Out of the Darkness

Eight

Colonel Sabrino led his wing-what was left of it-down to a landing on a makeshift dragon farm outside the little town of Pontremoli, a few miles east of the Scamandro. Some of the dragon-handlers on the ground knew what they were doing; others were boys and old men from a Popular Assault regiment, doing the best they could at jobs they’d never expected to have to handle.

Once Sabrino’s dragon was chained to an iron spike driven deep into the muddy ground, he climbed down and wearily made his way toward the tents that had sprouted to await the wing’s arrival. Captain Orosio’s dragon had landed not far away. Orosio looked as worn as Sabrino, but managed a nod and a wave.

“Almost full circle,” Sabrino said.

“Sir?” The squadron commander scratched his head. In the five and a half years he’d flown in Sabrino’s wing, his hair had retreated a good deal at the temples. Sabrino wondered how much older he looked himself these days. He felt about ninety.

He waved to the east-not so very far to the east. “If we fall back any more, we’ll be flying out of the dragon farm near Trapani, the one we left when we went to war against Forthweg.”

“Oh.” Orosio thought that over, then nodded. “By the powers above, you’re right.” He looked around. “Not fornicating many left who set out with us that day. You, me, two or three others-that’s it. Sixty-four dragonfliers, and all the rest dead or maimed.” He spat. “And how much longer d’you think we’ll last?”

“As long as we do, that’s all,” Sabrino answered with a shrug that tried for typical Algarvian brio but didn’t come up with much. “I have no fear any more, and I have no hope, either. We do what we do as long as we can keep doing it, and then …” He shrugged again. “After that, what difference would it make, anyhow?”

“Not much.” Orosio pointed to the road that led east out of Pontremoli. “They don’t think what we’re doing now makes much difference, either.”

Algarvians poured east in a steady stream, carrying whatever they could. In earlier days, in happier days, Sabrino had watched from the air as Unkerlanters fled west before King Mezentio’s men, clogging the roads for King Swemmel’s soldiers. Now the shoe-when the refugees had shoes-was on the other foot. His dragonfliers had flamed refugee columns in Unkerlant and dropped eggs on them. Now the men who flew dragons painted rock-gray had their turn with Sabrino’s countrymen.

“Maybe some of them will get away,” Sabrino said, fighting to keep despair from overwhelming him altogether. “Maybe they’ll get to parts of the kingdom the Lagoans and Kuusamans are overrunning. That should keep them alive. The islanders don’t kill for the sport of it, anyhow.”

How many dead Kaunians? he wondered. How long would other kingdoms throw that in Algarve’s face? Generations, probably. And who could blame them? I tried to talk Mezentio out of it, Sabrino thought. As far as people in Algarve go, that gives me clean hands. Powers above help us all.

Orosio said, “You think it’s lost, then? You think we have no chance, no matter what King Mezentio says?”

“Aye, I think that,” Sabrino answered. “Don’t you?” Reluctantly, the squadron commander nodded. “All right, then,” Sabrino said. “What do we do next?”

“Fight as hard as we can as long as we can,” Orosio said. “What else is there?”

“Nothing I can see,” Sabrino told him. “Not a single fornicating thing.” As Orosio had, he spat into the muck. “And I’m not doing it for King Mezentio. This for King Mezentio.” He spat again. “If it weren’t for what Mezentio did back in the first autumn of the war with Unkerlant, we’d have a better chance now-and nobody would hate us quite so much.”

Had Orosio taken that back to the ears of men who cared about such things-to King Mezentio’s equivalent of inspectors, Sabrino thought scornfully- the wing commander would have found himself in trouble … as if trying to keep up the fight against the Unkerlanters weren’t trouble enough. But Sabrino knew his squadron commander well enough to be sure Orosio would sooner be flamed out of the sky than betray him. What Orosio did say was, “Well, if it’s not for the king and it’s not for the kingdom, why not just pack it in?”

“Who says it’s not for the kingdom?” Sabrino looked back toward that unending stream of Algarvians fleeing eastward. “The longer we keep going, the longer we hold back Swemmel’s whoresons, the more people will have the chance to get away. That’s worth doing, curse it.”

“Ah.” Orosio didn’t need long to think it over this time. “You’re right, sir. We’ve got to do what we can.”

“However much that is-or however little.” Sabrino raised his voice to call to the chief dragon-handler: “Sergeant! A word with you, if you please.”

“Aye, sir?” The fellow hurried up to him. “What can I do for you, sir? We were just going to feed the beasts.”

“That’s what I wanted to ask you about,” Sabrino said. “Did that shipment of cinnabar you were talking about ever get down here from the north? Without it, our dragons are only flaming half as far as the ones the Unkerlanters fly.”

“Oh. That. Sorry, sir. No.” The sergeant shook his head. “I don’t think we can expect any more, either. I heard today Swemmel’s men have overrun the mines south of Bonorva. That was about the last cinnabar we had left, sir, and we had to try and parcel it out amongst all the dragons we’ve still got in the air.”

“The last of the cinnabar.” Sabrino didn’t know why it surprised him. He’d seen this day coming when the Algarvians were driven out of the cinnabar-rich austral continent-after their murderous magic went wrong there, as foreign magic had a way of doing, and wrecked their own army-and especially after they didn’t swarm past Sulingen and into the cinnabar mines of the Mamming Hills in southern Unkerlant. He’d seen it coming, and seen it coming. . and it was finally here.

Orosio put the best face on things he could: “Well, sir, our job just got a little harder, that’s all.”

Their job, for most of the past two years, had been impossible. Orosio surely knew that as well as Sabrino did. Sabrino let out another weary sigh. “Fishing without a net or a line, that’s what we’ll be doing. How many minnows can we grab out of the water with our bare hands?”

“Fish, sir?” The sergeant of dragon-handlers looked confused. A solid, capable man when doing what he knew how to do, he wouldn’t have known a metaphor had one strolled up wagging its tail. Sabrino almost envied him. He wished he were more ignorant himself these days.

He ducked into his tent. A meal of sorts waited there: rye bread and a little crock of butter and a jug of spirits. Sabrino shook his head. Change the spirits to ale and his barbarous ancestors would have eaten like this in the days before they ever dreamt of challenging the might of the Kaunian Empire.

New barbarians at the gates now, Sabrino thought. He wondered whether he meant the Unkerlanters or his own people. He shrugged a fine, flamboyant Algarvian shrug. What difference did it make, really? He drank more of his supper than he ate, and went to bed with wits whirling.

When he woke up the next morning, his throbbing head seemed altogether in keeping with the general state of the world, or the Algarvian portion thereof. His head would eventually improve. He had his doubts about the Algarvian portion of the world.

Bread liberally smeared with butter did nothing to beat back his hangover. They did grease his stomach so the slug of spirits he poured down after them didn’t hurt so much. When the spirits mounted to his head, he felt human again, in a melancholy way. How any Algarvian could feel anything but melancholy these days was beyond him.

The day was cool and cloudy, with a threat of rain in the air. Sabrino wouldn’t have wanted to face bright sunshine just then. He started over to the crystallomancers’ tent to find out where along the tattered front his dozen or so dragons could do the most good. Before he got there, someone called his name. He turned.

He knew he stared. He couldn’t help it. The smiling young fellow striding toward him might have come out of the early days, the triumphant days, of the war. It wasn’t so much that his uniform tunic and kilt were clean and new and well pressed, though at this stage of things that seemed a minor prodigy to Sabrino of itself. But the stranger’s expression and bearing seemed to say the past two years and more had been nothing but a bad dream. Sabrino wished it were so. Unfortunately, he knew better.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Colonel,” the younger man said, holding out his arm. As he and Sabrino clasped wrists, he went on, “I have the honor to be called Almonte, sir.”

He wore a major’s rank badges and, prominent on his left breast, a mage’s insigne. “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Sabrino echoed, though anything but sure he was pleased. “What can I do for you?”

“No, Colonel, it’s what I can do for you.” Almonte was excessively glib; he put Sabrino in mind of a commercial traveler peddling silver spoons that would show the brass beneath inside a month. He had plenty of brass himself; he continued, “How would you like to lick the Unkerlanters all the way back to their own kingdom?”

“If I could lick them back half a mile, I’d be tolerably pleased,” Sabrino answered. In Algarve’s hour of desperation, all sorts of maniacs were getting their chances, for how could they make things worse? “What have you got in mind?”

“Riding with you to smite the enemy from the air with a new, particularly potent sorcery I’ve devised,” Almonte answered.

“Have you tried it before?” Sabrino asked. “If you have, how did it go?”

“I’m still here,” Almonte answered.

“So are the Unkerlanters,” Sabrino said dryly.

Almonte gave him a reproachful stare. “I am but one man, Colonel. I do what I can for King Mezentio and Algarve. I hope you can say the same.”

If he thought he would make Sabrino feel guilty, he erred. “Futter you, Major,” the wing commander said, not bothering to raise his voice. “I fought on the ground in the Six Years’ War, and I’ve been at the front in this one since the day it started. I don’t owe Algarve any more than I’ve already given. Before I decide whether I want you on a dragon with me, suppose you tell me just what your precious spell is and what you think it can do to the Unkerlanters.”

Biting his lip in anger, Almonte plunged into his explanation. He plainly didn’t know how technical to be; sometimes he talked down to Sabrino, others his words went over the dragonflier’s head. What he aimed to do was clear enough: loose horror and destruction on Swemmel’s men from the air. How he proposed to go about it…

Sabrino didn’t hit him. Afterwards, he wondered why. His stomach lurching as if his dragon had dived without warning, he said, “Get out of my sight this instant, or I’ll blaze you where you stand. This makes killing Kaunians clean by comparison.”

“Desperate times take desperate measures,” the mage declared.

King Mezentio had said the same thing, just before the Algarvian wizards started butchering blonds. Sabrino hadn’t been able to stop him. He was the king. This fellow. . “If you want to try that, Major, I’d sooner see the Unkerlanters smash us down,” Sabrino said.

“I shall return with orders from your superiors,” Almonte snapped.

“Fine,” Sabrino said. “You can go up on my dragon, or on any dragon in this wing, but there’s no guarantee you’ll come down.” Almonte stalked off. He didn’t come back. Sabrino hadn’t thought he would.

In the blockhouse not far from the hostel in the Naantali district, Pekka spun a globe. Globes and maps were more than just pictures of the world; as even the sages of the Kaunian Empire had realized, they were also, in their own way, applications of and invitations to the law of similarity. Pekka looked from one of her colleagues to another. “This is our last great test,” she said, and they all nodded. “If everything goes as it should, we can use this sorcery against any place in the world from here.”

They all nodded: Raahe and Alkio, Piilis-and Fernao. Pekka did her best to treat him the same way she treated the other theoretical sorcerers. He didn’t like that; his eyes, so like a Kuusaman’s, showed as much. She hadn’t been in his bed-she hadn’t wanted to be in anyone’s bed-since learning of Leino’s death.

But for a couple of trips back to Kajaani to see her son and her sister, she’d thrown herself into her sorcery, using work as an anodyne where someone else might have used spirits.

He couldn’t very well complain, not here in front of everyone. What he did say was, “The blockhouse seems empty today, compared to so many of the things we’ve done. No secondary sorcerers here, for instance-just a crystallomancer.”

“We don’t need secondary sorcerers, not for this.” Pekka waved at the bank of cages full of rats and rabbits. “We’ll be sending the energy we release from the beasts so far away, we can safely keep the cages here.”

I want to send the energy to Trapani, she thought savagely. I want to lash the capital of Algarve with a whip of fire, till nothing there still stands. But what good would that do? It wouldn’t bring Leino back to life. Nothing could do that. A day at a time, she was realizing the finality of death.

“Shall we begin?” Raahe asked quietly. She was holding Alkio’s hand. She and her husband were ten or fifteen years older than Pekka, but smiling like a couple of newlyweds.

“Aye,” Pekka said: one harsh word. Whom have I? she wondered. Not Leino, not any more, not ever. I did have Fernao. I could have him again. Is he what I really want, or was he just someone to keep me warm while Leino was far away? She didn’t know. She was afraid to find out.

I’m also too busy to find out. She recited the Kuusaman ritual words that preceded every spell save one cast in an emergency. Then she spun the globe again. This time, she purposely stopped it. Her fingernail tapped what looked like a fly speck in the eastern Bothnian Ocean. “Becsehely.” She pronounced the Gyongyosian name as best she could. “Everyone is supposed to be off the island.”

“Everyone had better be off the island,” Fernao said. “Anyone who stayed behind would be very sorry.”

“I begin,” Pekka said, and started incanting. After so many runs through spells like this, she cast another one with almost as much confidence and aplomb as if she were a practical mage herself. No, that’s Leino, she thought, and felt again the hole in her life. That was Leino. But she couldn’t dwell on it, not now. The spell came first.

She felt the sorcerous energy building inside the blockhouse. The animals in the cages felt it, too. They scurried this way and that. Some tried to get out. Some tried to bury under the shavings and sawdust on the cage floors, to hide from what was happening. That wouldn’t help them, but they didn’t know it wouldn’t.

Pekka chanted on. The passes that went with the incantation were second nature to her now. The other theoretical sorcerers stood by, lending strength and standing ready to rush to her aid if, in spite of everything, she faltered. That had happened before. She missed Master Siuntio-dead at the Algarvians’ hands, too-and Master Ilmarinen. Fernao had saved her before. She didn’t want to think about that, and, again, she didn’t have to.

The animals were growing frantic now, the rats squeaking in fear and alarm. Pekka knew an abstract pity for them. Better you than so many Kaunians or Unkerlanters or even Gyongyosians who are proud to volunteer their throats to the knife. Glowing blue lines of sorcerous energy stretched between cages of young beasts and their grandparents. Those lines grew brighter by the moment, brighter and brighter and. .

All at once, they flashed, intolerably brilliant. Pekka’s eyes were closed against the glare by then, but that flash pierced her to the quick even so. When she opened her eyes afterwards, green-purple lines seemed printed across the world. Slowly, slowly, they faded.

Corruption’s ripe reek filled the blockhouse, but only for a moment. The older rats and rabbits in the cages aged so catastrophically fast, they went past rotting to bare bones far quicker than the blink of an eye. The younger ones, by contrast, were propelled backwards chronologically, back to the days long before they were born. Had they ever truly existed, then? The mathematics there were indeterminate. But for sawdust and shavings, the cages that had held them were empty now.

“Divergent series,” Pekka murmured. Sure enough, that was how to get the greatest release of sorcerous energy.

“We did everything as planned,” Raahe said. “Now we find out if our calculations were right.”

“That’s the interesting part, or so Ilmarinen would say,” Pekka replied. She hoped the cantankerous old master mage was all right. Losing him on top of all the other disasters of war would have been almost too much to bear. Deliberately forcing the thought from her mind, she turned to the crystallomancer. “Make the etheric connection to the Searaven.”

“Aye, Mistress Pekka.” The crystallomancer bent over her glassy sphere and murmured the charm that would link the blockhouse to the Kuusaman cruiser gliding along a ley line a few miles off the beaches of Becsehely. Her first attempt failed; the crystal refused to flare with light. She muttered something under her breath, then spoke aloud: “It should have worked. Let me try again.”

“All right,” Pekka said nervously. The amount of energy they’d released. . If they’d miscalculated even by a little, it might have come down on the Searaven instead of the empty island at which they’d aimed.

But then the crystal did light up. After a moment, the flash faded and a naval officer’s face appeared in the globe. “Here you are, Mistress Pekka,” the crystallomancer said. “Here is Captain Waino.”

“Powers above be praised,” Pekka murmured as she hurried over to stand before the crystal. She raised her voice: “Hello, Captain. Please describe what- if anything-you and your crew observed on Becsehely.”

“If anything?” Waino exclaimed. “Mistress, as far as that island’s concerned, it’s the end of the fornicating world-pardon my Valmieran.”

Pekka smiled. “You’re a naval man, and you talk like what you are.”

“As you say, Mistress.” Waino sounded like a man who’d just been through an earthquake. “Everything was normal as you please, and then lightning slammed down out of a clear sky and things blew up-it was as though every dragon in the world dropped a couple of eggs on Becsehely at the same time as the lightning hit it. But there weren’t any dragons.”

Behind Pekka, the other theoretical sorcerers cheered and applauded. Somebody gave her a glass of applejack. She didn’t sip from it, but asked the officer, “What can you see of the island now?”

“Not forn. .” Waino caught himself. “Not much. It’s still covered in smoke and dust and steams. We will send men ashore for a further examination as things settle down.”

“Very well, Captain. Thank you.” Pekka nodded to the crystallomancer, who broke the etheric connection. After a pull at the apple brandy-now she’d earned it-Pekka said, “We can do this thing.” The other theoretical sorcerers cheered again. They had glasses in their hands, too.

Trapani, Pekka thought again as they walked out to the sleighs to go back to the hostel. Gyorvar, to teach Ekrekek Arpad a lesson he’ll never forget. Cottbus, even, if King Swemmel ever needs the same kind of lesson. She could feel the applejack, but the knowledge of power felt still more intoxicating.

As she always did, she rode with Fernao. The calendar said spring was here; the landscape wouldn’t listen to the calendar for another month, maybe longer. Fresh snow had fallen the night before. By the low gray clouds overhead, more might come down any time. A reindeer-drawn sleigh remained the best way to get around.

Though blankets covered them and kept the driver from seeing what they did beneath, Fernao kept his hands to himself. He hadn’t tried pushing things after Leino died. He knew Pekka well enough to understand that nothing would have been likelier to drive her away from him for good. And she’d stayed well apart from him on the trip out to the blockhouse. Now, for the first time since that dreadful day she got the news, she let her head rest on his shoulder. Maybe it’s the applejack, she thought. Even if it isn’t, I can blame it on the applejack.

Fernao’s narrow eyes widened. He put his arm around her. She discovered she was glad to have it there. She might not have been so glad had he tried to paw her, but he didn’t. He didn’t say anything, either. A Kuusaman would have. Most Lagoans, she thought, probably would. He was wise to keep quiet.

When they got to the hostel, they went upstairs together. Pekka’s chamber was one floor higher than Fernao’s, but she left the stairway with him. He still didn’t speak, not till they stood inside his room. Then, at last, he said, “Thank you. I love you.”

Do I really love him? Pekka wondered. Do I love him in a way that might make my life whole again, or at least not ripped to pieces? Do I love him in a way that would make me want him to help raise Uto? Do I want to give Uto a half brother or half sister by him? I don’t know, not for sure. But I think I’d better find out.

“Before,” she said, “our first times were accidents. This won’t be. I mean it.” Was she telling him or trying to convince herself? She wasn’t sure of that, either.

Fernao just nodded. He said, “I’ve always meant it.”

“I know,” Pekka answered, and started to laugh. Men were supposed to be the ones who didn’t want to get tied down. Women were supposed to look for loves that lasted. She and Fernao hadn’t worked that way, though. Maybe we will now, she thought.

She stepped toward him at the same time as he was stepping toward her. When they embraced, the top of her head didn’t come much past his shoulder. That sometimes bothered her. Today, it didn’t seem to matter.

It mattered even less when they lay down together. Pekka wondered if she would, if she could, take any pleasure. She wouldn’t have worried if she hadn’t; sometimes having arms around her was enough. But Fernao took his time and paid what seemed like special attention to her. The only thing that could have kept her from eventually arching her back and moaning was. . She couldn’t imagine anything that could have. Certainly, nothing did.

As she lay with her legs entwined with his, she wondered how much that truly mattered. Well, she thought, lazy in the afterglow, it can’t hurt.

All around Krasta, the servants at the mansion bustled like so many scurrying ants, getting the place ready for her brother’s marriage to the horrible, bloodthirsty peasant wench with whom he’d unaccountably become infatuated. That was how Krasta looked at the match, at any rate, and nothing was going to make her change her mind. Hardly anything ever made her change her mind.

A wedding invitation wouldn’t have done it. She was sure of that. It didn’t matter, though; no invitation had been forthcoming. Skarnu and Merkela expected her to stay in her bedchamber by herself while they celebrated. They had their nerve, as far as she was concerned.

Worst of all was that they would probably get what they expected. Had she not been enormously pregnant, she might well have done her best to interrupt, to upstage, the ceremony she so despised. Being about the size of a behemoth, though, did put a crimp in such plans. All she wanted to do was have the baby and get it over with. She’d been feeling that way for most of the past month.

Even Bauska was pressed into the service of Skarnu and Merkela, which infuriated Krasta afresh. Her maidservant did show her a little sympathy when she had time to make an appearance, saying, “Oh, aye, milady, before I finally had Brindza, I would have paid anything to get her the blazes out of there.”

“I should say so,” Krasta exclaimed. She rested her hands on her enormous belly; her arms seemed too short to go round herself, though of course they weren’t. And she had something else on her mind, too, something Bauska couldn’t have dwelt upon: “And once this baby finally comes out, everyone will see it’s a proper little blond, not some nasty Algarvian’s bastard.”

Bauska’s mouth tightened. She left, even though Krasta hadn’t told her she could. Krasta snarled something vile under her breath. To her way of thinking, having a normal, Valmieran-looking baby would automatically wash her clean of all the times she’d opened her legs for Colonel Lurcanio. Anyone would be able to look at the child and see at a glance that, when it really mattered, she’d lain with one of her own countrymen-and a nobleman to boot.

Her womb had been tightening every so often for some weeks. She’d got used to it, though she found it annoying-it squeezed on the baby, which was uncomfortable to her, and it evidently made the baby uncomfortable, too, for the little brat always did some extra thrashing and wiggling after things eased up. Krasta didn’t like that, either; by now, the baby was big enough to kick and poke hard, and didn’t care what tender parts of her it abused in the process.

Three days before her brother’s wedding, the labor pains started in earnest. They were rhythmic, they were regular, and they were much more irksome than any pangs she’d known before. She cursed before calling for Bauska. She’d hoped the baby would wait till the middle of the marriage ceremony. If she’d started screaming for a midwife then, that would have taken everybody’s mind off the catastrophe befalling her family.

But no such luck. When she became convinced these pains weren’t going away, she shouted for Bauska. Her maidservant took her own sweet time getting there. When she did, Krasta demanded, “What was the name of that woman?”

“What woman, milady?” Bauska asked. Krasta had another pang then, and clenched her teeth against it. That told Bauska everything she needed to know. “Oh, the midwife,” she said. “She’s called Kudirka. Shall I have her summoned?”

“No, of course not,” Krasta snapped. “I just wanted to know her name for no reason at all.” And then, in case the maidservant was a fool or felt like pretending to be one, she made herself perfectly clear: “Aye, fetch her. This is going to be over, and I am going to show everybody what the truth is.”

Bauska didn’t answer that. She went away, which satisfied Krasta well enough. Presently, the carriage clattered down the walk and away from the mansion. After what was about an hour and seemed much longer, it came rattling back. By then, Krasta’s labor pains had advanced to the point where she hardly noticed its return.

Kudirka walked into the bedchamber without bothering to knock. She was as broad-shouldered as an Unkerlanter and had a face like a frog, but something in her manner got through even to Krasta. “Take off your trousers, sweetie, and let’s find out what’s going on in there,” the midwife said.

“All. . right.” Another pang seized Krasta before she could. Kudirka waited till it was over, then yanked the trousers off the marchioness herself. She proceeded to feel Krasta’s belly and then to probe her a good deal more intimately than any lover ever had. Krasta yelped.

“Don’t you worry about a thing,” Kudirka told her. “Your hips are nice and wide. You won’t have any trouble at all. A few hours of grunting, then some pushing, and then there’s a baby in your arms. Easy as you please.”

“Good,” Krasta said. It all sounded simple and straightforward.

It didn’t turn out to be that way, of course. It turned out to be boring and painful and exhausting. She discovered exactly why the process was called labor. Sweat plastered her hair to her forehead. It seemed to go on forever, and to hurt more and more as it continued.

At one point, Krasta started cursing every man she’d ever lain with, and cursing Kudirka, too. The midwife took it in stride. “It’s a good sign, honey,” she said. “It means you’ll be ready to do your pushing pretty soon.”

“There’s more?” Krasta groaned. She’d been going through this for an eternity-it was getting dark outside, and she’d started in the morning. Kudirka only nodded. Then she went to the bedchamber and spoke to someone. Krasta paid little attention till Merkela came in. No matter how far gone she was, that registered. “Get out of here!” she squawked.

“No,” the peasant woman answered. “I am going to see this baby before you have the chance to do anything with it or to it. If it’s blond, it is. If it’s not… I will know that, too.”

Krasta cursed her as savagely as she knew how. She had no inhibitions left, none whatever. Merkela gave back as good as she got till Kudirka nudged her. Even she respected the midwife, and fell silent.

“I have to shit,” Krasta said. “I have to shit more than I ever had to shit in my whole life.”

“That’s the baby,” Kudirka said. “Go ahead and push it out.”

Saying that was one thing; doing it turned out to be something else again. Krasta felt as if she were trying to pass a boulder, not a turd. And then, to her disgust, she did pass a turd. Without any fuss, Merkela disposed of the sheet on which it lay. It must come of growing up on a farm, Krasta thought. She knows all about turds.

Then she stopped thinking altogether, stopped everything except struggling to force the baby out of her. She hardly heard Kudirka’s encouragement. The world, everything but her labor, seemed very far away. She took a deep breath, then let out an explosive noise somewhere between a grunt and a squeal.

“That’s it!” the midwife said. “Do that twice more, three times at the most, and you’ll have yourself a baby.”

Krasta didn’t know how many times she made that desperate effort. She was beyond caring by then. At last, though, just when she seemed certain to split in two, everything suddenly got easier. “The baby’s head is out,” Merkela said.

“A couple of more pushes and it’s done,” Kudirka added. “The head is the big part. Everything else will be easy.”

For a miracle, she was right. She guided out the baby’s shoulders and torso and legs. She and Merkela tied off the umbilical cord. Merkela cut it with a pair of shears. Krasta hardly noticed that. She was busy passing the afterbirth, a disgusting bit of business no one had told her about, and one that cost her the undersheet on her bed.

“You have a boy,” Merkela said. She held the squalling baby in the crook of her arm with practiced ease. Not so long before, her son by Skarnu had been so tiny.

Through a haze of exhaustion, Krasta said, “I’ll name him Valnu, for his father.”

Kudirka said nothing at all. Merkela laughed and laughed. The wolfish quality in the peasant woman’s mirth made Krasta shiver no matter how weary she was. Merkela held the baby under her nose, so close her eyes almost crossed. “You were an Algarvian’s whore. I don’t care who else you might have spread your legs for, but you were an Algarvian’s whore, and by what comes out of your own twat you prove what went into it.”

As newborns often are, Krasta’s baby son was born almost bald. But the fine fuzz on his head was of a strawberry tinge no purely Valmieran baby’s head would have had. It was, in fact, nearly identical in color to the hair of Bauska’s bastard half-breed daughter, Brindza.

Laughing still, Merkela said, “If you’re going to name it for its father, you stinking slut, you can call it Lurcanio.”

The weariness Krasta knew then had nothing to do with the ordeal she’d just been through. She’d spent so much time and effort trying to convince everyone, including herself, that the child she was carrying was indeed Valnu’s. She’d- mostly-made herself believe it. She’d made everyone else wonder. And now, to be betrayed by something as trivial as a few strands of hair on the baby’s oddly cone-shaped head (she presumed that would change, even if the brat’s wretched hair color never did) … It all seemed most unfair, as did anything that didn’t go just the way she wished it would have.

“I-” she began.

“Shut up.” Merkela’s voice was flat and hard and vicious, the voice of a wildcat seeing prey it had long stalked at last helpless before it. She gave the baby to Kudirka, then grabbed the scissors she’d used to cut the cord. “I’ve waited too cursed long for this, by the powers above, but now you get what’s coming to you.” She grabbed a shock of Krasta’s hair and hacked it off not a finger’s breadth from her scalp.

“Powers below eat you, you can’t-” Krasta said.

Merkela slapped her in the face. Only Lurcanio had ever dared do that to her before. “Shut up, I told you,” Merkela snapped. She closed the shears and aimed them at one of Krasta’s eyes. “What I’m doing is the least of what you deserve- the least, do you hear me? You can take it, or I’ll give you plenty more. I’d love to, do you hear me? You don’t know how much I’d love to.” The shears jerked closer.

Krasta closed her eyes and flinched. She couldn’t help herself. At any other time, she would have fought, regardless of whether she had a weapon of her own. Exhausted as she’d never been exhausted, sick in spirit as well, she kept her eyes closed and let Merkela do as she would. At last, though, the hateful snip-snip of the shears made her exclaim, “Futter you!”

“A Valmieran futters me,” Merkela retorted. Snip-snip. “I didn’t have a stinking redhead leave silver on the dresser every time he stuck it in.” Snip-snip.

It wasn’t like that. But Krasta didn’t say it. What point? Merkela wouldn’t have believed her, and wouldn’t have cared even if she had believed her. At last, it was over. Kudirka set the baby-the half-Algarvian bastard, just like Bauska’s- on Krasta’s breast. It rooted and began to suck. Krasta didn’t burst into tears. She was too worn for that. But, one after another, they trickled down her cheeks.

No one had ever formally released Skarnu from his service in the Valmieran army. And, unlike most of his countrymen, he’d never given up the fight against the Algarvians. And so, when he proposed to Merkela that he wed her while wearing a captain’s uniform, she nodded. “That’s how I first saw you, you know, coming toward the farmhouse with Raunu at your side,” she said.

Remembering what he’d gone through during his kingdom’s inglorious collapse almost five years before, he answered, “I hope I’ll be cleaner at the ceremony than I was then.”

Merkela laughed. Laughter came easy for her now that she’d finally proved right about Krasta. It was as if she’d won a brand-new victory against the Algarvians long after they’d left Priekule. And so, in a way, she had. Skarnu could have felt victorious about his own sister, too. He didn’t. All he felt was sad. Krasta had made the wrong choice, and now she was paying for it. Hundreds, thousands, of women across Valmiera and Jelgava had paid as much. A good many men who’d collaborated with the redheads had paid or would pay far more.

“Tomorrow,” Merkela murmured. She laid a fond hand on Skarnu’s arm. “It still hardly feels real. It feels like something out of one of the fairy tales my grandmother would tell me when I was a little girl.”

“You had better get used to it, milady,” Skarnu said solemnly, “for it’s the truth.” That he was marrying at all still struck him as surprising. That he was marrying a commoner would have seemed treason to his class before the war.

Little Gedominu, who was toddling around the bedchamber they shared, fell down. The damage, obviously, was anywhere from minimal to imaginary, but he wailed, “Mama!” and started to cry anyway.

Merkela scooped him up. “It’s all right,” she said. After a moment or two in her arms, it was all right, too. Skarnu wished his own hurts were so easily fixed. That thought had hardly crossed his mind when Merkela flicked one of those hurts. She ruffled Gedominu’s fine, golden hair and murmured, “You look the way you’re supposed to. That’s more than anybody can say about your nasty little cousin.”

Skarnu sighed. He wished Krasta’s baby had looked like a proper Valmieran. That would have taken the taint of scandal off the whole family. As things were, he sighed and said, “It’s not the baby’s fault.”

“It certainly isn’t,” Merkela agreed. “It’s her fault.” She still didn’t want to call Krasta Skarnu’s sister. Ever since they’d first learned Krasta was keeping company with a redhead, they-and Merkela especially-had denied Skarnu even had a sister. That was harder now that they were living in the same house with Krasta, but Merkela managed. She went on, “She was going to name the baby Valnu.”

“Too bad she couldn’t,” Skarnu said. “Sooner or later, these things have to come to an end.”

“Not yet, by the powers above,” Merkela declared. “When she had Lurcanio’s bastard, I told her she should name it for him.”

Skarnu sighed. “That doesn’t help, you know. Krasta’s going to be your sister-in-law whether you like it or not.” He held up a hand. “You don’t. You’ve told me. You don’t need to tell me again. Just remember, Valnu put in a good word for her. He’d be dead if she’d opened her mouth at the wrong time. Then there wouldn’t have been any doubt who the baby’s father was.”

“She opened her mouth at plenty of the wrong times,” Merkela said. While Skarnu was still spluttering over that, his fiancee added, “If she’d done it once more, she wouldn’t have had the little bastard in the first place.” That only made Skarnu splutter again.

In the end, he decided not to push the argument. He wasn’t going to change Merkela’s mind. Part of him-not half, but close to it-agreed with her, anyhow. What he most wanted now was to get through the wedding ceremony without any fresh scandal. Enlisting Merkela in that effort was bound to be futile. Trying to enlist Krasta in it was bound to be worse than futile. Skarnu had spent a lot of time away from home, but not so much that he didn’t know what to do in such cases.

He approached Valmiru, who nodded wisely. “You are holding the ceremony out of doors, is it not so?” the butler said. When Skarnu agreed that he was-he could hardly deny it, not with the pavilion already up behind the mansion- Valmiru nodded again. “Very well. I shall make a point of allowing no physical disruption. I cannot necessarily promise there will be no commotion from within the house, however.”

“I understand that. Believe me, Valmiru, I’ll be grateful for anything you can do-and I’ll make it worth your while, too,” Skarnu said. The butler’s expression didn’t change in any way Skarnu could have defined, but he contrived to look pleased nonetheless. They were indoors. Skarnu looked up at the sky even so. “It had better not rain, that’s all I’ve got to say.”

To his vast relief, it didn’t. The wedding day dawned fine and mild. It might have come from the end of springtime, not the beginning. The ceremony was set for noon. Guests started arriving a couple of hours early. Servants steered them around the mansion to the pavilion in back of it. Giving the temporary structure that name could not disguise its origins: it was, in fact, an outsized tent borrowed from the Valmieran army. Being an officer who’d never been formally discharged had certain advantages when it came to laying one’s hands on such things.

Every now and then, an alert listener-Skarnu, for instance-might have heard a newborn baby wailing inside the mansion. Most of the guests knew by then that the baby had hair of not quite the right color. A couple of people clapped Skarnu on the back in sympathy. Valnu gave him a comic shrug almost exaggerated enough to have come from an Algarvian, as if to say, Well, it could have been mine.

At one point, not long before the ceremony was to begin, a listener would not have needed to be alert in the least to hear Krasta trying to come outside and expressing her detailed opinions of the people who kept her from doing so. She waxed eloquent, in a vulgar way. Several people shrugged at Skarnu now.

White-mustached old Marstalu, the Duke of Klaipeda, conducted the ceremony. As far as Skarnu was concerned, conducting a wedding was about what he was good for. He’d commanded the Valmieran troops opposing Algarve in the early days of the war, and had had not a clue about beating back Mezentio’s men. His nephew had been a collaborator, but that brush didn’t tar him.

“He’s splendid looking,” Merkela whispered as she and Skarnu approached him. Skarnu thought she looked quite splendid herself, in tunic and trousers of glowing green silk, the color of fertility in Valmiera since the days of the Kaunian Empire. That it went well with his own darker green captain’s uniform was a happy coincidence.

Marstalu looked like a kindly grandfather. He spoke classical Kaunian as if it were his birthspeech. He had enough years on him to make that seem almost plausible (his backward cast of mind during the fighting made it seem plausible, too, but Skarnu did his best not to dwell on that). Skarnu’s own command of the old language left something to be desired; Merkela knew next to none. But they’d rehearsed. When the duke stopped and looked expectantly at them, that meant he’d just asked if they agreed to live together as man and wife. “Aye,” Skarnu said loudly. Merkela echoed the agreement in a softer voice.

“It is accomplished,” Duke Marstalu boomed, still in classical Kaunian. Then, the formal part of the ceremony concluded, he grinned and switched to ordinary, everyday Valmieran: “Kiss her, boy, before I beat you to it.”

“Aye, sir.” Skarnu saluted. “I’ve never had an order I was gladder to obey.” He gathered Merkela in. All the guests cheered and whooped and clapped their hands. People pelted the newlyweds with flowers and nuts-more symbols of fertility. Some of the nuts flew back and forth in among the crowd, as if rival armies were tossing eggs at each other. Skarnu had seen that happen at other weddings, too.

After the ceremony, people ate and drank and danced and gossiped. If any more squawks came from the mansion, the noise the guests made drowned them out. Somebody slapped Viscount Valnu’s face. Skarnu was at the far end of the pavilion then, and never did find out whether Valnu had offended a man or a woman.

And then, towards evening, the guests began to drift away. Valnu said,

“I had a splendid time.” Getting slapped hadn’t bothered him in the least. He leered and added, “But not nearly so fine a time as the two of you are going to have-I’m sure of that.” He kissed Merkela and then, for good measure, kissed Skarnu, too. After that, whistling and grinning, he took his leave.

“Impossible man,” Merkela said, to which Skarnu could only nod. She glanced over to her new husband. “Are you sure he was on our side during the occupation?”

“Positive,” Skarnu answered. His new bride sighed.

Servants had charge of little Gedominu for the evening. Skarnu held the door to the bedchamber open for Merkela. After she went in, he closed it and barred it behind them. She smiled. “No one’s going to bother us tonight, and I won’t try to get away.”

“You’d better not.” Skarnu took her in his arms. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t made love before; the son they weren’t watching proved that. But the first time as man and wife still seemed special. “I love you,” Skarnu told Merkela just before pleasure overwhelmed him.

He wasn’t sure she heard him; she wasn’t far from her own joy. But then, as their hearts both slowed, she reached up to stroke his cheek and said, “You must,” in wondering tones. Some small part of her must have wondered if he would abandon her when he could. It being a wedding night, Skarnu got other chances to prove how wrong that was.

He and Merkela were both sodden with slumber when someone rapped on the bedchamber door much too early the next morning. His first coherent words were some of the harsher ones he’d picked up as a soldier. But then Valmiru’s voice came through the door: “Your pardon, my lord, milady, but King Gainibu summons you to the palace at once. A carriage awaits.”

That put a different light on things. “We’ll be down directly,” Skarnu said. He and Merkela dressed as fast as they could, dragged brushes through their hair, and hurried out to the front of the mansion, where a carriage did indeed wait. Half an hour later, they were bowing before the King of Valmiera.

“Congratulations to you both,” Gainibu said. He still looked like a man who sometimes had too much to drink, but he didn’t sound like a man who’d done it lately. Like his kingdom, he was recovering from the occupation. He went on, “I’ve been thinking about what sort of present to give you, and I believe I’ve found a good one.”

“You’re too kind, your Majesty,” Skarnu murmured. Merkela kept silent. Speaking to the king had seemed even stranger to her than marrying a noble.

Gainibu said, “The estate formerly held by the late Count Enkuru and his son, the late Count Simanu, has been adjudged forfeit to the Crown because of their treason and collaboration with the foe.” Skarnu nodded. That was the noble estate nearest Pavilosta. He’d had a good deal to do with Enkuru’s demise; he and Merkela had both had a great deal to do with killing Simanu. The king continued, “I have it in mind to raise that estate from a county to a marquisate and to confer it on the two of you. That way, I know it will stay in loyal hands. What do you say to the notion?”

Skarnu glanced at Merkela. Her eyes glowed with astonished delight. She found words now: “We say, Thank you, your Majesty. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.”

With a chuckle, Gainibu remarked. “She’s speaking for you already, is she? Well, I’m glad you’re pleased. This will also let you get away from Krasta, and from her unfortunately irregular offspring. Oh, aye, I’ve heard about that. And may I make one suggestion?” He didn’t wait for anyone’s approval before giving it: “Take as many of your household staff as care to go.”

Merkela laughed out loud at that. A little more reluctantly, so did Skarnu. He didn’t think his sister would be very happy. He also didn’t think King Gainibu cared.

For as long as he’d seen only their soldiers, Sidroc had been able to hold on to his admiration for the Algarvians. Their fighting men knew what they were doing. Even with the odds against them, as they certainly were now, footsoldiers and behemoth crews and the men who served egg-tossers and dragonfliers went about their jobs with a matter-of-fact competence he’d never seen from his own people, from the Unkerlanters, or from the Yaninans (not that that last was saying much).

Now, though, Plegmund’s Brigade was actually inside Algarve, fighting not to take the war to the Unkerlanters but to hold them out of Trapani. Sidroc and his comrades weren’t just dealing with Algarvian soldiers any more. They had to deal with Algarvian civilians, too. And Algarvian civilians, to put it mildly, left him unimpressed.

“Get your crap out of the road, lady!” he shouted to a woman who seemed intent on taking everything she owned with her as she fled east-this though she had only a tiny handcart in which to carry it all. “Get it out of the way or we’ll fornicating well kick it out of the way for you.”

The woman in question was one of the plump, middle-aged sort who make a life out of running their towns-and their neighbors’ affairs. Getting orders rather than giving them didn’t sit well with her. “I don’t know what the world is coming to,” she said, “when we have barbarians loose in the streets of our cities.”

“Futter you, lady,” Sidroc said cheerfully. “You don’t let us do what we’re supposed to be doing, King Swemmel’s boys’ll get in here. You think we’re barbarians? We’re on your side, you stupid twat. The Unkerlanters take this place, about twenty of ‘em’ll line up, and they’ll all futter you-if they don’t decide you’re too stinking ugly to waste cock on and bash in your stupid head instead.”

His squad-Forthwegians and a couple of blonds from the Phalanx of Valmiera, which had fallen on even harder times than Plegmund’s Brigade- laughed raucously. The Algarvian woman gaped as if she couldn’t believe her ears. “I shall find a civilized man,” she said, and flounced off.

She didn’t have to flounce far before finding Lieutenant Puliano. He cut her off as she started to spin her tale of woe. “Shut up,” he said. “I heard Corporal Sidroc, and I know bloody well he’s right.” He waved. “Go on through her stuff, boys. She doesn’t need it, and it’s just in the way.”

Sidroc kicked a brass-wired bird cage as if it were a football on a pitch. The door flew open as it rolled. A couple of finches from Siaulia-brilliant little birds, all scarlet and gold and green-flew out of it and away. He hoped they’d do all right so far from home. The war wasn’t their fault.

“Keep moving!” the lieutenant called. “You see more junk in the road, just go on through it.”

Ceorl did just that, and seemed to take considerable pleasure in trampling the possessions the Algarvians in the town had spent a lifetime gathering. “You ask me, these whoresons don’t deserve to win the war,” he said. “If they can’t figure out what in blazes is important and what they’d better leave behind, the powers below are welcome to ‘em.”

By all the signs, the powers below were going to get their hands on a lot of Algarvians regardless of whether they knew what to do with their goods. And they’ll probably get their hands on me, too, Sidroc thought. He shrugged. He’d stuck with the redheads this far. He couldn’t very well abandon them now.

He couldn’t even strip off his uniform, find civilian clothes, and do his best to pretend he’d never been in the army. He looked about as unlike an Algarvian as it was possible for anyone this side of a black Zuwayzi to look. He would have had a better chance pretending to be an Unkerlanter.

Some few Algarvian soldiers, at least, were doing their best to slide out of the war. Maybe some of them got away with it. Not all of them did. As the men of Plegmund’s Brigade tramped out of the town, they passed three redheaded corpses hanging from trees by the side of the road. The placards tied round their necks warned, this is what deserters get.

“They deserve it,” Lieutenant Puliano said. “Anybody who gives up on his kingdom when it needs him the most deserves everything that happens to him, and more besides.”

The Forthwegians in Algarvian service solemnly nodded. Unlike the redheads, they couldn’t even try to go home again. The handful of blonds from Valmiera also nodded. They really couldn’t go home again. They were far worse traitors in the eyes of their countrymen than the men of Plegmund’s Brigade were to theirs.

But Sidroc had some gloomy thoughts of his own as he marched by the hanged deserters. Even Mezentio’s men are starting to see there’s no hope left for them. If they can see it, I’d have to be a cursed fool to miss it myself. He knew he wasn’t the brightest fellow around. If he’d ever had any doubts on that score, spending years getting compared to his clever cousin Ealstan would have cured them.

He laughed, none too pleasantly. If Ealstan was so fornicating smart, why did he fall in love with a Kaunian girl? I wonder if he ever found out he was getting that redheaded officer’s sloppy seconds. He laughed again. I hope so.

“Watch your step here, boys,” Puliano called. “You don’t want to go off the road, or you’d end up arse-deep in mud. This is swampy country.”

“It doesn’t look too bad,” somebody said. And, indeed, it didn’t. In fact, it looked greener than most of the firmer ground farther west. On dry land, spring was just starting to make itself known. Here, though, the swamp plants, or most of them, had kept their color through the winter. The road might almost have been passing through a meadow.

Sudaku stepped up alongside Sidroc. In his Valmieran-flavored Algarvian, he said, “This swamp is a sign we grow near to Trapani. I passed through the capital and through this country on the way west to join the Phalanx of Valmiera.”

“Getting near Trapani, eh?” Sidroc said, and the blond’s head bobbed up and down. Sidroc grunted. “That doesn’t sound so good.”

“No,” the Kaunian said. “But, by now, what is left for us to do but die like heroes?”

Sidroc grunted again. “I didn’t sign up to be a hero.”

“But what else are we, fighting to the death for a cause surely lost?” Sudaku persisted.

“Who knows? Come to that, who cares?” Sidroc said. “Besides, if we lose- when we lose-who’s going to call us heroes? Winners are heroes. They get the girls, and they don’t get their uniforms mussed. In the stories, we’re just the fellows who blaze at them and miss.”

“Everyone is a hero in his own story,” the Kaunian said. “The only trouble is, our stories, I fear, will be ending soon.”

Before Sidroc could answer that-not that it needed much answering, for it seemed pretty obviously true-someone toward the rear of the weary, shambling column of men let out a frightened shout: “Dragons! Unkerlanter dragons!”

Looking back over his shoulder, Sidroc spied the great rock-gray shapes bearing down on his comrades-and on him. He wasn’t ready for his story to end quite yet. “Into the mud!” he yelled, and dove for the side of the road.

It was the only hope the soldiers had, and they made the most of it they could. Like Sidroc, they floundered into the swamp as far as they could go. Some of them blazed. Others just tried to cover themselves in ooze. The dragons roared fiercely as they belched out fire. None of the flames came too close to Sidroc, but he felt the heat from them all the same. What happened to the men who’d stayed on the road wasn’t pretty.

Survivors gathered themselves and trudged on. That was all they could do. Ceorl was as filthy as Sidroc. “You son of a whore, I thought they’d’ve got rid of you a long time ago,” he said. “You’re tougher than I gave you credit for.”

“Thanks, I suppose,” Sidroc said.

Up the road was a town called Laterza. It had taken as much damage as any other Algarvian town not far from Trapani. Standing in the middle of the main street, though, as if on a normal day, was a captain wearing a mage’s emblem. “Ah, good,” he said when he saw what sorts of soldiers Lieutenant Puliano led. “A band of mercenaries and auxiliaries.” Sidroc didn’t like his tone or the sneer on his face. I’ve been through too much for him to have any business looking at me like that, he thought. The mage went on, “You will furnish me all your Kaunians at once.”

Sidroc didn’t like the sound of that at all. Neither, evidently, did Puliano, who said, “Oh, I will, will I? And why is that?”

“Because it will aid the war, and because I, your superior, order it,” the captain replied. So I can kill them, Sidroc translated in his own mind.

He wasn’t the only one who made the same translation. Sudaku pushed his way forward. The man from the Phalanx of Valmiera stuck his stick in the mage’s face. “Do you want anything to do with me or my countrymen?” he asked coldly.

“Arrest this man!” the mage gabbled.

“What for?” Lieutenant Puliano said with a smile. “Seems like a pretty good question to me. Maybe you’d better answer it.”

“Do you want anything to do with me or mine?” Sudaku repeated.

The mage had nerve. Whatever Algarvians lacked, that was rarely it. He thought for a long time before finally shaking his head. And even after he did, he shook a fist at Lieutenant Puliano. “It’s because of people like you that our kingdom’s in the state it’s in,” he said bitterly.

“Because of people like me?” Puliano returned. “Have you looked in a mirror any time lately?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” the mage demanded. He really didn’t know. Sidroc could see as much. That was as alarming as anything else that had happened to him lately-a pretty frightening thought, when you got down to it.

Sudaku said, “I think you had better disappear. I think that if you do not disappear, something bad will happen to you.”

Again, even with a stick in his face, the Algarvian wizard seemed on the point of saying no. If he had, the blond from the Phalanx of Valmiera would have blazed his brains out. Sidroc was sure of that. The mage evidently came to the same conclusion. He turned on his heel and stalked away. His stiff back radiated outrage.

“Poor fellow,” the Kaunian said. “He is angry at me because I do not propose to let him kill me. Well, too bad.” He turned to Lieutenant Puliano. “Thank you, sir, for thinking I am worth more to Algarve alive.”

“Mages are a pack of cursed fools,” the redhead said. “If they were half as smart as they think they are, they’d be twice as smart as they really are. I know what a good soldier’s worth. I haven’t got any idea what that bastard’s worth, and why should I waste time finding out?” He looked around at his ragtag followers. “Come on, boys. Let’s get going. Wizards or no wizards, we’ve still got a war to fight.”

How much longer can we keep fighting? Sidroc wondered. He had no idea. But the stick in his hand still held charges. The Unkerlanters hadn’t nailed him yet. They won’t have an easy time doing it, either, he told himself, and marched deeper into Algarve, on toward Trapani.

Marshal Rathar muttered something vile under his breath. His army had just tried to throw another bridgehead across the Scamandro, and the Algarvians had just crushed it. “Can’t be helped,” General Vatran said philosophically. “We still haven’t built up enough men or supplies to do a proper job yet.”

Logically, Rathar knew that was true. But logic had only so much to do with it. He glanced over at the portrait of King Swemmel on the wall. His imagination had to be running away with him, but he thought the king was glaring at him in particular. “It could have worked,” he said. “It was worth a try.”

“Oh, aye.” Vatran nodded. “That’s why we gave it a blaze. But it wasn’t a sure thing, and it didn’t pan out. Won’t be long now before we can do it right.”

“I know.” But Rathar, still eyeing Swemmel’s portrait, had a bad feeling there would be some unpleasant conversations with the king before that happened. He wondered if he could get away with telling the crystallomancers to tell Swemmel he was indisposed. Probably not, worse luck.

Vatran shuffled through leaves of paper. He pulled one out and handed it to Rathar. “Here, lord Marshal. You said you wanted to see these.”

“I need to see them, if that’s what I think it is. That’s not the same thing as wanting to.” Rathar took the paper and glanced through it. Sure enough, it was what he thought it was. He handed it back to Vatran. “Stinking werewolves.”

Vatran made a sour face. “Trust the Algarvians to come up with a name like that.”

“I don’t care what you call them,” Rathar said. “They’re a pack of cursed nuisances, and no mistake.”

He recognized the irony in his words. While Mezentio’s men occupied great stretches of Unkerlant, his own countrymen had made their lives miserable, raiding their garrisons, sabotaging ley lines, and doing anything else they could to hurt the foe. Now, with Unkerlanter forces inside Algarve, the boot was on the other foot. The redheads behind his lines were doing their best to disrupt his operations. Werewolves was a fancier, more grandiose name than irregulars, but they did the same job.

With a shrug, Vatran said, “When we catch ‘em, we hang ‘em or we blaze ‘em or we boil ‘em. That way, they don’t turn into anything worse than a nuisance.”

A couple of years before, Algarvian generals had to have been saying the same thing about Unkerlanter irregulars. Rathar had the same response they must have had: “Once we win the war, the trouble will go away.” Mezentio’s men hadn’t won the war. If he didn’t win it now, he would deserve whatever Swemmel chose to do to him.

Vatran shuffled more papers. “There’s still trouble with bandits back in the Duchy of Grelz, too.”

Bandits, of course, was another name for irregulars and werewolves. Some of the Grelzers who’d aligned themselves with Mezentio and against Swemmel had been in grim earnest, and kept up their fight against Unkerlant even after the Algarvians were driven east and out of their duchy. But that problem had the same answer as the other one: “If we win here, the bandits will quiet down-and if they don’t, we’ll root ‘em out one at a time if we have to.”

“Aye-makes sense,” Vatran agreed.

“Now, the next question, and the one where losing the bridgehead really hurts,” Rathar said. “How far west have the islanders come, and how close to Trapani have they got?”

One of Vatran’s white eyebrows twitched. “They’re within about eighty miles, sir,” he answered unhappily. “Still moving forward pretty fast, too, curse them.”

“They’re our allies,” Rathar said. “We’re not supposed to curse them. We’re supposed to congratulate them.” He looked east. “Congratulations-curse you.”

Vatran laughed, though it really wasn’t funny. “Of course, one reason they’re moving so fast is that the redheads have all their best soldiers-all the best of whatever they’ve got left-pointed at us.”

“That old, old song,” Rathar said. “We’re beating them anyhow, the bastards. And we’re beating them in spite of all the funny magic they’re throwing at us.”

“Every time they try something new, our mages have fresh hysterics,” Vatran said.

“They’ve been doing that ever since the redheads started killing Kaunians,” Rathar replied. “Sometimes they find an answer, sometimes things just go wrong for the redheads, and sometimes we have so many men and behemoths, it doesn’t matter anyway.”

Vatran let out a long, heartfelt sigh. “I’ll be glad when it’s finally over, and that’s the truth.” He ran a hand through his curly white hair. “I’m too cursed old to go through what the Algarvians have put us through.”

“Not obvious it’ll be over even after we lick Mezentio,” Rathar said. “King Swemmel hasn’t said what he’ll do about Gyongyos then. Maybe we’ll all pack up and head west-a long way west.”

“Maybe,” Vatran agreed. “But do you know what, lord Marshal? Even if we do, I won’t be nervous about it, the way I have been ever since we started fighting the redheads. Even if the Gongs should somehow lick us-and I don’t think they can do it-it wouldn’t be the end of the world. If the Algarvians had beaten us, our kingdom was dead. They’d’ve ruled us like we were some barbarian principality up in Siaulia, and they’d never have let us back up on our feet again.”

Since Rathar thought the older general was right, he didn’t argue with him. The war with Algarve was a war to the knife, no doubt about it. Mezentio’s men might not have treated Unkerlant and its people quite so harshly as they had the Kaunians in Forthweg, but they wouldn’t have made easy masters. They hadn’t made easy masters in the parts of Unkerlant they’d held.

They’re arrogant whoresons, and it cost them, Rathar thought. If they’d pretended to come as liberators from Swemmel’s hard rule, half the kingdom would have gone over to them. But they didn’t think they needed to worry about what we thought. They gave Grelz an Algarvian for a king. They showed everybody they were even worse than Swemmel-and they paid for it. And now we’ll be the masters in big chunks of Algarve, and we won’t be sweet to the redheads, either.

Someone hurried into the headquarters-an Unkerlanter major. “Marshal Rather!” he called. “I’ve got important news.”

Rathar looked up from the map table. “I’m here,” he said. “What’s gone wrong now?” By the man’s tone, something had. Vatran looked up, too, sharply. He picked up his mug of tea and started to sip from it.

“Here, lord Marshal,” the newcomer said. “I’ll have to show you.” He took a couple of steps toward the map table-and then stopped and yanked his short officer’s stick from his belt and swung it toward Rathar.

The Marshal of Unkerlant had half a heartbeat to know what a fool he’d been. This is how General Gurmun died, flashed through his mind. If the Algarvians could sorcerously disguise one of their own to look like an Unkerlanter up in Forthweg, why not on their own soil, too?

But the beam never bit into his flesh. Vatran flung his heavy earthenware mug at the false major’s face. It caught him right in the teeth. He howled and clutched at himself, and his blaze went wild. Before his finger could find its way into the blazing hole again, Vatran and Rathar were both grappling with him. Rathar wrenched the stick out of his hands. The shouts and groans from the map chamber brought more soldiers rushing in. They seized the major and, after some fumbling, tied him up.

“He’s gone mad, sir,” a captain-a veritable Unkerlanter captain-exclaimed.

“No, I don’t think so,” Rathar answered. “I think if we leave him alone for a few hours, he’ll start looking like one of Mezentio’s majors, not like one of ours.” He switched to Algarvian and addressed the would-be assassin: “Isn’t that right, Major-or whatever your real rank happens to be?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the fellow replied in Unkerlanter holding no trace of any accent save that of Cottbus-certainly no Algarvian trill. His mouth bled where the mug had caught him-and where the two Unkerlanter officers had hit him in the fight that followed.

“Aye, tell us King Mezentio didn’t send you after the marshal,” General Vatran jeered.

“He didn’t,” the man replied with a bloody grin. “King Swemmel did.”

If he aimed to produce consternation in the headquarters, he succeeded. Horrified silence fell. Rathar himself broke it, saying, “You lie. If his Majesty wants me dead, he has no need to sneak in a murderer. He could simply arrest me, and his will would be done.”

“You’d be too likely to rise against him, and the men are too likely to follow you,” the fellow said.

All that had a certain ring of truth, regardless of whether the failed assassin was what he claimed to be. All the more reason, then, for Marshal Rather to speak in ringing tones: “You lie. I am loyal, and his Majesty knows it.” He turned to his men. “Take this lying wretch away. Do nothing to him for one day except keeping him under close guard. When his looks change and show him for the Algarvian he is, let me know.”

They dragged the false major out of the headquarters. Rathar hoped with all his heart the man would show himself to be an Algarvian. If he didn’t. . The marshal didn’t want to think about that. Being possessed of a disciplined mind, he didn’t. Instead, he told Vatran, “Thank you,” and asked, “How were you so ready there?”

Vatran shrugged. “Something about the way he looked, something about the way he sounded-it didn’t feel quite right.”

“He just seemed eager to me,” Rathar said.

“Maybe that was it,” Vatran said.

Rathar wondered if he was joking. After a moment, the marshal decided Vatran wasn’t. After almost four grinding years of war against Algarve, how many Unkerlanter officers had any eagerness left? Algarvians, now.. Algarvians went into everything with panache. This fellow hadn’t looked or sounded like one, but he’d seemed enough like one to make Vatran at least wonder-and that, in turn, had ended up saving Rathar’s neck.

“Thank you,” the marshal said again.

“You’re welcome,” Vatran replied. He lowered his voice: “Now we just have to hope the lousy bugger really is a redhead.”

“Indeed,” Rathar said, and said no more. Could Swemmel have been so daft as to choose this moment to try to be rid of him? It didn’t seem likely, but the same held true for a lot of things Swemmel did.

The crystallomancer’s call came long after midnight. “He’s an Algarvian,” reported the officer charged with guarding important captives.

“Powers above be praised,” Rathar said, and slept sound the rest of the night.