Rulers of the Darkness

Sixteen

Count Lurcanio bowed to Krasta. "By your leave, milady, I should like to invite a guest to supper with us tonight," he said. "A nobleman- a Valmieran nobleman, to be perfectly plain."

He was scrupulous about remembering that the mansion and the serving staff were in fact Krasta's. He was more scrupulous about such things than a good many of his countrymen; had he chosen to commandeer rather than ask, what could she have done about it? Nothing, as she knew all too well. That was the essence of being occupied. And so she said, "Well, of course. Who is it?" She did hope she wouldn't have to endure one of the savage backwoods boors who seemed so fond of Algarve's cause. The idea of Valmierans fighting under Mezentio's banner still left her queasy.

But Lurcanio answered, "A count by the name of Amatu- affable fellow, I find, if a bit full of himself."

"Oh. Amatu. I know him, aye." Krasta didn't sigh in relief, but she felt like it. "He's from right here in Priekule. But…" Her voice trailed away. She frowned a little. "I haven't seen him- or I don't recall seeing him- in a very long time."

That held an unspoken question, something on the order of, If he hasn't come to any of the functions that have gone on since Algarve occupied Valmiera, what's he doing here now? Some nobles in the capital still stubbornly kept themselves aloof from Mezentio's men. Krasta wondered how Lurcanio would have gone about inviting one of them for supper.

"He's been away from the capital for some time," Lurcanio replied. "He's very glad to be home again, though, I will say."

"I should certainly hope so," Krasta exclaimed. "Why would anyone who could live in Priekule care to go anywhere else?"

Lurcanio didn't answer, from which she concluded he agreed with her. Though nothing else in Valmiera seemed to, her sense of superiority remained invincible. She went off to browbeat the cook into outdoing himself for a noble guest.

"Aye, milady, nothing but the best," the cook promised, his head bobbing up and down with a show of eagerness to please. "I've got a couple of fine beef tongues in the rest crate, if those would suit you for the main dish."

"The very thing!" Krasta's smile was not without a certain small malice. Algarvians had a way of looking down their noses at robust Valmieran cooking. Lurcanio could eat tongue tonight and like it- or at least pretend. She made sure the rest of the menu was along the same lines: fried parsnips with butter, sour cabbage, and a rhubarb pie for dessert. "Nothing spare and Algarvian tonight," she told the cook. "Tonight the guest is a countryman."

"Just as you say, milady, so it'll be," he replied.

"Well, of course," Krasta said. As long as she wasn't dealing with Lurcanio, her word remained law on her estate.

Having made sure of the cook, she went up to her bedchamber, shouting for Bauska as she went. The maidservant never got there fast enough to suit her. "I'm sorry, milady," she said when Krasta shouted at her rather than for her. "My little girl had soiled herself, and I was cleaning her off."

Krasta wrinkled her nose. "Is that what I smell?" she said, which was unfair: Bauska took good care of her bastard by an Algarvian officer, and the baby was not only cheerful and happy but gave promise of good looks. Krasta, however, worried very little about fairness. She went on, "Count Amatu is coming to supper tonight, and I want to impress him. What shall I wear?"

"How do you want to impress him?" Bauska asked. Krasta rolled her eyes. As far as she was concerned, only one way mattered. Bauska set out a gold silk tunic that looked transparent but wasn't quite and a pair of dark blue trousers in slashed velvet with side laces to get them to fit as tightly as possible. She added, "You might wear the black shoes with the heels, milady. They give your walk a certain something it wouldn't have otherwise."

"My walk already has everything it needs," Krasta said. But she did wear the shoes. They were even more uncomfortable than the trousers, which Bauska took savage pleasure in lacing till Krasta could hardly breathe. The serving woman looked disappointed when Krasta condescended to thank her for her help.

The way Colonel Lurcanio's eyes lit up when Krasta came downstairs was its own reward. He set a hand on the curve of her hip. "Perhaps I should send Amatu away and keep you all to myself tonight."

"Perhaps you should," she purred, looking up at him from under half-lowered eyelids.

But he laughed and patted her and shook his head. "No, he'll be here any moment, and I truly do want the two of you to meet… so long as I am chaperoning. You may have more in common than you think."

"What does that mean?" Krasta asked. "I don't like it when you make your little jokes and I don't know what's going on."

"You'll know soon enough, my sweet; I promise you that," Lurcanio said: more in the way of reassurance than he usually gave her.

Count Amatu knocked on the door a few minutes later. He bowed over Krasta's hand, then clasped wrists, Algarvian style, with Lurcanio. He was thinner than Krasta remembered, thinner and somehow harsher. He knocked back a brandy and nodded. "That opens your eyes," he said, and then, "I've had my eyes opened lately, by the powers above. That I have."

"How do you mean?" Krasta asked.

Amatu glanced over to Colonel Lurcanio, then asked her, "Have you seen your brother lately?"

"Skarnu?" Krasta exclaimed, as if she had some other brother, too. Count Amatu nodded. "No," she said. "I haven't seen him since he went off to fight in the war." That was true. "I've never been sure since whether he was alive or dead." That was anything but true, though she didn't think Lurcanio knew it. She knew her brother was alive and still doing something to resist the Algarvians. But what did Amatu know? She did her best to sound intrigued and pleased as she asked, "Why? Have you seen him? Where is he?"

"Oh, I've seen him, all right." Amatu didn't sound pleased about it, either. After muttering something under his breath that Krasta, perhaps fortunately, didn't catch, he went on, "He's down in the south somewhere, mucking about with those miserable bandits who don't know a lost cause when they see one."

"Is he? I had no idea." Krasta was very conscious of Lurcanio's eye on her. He'd invited Amatu here to see what she would do when she got this news. She had to let it seem a surprise. "I wish he'd chosen differently." And part of her did. Had he chosen differently, she wouldn't have had to think about how she'd chosen. One way and another, she'd learned too much about what the Algarvians were doing. That left her unhappy with herself: not a feeling she was used to having.

"They're hopeless, useless, worthless- the bandits, I mean," Amatu said with fine aristocratic scorn. "But your brother's having a fine time slumming, I will say. He's knocked up some peasant wench, and he couldn't be prouder if he'd taken one of King Gainibu's daughters to bed."

Now Krasta drew herself up very straight. "Skarnu and some woman off a farm? I don't believe you." She didn't think her brother immune to lust. Bad taste, however, was an altogether different question.

But Amatu said, "Only shows what you know. I heard him with my own ears- heard more than I ever want to, believe you me. He's as head over heels as if he'd invented this tart, and I'll take oath on that by the powers above."

He meant it. Krasta could see, could hear, as much. She asked, "How do you know all this? If he's with these bandits- were you with them, too?"

"For a little while," Amatu answered. "I spent some time down in Lagoas. When I came back across the Strait to Valmiera, I fell in with those people for a bit. But they haven't got the faintest idea what they're doing to the kingdom. They didn't want to listen to anybody who tried to tell them otherwise, either."

They didn't want to listen to you, and that's why you went over to the Algarvians, Krasta thought. She knew cattiness when she heard it; it came around too often in her own circle to let her mistake it. She was saved from having to say anything when a servant announced, "Milady, lords, supper is ready."

Amatu ate with good appetite, and did a good deal of drinking, too. When Lurcanio saw what the bill of fare was, he sent Krasta a reproachful look. She gave back her own most innocent stare, and said, "Don't you fancy our hearty Valmieran recipes?"

"I certainly do," Amatu said, and helped himself to another slice of tongue. He took a big spoonful of the onions the cook had boiled in the pot with the beef tongues. Lurcanio sighed, as if to say that even his own tool had turned in his hand and cut him. Krasta hid her smile.

After demolishing half the rhubarb pie himself, Amatu took his leave. Lurcanio sat in the dining hall, still sipping a cup of tea. He remarked, "You did not seem very excited about the news he had of your brother."

Krasta shrugged. "He seemed more interested in throwing it in my face than in really telling me anything about Skarnu, so I wouldn't give him the satisfaction. He doesn't like Skarnu much, does he?"

"One need hardly be a first-rank mage to see that," Lurcanio remarked. "Your brother, I gather, gave Amatu a good set of lumps before the count decided he might be better served on the Algarvian side."

"Did he?" Krasta said. "Well, good for him."

"I never claimed Amatu was the most lovable man ever born, though he does love himself rather well, would you not agreed?" Lurcanio said.

"Someone has to, I suppose," Krasta said. "He makes one."

"Sweet as ever," Lurcanio said, and Krasta smiled, as if at a compliment. Her Algarvian lover went on, "What do you think of what he did have to tell you?"

"I can't believe my brother would take up with a peasant girl," Krasta said. "It's… beneath his dignity."

"It also happens to be true," Lurcanio said. "Her name is Merkela. We were going to seize her, to use her as a lure to draw your brother, but she seems to have got wind of that, for she fled her farm."

"What would you have done with Skarnu if you'd caught him?" Krasta didn't want to ask the question, but didn't see how she could avoid it.

"Squeezed him for what he knew about the other bandits, of course," Lurcanio answered. "We are fighting a war, after all. Still, we wouldn't have done anything, ah, drastic if he had come out and told us what we needed to learn. Does Amatu look much the worse for wear?"

"Well, no," Krasta admitted.

"There you are, then," Lurcanio said. But Krasta wondered if it were so simple. Amatu, unless she misread things, had had a bellyful of Algarve's foes and had gone to the redheads of his own accord. No wonder they'd taken it easy on him, then. Skarnu wouldn't have had that on his side of the ledger.

I went to the redheads of my own accord, too, Krasta thought. No wonder they've taken it easy on me, then. To her amazement- indeed, to something not far from her horror- she burst into tears.

Had Sidroc sat any closer to the fire, his tunic would have started smoldering. Fall here in southern Unkerlant was as bad as winter back in Gromheort. He'd seen what winter was like here. He never wanted to see it again, but he would, and soon… if he lived long enough.

He didn't want to think about that. He didn't want to think about anything. All he wanted was the simple animal pleasure of warmth. A pot atop the fire was starting to bubble. Pretty soon, he'd have the animal pleasure of food, too. For the moment- and what else mattered in a soldier's life? -things weren't so bad.

Sergeant Werferth got to his feet and stirred the pot with a big iron spoon that had come from an Unkerlanter peasant hut. "Pretty soon," he said, settling back down on his haunches again.

"Good," Sidroc said. A couple of other men from Plegmund's Brigade nodded.

Werferth let out a long sigh. "We were that close to smashing them," he said, holding up his thumb and forefinger almost touching. "That close, curse it."

Ceorl held up his thumb and forefinger the same way. "I'm about that close to starving," the ruffian said. "That close, curse it."

Everybody laughed: even Werferth, whose dignity as an underofficer was menaced; even Sidroc, who still despised Ceorl whenever the two of them weren't fighting the Unkerlanters. Werferth said, "I told you it'd be done soon. Did you think I was lying?"

Somewhere off in the distance- not too far- eggs burst. Everyone's head came up as the soldiers gauged the distance and direction of the noise. "Ours," Sidroc judged. He waited to see if anybody would argue with him. When no one did, he relaxed- a little.

Werferth said, "Powers below eat me if I know how we figure out who's tossing those eggs and what it means. The way things have been going, we're not even sure where in blazes we're at."

"Somewhere this side of the Gifhorn River," Sidroc said. "Somewhere this side of the western border of Grelz, too, or we'd have those fellows in the dark green tunics fighting on our side." They were somewhere a long way north and west of Durrwangen, but he didn't mention that. Everybody around the fire already knew it too well.

"We hope we would, anyhow," Werferth said. "From what I hear, the Grelzers are getting shaky."

"Fair-weather friends." Ceorl spat into the campfire. "Blaze a few of 'em to remind the rest who they work for and they won't give you much trouble."

Sidroc found himself nodding. Even though Ceorl was the one who'd said it, it made good sense to him. Werferth stirred the pot again, lifted out the spoon to taste a mouthful, and nodded. "It's done."

The stew was cabbage and buckwheat groats and turnips and meat from a dead unicorn, all boiled together with some salt. Back in Gromheort, Sidroc wouldn't have touched it. Here, he wolfed it down and held out his mess tin for more. His comrades were doing the same, so he didn't get much of a second helping.

A sentry called out a challenge. The Forthwegians by the fire grabbed for their sticks. Nobody from Plegmund's Brigade ever left his weapon out of reach, not even for a moment. Anybody who did that in this country was asking to get his throat cut. But the answer came back in Algarvian: "You are Plegmund's Brigade, is it not so? I've got letters for you: soldiers' post."

They greeted him almost as enthusiastically as if he were a woman of easy virtue. He got whatever stew was left in the pot, and a swig of spirits from somebody's water bottle. Once he figured out which squad from which company they were, he started passing out letters. Some of them got passed back to him, with remarks like, "He's dead," or, "He got wounded and taken off a couple weeks ago," that took the edge off the excitement of seeing mail.

Sidroc leaped in the air when the Algarvian called his name. He hadn't heard from Gromheort in a long time. The only person there who cared to write him was his father. The rest of his family were either dead or hated him, and that ran both ways.

Sure enough, the envelope the redhead handed him bore his father's familiar handwriting. It also bore a prewar Forthwegian value imprinted in one corner, and a green handstamp that said MILITARY POST over it. People who collected envelopes might have paid a fair bit of silver for this one. Sidroc wasn't any of those people, and so he tore it open to get at the letter inside.

My dear son, his father wrote. It was good to hear from you, and good to hear that you came through the hard fighting around Durrwangen safe. I hope this finds you well. Powers above grant it be so. I am well enough, though a toothache will send me to the dentist when it gets bad enough.

After I got your last letter, I paid a call on your dear Uncle Hestan. Sidroc grunted at that; Ealstan and Leofsig's father wasn't dear to him these days, nor he to Hestan. His own father went on, I told him what you had to say to me about the Kaunian wench named Vanai, and about the way his precious son Ealstan had been panting after her for years. I also told him she was an Algarvian officer's plaything in Oyngestun.

He only shrugged and said he didn't know anything about it. He said he hadn't heard a word from Ealstan since the day you got hit in the head (however that happened) and the self-righteous little brat disappeared (however that happened).

I don't believe him. But you know Hestan too well, the same as I do. He never tells his face what he is thinking. A lot of people think he is clever just because they don't know what's going on inside his head. And he may even be clever, but he is not as smart as he thinks he is.

"Ha! That's the truth, by the powers above," Sidroc said, as if his father were standing there beside him.

I am afraid I will never be able to get to the bottom of this by myself, the letter went on. Maybe I will see if the Algarvians are interested in getting to the bottom of it for me. Hestan is my own flesh and blood, but that gets hard to remember after all the names he's called me since things went sour between you and his sons.

You are everything I have left. Stay safe. Stay warm. Be brave- I know you will. Love, your father.

"Powers below eat Uncle Hestan," Sidroc muttered. "Powers below eat Ealstan, too. He'd always suck up to the schoolmasters, and I'd get the stripes."

"Who's it from, Sidroc?" Sergeant Werferth asked. "Anything juicy in it?" The soldiers who got letters from sweethearts often read out the livelier bits to amuse their comrades.

But Sidroc shook his head. "Not a thing. It's just from my old man."

"Well, is he getting any?" Ceorl demanded. Sidroc shook his head again and put the letter in his belt pouch. Ceorl looked to be about to say something else. Sergeant Werferth set him to gathering more wood to throw on the fire. Werferth knew Sidroc and Ceorl had no love lost between them. He did his best not to give them any chance to quarrel.

"Halt! Who goes there?" the sentry called again.

"I have the honor to be Captain Baiardo," another Algarvian answered. "Do you have the honor to be the men of Plegmundo's- no, Plegmund's- Brigade?"

"Aye," the sentry answered. "Advance and be recognized, sir."

Sidroc turned to Sergeant Werferth. "Too bad they wouldn't let you keep the company, Sergeant. You've done as well with it as any of the redhead officers they put over us."

"Thanks." Werferth shrugged. "What can you do? They give the orders."

But Baiardo, when he came up to the fire, proved not to be the new company commander. Along with his rank badges, he wore that of a mage- he was an officer by courtesy, not by blood. And it took a lot of courtesy to reckon him an officer: he looked like an unmade bed. "Who's in charge here?" he asked, peering from one Forthwegian to another.

The men of Plegmund's Brigade wore their own kingdom's markings of rank; Sergeant Werferth's single chevrons couldn't have meant anything to Baiardo. "I am, sir," Werferth said resignedly. "What do you want?"

"I need a volunteer," Baiardo said.

Silence fell on the Forthwegians. They had seen plenty to teach them that the war was bad enough when they did what they had to do. Doing more than they had to do only made it worse. Baiardo looked expectantly from one soldier to the next. Maybe he hadn't seen all that much himself. Nobody could tell him no, not straight out. He was an Algarvian, and an officer- well, an officer of sorts- to boot. At last, Sergeant Werferth pointed to Sidroc and said, "He'll do whatever you need, sir."

"Splendid." Baiardo clapped his hands in what looked like real delight.

Sidroc thought it anything but splendid. He glared at Baiardo and Werferth in turn. Glaring, of course, was all he could do. Whatever happened to him would be better than what he'd get for disobeying an order. With a sigh, he asked the Algarvian mage, "What do you need from me, sir?"

If Baiardo noticed his reluctance, he didn't let it show. "Here." He unslung his pack and handed it to Sidroc. "Carry this. Come with me."

He's arrogant enough to make a proper Algarvian, Sidroc thought. The pack might have been stuffed with lead. He carried it and his own pack and his stick and followed Baiardo away from the fire. The mage blithely strode southwest. After a little while, Sidroc said, "Sir, if you keep going, you'll see the Unkerlanters closer than you ever wanted to."

"Their lines are close?" Baiardo sounded as if that hadn't occurred to him.

"You might say so, aye," Sidroc answered dryly. Baiardo clapped his hands again. "Powers above, keep quiet!" Sidroc hissed. "Are you trying to get both of us killed?" As far as he was concerned, Baiardo was welcome to do himself in, but Sidroc resented being included in his suicide.

But the mage shook his head and said, "No. Set down the pack" -an order Sidroc was glad to obey. Baiardo took from the heavy pack a laurel leaf of the sort often used in Forthwegian cookery and a small, dazzlingly bright opal. He wrapped the stone in the leaf and chanted first in Algarvian, then in classical Kaunian. Sidroc stared, for the mage's outline grew hazy, indistinct; at last, Baiardo almost disappeared. "Stay here," he told Sidroc. "Wait for me." Still in that wraithlike state, he started for the Unkerlanters' line.

How long do I wait? Sidroc wondered. Baiardo wasn't fully invisible. If Swemmel's soldiers were alert, they would spot him. If they did, Sidroc was liable to have a very long wait indeed. Muttering a curse under his breath, he started digging a hole. He felt naked on the Unkerlanter plain without one. The dirt he dug up made a breastwork in front of his scrape. It wouldn't protect him if a regiment of Unkerlanters came roaring after Baiardo, but it might keep a sniper from parting his hair with a beam.

He'd just scrambled down into the hole when a voice spoke out of thin air behind him: "We can go back now." He whirled, and there stood Baiardo, as haggard and unkempt as ever, putting the laurel leaf and the opal back into his pack. The mage added, "I got what I came for."

"And you almost got blazed before you could deliver it, whatever it was, you cursed fool," Sidroc said angrily. "Don't you have any sense at all?"

Baiardo gave that serious consideration. "I doubt it," he said at last. "It doesn't always help in my business."

They trudged back toward the fire, Baiardo pleased with himself, Sidroc still a little- maybe more than a little- twitchy. The mage, he noticed, had sense enough not to carry his own pack when he didn't have to. He left that to Sidroc.

"Welcome back," people kept telling Fernao, in Kuusaman and in classical Kaunian. Some of them added, "How well you are moving!"

"Thank you," Fernao said, over and over. The mages and the cooks and maids in the hostel in the Naantali district were just being polite, and he knew it. He would never move well again, not as long as he lived. Maybe he was moving a little better than he had when he went off to Setubal. Maybe. He remained imperfectly convinced.

Ilmarinen helped him put things in perspective. The master mage patted him on the back and said, "Well, after so much time off in that miserable little no-account excuse for a city, you must be glad to come back here, to a place where interesting things are happening."

His classical Kaunian was so fast and colloquial- so much like a living language in his mouth- that at first Fernao thought he meant the Naantali district was the sleepy place and Setubal the one where things happened. When he realized Ilmarinen had said the opposite, he laughed out loud. "You always have that knack for turning things upside down," he told the Kuusaman mage. His own Kaunian remained formal: a language he could use, but not one in which he felt at home.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Ilmarinen answered. "I always speak plain sense. Is it my fault the rest of the world isn't ready to see it most of the time?"

Pekka came into the dining room in time to hear that. "A madman's ravings always seem sensible to him," she remarked, not without affection.

Ilmarinen snorted and waved to a serving woman. "A mug of ale, Linna," he called before turning back to Pekka. "You sound as if sense were sensible in magecraft. A thing has to work. It doesn't have to be sensible."

"Oh, nonsense," Fernao said. "Otherwise, theoretical sorcery would be a dry well."

"A lot of the time, it is," Ilmarinen retorted, reveling in his heresy. "A lot of the time, what we do is figure out after the fact why an experiment that had no business working did work in spite of what we- wrongly- thought we knew." He waved. "If that weren't so, what would we all be doing here?"

Fernao hesitated. Ilmarinen enjoyed tossing eggs into a conversation. But being outrageous wasn't necessarily the same as being wrong.

Pekka, now, wagged a finger under Ilmarinen's nose, as if he were a naughty little boy. "We can also go from pure theory to practical sorcery. If that isn't sense, what is it?"

"Luck," Ilmarinen answered. "And speaking of luck…" Linna came up with the mug of ale. "Here it is now. Thank you, sweetheart." He bowed to the serving girl. He hadn't given up chasing her- or maybe he had while Fernao was away, and then started up again. You never could tell with Ilmarinen.

Linna went off without a backwards glance. Plainly, the next time Ilmarinen caught her would be the first. Whatever else Fernao couldn't tell about the master mage, that was glaringly obvious.

Ilmarinen took a long pull at the ale. "Curse King Mezentio," he ground out. "Curse him and all his clever mages. Now the rest of the world has to deal with the question of how in blazes to beat him without being as vile as he is."

"King Swemmel worries about that not at all," Fernao pointed out, which only prompted Ilmarinen to make a horrible face at him.

"We are still fighting King Mezentio, too, and we have resorted to none of his barbarism," Pekka said primly.

Ilmarinen got down to the bottom of his mug and smacked it down on the table almost hard enough to shatter it. He said, "We've also got the luxury of the Strait of Valmiera between us and the worst Mezentio can do. The Unkerlanters, poor buggers, don't. What'll we do when we've got big armies in the field against Algarve?"

"A good deal of the answer to that depends on whether we succeed here, would you not agree?" Fernao said. Pekka nodded; she agreed, at any rate.

But Ilmarinen, contrary as usual, said, "Suppose we fail here. Sooner or later, we'll still have big armies in the field against the Algarvians. Sure as Mezentio's got a pointy nose, they'll start killing Kaunians to try to stop us. What do we do then?"

That was a large, important question. The only time the Lagoans and Kuusamans had had a large army in the field against Algarve after Mezentio's men unveiled their murderous magic was down in the land of the Ice People. Sure as sure, the Algarvians had tried to turn back their foes by butchering blonds. But the magic had gone wrong, there on the austral continent. It had come down on the Algarvians' heads, not those of their foes. That wouldn't happen on the mainland of Derlavai. Too many massacres had proved as much.

Pekka said, "We cannot match them in murder. That is the best argument I know for mastering them with magecraft."

"Suppose we fail," Ilmarinen repeated. "We'll be fighting Mezentio's men even so. What do we do when they start killing? We had better think about that, you know- I don't mean us here alone, but also the Seven here and King Vitor and his counselors in that small town of yours, Fernao. The day is coming. We've all heard the name Habakkuk- no use pretending we haven't."

"I have heard the name, but I do not know what it means," Fernao said.

"My husband works with Habakkuk, and I do not know what he does," Pekka added. "I do not ask, any more than he asks me what I do."

"You are the soul of virtue." Ilmarinen's voice was sour. "Well, I know, because I have no virtue save perhaps that of thinking backwards and upside down. I will spare your tender virgin ears the details, but I trust I do not shock you when I say Habakkuk isn't intended to make Mezentio sleep easier of nights."

"If Mezentio can sleep at all, after the things he has done, his conscience is made of cast iron," Fernao said, "and doubtless he can, so doubtless it is."

"All right, then." Ilmarinen took his usual pleasure in making himself as difficult as possible. "Thanks to Habakkuk, among other things, we come to grips with Algarve on land. Mezentio's mages kill Kaunians to throw us back. What comes next?"

"There are blocking spells," Fernao said. "If you and Siuntio had not used them then, we probably would not be here to have this discussion."

"Aye, they helped- some," Ilmarinen answered. "How would you like to be a foolish young man, more balls than brains, trying to kill other foolish young men in a different uniform, with your mages helping you with a spell that leaks as much as it shields? Before very long, wouldn't you sooner take after them than after the enemy soldiers? I would, and I wouldn't take long to get there, either."

"Master Ilmarinen, you have just shown why we so badly have to succeed," Pekka said.

"No." The master mage shook his head. "I've shown why we so badly need to succeed. But have to?" He shook his head again. "Life does not come with a guarantee, except that it will end. What I tried to show you was that we'd better find some answers somewhere else in case we don't find them here. But you don't want to listen to that. And so…" He got to his feet, gave Fernao and Pekka nicely matched mocking bows, and departed.

"I am always so grateful for such encouragement," Pekka said.

"As am I," Fernao agreed. He made as if to rise and follow Ilmarinen. "And now, if you will excuse me, I think I shall go back to my room and slit my wrists."

Pekka stared at him, then laughed when she realized he was joking. "Be careful with what you say," she warned. "I took you seriously for a moment."

"He asks interesting questions, does he not?" Fernao said. "If he were as interested in answering them as he is in asking them…" He shrugged. "If that were so, he would not be Ilmarinen."

"No- he would come closer to being Siuntio," Pekka said. "And Siuntio is the mage we need most right now. Every day without him proves that." Her hands folded into fists. "Powers below eat the Algarvians. Curse their magic."

Fernao nodded. But the question Ilmarinen had posed kept rattling around in his mind, whether he wanted it to or not. "If we fail here, how do our kingdoms beat the Algarvians without sinking into the swamp that has already taken them?"

"I do not know," Pekka said. "If we do sink down into the swamp with the Algarvians, does it matter in the end whether we win or lose?"

"To us, aye, it matters." Fernao held up a hand to show he hadn't finished and to keep Pekka from arguing. "To the world, it probably does not."

Pekka pondered that, then slowly nodded. "If Algarve beats Unkerlant, we have Mezentio's minions eyeing us from across the Strait of Valmiera. And if Unkerlant beats Algarve, we have Swemmel's minions eyeing us instead. But the one set would not be much different from the other, would it?"

"The Algarvians would tell you more about the differences than you would ever want to hear," Fernao answered. "So would the Unkerlanters. My opinion is that they would not matter much."

"I think you are right," Pekka said. "You see through the show to the essential. That is what makes you a good mage."

"Thank you," Fernao said. "Praise from the praiseworthy is praise indeed." That was a proverb in classical Kaunian. He brought it out as if he'd thought of it on the spur of the moment.

Kuusamans were swarthy; he couldn't be sure whether Pekka blushed. But, by the way she murmured, "You do me too much honor," he judged he'd succeeded in embarrassing her. He didn't mind. He wanted her to know he thought well of her. Even more, he wanted her to think well of him. He wished he could come right out and say that. He knew he would ruin everything if he did.

He sighed, both because of that and for other reasons. "One way or another," he said, "the world will not be the same after this war ends."

Pekka thought about that, then shook her head. "No. One way and another, the world will not be the same after this war ends. We are changing too many things ever to be the same again."

"True enough," Fernao said. "Too true, if anything." He waved in the direction of the blockhouse. "If all goes well, we help set the tone of the changes. That is no small privilege."

"That is no small responsibility." Pekka sighed. "I wish it were not on my shoulders. But what we wish for and what we get are not always the same. I know that I can deal with the world the way it is, no matter how much I wish it were otherwise."

Fernao inclined his head to her. "We are lucky to have such a leader." Part of that was flattery. A larger part was anything but.

"If we were lucky, we would still have Siuntio," Pekka answered. "Whenever we run into trouble, I ask myself how he might fix it. I hope I am right more often than I am wrong."

"You could do worse," Fernao said.

"I know," Pekka said bleakly. "And, one of these days, I probably will." Try as he would, Fernao found no flattering answer for that.

When Istvan looked up at the night sky from the island of Becsehely, he had no trouble seeing the stars. The didn't glitter so brilliantly as they did in the clear, cold air of his own mountain valley, but they were there, from horizon to horizon. "It almost seems strange," he remarked to Szonyi. "After so long in the accursed woods of western Unkerlant, I'd got used to seeing a star here, a star there, but most of them blotted out by branches overhead."

"Aye." Szonyi's fingers writhed in a sign to avert evil. "Me, too. No wonder I felt forsaken by the stars while I was there."

"No wonder at all." Some of Istvan's shiver had to do with the night air, which was moist and chilly. More sprang from dread and loathing of the forest he and his companions had finally escaped. "There are places in those woods that no star saw for years at a time."

"Can't say that here." Szonyi's waved encompassed all of Becsehely- not that there was a whole lot to encompass. "It's not much like Obuda, is it? Before we got to this place, I always thought, well, an island is an island, you know what I mean? But it doesn't look like it works that way."

The gold frame to Captain Kun's spectacles glittered in the firelight as he turned his head toward Szonyi. "After you had one woman," he asked, "did you think all women were the same, too?"

He probably wanted to anger Szonyi. But the big trooper just laughed and said, "After my first one? Aye, of course I did. I found out different pretty fast. Now I'm finding out different about islands, too."

"He's got you there, Kun," Istvan said with a laugh.

"I suppose so- if you're daft enough to assume one island is like another to begin with," Kun answered.

"Enough." Istvan put a sergeant's snap in his voice. "Let's hope this island won't be anything like Obuda. Let's hope- and let's make sure- we don't lose it to the stinking Kuusamans, the way we lost Obuda."

He peered west through the darkness, as if expecting to spot a fleet of Kuusaman ley-line cruisers and patrol boats and transports and dragon haulers bearing down on Becsehely. Gyongyos had lost a good many islands besides Obuda to Kuusamo this past year; Ekrekek Arpad had vowed to the stars that the warrior race would lose no more.

I am the instrument of Arpad's vow, Istvan thought. An instrument of his vow, anyway. In the forests of Unkerlant, he'd often feared that the Ekrekek had joined the stars in forsaking him. Here, by contrast, he felt as if he were serving under his sovereign's eye.

After a while, he wrapped himself in a blanket and slept. When he woke, he wondered if Ekrekek Arpad had blinked: a thick fog covered Becsehely. All the Kuusaman ships in the world could have sailed past half a mile offshore, and he never would have known it. More fog streamed from his nose and mouth every time he exhaled. When he inhaled, he could taste the sea almost as readily as if he were a fish swimming in it.

Not far away, a bell began ringing. Istvan's stomach rumbled. "Follow your ears, boys," he told the troopers in his squad. "Try not to break your necks before you get there."

His boots scrunched on gravel and squelched through mud as he made his own way toward the bell. The fog muffled his footsteps. It muffled the bell, too, and the endless slap of the sea on the beach perhaps a quarter of a mile away. Becsehely was low and flat. Had it not lain along a ley line, it wouldn't have been worth visiting at all- but then, as far as Istvan was concerned, the same held true for every island in the Bothnian Ocean.

There was the cookfire- and there was a queue of men with mess kits. Istvan took his place in it. The man in front of him turned and said, "Good morning, Sergeant."

"Oh!" Istvan said. "Good morning, Captain Frigyes. I'm sorry, sir- a man wouldn't know his own mother in this fog."

"Can't argue with you there," his company commander replied. "You'd almost think the Kuusamans magicked it up on purpose."

"Sir?" Istvan said in some alarm. "You don't suppose-?"

Frigyes shook his head. "No, I don't suppose that. Our mages would be screaming their heads off were it so. They aren't. That means it isn't."

Istvan considered. "Aye. That makes sense." He peered out into the fog with new suspicion just the same.

A bored-looking cook filled his mess tin with a stew of millet and lentils and bits of fish. He ate methodically, then went down to the beach and washed the tin in the ocean. Becsehely boasted only a handful of springs; fresh water was too precious to waste on washing.

Toward mid-morning, the fog lifted. The sky remained gray. So did the sea. Becsehely seemed gray, too. Most of the gravel was that color, and the grass and bushes, fading in the fall, were more yellowish gray than green.

An observation tower stood on the high ground- such as it was- at the center of the island. Sentries with spyglasses swept the horizon, not that they would have done much good in the swaddling fog. But dowsers and other mages stood by to warn against trouble then. Istvan hoped whatever warning they might give would be enough.

A dragon flapped into the air from the farm beyond the tower. Istvan expected it to vanish into the clouds, but it didn't. It flew in a wide spiral below them: one more sentry, to spy out the Kuusamans before they drew too close to Becsehely. Sentries were all very well, but…

Istvan turned to Captain Frigyes and said, "I wish we had more dragons on this stars-forsaken island, sir."

"Well, Sergeant, so do I, when you get right down to it," Frigyes answered. "But Becsehely doesn't have enough growing on it to support much in the way of cattle or pigs or even" -he made a revolted face- "goats. That means we have to ship in meat for the dragons, same as we have to bring in food for us. We can only afford so many of the miserable beasts."

"Miserable is right." Istvan remembered unpleasant days on Obuda, mucking out dragon farms. With a frown, he went on, "The stinking Kuusamans bring whole shiploads of dragons with 'em wherever they go."

"I know that. We all know that- much too well, in fact," Frigyes said. "It's one of the reasons they've given us so much trouble in the islands. We'll be able to do it ourselves before too long."

"That'd be about time, sir," Istvan said. We'll be able to do it before too long was a phrase that had got a lot of Gyongyosian soldiers killed before their time.

"We are a warrior race," Frigyes said, disapproval strong in his voice. "We shall prevail."

"Aye, sir," Istvan answered. He couldn't very well say anything else, not without denying Gyongyos' heritage. But he'd seen over and over again, on Obuda and in the woods of western Unkerlant, that warrior virtues, however admirable, could be overcome by sound strategy or strong sorcery.

Despite the tower, despite the dragons, despite the dowsers, no one on Becsehely spied the approaching Kuusaman flotilla till it launched its dragons at the island. Mist and rain clung to Becsehely, thwarting the men with the spyglass, thwarting the dragonfliers, and even thwarting the dowsers, who had to try to detect the motion of ships through the motions of millions of falling raindrops. Dowsers had techniques for noting one kind of motion while screening out others; maybe the Kuusamans had techniques for making ships seem more like rain.

Whatever the explanation, the first thing the garrison knew of the flotilla was eggs falling out of the sky and bursting all over the island. The observation tower went down in ruin when a lucky hit smashed its supports. More eggs burst near the dragon farm, but the dragonfliers got at least some of their beasts into the air to challenge the Kuusamans.

Frigyes' whistle wailed through the din. "To the beach!" he yelled. "Stand by to repel invaders!"

"Come on, you lugs!" Istvan shouted to his squad. "If they don't make it ashore, they can't hurt us, right?"

More eggs burst close by, making all the Gyongyosians dive for holes in the ground. As dirt pattered down on them, Szonyi said, "Who says they can't?"

"Come on!" Istvan repeated, and they were up and running again. He and Kun- and Szonyi, too- had spent a lot of time harping on how important it was to keep the Kuusamans from landing. He knew a certain amount of pride that the rest of the squad took them seriously. Everybody loved the stars, but no one wanted them to take and cherish his spirit right then.

The Kuusaman dragons had already given the trenches by the beach a pretty good pounding. Istvan wasn't fussy- any hole in the ground, whether a proper trench or the crater left by a bursting egg, would do fine. He jumped down into one, then peered out again, wondering how close the invasion fleet was, and what sort of defending vessels Gyongyos had in these waters. He remembered only too well how the Kuusamans had fought their way onto the beaches of Obuda.

He spied no enemy ships gliding along the ley line toward Becsehely, no landing boats leaving larger ships and approaching the island on a broad front propelled by sails or oars. Corporal Kun saw- or rather, didn't see- the same thing, and spoke with some relief: "Just a raid from their dragon haulers."

"Aye." Istvan sounded relieved, too. The dragons might kill him, but without landing boats in the water there wasn't the certainty of a life-and-death struggle for the island. Sooner or later, the accursed beasts would fly back to the ships that had brought them, and the raid would end.

"Demon of a lot of dragons overhead for just a raid," Kun said.

That was also true. Istvan shrugged. "They must have brought more of those ships along than usual. Aren't we lucky?"

And then they were lucky, for one of the heavy sticks mounted on Becsehely blazed a Kuusaman dragon out of the sky. It fell into the sea just offshore and thrashed out its death agony there. Painted pale blue and light green, it might almost have been a sea creature itself. If its dragonflier hadn't been dead when it smashed down, its writhings would surely have crushed him.

Eventually, a soldier managed to blaze the dragon through one of its great, glaring eyes. It shuddered and lay still. A moment later, another dragon plunged into the sea, and then one onto the stony soil of the island behind Istvan. He shook his fist in triumph. "By the stars, nothing's going to come cheap for the stinking Kuusamans here."

The foe must have decided the same thing, for the dragons flew off toward the west. Only later did Istvan pause to wonder whether Becsehely was worth having for anybody at all.

Talsu walked through the streets of Skrunda thinking about spells of undoing. There had to be a way to get more out of them than he'd yet seen. He was convinced of that. But he wasn't yet sure what it might be.

A news-sheet vendor waved a leaf of paper at him. "Gyongyos crushes Kuusaman air pirates!" the fellow called. "Read the whole exciting story!"

Instead of answering, Talsu just kept walking. If he'd said no, the vendor would have done his best to turn it into an argument, hoping to entice him to buy the news sheet that way. But silence gave the fellow nothing to grip. He glared at Talsu. Talsu ignored that, too.

As soon as he turned a corner, though, he cursed under his breath. The vendor had made him fall away from the ley line his thought had been following. Whatever the answer he'd sought, he wouldn't find it right away.

FINE SILVERSMITHING BY KUGU, a shopfront sign said, and then below, in smaller letters, JEWELRY MADE AND REPAIRED. CUSTOM FLATWARE. POTS amp; BOWLS OUR SPECIALTY. The shop was closed.

"Pest-holes and betrayals, our specialty," Talsu muttered under his breath. He wanted to let his face show exactly what he thought of the silversmith. But he couldn't even do that, because he was meeting Kugu for supper at an eatery that should be… He brightened. "There it is." He'd walked past the Dragon Inn any number of times. He'd never gone inside, not till now. It came as close to being a fine eatery as any place Skrunda boasted.

His nostrils twitched at the smell of roasting meat as he opened the door. He didn't suppose the inn cooked with a real dragon: stoves and grills surely gave better- to say nothing of safer- results. But food and flame did come together here. His belly rumbled. He didn't eat much meat back home.

As if by sorcery, a waiter appeared at his elbow. "May I help you, sir?" The tone was polite but wary. He got the feeling he'd be out on the street in a hurry if the fellow didn't like his answer.

But the waiter relaxed when he said, "I'm dining with Master Kugu."

"Ah. Of course. Come with me, then, if you'd be so kind. The gentleman is waiting for you." The waiter led him to a booth in the back where Kugu did indeed sit waiting. With a bow, the fellow said, "Enjoy your meal, sir," and vanished as suddenly as he'd appeared.

Kugu rose and clasped Talsu's hand. "Good of you to join me," he murmured. "Let me pour you some wine." He did, then raised his goblet in salute. "Your very good health."

"Thanks. And yours." With straight-faced hypocrisy, Talsu drank. His eyebrows rose. He didn't get to enjoy wine like this at home: a full-bodied vintage, with just a touch of lime to give it the tartness Jelgavans craved. He thought he could get tiddly on the bouquet alone.

"Order whatever suits your fancy: it's my pleasure," Kugu said. "The leg of mutton is very fine, if you care for it. They don't stint the garlic."

"That sounds good," Talsu agreed, and he did choose it when the waiter came back with an inquiring look on his face. So did Kugu. Talsu had all he could do not to gape like a fool when his supper arrived. Aye, that much meat could have fed his father and mother and sister and wife- and him to boot- for a couple of days, or so he thought. It was tender as lamb but far more flavorful; it seemed to melt off the bone. In an amazingly short time, nothing but that bone remained on the plate.

"I trust that met with your approval?" Kugu asked as the waiter carried the plate away. The silversmith had also demolished his supper. Talsu nodded; he was too full to speak. But he discovered he still had room for the brandied cherries the man brought back. They were potent. After only three or four, his eyes started to cross. Kugu ate them, too, but they didn't look to bother him. He said, "Shall we get down to business?"

"Aye. We might as well," Talsu agreed. He would have agreed to anything about then, regardless of how he felt about the silversmith.

Kugu's smile reached his mouth but not his eyes. "You alarmed the occupying authorities, you know."

"How could I have done that?" Talsu asked. "Powers above, I was in a dungeon. I was about as alarming as a mouse in a trap."

"Mice don't write denunciations," Kugu said patiently, as if he'd had nothing to do with Talsu's ending up in a dungeon. "You named people the Algarvians thought were safe. They did some checking and found out that some of those people weren't so safe after all. Do you wonder that they started worrying?"

Talsu shrugged. "If I'd told them a pack of lies, I'd still be in that miserable place." And I remember who put me there. Aye, I remember.

"I understand that," the silversmith said, more patiently still. "But when they found out they'd trusted some of the wrong people, they started checking everybody they'd trusted. They even checked me, if you can imagine."

Talsu didn't trust himself to say anything to that. Any reply he gave would have sounded sardonic, and he didn't dare make Kugu any more suspicious than he was already. He sat there and waited.

Kugu nodded, as if acknowledging a clever ploy. He went on, "And so, you see, we have to show we can work together. Then the Algarvians will know they can trust both of us. That's something they need to know. There's a lot of treason in this kingdom."

He spoke very earnestly, as if he meant treason against Jelgava rather than treason against her occupiers. Maybe he confused the two. Maybe Talsu had come closer to getting him in serious trouble than he'd thought possible, too. He hoped so. He wanted Kugu in serious trouble, however it happened. He wasn't the least bit fussy about that. "What have you got in mind?" he asked.

Kugu returned a question for a question: "Do you know Zverinu the banker?"

"I know of him. Who doesn't?" Talsu answered. He didn't point out how unlikely it was for a tailor's son to have made the acquaintance of probably the richest man in Skrunda.

"That will do," Kugu said. Maybe he really did know Zverinu. Talsu had seen that he knew some surprising people. For now, he went on, "If we both denounce him, a few days apart, the Algarvians are bound to haul him in. That will make us look good in their eyes. It'll make us look busy, if you know what I mean?"

"Has he done anything that needs denouncing?" Talsu asked. If Kugu said aye, he would find some excuse not to do anything of the sort.

But the silversmith only shrugged, as Talsu had a while before. "Who knows? By the time the Algarvians are done digging, though, they'll find something. You can bet on that."

Talsu abruptly wondered if he'd be sick all over the table in front of him. This was fouler than anything he'd imagined. It felt like wading in sewage. Worse still was being unable to show what he thought. He spoke carefully: "The Algarvians are liable to know I don't know anything about Zverinu."

"Not if you phrase the denunciation the right way." Kugu taught treason with the same methodical thoroughness he gave classical Kaunian. "You can say you heard him on the street, or in the market square, or any place where you could both plausibly be. You can even say you had to ask somebody who he was. That's a nice touch, in fact. It makes things feel real."

"I'll see what I can come up with." Talsu gulped the fine wine Kugu was buying. That first denunciation had got him out of the dungeon, but it hadn't got him out of trouble. If anything, it had got him in deeper.

"All right." Kugu emptied his own goblet. "Don't take too long, though. They're keeping an eye on both of us. It's a hard, cold world, and a man has to get along as best he can."

A man has to get along as best he can. Talsu had lived by that rule in the army. The idea of living by it to the extent of turning against his own kingdom filled him with loathing. But all he said was, "Aye." Here he was, getting along with Kugu as best he could till he found some way to pay back the silversmith.

Kugu set coins on the table, some with King Donalitu's image, more with that of King Mainardo, the younger brother of King Mezentio. If nothing else, Talsu had made him spend a good deal of his, or perhaps Algarve's, money. That wasn't so bad, but it wasn't enough, not nearly.

In the cool evening twilight outside the eatery, Kugu asked, "Do you want to lead off with your denunciation, or shall I go first?"

"You go ahead," Talsu answered. "Yours will be better than mine; it's bound to be. So mine can add on to what you've already said." The longer he delayed, the more time he had to come up with something to undo Kugu.

But the silversmith took Talsu's flattery, if that was what it was, as no more than his due. Nodding, he said, "I give my language lessons tomorrow. I'll work on mine over the next couple of days after that and turn it in. That gives you plenty of time to get something ready."

"All right," Talsu said, though it wasn't. "I'd better get back before curfew catches me."

"Before long, you won't need to worry about that," Kugu said. "People will know who you are." Confident as if he were a redhead, he strode away.

So did Talsu, less confidently. He was thinking furiously as he went back to his father's tailor's shop and his room above it. He kept right on thinking furiously all the next day. He was thinking so hard, he wasn't worth much at work. Traku scolded him: "How many times are you going to use the undo spell, son? The idea is to get it right the first time, not to see how many different kinds of mistake you can fix."

"I'm sorry." Talsu didn't like lying to his father, but he didn't know what else to do. He wanted to see just how many things he could undo, and in how many ways.

His father and his mother and his sister and Gailisa all squawked at him when he went out that night, but he did a good job of pretending to be deaf. He also did a good job of evading patrols as he made his way to Kugu's house. Skrunda was his town. In the mandatory darkness of night, he knew how to disappear.

He didn't knock on Kugu's door. He waited across the street, hidden in a deeper shadow. Several language students went in. They didn't see him, any more than the Algarvian constables had. He lurked there till he was sure Kugu would be immersed in his classical Kaunian lesson and then, very quietly, he began to chant.

Odds are, I'm wasting my time, he thought. Undoing spells were funny business. Could he make what worked with cloth work on a man, too? He'd twiddled up a spell as best he knew how, but he knew he didn't know much. Could he really undo Kugu's mask of virtue and patriotism and make him reveal himself to the men he taught for what he really was? Even if he could, would he ever know he'd done it? Might he have to write his denunciation even if he succeeded?

He hadn't known if he would get answers to any of those questions, but he got answers to all of them, and in short order, too. Without warning, furious shouts and screams from inside Kugu's house shattered the stillness of the night. Crashes and thuds followed immediately thereafter. The front door flew open. The silversmith's students fled into the night.

Talsu slipped away, too, still unseen. He wondered how by word or deed he'd made Kugu betray himself. He would never know, and it didn't matter, but he still wondered. When he got back home, he found his whole family waiting anxiously for him. He grinned, greeted them with two words- "He's undone" -and laughed loud and long.

The crystallomancer nodded to Rathar. "Go ahead, lord Marshal. His Majesty awaits you."

"So I see," Rathar said: King Swemmel's pale, long-faced image peered out of the crystal at him. He took a deep breath and went on, "Your Majesty, as I greet you I stand on the soil of the Duchy of Grelz."

"Ah." The king's eyes glittered. "We are pleased to hear that, Marshal. Aye, we are very pleased indeed."

Rathar bowed. "So I hoped. And the Algarvians continue to fall back before us."

He might as well not have spoken, for the king talked right through him: "We would have been better pleased still, though, had Grelz never fallen to the invader in the first place."

"So would I, your Majesty." That was true, even if Rathar knew how lucky Unkerlant was to have survived the first dreadful year of fighting against the redheads. "Your armies are doing their best to make amends."

"Aye." The king sounded as if that best were not nearly good enough. But then he brightened. "Inside Grelz," he murmured, at least half to himself. "The time comes for a great burning and boiling and flaying of traitors."

"As you say, your Majesty." Rathar knew there were traitors aplenty in Grelz. His men had already run up against Grelzer soldiers: men of good Unkerlanter blood wearing dark green tunics and fighting for Raniero, the Algarvian puppet king. Some of those companies and battalions broke and fled when the first eggs burst near them. Some fought his men harder and with more grim determination than any Algarvians. That was what Swemmel's reign had sown, and what it now reaped.

If Swemmel himself realized as much, he gave no sign of it. "Carry on, then, Marshal," he said. "Purify the land. Purify it with fire and water and sweet-edged steel." Before Rathar could answer, the king's image disappeared. The crystal flared and then became nothing but an inert globe of glass.

"Do you require any other connections, lord Marshal?" the crystallomancer asked.

"What?" Rathar said absently. Then he shook his head. "No. Not right now."

He took his umbrella and left the ruined house where the crystallomancer had set up shop. Rain thrummed on the umbrella's canvas when he stepped outside. His boots squelched in mud. Two years before, the fall rains and mud had slowed Mezentio's men on their drive toward Cottbus. Now they slowed the Unkerlanters in their assault on the invaders. Rain and mud were impartial. Curse them, Rathar thought, squelching again.

Every house in this village was wrecked, to a greater or lesser degree. The Algarvians had fought hard to hold the place before sullenly, stubbornly withdrawing. Curse them, too, Rathar thought. Nothing in this summer's drive toward the east had been easy. The redheads never had enough men or behemoths or dragons to halt his men for long, but they always knew what to do with the ones they had. Despite the rain, the stench of death was strong here.

Eggs burst, somewhere not far away. No, the redheads hadn't given up, nor the Grelzers they led, either. If they could stop the Unkerlanters, they would. And if they couldn't, they would make King Swemmel's soldiers pay the highest possible price for going forward. He'd seen that, too.

"Urra!" a peasant shouted as Rathar walked down the street toward what had probably been the firstman's house. Rathar nodded at him and went on. The peasant was gray-haired and limped. Maybe he'd been wounded in the Six Years' War. That might keep Swemmel's impressers from hauling him into the army once the front moved a little farther east. The younger, haler men in the village, though, those of them that were left, would probably be wearing rock-gray and carrying sticks before long.

Those of them that were left. A sour expression on his face, Rathar surveyed the village. Aye, it had been fought over. But he'd been through plenty of other villages that had been fought over. Once the fighting was over, the peasants came back from wherever they'd been hiding and got on with their lives. Here in Grelz, a lot of them didn't. A lot of them fled east with the retreating Algarvians. He'd seen some of that before, in lands to the south and west. He'd never seen it to the degree he was seeing it here, however.

How bad would it be if the Algarvians had set up a local noble as king, and not King Mezentio's first cousin? he wondered. No way to know, of course, but he suspected it would have been a good deal worse. As things were, a lot of Grelzers still remained loyal to the throne of Unkerlant. Had they had one of their own set above them, not some foreign overlord…

Algarvians were arrogant. It was their worst failing. They hadn't thought they would need to worry about how the Grelzers felt. And so Raniero got to wear a fancy crown and call himself king- and plenty of men who might have put up with a Grelzer puppet went into the woods and fought for Swemmel.

Rathar stomped on over to the firstman's house, scraping mud from his boots off against the doorsill. General Vatran looked up from a mug of tea- fortified tea, for Rathar's nose caught the tang of spirits. "Well?" Vatran asked. "I trust his Majesty was pleased to learn where we are?"

"Aye, so he was," Rathar agreed. "Much easier to explain advances than retreats, by the powers above."

"I believe it." Vatran lifted his mug in salute. "May we have many more advances to explain, then."

"That would be very fine." Rathar raised his voice a little: "Ysolt, can I get a mug of tea, too? And a good slug of whatever Vatran poured into it?"

"Coming up, lord Marshal." The headquarters cook had been plucking a chicken. Now she went over to the brass kettle hanging above the fire and poured tea for Rathar. As she brought it to him, she went on, "You'll have to pry the brandy out of the general. That's his, not ours." She went back to the bird, rolling her formidable haunches as she walked.

Rathar held out the mug to Vatran. "How about it, General?"

Vatran undid the flask he wore on his belt. "Here you go, lord Marshal. If this doesn't make your eyes open wide, you're dead."

Rathar undid the stopper, sniffed, and then coughed. "That's strong, all right." He poured some into the tea and handed the flask back to General Vatran. With caution exaggerated enough to make Vatran laugh, he raised the mug to his lips. "Ahh!" he said. "Well, you're right. That's the straight goods."

"You bet it is. It'll put hair on your chest." Vatran pulled open the neck of his tunic and peered down at himself. "Works for me, anyway." Rathar knew Vatran had a thick thatch of white hair there. Most Unkerlanter men were pretty hairy. Of course, most Unkerlanter men drank a good deal, too. Maybe the one had something to do with the other.

Vatran said, "All right, now that we're inside Grelz, what does the king want us to do next?"

"Purify the land," he said," Rathar answered, and took another sip of tea. He coughed again. "Pouring these spirits over it ought to do the trick there." While Vatran laughed once more, the marshal went on, "Past that, he didn't give any detailed orders."

"Good," Vatran murmured- but only after glancing around to make sure Ysolt was out of earshot. Rathar nodded. He hated nothing worse than Swemmel's trying to direct the campaign from Cottbus. The king often couldn't resist sticking his oar in, but he usually made things worse, not better. In more normal tones, Vatran asked, "What have you got in mind, then?"

"I want to strike for Herborn," Rathar said.

That made Vatran's bushy white eyebrows fly up toward his hairline. Rathar had been sure it would, which was one of the reasons he hadn't mentioned it till now. "During the fall mud-time, lord Marshal?" Vatran said. "Do you really think we've got a chance of bringing it off?"

"I do, by the powers above," Rathar answered, "and one of the reasons I do is that the Algarvians won't think we'd dare try. We're better in the mud, the same as we're better in the snow. We have to be. We deal with them every year. If we can crack the crust and get a couple of columns moving fast, we can cut off a lot of redheads."

"That's the game they like to play against us," Vatran said.

"It's a good game," Rathar said. "And I'll tell you something else, too: it's a lot more fun when you're on the giving end than when you've got to take it."

"That's the truth!" Vatran boomed. "Getting our own back feels pretty cursed good; bugger me if it doesn't. But speaking of buggers, what about the Grelzers? They're flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone. They know what to do in mud and snow, even if Mezentio's men don't."

Rathar cursed. "You're right," he said reluctantly. "But I still think we can do it. From everything we've seen, the Grelzers are just footsoldiers. They're light on horses and unicorns, they haven't got any behemoths the scouts have seen, and they haven't got much in the way of egg-tossers. The redheads have been using 'em to hold down the countryside, not to do any real fighting. Send General Gurmun through 'em with a column of behemoths and they'll shatter like glass."

"Here's hoping." Vatran rubbed his chin, considering. "It could be, I suppose. You're really going to try it?"

"Aye, I'm really going to try it. Even if it doesn't go the way we hope it will, the Algarvians can't knock us back very far." Rathar cocked his head to one side in some astonishment, listening to what he'd just said.

Vatran's face bore a bemused look, too. "You know, I think you may be right," he said. "That's what the cursed redheads were saying about us a couple of years ago."

"I know," Rathar said. "They turned out to be wrong. We have to keep hammering them. That's the best hope we've got of turning out to be right." He nodded to himself. "Sure enough: I'm going for Herborn."

"Command me, then, lord Marshal," Vatran said. "If you've got the stomach for pushing forward even through mud, I'll help you ram the knife home."

"Good," Rathar told him. "I'll need all the help I can-" He broke off and turned toward the front door, through which a panting young lieutenant of crystallomancers had just come. "Hello! What's this about?"

"Lord Marshal." The young officer saluted. "We're getting reports from the front that the Algarvians have started pulling some of their units out of the line and taking them back to the east."

"What?" Rathar exclaimed. "Why in blazes are they doing that? Have they forgotten they're still fighting us?"

"I don't know why, sir," the crystallomancer said. "I just know what's reported to me."

"Well, whatever the reason-" Rathar smacked his fist into the palm of his other hand. "Whatever the reason, we'll make 'em pay for it."