows what I am.

She had no proof. By the nature of things, she wouldn’t get any proof. But the thought, once lodged, wouldn’t go away. If it were true, it wouldn’t be Mezentio killing Kaunianity. No-Kaunianity would kill itself.

Vanai went back to her flat. Saxburh liked going upstairs; it felt different from walking on level ground. Vanai would have liked it better if she were carried instead of carrying, too.

“Judged never to have occurred,” she said again when she got inside. Did that mean she’d never had to go to bed with Major Spinello? Did it mean she’d never had to wear this sorcerous disguise? Did it mean the redheads had never captured her and thrown her into the Kaunian quarter here in Eoforwic? Did it mean they hadn’t killed tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, of blonds? She wished it did. Wishing meant nothing, or perhaps a little less.

“Dada,” Saxburh said.

“No, I’m your mama,” Vanai told her. The baby said mama, but less often. Vanai said, “Your dada will be home soon.” Powers above, I hope he will.

“Dada,” Saxburh said again. Vanai laughed. It was either that or start to cry. She’d done too much crying over the course of this war. So long as I don’t have to do any more.

She went to the cupboard to see what she could make for supper. Barley, peas, turnips, beans, olives, cheese, olive oil-nothing very exciting, but enough to keep body and spirit together. Peasants in the countryside ate this kind of food their whole lives long. City people praised peasants for their healthy diet-and didn’t try very hard to imitate it. The way things were these days, though, having enough of any kind of food, no matter how boring, was worth celebrating.

In a few days, she’d have to go down to the market square to get more. She wondered if Guthfrith who had been Ethelhelm would be there with his band. She’d seen the drummer and singer and songwriter several times. She didn’t stop to listen to his music anymore; he made her nervous. But he noticed her; she’d seen him follow her with his eyes more than once. That was not the least of the reasons he made her nervous. It wasn’t the only one, though. He had a good notion that she was a Kaunian. With King Beornwulf ‘s edict, it shouldn’t have mattered. It shouldn’t have, but it did. Kaunians in Forthweg rarely assumed edicts concerning them meant everything they said-unless the edicts were threats. With threats, whoever happened to be lording it over Forthweg was commonly sincere.

I have a weapon of my own, Vanai thought. Guthfrith was a fellow who played for coppers in the square. Ethelhelm, despite Kaunian blood, had been famous all over Forthweg. But, because of that Kaunian blood, Ethelhelm had decided it was wiser to collaborate with the Algarvians. If he tried to tar her, she could tar him.

She made a sour face. She hated to have to think that way. She hated to, but she would. If she had to keep her baby and herself safe, she’d do what needed doing and worry about everything else later. Like so many others across Derlavai, she’d learned ruthlessness in the war.

Marshal Rathar looked up at the night sky. Thick gray clouds covered it. He turned toward General Vatran-and accidentally bumped one of the bodyguards King Swemmel had ordered him to use after the Algarvians came altogether too close to assassinating him. “Sorry,” he murmured.

“It’s all right, sir,” the bodyguard said. “Just think of us as furniture.”

They were large, well-muscled pieces of furniture. Peering around them, Rathar said, “Everything’s ready to go.”

“It had better be,” Vatran answered. “We’ve spent as much time building up toward things here as we did in the north last summer.”

“We can’t afford to have things go wrong,” Rathar said. “Once we get over the Scamandro, we storm straight for Trapani. It’s going to be ours, by the powers above. The islanders aren’t going to take it. We’ve paid the biggest bills, and we deserve the biggest prize.” That was what Swemmel said, and Rathar, here, emphatically agreed with him.

Vatran nodded, too. “With what all we’ve got here, sir, I don’t see any way the redheads can stop us, or even slow us down much. How much longer till the dance starts?”

“A quarter of an hour,” Rathar replied. “We get past the high ground on the east side of the river and everything should go fine from there.”

“Here’s hoping,” Vatran said. “If they don’t pull out any funny sorcery …”

That worried Rathar, too. What did King Mezentio have left, here in Algarve’s last extremity? The mages who wore Unkerlant’s rock-gray had grown ever more appalled at the spells the redheads tried. Not many of those spells had worked as well as the Algarvians wished, but what the enemy attempted kept getting wilder and darker.

“If we keep them busy enough fighting a regular war, they can’t spend too much time or energy getting strange on us,” the marshal said, and hoped he was right.

At the appointed hour, swarms of rock-gray dragons flew low over the Scamandro, pulverizing the Algarvians’ works on the eastern bank with eggs and with flame. Hundreds, thousands, of egg-tossers flung more death across the river. At dozens of points along the front, artificers would be springing into action to bridge the Scamandro. Let any one of those bridges stand, and we’ll whip the redheads, Rathar thought. He expected a great many more than one would stand. He expected most of them would, in fact. But one would do well enough. Any bridgehead on the eastern side of the Scamandro would give his kingdom the opening it needed.

Mages added something new to the attack: sorcerous lamps that seemed to shine bright as the sun. Their glare reflected off the underside of the clouds and helped light the way for the dragons and the men aiming the egg-tossers-to say nothing of distracting the foe. “We want Mezentio’s men knocked flat before we cross,” Rathar said.

“Looks like we’re getting what we want, too,” Vatran answered. Even as far from the front as Mangani was, he had to raise his voice to be heard over the din of bursting eggs.

A crystallomancer came up to Rathar. Saluting, he said, “Lord Marshal, resistance on the far side of the river is lighter than expected. That’s what the dragonfliers report.”

“We’ve finally beaten them down,” Vatran said.

“That would be good. That would be very good.” Rathar wasn’t sure he believed it, but in the opening minutes of an attack he was willing to be hopeful.

Another crystallomancer hurried up and saluted. “Sir, we have a bridgehead over the Scamandro and behemoths crossing in numbers to the east bank.”

Vatran and Rathar both exclaimed in delight then, and clasped hands. The Algarvians had thrown back all their efforts to force earlier bridgeheads. Let’s see the whoresons throw this back, Rathar thought. I’d like to see any army in the world-throw back this attack.

More crystallomancers brought news of bridges crossing the river and behemoths and footsoldiers rushing across. All of them said the same thing as the dragonfliers had: resistance was less than expected. Maybe we have knocked them flat, Rathar thought. If we have, we walk into Trapani instead of battering our way there. That would be nice.

Aloud, he kept giving the same order over and over: “Keep moving! Try to take the high ground east of the Scamandro. Do everything you can to link up our crossings.” The crystallomancers hurried away to take his words to the officers in the front line.

Dawn meant the sorcerers could douse the hideous lights they’d fashioned. It also meant he got some news he would rather not have had: on the far side of the Scamandro, the Algarvians had started fighting back fiercely. “How can they?” Vatran said when the crystallomancers reported that. “We should have squashed them flat as a bug.”

“I think I know what they did,” Rathar said. “I’m not sure, but I think so. I think they pulled back from their frontline positions before we hit them. They did that a few times back in Unkerlant. It would let them save a lot of their men and egg-tossers and behemoths, even if it did cost them land.”

“They can’t afford to lose anything right now,” Vatran said.

“I know.” Rathar nodded. “But if they’d lost the men, they surely would have lost the land, too. This way, they have a chance of counterattacking and driving us back-or they think they do, anyhow.”

“We have to keep throwing men and behemoths at them,” Vatran said.

“We’re doing that. We haven’t been building up here for nothing,” Rathar said. “But it’s going to be harder than we thought it would.”

General Vatran made a sour face. “What isn’t, with Algarvians?”

Rathar had no answer for that. The redheads had come horrifyingly close to conquering his kingdom. Now he was tantalizingly close to conquering theirs. But they hadn’t made any of the fights easy, not a single one. They’d failed not because they weren’t good soldiers, but because there weren’t enough of them and because King Mezentio hadn’t thought he would need to bother conciliating the Unkerlanters his men overran. Arrogance was an Algarvian vice.

It wasn’t one that mattered here, though. There still aren‘t enough of them to stop us, Rathar thought. “Wherever we penetrate, send in reinforcements;” he commanded. Again, crystallomancers relayed his words to the commanders at the front.

He hoped they wouldn’t need the order. It was standard doctrine in Unkerlant. He gave it anyhow. In the heat of the moment, who could guess whether these front-line commanders bothered to remember doctrine?

More dragons flew east, to torment the Algarvians with eggs and with fire. Crystallomancers reported only a handful of enemy beasts rising to challenge them. There was no doubt whatsoever that the Unkerlanters had at last forced the line of the Scamandro. How much more they would be able to do, though, remained an open question.

“Powers below eat the redheads,” Vatran growled as the day wore on with no sign of a breakthrough.

“They will,” Rathar said. “We’re feeding them.”

“Not fast enough,” Vatran grumbled. Rathar wished he could have argued with his general. Unfortunately, he agreed with him. The Algarvians had salvaged more than he’d thought they could, and they were righting not only with their usual cleverness but also with the desperate courage of men who had nothing left to lose. They knew as well as Rathar that only they lay between his army and Trapani.

Another night and day of hammering produced only a little progress, and only a couple of lodgements on the high ground Mezentio’s men were defending. Had everything gone according to plan, Rathar’s behemoths would have been lumbering toward Trapani by then. But the Marshal of Unkerlant wasn’t the only one who’d made plans for this moment, and those of the Algarvians looked to be working a little better than his.

“How long can this go on?” Vatran complained that evening.

“I don’t know,” Rathar answered. “I still think we’re all right, though. We have made them fall back some, and we’ve still got reinforcements pouring in from the west. When they use up what they’ve mustered against us, it’s gone, and gone for good.”

But even he had trouble staying detached and optimistic when his men gained hardly any more ground on the third day of the attack than they had on the second. And that evening, Vatran wasn’t the one doing the complaining. A crystallomancer came up to Rathar and said, “Sir, King Swemmel would speak to you at once.”

Rathar had more than expected such a call. If anything, he was a little surprised the king had waited this long. “I’m coming,” he said. Just for a moment, he imagined ordering the crystallomancer to tell Swemmel he couldn’t come, that he was too busy. But no one had any business being too busy to talk to the King of Unkerlant.

Swemmel’s image stared out of the crystal at Rathar. Not for the first time, the marshal thought his sovereign looked like an Algarvian. He had a long, pale face with a straight nose, though his hair and eyes were dark like a proper Unkerlanter’s. Those eyes often had a febrile glow to them, and they positively blazed now. “We are not pleased, Marshal, not pleased at all,” Swemmel said without preamble. “We had hoped and believed the news from the front would be better than what we have heard.”

“I’d hoped so myself, your Majesty,” Rathar replied. “For now, the Algarvians are fighting harder than I thought they could. But when springs come to the icebound rivers in the south, the ice does melt each year, and the water does flow down to the Narrow Sea. As the ice does, the Algarvians’ lines will break up. The thaw is slow, but it will come.”

“Very pretty,” Swemmel said. “We did not know we had a poet commanding our armies. We want to be sure we do have a soldier commanding them.”

Stiffly, Rathar said, “Your Majesty, the redheads thought I was doing well enough to make it worth their while to try to murder me. If you think someone else can do better, give me a stick and send me to the front line. I will fight for you in whatever way suits you best.”

“We want Mezentio, Marshal,” the king said. “Give us Mezentio, as you gave us Raniero. By the time Mezentio dies, he will have spent long and long envying his cousin.”

Swemmel had boiled Raniero alive after his soldiers recaptured most of the Duchy of Grelz. Rathar didn’t know what he could do to Mezentio that was worse, but his sovereign had had a year and a half to think about it. “I don’t know if I can give you Mezentio, your Majesty,” he said. “He will have somewhat to say about that himself, very likely. But I can give you Trapani, and I will.”

“You should have done it already,” Swemmel said peevishly.

“The day will come, your Majesty,” Rathar promised. “And I think it will come soon. The Algarvians have lost ground here, and they can’t afford to lose much more. This is the last obstacle in front of us. We are beating it down.”

“Enemies everywhere,” King Swemmel muttered. Rathar didn’t think that was aimed at him. Had it been, Swemmel would have sacked him, or worse. The king gathered himself. “Break the Algarvians. Crush them beneath your heel- beneath our heel.” That was the royal we again, proud and imperious.

“Your Majesty, it will be a pleasure,” Rathar said. “And we will do it. It’s only a matter of time.” He hadn’t finished before the crystal flared and Swemmel’s image vanished. He’d told the king what he wanted to hear. Now he had to make it good. He hadn’t lied. He didn’t think it would take long.

Garivald had hated the Algarvians even before they overran his home village. But ever since he’d faced the redheads as an irregular-and especially since King Swemmel’s impressers hauled him into the army and he’d fought Mezentio’s men here in the north-he’d developed a sincere if grudging respect for them as soldiers. However outnumbered they were, they always fought cleverly, they always fought hard, and they always made Unkerlant pay more than it should have for every inch of land it took.

Always-until now. A couple of redheaded soldiers came out of a house with hands high over their heads and with fearful expressions on their faces. Garivald had been fearful, too, as in any fight. They might have killed him. He knew that all too well. But they’d given up instead. More and more now, Algarvians were throwing down their sticks and throwing up their hands. They knew, or some of them knew, they were beaten.

With a gesture from the business end of his stick, Garivald sent these redheads off to captivity. He didn’t even bother rifling their belt pouches for whatever silver they carried. It was as if he were saying, You fellows can go on. I’ll catch some of your pals pretty soon and frisk them instead.

Lieutenant Andelot called, “Well, Fariulf, they really are starting to go to pieces now. Even a few weeks ago, those whoresons would have made us pay the price of prying them out of there.”

A few weeks before, the Unkerlanter army, or the part of it with which Garivald was most intimately concerned, had been falling back from Bonorva in the face of a fierce Algarvian counterattack. Mezentio’s men couldn’t sustain it, though. And, having used up so many men and behemoths, they hadn’t been able to hold their ground against the Unkerlanters afterwards.

“I think you’re right, sir,” Garivald answered. By now, he took his false name as much for granted as his real one. He pointed toward the southeast, the direction in which his regiment had been driving. “What’s the name of the next town ahead?”

“I have to look.” Andelot unfolded a map, then checked himself. “No. Here, Sergeant. You come see for yourself. If you’ve got your letters, you may as well use them.”

“All right.” Garivald trotted over to the company commander. “Whereabouts are we now?” Andelot showed him with a grimy-nailed finger. “And we’re going this way, right?” Garivald asked. The young lieutenant nodded. Frowning in concentration, Garivald studied the map. “Then we’re headed toward. . Torgavi?” He wondered if he’d correctly pronounced the foreign name.

By the way Andelot beamed, he had. “That’s good, Fariulf. Anybody would think you’d been reading for years.” The lieutenant pointed to the blue line meandering past Torgavi. “And what’s the name of this river here?”

Garivald squinted at the map again: the river’s name was written in very small characters. “It’s the Albi, sir,” he said confidently; with a name that short, he was sure he hadn’t made a hash of it.

And he hadn’t. “Right again,” Andelot said. “You do so well here. Why didn’t you ever learn before?”

They’d been over this ground before. Shrugging broad shoulders, Garivald answered, “How could I have, sir? Our village had no school. Our firstman knew his letters, but I don’t think anybody else who lived there did. I don’t suppose any of the villages around ours were any different, either.”

Andelot nodded. “I’m sure you’re right, Sergeant. But things like that aren’t good for the kingdom. We’re less efficient than we ought to be. Just about all of these Algarvians can read and write. It makes them more flexible than we are, able to do more things. The same is true for the Kuusamans and Lagoans. They’re our allies now, but who knows how long that will last once Mezentio gets what’s coming to him? We need to start thinking about such things.”

Garivald shrugged again. The men from the great island in the distant east hardly seemed real to him. Of course, it hadn’t been so very long before that the Algarvians had hardly seemed real to him, either. He’d come to know them better than he’d ever imagined he would-and better than he’d ever wanted to, too. Would the same thing happen with the men of Kuusamo and Lagoas? He hoped not. Once the fight ended, all he wanted to do was find his way back to Obilot. He’d lost one family in the war. He hoped for the chance to start another.

Up ahead, somewhere near Torgavi, a few eggs burst. Less than a minute later, several more came down, these a lot closer to Garivald and Andelot. Garivald grimaced. “Not all the buggers have quit,” he said.

“No, not yet,” Lieutenant Andelot agreed. “That’s why we’re here-to take care of the ones too stubborn or too stupid to know they’re licked.” He blew a shrill blast on his whistle, loud enough to make Garivald’s ears ring, and shouted, “Forward!”

“Forward!” Garivald echoed, and then, showing off what he’d learned, “Let’s clear these bastards out of Torgavi.”

All along the line, officers’ whistles squealed. Officers and underofficers yelled, “Forward!” And forward the Unkerlanters went, trotting toward Torgavi across wheatfields and through olive groves. Garivald wondered why anyone wanted to cultivate olives. He didn’t think much of the fruit, and the oil had a nasty flavor. He doubted olives would grow down in the Duchy of Grelz, and didn’t miss them a bit.

Unkerlanter behemoths advanced with the footsoldiers, using their egg-tossers and heavy sticks to smash up the strongpoints the redheads were defending. Garivald took that cooperation for granted. Men who’d been in the army longer didn’t. By what they said, the Algarvians had always been able to bring it off. King Swemmel’s men had had to learn how, and a lot of the lessons had proved painful and expensive.

Dragons pounded Torgavi’s defenders, too. Again, some of the Algarvians began coming out into the open and surrendering. But some of them kept fighting, too. I don’t want to die now, Garivald thought as he flopped down near a house on the outskirts of Torgavi. Why don’t they all just give up, curse them? That would make things easier on them and easier on me, too.

With a rumbling roar, a bridge across the Albi tumbled into the river. Mezentio’s men must have wrecked it with eggs. Sure enough, some of them kept fighting as if the war still hung in the balance. Fools, Garivald thought. Enough.

A column of behemoths lumbered into Torgavi. Garivald waved as many men as he could forward; the behemoths protected footsoldiers, but the reverse also held true. That too was cooperation. Some Algarvian diehards in a house near the outskirts of the town blazed at the behemoths. The behemoth crews lobbed three or four eggs at the house. At such short range, the house crumbled as if made of pasteboard. No more blazes came from it.

“That’s the way!” Garivald shouted. One of the crewmen on the closest behemoth waved to him. He waved back. That other soldier undoubtedly wanted to make it through the war and then go home, too.

After the Unkerlanters dealt with the diehards, the rest of the redheads in Torgavi decided they’d had enough. White flags and banners appeared in windows all over town. Kilted soldiers came out of the few strongholds they still held. They might have feared going into captivity, but they feared dying more. With brusque gestures, Garivald and the other Unkerlanters sent the captives to the rear.

Somewhere not far away, a woman started screaming. Garivald looked around for Lieutenant Andelot. When he caught the company commander’s eye, Andelot just shrugged. Garivald nodded. The Algarvians had outraged plenty of women in Unkerlant; he’d seen that for himself in Zossen. Rough justice said his countrymen could pay them back in the same coin. The woman’s screams went on. A moment later, more screams started, these rather shriller.

“Come on,” Andelot called to the men within earshot. “Let’s get down to the river and see if we can find a way to cross. Powers below eat the Algarvians for dropping the bridge in the water.”

“Powers below eat the Algarvians.” Garivald needed no qualifiers for that. Now Andelot was the one who nodded.

What remained of the bridge over the Albi were a couple of stone piers in the river that had supported it and a lot of twisted ironwork. On the far side of the stream, perhaps a hundred yards away, a couple of behemoths and a squad of footsoldiers approached the riverbank. Garivald started to dive for cover.

“Wait,” Andelot said. The one word held such quiet excitement, it froze Garivald where he stood. Andelot went on, “Do you know, Fariulf, I don’t think those are Algarvians at all.”

“Who else would they be, sir?” Garivald shaded his eyes with the palm of his hand to see better. He didn’t think the soldiers on the far bank wore kilts. They weren’t blazing at his comrades and him. They were looking and pointing in much the same way as the Unkerlanters were. One of them trained a shiny brass spyglass on Garivald and the other soldiers here. Garivald could see the fellow jump when he got a good look. “Whoever he is, he just figured out we aren’t redheads.”

The fellow with the spyglass set it on the ground. Cupping his hands in front of his mouth, he shouted, “Unkerlant?”

“Aye, we’re from Unkerlant,” Lieutenant Andelot shouted back. “Who are you?”

Garivald couldn’t make out all of the answer, but one word was very clear: “Kuusamo.” Awe prickled through him. His countrymen and those fellows on the other bank of the Albi had fought their way across half of Derlavai to meet here.

That same realization went through the rest of Swemmel’s soldiers, too. “By the powers above,” someone said softly. “We’ve cut Algarve in half,” somebody else added. Most of the men began to cheer. A couple began to weep. On the other bank, the Kuusamans were cheering, too.

“We’ve got to get across,” Andelot said. He peered up and down the river.

So did Garivald. “There’s a rowboat!” he exclaimed at the same time as Andelot started for it. Garivald hurried after his company commander. If I ever have grandchildren, I can tell them about this, he thought. Another soldier had the same idea. Garivald tapped the three bronze triangles that showed he was a sergeant. The other man bared his teeth in a disappointed grimace, but fell back.

Garivald was clumsy with the oars. He didn’t care, and Andelot didn’t complain. They would have paddled with their sticks had the boat not held oars.

On the other bank, the Kuusamans greeted them with open arms. They gave the Unkerlanters smoked salmon and wine. Garivald had something stronger than wine in his water bottle. He gladly shared it. The swarthy little slant-eyed men smacked their lips and clapped him on the back.

None of them spoke Unkerlanter, and neither Garivald nor Andelot knew any of their tongue. A Kuusaman tried another language. “That’s classical Kaunian,” Andelot said. “I know of it, but I don’t speak it.” He had some Algarvian, and did his best with that. A couple of the Kuusamans proved to know some of the enemy’s speech, too.

“What do they say, sir?” Garivald asked around a mouthful of salmon. The stuff tasted amazingly good.

“They say it won’t be long now,” Andelot answered. Garivald nodded vehemently, to show how much he hoped they were right.

As he had for weeks now, Ealstan peered longingly toward Gromheort. The Unkerlanter army, of which he was a small but unwilling part, hadn’t pushed the attack against his home town so hard as it might have, seeming content to let time and hunger do some of their work for them. The redheads in there are going hungry, he thought. That’s fine, but my family is going hungry, too.

He wondered if he had any family left alive. All he could do was hope. Before long I’ll find out. People said the Unkerlanter army down in the south had finally launched its great attack on Trapani. He didn’t know whether that was true or just one more rumor. He suspected it held some truth, though, because the fight around Gromheort was heating up again, too.

Dragons dropped eggs on the city and swooped down to rooftop height to flame any enemy soldiers they could catch away from cover. Egg-tossers punished Gromheort still more. Behemoths came forward, assembling almost contemptuously outside the city to let the Algarvians know what would be heading their way.

An Unkerlanter officer went into Gromheort under flag of truce to demand surrender one last time. The Algarvians sent him back. He happened to walk past Ealstan’s regiment shaking his head. Somebody called to him, “We’ll have to squash the whoresons, eh?”

“That’s right,” the envoy answered. Ealstan followed Unkerlanter fairly well these days. The officer added, “We can do it, too.” Maybe he expected the soldiers to burst into cheers. If he did, he was disappointed. They’d seen too much fighting to be eager for more.

Before dawn the next morning, more dragons swooped down on Ealstan’s poor, beleaguered city. Egg-tossers pummeled Gromheort anew. He grimaced at the chaos and destruction ahead. How could anyone, Algarvian soldier or Forthwegian civilian, have survived the pummeling the Unkerlanters had given the place?

As soon as the sunrise painted the sky with pink, whistles shrilled all around Gromheort. Officers and sergeants shouted, “Forward!” Clutching his stick, doing his best not to be afraid and not to let himself worry, forward Ealstan went.

Watching behemoths going forward, too, was reassuring. For one thing, they fought vastly better than individual footsoldiers could. For another, they drew blazes from the enemy, who knew how well they fought at least as well as Ealstan did. If the redheads were blazing at behemoths, they weren’t blazing at him.

And redheads blazing there were. Regardless of whether Ealstan thought the Unkerlanter pounding should have killed them all, it hadn’t. They plainly intended to make the attackers pay for every inch of the journey into Gromheort.

Perhaps fifty yards off to Ealstan’s left, a behemoth’s massive foot came down on an egg buried in the ground. The egg burst. An instant later, so did all the smaller eggs the behemoth was carrying. The blast of sorcerous energy knocked Ealstan off his feet and left him half stunned, his ears ringing. When he looked over there, he saw no sign the behemoth or its crew had ever existed except for a crater gouged in the earth.

“Forward!” The shout seemed to come from very far away now. But Ealstan knew what Swemmel’s men would be yelling regardless of how well he heard them. And, again, he went forward. The Algarvians might blaze him if he did. The Unkerlanters would surely blaze him if he didn’t.

An Algarvian-a filthy, scrawny fellow in the rags of a tunic and kilt-threw up his hands and came out of his hole as Ealstan and a couple of Unkerlanters drew near. “I surrender!” he shouted in his own language.

Ealstan’s formal Algarvian was better than his formal Unkerlanter, in which he guessed at the meaning a lot of the time and sometimes guessed wrong. “Keep your hands high and go to the rear,” he told the redhead. “If you are lucky, no one will blaze you.” Mezentio’s trooper knew how lucky he was not to have been blazed down on the spot. Babbling thanks, he hurried off toward whatever captivity might hold for him.

“You really speak some of their language,” an Unkerlanter said admiringly. “It’s not just ‘Hands high!’ and ‘Drop your stick!’ with you.” He brought out the couple of phrases almost any Unkerlanter soldier could say.

Ealstan shrugged. “The Algarvians made me learn it in school.”

“No, no, it’s good you know it,” the soldier in the rock-gray tunic said. “Maybe you can talk more of the whoresons into giving up.” He didn’t want to get blazed, either. The more of Mezentio’s men who surrendered, the fewer who would fight to the end. That made good sense to Ealstan, too.

He didn’t need long to see that this push was going to be different. Before, when the Unkerlanters probed at Gromheort, they’d eased off on running into stiff resistance. Not now. Now, the behemoths pounded Algarvian strongpoints outside the shattered walls. Footsoldiers pushed forward between those strong-points. Mezentio’s men were brave. Ealstan, who hated them as much as any man in Forthweg did, had seen that for himself, both during the dreadful fighting in Eoforwic and in his involuntary stay in King Swemmel’s army. But courage wasn’t going to do them any good, not this time. A starved cat forced to fight a mastiff might be brave, too. Its bravery wouldn’t do it any good: the mastiff would kill it just the same.

As he ran toward a wrecked gate, he wondered how many times he’d come this way before. He knew the one he remembered best: walking back to Gromheort after the first time he’d made love with Vanai. He’d been dazed by joy then. He was dazed now, too, but that was because the buried egg and the load on the behemoth’s back had burst too close to him. The oak grove where he’d lain with her was smashed to kindling; he’d been through it.

Redheads still fought, using the rubble of the wall and the gateway for cover. Beams scorched tracks of black through the grass near Ealstan’s feet. Behemoths started tossing eggs at the gate. Ealstan saw pieces of a soldier fly through the air. A few more eggs bursting by the gateway meant far fewer blazes came back at the onrushing Unkerlanters.

With a whoop, Ealstan scrambled over the gray stones of the wall and into Gromheort. “Home!” he yelled. Then a beam flicked past his ear, so close he smelled lightning in the air. So much for exultation. He threw himself down behind another stone and blazed back.

Nothing was going to come easy. Mezentio’s men had had weeks to fortify Gromheort, and they’d made the most of them. They’d probably used the luckless civilians as laborers. Every street seemed to have a barricade across it every block. Behemoths broke into the city and started knocking down barricades with their egg-tossers, but redheads in the buildings on either side of the street dropped eggs on them from rooftops and upper stories. Ealstan had seen in Eoforwic how expensive street fighting could be.

He’d thought-he’d hoped-he could simply head for the Avenue of Countess Hereswith, where his family lived. Things weren’t so simple. The way Mezentio’s men were fighting, his home might as well have been on the far side of the moon.

He was running from one barricade towards another when he got blazed. One second, everything was fine. Next thing he knew, his left leg didn’t want to bear his weight any more. He landed hard, scraping both knees and one elbow.

At first, those small injuries hurt more than his wound. Then they didn’t, and he let out a raw-edged howl of pain.

He dragged himself into a doorway, leaving a trail of blood behind him like a slug’s trail of slime. An Unkerlanter soldier crouched by him and started bandaging the wound, which was in the outside of his thigh. “Not too bad,” the fellow said encouragingly.

“Easy for you to say,” Ealstan answered. “It’s not your fornicating leg.” The Unkerlanter laughed, finished the job, and ran deeper into the city to fight some more.

Ealstan tried once to get up, but couldn’t manage with the leg limp and useless. Having no other choice, then, he lay where he was and watched the bandage turn red. It didn’t fill with blood too fast, which he found moderately encouraging; if it had, he might have bled to death. Some unknown stretch of time went by. The Unkerlanters drove ever deeper into Gromheort, and the din of battle washed past him.

Maybe he slept, or passed out. He was certainly surprised when an Unkerlanter soldier started to drag him out of the doorway by his feet. “I’m not dead, you stupid son of a whore,” he snarled. He rather wished he were, for the sudden jerk on his wounded leg made it hurt like fire.

“Oh. Sorry, buddy,” the soldier said. He called to a pal: “Hey, Joswe! Come give me a hand. I’ve got a live one here.”

Between the two of them, they got Ealstan upright and lugged him back toward an infirmary Swemmel’s men had set up near the edge of town. He almost wished they’d let him lie where he was; the howls of pain coming out of the place sounded anything but encouraging. But, when they helped him inside, he discovered a couple of Unkerlanter healers were there, working like men possessed along with a bearded Forthwegian they’d probably impressed into their service.

Ealstan didn’t get a cot. He counted himself lucky not to have to lie on another wounded man: the place was packed, and getting more so by the minute. Healers and Forthwegian women with fresh bandages-also no doubt pressed into duty-had to walk carefully to keep from stepping on hands and feet.

After what seemed like forever, a healer got to Ealstan. He stripped off the field dressing and muttered a charm over the wound to keep it from going bad. A Forthwegian healer would have used a spell in classical Kaunian; the Unkerlanter spoke his own language. He said, “You’ll do all right, soldier,” shouted for one of the women to come give Ealstan a fresh bandage, and went on to the next hurt man.

The Forthwegian woman who stooped beside Ealstan was a couple of years older than he, on the skinny side, and looked weary unto death. She plainly had practice putting on bandages; maybe she’d done it for the Algarvians, too. “Thank you very much,” Ealstan said in Forthwegian; he hadn’t had many chances lately to use his own tongue,

“You’re welcome,” she replied, one eyebrow rising in surprise. Then she took another, longer, look at him. Her eyes widened; her mouth fell open. “Ealstan?” she whispered.

He recognized her voice where he hadn’t known her face. “Conberge?” he said, and reached up to embrace his sister. They both burst into tears, careless of the staring Unkerlanters all around them. Ealstan asked, “Are Father and Mother all right? And”-he felt absurdly pleased with remembering-”your husband?” She hadn’t been married when he fled Gromheort.

To his vast relief, she nodded. “They all were this morning, anyhow. We’ve spent a lot of time in the wine cellar, but most of the house is still standing. Well, it was, anyhow.”

“Powers above be praised,” Ealstan said, and let more tears fall. He added, “Mother and Father are grandparents. Vanai and I had a little girl, end of last spring.”

Conberge set a hand on her own stomach. “They will be again, come wintertime.” She added, “How did you turn into an Unkerlanter soldier? What will they do with you, now that you’re hurt?”

“They caught me and gave me a stick. As for the other”-he shrugged- “we’ll just have to find out.”