Rulers of the Darkness

Ten

Sergeant Pesaro glared at the Algarvian constables drawn up at attention in front of the barracks in Gromheort. "Listen up, you lugs," he growled. "You'd better listen up, on account of this is important."

As imperceptibly as he could, Bembo shifted from foot to foot. "How many times have we heard speeches like this?" he whispered to Oraste, who stood next to him.

Oraste might have been carved from stone. Even his lips hardly stirred as he answered, "Too cursed many."

"Shut up, the lot of you!" Pesaro roared. His jowls wobbled when he opened his mouth very wide. "You'd better shut up, or you'll bloody well be sorry. Have you got that?" He looked so fierce, even Bembo, who'd known him since dirt, decided he had to take him seriously. After one more glare, Pesaro went on, "All right. That's better. Our kingdom needs us, by the powers above, and we're going to come through."

Alarm blazed up Bembo's back. One of the things he'd always feared was that the meat grinder of war might decide to take constables and turn them into soldiers. By the horrified expressions some of his comrades were wearing, the same thing had occurred to them, too.

Pesaro's chuckle was anything but pleasant. "There. Have I got your attention? I cursed well better have. What we're going to do is, we're going to go into the Kaunian quarter here, we're going to grab as many blonds as we can, and we're going to ship 'em west. The men in the trenches there'll need all the sorcerous help they can get. We're the boys who can give 'em what they need."

"As long as we're not going into the trenches ourselves," somebody behind Bembo muttered. Bembo had all he could do to keep from nodding like a fool, because that was exactly how he felt himself.

A constable in front of him stuck up a hand. When Pesaro nodded, the fellow asked, "What do we do if we run into people who look like Forthwegians?"

"Grab 'em anyhow," Pesaro answered promptly. "We'll throw the buggers into holding cells. If they still look like Forthwegians a day later, we'll turn 'em loose. And if they don't- which, you ask me, is a lot more likely- then off they go. If they're in the Kaunian quarter, we figure they're blonds till they show us different."

Another constable, a young fellow named Almonio, raised his hand. "Permission to fall out, Sergeant?" He never had had the stomach for seizing Kaunians who would be doomed to massacre.

But Pesaro shook his head, which made his jowls wobble again, this time from side to side. "No." His voice was flat and hard. "You can come along, or you can go to the guardhouse. Those are your choices."

"I'll come," Almonio said miserably. "It's not right, but I'll come." Bembo knew the youngster would drink himself into a stupor the first chance he got.

"You bet your arse you'll come." Pesaro wasn't just going to have his way; he was going to rub the other constable's nose in it, so that Almonio wouldn't pester him again with second thoughts. "This war we're fighting with Unkerlant touches everybody now. We're all fighting it, irregardless of whether we're in the front line or not." A smile spread over his broad, fleshy face- he plainly thought that rather fine.

Elsewhere on the parade ground in front of the barracks, other sergeants were haranguing other squads of constables. That fit in with what Bembo knew, or thought he knew, of how soldiers and their leaders behaved before a battle. All the sergeants finished at about the same time. That, Bembo suspected, was no accident.

The captain who'd led the raid on the block of flats where the Kaunian robber Gippias' pals had been hiding out was in charge of this assault on the Kaunian quarter. Bembo still didn't know his name. He did know the fellow was from Trapani, and had a vast contempt not only for Kaunians but also for Forthwegians and for his own countrymen who had the misfortune to come from provincial towns.

"We'll get them," the captain declared as the constables marched toward the little district into which the blonds had been shoehorned. "We'll get them, and we'll teach them what it means to be Algarve's enemies."

"He sees what needs doing, anyhow," Oraste said. But then the captain repeated himself, and then he said the same thing over again for a third and soon for a fourth time. Oraste rolled his eyes. "All right. We've got the fornicating idea."

Forthwegians who saw a company's worth of constables bearing down on them sensibly got out of the way as fast as they could. Pride made Bembo suck in his belly, throw back his shoulders, and march as if marching really mattered. Like any Algarvian, he reckoned being part of a parade the only thing better than watching one.

But that thought had hardly crossed his mind before the constables had to halt. It wasn't Forthwegians or Kaunians who stopped them, either: it was their own countrymen. A couple of regiments of soldiers were marching through the city toward the ley-line caravan depot. They didn't swagger, as the constables did; they just tramped along, intent on getting where they were going- probably back to the front in Unkerlant. The ones who weren't lean were downright skinny. Their tunics and kilts were faded and patched. And they all had a knowing look in their eyes, a look that said they'd been places and done things the constables couldn't- and wouldn't want to- imagine.

"Aren't they cute?" one soldier said to another, pointing at the constables. "Aren't they sweet?"

"Oh, aye, they're just the most precious dears I ever saw," his friend answered. Both men guffawed. Bembo's ears heated in dull embarrassment.

Another Algarvian trooper was blunter. "Slackers!" he yelled. "Whose prong did you suck to stay out of the real fight?" His pals growled and shook their fists at the constables. One of them flipped up his kilt and showed his bare buttocks- he wasn't wearing drawers.

"Get that man's name! Discipline him!" the constabulary captain shouted to the sergeants and lieutenants and captains marching past. But, in spite of his fury, the military officers paid him no attention. The more they ignored him, the angrier and louder he got. It did him no good at all.

He was still steaming when the last footsoldier finally walked past. Some of the other constables had got angry, too. More, like Bembo, were just resigned. "Soldiers never have any use for us," he said. "They're jealous that they have to go forward and we get to stay back here."

"Wouldn't you be?" Oraste returned.

"Of course I would. You think I'm daft?" Bembo said. "But I don't have to be jealous of me, on account of I'm a constable, not a soldier."

Oraste might have had further opinion on just what Bembo was. If he did, he kept his mouth shut about them. The two constables were partners, after all. They marched on till they came to the edge of the Kaunian quarter. There the captain divided them into two groups: a larger one that would go into houses and shops and bring out the blonds, and a smaller one that would guard them and keep them from slipping away in the confusion. Bembo and Oraste were both in the first group.

"This is for Algarve!" the captain declared. "This is for victory! Go in there and do your duty."

Had the constables been rookies, they might have charged into the Kaunian district with cheers ringing from their lips. But almost all of them had been through roundups before, both in Gromheort and in the surrounding villages. They had a hard time getting excited about another one.

Oraste might not have been excited, but he enjoyed kicking in a door when no one responded after he yelled, "Kaunians, come forth!" He liked breaking things and knocking things down. Roundups gave him the chance to have fun.

But he went from gloating to cursing when he and Bembo found nobody in the flat once he had kicked in the door. They went next door. This time, Bembo shouted, "Kaunians, come forth!" Again, no one came forth. No one responded at all. With a snarl, Oraste put a boot to the door near the latch. It flew open. The constables swarmed in, sticks in hand and ready to blaze. Once more, though, they found only a deserted flat.

"Powers above!" Oraste exclaimed. "Did all the stinking blonds magic themselves dark and sneak out when nobody was looking?"

"They couldn't have," Bembo said, though without much conviction. "Somebody would have noticed."

"Then where are they?" Oraste asked, and Bembo had no good answer for him. He did hope Doldasai and her family had managed to get out of the Kaunian quarter. If they hadn't, he wouldn't be able to do a thing about it if they got seized again.

They both shouted, "Kaunians, come forth!" in front of the doorway to the next flat. Once more, no one inside came out or said a word. Yet again, Oraste kicked in the door- not only was he better at it than Bembo, he enjoyed it more. This time, though, they found a man and a woman hiding in a closet under some cloaks. Both of them might have been Forthwegian by their looks.

"We were just visiting," the man quavered in Algarvian, "and your shout frightened us, so-"

"Shut up!" Oraste said, and hit him in the head with his bludgeon. The woman screamed. He hit her, too. "For one thing, I know you're lying. For another thing, I don't give a fart. Orders are to grab everybody, and I don't care what you look like. Get moving, or else I'll wallop you again."

As the unhappy couple stumbled toward the door, blood ran down their faces and dripped on the shabby carpeting. Desperation in his voice, the man said, "I'll give you anything you want to pretend you never saw us."

"Forget it," Oraste said. Bembo couldn't do anything but nod. Oraste continued. "Go on, curse you. It's not like anybody'll miss you once you're gone."

The man said something in classical Kaunian. Oraste didn't know a word of the language. Bembo knew just enough to recognize a curse when he heard one. He hit the man again, on the off chance that the fellow was mage enough to make the curse stick if he got to finish it. "None of that," he snapped. "We're warded against wizardry anyhow." He hoped the wards worked well.

He and Oraste led the couple they'd captured back to the constables in charge of holding Kaunians once caught. Other constables were leading more Kaunians and presumed Kaunians out of the cramped district. "Powers above, a lot of these buggers look like Forthwegians and wear tunics," Oraste said.

Bembo could only nod. Close to half the captives looked swarthy and dressed like their Forthwegian countrymen. Genuine blonds wearing genuine trousers had become scarce even in the Kaunian quarter. "I do wonder how many have slipped away to someplace where nobody knows what in blazes they are," Bembo said.

"Too cursed many, I'll tell you that," Oraste said.

The captain in charge of the operation plainly agreed with him. "You'll have to do better than this," he shouted to his men. "Algarve's going to need bodies for the fight ahead. You've got to go in there and get 'em."

"There aren't that many bodies to get, not anymore," Bembo said. "We've already nabbed a good many, and likely even more have slipped through our fingers with their sorcerous disguises." Again, he hoped Doldasai had. He wouldn't have wanted to put his neck on the block like that for nothing.

"Too right they have," Oraste agreed. "But the ones that are left, we've bloody well got to dig out. Come on." Back into the Kaunian quarter he went, intent on doing all he could. Bembo couldn't come close to matching such zeal, and didn't much want to, but he followed nonetheless. What choice have I got? he wondered. He knew the answer all too well: none whatever.

Smooth as velvet, the ley-line caravan glided to a stop at the depot. "Skrunda!" the conductor yelled, going from car to car. "All out for Skrunda!"

"Your pardon," Talsu said as he got to his feet. The man sitting next to him swung his legs into the aisle so Talsu, who'd been by the window, could get past and walk to the doorway that would let him return to his own town.

He had to snatch at his trousers as he went up the aisle. They'd fit fine when the Algarvians first captured him. After months in prison, though, they threatened to fall down with every stride he took. He was willing to hang on to them. When he got home, he or his father could alter his clothes so they'd fit his present scrawny state. And he could start eating properly again, to start making himself fit the clothes.

"Watch your step, sir," the conductor said as Talsu got down from the caravan car by way of the little set of stairs that led to the platform. His voice was an emotionless drone. How many thousands of times, how many tens of thousands of times, had he said exactly the same thing? Enough to drive a man easily bored mad, surely. But he said, "Watch your step, sir," to the man behind Talsu, too, in just the same way.

Talsu had no baggage to reclaim. He counted himself lucky that his captors had given him back the clothes he was wearing when they'd seized him. He hurried out of the depot and onto the streets of the town where he'd lived all his life till conscripted into King Donalitu's army. That hadn't turned out well, not for him and not for Jelgava, either. Next to months in a dungeon, though…

He went through the market square at close to a trot. Part of him said the bread and onions and olives and almonds and olive oil on display there were shadows of what had been for sale before the war. The rest, the part that had thought hard about eating cockroaches, wanted to stop right there and stuff himself till he couldn't walk anymore.

He did stop when someone called his name. "Talsu!" his friend repeated, coming up to pump his hand. "I thought you were… you know."

"Hello, Stikliu," Talsu said. "I was, as a matter of fact. But they finally let me go."

"Did they?" Something in Stikliu's face changed. It wasn't a pleasant sort of change, either. "How… lucky for you. I'll see you later. I have some other things to do. So long." He left as fast as he'd come forward.

What was that all about? Talsu wondered. But he didn't need to wonder for long. Stikliu thought he'd sold his soul to the Algarvians. Talsu scowled. A lot of people were liable to think that. For what other reason would he have come out of the dungeon? What would he have thought if someone imprisoned were suddenly freed? Nothing good. Stikliu hadn't thought anything good, either.

A couple of other people who knew Talsu saw him on the way to the tailor's shop and the dwelling over it. They didn't come rushing over to find out how he was. They did their best to pretend they'd never set eyes on him. His scowl got deeper. Maybe the gaolers hadn't done him such an enormous favor by turning him loose.

He walked into the tailor's shop. There behind the counter sat his father, doing the necessary hand stitching on an Algarvian kilt before chanting the spell that would use the laws of similarity and contagion to bind the whole garment together. Traku looked up from his work. "Good morn-" he began, and then threw down the kilt and ran out to take Talsu in his arms. "Talsu!" he said, and his voice broke. He rumpled his son's hair, as he had when Talsu was a little boy. "Powers above be praised, you've come home!" He didn't care how that might have happened; he just rejoiced that it had.

"Aye, Father." Tears ran down Talsu's face, too. "I'm home."

Traku all but squeezed the breath out of Talsu. Then Talsu's father hurried to the stairway and called, "Laitsina! Ausra! Come quick!"

"What on earth?" Talsu's mother said. But she and his sister Ausra both hurried downstairs. They both squealed- shrieked, actually- when they saw Talsu standing there, and then smothered him in hugs and kisses. After a couple of minutes, coherent speech and coherent thought returned. Laitsina asked, "Does Gailisa know you're free?"

"No, Mother." Talsu shook his head. "I came here first."

"All right." Laitsina took charge, as she had a way of doing. "Ausra, go to the grocer's and bring her back. Don't name any names, not out loud." She rounded on her husband. "Don't just stand there, Traku. Run upstairs and bring down the wine."

"Aye." Ausra and Traku said the same thing at the same time, as if to their commander. Ausra dashed out the door. Traku dashed up the stairs. In his army days, Talsu had had only one officer who'd got that instant obedience from his men. Poor Colonel Adomu hadn't lasted long; the Algarvians had killed him.

Traku came down with the wine. He poured cups for himself, his wife, and Talsu, and set the jar on the counter to wait for Ausra and Gailisa. Then he raised his own cup high. "To freedom!" he said, and drank.

"To freedom!" Talsu echoed. But when he sipped, the red wine- made tangy in the usual Jelgavan style with the juices of limes and oranges and lemons- put him in mind of the prison and of the Jelgavan constabulary captain who'd given him all the wine he wanted to get him to denounce his friends and neighbors.

"What finally made them let you go, son?" Traku asked.

"You must know how they took Gailisa away," Talsu said, and his father and mother both nodded. He went on, "They brought her to my prison and made her write out a list of names. Then they told me she'd done it, and that my names had better match hers. I knew she'd never denounce anyone who really hated Algarvians, so I wrote down people who liked them but weren't real showy about it- you know the kind I mean. And I must have been thinking along with her, because they turned me loose."

"Clever lad!" Traku burst out, and hit him in the shoulder. "You can say a lot of things about my line, but we don't raise fools." Laitsina contented herself with kissing Talsu, which probably amounted to the same thing.

His parents were pleased with him. They thought him a clever fellow. But what would other people in Skrunda think of him? He'd already had a taste of the answer: they'd think he'd sold himself to the redheads. Would they have anything to do with him now that he'd been released? The only ones likely to were men and women of the sort he'd named as anti-Algarvian activists. That was funny, if you looked at it the right way. It would have been even funnier if he'd wanted to have anything to do with those people.

The problem seemed urgent… for a moment. Then the bell rang as the door opened again. There was Ausra, with Gailisa right behind her. Talsu's wife gaped at him, then let out exactly the squeal a seven-year-old might have used at getting a new doll. She threw herself into Traku's arms. "I don't believe it," she said, over and over again. "I can't believe it."

Talsu had trouble believing the feel of a woman pressed against him. He'd thought his imagination and memory had held onto what that feeling was like, but he'd been wrong, wrong. "I saw you once," he said, in between kisses.

"Did you?" Gailisa answered. "When they took me to that horrible prison? I wondered if you would, if that was why. I didn't see you."

"No, they wouldn't let you," Talsu said. "But I was looking out through a peephole when they took you down the hallway. And when they told me you'd written a denunciation, I had to figure out what kind of names you'd put in it so mine would match. I guess I did it right, on account of they let me go."

"I named all the fat, smug whoresons I could think of, is what I did," Gailisa said.

"Me, too," Talsu said. "And it worked."

Somebody- he didn't notice who- had brought down and filled another pair of cups. His mother gave one to Ausra; his father gave the other to Gailisa. They both drank. Gailisa turned an accusing stare on his sister. "You didn't tell me why I had to come back here," she said. "You just told me it was important."

"Well, was I right or was I wrong?" Ausra asked.

"You were wrong, because you didn't come close to saying enough," Gailisa answered. "You didn't come close." She seized Talsu's arm and stared up into his face in such a marked manner that at any other time he would have been embarrassed. Not now. Now he drank in the warmth of her affection like a plant long in darkness drinking in the sun.

Not very much later, still holding him by the arm, she took him upstairs. Ausra started to follow them. Traku contrived to get in her way. In a low voice- but not quite low enough to keep Talsu from overhearing- he said, "No. Wait. Whatever you want up there, it will keep for a while."

Talsu's ears got hot. His parents and his sister had to know what he and Gailisa would be doing in the little bedchamber that had been his alone before he got married. Then he shrugged. If it didn't bother them- and it didn't seem to- he wasn't about to let it bother him, either.

Gailisa closed and barred the door to the bedchamber. Then she undid the toggles on Talsu's tunic. "How skinny you've got!" she said, running the palm of her hand along his ribs. "Didn't they feed you anything?"

"Not much," Talsu answered. The ease with which his trousers came down proved that.

"Don't you worry," Gailisa said. "I'll take care of things. Aye, I will." She let her hand linger for a moment, then planted it in the middle of his chest. He went over on his back onto the bed. "Stay there," she told him, busy with the fastenings of her own clothes. Once she was out of them, Talsu stared and stared. No, memory and imagination were only shadows when set beside reality.

She lay down beside him. Their lips met. Their hands wandered. Before long, Gailisa straddled him and impaled herself upon him. "Ohhh," he said- one long exhalation. How could he have misremembered so much?

"You hush," Gailisa said. "Just let me…" And she did, slowly, carefully, lovingly. Having gone without so long, Talsu didn't think he'd be able to last now, but she took care of that, too. When he finally did groan and shudder, it was as if he were making up for all the lost time at once. Gailisa leaned forward and brushed his lips with hers. "There," she murmured, almost as if to a child. "Is that better?"

"Better, aye," he said. But he was still a young man, even if poorly fed, and his spear retained its temper. This time, he began to move, slowly at first but then with more insistence. Gailisa threw her head back. Her breath came short. So did his. She clenched him, as with a hand. He groaned again. This time, so did she.

Sweat made their skins slide against each other as they separated. Talsu hoped for a third round, but not urgently. He caressed Gailisa, marveling all over again at how soft she was.

A heavily laden wagon rattled by outside, turning his mind away from lovemaking and toward less delightful things. "People are going to think I sold out to the redheads," he said.

"They already think I did," Gailisa answered. "Powers below eat them."

"Aye." Talsu's hand closed on her bare left breast. Somehow, talking of such things while they sprawled naked and sated was an exorcism of sorts, even if modern thaumaturgy had proved precious few demons really existed. He went on, "Do you know who betrayed me?" He waited for her to shake her head, then spoke three more words: "Kugu the silversmith."

"The classical Kaunian master?" Gailisa exclaimed in horror.

"The very same fellow," Talsu said.

"Something ought to happen to him." His wife spoke with great conviction.

"Maybe something will," Talsu said. "But if anything does, it won't be something anybody can blame me for." Gailisa accepted that as naturally as if he'd said the sun rose in the east.

Pekka lay beside Leino in the big bed where they'd spent so much happy time together. He'd be ready again pretty soon, she judged, and then they would start another round of what they'd both been too long without. "So good to be here," her husband murmured.

"So good to be here with you," Pekka said.

Leino laughed. "So good to be here at all. Compared to the land of the Ice People…" His voice trailed off. "I've said too much."

"Habakkuk," Pekka said.

Her husband nodded. "Aye, Habakkuk. I never should have said anything about that, either. And if I did say something about it, the censor never should have passed it. But I did and he did, and now we've got to live with it."

"Fer… one of the other mages who's working with me said the name sounded as if it came from the land of the Ice People." Pekka didn't want to- very strongly didn't want to- mention Fernao's name while she was in bed with her husband. She'd worry about what that meant, and if it meant anything, another time.

"He was right." If Leino noticed her hesitation, he didn't make a big thing of it. Forbearance was one of the reasons she loved him. He sighed and went on, "I think you've got the more interesting job, working with people like Ilmarinen and Siuntio… What's the matter now?"

"Siuntio's dead." Pekka knew she shouldn't have been so startled, but she couldn't help it. Her husband couldn't have known. She hadn't written about it to him; even if she had, one of the censors probably would have kept the news from getting out. The harder the time Mezentio's men had of learning what they'd done, the better.

"Is he?" Leino clicked his tongue between his teeth. "That's a pity, but he wasn't a young man to begin with."

"No, not dead like that." Pekka would have staked her life that the redheads couldn't possibly be listening to what went on in her bedchamber. "Dead in an Algarvian attack. If he hadn't fought it off, or at least fought part of it off, the whole team might have died with him."

"By the powers above," Leino said. "You never told me anything about this before. You couldn't, could you?" Pekka shook her head. With a sigh, Leino went on, "I think I'm working on a sideshow. You're doing what really matters."

"Am I? I hope so." Pekka clung to him. She didn't want to have to think about the work she'd finally escaped. She was more interested in thinking about the two of them, what they had been doing, and what they'd soon do again.

But Leino couldn't do it again quite yet. Had he been able to, he would have been stirring against her thigh. Because he couldn't quite yet, he was interested in what Pekka had been up to. "The Algarvians must think so," he said. "If they didn't, they wouldn't have bothered attacking you. How did they do it? Dragons?"

Pekka shook her head. She didn't want to think about that, either, but the question gave her no choice. "No. Another Kaunian sacrifice. I don't know whether they just grabbed the first however many Valmierans they saw, or if they brought Kaunians east out of Forthweg. Whichever, it was very bad." She shuddered, recalling just how bad it had been.

Leino held her and stroked her. She could tell he was bursting with curiosity. She'd known him a good many years now; if she couldn't tell such things, who could? But he did his best not to let any of it show, because he knew that would bother her. And if a mage's suppressing his curiosity wasn't love, what was it? As much in gratitude as for any other reason, she slid down and took him in her mouth, trying to hurry things along. That wasn't magic, but it worked as if it were. Before long, they both stopped worrying about what Habakkuk was or why Mezentio's mages chose to assail Pekka and her colleagues.

But lovemaking never resolved things; it only put them off for a while. After they'd gasped their way to completion, Pekka knew Leino wouldn't be trying yet another round any time soon. That meant his thought would turn elsewhere. And sure enough, he said, "You must be working on something truly big, if the Algarvians used that spell against you."

"Something, aye." Pekka still didn't want to talk about it.

Leino said, "They tried to use that same spell to drive us off the austral continent, you know." Pekka nodded; she'd heard something about that. Her husband continued, "It went wrong. It went horribly wrong, and came down on their heads instead of ours and the Lagoans'. Magecraft that works fine here or on the mainland of Derlavai has a way of going wrong down in the land of the Ice People."

"That's what they say." Pekka nodded again, then laughed. "Whoever they are." Because she found worrying about her husband's problems easier than worrying about her own, she quickly found another question to ask: "Will that cause trouble for Habakkuk?"

"It shouldn't." Leino used an extravagant gesture. "Habakkuk is… something else." He chuckled ruefully. "I can't talk about it, any more than you can say much about whatever it is you're working on."

"I know. I understand." Pekka wanted to tell him everything. Just for a moment, she wished Fernao were there so she could talk shop. Then she shook her hair, and had to brush hair out of her eyes. He was part of what she'd come here, come away from the project, to escape.

"I love you," Leino said, and Pekka reminded herself he'd come a long way to escape hard, dangerous work, too. She clung to him as he clung to her. They didn't make love again; Leino wasn't so young that he could do it whenever he wanted. But the feel of him pressed against her was about as good as the real thing for Pekka, especially when they'd been apart so long. She hoped holding her was as good for him, but had her doubts. Men were different that way.

The next morning, Uto woke both of them at an improbably early hour. With Kajaani so far south, spring days lengthened quickly: the sun rose early and set late. Even so, Pekka's sleep-gummed eyelids told just how beastly early it was. "You don't treat Aunt Elimaki this way, do you?" she asked, wishing either for tea, which she could get, or another couple of hours' sleep, which she wouldn't.

"Of course not," her son said virtuously.

That, as Pekka knew, might mean anything or nothing. "You'd better not," she warned. "Aunt Elimaki is going to have a baby of her own, and she needs all the sleep she can get."

"She won't get it later, that's for sure." Leino sounded as sandbagged as Pekka.

"All right, Mother. All right, Father." Uto, by contrast, might have been the soul of virtue. He patted Pekka on the arm. "Are you going to have another baby, too, Mother?"

"I don't think so," Pekka answered. She and Leino smiled at each other; if she wasn't, it was in spite of last night's exertions. She yawned and sat up in bed, somewhat resigned to being awake. "What would the two of you like for breakfast?"

"Anything," Leino said before his son could speak. "Almost anything at all. Down in the land of the Ice People, I counted for a good cook, if you can believe it."

"I'm so sorry for you," Pekka exclaimed. The horror of that idea was plenty to rout her out of bed and into the kitchen. She got the teakettle going, then folded fat, fresh shrimp into an omelette. Along with fried mashed turnips and bread and butter (olive oil was an imported luxury in Kuusamo, not a staple), it made a fine breakfast.

Uto inhaled everything. He wasn't picky in what he ate; he chose other ways to make himself difficult. Leino ate hugely, too, and put down cup after cup of tea. "That's so much better," he said.

"Will you be able to sleep at all tonight?" Pekka asked him.

He nodded and opened his eyes very wide, which made Uto laugh. "Oh, aye," he said. "I won't have any trouble. I may have to eat seal every now and again down in the land of the Ice People, but there's plenty of tea. The Lagoans drink even more of it than we do. They say it lubricates the brain, and I can't argue with them."

"Seal?" Uto sounded horrified, but looked interested. "What does it taste like?"

"Greasy. Fishy," his father answered. "We eat camel, too, sometimes. That's better, at least for a while. It sort of tastes like beef, but it's fatter meat. The Ice People live on camel and reindeer almost all the time."

"Are they as ugly as everybody says?" Uto asked.

"No," Leino said, which obviously disappointed his son. Then he added, "They're uglier," and everything was right with the world as far as Uto was concerned.

"Hurry up and get ready for school," Pekka told him. He greeted that with moans and groans. Now that his parents were back in Kajaani, he wanted to spend as much time as he could with them. Pekka was inflexible. "You'll be back this afternoon, and you need to learn things. Besides, you're the one who got us up early." That produced as many more groans as she'd thought it would, but Uto, wearing a martyred expression, eventually went out the door and headed for school.

"Privacy," Leino said when he was gone. "I'd almost forgotten what it means. There in the little sorcerers' colony east of Mizpah, everybody lives in everybody else's belt pouch all the time."

"It's not quite so bad over in the Naantali district." Pekka started to laugh. "And now we've both said more than we should have."

Leino nodded. He took keeping secrets seriously. His voice was thoughtful, musing, as he said, "The Naantali district, eh? Nothing but empty space in those parts- I can't think of anybody who'd want to go there or need to go there- which probably makes it perfect for whatever you're doing." He held up a hand. "I'm not asking any questions. And even if I did, I know you couldn't give me any answers."

"That's right." Pekka sent him a challenging stare. "Well, now that we've got this privacy, what shall we do with it?"

"Oh, maybe we'll think of something." Leino pulled his tunic off over his head.

Pekka didn't know if either of them had been so ardent even on their honeymoon. They'd spent that at a small hostel in Priekule, and had alternated making love and sightseeing. Now they just had each other, and they were intent on making the most of it before they both had to return to the war.

"I'm not quite so young as I used to be," Leino said at some point that morning when, after several days of horizontal exercises, he failed to rise to the occasion.

"Don't worry about it," Pekka said. "You've done fine, believe me." Her body felt all aglow, so that it seemed they would hardly need the bedchamber lamp that evening.

"I wasn't worried," Leino said. "The people who worry about things like that are the ones who think there's only one way to get from hither to yon. Mages know better- or if they don't, they ought to." With fingers and tongue, he showed her what he meant. He was right, too- that road worked as well as the other one.

When Pekka's breathing and heartbeat had slowed to something close to normal, she said, "They talk about women wearing men out. This is the other way round." She ran a hand down his smooth chest- Kuusamans weren't a very hairy people. "Not that I'm complaining, mind you."

"I hope not," Leino said. "This is like putting money in Olavin's bank." Elimaki's husband, these days, was keeping the finances of the Kuusaman army and navy straight, but Pekka understood what her own husband meant. He went on, "We don't get many chances now, so we have to make the most of them, put them away in our memory bank. They may not earn interest, but they're interesting."

"That's one word," Pekka remarked. Leino's hands had started wandering again, too. But when one of them found its way between her legs, she said, "Wait a bit. I really have done everything I can right now. Let's see what I can do for you."

She crouched beside him, her head bobbing up and down. Rather sooner than she'd expected, she pulled away, taking a couple of deep breaths and choking a little. "Well, well," Leino said. "I didn't think I had it in me."

"You certainly did." Pekka went over to the sink and washed off her chin.

"You'll have to excuse me now," her husband said, curling up on the bed. "I'm going to sleep for about a week." He offered a theatrical snore.

It made Pekka smile, but it didn't convince her. "A likely story," she said. "You'll be feeling me up again before Uto gets home."

"Who was just doing what to whom?" Leino asked, and Pekka had no good answer. He stretched out again, then said, "I love you, you know."

"I love you, too," she said. "That's probably why we've been doing all this."

"Can you think of a better reason?" Leino said. "This is a lot more fun than being lonely and jumping on the first halfway decent-looking person you find."

"Aye," Pekka said, and wished Fernao hadn't chosen that moment to cross her mind again.

Vanai poured out wine and listened to Ealstan pour out excitement. "He is! Pybba is, by the powers above," her husband said. "Sure as I'm sitting here, he's funneling money into things that hurt the Algarvians."

"Good for him," Vanai said. "Do you want some sausage? It's the first time in a while the butcher had some that looked even halfway decent."

"Sausage? Oh, aye." Ealstan's voice was far away; he'd heard what she said, but he hadn't paid much attention to it. His mind was on Pybba's accounts: "If he's fighting the Algarvians, maybe I'll finally get the chance to fight them, too. I mean, really fight them."

"And maybe you'll get in trouble, too," Vanai said. "For all you know, his accounts are like a spiderweb, set up to catch somebody who's not quite as smart as he thinks he is." She put a length of sausage on Ealstan's plate and then set a hand on her own belly. "Please be careful."

"Of course I'll be careful." But Ealstan didn't sound as if that were the first thing on his mind, or even the fourth or fifth. He sounded annoyed at Vanai for reminding him he might need to have a care.

You're a man, sure enough, Vanai thought. You'll do whatever you please and then blame me if it doesn't work out the way you want. She sighed. "How is the sausage?" she asked.

Ealstan suddenly seemed to notice what he'd been devouring for supper. "Oh! It's very good," he said. Vanai sighed again. As soon as Ealstan finished eating, he started going on about Pybba some more. Short of clouting him in the head with a rock, Vanai didn't know how to make him shut up. But when he declared, "It's practically my patriotic duty to see what's going on," she lost patience with him.

"You are going to do this thing," she said. "I can tell you're going to do it, and you won't listen to me no matter what I say. But I am going to say this: don't go charging straight ahead, as if you had four legs and two big horns and no brains at all. If you do that, I have the bad feeling you'll disappear one day, and I'll never see you again."

"Don't be silly," he answered, which really made her want to clout him in the head with a rock. But he went on, "I'm my father's son, after all. I don't go blindly charging into things."

That held enough truth to give her pause, but not enough fully to reassure her. Ealstan was his father's son, but he was also a red-blooded Forthwegian. Vanai knew that without fully understanding it; Forthweg was her homeland, but she didn't love it the way Forthwegians did. Why should she? A good part of the overwhelming Forthwegian majority would have been just as well pleased if she and all the Kaunians in the kingdom disappeared. And now a lot of the Kaunians in the kingdom were disappearing, thanks to the Algarvians- and thanks to Forthwegians not sorry to see them go.

Those thoughts flashed through her mind in a moment. She hardly missed a beat in answering, "I hope you don't. You'd better not."

"I won't. Truly." Ealstan sounded perfectly confident. He also sounded perfectly blockheaded.

Vanai couldn't tell him that. It wouldn't have made him pay attention to her, and would have made her angry. What she did say was, "Remember, you've got a lot to live for here at the flat."

She wondered if she ought to pull off her tunic and skin out of her drawers. That would remind him of what he had to live for if nothing else did. Patriot or no, he was wild for lovemaking- a good deal wilder than she was at the moment, with pregnancy making her desire fitful. But she shook her head, as if he'd asked her to strip herself naked. She had too much pride, too much dignity, for that. She'd been Major Spinello's plaything. She wouldn't make herself anyone else's, not that way.

Ealstan pointed to her. For a moment, she thought he was going to ask her to do what she'd just rejected. She took a deep breath: she was ready to scorch him. But he said, "Your sorcery's slipped. You need to set it right. You especially need to keep it strong now. Mezentio's men have been taking a demon of a lot of people out of the Kaunian quarter lately."

"Oh." Vanai's anger evaporated. "All right. Thank you." She always kept the golden yarn and the dark brown in her handbag. She got them, twisted them together, and chanted the spell she'd devised. When she was done, she turned to Ealstan and said, "Is it good?"

"It's fine." Ealstan's smile was suddenly shy. "I'm sorry you can't look like yourself- the way you're supposed to look, I mean- all the time. You're very pretty when you look like a Forthwegian- don't get me wrong- but I think you're beautiful when you look like a Kaunian. I always have, from the day I first saw you."

"Have you?" Vanai said. Ealstan's nod was shy, too. As few things did, that little show of embarrassment reminded her she was a year older than he. He'd been fifteen when they first met in the oak wood between Oyngestun and Gromheort, his beard only darkening fuzz on his cheeks. He looked like a man now, and acted like a man… and he wanted to fight like a man. Vanai didn't know what to do about that. She feared she couldn't do anything about it.

She let him make love to her when they went to bed. It made him happy, and that made her happy, though she didn't kindle. One thing, she thought as she drifted toward sleep, I don't need to worry about whether I'm going to have a baby. Now I know.

Her spell had slipped again by the time she woke the next morning. She hastily repaired it while Ealstan ate barley porridge and gulped a morning cup of wine. As it had the night before, his smile reassured her. She could cast the spell with no one checking her, but she'd find out the hard way if she made a mistake.

Ealstan gave her an absentminded kiss and hurried out the door. By the way he hurried, Vanai was sure he was heading to Pybba's pottery works, though he didn't say so. She shook her head. She'd done everything she could to keep him safe. He would have to do something for himself, too.

She also had to go out, to the market square. While she'd kept her Kaunian looks, Ealstan had done the shopping. Getting out of the flat still seemed a miracle: so much so that she didn't mind lugging food back. Beans? Olives? Cabbages? So what? Just the chance to be out on the streets of Eoforwic, to see more than she could from her grimy window, made up for the work she had to do.

The apothecary's shop where she'd almost been caught out as a Kaunian, where the proprietor had killed himself rather than letting the Algarvians try to torment answers out of him, was open again. UNDER NEW OWNERSHIP, a sign in one window said. NEW LOWER PRICES, cried another sign, a bigger one, in the other window. I might get medicines there, Vanai thought. I'd never trust this new owner, whoever he is, with anything more. He might be in the redheads' belt pouch.

For all she knew, the new owner might be a relative of the dead apothecary. She still wouldn't trust him, and he still might be in the Algarvians' pay.

She didn't trust the butcher, either, but for different reasons: suspicion that he called mutton lamb, that he put grain in his sausages when he swore he didn't, that his scales worked in his favor. Writers had complained about such tricks in the days of the Kaunian Empire. Brivibas, no doubt, could have cited half a dozen examples, with appropriate citations. Vanai bit her lip. Her grandfather wouldn't be citing any more classical authors. Half the distress she felt was at not feeling more distress now that he was dead.

Marrow bones would flavor soup. The butcher said they were beef. They might have been horse or donkey. Vanai couldn't have proved otherwise; there, for once, the lie, if it was one, was reassuring. The gizzards he sold her probably did come from chickens- they were too big to belong to crows or pigeons. "I wouldn't have had 'em by this afternoon," he told her.

"I know that," she answered, and took them away.

When she got out on the street, people were nudging one another and pointing. "Look at him," somebody said. "Who does he think he is?" somebody else, a woman, added. "What does he think he is?" another woman said.

Vanai didn't want to look. She was too afraid of what she'd see: a Kaunian whose magic had run out, most likely. If the fellow had dyed hair, he wouldn't look exactly like a Kaunian, but he wouldn't look like a Forthwegian, either. Before long, the cry for Algarvian constables would go up.

Horrid fascination didn't take long to turn Vanai's eyes in the direction of the pointing fingers. The man at whom people were pointing didn't look just like a Forthwegian, but he wasn't an obvious Kaunian, either. Halfbreed, Vanai thought. Eoforwic held more than the rest of Forthweg put together. Her hand flattened on her belly. She held one herself.

Then she gasped, because she recognized the man. "Ethelhelm!"

The name slipped from her lips almost by accident. In a moment, it was in everyone's mouth. And the singer and drummer grinned at the crowd that had been so hostile and now paused, uncertain, waiting to hear what he would say. "Hello, folks." His voice was relaxed, easy. "I often use a little magic so I can go out and about without people bothering me. It must've worn off. Can I give you a song to make up for startling you?"

He'd told a great, thumping lie, and Vanai knew it. The redheads were hungry for Ethelhelm. But the crowd didn't know that. With one voice, they shouted, "Aye!" They might have mobbed an ordinary Kaunian or halfbreed whose luck had run out with his magic. Ethelhelm wasn't ordinary. He might have lost his magic, but he still had some luck.

And he still had his voice. He grabbed a wooden bucket from someone, turned it upside down, and used it to beat out a rhythm as he sang. After one song- he carefully picked one that said nothing about the Algarvians- the crowd howled for another. The impromptu concert was still going on when Vanai left.

He'll get away, she thought. He'll keep playing till he satisfies them, then get off somewhere by himself and renew his spell. And then he'll be an ordinary Forthwegian… the same way I'm an ordinary Forthwegian. But that wasn't quite right. The Algarvians wanted Ethelhelm because of who he was, not what he was. Vanai shook her head in slow wonder. She'd finally found somebody worse off than she was.

When Skarnu had visited Zarasai by himself, he hadn't been much impressed: it was a southern provincial town without much going for it that a man from Priekule could see. Returning to it with Amatu and Lauzdonu was unpleasantly like torture. The two Valmieran nobles who'd come back from Lagoas seemed to him to be doing their best to get caught.

His temper didn't take long to kindle. When he got them alone in the flat the underground had found for them, he snapped, "Why don't you just carry signs that say WE HATE KING MEZENTIO? Then the constables would nab you and the people who really know what they're doing could get back to doing it instead of spending half their time saving you. Whenever you go outside, you risk yourselves and everybody who helped you get here in one piece."

"Sorry," said Lauzdonu, who had some vestiges of sense. "The kingdom's changed a lot more than we thought it had since we flew our dragons south instead of giving up."

"Aye." Amatu had a sharp, rather shrill voice that would have irritated Skarnu no matter what he said. When he said things like, "It's changed for the worse, that's what it's done," he irritated Skarnu all the more. And then he went on, "It looks like nine people out of every ten are stinking traitors, that's what it looks like. And I'm not so bloody sure about the tenth chap, either." He looked Skarnu full in the face as he made that- perhaps impolitic- remark.

I'm not supposed to bash him in the head, Skarnu reminded himself. We're on the same side. We're supposed to be, anyhow. "People are trying to live their lives," he said. "You can't blame them for that. What's a waiter to do if an Algarvian comes into his eatery? Throw him out? The poor whoreson'd get arrested, or more likely blazed."

"And who'd arrest him?" Lauzdonu put in. "Not the redheads, most likely. It'd be a Valmieran constable. You bet it would."

"They're the real traitors," Amatu snarled. "They all need shortening by a head, powers below eat 'em." He was quick to condemn. "And the waiters, too. If an Algarvian comes into their eatery, the redhead ought to go out with a case of the runs or the pukes. That'd teach him a lesson."

"So it would," Skarnu agreed, "the lesson being that something dreadful ought to happen to the waiter who messed with his stew or his chop. You haven't got any sense, Amatu."

"You haven't got any balls, Skarnu," retorted the noble returned from exile.

Lauzdonu had to step between them. "Stop!" he said. "Stop! If we quarrel, who laughs? Mezentio, that's who."

That was enough to halt Skarnu in his tracks. Amatu still seethed. "I ought to call you out," he snarled.

"Aye, go ahead- imitate the Algarvians," Skarnu said. That brought the other noble up short, where nothing else had done the job. Pushing his edge, Skarnu went on, "Can we look for ways to hurt the enemy instead of each other?"

"You don't seem to know who the enemy is." But now Amatu only sounded sulky, not incandescent.

"We do what we can," Skarnu answered. "We came here, remember, because a lot of ley lines run south through Zarasai. We want to keep the redheads from sending Kaunians to the seashore and slaughtering them to strike at Lagoas and Kuusamo."

Amatu's lip curled. "Maybe you came here for that. I came here to strike at the Algarvians and their lickspittle lapdogs. Who cares what happens to the kingdoms on the far side of the Strait of Valmiera?"

Doing his best to be reasonable, Lauzdonu said, "Except for Unkerlant, they're the only two kingdoms still in the fight against Algarve. That counts for something." All he got was another sneer from Amatu.

Skarnu said, "My lord, if you're not interested in doing the job you were sent here to do, if you'd sooner do what you think best, you can do that. But you'll have to move out of this flat and find one on your own, and you'll have to strike at the redheads on your own, too. No one from the underground will help you."

"Find a flat on my own?" Amatu looked horrified. Without a doubt, he'd never had to look for lodgings in his whole life. Skarnu wondered if he had any idea how to go about it. By his expression, probably not.

"The fight against Algarve is bigger than any one man." Skarnu knew he sounded like a particularly gooey kind of recruiting poster, but he didn't much care. Anything to get some use out of Amatu.

"All right. All right!" The returned exile threw his hands in the air. "I'm yours. Do with me as you will. And once you're done, once I have time of my own, have I got your gracious leave to go after the Algarvians in my own way?" He bowed himself almost double.

He really did want to go after the redheads. Skarnu recognized as much. The trouble was, he made almost every Valmieran commoner and a lot of nobles want to go after him. When betrayal was as simple as a word whispered in the ear of a Valmieran constable, that wouldn't do. Skarnu had to remember to bow back, lest Amatu think he was offering a deadly insult. "Of course you may, as long as you try not to do anything that'll get us killed or captured and tortured. Betraying our friends isn't what we've got in mind, either."

"I understand that. I'm not an idiot," Amatu said testily, though Skarnu might not have agreed with him. The noble went on, "I'll haunt the caravan depot, if that's what you need from me. If I could sleep upside down in the rafters like a bat, I'd do that. Are you satisfied?"

"No," Skarnu said at once, which made Amatu glare at him all over again. He went on, "You and Lauzdonu and a lot of other people we don't even know will wander through the depot every so often- not often enough to make the Algarvians or their Valmieran hunting dogs notice us. If we see anything- powers above, if we smell anything, because those cars stink- there's a little eatery where we can go. In the back of that eatery, there's a crystal. Here's hoping we don't have to use it."

"Aye," Lauzdonu said. "That would mean trouble for us, and trouble for the poor Kaunians in the caravan car, too." He had some basic sense of reality.

Amatu? Skarnu wasn't so sure about him. He might have forgotten what he'd promised a moment before. Now he said, "Hang around in the depot? Oh, very well." He gave a martyred sigh. "But if I were a woman or Viscount Valnu, I might get arrested for soliciting."

"No, not like that," Skarnu said again. "Don't hang around. Wander through. Pause on a platform when a caravan comes in from the north or east. Wander off again. Buy yourself a mug of ale or a news sheet. Kill time."

"Beastly lies in the news sheets," Amatu said.

"Of course there are," Skarnu agreed. "But knowing how the enemy is lying is military information, too." That seemed to startle the other noble, who thought for a bit before nodding. Amatu had probably been fine fighting on dragonback- his headlong aggressiveness matched his mount's. Skarnu's opinion was that his brainpower also matched his mount's, but that was nothing he could say.

He decided not to trust Amatu alone in the ley-line caravan depot, at least at first. To his relief, the returned exile seemed glad for company, not irate because Skarnu was coming with him. He probably hasn't realized why I'm coming along, Skarnu thought. I'm not going to tell him, either.

"Bloody ugly building," Amatu remarked as they walked up to the red-brick depot. Skarnu agreed with him, but he hadn't come as an architecture critic. Once they got inside, he studied the board, then pointed. Amatu nodded. "Aye. Platform three," he said. Skarnu didn't stomp on his toes to make him shut up, but couldn't have said why he didn't. He was more merciful than he'd suspected, that was all.

On the way to platform three, he bought some ale and a news sheet. Amatu refused to buy a news sheet and made a horrible face when he tasted his ale. Skarnu wondered if his comrade were trying to get them both caught, if he were in Algarvian pay. Skarnu didn't think so, but stupidity and arrogance could be as deadly as treason.

The caravan that stopped at the depot seemed ordinary. It had no passenger cars with wooden shutters nailed over the windows, no baggage cars from which came the stench of crowded, filthy people. "Well, this was a waste of time, wasn't it?" Amatu said.

"Aye, it was, but we didn't know ahead of time that it would be," Skarnu answered in a much lower voice. "That's why we keep an eye on the depot: because we don't know ahead of time, I mean."

Amatu accepted that, even if reluctantly. He was glad to leave the depot, though. Alone, Skarnu would have hung around for a while longer. With Amatu for a comrade, he was delighted to get away unscathed. He let out a silent sigh of relief when they got past the pair of Valmieran constables standing at the entranceway.

Once they reached their street, Amatu started toward their block of flats without the least hesitation. "Wait," Skarnu murmured, and took him by the arm. "Let's walk past. Let's not go inside."

"Why not?" For a wonder, Amatu kept his voice down.

"I've never seen those fellows lounging by the stairway," Skarnu answered. "Beggars usually have their own turfs. Those fellows are new. Their rags look too clean, and so do they. They've never missed a meal. I think they're constables… No, curse you, don't stare at them."

"Lauzdonu-" Amatu began.

Skarnu had become a better actor than he would have imagined in his carefree days in Priekule. Without seeming to break stride, he contrived to step on Amatu's foot and make the noble hop and curse. For good measure, he stuck an elbow in the pit of Amatu's stomach, too. "Shut up, you cursed fool," he hissed. "They may have him already. Odds are, they do."

For another wonder, Amatu heeded him and said not another word till they'd turned the corner. Then, in tones more subdued than he usually used, he asked, "What do we do now?"

"We go to that eatery," Skarnu answered patiently. "We talk on the crystal- just long enough to let people know there's trouble here. After that, we disappear again. This isn't my town, you know."

"Nor mine, powers above be praised for that," Amatu said. "All right- the eatery."

No suspiciously well-fed tramps lingered outside. But when Skarnu casually asked after the waiter's health, the fellow answered that he was fine, and didn't use the words he was supposed to. Skarnu ordered ale and a plate of smoked beef tongue for himself and Amatu. They ate and drank, paid the scot, and left.

"No good?" Amatu asked.

"No good," Skarnu agreed. "They're waiting for people in the underground to come in and show themselves. If we'd done it, we wouldn't have walked out again."

"What do we do now?" Amatu asked again.

"Walk around for a while," Skarnu answered. "They can't have grabbed everybody in Zarasai. Somebody will give us a hand." I hope, he thought. Oh, by the powers above, how I hope. Otherwise I'm stuck here with the worst excuse for an underground man the world has ever known, and no way to get free of him.

The bigger of the two Unkerlanter soldiers who'd come east into the Duchy of Grelz was named Gandiluz. The smaller one was Tantris. They were both back with Garivald's band of irregulars these days. Tantris did most of the talking for them. "Now that the trees are in full leaf again, things favor you," he declared. "You've got to strike the Algarvians and their Grelzer puppets one stinging blow after another."

"We'll do what we can, of course," Garivald answered, "but look around. We're not a big band."

Tantris waved that aside, as if of no account. "And you've got a mage."

"Where?" Garivald asked in real perplexity.

"There." The Unkerlanter regular pointed at Sadoc.

Garivald threw his hands in the air. "Oh, by the powers above!" he howled. "Munderic thought the same bloody thing. Every time Sadoc tried a spell, something would go wrong. Every stinking time. Sometimes it'd be something big, sometimes just something little. But something would always happen." He turned his furious glare on Sadoc. "Tell 'em yourself. Am I right, or am I wrong?"

"Well, aye, you're right," Sadoc said. "But that's only so far. I think I know what I've been doing wrong. I'll be better from here on out."

"A likely story," Garivald growled. He turned back to the pair of Unkerlanter regulars. "Are you both daft? Do you want to get the lot of us killed before you can squeeze any kind of proper use out of us?"

"Of course not," Gandiluz said.

"Shut up," Tantris told him, and shut up he did. Tantris returned his attention to Garivald. "What we want to do should be as plain as the nose on my face." He had a formidable Unkerlanter beak. "We want to do the most harm we can to the Algarvians with this band of irregulars. It stands to reason that we can do more using magecraft than we can without it. If we've got a mage here, we ought to get what we can out of him."

"If we had a mage here, that would be a good idea," Obilot put in. "What we've got is Sadoc, so you can forget about it." Garivald sent her a grateful glance.

"I'm sure he's not a first-rank mage like the ones they've got in Cottbus…" Tantris began.

"He's not even a fifth-rank mage like the worthless drunk they sent to Zossen, my home village," Garivald said. "What he is is a disaster waiting to happen."

"I won't be that bad from now on," Sadoc insisted. "I truly won't. I can do just about anything now. I know I can."

That was one of the more frightening things Garivald had heard. Sadoc scared him almost as much as had the Algarvian officer who'd told him he'd be boiled alive in Herborn, the capital of Grelz. The Algarvian had turned out to be wrong. Garivald was sure Sadoc was wrong, too.

He scowled at the Unkerlanter irregulars who'd encouraged the would-be mage to new dreams of glory. "If you want to get the most out of us, why don't you just cut our throats and use our life energy against the redheads?"

Tantris didn't turn a hair. "We've thought about that. If we have to, we'll do it."

He and Gandiluz were King Swemmel's only formal representatives within the clearing. The irregulars could have blazed them down and buried them with no one outside the woods the wiser. But they didn't. They'd been too accustomed for too long to doing what Unkerlanter inspectors and impressers said- when they couldn't get around it, that is.

Garivald hoped he could get around it here. "You've been in Grelz for a few weeks. We've been doing this ever since the Algarvians came through." He hadn't, not quite, but Swemmel's men didn't need to hear that. "Don't you think we know whether we've got a mage here or not?"

"What we think is, you haven't been using him the right way," Tantris said, and Gandiluz nodded to show he was part of that we. Tantris went on, "It's especially important to hit the Algarvians now, to make it hard for them to bring men and beasts to the fighting front southwest of here."

From behind Tantris, somebody said, "We've heard nothing but how this is especially important and that's especially important and the other thing is especially important, too. When it's all especially important, none of it's especially important."

"Well, this truly is," Tantris said. "If the Algarvians win the summer's fight, we're almost as bad off as we were last year. They might even have another go at Sulingen, curse 'em. But if we win it, then they're the ones who have to worry."

"How is Sadoc's magecraft going to make a copper's worth of difference?" Garivald demanded. "I mean, how would it make any difference if he had any magecraft?"

"He will disguise us as we charge down on the enemy," Tantris declared. Sadoc nodded. He thought he could do it. But Garivald had seen how Sadoc had thought he could do any number of things he couldn't do.

Here, Garivald didn't have to do any complaining. The other irregulars did it for him. The woods were alive with the sound of outrage. Obilot proved most articulate: "If you use us to charge down on the enemy, you use us once. I thought the point of a band of irregulars was stinging the enemy again and again. We've done that. We can keep doing it, too- if you leave any of us alive to do it."

"Saving the kingdom comes first," Gandiluz said, for once speaking ahead of his comrade. "Saving the band comes only after that."

Garivald nodded. "Fine. You show me how charging down on a bunch of Grelzers- or even redheads- will save the kingdom, and we'll do it. Till you show us that, we'll hit the foe and run away, the way we've been doing for almost two years now. That's what efficiency is all about, isn't it?"

Tantris gave him a dirty look. "You're not cooperating. His Majesty will hear of this."

"I'm doing my best," Garivald said. "Tell me what you want. Let's see if we can't do it without magecraft."

"A company of Grelzers will march past these woods day after tomorrow," Tantris said. "You ought to attack them."

He didn't say how he knew. That was supposed to make him seem knowledgeable and impressive. But Garivald had a good idea of all the ways he might know. Magic was one. Getting the news from a Grelzer soldier was another, a Grelzer clerk a third. Gossip would work about as well as patriotism (or treason, from a Grelzer point of view). Or, of course, it could have been a trap.

But none of that mattered. A certain amount of common sense did. Garivald waved. "Look at us. It's been a hard winter. I don't care if you disguise us as behemoths or butterflies- how likely are we to take out a company of soldiers?"

"Say, that ferocious company of Grelzers, though- Algarve wouldn't have a chance of winning the war without them," Obilot said.

Her sarcasm finally got under Tantris' hide. He snapped, "Be silent, woman," as if he were her husband back in a peasant village.

She was carrying her stick, of course. She was hardly ever without it. As if by magic, the business end suddenly pointed at Tantris' belly. "If you want to come here and make me, come right ahead," she said pleasantly.

Gandiluz started to move to flank her. "Not you," Garivald told him, also pleasantly. Talking back to the regulars got easier the more he did it. He aimed his stick at Gandiluz's midriff. Gandiluz stopped moving. He didn't stop weighing his chances, though. Neither did Tantris. King Swemmel might have sent out petty tyrants, but he hadn't chosen cowards.

In the confrontation, everyone had forgotten about Sadoc. The peasant who'd struggled so hard to become a mage was dark with fury. "There is a power point in these woods, and I'm going to use it," he growled, his hands moving in swift passes that certainly looked confident and competent. "Garivald, you'll pay for mocking me."

Garivald knew a certain amount of alarm- but less than he had going into combat against the Grelzers. They'd made it plain they knew what they were doing when they tried to kill him; Sadoc hadn't proved any such thing. "Don't be a bigger jackass than you can help," Garivald suggested.

"And you'll pay for that, too," Sadoc said. "I can call down lightnings out of a clear blue sky- I can, and I will!" He raised his hands to the heavens and cried out words of power- or they might have been nonsense syllables, for all Garivald knew.

But power gathered in the air. Garivald could feel it. He'd felt it before when Sadoc tried to do this, that, or the other thing. The would-be wizard could prepare for a spell. What came after the preparations, though…

"Sadoc, stop it this instant!" Now Obilot's voice came sharp as a whipcrack. Garivald wasn't the only one who felt that building power, then.

As a matter of fact, Gandiluz felt it, too. "You see?" he said to Garivald. "He can be what we need against Algarve."

"My arse," Garivald said succinctly.

"No, my arse," Sadoc said. "You can kiss it, Garivald!" He brought down his hands in a gesture filled with hate- and lightning followed.

Garivald fell to the ground, stunned and blinded by the blue-white stroke. Thunder roared around him. For a couple of heartbeats, he thought he really was dead. But then, like the rest of the irregulars, he staggered to his feet. Sadoc was still upright, looking in astonishment at what he'd done. Like everybody else's, Garivald's gaze followed his.

"Oh, you idiot," Garivald said, astonished at how few shakes his voice held. He blinked, but it would be a while before he stopped seeing the world through green and purple snakes. "You big, clumsy, futtering idiot."

There stood Tantris. He was shaking, shaking like a leaf. And there beside him lay the charred, smoking ruins of Gandiluz- one Unkerlanter regular who would never report back to King Swemmel again. Sadoc had called down the lightning, all right, but not on the target he'd had in mind.

"I-I'm sorry," he stammered. "I really am. I aimed to hit you with that, Garivald. I probably shouldn't have done that either, should I?"

"No, you bloody clot," Garivald snapped. He rounded on Tantris again. "Well?" he demanded. "Are you going to tell me some more about how Sadoc is the unicorn you're going to ride to victory, and he'll gore everything that gets in front of you out of the way?"

Tantris was still gaping at the remains of his comrade. The stench of burnt meat filled the clearing. Garivald had to repeat himself to get his attention. When he did, Tantris shuddered. He leaned over and was noisily sick. Garivald nodded to the irregular closest to him. The man gave Tantris a canteen. After he'd rinsed his mouth and spat, he violently shook his head. "I'm not going to tell anybody anything, not for a while," he answered.

"That's the first sensible thing you've said since you got here," Garivald told him.

But Tantris shook his head. "No. We really do need to do everything we can to keep the redheads from moving supplies through Grelz. However we do it."

"However we do it- aye," Garivald said. "Suppose you let us find our way instead of telling us yours." Tantris looked at Gandiluz's corpse again. He gulped. He said not another word.