Out of the Darkness

Eighteen

Good day to you,” Valamo said in classical Kaunian as Talsu walked into the Kuusaman tailor’s shop.

“Good day to you, sir,” Talsu answered in Kuusaman. A word, a phrase, a conjugation at a time, he was picking up the language of the land that had taken him in. The flat vowels, some short, some long, still felt strange in his mouth, but people understood him when he spoke. Unless they slowed down for him, though, he had trouble understanding them.

“How are you today?” Valamo asked, switching to Kuusaman himself.

“I am well, thank you.” Talsu came out with another stock phrase. Then he had to fall back on classical Kaunian: “What is there for me to do today?”

“Some leggings, a cape to finish, a few other things,” Valamo said, also in the old tongue. He smiled at Talsu. “Since you taught me that wonderful charm, we get more done in less time.”

Talsu smiled back, and managed a dutiful nod. He still had mixed feelings about that charm. It was everything the Algarvian who’d taught it to his father and him said it would be. If only he hadn’t learned it from a redhead! The spell itself was surely clean, but hadn’t it grown in tainted soil?

“Well, to work,” he said, pushing down his qualms as he did almost every day. He had that bit of Kuusaman down solid; Valamo said it at any excuse or none. Talsu’s new boss was a sunnier man than his own father, but no less dedicated to doing what needed doing and making sure everyone else did, too. Talsu asked, “What do you want me to do first?” He could never go wrong there, either, even if he did have to say it in classical Kaunian.

“Do the cape,” Valamo told him. “Once you get done with that, tell me, and I will see what wants doing next.”

That was also in classical Kaunian; Talsu could answer in Kuusaman, and did: “All right.”

He was busy working on the cape-a much heavier garment than anyone in Jelgava would have worn, and one more like those he’d made for Algarvian soldiers bound for Unkerlant-when the bell above the door to Valamo’s shop chimed. When Talsu looked up, he started in alarm, for he thought the man walking into the shop was himself an Algarvian. The fellow was a tall redhead, and wore a tunic and kilt.

But he also had narrow eyes set on a slant, and wore his hair gathered in a neat ponytail at the nape of his neck. A Lagoan, Talsu realized, and let out a sigh of relief.

If he was a Lagoan, though, he spoke excellent Kuusaman-spoke it too fast for Talsu to follow, in fact. He blinked when Valamo turned to him and said, “He does not want to talk to me. He wants to talk to you.”

“To me?” Talsu said, startled into Jelgavan. Switching to classical Kaunian, he nodded to the newcomer. “What do you want, sir?”

“Can you follow my Valmieran?” the fellow asked. Talsu nodded; his own tongue and that of the other Kaunian kingdom in the east were close kin. “Good,” the redheaded man said. “I want you to make me a wedding suit.”

“A wedding suit?” Talsu echoed, still taken aback. Then his wits started to work. “Why me? You seem to know who I am.”

“Aye, I do,” the Lagoan answered. “You see, the woman I am marrying is named Pekka.” He waited to see if that would get a reaction from Talsu.

“Oh!” Talsu exclaimed. “Please make her happy. . ah?”

“My name is Fernao,” the Lagoan said.

“Thank you, Master Fernao,” Talsu said. “Please make her happy. I owe her so much. If it weren’t for her, I would still be sitting in a Jelgavan dungeon.”

“I translated your wife’s letter,” Fernao told him. “She had a little something to do with this, too.”

“Then I thank you, too, sir,” Talsu said. “If I had my own shop, I would be proud to make you your suit for nothing. As things are. .” He glanced over toward Valamo.

“I did not come in here for that,” Fernao said. “I can afford to pay you, and to pay your boss.”

Talsu’s boss took advantage of the pause to ask, “What is going on? I see the two of you know each other, but I cannot follow the language you use.”

He spoke in classical Kaunian. Fernao started to reply in the same language- he used it more fluently than Valamo, much more fluently than Talsu-but then switched to Kuusaman, in which he was also very quick and smooth. How many languages does he know? Talsu wondered. He wished Fernao hadn’t switched to Kuusaman; it gave him no chance to follow what was going on.

Valamo went back to classical Kaunian: “This is your friend, then?”

“I would like to think so, aye,” Talsu answered in the same tongue. “I would be honored to think so.”

“I would like to think so, too,” Fernao said. With Algarvic courtesy, he bowed. Talsu nodded in return. He’s not an Algarvian, he reminded himself. All the redheaded kingdoms have some of the same customs, and Lagoans helped free Jelgava. After seeing so much of Mezentio’s men in Skrunda, he needed the reminder.

“Good.” Valamo beamed. “Very good. A wedding suit, is it? That is very good, too. I am sure Talsu will do a splendid job. He is a clever fellow. As soon as he learns our tongue and saves up a stake, he will do very well in a shop of his own. A wedding suit.” His narrow eyes narrowed further. “Shall we speak of price now?”

“Take the price from my pay,” Talsu said. “I want to do this.”

“No, no, no.” Fernao shook his head. “I will go somewhere else before I let that happen. I want to bring you business, not to cost you money.”

“Seeing what I owe the lady you are marrying-” Talsu began.

“Hush,” Valamo said sharply. “He has said he will pay. Good enough-he will pay.” Sure enough, the tailor was all business. But just when that thought went through Talsu’s mind, Valamo went on, “I will offer some discount-say, one part in four.”

Now Fernao bowed to him. “That is very generous, sir.”

“We have several styles,” Valamo said. “While the gentleman is here, I will show him some of the possibilities.” He took a big book off a shelf and opened it on the counter. “Sir, if you would. . Aye, and you, too, Talsu. You should get a notion of what you will be doing.”

With a sheepish smile, Talsu said, “I certainly should. I have to find out what a Kuusaman wedding suit looks like. I do not make-have not made-a Kuusaman wedding suit before now.”

To Fernao, Valamo added, “Understand, these are only for guidance. If what you see does not please you, or if you want to combine two styles you do see, we can do that, too.”

Fernao studied the illustrations. So did Talsu. To him, the clothes Kuusamans wore to get married were ridiculously gaudy, but nobody wanted his opinion. Fernao pointed to one and said, “This ought to suit me.”

“You are a man of taste,” Valamo said. “That is a very fine style for a man who is tall and slim, as you are.”

“Except for my eyes, I am never going to look like most Kuusamans,” Fernao said. “But this should do well enough.”

“Not all of us look like me,” Valamo said generously. “Most, aye, but not all. You have that Lagoan accent, and I do not suppose you will lose it, but how did you come to speak Kuusaman like a man from the south coast? Most foreigners try to talk like folk from Yliharma.”

Fernao laughed. “That is because of the company I keep. My fiancee is from Kajaani.”

“I see. I see.” Valamo laughed, too. “Aye, that makes sense.” To Talsu, he said, “You see, here is another foreigner who has learned our tongue. You can do it, too.”

“I hope so,” Talsu said. He asked Fernao, “How long did it take you to feel comfortable speaking Kuusaman every day?”

“Somewhere between one year and two,” Fernao answered. “At first, I would have to use classical Kaunian for words I did not know in Kuusaman. And I should warn you that you may not learn as fast as I did, for I am good with languages.”

“But he is also a younger man than you,” Valamo said. “He has time to learn.”

“I am no scholar,” Talsu said, “but I am doing my best.”

“What more can a man do?” the Kuusaman tailor responded. “Now, do your best to measure the gentleman.”

“One moment,” Fernao said. “First, a part in four off a price of …?”

The haggle quickly went from classical Kaunian into Kuusaman. Talsu knew his numbers, so he could follow pieces of it. He did his best to pick up other words from context. He thought he learned the term for swindler, which struck him as a useful thing to know. But the Kuusaman tailor and the Lagoan didn’t start screaming at each other, even if they did throw insults around. As Talsu had seen, Algarvians got-or at least acted-much more excited in a dicker.

“Bargain,” Valamo said at last, and stuck out a hand. Fernao took it. To Talsu, Valamo said, “What are you standing there for? Get to work!” He bared his teeth in a smile to show he meant it for a joke, or at least some of a joke.

Talsu took out the tape measure. “Now I will measure you. If you put your tunic on this hanger, sir, so I can get the most accurate measurements…”

In Valmieran, Fernao said, “I am not used to having people as tall as I am around me here in Kuusamo.”

“I understand that,” Talsu answered in Jelgavan. “Children here often think I am something very strange.”

“I have had that happen, too,” Fernao said. “At least they would not suspect you of being an Algarvian.”

“Well, no,” Talsu said. “Raise your arm, if you please, sir. I need another measurement.” When he was through, he nodded to the Lagoan. “That will be all for now. I expect I can have your suit ready for you in a week or so.”

“Good enough,” Fernao said. “Thank you very much.” He reclaimed his tunic, donned it again, and left the shop.

“That was a nice bit of business he just brought us, even with the discount,” Valamo said.

“So it was,” Talsu said. “Doing it will be a pleasure.”

“A man should enjoy his work,” the Kuusaman tailor agreed. “A man should also make money at his work. The Lagoan gentleman understood that. You should, too.”

“If I have to choose between money and friendship, I know what my choice will be,” Talsu said. “If he is going to wed the woman who helped me escape from that dungeon, I owe him everything I can give him.”

“You owe him your best work. He owes you a fair price,” Valamo said. “He will pay one. Now you have to do your best for him.”

“I intend to,” Talsu said.

“Good. Before long, you will be working for yourself, in your own shop. Your labor is all you have. Make it as good as you know how, but do not give very much of it away, or you will not eat.”

“Good advice,” Talsu said. “Let me see the patterns for the style he picked out, please.” Valamo passed him the book. He’d never tried anything so complicated, not on his own, but he thought he could do it. He went into the back of the shop to see exactly what fabric he had available, then settled down and got to work.

Bembo hadn’t wanted to come back to duty on night patrol, but he didn’t dare complain. From Captain Sasso’s point of view, he supposed putting him here on the schedule made sense. Sasso already had a solid rotation of constables. Nobody much cared to go out at night, so why not give the newcomer that shift?

I’ll tell you why not, Bembo thought. If I trip over a high cobblestone I didn’t see in the dark and break my leg again, I’ll be very annoyed. But he couldn’t say that to Sasso, for fear the captain would tell him he couldn’t do the job.

Six years had gone by, near enough, since he’d had the night shift when the war was new. Things had been pretty quiet then, and were pretty quiet now, for the same reason: a curfew was in force. Kuusaman patrols also tramped the streets. Bembo had had to show them his badge once already tonight. He didn’t care for that, but liked the idea of getting blazed even less.

Tricarico wasn’t black now, as it had been when the Derlavaian War was new. No enemy dragons flew overhead, ready to drop eggs on the city. But more than a few enemy dragons now ate their stupid heads off on Algarvian territory. If Bembo’s people ever thought of rising up against their occupiers. . He shuddered. The idea of suicide had never appealed to him.

He strode up the street toward the stump of the old Kaunian column in the center of town. The column itself had come down while he was in Forthweg- razed by the Algarvians, not by enemy action. Not much from the Kaunian past survived in Tricarico these days: not much in all of Algarve, from what he’d heard. The stump was bare, plain marble, about as tall as a man. The reliefs above it? Gone.

Beyond the remains of the column, somebody moved. Bembo’s stick was in his hand on the instant. “Who goes?” he said sharply.

“It’s only me,” a woman’s voice answered. “You wouldn’t do anything to bother me, now would you?”

“Who the blazes-?” Bembo burst out. But the voice was familiar. “Fiametta, is that you?”

“Well, who else would it be, sweetheart?” she said as she came around what was left of the column. Her tunic might have been painted on; her kilt barely covered her shapely backside. “Bembo?” she asked, stopping short in surprise when she recognized him. “I thought you were dead!”

“Not quite,” Bembo said. “What are you doing out after curfew? You ought to know better than that.”

“What do you think I was doing?” Fiametta twitched her hips. “I was working, that’s what. I’ll go along home like a good little girl, I promise.”

Bembo barked laughter. “You haven’t been a good little girl since you got too big to make messes in your drawers. I caught you out right about here back when the war started, remember? I ought to run you in.”

“You wouldn’t do that!” the courtesan exclaimed in dismay.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Bembo said. “You know what time it is. You’re out late. You can’t very well say I beat your door down and dragged you out of bed.”

“Have a heart, Bembo!” Fiametta said. Bembo just stood there, looking official. The woman muttered something under her breath. He couldn’t make out what, which was probably just as well. She sighed. “Look, suppose I give you some, too? Will you leave me alone then? It wouldn’t be the first time, you know.”

He didn’t even think about Saffa. Constables and courtesans made bargains like this all the time. “Now you’re talking,” he said.

They found an alley where the street lights didn’t reach. When Bembo came out a few minutes later, he was whistling. Fiametta, he supposed, headed to her home, or maybe just to another paying job. He wondered what she would do if she ran into a Kuusaman patrol. From everything he’d seen, the Kuusamans didn’t make deals like that.

The rest of his shift passed less enjoyably, but he didn’t have to do much. That suited him fine. The sun climbed up over the Bradano Mountains. He met his relief on the streets, then made his way back to the constabulary station to check out. As he neared the stairs, a skinny old man came up the street from the other direction. The fellow called his name.

“Aye, that’s me,” Bembo answered. “Who are you? Curfew doesn’t end for another hour or so.” If this fellow had no good explanation for being out and about, he’d grab him and haul him in. That would show people what a diligent fellow he was.

“You don’t know me?” The skinny man looked down at himself. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. There was more of me when we saw each other last.”

Bembo’s jaw dropped. “Sergeant Pesaro? Powers above! If this isn’t old home week, I don’t know what. But you were in Gromheort. How did you get out alive?”

Pesaro shrugged. “I hadn’t quite starved to death when the Unkerlanters took the place-advantage to being fat, you know-and the fellow I surrendered to let me do it instead of blazing me. I got lucky there, I know. They didn’t feed me much in the captives’ camp, but they finally let most of us go-easier than hanging on to us, I expect. I’ve walked across most of Algarve to get here, on account of an awful lot of the ley lines still aren’t working the way they’re supposed to.”

“You were lucky,” Bembo said.

“If you want to call it that,” Pesaro answered. “How about you? You were in Eoforwic when the Unkerlanters took it, so I didn’t think I’d ever see your ugly mug again.”

“I got wounded-broken leg-when the Unkerlanter attack opened up,” Bembo said. “We still had a line of retreat open from the town, so they shipped me out. I don’t think Oraste got away.”

“Well, he always was a tough bastard,” Pesaro said. “If Swemmel’s men caught him, he’ll have the chance to prove it. And if they didn’t catch him, he’s bound to be dead.”

Bembo climbed the stairs and held the door open. “Come on, Sergeant. Show ‘em you still know what’s what.”

“All I know is, I’m cursed glad I’m still breathing,” Pesaro said as he wearily joined Bembo at the top of the stairs. “There were plenty of times when I didn’t think I would be.”

“Who you jawing with, Bembo?” the desk sergeant asked. “You arrest somebody?”

“No, Sergeant,” Bembo answered. “Look, here’s Sergeant Pesaro, back from the west. If he can make it back, maybe more people will.”

“Sergeant Pesaro?” The desk sergeant sounded as if he couldn’t believe his ears. He got up and stared at Pesaro. “Why, by the powers above, it is. Welcome home, Sergeant. Always good news when another one comes back.” He glanced over at Bembo. “Well, almost always.”

“And I love you, too, Sergeant,” Bembo said sweetly.

Hearing Pesaro’s name brought constables and clerks out from the back rooms of the constabulary station. They pounded the newcomer’s back, clasped his wrist, and congratulated him on coming home again. They never paid that much attention to me, Bembo thought resentfully. But then he smiled to himself. Let them fuss as much as they want. I’ve got Saffa warming my bed, and Pesaro won’t be able to match that-or he’d better not, anyhow.

Even Captain Sasso, who was in early, came down from his lofty office to greet Pesaro. “Good to see you, too, Captain,” Pesaro said. “I wondered if I ever would, after you sent me west.”

That brought a moment of silence. Bembo hadn’t dared say any such thing to Sasso. The constabulary captain licked his lips. Everyone waited to hear how he would answer. At last, he said, “Well, Sergeant, back then none of us thought things would turn out the way they did.”

Now it was Pesaro’s turn to think things over. Grudgingly, he nodded. “All right, Captain, that’s fair enough, I guess.”

When Bembo went back to his flat, he found Saffa getting ready to go in to work. She burst into tears when he told her Pesaro had come back to Tricarico. She seemed so delighted, Bembo wondered if she had slept with the sergeant before he went west. But then Saffa said, “If he can come home. .” She didn’t finish the sentence, but she didn’t have to. If he can come home, my little bastard’s daddy can come home, too, and then the powers below eat you, Bembo. That was what she meant, that or something enough like it not to matter.

Bembo almost said something sharp in return, but at the last minute he decided to keep his mouth shut-something that came close to constituting an unnatural act for an Algarvian. He kissed her, patted her on the backside, yawned, and headed for the bedroom. He was tired. Saffa, he thought, gave him a grateful look for not picking a fight. Just before he fell asleep, he heard the door close as she went off to the constabulary station.

He got a rather different welcome when he came back to his flat a couple of mornings later. Saffa stood just inside the doorway. “You son of a whore!” she shouted, and slapped him in the face hard enough to rock him back on his heels. “You stick it into that cheap slut, and then you want to touch me? Not futtering likely!” She belted him again, backhand this time.

Though his ears rang, he did ask the right question: “What in blazes are you talking about?” He’d nearly said, How did you know? That would have lost the game before it even started.

But asking the right question didn’t do him a bit of good, for Saffa ground out, “Fiametta told Adonio what you did, and Adonio brought the lovely news back to the station, and now everybody there must know it. And if you think you’ll ever lay a finger on me again, let alone anything else-” She swung at him again.

He caught her by the wrist. When he didn’t let go right away, she tried to bite his hand. “Stop that, powers below eat you!” he said. “I can expl-”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Saffa said. “I never want to hear it. You’re not even wasting time telling me it’s all a lie.” She tried to twist away. He didn’t let go. She snarled, “You’d better turn me loose, Bembo, or I’ll really start screaming.”

“All right, bitch,” he said, “but if you try and take my head off again I promise you’ll lose teeth. Got it?” Saffa nodded warily. Even more warily, Bembo let go of her arm.

She took a quick step back. “I spent most of the night getting my stuff out of this place,” she said. “I have to see you at the station, but that’s all I have to do. As far as I’m concerned, you’re dead. Dead, do you hear me?”

“Curse it, Saffa, all I did was-”

“Screw a tart the first chance you got. No thanks, pal. You don’t play those games with me. Nobody plays those games with me.”

“But, sweetheart,” Bembo whined, “I really love you.” Did he? He doubted it, but knew he had to sound as if he did. “It was just one of those things.” He even made the ultimate sacrifice: “Darling, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry till the next time you think you can get it wet on the side. Goodbye!” Saffa hyphenated the two syllables by slamming the door so hard, the frame quivered. Bembo stood staring at it for several heartbeats. Then he walked into the flat’s little kitchen, poured himself a glass of spirits, and drank it down, all alone.

Ceorl scratched at his cheeks. He’d been doing that for days now, and cursing and fuming every time he did it. “This fornicating itch is driving me out of my mind,” he said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do about it.”

One of the Unkerlanter gang bosses-one of the few captives who ranked as Ceorl’s equal in the cinnabar mine-said, “Why don’t you cut your throat? Then we won’t have to listen to you anymore.” But even he smiled when he said it. He didn’t want trouble from Ceorl. Nobody, not captives, not guards, wanted trouble from Ceorl.

Another Unkerlanter, one less prominent in the camp hierarchy, said, “Why don’t you cut off that ugly beard? Maybe that would do some good. It sure looks like you’ve got the mange.”

“It does not,” Ceorl said indignantly. He was right, too; he had a fine, thick, curly beard. But he could have kissed that Unkerlanter-he’d been waiting for days for somebody to suggest shaving to him. He scratched again, then cursed again. “Powers above, maybe I will cut it off. Anything would be better than what I’m going through now. Who’s got a razor he can lend me?”

The gang boss said, “You’ll need a scissors first, to get that mess short enough so a razor will cut it.”

“If you say so,” Ceorl answered. “I don’t know anything about this shaving business. I really may cut my throat.”

He didn’t get the chance to find out for another couple of days. He carefully spent all that time grumbling about how his face itched. When he got a scissors and a broken piece of mirror to guide his hand, he snipped away at the whiskers he’d never done more than trim before. By the time he set down the scissors, he was shaking his head. “I really do look mangy now.”

The Unkerlanter called Fariulf handed him a straight razor and a cup of water to wet down what was left of his whiskers. “You won’t once you’re done here,” he said.

Ceorl rapidly discovered he despised shaving. He cut himself several times. The razor scraped over his face. Had he really had an itchy skin, he was sure what he was doing would only have made things worse. His hide, in fact, did itch and sting by the time he got done. He shook his head again. “People have to be out of their cursed minds to want to do this every day.” Reaching for the scrap of mirror, he added, “How do I look?”

His Unkerlanter was still foul. He knew that. People mostly understood him now, though. Somebody-somebody behind him, whom he couldn’t note- said, “You’re still ugly, but not the same way.”

Looking into the mirror, Ceorl had to admit that wasn’t far wrong. A stranger stared back at him: a man with a thrusting chin with a cleft in it, hollows below his cheekbones, and a scar above his upper lip he’d never seen before. He hadn’t shown the world his bare face since he was a boy. He looked as if he’d suddenly got five years younger. He also looked like an Unkerlanter, not a Forthwegian.

“How does it feel?” Fariulf asked.

Lousy, Ceorl thought. But that was the wrong answer. He splashed a little water from the cup onto his abused face and ran the palm of his hand over his cheeks and chin. His skin felt as strange to him as it looked. Making himself smile, he said, “I think it’s better. I’m going to have to keep doing this.”

Acquiring a razor of his own didn’t take long. Unkerlanter miners died all the time. Survivors split what little they had. They weren’t supposed to have razors, but the guards usually winked at that-picks and shovels and crowbars made weapons at least as dangerous. One of those razors ended up in Ceorl’s hands. Little by little, he learned to shave without turning his face into a mass of raw meat.

One afternoon, he took Sudaku aside and said, “When I give you the word, I’m going to want you and the boys to screw up the count.”

“Ah.” The blond from the Phalanx of Valmiera nodded, unsurprised. “Going to disappear, are you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ceorl answered. He slapped Sudaku on the back. “I wish you could come along. But it wouldn’t work, you know.” He wasn’t even lying; Kaunian or not, Sudaku made a pretty good right-hand man.

But Sudaku was a Kaunian, a blond. If he escaped from this mine, from this captives’ camp, he couldn’t possibly pretend to be an Unkerlanter. Ceorl could. “Good luck,” Sudaku told him, and sounded as if he meant it.

“Thanks,” Ceorl said. “I’ll let you know when.” Sudaku nodded. Ceorl knew he was taking a chance by saying even this much, but judged he could trust Sudaku so far. And the longer the head start he and Fariulf got when they broke out of this mining compound, the better the chance they had of getting away clean. If Ceorl hadn’t believed in taking risks, he never would have become a robber or joined Plegmund’s Brigade.

Then he had to get as ready as he could. Saving food wasn’t easy, not when the captives got barely enough to keep them alive. Still and all, he managed to accumulate a good many little bricks of black bread. They would be stale and hard by the time he made his move, but he would still be able to eat them. He hoped Fariulf was making similar preparations. He hoped so, but he didn’t try to find out. If Fariulf wasn’t ready once they broke out, too bad for him.

Ceorl bided his time. When he did make the move, he knew it would have to succeed. If it didn’t, he would never see a second chance. Fariulf kept asking, “When? When?”

“I’ll tell you when,” Ceorl answered. “Don’t hop out of your tunic.”

Waiting paid off. A couple of weeks after he started shaving, the runs went through the camp. Most of the time, men needed leave to visit the latrine trenches. When they were liable to foul themselves if they waited, the guards waived the rule. It wasn’t for the sake of the miners; Ceorl knew as much. It was so the guards wouldn’t have to smell the stink or watch where they put their feet. Why mattered little to him. The waiver did.

He sidled up to Fariulf in the mine and said, “Tonight, a couple of hours after midnight.” The Unkerlanter nodded without looking up; he’d learned such lessons as a captive’s life could teach him. Later that day, Ceorl managed to whisper a couple of words in Sudaku’s ear: “Tomorrow morning.” The blond didn’t even nod. He just gave Ceorl the sort of wave he would have used in the field to show he’d understood an order. This may work, Ceorl thought, and then, It had better work.

Even in the middle of the night, he wasn’t the only one heading for the latrine trenches. He didn’t want to think about what easing himself would be like in the middle of winter. He didn’t intend to be here to find out.

He didn’t hurry to the stinking trenches. Before long, Fariulf caught up with him. “What now?” the Unkerlanter asked.

“Now you get a guard to pay attention to you,” Ceorl answered. “I don’t care how you go about it-just do it. Once you manage it, we go from there.”

“Right,” Fariulf said. Then he added the same thought Ceorl had had earlier in the day: “This had better work.”

“You aren’t taking any chances I ain’t,” Ceorl said. Fariulf nodded.

Out beyond the slit trenches, guards paced beyond a deadline marked off by a rail fence. Any captive who crossed the deadline got blazed. So camp rules said. Ceorl had other ideas.

Fariulf squatted over a trench and started moaning and grunting in such a good simulation of agony that even Ceorl, who knew better, wanted to do something for him. When a guard drew near, Fariulf moaned, “I want to go to the infirmary! I’ve got to go to the infirmary!”

“Shut up,” the guard said, but his steps slowed. Fariulf didn’t shut up. He kept on giving a splendid impression of a man in distress. The guard never noticed Ceorl sliding under the fence. Ceorl had had practice killing men silently before joining Plegmund’s Brigade, and much more practice since. He slid up behind the Unkerlanter, clapped a hand over his mouth, and drew the razor across his throat. Even he had trouble hearing the whimpering gurgle that was the only sound the fellow made. He eased the body to the ground, picked up the guard’s stick, and started walking his beat.

Fariulf rose and hurried over to him. “Stay down,” Ceorl hissed. “Don’t draw eyes.” Fariulf flattened out on the ground. Ceorl gave him a kick in the ribs to remind him to keep low. “Get going. I’ll be along.”

He marched along till he saw another guard coming out of the darkness and made sure the other fellow saw him. Then he turned, as if going back along the beat. He almost went past the spot where he’d killed the guard; Fariulf had dragged the corpse somewhere out of the way. “Efficiency,” Ceorl muttered: nearly too much efficiency.

He hurried out, and soon caught up with the Unkerlanter. The trenches and fences around the mine were designed to keep captives in. Before the war, they probably would have done a good enough job. They weren’t adequate for confining men who’d faced worse barricades, and better manned ones, in Unkerlant and Forthweg and Yanina and Algarve. Ceorl killed another guard on the way out, again without a sound.

“We’re leaving a trail,” Fariulf said.

“Did you want him to nab us?” Ceorl snarled, and the Unkerlanter shook his head.

For all of King Swemmel’s preaching about efficiency, the guards took a long time to realize anything was amiss. Ceorl and Fariulf were out of the enclosure around the cinnabar mine by then, looking around for somewhere to lie up during the approaching day. “I didn’t think it would be this easy,” Fariulf said. “Why doesn’t everybody escape?”

“Most people are sheep,” Ceorl said scornfully. “Would you have tried breaking out if I hadn’t pushed you?” A troubled look on his face, Fariulf shook his head.

But the search, once it started, was not to be despised. No matter how Sudaku muddled the count, two dead guards got noticed. Dragons circled low overhead. Teams of guards swept through the hills. Had Ceorl and Fariulf not learned their trade in a harder school than this, they might have been taken that first day. As things were, they stayed hidden in scrubby bushes, and pushed north after nightfall. Fariulf did have food of his own, which was as well, for Ceorl had no intention of giving him any of his.

To Ceorl’s amazement, Fariulf had no idea where in his own kingdom the Mamming Hills lay. “Once we get over the Wolter, we’ll be back in regular country, without all these bastards snooping around,” Ceorl said.

“Inspectors are everywhere,” Fariulf told him sadly.

The warning made Ceorl fight shy of approaching the few herdsmen he saw in the hills. Perhaps it didn’t make him wary enough, though. He and Fariulf were nearing the Wolter when dogs started baying close behind them. A moment later, men shouted, their voices harsh as crows’ caws. “They’ve seen us!” Fariulf said, panic in his voice.

Ceorl shoved the Unkerlanter away. “Split up!” he said. “It’ll be harder for them to catch us both.” What he expected was that the pursuer would go after Fariulf, for the other man wasn’t so good in open country as he was himself. Maybe Fariulf had been an irregular, but he hadn’t learned enough.

So Ceorl thought. But the men in rock-gray came after him instead. Some of them were veterans, too. He could tell by the way they spread out and came forward in waves, making him keep his head down.

He blazed one at close range anyhow, then whirled and blazed another. When he whirled again, a beam caught him in the chest. As he crumpled, he thought, Maybe living in a cage wouldn’t have been so bad after all. But, as he’d given no second chances, he got none. Darkness swallowed him.

Garivald stared at the Wolter. He’d never imagined a river could be so wide-he hadn’t been able to see out when the ley-line caravan car took him over it to the mine in the Mamming Hills. He wasn’t a bad swimmer, but knew he would drown if he tried to cross it. If he stayed here on the south bank, the guards would hunt him down. He was sure of that, too, even if they hadn’t pursued him after he left Ceorl.

I need a boat, he thought. He saw none, though at night that proved little: a big one might have been tied up a quarter of a mile away, and he would never have known it. He doubted one was; Swemmel’s men knew more about efficiency than to make things easy for their captives. A raft, he thought. A tree trunk. Anything to keep me afloat.

He wondered what he would do even if he got to the far bank of the Wolter. He had no money. He had nothing, in fact, except his boots, the ragged tunic on his back, and a rapidly dwindling store of bread. Before long, he would have to start stealing food from the local peasants and herders. If he did that, he knew he wouldn’t last long.

He wrapped brush around himself-a miserable bed, but better than bare ground-and went to sleep. When I wake up, maybe everything will be all right, he thought. He had no idea why he’d come up with such a preposterous unlikelihood, but if he hadn’t believed it would he have tried to escape with the Forthwegian?

A shout, thin in the distance, threw him out of sleep a little before sunrise the next day. He sprang up, ready to flee. Had they found his trail after all?

But the shout came from the river, not the land: Garivald realized as much when he heard it again, this time fully conscious. He stared out toward the Wolter. His jaw dropped. He began giggling, as if suddenly stricken mad.

Maybe I was, he thought giddily. Maybe I’m not really seeing this. He’d hoped for a tree trunk, to help him cross the river. Never in all the days of the world, he told himself, had such a hope been so extravagantly fulfilled.

Thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands-for all Garivald knew, millions-of felled trees floated on the Wolter, drifting downstream toward. . what? Sawmills, he supposed. He wondered why anyone would have cared to build sawmills on a river sure to freeze up in winter. Maybe those sawmills were like the mines: a scheme to get some use out of captives instead of just killing them outright. Or maybe King Swemmel had simply pointed at a map and said, “Build sawmills here.” If he had, the sawmills would have gone up, regardless of whether the Wolter froze.

Here and there, tiny in the distance, insignificant among the countless trunks of the floating forest, men with poles rode logs, somehow staying upright. Now and again, they would use the poles to keep the tree trunks from jamming together. It was one of their shouts that Garivald had heard.

He didn’t waste more than a couple of minutes gawping. How long would that seemingly endless stream of trees endure? If it passed without his taking advantage of it, how long would he have to wait till another one came down the Wolter? Too long-he was sure of that.

When he got down to the riverbank, he shed his boots, pulled his tunic off over his head, and plunged into the Wolter. Although it flowed from down out of the warmer north, its waters still chilled him. He struck out toward the immense swarm of logs.

Before long, Garivald wondered if he’d made a dreadful mistake. Going from log to log across the river hadn’t seemed so hard till he tried it. Not getting crushed by all that floating, drifting timber was a lot harder than he’d imagined.

He’d made it perhaps halfway through the logs when one of the men riding herd on them spotted him. “What in blazes are you doing here, you son of a whore?” the fellow bawled.

“Getting away from the mines,” Garivald shouted back. If the log-rider came over to try to seize him, he’d do his best to drown the man.

But the fellow with the pole only waved when he heard that. “Good luck, pal,” he said. “Me, I never saw you. My brother went into the mines almost ten years ago, and he never came out.”

Powers above, there are some decent people in this kingdom after all, Garivald thought as he went on toward the far bank of the Wolter. After the way he’d got dragged into the army-and after the way he’d been seized coming out of it- he’d had his doubts. He couldn’t dwell on that, though, for he had to scramble to keep an oncoming log from crushing him to jelly against the one he was riding.

He went from one log to another. And then, quite suddenly, no more logs remained between him and the far bank, which was now the near bank. He swam till his feet hit bottom. Then he waded ashore and re-donned his sodden tunic and even soggier boots. His belly growled; the bread hadn’t survived the trip across the Wolter. He trudged away from the stream, hoping to find a road or a village.

When he saw a man working in a field, he waved and called, “I’ll do whatever you need for a supper and a chance to sleep in a barn.”

The farmer looked him over. He still wasn’t dry, nor anywhere close to it. “What happened to you?” the fellow asked. “Looks like you fell in a creek.”

“Oh, you might say so,” Garivald agreed dryly-his words made the grade, even if he didn’t.

Or so he thought, till the farmer screwed up his face and said, “You’re not from around these parts, I don’t reckon.”

“No.” Garivald admitted what he could hardly deny-he did sound like a Grelzer. He came out with the best excuse he could: “I’m just anothersoldier who got dumped in the wrong place trying to get back to my own farm and my own woman.”

“Huh.” The local looked toward the Wolter. There was, Garivald realized, bound to be a reward for men who turned in escaped captives. But the farmer said, “So you’ve got a place of your own, eh? Well, prove it.”

After grubbing cinnabar out of a vein with pick and crowbar, farm work wasn’t so bad. When the sun swung to the west, Garivald followed the farmer back to his hut. He got a big bowl of barley porridge with onions and dill and sausage, and a mug of ale to wash it down. Set beside the little bricks of bread and famine stews in the mines, it seemed the best meal he’d ever eaten.

He did sleep in an outbuilding, next to a couple of cows. He didn’t care. When morning came, the farmer gave him another bowl of porridge, a length of sausage to take with him, and a couple of coins. Tears came to Garivald’s eyes. “I can’t pay this back,” he said.

“Pay it forward,” the local told him. “Someday you’ll run into another poor bastard down on his luck. Now go on, before somebody gets a good look at you.”

Day by day, Garivald worked his way north and east, toward the Duchy of Grelz. Most people, he thought, took him for an escapee, but no one turned him in to Swemmel’s inspectors. He got meals. He got money. He got shelter. And he got a good look at what the war had done to this part of Unkerlant. What he’d seen in Grelz suddenly didn’t seem so dreadful.

The city of Durrwangen was still in ruins. Plenty of labor gangs were slowly putting the place back together again. Captives didn’t man all of them. Garivald got the idea that King Swemmel didn’t have enough captives to do all the things he wanted to do. He joined a gang that paid a little-not much, but a little. He’d had plenty of practice in Zossen at making a little stretch. Before too long, he’d saved enough silver for a ley-line caravan fare to Linnich.

And then, when he went to the depot in Durrwangen to buy the fare, he bought it for Tegeler, the next town northwest of Linnich-he remembered the name from his journey back from Algarve. Someone in Linnich might be looking for him. No one in Tegeler would be. The price went up a little, but he reckoned it silver well spent.

When he climbed down from the caravan car in Tegeler, he saw a lounger keeping an eye on people descending. But the lounger had never seen him before, and had no reason to suspect him of anything. Aye, he was ragged and none too clean, but a lot of men on the ley-line caravan could have used a bath and new clothes.

He started for Linnich on foot. He didn’t know exactly how far it was: if he’d had to guess, he would have said about twenty miles. It proved farther than that, for he needed a day and a half to get there. He had no trouble cadging a couple of meals along the way. For one thing, there were no works with lots of captives anywhere close by. For another, his Grelzer accent sounded just like everyone else’s hereabouts.

Garivald didn’t go into Linnich, but skirted the town. Maybe Dagulf hadn’t told the impressers where he was working a farm. Maybe. But he didn’t want his former friend-or anyone else-to have another chance at betraying him.

He worried about going back to the farm, too. Did an inspector have an eye on it, wondering if he’d return? How many inspectors did King Swemmel have? Garivald had no idea. Of one thing he was sure, though: Obilot was all he had left in the world. Without her, he might as well have stayed in the mines.

The track leading to the farm was as overgrown as it had been the last time he’d walked it, more than a year before, between the impressers who’d hauled him into the army. What did that mean? He couldn’t know till he got where he was going, which didn’t stop him from worrying. His heart pounded in his chest as he came round the last bend and saw the farm at last.

Crops are getting ripe, he thought. And then he spied Obilot, weeding in the vegetable patch by the farmhouse. He didn’t see anyone else. That had been another worry. He’d been gone a long time, including some little while after the end of the war. How could anyone blame her for thinking he was dead?

She looked up and saw him coming through the fields toward the house. The first thing she did was reach for something beside her-a stick, Garivald thought. Then she checked the motion and got to her feet. Garivald waved. So did Obilot. She ran to him.

She almost knocked him off his feet when she took him in her arms, but her embrace helped keep him upright. “I knew you would come back,” she said. “I don’t know why, but I did.”

“Where else would I come?” Garivald said, and kissed her for a long time. That dizzied him; it felt stronger than spirits. But he couldn’t afford to get drunk on anything, even sensuality, now. He asked, “Do they watch this place?”

Obilot’s eyes narrowed. “It’s like that?” she said. He nodded. “I haven’t seen anybody,” she told him. “Not since Dagulf. . died, and that was a while ago now.”

“Oh?” Garivald said. “How did that happen?”

“Nobody seems to know,” Obilot answered, not quite innocently enough. “Are we going to have to find another abandoned place and learn new names for ourselves all over again?”

Garivald looked around. She’d done an astonishing job of keeping this farm going. All the same, he nodded. “I’m afraid so. A couple of men ended up dead when I got out of the mines.”

“Mines? Oh.” Obilot nodded, too, briskly and without regret. “All right, we do, then. We can manage. I’m sure of it.”

“We’ll have a chance,” Garivald said, ingrained peasant pessimism in his voice. But then he shrugged. In Unkerlant, a chance was all you could hope for, and more than you usually got.

Istvan climbed down from the wagon near the mouth of the valley that held Kunhegyes and the neighboring villages. “Thank you kindly for the lift, sir,” he told the driver, a gray-bearded man with stooped shoulders.

“Glad to help, young fellow,” the other Gyongyosian replied. “Nothing’s too good for our fighters, by the stars. You’d best believe it.”

“Uh, the war is over,” Istvan said-maybe the wagon driver hadn’t heard. “We lost.” He brought the words out painfully. They hurt, aye, but they were true. No one who’d seen Gyorvar could doubt it even for a moment. He wished he hadn’t seen Gyorvar himself. He wished he hadn’t seen a great many things he’d had to see.

But the driver waved his words away, as if they were of no account. “Sooner or later, we’ll lick ‘em,” he declared. Istvan doubted he had a particular ‘em in mind-any enemy of Gyongyos would do. He wished things still looked so simple to him. They never would again. The driver flicked his whip and said, “Stars shine bright on you, Sergeant.”

“And on you,” Istvan called as the wagon rattled away.

Shouldering the duffel that held his few belongings, he trudged toward Kunhegyes. He wasn’t sure he’d been formally discharged from the army. Back in the coastal lowlands, government had been a matter of opinion since the death of Ekrekek Arpad and the destruction of Gyorvar. No one in all his long journey east had asked to see his papers. He didn’t expect anyone here would, either.

He looked around his home valley with wonder on his face. He’d been back only once since the war began. The place had seemed smaller then than when he’d gone forth to fight for Gyongyos. It seemed smaller still now, the mountains looming over the narrow bit of land trapped between them. Mountain apes up there, Istvan thought. He’d seen one of those, too. I’ve seen too much. He looked down at the scar on his left hand, the scar that had expiated his goat-eating, and shuddered. Aye, I’ve seen much too much.

Somewhere back on Obuda-or, more likely, back in Kuusamo by now-a little slant-eyed mage knew what he’d done. That made him shudder, too. Not that she would ever come to Kunhegyes-Istvan knew better than that. But he knew she knew, and the knowledge ate at him. He might as well have been naked before the world.

He tramped up to Kunhegyes’ battered old palisade. He had a much keener eye for field fortifications than he’d owned when he left the village. A couple of egg-tossers could have knocked it down in nothing flat. Rocks and bushes within stick range might give marauders cover. I’ll have to talk to somebody, he thought. Never can tell what those whoresons from the next valley over-or even from Szombathely down the valley from us-might try and do.

A sentry did pace the palisade. That was something. Istvan wondered how much, though. Had the fellow been more alert, he would have already spotted him. That thought had hardly gone through Istvan’s mind before the lookout stiffened, peered out toward him, and called, “Who comes to Kunhegyes?”

Istvan recognized his voice. “Hail, Korosi,” he called back. The villager had made his life difficult before he’d gone into Ekrekek Arpad’s army, but he’d been mild enough when Istvan visited on leave. Easier to overawe a youth than a veteran on leave, Istvan supposed.

“Is that you, Istvan?” Korosi said now. “Have you got another leave?”

“Another leave?” Istvan gaped. “Have the stars addled your wits? The war’s over. Haven’t you heard?” He’d known his home village was backward, but this struck him as excessive. Kun would have laughed and laughed. But Kun was dead, struck down by the sorcery that had slain Gyorvar.

Korosi said, “Some commercial traveler tried to tell us that a couple of days ago, but we figured it was a pack of lies. He spouted all sorts of nonsense-the ekrekek, stars love him, slain; Gyorvar gone in a flash of light; the goat-eating Unkerlanters licking us in the east; us surrendering, if you can believe it. Some of us wanted to pitch him in the creek for that pack of crap, but we didn’t.”

“A good thing, too, because it isn’t crap,” Istvan said, and watched the village bruiser’s jaw drop. Istvan qualified that: “Well, I don’t know about Swemmel’s bastards, not so I can take oath about it, but the rest is true. I was stationed near Gyorvar, I saw the city die, and I’ve been in it since. The ekrekek’s dead, and so is his whole family. And we have yielded-it was either that or get another dose of this wizardry. I saw a Lagoan going through what’s left of Gyorvar, looking to see just what the magic did. One of our mages was with him, and acting mild as milk.”

“You’re making that up,” Korosi said. In a different tone, it could have been an insult, even a challenge. But Istvan had heard men cry, “No!” when they knew they were wounded but didn’t want to believe it. Korosi’s protest was of that sort.

“By the stars, Korosi, it’s true,” Istvan said. “Let me in. The whole village needs to know.”

“Aye.” Korosi still sounded shaken to the core. He descended from the palisade and unbarred the gate. It creaked open. Istvan walked through. Korosi shut it behind him. He looked around. I probably won’t go far from this place for the rest of my life. Part of him rejoiced at the realization. The rest saw how small and cramped Kunhegyes seemed, as if crouching behind its palisade. True, the houses and shops stood well apart from one another-a precaution against ambushes-but they themselves were nothing beside those of Gyorvar. Istvan shook his head. No, beside what once was in Gyorvar. Only rocks and houses alike melted to slag there now.

Korosi’s booted feet thumped on the wooden stairs as he went up to the walkway once more. People came out into Kunhegyes’ narrow main street. Istvan found himself the center of a circle of staring eyes, some green, some blue, some brown. “Did I hear you right?” somebody asked. “Did you tell Korosi it’s over? We lost?”

“That’s right, Maleter,” Istvan said to the middle-aged man. “It is over. We did lose.” He repeated what had happened to Gyorvar, and to Ekrekek Arpad and his kin.

Quietly, women began to weep. Tears didn’t suit the men of a warrior race, but several of them turned away so no one would have to see them shed any. The sounds of mourning drew more folk into the street. One of them was the younger of Istvan’s two sisters. She shrieked his name and threw herself into his arms. “Are you all right?” she demanded.

He stroked her curly, tawny hair. “I’m fine, Ilona,” he said. “That’s not what people are upset about. I told them the war was lost.”

“Is that all?” she said. “What difference does that make, as long as you’re safe?”

Istvan’s first thought was that that was no attitude for a woman from a warrior race to have. His second thought was that maybe she owned better sense than a lot of other people in Gyongyos. Remembering what had happened to Gyorvar, he decided there was no maybe to it. “What’s happened here?” he asked. “That’s what’s really important, isn’t it?” It is if I stay here the rest of my days, that’s certain sure.

“Of course it is.” Ilona had no doubts; she’d never been out of the valley. “Well, for one thing, Saria”-Istvan’s other sister-”is betrothed to Gul, the baker’s son.”

“That weedy little worm?” Istvan exclaimed. But he checked himself; Gul might have been weedy when he went off to war, but probably wasn’t any more. And his father had, or had had, more money than Istvan’s own. “What else?” he asked.

“Great-uncle Batthyany died last spring,” his sister told him.

“Stars shine bright on his spirit,” Istvan said. Ilona nodded. Istvan went on, “He was full of years. Did he pass on peacefully?”

“Aye,” Ilona said. “He went to sleep one night, and he wouldn’t wake the next morning.”

“Can’t ask for better than that,” Istvan agreed, trying not to think of all the worse deaths he’d seen.

His sister took him by the hand and started dragging him toward the family house-my house again, at least for a while, he thought. She said, “But what happened to you? By the stars, Istvan, we all feared you were dead. You never wrote very often, but when your letters just plain stopped coming….”

“I couldn’t write,” he said. “I got sent from the woods of Unkerlant out to this island in the Bothnian Ocean-”

“We know that,” Ilona said. “That was when your letters stopped.”

“They stopped because I got captured,” Istvan said. “I was in a Kuusaman captives’ camp on Obuda for a long time, but then the slanteyes sent me to Gyorvar.”

“Why did they send you there?”

“Because of something I’d seen. I wasn’t the only one. They wanted us to warn the ekrekek they’d do the same to Gyorvar if he didn’t yield to them. He didn’t, and so they did. I wish he would have. We’d all be better off if he would have-him included.”

By that time, they’d come to his front door. Alpri, his father, was nailing the heel of a boot to the sole. The cobbler looked up from his work. “May I help-?” he began, as he would have when anyone walked into the shop that was also a house. Then he recognized Istvan. He let out a roar like a tiger’s, rushed around the cobbler’s bench, and squeezed the breath from his son. “I knew the stars would bring you home!” he shouted, planting a kiss on each of Istvan’s cheeks. “I knew it!” He let out another roar, this one with words in it: “Gizella! Saria! Istvan’s home!”

Istvan’s mother and his other sister came running up from the back of the house. They smothered him in kisses and exclamations. Someone-he never did see who-pressed a beaker of mead into his hand.

“You’re home!” his mother said, over and over again.

“Aye, I’m home,” Istvan agreed. “I don’t think I’m ever going to leave this valley again.”

“Stars grant it be so,” Gizella said. Istvan’s father and his sisters all nodded vigorously. Somehow, they held beakers of mead, too.

Had Istvan got out of the army not long after going in, he would have had no qualms about staying close to Kunhegyes the rest of his days, either. But he’d seen so much of the wider world the past six years, the valley still felt too small to suit him as well as it might have. Fillet used to it again, he thought. I have to get used to it again.

A pull at the sweet, strong mead went a long way toward reconciling him to being home. “With the war lost, with the ekrekek dead, where would I go?” he said, as much to himself as to his family. Alpri and Gizella and Saria all exclaimed again, this time in shocked dismay, so he had to tell his news once more.

“What will we do?” his father asked. “What can we do? Have the stars abandoned us forever?”

Istvan thought about that. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “I’m not even sure it matters. We have to go on living our lives as best we can any which way, don’t you think?” Was that heresy or simply common sense? He had the feeling Kun would have approved. The scar on his left hand didn’t throb, as it often did when he found himself in doubt or dismay. And, that evening, the stars shone down brilliantly on the celebrating village of Kunhegyes. Maybe that meant they approved of what he’d said. Maybe it didn’t matter either way. How can I know? Istvan wondered. He didn’t suppose he could, which didn’t stop him from celebrating, too.

For once, the great square in front of the royal palace in Cottbus was packed with people. The Unkerlanters remained in holiday mood, too. And why not? Marshal Rathar thought. We didn‘t just beat Algarve. We beat Gyongyos, too. He looked back at the assembled might in the victory parade he was to lead. We could lick the Kuusamans and the Lagoans, too. We could, if’. .

If. The word ate at him. He hadn’t gone into Gyorvar himself, but he’d had reports from men who had. The sorcery that had destroyed the capital of Gyongyos could fall on Cottbus, too. He knew that. He never forgot it. He had to hope King Swemmel also remembered it.

High and thin and spidery, a single note from a trumpet rang out: the signal for the parade to begin. It should have been an officer’s whistle, ordering the advance, Rathar thought. But it was what it was. He thrust out his chest, thrust back his head, and marched forward as proudly and precisely as if he were on parade at the officer’s collegium he’d never attended.

When he came into sight, the people who packed the square-all but the parade route through it-shouted his name again and again: “Rathar! Rathar! Rathar!”

Rathar had rather thought they would do that. He’d rather feared they would do that, in fact. He held up his hand. Silence fell. He pointed toward the reviewing stand, on which, surrounded by bodyguards, his sovereign stood. “King Swemmel!” he shouted. “Huzzah for King Swemmel!”

To his vast relief, most of the people started shouting Swemmel’s name. He suspected they did so for the same reason he’d pointed to the king: simple fear. If a vast throng of folk started crying Rathar’s name, Swemmel was too likely to think his marshal planned to try to steal his throne-and to make sure Rathar had no chance to do so. As for the folk who’d started yelling for Rathar, all of them had to know one of the men and women standing nearby was bound to be an inspector. The mines always needed fresh blood, despite the great glut of captives in them now. Inside a couple of years, most of those captives would be dead.

Behind Rathar came a block of footsoldiers. Behind them trudged weary, hungry-looking Gyongyosian captives. Most of those men would probably head for the Mamming Hills after their display here. Or maybe Swemmel had canals he wanted dug or rubble that needed carting away. The possibilities, in a kingdom ravaged by war, were endless.

After the Gongs marched a regiment of unicorn-riders, and then a regiment of behemoths. Rathar could hear the chain-mail clanking on the great beasts through the rhythmic thud of marching feet. Hearing that clank reminded him of reports the islanders had come up with behemoth armor better at stopping beams than anything his own kingdom had. One more project to keep the mages busy-as if they didn’t have enough.

More behemoths hauled egg-tossers of all sizes through the square. Another shambling throng of Gyongyosian captives came after them, followed by more Unkerlanter footsoldiers. Those Gongs and soldiers might have to watch where they put their feet. Dragons painted rock-gray flapped past overhead. They were incontinent beasts, too; Rathar hoped none of them chose the wrong moment to do something unfortunate.

As he passed the reviewing stand-which, along with Swemmel and his guardsmen, held Unkerlanter courtiers and foreign dignitaries and attaches (the latter sure to be taking notes on the parade)-Marshal Rathar met the king’s eye and saluted him. King Swemmel gave back his usual unwinking stare. But then, to the marshal’s surprise, he deigned to return the salute.

Rathar almost missed a step. Did a formal, public salute from Swemmel mean the king truly trusted him? Or did it mean Swemmel wanted to lull his suspicions and put him out of the way? How could he tell, till the day came or didn’t?

You could rebel, he thought. Plenty would back you. But, as always, he rejected the idea as soon as it crossed his mind. For one thing, he didn’t want the throne. For another, he was sure Swemmel would win in a game of intrigue. He was doing what he wanted to do. He did it well. The crown? If Swemmel wanted it so badly, he was welcome to it.

Out of the square marched Rathar, out of the square and down Cottbus’ main avenue. The sidewalks there were packed, too; only a continuous line of constables and impressers held the crowd back. Men and women cheered much more enthusiastically than Unkerlanters usually did. If they were proud of what their kingdom had accomplished, they’d earned the right to be. And if they were relieved Unkerlant had survived, they’d also earned that right. How many of them had tried to flee west when Cottbus looked like falling to the Algarvians almost four years before? More than a few-Rathar was sure of that. How many would admit it now? Next to none, and the marshal was sure of that, too.

People who didn’t have the pull to get into the central square shouted Swemmel’s name more often than they shouted Rathar’s. These are the poor people, the ignorant people, Rathar thought. They don’t really know who did what.

That thought salved his vanity. Even so, he wondered how much truth it really held. Aye, Rathar had been the one who’d made the plans and given the orders that led to the defeat of the redheads and the Gyongyosians. But King Swemmel had been the one who refused even to imagine that Unkerlant could be beaten. Without such an indomitable man at the top, the kingdom might have fallen to pieces under the hammer blows the Algarvians struck during the first summer and autumn of the war.

Of course, if we hadn‘t been readying our own attack on Mezentio ‘s men, if we’d paid more attention to defending our kingdom against them, they might not have been able to strike those hammer blows. Rathar shrugged. It was years too late to worry about such things now.

After the parade ended, a carriage waited to take Marshal Rathar back to the palace. Major Merovec waited in his office. Rathar set a sympathetic hand on Merovec’s shoulder: no one cared about adjutants in victory parades. No one would ever know how important a job Merovec had had or how well he’d done it, either.

Perhaps not quite no one: Merovec said, “Thank you, sir-my promotion to colonel has finally come through.”

“Good,” Rathar said. “I put that in for you more than a year ago. One thing nobody can do, though, is hurry his Majesty.”

“No, of course not,” his adjutant replied. “What do they say, though? A rising tide lifts all boats? That’s how things are right now.”

“My boat has lifted me as far as I care to rise, thank you very much,” the marshal said. He didn’t know for certain that King Swemmel could sorcerously listen to his conversations, but had to assume the king could manage it. And there was only one higher rank to which a rising tide could lift him: the one Swemmel now held. He didn’t want the king believing he aspired to the throne. Such notions, as he’d thought during the parade, were dangerous. He nodded to Merovec. “After putting up with me for so long, you deserve a promotion.”

“Thank you, sir,” Merovec said. “What rank do you suppose I’ll have when the next war comes down the ley line at us?”

“The next war?” Rathar echoed.

His adjutant nodded. “Aye, sir. The one against the islanders, I mean. Whoever wins that will have all of Derlavai in his beltpouch.”

“If it comes soon, we won’t win it,” Rathar said. “If it comes soon, they’ll serve Cottbus as they served Gyorvar, and we can’t hit back the same way. They can make us back away from whatever we try. “We’d have to.”

I hope we’d have to, the marshal thought. If Swemmel gets a sudden attack of pride, he could throw this whole kingdom down the sewer. He would have worried less with a calmer, more sensible ruler-not that Unkerlant had enjoyed a lot of calm, sensible rulers in her history.

A young lieutenant stuck his head into the office, spotted Marshal Rathar, and brightened. “There you are, lord Marshal,” he said, as if Rathar had been playing hide-and-seek. “His Majesty wants to confer with you. At once.”

At once should have gone without saying where Swemmel was concerned. Being king meant never having to wait. “I’m coming,” Rathar said. That also went without saying. Merovec saluted as the marshal left the office. As always when summoned by Swemmel, Rathar wondered if he would ever come back here again.

He surrendered his ceremonial sword to Swemmel’s guards, let them frisk him, and then abased himself before his sovereign. “You may rise,” the king said. “Did you see the Kuusaman and Lagoan vultures perched on the reviewing stand with us when you marched past?”

“Aye, your Majesty,” Rathar replied. “I noticed the islanders’ ministers and their attaches.”

“What do you think they made of our might?” King Swemmel asked.

“Your Majesty, no matter how strong we are in soldiery, we dare not cross Lagoas and Kuusamo in any serious way till we can match them in magecraft, too,” Rathar said. “They have to know that as well as we do.”

Grimly, Swemmel nodded. “And so they laugh at us behind their hands. Well, we shall set our own mages to work, as indeed we have already done, and we shall see what spying can bring us, too.”

“That will not be so easy,” Marshal Rathar said. “How can one of our people pretend to come from Lagoas or Kuusamo?”

“One of our people would have a difficult time,” the king agreed. “There are, however, some few Algarvians who speak Lagoan without a trace of accent. Some of them were Mezentio’s spies. Paid well enough-and with their families held hostage to guard against betrayal-they should serve us well, too.”

“Ah,” Rathar said. “If we can bring that off, it will serve us well.”

“Many Algarvians are whores who will do anything for money,” Swemmel said. Rathar nodded. The king went on, “Our task is to find the ones who will be able to understand what they need to learn, and to slip them into the Lagoan Guild of Mages. It may not be easy or quick, but we think it can be done. As they say in cards, one peek is worth a thousand finesses.”

Rathar laughed. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard King Swemmel crack a joke. Then he realized the king wasn’t joking. He nodded again all the same. Joking or not, Swemmel was right.