Rulers of the Darkness

Fifteen

“To sing a song of victory." Words bubbled inside Garivald like stew bubbling in a pot over a hot fire. "The day they thought they'd never see." He paused, waiting for the next couplet to form. "They thought they'd hit us hard in summer. But now we know their days are numbered." He shook his head. That wouldn't do, not even with music to make the bad rhyme and scansion less obvious.

He cast about for a better line. Before he could find one, the Unkerlanter regular named Tantris came up to him. Whatever line might have taken shape flew away instead. He gave Tantris a dirty look.

The regular ignored it. He said, "We need to strike the followers of Raniero the pretender, to show them they aren't safe even though his Majesty's troops haven't yet started taking Grelz back from the invaders. Can we do it?"

"You're asking me now?" Garivald said, intrigued. Tantris nodded. Garivald persisted: "You're not giving orders? You're not saying you know everything and I don't know anything, the way you did before?"

"I never said that," Tantris protested.

"No?" Garivald glowered at him. "Where's Gandiluz, then? Dead, that's where. Dead because you wouldn't listen to me when I told you Sadoc could no more work magic than a bullfrog can fly. You had it all planned, the two of you. But you weren't quite as efficient as you thought, were you?"

Tantris gave him a long, expressionless look. "You do want to have some care in how you speak to me."

Garivald wanted nothing of the sort. Tantris put him in mind of all the inspectors and impressers he'd had to obey his whole life long. But he didn't have to obey this whoreson. The band of irregulars in the woods west of Herborn was his, not Tantris'. One word from him and the regular soldier would meet with an unfortunate accident. Garivald smiled. Power was heady stuff.

Tantris nodded as if Garivald had spoken his thoughts aloud. "Everything gets remembered, you know," Tantris said. "Everything. With his Majesty's armies moving forward again, debts will be paid, every single one of them. Before very long, Grelz will find out exactly what that means."

Birds chirped. Leaves were green. The sun shone brightly. But, just for a moment, winter lived in Garivald. He held the whip hand right now. But behind him stood only his irregulars. Behind Tantris stood the whole great apparatus of Unkerlanter intimidation, reaching all the way back to the throne room in Cottbus and to King Swemmel himself. Which carried more weight in the end? Garivald knew too mournfully well. With a sigh, he said, "We hate the redheads and the traitors worse than we hate each other. We'd better, anyhow."

"Aye. We'd better." Tantris' smile was crooked. "And we'd better show the traitors that we're still in business around these parts. Their hearts will be down in their boots anyhow, with the Algarvians falling back toward the borders of Grelz. A lot of them will be looking for ways out of the fight. Their hearts won't be in it anymore."

"Maybe," Garivald said. "Some of them follow King Raniero-"

"False King Raniero," Tantris broke in.

"False King Raniero," Garivald agreed dutifully. "Some of them follow him for the sake of a full belly or a place to sleep at night. But some of them…" He paused, wondering how to say what needed saying without putting his own head in the noose. "Some of them, you know, really mean it."

Tantris nodded. "Those are the ones who really need killing. We can't let people think they can side with the redheads and against our kingdom and get away with it. This isn't a game we're playing here. They'd get rid of every one of us if they could, and we have to treat them the same way."

Garivald nodded. Every word of that was true, however much he wished it weren't. "What have you got in mind?" he asked. "If it's something we can do, we'll do it." He couldn't resist a last jab: "If it's more of Sadoc's magic, maybe you'd better think again."

Tantris winced. The lightning Sadoc had called down could have seared him instead of Gandiluz. It could have seared Garivald, too. Garivald knew what had saved him, though: Sadoc had aimed the lightning his way. And Sadoc had proved he couldn't hit what he was aiming at.

"No more magic," Tantris said with another shudder. "What I have in mind is hitting one of the villages around the woods that the Grelzers garrison. If we kill a few Algarvians in the fighting, all the better."

"All right," Garivald said. "As long as you don't want to make us stand and fight if they turn out to be stronger than we expect going in." King Swemmel was liable to reckon it efficient to get rid of men bold enough to be irregulars at the same time as he was fighting the Grelzers.

If that had occurred to Tantris, he didn't show it. He said, "Whatever you think best, as long as we strike the blow."

Garivald scratched his chin. Whiskers rasped under his fingers; he still shaved every now and then, but only every now and then, and he had the fair- or rather, the dark- beginnings of a beard. After some thought, he said, "Lohr. That'll be the place we'll have the easiest time hitting. It's not very far from the woods, and the garrison there isn't very big. Aye, Lohr."

"Suits me well enough," Tantris said.

"I was blooded in this band between Lohr and Pirmasens," Garivald said. "We ambushed a squad of Algarvian footsoldiers marching from one to the other. I don't think there are any redheads down there these days- they've mostly gone west, and they leave it to the traitors to hold down the countryside."

"Our job is to show 'em that won't work," Tantris said.

Two nights later, the irregulars left the shelter of the woods and marched on Lohr. Actually, it was more of a straggle than a march. They ambled along in a column, tramping down the dirt road toward the village. Garivald posted a couple of men who'd grown up by Lohr in the vanguard, and another at the rear. They were the best local guides in the darkness- and if something went wrong.

Somewhere between the van and the rear, he would find himself walking beside Obilot. She said, "Fighting Grelzers isn't the same as fighting Algarvians. It's like drinking spirits cut with too much water."

"We hurt the Algarvians when we hit the Grelzers, too," Garivald said.

"I know," she answered. "It's still not the same. I don't want to hurt Algarvians by hurting Grelzer traitors. I want to hurt Algarvians by hurting Algarvians." She kicked at the ground as if it were one of Mezentio's soldiers.

Not for the first time, Garivald wanted to ask what the redheads had done to her. Not for the first time, he found he lacked the nerve. He kept marching.

When they started to near Lohr, Tantris came over to him and said, "We ought to get off the road now, and go by way of the fields. If the traitors have sentries, they'll be less likely to spot us so."

He still wasn't giving orders. He'd lost some of his arrogance, sure enough. And his advice made sense. Garivald nodded and said, "Aye, we'll do it." He gave the orders.

No sentries challenged them. Garivald's confidence began to rise. No one had betrayed the attack to the men who followed King Raniero. He and his irregulars often knew what the Grelzers would do as soon as Raniero's men did, but that coin had two sides. Who in my band is a traitor? was a question that always ate at him.

Dawn had just begun to turn the eastern sky gray when they came up to Lohr. A man from the vanguard pointed out three or four houses. "Those are the ones the Grelzers use," he whispered to Garivald. He spoke with great confidence. Garivald assumed someone in the village had told him. Sure enough, this business of civil war was as much a matter of listening and hearing as it was of fighting.

"Forward!" Garivald called softly, and the irregulars loped into the sleeping village. Dogs began to bark. A little white one ran yapping at Garivald and made as if to bite his ankle. He blazed it. It let out a low wail of pain, then fell silent. He kicked its body aside and ran on.

A couple of villagers and a couple of Grelzer soldiers came out to see what the fuss was about. In the dim light, none of the irregulars tried to figure out who was who. They just started blazing. It wasn't a battle. It wasn't anything like a battle. In a very few minutes, Lohr was theirs.

The survivors they captured from the squad of Grelzers made Garivald sad. They could as easily have fought on his side as for the Algarvian puppet king of Grelz. But they'd made the other choice- the wrong choice, as it turned out- and they would have to pay for it. Tantris was looking at him, as if wondering whether he had the stomach to give the order.

He did, saying, "Blaze the traitors." A moment later, he added, "Blaze the firstman, too. He's been in bed with the Algarvians ever since they got here." None of that took long, either. Before the sun had risen, the irregulars were on their way back to their forest fastness.

Tantris came up to him, saying, "Very neat. You see what you can do."

Garivald nodded. "I also see you weren't joggling my elbow, the way you did when you tried to use Sadoc for more than he could give."

"Do I have to tell you again that everything you say will be remembered?" Tantris asked.

"Do you care to remember that I told you the truth?" Garivald answered. He stepped up his pace. Tantris didn't try to stay with him.

He caught up with Obilot just as the sun came red over the horizon. Her eyes, he thought, shone brighter than it did. "We did well there, even if they were only Grelzers," she said.

"Aye." Garivald nodded. Her words weren't much different from what Tantris had given him, but warmed him far more. He could have done without the regular's approval; at times, he would gladly have done without the regular altogether. But what Obilot thought mattered to him. All at once, hardly thinking what he was doing, he reached out and took her hand.

She blinked. Garivald waited to see what would happen next. If she decided she didn't like that, she was liable to do something much more emphatic than just telling him so. But she let his hand stay in hers. All she said was, "Took you long enough."

"I wanted to be sure," he answered, though he'd been anything but. Then he took his hand away, not wanting to push too hard.

The band got back under the trees without having lost a man- or a woman, either. Garivald left sentries behind to warn of a Grelzer counterattack if one came. The rest of the irregulars returned to the clearing for as much of a celebration as they could manage, though a lot of them wanted nothing but sleep.

Garivald caught Obilot's eye again. He wandered into the woods. If she followed, she did. If she didn't… He shrugged. Pushing Obilot when she didn't care to be pushed was a good way to end up dead.

But she did follow. When they found a tiny clearing far enough from the main one, they paused and looked at each other. "Are you sure?" Garivald asked. He'd been away from his wife and family for more than a year. Obilot nodded. He thought she had no family left alive, though he wasn't sure. He took her in his arms. None of what they said to each other after that had anything to do with words.

Flying over the plains of southern Unkerlant, Count Sabrino felt a strong sense of having done all this before. By the way things looked, the war against Unkerlant, the war the Algarvians had thought they would win in the first campaigning season, would go on forever.

His mouth twisted. Appearances were liable to be deceiving, but not in the way for which his countrymen would have hoped. If they'd broken through to Cottbus, if they'd broken past Sulingen, maybe even if they'd torn the heart from the Unkerlanter defenses in the Durrwangen bulge…

But they hadn't. They hadn't done any of those things. And how many Algarvian behemoths lay rotting on the battlefields of the Durrwangen salient? Sabrino couldn't have said, not to the closest hundred, not even to the closest five hundred, not to save his own life. But he knew the answer just the same. Too many.

These days, the Algarvians had to hold on tightly to the behemoths they had left. If they incautiously threw them away, they'd have none at all. Oh, that wasn't quite true- but it came all too close. And it would be at least another year, more likely two or three, before new beasts came off the breeding farms in anything like adequate numbers.

Meanwhile… Meanwhile, the Unkerlanters still had behemoths and to spare. And they handled them better than they had when the war was new. Why not? Sabrino thought bitterly. They've spent the past two years learning from us.

They had behemoths. More came from their breeding farms in a steady stream. How many breeding farms did they have, there in the far west beyond the reach of any Algarvian dragon? Those same two words formed again in Sabrino's mind. Too many. They had footsoldiers in endless profusion, too. And they had mages willing to be as ruthless as- maybe more ruthless than- any who served King Mezentio.

No wonder, then, that Sabrino was flying a good deal north and east of Durrwangen these days. The Unkerlanters were the ones moving forward now, his own countrymen the ones who tried to slow them, tried to stop them, tried to turn them back. He wished they would have had more luck at it.

The Algarvians did have a counterattack going in now, a blow at the flank of an advancing Unkerlanter column. Sabrino knew a certain somber pride as he watched the footsoldiers down there far below crumple up the Unkerlanters. They were still better versed in the art of war than King Swemmel's men. Where they gained anything close to local equality, they could still drive the foe before them.

He spoke into his crystal: "Forward! If we take out their egg-tossers, our boys may be able to pin the Unkerlanters against the river and do a proper job of chewing them up."

Captain Orosio said, "Can't hurt to try. Sooner or later, we've got to stop these bastards. Might as well be now."

"That's right. We've got the edge here. We'd better take advantage of it." Sabrino said nothing of conquest. He said nothing of driving the enemy back to Durrwangen, let alone to Sulingen or Cottbus. His horizons had contracted. A local victory, an advance here instead of a retreat, would do well enough for now.

He spotted the egg-tossers in what had been a field of rye but was now overgrown and full of weeds. The dragonfliers of his wing behind him, he dove on them. For a few splendid minutes, everything went the way it had back in the first days of the war. One after another, the Algarvians released their eggs and then rose into the sky once more. Looking over his shoulder, Sabrino saw the bursts of sorcerous energy send the enemy egg-tossers and their crews flying in ruin.

"That's the way to do it," he said. The enemy would have a harder time hurting the Algarvian soldiers on the ground. He and his wing flew on toward the west, gaining height. There was the river, sure enough. He spoke into the crystal again: "We'll turn around and flame the crews we might have missed with our eggs. Then back to the dragon farm and we'll get ourselves some rest."

Rest. He laughed. He had trouble remembering what the word meant. He patted the scaly side of his dragon's neck. The vicious, stupid beast had trouble remembering, too. Of course, it had trouble remembering everything.

No sooner had that thought struck him than he spied the Unkerlanter dragons winging their way up out of the south, straight for his wing. They were very fast and flew in good formation- some of Swemmel's top dragon-fliers, mounted on prime beasts. It was an honor of sorts, though one Sabrino could have done without. He shouted into the crystal, warning his men.

The Unkerlanters had the advantage of numbers and the advantage of height, as well as the advantage of fresh dragons. All Sabrino and his men had left to them was the advantage of skill. Up till now, it had always sufficed to let them hurt the foe worse than he hurt them, to bring most of them back safe to whichever dragon farm they were using that day.

"One more time, by the powers above," Sabrino said, and swung his dragon toward the closest Unkerlanter. However weary it was, it still hated its own kind; its scream of rage proved as much.

Sabrino blazed one of King Swemmel's dragonfliers off the back of his mount. The dragon, without control, went wild and struck out at the beast closest to it, which was also painted Unkerlanter rock-gray. Sabrino whooped. He'd just made life harder for the foe.

And then his own dragon twisted and convulsed beneath him, bellowing in the agony he'd inflicted on so many of his enemies. While he'd been dealing with the foe in front of him, he'd let an Unkerlanter dragon get close enough to his rear to flame. In any sort of even fight, it would have been a rookie mistake. Outnumbered as his countrymen were, it had to happen every so often. So he told himself, at any rate. Excuses aside, though, it was liable to kill him.

His dragon, he saw at once, wouldn't be able to stay in the air. He looked back. Sure enough, its right wing was badly burned. The only consolation he could draw was that it didn't plummet to earth at once, which would have put an immediate end to his career, too.

He tried to urge it back toward the east, toward the Algarvian lines. But, lost in its private wilderness of pain, the dragon paid no attention to the increasingly frantic signals he gave it with the goad. It flew straight for the river. The water is cold, it must have thought. It will feel good on my hurt wing.

"No, you miserable, stupid, stinking thing!" Sabrino howled. "You'll drown, and you'll drown me, too." He pounded at it with the goad.

Maybe he did a little good. Instead of coming down in the water, the dragon landed on the riverbank. Sabrino unfastened his harness and leaped off its back as it waded into the stream. Only then did he realize it had come down on the western side of the river, putting that stream and several miles of enemy-held country between himself and his countrymen.

Fast as he could, he got out of the furs and leather he wore to ward himself against the chill of the upper air. Drawn by the dragon, Unkerlanter soldiers were trotting toward him. They would finish him off if they got the chance. He didn't want to give it to them. Clad only in his drawers and clutching his stick, he plunged into the river.

He struck out for the eastern bank, swimming as strongly as he could. Even in late summer, the water was bitterly cold. The Unkerlanters shouted and started blazing. Puffs of steam rose from the river not far from Sabrino; their beams were plenty to boil it here and there. But they didn't get close enough to the water's edge to blaze with any great accuracy. For a while, Sabrino simply accepted that. He wasn't about to look back to see what was going on.

But then he didn't have to. His wounded dragon's bellows of pain and rage told him everything he wanted to know. Swemmel's soldiers would have to stalk it and kill it before they could worry too much about him. And, although it couldn't fly, it remained deadly dangerous on the ground. Sabrino thought he could safely concentrate on his swimming.

He was worn when he splashed up onto the eastern bank. He lay there for a couple of minutes, gathering his strength. I'm getting too old for these games, he thought. But he wasn't so old that he felt like dying. Once he got his wind back, he climbed to his feet and started east. Somehow or other, he would have to get through the Unkerlanter line and back to his own.

First things first. He dove behind some bushes. A squad's worth of Unkerlanters were trotting toward the river. They were pointing at the dragon, and didn't see him. He supposed they were going to have some fun blazing at it. They couldn't do it much harm, not from this side of the stream. Of course, it couldn't flame them over here, either. Once they'd gone past him, Sabrino scurried east again.

He found the Unkerlanter in the bushes by almost stumbling over him. The fellow was squatting, his tunic hiked up, his stick beside him on the ground. He stared at Sabrino in the same horror and astonishment as Sabrino felt on coming across him. Then he grabbed for his stick. Sabrino blazed first. The Unkerlanter let out a moan and toppled.

Sabrino put on his rock-gray tunic and his boots, which were too big. He didn't look anything like an Unkerlanter, but he wouldn't stand out so much at long range wearing the tunic. The man he'd killed had some flat barley cakes in his belt pouch. Sabrino wolfed them down.

Should I lie low till nightfall? he wondered. In the end, he didn't dare. His dragon would draw more Unkerlanters, the same way amber drew feathers and bits of paper. The farther away from it he got, the better. And every step put him one step closer to his countrymen. One step closer to the Unkerlanters' main line, too, he thought. But he kept moving.

It almost cost him his life. A couple of Unkerlanters spotted him and started running after him. He blazed one of them, then ran like blazes himself. But the other soldier seemed to take two strides for every one of his. I'm much too old for this, Sabrino thought, heart thudding fit to burst.

The Unkerlanter kept blazing as he ran. He couldn't aim very well doing that; he charred lines in the grass and shrubs all around Sabrino. But then his beam caught the Algarvian dragonflier high in the back of the left shoulder. With a howl of pain, Sabrino fell forward on his face. With a howl of triumph, Swemmel's soldier dashed up to finish him off- and took a beam right in the chest. Wearing a look of absurd, indignant surprise, he crumpled.

"Never try to trick an old fox," Sabrino panted. Right at the moment, he felt like the oldest fox in the world. He robbed this Unkerlanter, too, and then cut the dead man's tunic into strips to bandage his wound. It hurt, but he didn't think it too serious. He also stuffed cloth into the toes of the boots he'd stolen to make them fit better.

Now he did hide till midnight. The Unkerlanter had an entrenching tool on his belt. Sabrino dug himself a scrape- awkwardly and painfully, with only one arm working well- and waited for darkness.

It came sooner than it would have at the height of the fighting for the Durrwangen bulge. Fall was on the way, and then another savage Unkerlanter winter. When night arrived, he scurried forward. He favored his left side, which had stiffened up. Every time he heard an Unkerlanter voice, he froze.

The front, fortunately, was fluid hereabouts. The Unkerlanters and his own men had foxholes and outposts, not solid trench lines. A determined- no, a desperate- man could sneak between them.

Dawn was painting the east red when someone called out a nervous challenge: "Halt! Who comes?"

Sabrino almost wept. The challenge was in Algarvian. "A friend," he said. "A dragonflier blazed down behind the enemy's line."

Silence. Then: "Advance and be recognized. Hands high." Because of the wound, Sabrino's left hand didn't want to go high. He raised it despite the pain. Moving forward as if surrendering, he let his own side capture him.

"Here you go, Constable." A baker offered Bembo a slice of cheese pie. "Try this and tell me what you think."

"Don't mind if I do." Bembo never minded taking free food and drink from the shops and taverns on his beat. He'd done it in Tricarico, and he did it here in Gromheort, too. He took a big bite and chewed thoughtfully. "Not bad," he said, and took another bite to prove it. "What all's in it?"

"Two kinds of cheese," the baker began. He spoke good Algarvian.

"Aye, I know that," Bembo said impatiently. "What livens it up?"

"Well, there's garlic and onions and leeks," the baker said, and Bembo nodded each time. Then the Forthwegian looked sly and set a finger by the side of his nose. "And there's a mystery ingredient. I don't know whether I ought to tell you or not."

By then, Bembo was finishing the slice of pie. "You'd better," he said, his mouth full. "You'll be sorry if you don't." Had the whoreson given him mouse turds, or something like that? Surely not- if he had, he wouldn't have told Bembo at all.

"All right, I'll talk," the baker said, as if he were a captive Bembo was belaboring. "It's dried chanterelle mushrooms."

"You're kidding." Bembo's stomach did a slow lurch. Like all Algarvians, he thought mushrooms disgusting. Forthwegians, on the other hand, were wild for them, and put them in everything but tea. Bembo's hand fell to the leather grip of his bludgeon. "I ought to loosen your teeth for you, feeding me those miserable things."

"Why?" the Forthwegian asked in what sounded like honest bewilderment. "You just said you liked the pie."

Bembo could hardly deny that. He did his best: "I liked it in spite of the mushrooms, not because of them."

"How do you know? Be honest, Constable. How do you know?" The baker speared a mushroom out of the pie with the point of the knife he'd used to slice it. He offered it to Bembo. "How can you really know till you try?"

"I'd sooner eat a snail," Bembo said, which was true- he liked snails fine, especially in butter and garlic. The Forthwegian baker made a horrible face. Bembo laughed at that, and wagged a finger at the fellow. "You see? I'm not the only one." But the mushroom remained on the end of the knife, a mute challenge to his manhood. He scowled, but then he ate it.

The little boy's way of handling such an unfortunate situation would have been to gulp the mushroom down without tasting it. Bembo was tempted to do just that, but made himself chew slowly and deliberately before swallowing. "Well?" the baker demanded. "What do you think?"

"I think you Forthwegians get too worked up over the cursed things, that's what," Bembo answered. "Not a whole lot of taste any which way."

"These are just the dried ones," the baker said. "When the fall rains come and the fresh mushrooms start growing, then…" He sighed, as Bembo might have sighed over the charms of a beautiful woman. Bembo was convinced he could have a lot more fun with a beautiful woman than any Forthwegian could with a mushroom.

"Well, I'm off," he said, wiping greasy fingers on his kilt. "No surprises next time, mind you, or you'll get a surprise you won't like so bloody well." He went on his way, hoping he'd put a little fear into the baker's heart. The strangled guffaw he heard as he closed the door behind him made him doubt it. He wasn't usually the sort who roused fear in people. Oraste, now… Oraste even roused fear in Bembo, his partner.

Bembo swaggered along, every now and then flourishing his club. Oraste, at the moment, roused fear in nobody; he was down with a nasty case of the grippe. Bembo hoped he wouldn't catch it. He feared he would, though. People who worked with people who got sick often got sick themselves. Nobody'd ever quite figured out why. It probably had something to do with the law of similarity.

Or maybe it's the law of contagion, Bembo thought. Contagion. Get it? He laughed. Without Oraste at his side, he had to tell jokes to himself. He found them funnier than Oraste would have. He was sure of that.

Seeing a company of Algarvian footsoldiers tramping toward the ley-line caravan depot, he stuck up his arm to halt traffic on the cross street. His countrymen cursed him as they passed. By now, he was used to that. They were on their way to Unkerlant, and he got to stay here in Gromheort. The way things were in Unkerlant these days, he wouldn't have wanted to go there himself.

Behind the Algarvians came another company in uniform: bearded Forthwegians who'd joined Plegmund's Brigade. Their countrymen, forced to wait at the cross street while they passed, cursed them more foully than the Algarvian soldiers had cursed Bembo. Disciplined and stolid, the new recruits for the Brigade kept on marching. They puzzled Bembo. If some foreign king occupied Algarve, he couldn't see himself volunteering to fight for the fellow.

Of course, I'm a lover, not a fighter, he thought. He wouldn't have said that aloud had Oraste been tramping along beside him. His partner seldom found his jokes funny, but Oraste would have howled laughter at that.

A little storefront had a big sign in unintelligible Forthwegian. Below it, in smaller letters, were a couple of words of perfectly understandable Algarvian: Healing Charms. The paint that served as their background was a little newer, a little cleaner, than the rest of the sign. Bembo wondered if the sign had said the same thing in classical Kaunian before Gromheort changed hands.

He might have walked on by had he not chosen that moment to sneeze. He didn't want to spend several days on his cot aching and feverish and generally feeling as if he'd stepped in front of a ley-line caravan car. If a charm would stop his sickness before it really got started, he was all for it. He went inside.

Two men and a woman sat in a gloomy, nasty waiting room. They all looked up at him in varying degrees of alarm. He'd expected nothing less. "Relax," he told them, hoping they understood Algarvian- after the baker, he was feeling spoiled. "I'm here for the same reason you are."

One of the men murmured in Forthwegian. The other two people eased back into their seats. The woman chuckled nervously. The man who knew some Algarvian asked, "And why is that?"

"To keep myself from coming down with the grippe, of course," Bembo answered. He sneezed again. "Powers above, I hope I'm not too late."

"Oh," the man said. He translated once more. The other man said something. They all smiled. The man patted the chair next to him. "Here. You can go next."

"Thanks." Bembo took such privileges for granted. He sat down.

A few minutes later, the door to the back room opened. A man and a woman came out. The man took one look at Bembo and scooted past him, out the front door, and onto the street. That didn't surprise Bembo, either- the fellow was the type who would have dealt with constables before. The woman looked Bembo up and down, too. After a brittle silence, she asked, "What you want?" in halting Algarvian.

Before Bembo could speak, the man sitting by him said, "He's after your famous cure for the grippe."

"Ah." The woman nodded. She pointed to Bembo. "You come with me."

"Aye, Mistress," he answered, and followed her into the back room. It had the impressive disorder he'd seen before among mages of a certain type, although he would have been mightily surprised if she held any formal ranking. When she gestured, he sat down in one of the chairs. She sat in the other, which faced his.

"Grippe, eh?" she said.

"That's right," Bembo agreed. "My partner's down with it now, and I don't want to catch it myself."

Nodding again, she set her hand on his forehead. Her palm was cool and smooth. She clicked her tongue between her teeth. "You just in time- I hope," she said.

"Have I got a fever?" Bembo asked anxiously.

She held up her thumb and forefinger. "Little one," she answered. "Now little one. You not worry. I fix." She reached for a book. It was, Bembo saw, in Kaunian. He gave a mental shrug. Algarvian mages used the classical tongue, too.

After reading, she rummaged through her sorcerous supplies (had she not been a mage of sorts, Bembo would have thought of the stuff as junk). She bound a small, reddish rock and a bit of something fibrous into a silk bag, then hung it round his neck by a cord. Then she put a couple of teeth, one needlelike, the other thicker but still sharp, into another little sack and set that in his breast pocket.

"Bloodstone and sea sponge good against fever," she said. "Likewise fangs of serpent and crocodile." She stood and set both hands on top of his head. Some of her chant was in Forthwegian, some in Kaunian. When she was done, she gave Bembo a brisk nod and held out her right hand, palm up. "One broad silver bit."

He started to growl. But angering a mage, even a lesser one, was foolish. He paid. Not only did he pay, he said, "Thank you."

It wasn't what he was thinking. The healer had to know that. But nobody could blaze you for thinking. She said, "You're welcome."

When he came out into the front room, conversation stopped most abruptly. A couple of new people had come in while the healing mage was helping him. He thought they were talking back and forth in Kaunian, but he hadn't heard enough to be sure. He strode past them and out onto the street again.

The more he walked his beat, though, the more worried he got. If that was a place where disguised Kaunians gathered, had the healer tried to cure him or curse him? When he got back to the barracks, he put the question to a mage attached to the constabulary.

"Let's see the amulets she gave you," the fellow said. Bembo showed them to him. He nodded. "The substances are what they should be. I can check whether the spell was perverted some sort of way." The mage chanted, cocked his head to one side as if listening, and chanted some more. He glanced over at Bembo. "Far as I can tell, friend, you're not likely to get the grippe for a while. Everything's as it should be."

"Good," Bembo said. "The way things are nowadays, you can't be too careful."

"Well, I'm not going to tell you you're wrong there," the mage said. "But everything's fine this time."

Bembo intended to stop in and thank the healer- and probably frighten the life out of her customers- when he walked his beat the next day. But when he came to the little storefront, the door was ajar. He stuck his head inside. The door to the back room stood half open, too. He went back and peered into the gloom- no lamps shining now. And no litter of sorcerous apparatus there, either. The mage was gone, and she'd cleaned out all her stuff.

Bembo sighed. He wasn't even very surprised. He patted the amulets she'd given him. She'd been honest, and then she'd decided she had to run away. "Shows what honesty's worth," Bembo muttered. And if that wasn't a demon of a thought for a constable to have, he didn't know what was.

Spinello not only walked through the streets of Trapani with a limp, he walked through them with a cane. From what the healers said, he might get rid of the cane one day before too long. The limp, though, the limp looked to be here to stay.

There were compensations. He got pitying glances from women, and pity, for a man of enterprise, might easily be turned to some warmer emotion. The wound badge he wore on his tunic now supported a gold bar. He'd been awarded the Algarvian Sunburst, Second Grade, for gallantry in the face of the enemy, to go with his frozen-meat medal, and he had a colonel's three stars on his collar patches. When he went back to the front, he'd probably end up commanding a brigade.

He tried to straighten up and walk as if he hadn't been wounded. He could do it- for a couple of steps at a time. After that, it hurt too much. He would have traded rank and decorations for the smooth stride he'd once enjoyed in a heartbeat- in half a heartbeat, by the powers above, he thought. But the powers above didn't strike bargains like that, worse luck.

Going up the stairs to the Royal Cultural Museum made sweat spring out on his forehead. By the time he climbed them all and strode into the great rococo pile of a building, he was biting his lip against the pain. The ticket-seller, a nice-looking young woman, gave him a smile that could have been promising. But when Spinello said hello to her, he tasted blood in his mouth. He went on by, his own face grim.

As always, he made for the large gallery housing artifacts from the days of the Kaunian Empire. The spare, even severe, sensibility informing those busts and pots and coins and sorcerous tools and other articles of everyday life was as far removed from that inspiring the building in which they were housed as it possibly could have been. And yet, all things considered, Spinello preferred elegant simplicity to equally elegant extravagance.

As he always did in this gallery, Spinello paused in front of a two-handled drinking cup whose lines had always struck him as being as close to perfection as made no difference. Neither illustration nor memory ever did it justice. Every so often, he had to see it in the fired clay to remind himself what human hand and human will could shape.

"Spinello, isn't it?"

He was so lost in contemplation, he needed a moment to hear and recognize his own name. Then he turned and stared at the aged savant who'd been leaning on a cane longer than he had been alive. His own bow was awkward, but heartfelt. "Master Malindo!" he exclaimed. "What an honor! What a pleasant surprise!" What a pleasant surprise to see you still breathing, was what he meant. Malindo had been too old to serve in the Six Years' War, which surely put him up past ninety now.

"I go on," Malindo said in a creaky voice. "Are those a colonel's stars I see?"

"Aye." Spinello drew himself up with what he hoped was pardonable pride.

"A man of valor. A man of spirit," Malindo murmured. He paused, perhaps trying to find what he'd meant to say. He is old, Spinello thought. But then, quite visibly, the savant did find it. "And have you fought in the west?"

"Aye," Spinello repeated, this time in a different tone of voice.

Malindo reached out with his free hand, all wrinkled and veiny, and set it on the one Spinello used to hold his cane. "Then tell me- I beseech you, by the powers above- that what we hear of Algarve's dealings with Kaunians, dealings with the descendants of those who created this" -he wagged a finger at the cup- "is nothing but a lie, a filthy lie invented by our enemies."

Spinello couldn't nerve himself to lie to the old man. But he couldn't nerve himself to tell Malindo the truth, either. He stood mute.

Malindo sighed. He took his hand away from Spinello's. "What shall become of us?" he asked. Spinello didn't think the old man was talking to him. Malindo heaved another sigh, then slowly shuffled down the exhibit hall.

Try as he would, Spinello couldn't contemplate the cup the same way after that. The other Kaunian artifacts seemed somehow different, too. Cursing under his breath, he left the Royal Cultural Museum much sooner than he'd intended to. He wondered if he would ever be able to go back.

Two nights later, though, he hired a cab to take him through the darkened streets of Trapani to the royal palace. The last time he was wounded, he'd been too badly hurt to attend any of King Mezentio's receptions. This time, while not yet fit for field duty, he could- and did- display himself before his sovereign.

A somber servitor checked his name off a list. An even more somber mage muttered charms to test his cane before allowing him to go forward. "I haven't got a knife in there, nor a stick, either," Spinello said. "I could have told you as much, had you asked."

The mage bowed. "No doubt, your Excellency. An assassin could have told me as much, too, but he would have been lying. Best to take no chances, eh?"

"I suppose not," Spinello agreed with rather poor grace. But he added, "You didn't fret about such things when the war was new."

The mage shrugged. "Times are different now, sir." He waved Spinello past him.

Spinello went. What the fellow meant, of course, was, The war news sounded a lot better then. Who would have wanted to harm King Mezentio when Algarve's armies drove everything before them? No one, save perhaps some foreign hireling. Nowadays… Nowadays, there might well be Algarvians who'd lost enough to seek to avenge themselves on their sovereign. Spinello hoped not, but had to admit Mezentio was right to use the mage to help keep himself safe.

"Viscount Spinello!" a flunky bawled after Spinello murmured his name and rank to the man. A few heads turned his way. Most of the people already in the reception hall went on with what they were doing. A viscount limping along with the help of a cane was neither exotic nor prominent enough to be very interesting.

Officers and civilian functionaries drank and gossiped and eyed one another's women. The women drank and gossiped and eyed one another's men. And everyone, of course, eyed King Mezentio, who drifted through the room talking now with one man, now with another, or yet again with one of the better-looking women there.

After asking for a glass of wine and sipping it, Spinello looked at it in some surprise. "Something wrong, sir?" asked the servitor behind the bar.

"Wrong? No." Spinello shook his head. "But I've poured down too much in the way of Unkerlanter spirits, I think. Any drink that doesn't try to tear off the top of my skull hardly seems worth bothering with."

"Ha! That's the truth, by the powers above!" a soldier behind him boomed. The fellow also leaned on a cane, but would have been monstrous tall if straight. He wore a brigadier's rank badges, and had three gold bars under his wound badge. He went on, "After that stuff they brew from turnips and barley, wine isn't good for much but making you piss a lot."

"It does taste good," Spinello said, sipping again. For all the jolt it carried, it could have been water.

With a snort, the brigadier said, "My mistress tastes good, too, but that's not why I eat her." Had Spinello been drinking then, he would have sprayed wine over everything in front of him. As it was, he laughed loud enough to turn several heads his way.

One of those heads belonged to King Mezentio. He came over and asked, "And what is so funny here?"

"Your Majesty, you'll have to ask my superior here," Spinello answered. "He made the joke, and I would never dream of stealing it from him while he's close enough to listen to me do it."

Amusement flashed in Mezentio's hazel eyes. He turned to the brigadier, giving Spinello the long-nosed profile already familiar to him from the coins in his belt pouch. "Well, your Excellency?" Repeating himself didn't embarrass the brigadier one bit. And he made the king laugh. "Aye, that's good. That's very good," Mezentio said.

"I thought so," Spinello said: since he hadn't made the joke, he had to take credit for laughing at it. But maybe the wine he'd drunk had made him bolder than he'd believed, for he heard himself asking, "And when do we start making the Unkerlanters laugh out of the other side of their mouths again your Majesty?"

"If you have a way to do that, Colonel, leave a memorial with my officers," Mezentio replied. "I assure you, they will give it their closest attention."

He means it, Spinello realized, a wintry notion if ever there was one. The brigadier must have had the same thought, too, for he exclaimed, "We should have been readier when we struck them, then."

Now Mezentio looked right through him. "Thank you for your confidence in us, Carietto," the king said, for all the world as if he were Swemmel of Unkerlant, or perhaps twins. Spinello hadn't known the brigadier's name, but Mezentio did. Carietto, plainly, would never, ever, advance in rank again.

Spinello said, "Your Majesty, what can we do?"

"Keep fighting," King Mezentio said at once. "Make our foes bleed themselves white- and they will. Hold on till our mages strengthen their sorceries- and they will. Never admit we can be defeated. Fight with every fiber of our being so that victory comes to us- and it will."

He sounded very sure, very strong. Spinello saluted. So did Brigadier Carietto, not that it would do him any good. With a grin, Spinello said, "There may not be any Kaunians left by the time we're through."

"And so what?" Mezentio said. "How better to serve our ancient oppressors than to use them as weapons against the western barbarians? Algarve must save Derlavaian civilization, Colonel- and it will." He had a brandy in his hand. He knocked it back and strode away.

So much for old Malindo, Spinello thought. The savant, briefly, had made him feel guilty. Mezentio made him feel proud. Pride was better. He glanced over at Carietto. The brigadier looked like a man refusing to acknowledge he was wounded. He had pride, too. When he went back to the fighting, Spinello didn't think he would let himself live long.

"What were you talking about with the king?" That wasn't Carietto, but a woman about Spinello's own age. She had a wide, generous mouth, a nose with a tiny bend that made it more interesting than it would have been otherwise, and a figure her tight tunic and short kilt displayed to advantage.

Spinello bowed. "The war. Nothing important." He bowed again. "I would sooner talk about you, milady. I am Spinello. And your name is-?"

"Fronesia." She held out her hand.

After bowing over it once more, Spinello kissed it. "And whose friend are you, milady Fronesia?" he asked. "As lovely as you are, you must be someone's."

She smiled. "A colonel of dragonfliers' friend," she answered. "But Sabrino has been in the west forever and a day, and I grow lonely, to say nothing of bored. When I got myself invited here tonight, I hoped I would find a new friend. Was I right?"

Algarvian women had a way of coming straight to the point. So did Algarvian men. "Milady, with your looks" -Spinello's eyes traveled her curves- "you could have an array of friends, did you so choose. If you want one in particular, I am at your service."

Fronesia nodded. "If you're as generous as you are well-spoken, we should get on very well indeed, Colonel Spinello."

"There is generosity, and then there is generosity." Spinello looked her up and down again.

"My flat isn't far from here, Colonel," Fronesia said. "Shall we go back there and talk about it?"

"As long as we're there, we might as well talk, too," Spinello agreed. Laughing, they left together.

Ealstan had come up in the world. From bookkeeper, he'd advanced all the way to conspirator. If that wasn't progress, he didn't know what was. "I wish I'd found you a long time ago," he told Pybba.

"No, no, no." His boss shook his head. "Wish we'd been strong enough to give the stinking Algarvians a good boot in the balls when the war first started. Then we wouldn't have to play all these stupid games."

The pottery magnate was playing enough of them. Ealstan had thought as much when he first found the discrepancies in Pybba's books. He'd hoped as much. But even he hadn't had any notion of how deeply Pybba was involved in resisting King Mezentio's men in Forthweg. Nothing but admiration in his voice, he said, "I don't think anybody can write anything nasty about the Algarvians on a wall anywhere in Eoforwic unless you know about it before it happens."

"That's the idea." Pybba sounded smug: his usual growl with a purr mixed into it. The purr disappeared as he went on, "Now shut up about what you're not supposed to be talking about and get back to work. If I don't make any money, I can't very well put any money into giving the redheads a hard time, now can I?"

Back to work Ealstan went, and utterly mundane work it was, too. But he didn't care. He'd scratched his itch to know. He'd done more than that. He'd started working to help drive Mezentio's men out of his kingdom. What more could he want? Nothing, or so he thought. If fighting the Algarvians also meant keeping track of invoices on fifty-seven different styles of teacup- and it did- he would cheerfully do that. If it wasn't his patriotic duty, he didn't know what it was.

And the news sheets had got very vague about how the fighting in Unkerlant was going. He took that as a good sign.

He'd been working in his new capacity for a few weeks when something odd struck him. That was almost literally true: he was walking home in the first rain of fall when the thought came to him. "The mushrooms will be springing up," he told Vanai when he got back to their flat.

"That's true." She clapped her hands together. "And I'll be able to go hunting them this year. Staying cooped up in the middle of mushroom season is something that shouldn't happen to anyone."

"Thanks to your sorcery, it won't happen to nearly so many people." Ealstan said went over and gave her a kiss. Then he paused, scratching his head.

"What is it?" Vanai asked.

"Nothing," Ealstan answered. "Or I don't think it's anything, anyway."

Vanai raised an eyebrow. But, rather to his relief, she did no more than raise an eyebrow. She didn't constantly push at him, for which he was duly grateful. Maybe that was because she'd never been able to push at her grandfather, by all the signs one of the least pushable men ever born. If so, it was one of the few things for which Ealstan would have thanked Brivibas had he been able. And, by all the signs, Brivibas wouldn't have appreciated his thanks.

A couple of days later, in casual tones, Ealstan said to Pybba, "Occurs to me you're missing something."

"Oh?" The pottery magnate raised a shaggy eyebrow. "What's that? Whatever it is, you'll tell me. You're the one who knows everything, after all."

Ealstan's cheeks heated. He hoped his beard kept Pybba from seeing him flush. But flushed or not, he stubbornly plowed ahead: "You want to do the redheads the most harm you can, right?"

"Not much point to kicking 'em halfway in the balls, is there?" his boss returned, and laughed at his own joke.

Ealstan chuckled, too, but went on, "Well, then, you are missing something. Who hates Mezentio's men more than anybody?"

Pybba jabbed a thumb at his own thick chest. "I do, by the powers above."

But Ealstan shook his head. "You don't hate them worse than the Kaunians do," he said. "And I haven't seen you doing anything to get the blonds to work alongside us Forthwegians. What they owe the Algarvians…"

"Kaunians? Blonds?" The pottery magnate might never have heard the names before. He scowled. "Weren't for the miserable Kaunians, we wouldn't have got into the war in the first place."

"Oh, by the powers above!" Ealstan clapped a hand to his forehead. "The Algarvians have been saying the same thing in their broadsheets ever since they beat us. Do you want to sound like them?"

"They're whoresons, aye- the Algarvians, I mean- but that doesn't make 'em wrong all the time," Pybba said. "I'd sooner trust my own kind, thank you very much."

"Kaunians are people, too," Ealstan said. His father had been saying that for as long as he could remember: long enough to make him take it for granted, anyway. But even if he took it for granted, he'd already seen that few of his fellow Forthwegians did.

Pybba proved not to be one of those few. He patted Ealstan on the back and said, "I know you used to cast accounts for that half-breed musician. I suppose that's why you think the way you do. But most Kaunians are nothing but trouble, and you can take that to the bank. We'll kick the Algarvians out on their arses, we'll bring King Penda back, and everything will be fine."

Most Kaunians are nothing but trouble, and you can take that to the bank. What would Pybba say if he knew Ealstan's wife, whom he'd met as Thelberge, was really named Vanai? He can't find out, Ealstan thought- an obvious truth if ever there was one.

"Now get yourself back to work," Pybba said. "I'll do the thinking around here. You just cast the accounts."

"Right," Ealstan said tightly. He almost threw his job in the pottery magnate's face then and there. But if he left now, Pybba would realize his reasons had to do with Kaunians. He couldn't afford that. As he went back to the ledgers, tears of rage and frustration made the columns of numbers blur for a moment. He blinked till they went away. He'd found the underground, and now he found he didn't fit into it. That hurt almost too much to bear.

When he got home that evening, he poured out his troubles to Vanai. "No, you can't quit," his wife said, "even if Pybba has no use for Kaunians. If he has his way, people will despise us- the Forthwegians will, anyway. If the Algarvians win, we won't be around to despise. That makes things pretty simple, doesn't it?"

"It's not right," Ealstan insisted.

Vanai kissed him. "Of course it's not. But life hasn't been fair to us since the Kaunian Empire fell. Why should it start now? If Pybba and King Penda win, at least we get the chance to go on."

What Ealstan wanted to do was get drunk and stay drunk. And if that doesn't prove I'm a Forthwegian, what would? he thought. He didn't do it. He drank less wine with his supper than usual, in fact. But the temptation remained.

He felt Pybba's eye on him all the next morning. He went about his work as stolidly as he could, and made no waves whatever. In the face of Vanai's relentless pragmatism, he didn't see what else he could do. When he didn't come out with anything radical, Pybba relaxed a little.

And then, a couple of days later, Ealstan jerked as if stung by a wasp. He looked around for Pybba. When he caught the pottery magnate's eye, Pybba was the one who flinched. "You've got that crazy look on your face again," he rumbled. "Mad Ealstan the Bookkeeper, that's you. Or that's what they'd've called you if you lived in King Plegmund's time, anyway."

Thinking of King Plegmund's time only made Ealstan scowl, no matter how glorious it had been for Forthweg. To him, Plegmund's time meant Plegmund's Brigade, and Plegmund's Brigade meant his cousin Sidroc, who'd killed his brother. Thinking of Plegmund's Brigade only convinced him his idea would work. He said, "Can we go into your office?"

"This had better be good," Pybba warned. Ealstan nodded. With obvious reluctance, his boss headed for the office. Ealstan followed him. Pybba slammed the door behind them. "Go ahead. You'd best knock me right out of my boots."

"I don't know whether I can or not," Ealstan said. "But I don't think we're doing everything with magecraft that we ought to be."

"You're right," the pottery magnate agreed. "I should have turned you into a paperweight or something else that can't talk a long time ago."

Ignoring that, Ealstan plowed ahead: "A mage could write something rude on one recruiting broadsheet for Plegmund's Brigade and then use the laws of similarity and contagion to make the same thing show up on every broadsheet all over Eoforwic."

"We are doing some of that kind of thing," Pybba said.

"Not enough," Ealstan returned. "Not nearly enough."

Pybba plucked at his beard. "It'd be hard on the mage if the redheads caught him," he said at last.

"It'd be hard on any of us if the redheads caught him," Ealstan answered. "Are we lawn-bowling with the Algarvians or fighting a war against them?"

The pottery magnate grunted. "Lawn-bowling, eh? All right, Mad Ealstan, get your arse back to your stool and start going over my books again."

That was all he would say. Ealstan wanted to push him harder, but decided he'd already done enough, or perhaps too much. He went back to the books. Pybba kept on calling him Mad Ealstan, which earned him some odd looks from the other men who worked for the magnate. Ealstan didn't let that worry him. If you weren't a little bit crazy, you couldn't work for Pybba very long.

When the next payday came, Pybba said, "Here. Make sure this goes on the books," and gave him another bonus. It was less than he'd got after being asked to look the other way about the discrepancies he'd found in Pybba's accounts, but it was a good deal better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

A few days later, the Algarvians plastered a new recruiting broadsheet for Plegmund's Brigade all over Eoforwic. A FIGHT TO THE FINISH! it said. Two days after that, all those broadsheets suddenly sported a crude modification: A FIGHT FOR THE FINISHED! The Algarvians had paid Forthwegian laborers to put them up. Now they paid Forthwegians to take them down again.

"Aye, Mad Ealstan the Bookkeeper, by the powers above," Pybba said. Ealstan didn't say anything at all. He didn't say anything when Pybba gave him one more bonus the following payday, either. Nobody but him noticed the bonus, and nobody noticed his silence, either. Most people were silent around Pybba most of the time, and only exceptions got noticed. Ealstan knew what he'd done, and so did the magnate. Nothing else mattered.

Skarnu settled into a furnished room in the little town of Jurbarkas with the air of a man who'd known worse. When the silver in his pockets began to run low, he took odd jobs for the farmers around the town. He quickly proved he knew what he was doing, so he got more work than a lot of the drifters who looked for it in the market square.

Getting out into the countryside let him visit the farm near Jurbarkas run by a man who worked with the underground. After visiting, Skarnu wished he hadn't. Those fields grew rank and untended; the farmhouse stood empty. Three words had been daubed on the door in whitewash now rain streaked and fading: NIGHT AND FOG. Wherever the farmer had gone, he wouldn't be coming back. Skarnu hurried back to town as fast as he could.

Jurbarkas wasn't far from Pavilosta. That thought kept echoing and reechoing in Skarnu's mind. If Merkela hadn't had her baby- his baby- yet, she would any day now. But if he showed himself around those parts, he would be recognized. Even if the redheads didn't catch him, he might give them the excuse they needed to write NIGHT AND FOG on Merkela's door. He didn't want to do that, no matter what.

He wondered if Amatu would come after him. But as day followed day and nothing happened along those lines, he began to feel easier there. The returned exile was somebody else's worry now.

He did wonder a little that no one from the underground tried to get hold of him. But even that didn't worry him so much. He'd spent three years sticking pins in the Algarvians. He was willing- even eager- to let somebody else have a turn.

He stood in the market square at sunrise one morning. Despite the mug of hot tea he'd bought from a small eatery there, he shivered a little. Fall was in the air, even if the leaves hadn't started turning yet. Farmers came into town early, though, to get a full day's work from whomever they hired there and to keep from losing too much time themselves.

A fellow who wasn't a farmer walked up to Skarnu and said, "Hello, Pavilosta."

Only a man from the underground would have called him by the name of the hamlet near which he'd lived. "Well, well," he answered. "Hello yourself, Zarasai." That was also the name of a town, not a person. He didn't know the other man's real name, and hoped the fellow didn't know his. "What brings you here?"

"Somebody got wind that you were in these parts, even if you have been lying low," answered the other fellow from the underground. "I just came around to tell you lying low's a real good idea these days."

"Oh?" Skarnu said.

"That's right." The man from Zarasai nodded. "We've got trouble on the loose. Some madman is leaking to the redheads, leaking like a cursed sieve."

Skarnu rolled his eyes. "Just what we need. As if life weren't hard enough already." That got him another nod from the fellow who called himself Zarasai. Skarnu asked, "Who is the whoreson? Are we trying to kill him?"

"Of course we're trying to kill him. You think we're bloody daft?" "Zarasai" answered. "But the Algarvians are taking good care of him. If I were in their boots, curse them, I'd take good care of him, too. As for who he is, I haven't got a name to give him, but they say he's one of the fancy-trousers nobles who came back across the Strait of Valmiera from Lagoas to fight Mezentio's men. Then he changed his mind. He should have stayed down there in Setubal, powers below eat him."

"Powers below eat me," Skarnu exclaimed. The man from Zarasai raised a questioning eyebrow. Skarnu said, "That's got to be Amatu. The blundering idiot kept trying to get himself and everybody with him- including me- killed. He couldn't help acting like one of those nobles who want commoners to bow and scrape before 'em- that's what he was. Is. We finally fought about it. I gave him a good thumping, and we went our separate ways. I came here… and I guess he went to the redheads."

"I can see how you wouldn't have had any use for him," "Zarasai" said, "but he's singing like a nightingale now. We've lost at least half a dozen good men on account of him. And even a good man'll sing sometimes, if the Algarvians work on him long enough and hard enough. So we'll lose more, too, no doubt about it."

"Curse him," Skarnu repeated. "He wasn't important enough in the underground to suit him. He's important to the Algarvians, all right, the way a hook's important to a fisherman."

"Zarasai" said, "Sooner or later, he'll run out of names and places. After that, Mezentio's men will probably give him what he deserves."

"They couldn't possibly." Skarnu didn't try to hide his bitterness.

"Mm, maybe not," the other underground leader said. "But you're safe here, I think. If you parted from him, he won't know about this place, right? Sit tight, and we'll do our best to ride things out."

"I wish the redheads had caught him and not Lauzdonu over in Ventspils," Skarnu said. "He's not a coward. I don't think he would have had much to say if they'd just captured him. But he's a spoiled brat. He couldn't have everything he wanted from us, and so he went to get it from the Algarvians. Aye, he'd sing for them, sure enough."

"You've given us a name," "Zarasai" said. "That'll help. When we listen to the emanations from the Algarvians' crystals, maybe we'll hear it, so we'll know what they're doing with him. Maybe he'll have an accident. Aye, maybe he will. Here's hoping he does, anyhow." He slipped away. Skarnu didn't watch him go. The less Skarnu knew about anyone else's comings and goings, the less the Algarvians could tear out of him if they caught him and squeezed.

Lie low. Sit tight. Ride it out. At first, that all seemed good advice to Skarnu. But then he started to wonder, and to worry. He'd spent a lot of time with Amatu before they had their break. How much had he said about Merkela? Had he named her? Had he mentioned Pavilosta? If he had, would Amatu remember?

That seemed only too likely. And if he remembered, what would make him happier than betraying Skarnu's lover to the Algarvians? Nothing Skarnu could think of.

If he sat tight, if he lay low, he might save himself- and abandon Merkela, abandon the child he'd never seen, and, not quite incidentally, abandon his old senior sergeant, Raunu, to the tender mercies of Mezentio's men, to say nothing of the Kaunian couple from Forthweg who'd escaped the sabotaged ley-line caravan that was carrying them to their death. Ever since he'd fled Merkela's farm, he'd told himself he would endanger her if he went back. Now he decided she would face worse danger if he stayed away. He left Jurbarkas without a backwards glance and went off down the road toward Pavilosta with a smile on his face.

He slept in a haystack that night, and had a chilly time of it: fall was on the way, sure enough. Because the night was cold, he woke in predawn grayness and got moving before the farmer knew he'd been there. After an hour or so, he came on a roadside tavern, and paid the proprietor an outrageous price for a sweet roll and a mug of hot herb tea thick with honey. Thus fortified, he set out again.

Before long, the road grew familiar. If he stayed on it, he would go straight into Pavilosta. He didn't want to do that; too many of the villagers knew who he was. The fewer folk who saw him, the fewer who might betray him to the Algarvians.

And so he left the road, heading down one narrow dirt track that looked no different from any of the others. The path, and others into which it led, took him around Pavilosta and toward Merkela's farm. He nodded to himself whenever he chose a new track; he knew these winding lanes as well as he knew the streets of Priekule. Soon, he thought. Very soon.

But the closer to the farm he got, the more fear fought with hope. What would he do if he found only an empty, abandoned farmhouse with NIGHT AND FOG scrawled on the door or the wall beside it? Go mad, was the answer that sprang to mind. Setting one foot in front of the other took endless distinct efforts of will.

"Powers above," he said softly, rounding the last bend. "There it is."

Tears sprang into his eyes: tears of relief, for smoke rose from the chimney. The fields were golden with ripening grain, the meadows emerald green. And that solid, stolid figure with the crook, keeping an eye on the sheep as they fed, could only belong to Raunu.

Skarnu hurried forward and climbed over the sun-faded wooden rails of the fence. Raunu trotted toward him, plainly ready to use that crook as a weapon. "Here now, stranger!" he shouted in a voice trained to carry through battlefield din. "What in blazes do you want?"

"I may be shabby, Sergeant, but I'm no stranger," Skarnu answered.

Raunu stopped in his tracks. Skarnu thought he might come to attention and salute, but he didn't. "No, Captain, you're no stranger," he agreed, "but you're an idiot to show your face in these parts. There's a hefty price on your head, there is. Nobody ever gave a fart about a sausage-seller's son" -he jerked a thumb at himself- "but a rebel marquis? The redheads want you bad."

"They're liable to care about you if you're here," Skarnu said, "you and Merkela and the Kaunians from Forthweg." He took a deep breath. "How is she?"

"Well enough, though she'll have that baby any day now," Raunu replied.

Skarnu nodded, but cursed softly under his breath. "That'll make moving fast harder, but we have to do it. I think- I'm pretty sure- this place has been betrayed to the Algarvians." In three or four sentences, he told of Amatu and what the other noble had done.

Raunu cursed, too, with a sergeant's fluency. "You're right- we can't stay. Come on back to the house with me, and tell your lady."

Merkela and Pernavai were kneading bread dough when Raunu and Skarnu walked in. Merkela looked up in surprise. "Why aren't you out in the-?" She broke off abruptly when she saw Skarnu behind the veteran sergeant. "What are you doing here?" she whispered, and then hurried to him.

She moved awkwardly; she was, as Raunu had said, very great with child. When Skarnu took her in his arms, he had to lean forward over her swollen belly to kiss her. She was almost as tall as he. "You have to get away," he said. "The Algarvians know about this place- or they may, anyhow." And he told the story of Amatu again.

Merkela cursed as vividly as Skarnu had. "Nobles like that… If the redheads had smashed them, plenty of people would be glad to follow Mezentio." Her fury made Skarnu ashamed of his own high blood. Before he could say anything, she went on, "Aye, we have to leave. Pernavai, fetch Vatsyunas."

The woman from Forthweg nodded. She'd come to understand Valmieran well enough, even if she still spoke much more classical Kaunian. She hurried off to get her husband.

"We'll need to take the wagon," Skarnu said to Merkela. "You can't get far on foot." He too cursed Amatu with all the venom he had in him. That did no good.

"It'll make us easy to spot, easy to catch," Merkela protested.

"So would having you die by the roadside," Skarnu growled, and she subsided. They didn't run into a squad of Algarvians rushing to seize them as they rattled away from the farm. As far as Skarnu was concerned, that put them ahead of the game right there.