Out of the Darkness

Twelve

All the regular news sheets in Trapani were dead. But the Algarvians still turned out something they called The Armored Wolf. Printed on small leaves of cheap, sour-smelling paper, it kept right on screaming shrill defiance at all of King Mezentio’s enemies and declaring that victory lay just around the corner.

Crouched behind a barricade only a couple of hundred yards in front of the royal palace, with Unkerlanter eggs bursting all around him, Sidroc was certain the only thing lying around the next corner was a swarm of Unkerlanter footsoldiers and behemoths. He folded his copy of The Armored Wolf and. stuffed it into his belt pouch.

Ceorl asked, “Why are you wasting time with that horrible rag? Seeing it once is bad enough. Nobody’d want to look at it twice.”

“I’m not going to look at it twice,” Sidroc said. “I’m almost out of arsewipes, though, and it’ll do well enough for that.”

“Ah. All right.” Ceorl’s big head bobbed up and down. “You’re not as dumb as I thought you were when you came into the Brigade. If you were, you’d’ve been dead a long time ago.”

Sidroc shrugged and spat. “Dumb doesn’t matter-you’re still breathing, for instance.” Ceorl’s fingers twisted in an obscene gesture. Laughing, Sidroc gave it back. He went on, “You’re still here, and I’m still here, and Sergeant Werferth, who made a better soldier than both of us put together, what happened to him? He stopped a beam in Yanina, that’s what. Bad futtering luck, nothing else to it.”

Before Ceorl could answer, smoke on the breeze set him coughing. Whole great stretches of Trapani burned, with no one doing much to try to put out the fires. The Algarvians couldn’t, and the Unkerlanters didn’t care.

Slowly, the smoke cleared. Ceorl’s face was as black with soot as his beard. Sidroc doubted his own was any cleaner. Ceorl said, “Not fornicating likely we’re going to end up any different.”

“No,” Sidroc agreed. “This stretch around the palace is about what’s left. Maybe a few other little patches, but they don’t do anybody any good. Everything else, Swemmel’s buggers have got it.”

“And they want Mezentio,” Ceorl said. “They want that whoreson bad.”

Being a corporal, Sidroc could-should-have reproved him. Instead, he nodded. The Unkerlanters did want Mezentio. Their dragons dropped leaflets promising not just safety but enormous rewards for any Algarvians who gave them the king. Sidroc supposed the same applied to the men of Plegmund’s Brigade. He didn’t care. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the Unkerlanters, though he didn’t. But, after spending the past two and a half years battling them, he didn’t want to have anything to do with them except over the business end of a stick.

A couple of men in rock-gray tunics darted out from a doorway and dashed toward rubble in front of the barricade. Using the business end of his stick, Sidroc blazed one of them. The other made it and started blazing back.

Sidroc scuttled along the barricade to find a new place from which to blaze at the foe. Stay anywhere very long and you asked for a sniper’s beam through the head. Behind him, an Algarvian declared, “I will deal with these cursed savages.”

That was interesting enough to make Sidroc turn his head. “Who in blazes are you?” he asked the redhead standing there-standing there, Sidroc noted, with no regard whatsoever for his own safety. Considering what was going on all around-considering that Trapani was, not to put too fine a point on it, falling-that took even Algarvian arrogance a bit far.

“I am Major Almonte,” the fellow replied. With his left hand, he brushed the mage’s badge he wore on his left breast. “I have the power to hurl the Unkerlanters back in dismay.”

“Oh, you do, do you?” Sidroc grunted. Almonte nodded. He believed what he was saying. Sidroc didn’t, not for a minute. “If you’re such hot stuff, pal, what are Swemmel’s buggers doing within blaze of the royal palace here?”

“It’s not my fault,” Almonte said. “My superiors would not listen to me, would not let me show the full reach of my genius.”

From not far away, Ceorl said, “Another fornicating crackpot.” Sidroc laughed. Almonte might be an Algarvian and an officer by courtesy, but what difference did that make here and now?

The redhead glared at both Forthwegians. “You are nothing but mercenaries,” he said. “You have no business criticizing me.”

“Talk is cheap, pal,” Sidroc said.

“Futter yourself,” Almonte said crisply. “By the powers above, I will show you-I will show the world-what I can do.” He scrambled over the barricade and faced the Unkerlanters without the least shred of cover.

When they didn’t blaze Almonte down in the first instant, Sidroc knew he had some-more than a little-power. Beams flew toward him, but none bit. It was as if they were beneath the redhead’s notice. He raised both hands above his head and began a spell. It was, Sidroc noted, not in Algarvian but in classical Kaunian: he’d learned enough in school to recognize the language. He snickered. Hearing it now, of all times, and in the heart of Trapani, of all places, was pretty funny.

But then the laughter curdled in his mouth. The hair on his arms and at the back of his neck tried to prickle up in fear. Almonte’s magecraft seemed to draw darkness from beneath the flagstones on which he stood and cast it at the Unkerlanters. Sidroc briefly heard them cry out in alarm before that darkness-did he really see it, or sense it with something older and even more primitive than sight? — washed over them. Then they fell silent. Sidroc was somehow certain none of them would ever cry out again.

Major Almonte did, in pride and triumph. Sidroc leaned over and threw up. Ceorl looked green, too. “I’d sooner lose than use a magic like that,” he muttered. Sidroc nodded.

Almonte shook his fist at the sudden silence in front of the palace. “Die, swine!” he cried. “If the stinking dragonfliers had let me take my spells aloft, I’d have done more and worse to you. But even now. .” He resumed the incantation. That cold, dark, deadly silence spread farther. Unkerlanter lives went out liked snuffed candle flames.

Swemmel’s men might not have known exactly what was happening to them, but they knew something was, and they knew whence the trouble came. They hurled eggs at Almonte from tossers beyond the reach of his sorcery. Sidroc threw himself flat. Eggs bursting all around Almonte burst too close to him.

The Algarvian mage had had a spell for turning aside beams. When Sidroc lifted his head again, he discovered Almonte had owned no such warding against bursts of sorcerous energy and the metal from egg shells they flung about. The mage was down and screaming and bleeding. He looked more like a piece of butchery than a man.

Sidroc could have blazed him to put him out of his misery. What with the sort of magic Almonte had been using, he was more than glad to let him suffer.

“They’ll come after us as soon as they realize he can’t do anything to them anymore,” he warned Ceorl.

“I know,” the ruffian said.

Come the Unkerlanters did, behind a fresh barrage of eggs. “Urra!” they shouted, more in relief, Sidroc thought, than anything else. “Urra! Swemmel! Urra!” Despite good blazing from the barricades and from the palace itself, they gained lodgments here and there and began blazing down the Algarvians and the men from Plegmund’s Brigade and the Phalanx of Valmiera who still stood against them.

“Fall back!” Sidroc yelled. “We’ll be cut off if we don’t!” He’d done enough in this fight-he’d done enough in his whole term of service in Plegmund’s Brigade-that no one could accuse him of cowardice. He ran back toward the royal palace, his men-those still on their feet-with him.

As he ran, he hoped the redheads inside wouldn’t take the soldiers of Plegmund’s Brigade for Unkerlanters and blaze them down. That would have been the ultimate indignity. In the end, though, how much did it matter? He didn’t think he would last very long any which way.

He made it into the palace unblazed, and took up a new position at a window that had offered a magnificent view but was really too long, too open, to give good cover. To his right knelt Ceorl and a blond Valmieran from the Phalanx, to his left a redhead from the Popular Assault who couldn’t have been above fifteen and an older Algarvian, a bald fellow with a beaky nose.

The old man could handle a stick. “There’s another one down,” he said, stretching an Unkerlanter lifeless in front of the palace. “But it won’t last. It can’t last, powers below eat them all.”

Sidroc shuddered. Major Almonte, he thought, had dealt much too intimately with the powers below. “We’ll hold on a while longer,” he said, and then took another look at the man crouching there beside him. His voice rose to a startled squeak: “Your, uh, Majesty.”

King Mezentio nodded briskly. “I will ask the same favor of you, Corporal, that I’ve asked of a good many men already: when you see this place falling, have the courtesy to blaze me down. I do not care to fall into Swemmel’s hands alive.”

“Uh, aye, sir.” Sidroc nodded. He wouldn’t have wanted the King of Unkerlant to get his hands on him, either.

“Meanwhile. .” Mezentio blazed again. He nodded, but then grimaced. “I should have won Algarve should have won. This kingdom proved itself weak. It doesn’t deserve to live.”

And who led it to where it is? Sidroc thought. But he didn’t see how he could say such a thing to the King of Algarve. Even as he cast about for ways that wouldn’t sound too blunt, the moment passed. A great racket of bursting eggs and crumpling masonry and shouting men arose from the rear of the palace.

A redhead dashed up to Mezentio, crying, “Your Majesty! Your Majesty! The whoresons are inside! We have some barricades in the corridors, but powers above only know how long they’ll hold.” Crashes and more screams said one of them had just gone down.

“All over,” Mezentio said, his voice soft and sad. “We came so close, but it’s all over. We weren’t strong enough. We all deserve to go into the fire.” He bowed to Sidroc. “Will you do the honors?” As Sidroc numbly nodded, the king spoke to the messenger: “Know that this man slays me at my request. Let him be rewarded for it, and in no way punished. Do you understand?”

“Aye, your Majesty.” Tears ran down the redhead’s face.

Mezentio bowed to Sidroc again. “Do what needs doing. Try to blaze true, to make it as quick as you can.” He closed his eyes and waited.

Sidroc did it. He’d done it for wounded comrades more than once before. Seeing King Mezentio slump over dead raised no special horror in him. It was as if he had nothing at all left inside. Ceorl set a hand on his shoulder. “Powers above,” the ruffian whispered.

Fresh shouts came from the back of the palace, these much closer. Sidroc got to his feet. “Come on,” he said savagely. “There’s still some fighting left.” As he and the men he led ran forward, panic-stricken Algarvians ran back toward them. “Cowards!” he shouted, and ran on. With nothing left inside him, what did he have to lose?

A beam took him in the side as he came round a corner. He went down, but kept blazing. Another beam bit, this one deep. He tasted blood in his mouth as his stick slipped from fingers that would not hold it. He was still moving a little when an Unkerlanter lieutenant paused, saw he wasn’t quite dead, and put a beam through his temple before charging on.

Though he got better food and better lodging in his new quarters outside the main captives’ camp on Obuda, Sergeant Istvan missed the company of his fellow Gyongyosians. When he grumbled about that to Lammi, the Kuusaman forensic mage raised a thin black eyebrow. “But they beat you,” she said. “And they would do it again if they had the chance.”

Istvan’s broad shoulders went up and down in a shrug. “I know. But they’re my own folk even so. You Kuusamans”-he shrugged again-”I don’t think the stars shine on you.”

One of his own people would have been furious at such an insult. Lammi only shrugged in her turn, which proved how foreign and alien she was. She knew Gyongyosian customs well, but they didn’t bind her. That made her more alarming to him, not less. She said, “I am willing to take my chances on it.”

Few, if any, Gyongyosians would have been so willing. Lammi didn’t talk about the scar on Istvan’s left hand, or about what it meant. Had his fellow captives known what it meant, they would have done worse to him than they would have for mere suspected treason. What could make treason mere! Goat-eating could, and Istvan knew it all too well.

His captors let him see Kun now and then. Each of them was wary with the other, for each knew the other had, however unwillingly, confessed to the abomination they’d both committed. Kun seemed more content away from his countrymen than Istvan did. “They’re a pack of fools, most of them,” he said loftily.

“Oh, and you’re not?” Istvan said.

“Not that kind, anyhow,” the former mage’s apprentice replied. “I got sick of men from mountain valleys long before those louts set on me.”

“I’m a man from a mountain valley,” Istvan reminded him, his big hands balling into fists.

“Proves my point, wouldn’t you say?” Kun grinned at Istvan’s flabbergasted expression. “And you, my dear fellow, you put up with me far better than most.”

Istvan thought about that for a little while. He said, “We’ve been through too much together. If the two of us don’t put up with each other, no one ever will.”

Kun grimaced. “And if that isn’t a judgment on both of us, stars go dark if I know what would be.”

A couple of days after that, Lammi summoned both of them. That surprised Istvan. They’d never been questioned together. Nor were they this time. The Kuusaman mage spoke briskly: “How would the two of you like to be free to return to your own land?”

“Don’t play with us,” Istvan said roughly. “That isn’t going to happen, and you know it. We’re here till the war is over.” And who knows for how long after that?

But Lammi shook her head. “Not necessarily. And I ask no treason of you. By the stars, I do not. All I ask is that you go on board ship, go back to the waters off Becsehely, watch a certain something, and then, when you are released, tell your own superiors exactly what you saw.” She held up a hand to forestall questions. “You would not be the only men doing this-far from it.”

“Why us?” Kun asked.

“Because you are in a certain amount of difficulty here,” Lammi answered, “and because you have shown more than a certain amount of wit. We feel confident you would tell those set above you the truth.”

“Why shouldn’t we just keep quiet?” Istvan asked. “And what’s off Becsehely?” They both knew the miserable little island east of Obuda better than they wanted to; they’d been captured there.

Lammi said, “You will see what is off, and on, Becsehely. And you will, I think, find good reason for telling the truth as you see it. Of course, if you would rather stay here on Obuda. .”

“I’ll go,” Istvan said. Kun hesitated, but only briefly.

Lammi smiled. “I thought that might prove persuasive. Pack whatever gear you have. The ley-line cruiser will be here tomorrow at first light.”

Istvan had a duffel bag ready in good time. No captive had much in the way of belongings. Kun’s duffel was heavier, but Kun cared more about books than Istvan ever had. A carriage took both of them to the harbor, which had been repaired since Captain Frigyes’ bloodthirsty magic did its work. The cruiser was long and sleek and deadly, somehow more dangerous-looking than a Gyongyosian ship. “When they boarded the vessel, a Kuusaman military clerk checked their names off a list. A fellow in greenish Kuusaman naval uniform escorted them to a cabin.

“You two stay here,” the Kuusaman said in Gyongyosian. Like most of his countrymen who spoke the language, he used the plural rather than the dual.

The cabin was big enough to boast two cots side by side. Istvan and Kun wouldn’t even have to quarrel over who got the top bunk. Istvan said, “If this is what the slanteyes do for captives, they must live mighty soft themselves.”

“They do,” Kun said. “They’re richer than we are. They’ve had modern magecraft longer than we have, and they do more with it than we do.”

“But we are the warrior race,” Kun said with pride in his countrymen still diminished only a little from what he’d felt when summoned into Ekrekek Arpad’s service.

Kun sighed. “I suppose I’d waste my time asking you how much good that’s done us or who’s winning the war, and so I won’t.”

By “not asking” in that particular way, of course, he put the question all the more effectively. Istvan chewed on it for some little while. He liked the flavors of none of the answers he found. To keep from showing how little he liked them, he peered out the porthole. To his surprise, Obuda was already receding in the distance. “We’re moving!” he exclaimed.

“Well, what if we are?” Kun seemed determined to stay contrary. “Stars above, this is a ley-line ship. Did you expect to hear sails flutter and the wind howl in the rigging? Use your head before you use your mouth.”

“Oh, go bugger a goat,” Istvan said. Coming from a valley far back in the mountains, he knew little about ships, ley-line or otherwise. The only times he’d been aboard them were on journeys across the Bothnian Ocean during the war. He’d never been in a two-man cabin then, but down in the hold with a lot of other soldiers, most of whom were just as ignorant of the sea and its ways as he was.

He did remember the meal gong. Either the Kuusamans had the same signal or they’d got a gong so they could use something with which their Gyongyosian passengers were familiar. Armed Kuusamans directed Istvan and Kun and the other Gyongyosians who emerged from cabins along the corridor to the iron chamber where they would eat. A large sign on the wall declared, WE DO NOT SERVE GOAT ABOARD THIS SHIP. YOU MAY EAT FREELY, WITH NO FEAR OF POLLUTION. Istvan hoped the slanteyes were telling the truth. If they weren’t. . The scar on his hand throbbed. He’d already learned more about ritual pollution and the way it ate at a man than he’d ever wanted to know.

Perhaps three dozen Gyongyosians queued up to take trays and utensils and bowls of the stew a couple of bored-looking Kuusaman cooks served up. The food was better than he’d got in the captives’ camp, but not so good as the guards’ rations he’d eaten since being extracted from among the rest of the captured Gyongyosians. The cooks gave each man one mug of ale and as much tea as he wanted.

Most of the other captives aboard the ley-line cruiser were officers. Istvan saw one man in a brigadier’s uniform, a couple of colonels, and a lot of majors and captains. One of those captains turned to him and asked, “Well, Sergeant, why did they pick you for this charade?”

“I have no real idea, sir,” Istvan answered cautiously. “Maybe because I fought on Becsehely.”

With a laugh, the officer said, “Well, that makes some sense. I don’t know why they chose me, I’ll tell you that. My guess is, the slanteyes drew my name out of a hat or a pot or whatever they use for such things.”

Corporal Kun asked, “Sir, do you have any idea what they’re going to show us when we get there?”

“Not the slightest clue.” The captain shook his head. “I speak some Kuusaman, and I’ve asked, but the slanteyes won’t say. They haven’t talked out of turn where I could hear ‘em, either, worse luck. Stars above be dark for them forever, they’re keeping their mouths shut tight.”

The ley-line cruiser stopped at another island east of Obuda and picked up four men from a captives’ camp there. Istvan wondered just how many Gyongyosian captives the Kuusamans held. Too many was the first answer that occurred to him.

When the cruiser stopped a couple of miles off the beaches of Becsehely, the Kuusamans summoned all their Gyongyosian passengers to the deck. The island looked as flat and unlovely as Istvan remembered it. It also looked extraordinarily battered, as if it had been fought over only the other day, not some months before. A Kuusaman officer spoke in Istvan’s language: “Watch what we do here. When we give you back to your own people, tell the truth about it.”

Back on Obuda, Lammi had said almost exactly the same thing. By the looks on the faces of the men who hadn’t come from Obuda, they’d heard the speech before, too. Kun raised an eyebrow and murmured, “The same old song.”

But then the Kuusaman added a new verse: “Remember, this could be Gyorvar, or any other place we choose.”

As if his words were a cue, a lash of fire fell on Becsehely from a clear blue sky. It wasn’t lightning; it was flame, as if from a dragon a mile long. But there was no dragon, nothing at all in the sky over Becsehely but air. The lash fell again and again and again. Even across a broad stretch of sea, it was too brilliant to look at directly; Istvan had to squint and hold a hand up to his face to protect his eyes. Even across that stretch of sea, he could feel the heat, too. And, where the flame slid off the battered land and into the Bothnian Ocean, great clouds of steam rose up.

“Stars preserve us,” muttered the captain with whom he’d spoken at supper. “That could be Gyorvar.” Despite the heat coming from the tormented island, a chill seized Istvan and wouldn’t let him go.

As if for variety, the flames eased and bursts of sorcerous energy, as if from great eggs, pounded Becsehely. Istvan marveled that the island didn’t sink beneath the sea. At last, as abruptly as it had begun, the magecraft ended. Shimmering waves of heat still rose from Becsehely.

“We will set you free now,” the Gyongyosian-speaking officer said. “Tell your people the truth. Tell them what could happen to them if they go on with the war. Tell them it has gone on too long. It will end soon.”

The ley-line cruiser glided east, away from Becsehely and toward the few islands in the Bothnian Ocean Gyongyos still held. Down in the bowels of the ship, a crystallomancer would, Istvan supposed, try to arrange a truce to hand over the captives. I might go back to Kunhegyes, to my own valley, he thought. Then he looked down at the scar on his hand. As long as I bear this, do I want to go home at all?

Marshal Rathar had always liked to have his headquarters as far forward as he could. With his army battering its way into the very heart of Trapani, he’d set up shop in a large house in the northern suburbs of the city, just out of reach of the last few Algarvian egg-tossers. He and General Vatran pored over a map of the city looted from a book dealer’s, stabbing pins with rock-gray heads into one landmark after another.

“They can’t hold on much longer,” Vatran said.

“They’ve already held out longer than they had any business doing,” Rathar said. He knew how many of his brigades the redheads had bled white. If they had to do much more fighting after this, they would have a hard time of it. But this was-this had to be-the end.

No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than a crystallomancer rushed into the dining hall that was doing duty as a map room. “Marshal Rathar!” he shouted. “Marshal Rathar!”

“Aye, that is my name,” Rathar agreed mildly. Vatran snorted.

But the crystallomancer was too full of himself, too full of his news, to pay any attention to a feeble joke. “Marshal Rathar, sir, an Algarvian general’s come out from what the redheads hold of the palace, sir, and he wants to yield up the soldiers the redheads still have fighting!” He leaped in the air with glee.

“Oh, by the powers above,” General Vatran whispered.

Back in the village where he’d grown up, Rathar had thought no moment in his life could surpass lying down with a woman-actually, she’d been a girl, a couple of summers younger than he-for the first time. Now, all these years later, he discovered he’d been wrong. “It may be over,” he murmured, and that sounded sweeter than I love you had back then.

“Aye, sir,” the crystallomancer said, and then, “Shall I have the redhead brought here, sir? And he’s asking for a truce while you dicker. Shall I say we grant him that?”

Fussing over details spoiled some of the glory, but it needed doing. “Aye, have him brought here,” Rathar replied. “And aye, he can have a truce till he returns to his own lines.” The marshal’s right hand folded into a fist. “That shouldn’t take long. He hasn’t got much to bargain with. Send out the necessary orders.”

Saluting, the crystallomancer hurried away. General Vatran straightened up over the map table. He too saluted. “Congratulations, sir.”

“Thank you.” Rathar felt as if he’d gulped a bottle of spirits: half numb, half exalted. Over the next quarter of an hour, he listened to the egg-tossers falling silent, one battery at a time. Quiet seemed eerie, unnatural. He hadn’t heard much of it, not these past four years. Somewhere not far away, a cuckoo began to sing. Maybe it had been singing before, but he hadn’t been able to hear it then.

There was a small commotion outside his headquarters when the Algarvian general got there. Rathar’s sentries tried to remove the redhead’s sword before allowing him into the marshal’s presence. The officer proved to speak good Unkerknter, and hesitated not at all about making his view clear: “Are you uncivilized, uncultured? You do not take the weapon of a brave foe who is still negotiating his army’s surrender!”

“Let him keep the blade for now,” Rathar called. The sentries brought the Algarvian into the map room. The fellow wore a grimy, wrinkled uniform and looked as if he hadn’t slept for a couple of days. He came to attention and gave Rathar a salute. Returning it, Rathar named himself and introduced General Vatran.

“I am General Oldrade,” the Algarvian replied. “I have the honor to command my kingdom’s forces in and around Trapani. I must tell you, Marshal, that we can no longer offer resistance against your armies.” He looked about to burst into tears.

“Has King Mezentio sent you forth with this word?” Rathar asked. “You must understand, General, that my sovereign will require Mezentio’s personal surrender. King Swemmel has left me no discretion whatsoever in this matter.”

Oldrade shrugged. “I cannot give you what I do not have, sir. After defending the royal palace to his last breath, his Majesty perished yesterday. I have seen the king’s body with my own eyes, and know this to be true.”

“Lucky bastard,” Vatran muttered. Oldrade didn’t react, so perhaps Vatran had been quiet enough to keep him from hearing.

Rathar was inclined to agree with his general. Compared to what Swemmel had wanted to do to Mezentio, dying in battle was the quick, easy way out. “You understand, General, that we shall have to be fully satisfied on this point.” Swemmel wasn’t going to be fully satisfied no matter what. He’d wanted his sport with, his vengeance on, Mezentio.

“You may examine the king’s body,” Oldrade said.

“My understanding is that Mainardo, having abdicated as King of Jelgava, now succeeds his older brother as King of Algarve,” General Oldrade answered. “King Mainardo is now arranging the surrender of Algarvian forces in the northeast to the Kuusaman army.”

Swemmel won’t get his hands on Mainardo, was what that meant. The Kuusamans were unlikely to boil the new King of Algarve alive or give him any of the other interesting and lingering ends he might deserve. Too bad, Rathar thought, but he didn’t see what he or Unkerlant could do about it. Maybe the Jelgavans will take care of it for us. They have almost as many reasons to hate Mainardo as we do-we did-to hate Mezentio.

“What terms are you prepared to give us, Marshal?” Oldrade asked.

“Assuming that what you say about Mezentio is true, will will grant your soldiers’ lives,” Rathar said. “We offer no more than that.”

Oldrade drew himself up, the picture of affronted dignity. “This is mean-spirited in the extreme!” he said indignantly.

“Too bad,” Rathar said. “If you like, I will send you back to your lines, and we can take up the fight again. See how many of your men come away with their lives then.”

“You are a hard, cruel man,” Oldrade said. “And your king-”

“Say what you like about me,” Rathar broke in. “You insult King Swemmel at your peril. Now, then-do you accept these terms, or not?”

“For the sake of my men, I must accept them.” Tears ran down Oldrade’s face. Rage? Humiliation? Sorrow? Rathar couldn’t say. All he knew was, no Unkerlanter would have thus bared himself before a foe. Vatran turned away, embarrassed to look at the Algarvian.

“I will have a secretary write out the terms, in Unkerlanter and Algarvian,” Rathar said. Oldrade, still weeping, nodded. The Marshal of Unkerlant went on, “I will also send out men with flags of truce and mages to magnify voices, letting everyone know the fighting here is over. When you pass back into your own lines, you do the same.” Oldrade nodded again. Rathar guessed the battle wouldn’t end at once, but would sputter out over several days. People would die for no reason whatever. He shrugged, hoping he was wrong but knowing he wouldn’t be able to stop such things.

“You have given us harsh terms,” Oldrade said. “I hope that, as tempers cool, you will be more generous in your triumph.”

The Algarvian general was three or four inches taller than Rathar. The marshal had to tilt his head back to look down his nose at Oldrade, and he did. “What sort of terms would you have offered if you had taken Cottbus?” he asked. General Oldrade flushed and did not answer. He didn’t have to; they both knew the truth there.

Vatran said, “We ought to send a mage to check Mezentio’s body, make sure it’s not somebody else wearing a sorcerous disguise.”

“A good point,” Rathar said. “I will have the secretary put that in the surrender document.”

“You are the conquerors.” Oldrade didn’t try to hide his bitterness. “You may do as you please.”

“That’s right,” Rathar said, and called his secretary. He told the young lieutenant what he wanted. The secretary was fluent in both his own language and Algarvian, which Rathar also spoke and read. He skimmed through both texts, then passed them to Oldrade.

After reading them, the redhead nodded. He pulled a pen from a tunic pocket. Rathar pushed a bottle of ink toward him. The pen scratched across both instruments of surrender. Oldrade said, “Would you please have your mages make copies for me to take back to … what is left of my command?”

“Of course, General.” In small matters, Rathar could afford courtesy. “With the fall of Trapani, this war is as near over as makes no difference. May we never fight another one.”

“May it be so,” Oldrade agreed. With a sigh, he unbuckled his sword and held it out to Rathar. “Now it is yours, sir, the negotiations being complete.”

“I accept it in the name of my king,” Rathar said. “Go now, and make the surrender known to your men. Your escort will take you back through the lines.” General Oldrade bowed, spun on his heel, and left the headquarters.

“Congratulations, lord Marshal,” Vatran said again. “We’ve done it.”

Rathar returned the general’s salute. “So we have,” he said. “And now to let his Majesty know we’ve done it.” He went off to the crystallomancers’ room. Arranging an etheric connection back to Cottbus didn’t take long. He hadn’t thought it would; the crystallomancers had to have been waiting for this moment. As soon as King Swemmel’s image appeared in the crystal before the marshal, he said, “Your Majesty, the Algarvians in Trapani have yielded, the surrender to spare their lives but nothing more. The enemy’s capital is yours.”

“And what of the enemy’s king?” Swemmel demanded. “We want Mezentio.”

“He is said to have died in the fighting, your Majesty,” Rathar answered. “I am sending a sorcerer to make sure the corpse is his.”

King Swemmel snorted contemptuously. “Mark our words-he turned coward at the end. He dared not face what we would have done to him for all that he did to our kingdom.” Rathar thought his sovereign likely to be right. In Mezentio’s place, he wouldn’t have cared to endure Swemmel’s wrath, either. The king went on, “Who now claims the throne of Algarve, if Mezentio is truly dead?”

“His brother Mainardo, your Majesty,” Rathar said. “He is said to have yielded himself up to the Kuusamans in the northeast.”

“They will not kill him, as he deserves. No.” Swemmel sounded worried, almost frightened. His eyes flicked back and forth, back and forth, as if watching demons only he could see. “No. They will leave him alive, leave him on what they call the throne of Algarve. The stinking whoresons, they will use him for a cat’s paw, a stalking horse, against us.”

“They want Algarve beaten as much as we do, your Majesty,” Rathar said.

“Algarve is beaten,” the king said. “Now they want us crushed as well. They think they can loose their sorceries in the middle of the Bothnian Ocean without our knowing it, but they are wrong-wrong, we tell you!” Swemmel’s voice rose to something close to a scream.

Rathar knew nothing about sorceries in the middle of the Bothnian Ocean. He wondered if Swemmel did, or if the king were only imagining them. “We’ve won here,” he said. King Swemmel nodded, but with none of the joy Rathar had hoped he’d show. And Rathar’s own joy, in turn, died before being fully born. He wondered if he would ever find a way to forgive Swemmel for that.

Gyorvar, the capital of Gyongyos, lay where four rivers came together near the coast to form a single stream. A ley line went up that stream from the sea to Gyorvar, so the cruiser Csikos, after skirting the Balaton Islands, could take the men it had received from its Kuusaman counterpart straight to the city.

“Home,” Kun murmured as the tall buildings came into sight.

It wasn’t home to Istvan. So many houses and shops and enormous structures whose use he didn’t know all jammed together were as alien to him as the forests of western Unkerlant or the low, flat expanse of Becsehely-Becsehely as it had been when he’d served there, not the scarred and burnt and ruined place the island had become.

“My own people,” Istvan said, as close as he could come to agreeing with the former mage’s apprentice.

Behind the lenses of his spectacles, Kun’s eyes gleamed. “You’re going to see more of your own people than you want to for a while, unless I miss my guess.”

“Huh,” Istvan said. “I never would have imagined.”

As soon as the Csikos tied up at a quay, swarms of men in clean uniforms with the badges of Eyes and Ears of the Ekrekek swarmed aboard. “Istvan, Sergeant!” one of them shouted, reading from a list.

“Here!” Istvan waved his hand.

“You come with me,” the fellow said, and checked off his name. “Petofi, Captain!”

“Here!” The officer waved as Istvan had. He was tall and gaunt, with a nasty scar on his left cheek that stopped just short of his eye.

“Good. You two are mine.” The Eye and Ear of the Ekrekek checked off Petofi’s name, too. “Come along with me, both of you. We’ve got carriages waiting to take you to interrogation headquarters.”

Istvan wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that. In fact, he was sure he didn’t like the sound of it. But he was only a sergeant. What could he do but obey? Captain Petofi had some ideas on that score. “One moment,” he said dryly. “A long time ago, I learned never to go anywhere with a stranger.”

“I am not a stranger.” The Eye and Ear tapped his badge to show what he meant. Captain Petofi just stood where he was. With a grimace, Ekrekek Arpad’s man said, “You may call me Balazs, if it makes you happy.”

“After what we have seen, it will take a good deal more than that to make us happy, Balazs,” Petofi said. “Is it not so, Sergeant?”

“Uh, aye, sir, it is.” Istvan stammered a little, surprised the scarred officer had bothered speaking to him.

“Well, part of my job is finding out about all that,” Balazs said easily. “Now that you know who I am, you come along with me, and we’ll see what you think you know.”

Captain Petofi bristled anew at that. Istvan didn’t rise to it; he was watching another Eye and Ear leading Kun away. Now he was alone, all the comrades with whom he’d gone through so much stripped away. He was back among his countrymen, true, but how could the smooth, slick, smug Balazs or the dour Petofi understand what had happened to him these past six years? Petofi might, some: he’d seen war and he’d been a Kuusaman captive, too. But he was an officer and, no doubt, a nobleman, and thus a breed apart from a man who’d come out of a village in a mountain valley.

“Come along, come along,” Balazs repeated: it seemed to be his favorite phrase. Istvan and Petofi followed him down the gangplank and over to one from among the swarm of carriages waiting at the base of the pier. The Eye and Ear held the door open for the two returning captives. When he shut it, it clicked as if locking. There were no handles on the inside, and the windows were too small to crawl through. Balazs got up with the driver. The carriage began to move.

Petofi’s face twisted into what Istvan belatedly recognized as a wry smile; the officer’s scar made his expressions hard to read. “Here we are, captives again,” Petofi said. “The fools think they will sit on what we know, as a duck sits on an egg, and the egg will never hatch-or burst. A billy goat’s cock up their arses couldn’t make them pay heed to what needs doing.”

“Aye, sir,” Istvan answered, but he’d only half heard the captain. The carriage’s windows might be small, but they let him see more of Gyorvar than he ever had before. Individual houses looked familiar: gray stone buildings, mostly of two stories, all vertical lines, with steep slate roofs to help keep snow from sticking. But he’d never seen so many-never seen a tenth so many-all together. And there were so many buildings that, though done in the same style, dwarfed those houses. How many households could inhabit a building eight stories high and half a block wide? How did they keep from feuding with one another? From things Kun had said, he knew clan ties were looser here in the city than they were back in his valley, but he had no feel for what that meant. He also couldn’t imagine why Gyorvar needed so many shops, and so many different kinds of shops. They sold more things than readily came to mind.

Captain Petofi’s chuckle brought him back to himself. “Your first time in Gyorvar, Sergeant?” the officer asked.

“I’ve been through before, sir,” Istvan answered, “but this is the first chance I’ve ever had to look around a little. It’s. not like my home valley.”

“Come from up in the mountains, do you?” Petofi said, and Istvan nodded. Petofi smiled his twisted smile. “I was just a little boy when my father moved the family here-Ekrekek Arpad’s father had summoned him to the city. I’d lived in the mountains myself till then. It’s a different world, sure as sure.”

“Aye, sir, it certainly is,” Istvan agreed.

After an hour or so, though, they came to a part of the world that looked thoroughly familiar. A barracks was a barracks, here or on Obuda. A barracks was a barracks, in fact, whether Gyongyosians or accursed foreigners like Kuusamans ran it. So Istvan had discovered, at any rate.

The carriage stopped. Balazs jumped down and opened the door that couldn’t be opened from the inside. “Come with me,” the Eye and Ear said again. “That hall right there, and we’ll find out what you know.”

Istvan felt a certain amount of relief on discovering the hall didn’t contain a torture chamber. Interrogation, among Gyongyosians, could be a serious business indeed. Balazs even gave Petofi and him food and ale. Coriander and pepper and caraway in the sausage reminded Istvan he was back in his own kingdom, though the pork wasn’t nearly so rich with fat as it would have been back in Kunhegyes.

“Now,” Balazs said once the two returned captives had refreshed themselves, “tell me what the stars-denying slanteyes claim to have shown you.”

“Fire and destruction, sent from afar,” Istvan answered.

“Even so,” Captain Petofi agreed. “Sorcery we cannot hope to match. They chose a worthless island, and made it more worthless still. But they can do the same to Gyorvar, and I see no way we could stop them. My spirit aches to say it, but I do not see how we can hope to win the war against them.”

“They told you they would visit this horror on our stars-beloved capital, did they?” Balazs inquired.

“They did,” Petofi said. “But they hardly needed to. A blind man can see that, if they did it to Becsehely, out in the middle of the Bothnian Ocean, they can do it wherever they choose.”

Balazs’ smile was far smoother than that of the wounded captain. “How do you know this?” he asked. “Again, did they tell you? Did they, perhaps, make a point of telling you?”

“How else could it have been?” Istvan said. “There was just the island, and us watching what happened to it.” He shuddered at the memory of the fire, and of the clouds of steam rising from the tormented sea.

“They could have had mages in the bowels of the very ship you rode, casting these fearsome spells,” the Eye and Ear said. “Or, for that matter, what they said was destruction could have been nothing but illusion. Either of those is easier to believe than that they really have these powers they claim.”

He doesn‘t believe because he doesn‘t want to believe, and because he didn‘t see with his own eyes, Istvan thought. He said, “Sir, anybody who’s fought the slanteyes-or who’s been in one of their captives’ camps-knows they’re stronger mages than we are. By the stars, they really did this thing.”

“So speaks a sergeant from back in the Ilszung Mountains,” Balazs said. “Do you claim to know everything of what is possible and what is not when it comes to sorcery?”

“No, sir,” Istvan answered. “All I claim is, I know what happened right in front of my own eyes. If you don’t believe me-if none of you people believe the captives the Kuusamans set free-our land will be sorry on account of it.”

“You should know, Sergeant,” Balazs said, his voice growing cold, “that the laws against treasonous talk and defeatism have been tightened up lately, as they should have been. You would be wise to have a care in what you say.”

Captain Petofi spoke up: “And you, wretch, you would be wise to listen to the underofficer. He spoke with a warrior’s courage, telling nothing but the truth, and you mock him and scorn him and answer him with threats. By the stars, with goatheads like you set over us, it’s no wonder we’re losing the war.”

Like most Gyongyosian men, Balazs let his shaggy, tawny beard grow high on his cheeks. It didn’t grow high enough to hide his flush of anger, though. “You have no business talking to me that way, Captain. I tell you what Ekrekek Arpad has told the land: we shall win this fight against the stars-detested savages of Kuusamo. If the Ekrekek of Gyongyos says a thing is so, how can a couple of ragged captives say otherwise?”

Istvan gulped. If Arpad said something was so, then it was bound to be so. Everything he’d ever learned proclaimed the truth of that. The stars spoke to Arpad, and Arpad spoke to Gyongyos. So it had ever been; so it would ever be.

But Petofi said, “If Ekrekek Arpad had been on that Kuusaman cruiser, he would have known the truth, the same as we did. And if we’re winning the war, how did the slanteyes ravage an island that used to belong to us?”

“I give you one last warning, Captain,” the Ekrekek’s Eye and Ear said. “We have places where we send defeatists, to keep them out of the way so their cowardice can’t infect the true warriors of Gyongyos.”

Petofi bowed. “By all means, send me to one of those places. The company and the wit are bound to be better there than here.”

“You’ll get your wish,” Balazs promised. He rounded on Istvan. “What about you, Sergeant? I trust you have better sense?”

That could only mean, Say what I want you to say, and things will go easy for you. Istvan gulped again. I just got out of a captives’ camp, he thought with something not far from despair. Petofi eyed him without saying a word. Sell yourself, wretch, his eyes seemed to say. Sighing, Istvan said, “How can you ask me to lie when the stars looking down on me know I tell the truth?”

“Another fool, eh?” Balazs scribbled a note on a leaf of paper in front of him. “Well, I already told you-we have places for fools.”

Ilmarinen was not a hunter. He had no qualms about eating game or meat. He just saw no sport in killing beasts. Men were supposed to be smarter than animals, so where was the contest? (The way men had behaved during the Derlavaian War did make him wonder about his assumption, but he’d still never heard of a deer or a wolf picking up a stick and blazing back at a hunter.) Still and all, though, one hunting phrase he’d heard stuck in his mind: in at the death. With Trapani fallen, he wanted to be in at the death of Algarve.

If that meant leaving Torgavi, he wasn’t altogether sorry to go. He hadn’t had much fun there anyhow, not since the Unkerlanters figured out he was a mage and ordered him to stay on his own kingdom’s side of the Albi. He went instead to Scansano, where Mainardo, once King of Jelgava and now King of Algarve, headed what passed for his kingdom’s government these days.

Kuusaman and Lagoan soldiers-and a few Jelgavans-patrolled the streets of Scansano these days. Mainardo had ordered the Algarvian soldiers fighting in the northeast of his kingdom to lay down their sticks even before his brother, King Mezentio, died in the fall of Trapani. All that was left now was for Mainardo to order all the Algarvians still fighting to do the same.

Mainardo reigned not from a palace, not even from the local count’s mansion, but from a hostel, as if to underscore how temporary his power was likely to prove. Ilmarinen managed to arrange a room in the very same hostel for himself.

“How did you do that?” a Kuusaman news-sheet writer asked him at a tavern across the street. “They told me they were full up.”

“It wasn’t hard,” the mage answered. “I bribed them.”

“That really worked?” The writer’s narrow eyes widened. “I know they say Algarvians are like that, but I didn’t believe it.”

“Believe it,” Ilmarinen said. “It’s true.” He laughed at the look on the news-sheet writer’s face. Kuusamans were straightforward in their dealings with one another. When they said aye or nay, they commonly meant it. Offer one of Ilmarinen’s countrymen a little money on the side to change his mind about something, and he was much more likely to shout for a constable. Algarvians weren’t like that. They used bribes the same way mechanics used grease.

“Will the surrender come today?” the writer asked. “That’s what everybody is saying, anyhow.”

“I’ll tell you how you’ll know,” Ilmarinen answered. The writer leaned toward him. He said, “When there’s a ley-line caravan from out of the west, then you’ll know it’s really over.”

“Out of the west?” Now the young news-sheet writer looked confused.

Ilmarinen wondered how the fellow was allowed to run around without a nursemaid. As gently as he could, he spelled things out: “Mainardo has to surrender to the Unkerlanters, too, you know.”

“Oh. Aye.” The writer thought. “Do you suppose they’ll send Marshal What’s-his-name to the ceremony?”

“Marshal Rathar,” Ilmarinen said, holding on to his patience with both hands. The news-sheet scribbler gave him a bright nod. The name meant hardly more to him than that of some half-forgotten Kaunian Emperor. Unkerlant might have been-much of Unkerlant was-on the other side of the world as far as most Kuusamans were concerned. “He does have business here,” Ilmarinen pointed out.

“I suppose so.” The writer sounded magnanimous in agreeing to that much. With further magnanimity, he said, “They did do some of the fighting, too.”

“Some?” Ilmarinen choked on his wine. He had a notion of what Swemmel’s kingdom had paid first to halt the Algarvians short of Cottbus and then to drive them back-a small notion, a foreigner’s notion, a notion he was sure was ludicrously inadequate. Unkerlant had beaten the Algarvians, aye. How many years-how many generations-would she take to recover from her triumph? “Son, they did more of it than the Lagoans and us put together. Three times as much, easily.”

The writer stared at him. “You’re joking.”

Ilmarinen’s patience dropped and broke. “And you’re an idiot,” he snapped. “Do they really let you run loose without diapers? How do you keep from making messes on the floor?”

“Who do you think you are?” the news-sheet writer said indignantly.

“Someone who knows what he’s talking about,” Ilmarinen answered. “Obviously something you’ve never had to worry about.” He finished his wine and stalked out.

As he’d predicted, Marshal Rathar’s ley-line caravan came in the next morning. The caravan had had to pass through a few regions where the Algarvians were still supposed to be fighting. It wasn’t scratched. That, to Ilmarinen, was a telling sign that the war, at least here in the east of Derlavai, had almost come to an end.

When Rathar descended from the caravan car, Ilmarinen contrived to be in the first rank of those waiting to greet him. He would, he thought, have used sorcery if he’d had to, but it hadn’t proved necessary. His colonel’s emblems, his mage’s badge, and a few judicious elbows did the trick.

Rathar turned out to be younger than he’d expected. And, also to his surprise, the Marshal of Unkerlant paused and pointed to him. “You are the mage Ilmarinen, is it not so?” Rathar asked in Algarvian. Classical Kaunian wasn’t widely taught in his kingdom, and he must have known Ilmarinen wouldn’t speak his language.

“That’s right,” Ilmarinen answered in the same language as officers and dignitaries stared at him. “What can I do for you, sir?”

“What does Kuusamo do in the Bothnian Ocean?” Rathar asked.

“Fight the Gongs,” Ilmarinen answered. “Fish. Things like that. What anyone else does in an ocean.”

Rathar shook his head. He looked like a dissatisfied bear. “That is not what I meant. What magic does Kuusamo do in the Bothnian Ocean?”

“None that anyone’s told me about,” Ilmarinen said, which had the virtue of being technically true. He had some ideas about the sorts of things his colleagues back in the Naantali district of Kuusamo might be doing, but he couldn’t prove them. He hadn’t heard much from those colleagues since leaving to fight-which made sense, for if captured he couldn’t tell what he didn’t know.

“I do not believe you,” the Unkerlanter marshal said. Ilmarinen shrugged. So did Rathar. His shoulders were twice as wide as Ilmarinen’s. One of the junior officers accompanying him, a man with bodyguard written all over him, tapped Rathar on the shoulder. Rathar nodded impatiently. Flanked by his entourage, he walked on.

The surrender ceremony took place that afternoon in the hostel’s dining room, the only chamber big enough to hold even a respectable fraction of all the people who wanted to be there. King Mainardo sat behind a table at one end of the room. A couple of Algarvian officers stood at his right and left hands, both of them looking extraordinarily glum. Grand General Nortamo of Kuusamo, Marshal Araujo of Lagoas, and Marshal Rathar of Unkerlant faced him. Their entourages crowded behind them. Ilmarinen stood among Nortamo’s followers, and had to go up on tiptoe to see over some of them.

Along with the soldiers of the three kingdoms that had done the bulk of the work in beating Algarve were smaller contingents from Valmiera and Jelgava and Sibiu. And Rathar had a man in Forthwegian uniform in his party. Ilmarinen looked to see if he also had a Yaninan in tow. He didn’t.

Nortamo spoke in Algarvian: “The Derlavaian War has gone on too long and cost too much. The allied kingdoms have prepared the instrument of surrender I hold for Algarve. Having caused so much torment for all surrounding kingdoms, having lost her own king in the fight, Algarve now acknowledges defeat and accepts responsibility for the consequences of her own dark deeds.” He walked over to Mainardo and set the surrender document in front of him.

“May I speak before I sign this paper?” the new King of Algarve asked.

“Say what you will,” Nortamo replied. “You must know, though, that it will not change the terms, which are no less than your complete and unconditional surrender.”

“Oh, aye, I know that,” Mainardo answered. Mezentio had been a fiery leader. His younger brother only seemed tired. With a nod, Mainardo said, “I cannot help but recognize that we are beaten. It is a truth. It is plain to all. But I say to you all that our courage, our sacrifice, our suffering, shall not be in vain. You may defeat us, but we shall rise again one day.” He inked a pen, signed the surrender, and handed it back to the Kuusaman commander.

Nortamo also signed it. He gave it to Marshal Araujo. After the Lagoan leader affixed his signature, he ceremoniously carried it to the table at which Marshal Rathar was sitting.

“I thank you,” Rathar said. “On behalf of my sovereign, I too have a word to say. Algarve did its best to murder Unkerlant. It is not sorry it fought this war. It is only sorry it lost.” In that, Ilmarinen judged, he was absolutely right. Rathar continued, “We intend to make Algarve sorry for a long, long time.”

He wrote his name, then called up the Forthwegian officer with him to add another signature. That done, he passed the document on to the minor kingdoms of the east-not that Valmiera would have reckoned itself such before the war began. At last, everyone had signed the surrender.

Nortamo spoke to the Algarvian officers: “You gentlemen will be so kind as to give up your swords. You are now war captives.”

Looking daggers at him, the officers obeyed. King Mainardo said, “What of me?”

“For the moment, you are king of however much of Algarve we decide to let you rule,” the Kuusaman commander replied. “You would be wise to hope you continue in this role, even if you reckon it less than exalted. King Donalitu has already submitted a request for your extradition to Jelgava.”

Ilmarinen happened to know that Donalitu had demanded-loudly demanded-Mainardo’s extradition to Jelgava. As far as Ilmarinen could tell, Donalitu had never in all his days done anything so demeaning as submitting a request.

Marshal Rathar said, “King Swemmel also has a claim on your person, you to represent King Mezentio and receive punishment for all Algarve did to Unkerlant.”

Now there’s an interesting choice, Ilmarinen thought. If I had to go to either Donalitu or Swemmel, whom would I pick? The Kuusaman mage shook his head. Choices like that made suicide look downright attractive.

Mainardo might have had more complaints or protests. If he did, hearing he was sought as a guest-in a manner of speaking-by both Jelgava and Unkerlant shut him up in a hurry. Marshal Araujo of Lagoas held up the instrument of surrender and said, “Let us all, on both sides, praise the powers above. The war in the east of Derlavai is over.”

Ilmarinen would have praised the powers above more if they’d never let the Derlavaian War start in the first place. But no one had asked his opinion there, and he had to admit that a finished war was better than one still going on. Well, a half-finished war, anyhow, he thought, and looked east, in the direction of Gyongyos. Then he looked west. The Gongs were closer in that direction, even if it wasn’t the one by which Kuusamo got at them.

Talsu was amazed at how readily he adjusted to a new round of life as a captive. Bad food and not enough of it, occasional beatings, interrogations that went nowhere-indeed, that seemed pointless-he’d been through them all before. He didn’t enjoy any of them. But they didn’t come as a shock this time, the way they had during his first stretch of time in a dungeon. The questions were somewhat different. The answers the interrogators-including his old unfriend, the major-wanted from him weren’t the same, either. All the principles behind them remained identical.

He had just been out in the yard-the most precious hour of a captive’s day, when he was reminded that fresh air and sunshine and birds and trees still existed-and was then, as usual, marched back to his cell. The gloom and the stink and the cold hard stone all around were doubly hard to bear after blue sky and bright sun and the scent of something growing. Talsu lay down on his pallet. Something was growing in the straw, too: mildew. As a tailor’s son would, he knew the musty odor only too well. He also knew better than to complain. If he did, he would sleep on stone.

With a squeal of hinges, the door flew open. Alarm blazed through him. Whenever guards came in when they weren’t supposed to, trouble was on the way. He’d learned that lesson when he’d been locked away at Algarvian orders. Having King Donalitu in charge hadn’t changed things a bit.

“Come with us,” one of the guards growled. Two others pointed sticks at Talsu, to make sure he wouldn’t suddenly leap on them and pound them all into the ground. Being thought more dangerous than he really was had seemed flattering the first time it happened. Now it just struck him as absurd.

If he didn’t get up, they would beat him and drag him. He knew that. As he rose, he couldn’t help asking, “What is it this time?” Sometimes they gave him a hint about which way the questioning would go.

Sometimes-but not today. “Shut up,” one of them told him. “Come along,” a second added. “You stinking son of a whore,” the third one said.

Had they let him bathe, he wouldn’t have stunk. He didn’t say anything of the sort. They seemed in an evil temper, even for guards in a dungeon. He hoped that didn’t mean another beating was coming. The bruises from his last one were only just starting to go from purple to yellow.

They frogmarched him down the corridor, up a flight of stairs, and into an interrogation chamber. There waiting for him sat the major who’d been a captain when in Algarvian service. The major was a professional. He did his job without mercy, but also without malice: Talsu had seen as much. That made the look of fury on his face all the more frightening.

“You stinking son of a whore,” he said, and Talsu’s testicles tried to crawl up into his belly. Whatever was coming, for whatever reason it was coming, would be very bad. He didn’t know why, but he did know that why often didn’t matter. They had him. They could do as they pleased with him.

“Sir, do we really have to do this?” a guard asked, and all hope within Talsu died. If it worried the guards, it would be dreadful indeed.

“Aye, we do, powers below eat him,” the major replied. He yanked open a desk drawer and pulled out the clothes Talsu had been wearing when he was arrested and the contents of his pockets. Glaring at Talsu, he demanded, “Are these goods yours? Is this everything you had in your possession when you were taken into the custody of King Donalitu’s security personnel?”

“I… think so,” Talsu answered. Now thoroughly confused, he dared ask, “What’s going on?”

“I’ll tell you what,” the interrogator snarled. “You must have kissed some Kuusaman’s arse, because the miserable slanteyes want you out of here. And so you’re going out of here-way out of here. Get into your clothes. You’ll be their problem from now on, and they’re fornicating well welcome to you.”

Things were happening too fast for Talsu to follow. He wondered if they were going to kill him and give his body to the Kuusamans. Then he decided they wouldn’t do that-the major wouldn’t have been so angry about disposing of his corpse.

He dressed in a hurry. The only Kuusamans with whom he’d had much to do were the mage near Skrunda and the soldiers he’d led past his home town. How could one of them have heard he’d been tossed in a dungeon? How would one of them have had the clout to get him out? He had no idea. He didn’t much care, either.

“Sign this.” The major shoved a leaf of paper at him.

“What is it?” Talsu asked. As he picked up a pen, he looked at the paper. “A certificate of good treatment? Are you out of your mind? Why should I sign it? It’s a bloody lie.”

“Why should you sign it?” The major looked at him. “Because we won’t turn you loose if you don’t, that’s why.” He folded his arms across his chest and waited.

Talsu started to bend over the certificate, then stopped, weighing the odds. He wouldn’t have been here if the Kuusamans hadn’t leaned on King Donalitu’s government, that was plain. But, since they had. . Who owned the power here? Talsu straightened up and set down the pen. “Futter you,” he said evenly.

Behind him, the guards growled. He tensed and started to shrink in on himself, fearing he’d misjudged and earned another beating. But the major of interrogators just gave him a sour stare. “We’re well rid of you,” he declared, “and the Kuusamans are welcome to you.”

What did that mean? Before Talsu could even ask, the major gestured to the guards. They grabbed Talsu and hustled him out of the interrogation chamber. He went out through the exercise yard-blinking at the bright sun, as he always did when he first saw it-and out through the gate. He blinked again, this time at not having walls around him. Was this where. .?

It was. A ley-line caravan glided up. A couple of nondescript men, men who looked amazingly like the fellows who’d arrested him, got down from a caravan car. One of them jerked a thumb at Talsu. “This the bastard?” he asked.

“It’s him, all right,” a guard agreed. The fellows from the caravan car and the guards signed some papers. Then the guards gave Talsu a shove. He climbed up into the caravan car. So did his new keepers. The ley-line caravan slid off toward the southeast.

“Where are we going?” Talsu asked.

“Balvi,” one of the men said. “Shut up,” the other one added. He would have had no trouble working in a dungeon.

“Balvi!” Talsu exclaimed. He’d never been to the capital of Jelgava. Before his days in the army, he’d never been far from Skrunda. The mountains he’d seen and fought in then hadn’t endeared him to the idea of travel. Neither had his couple of trips to King Donalitu’s dungeons. “Why Balvi?”

“Shut up.” This time, both keepers spoke together. In casual, conversational tones more frightening than fierce menace would have been, one of them went on, “You’d be amazed how much we can make you hurt without leaving a mark on you.”

“That’s true,” the other one agreed. Talsu was willing to believe them. He sat quietly in the compartment-save for one brief trip to ease himself, during which both keepers went with him-till the ley-line caravan glided into the depot at Balvi late that afternoon. A carriage waited for them there. Talsu craned his neck for glimpses of the capital’s famous buildings. Even the royal palace was worth seeing, no matter what he thought of King Donalitu.

Once inside the carriage, Talsu risked a question: “Where are we going?”

“Kuusaman ministry,” answered one of the men with him.

“You’re their worry now,” the other one said, “and good riddance to you.”

“What do you mean?” Talsu said. “You sound like you’re throwing me out of the kingdom.”

“That’s just what we’re doing,” a keeper said. “If the slanteyes want you so bad, they’re welcome to you, as far as Jelgava is concerned.”

Talsu was still chewing on that when the carriage stopped in front of a larger, more impressive building than any Skrunda boasted. The Kuusaman banner, sky blue and sea green, flew in front of it and atop it. “Out,” the other keeper said. Talsu got out. So did his shepherds.

A couple of Kuusamans took charge of them just inside the ministry. They spoke classical Kaunian-spoke it better than Talsu or his keepers, though it was the grandfather of Jelgavan but unrelated to the islanders’ tongue. That left Talsu obscurely embarrassed. The keepers signed several leaves of paper. Talsu began to feel as if he were no more than a sack of lentils passed from one dealer to another.

With a last glower, King Donalitu’s men left the ministry. One of the Kuusamans told Talsu, “Come with me. I shall take you to Minister Tukiainen.”

“I thank you,” Talsu said in his halting classical Kaunian. “But may I not wash myself first?” Middle voice, he thought. He was increasingly conscious that he hadn’t had the chance to bathe any time lately.

After putting their heads together and talking in their own language, the Kuusamans both nodded. “Let it be as you say,” one of them replied. “But you would do well-please believe me when I say this-to bathe quickly.”

A quick bath didn’t get rid of all the grime clinging to Talsu, but did leave him smelling less like something just off the midden. The Kuusamans escorted him to Minister Tukiainen’s office. He almost didn’t notice the minister, though, for Gailisa was sitting in the office. They flew into each other’s arms. “What are you doing here?” he asked her.

“It is her doing that you are both here.” Minister Tukiainen spoke good Jelgavan. By speaking, he reminded Talsu of his existence. He went on, “She wrote a letter that brought your plight to the notice of the Seven Princes. We requested your release. . and so, here you are.”

“Thank you, sir.” Reluctantly untangling himself from Gailisa, Talsu bowed. He asked, “Uh, sir, why am I here! Why didn’t they just let me go back to Skrunda?”

“Because your government has decided you and your wife are both troublemakers,” Tukiainen answered. “You are not welcome in Jelgava anymore. King Donalitu has said that, since Kuusamo is interested in you, you should be Kuusamo’s responsibility. And so”-he smiled-”we shall take care of that. As soon as may be, we shall send you to Yliharma and help you set up in business there. You are a tailor, your wife tells me. A skilled tailor should do well in Kuusamo.”

Things were moving too fast for Talsu. That morning, he’d been in the dungeon, with no particular hope of ever getting out again. Now he was not only out of the dungeon but also, evidently, on his way out of his own kingdom. He tried to make himself sorry or angry or anything of the sort. He couldn’t. All he felt was joy. “Thank you, sir,” he said, and bowed again. “I feel like-like I’m escaping.”

“And so you are,” Master Tukiainen said. “To us, this whole kingdom is like a dungeon. In my opinion, you are well out of it.”

“I’ll have to learn Kuusaman,” Talsu said. That, at the moment, was the least of his worries.