Through the Darkness

Thirteen

Skarnu enjoyed going into Pavilosta with Merkela. In his days in Priekule, he’d scorned such little market towns like any city sophisticate. Had he stayed in Priekule, he was sure he would have gone right on scorning them. After some weeks on a farm out in the countryside, though, Pavilosta’s few bright lights-taverns, shops, gossip in the market square-seemed to shine all the brighter.

To Merkela, Pavilosta was the big city, or as much of it as she’d ever known. “Look-the ironmonger’s has some new tools in the front window,” she said. She was familiar enough with what he usually displayed to recognize the additions at once.

Since Skarnu wasn’t, he just nodded to show he’d heard. A couple of doors past the ironmonger’s was a cordwainer’s, but no new boots stood in his window. Nothing at all stood in his window, in fact. But three words had been whitewashed across it, with savage strokes of the brush: NIGHT AND FOG.

“Oh, a pox,” Skarnu said softly.

“Aye, curse the Algarvians for taking him off and-” Merkela paused. She glanced over to Skarnu. “It’s worse than that, isn’t it?”

He nodded. “He was one of us, all right. If they made him disappear, that’s one thing. If they squeezed him first, that’s something else-something worse.”

“Will they come after us next, do you think?” Merkela asked.

“I don’t know,” Skarnu answered. “I can’t know. But we’d better be ready to disappear or fight before long.” He’d been striking blows at the Algarvian occupiers for a couple of years, ever since he’d sneaked through their lines instead of surrendering. But they could strike back, too. The day he forgot that would be the day of his ruination.

“I want to fight,” Merkela said, ferocity filling her voice.

“I want to fight, too-if we have some chance of winning,” Skarnu said. “If they land on us in the middle of the night, though, and paint NIGHT AND FOG on the front door-that’s not fighting. We wouldn’t have a chance.”

Merkela walked along for a while, kicking at the slates of the sidewalk. She muttered a curse under her breath. Skarnu muttered one even more quietly under his. When she got into one of these moods, sometimes he had everything he could do to keep her from trying to murder the first Algarvian soldier she saw. He understood why, but knew she needed the restraint if she wanted to go on fighting the redheads.

But then, to his surprise-indeed, to his astonishment-she spoke in much milder tones than she’d used before: “You’re right, of course.”

Skarnu gaped. He wanted to dig a finger into one ear to make sure he’d heard correctly. “Are you feeling well?” he asked. At first, he meant it for a joke, but after a moment he realized she hadn’t quite been herself lately.

She walked on for another few paces, head down, hands in her trouser pockets. “I hadn’t meant to tell you so soon,” she said, still looking at the sidewalk and not at him, “but I think I’d better.”

“Tell me what?” Skarnu asked.

Now she did lift her head and face him. He had trouble reading her smile. Was she pleased? Rueful? Something of each, perhaps? And then all his thoughtful analysis crashed to the ground, because she answered, “I’m going to have a baby. Not much doubt of it now.”

“A baby?” Skarnu wondered what his own face was showing. Astonishment again, most likely, which was foolish-they’d been lovers a good while. He did his best to rally. “That’s-wonderful, sweetheart.” After a moment, he nodded; saying it helped make him believe it.

And Merkela nodded, too. “It is, isn’t it? For me especially, I mean-when I didn’t quicken with Gedominu, I wondered if I was barren. When I didn’t quicken with you, I thought I must be. But I was wrong.” Now nothing but joy blazed from her smile.

Gedominu had been an old man. If anyone was to blame for Merkela’s not getting pregnant, Skarnu would have bet on him, not her. As for himself. . He shrugged. He’d never fathered a bastard before, but who could say what that meant about his own seed? Nothing, evidently, or Merkela wouldn’t be with child now.

He also wondered if he should let the child stay a bastard. In the normal course of events, he never would have met Merkela; if he had met her and bedded her, it would have been a night’s amusement, nothing more. Now… Thanks to the war, nothing was what it had been. Who would call him a madman if he took a farmer’s widow to wife?

Krasta would. That occurred to him almost at once. He shrugged again. Once upon a time, he would have cared what his sister thought. No more. Having let an Algarvian lie in her bed, Krasta could hardly complain about whose bed he lay in.

He took Merkela’s hand. “Everything will be fine,” he said. “I promise.” He didn’t know how he would keep that promise, but he’d find some way.

And Merkela nodded. “I know it,” she told him. “And. . the child will grow up free. By the powers above, it will.” Skarnu nodded, too, though he wasn’t sure how that vow would come true, either.

Holding hands, they walked into the market square. Farmers displayed eggs and cheeses and hams and preserved fruit and gherkins and any number of other good things. The eye Skarnu and Merkela turned on those was more competitive than acquisitive. Their own farm-which seemed much more real to Skarnu than the mansion he hadn’t seen for so long-supplied all they needed along those lines, and they sometimes sold their surplus here in the square, too.

But Pavilosta’s cloth merchant and potter-aye, and the ironmonger, too-had stalls of their own in the market square. Merkela admired some fine green linen, though she didn’t admire the price the cloth merchant wanted for the bolt. “You might get that from a marchioness,” she said, “but how many noblewomen will you see here?”

“If I sell it for less than what I paid for it, I won’t do myself any good,” the merchant said.

“You won’t do yourself any good if you don’t sell it at all, either,” Merkela retorted. “I think the moths will get fat on it before you move it.” Off she went, nose in the air as if she were a marchioness herself-indeed, Krasta could hardly have done it better. Skarnu followed in her wake.

Pavilosta’s townsfolk sneered at the goods the farmers had brought to market. The farmers who’d come to shop and not to sell disparaged everything the local merchants displayed. Some of them were much louder and ruder than Merkela.

Algarvians prowled through the square, too: more of them than Skarnu was used to seeing in Pavilosta. Put together with the cordwainer’s disappearance, that worried him. Weren’t the redheads supposed to be throwing everything they had into the fight in Unkerlant? If tliey were, why bring so many soldiers to a little country town where nothing ever happened?

But Pavilosta wasn’t quite a little country town where nothing ever happened. Count Enkuru, who’d been hand in glove with Mezentio’s men, had been assassinated here. A riot had broken out at the accession of his son Simanu, another noble who’d been too cozy with the Algarvians. And Simanu was dead, too; Skarnu had blazed him. So maybe the redheads had their reasons after all.

One of their officers practically paraded through the square, his uniform kilt flapping around his legs as he hurried this way and that. Merkela noticed him, too. “He’s trouble,” she whispered to Skarnu.

“Any time a colonel starts poking his nose into things, he’s always trouble,” Skarnu whispered back. An overage lieutenant headed up the little garrison in Pavilosta; he trotted along after the graying colonel, hands waving as he explained this or that.

Whatever he was saying, he failed to impress the senior Algarvian officer. At one point, the colonel said something that had to be downright cruel, for the lieutenant recoiled as if a beam had wounded him. Striking a dramatic pose, he cried, “Do please be reasonable, Colonel Lurcanio!”

Whatever the colonel answered, the lieutenant got no satisfaction from it. Whatever it was, Skarnu couldn’t hear it. He wasn’t quite sure if the Algarvian word he had heard meant reasonable or fair, his command of Algarvian, never great, was badly rusty these days. But that didn’t matter, either.

As soon as he could, he took Merkela aside and murmured, “I had better make myself scarce. If they’re not after me in particular, I’d be amazed.”

“Why do you say that?” Merkela asked.

He didn’t point. He didn’t want to do anything to draw the Algarvian officer’s notice. Quietly still, he answered, “Because that fellow over there is my dear sister’s lover.”

Merkela needed a moment to realize what that meant. When she did, her eyes flashed fire, almost as if she were a dragon. “The whore didn’t just sell her body to the Algarvians-she sold you, too!”

Skarnu didn’t want to believe that of Krasta. Of course, he didn’t want to believe his sister gave herself to the redhead, either, but he had no choice there. He said, “Whether she sold me or not, this Lurcanio’s not likely to be here by accident.”

“No, not likely at all.” Merkela frowned, then grew brisk. “You’re right- you’d better disappear. Vatsyunas and Pernavai have to go with you, too. They can’t sound like proper Valmierans. Raunu can stay-if the redheads come to the farm, I’ll be a widow making ends meet with a hired man.”

She marshaled the people in her life as if she were a general marshaling armies. “That may serve,” Skarnu said, “but it may not, too. Plenty of people in these parts can tell the Algarvians I’ve been living with you.”

She pondered, but not for long. “I’ll say we quarreled, and I cursed well threw you out.” Then she raised her voice to a furious shout: “You stinking cockhound, if you don’t keep your eyes and your hands where they belong, I’ll make sure you sing soprano for the rest of your days!”

People stared. Lurcanio was one of those people. His face twisted into an amused smirk. For a moment, Skarnu gaped-drawing Lurcanio’s attention was the last thing he wanted. But, a little slower than he should have, he saw how Merkela was building her alibi, and remembered that, at the moment, Lurcanio couldn’t recognize him. He did his best to get into the spirit of things, yelling, “Oh, shut up, you noisy bitch! I ought to give you a good one- and I will, too, if you don’t keep quiet.”

“You try it and you’ll be sorrier than you ever have been,” Merkela snarled. She sounded as if she meant it, too; she made a fine actress. And she wasn’t just acting, either. Skarnu wouldn’t have wanted to be the man who laid a hand on her when she didn’t care to be touched.

They kept on quarreling till they left Pavilosta. As soon as they were alone on the road back to the farm, they started to laugh. Skarnu wasn’t laughing, though, when he went off into the woods with Vatsyunas and Pernavai. He felt a coward for leaving a woman-and especially a woman carrying his child-to face the redheads alone. And the Kaunians from Forthweg were city folk, without much notion of how to take care of themselves in what seemed very wild country to them. Skarnu stayed busy showing them what needed doing. He tried to remember that he hadn’t known, either, till he went into the army.

He could sneak back to the farm for food; he didn’t have to hunt. About a week later, Merkela said, “They came today. And sure enough, that redhead who swives your sister is a dangerous man. But Raunu and I played the fool and sent him on his way.”

“Good enough,” Skarnu said. “Better than good enough, in fact. But I won’t come back to stay for a while yet. What do you care to bet they’ll swoop down here again, to see if you were playing tricks?”

“Aye, that Lurcanio would,” Merkela said at once. “He might even come back three times, curse him. Let him. He won’t catch you. And the fight goes on.”

Skarnu nodded. As if they were a spell, he repeated the words. “The fight goes on.”

Istvan studied the scar on his left hand. It still pained him every now and again; Captain Tivadar had cut deep. Istvan didn’t blame his company commander. Tivadar had had to let the sin out of him and out of the men of his squad. Istvan just hoped the cut proved expiation enough.

Corporal Kun came back through the trees toward him. “No sign of the Unkerlanters ahead, Sergeant,” he said.

“All right-good. We’ll move forward, then,” Istvan said. Kun nodded. They were oddly formal with each other. All the men who’d eaten goat were like that these days. They had a bond. It wasn’t one any of them would have wanted, but it was there. Feeling it, Istvan understood how and why criminals and perverts sometimes sought out goat’s flesh. It set them apart from the rest of mankind-the rest of Gyongyosian mankind, at any rate. They had to band together, for no one else would have anything to do with them.

“Sergeant?” Kun asked again in that oddly formal tone.

“Aye? What is it?” Istvan wanted to harass the bespectacled mage’s apprentice as he had before they shared the contents of that stewpot, but found he couldn’t. He looked down at his scar again.

Kun saw where Istvan’s eyes went, and he opened his own left hand. He was similarly marked-and, no doubt, similarly scarred on his soul as well. He let out a long, unhappy breath, then said, “Do you suppose the rest of the company knows. . what happened there, back in that clearing?”

“Well, nobody’s called me a goat-eater, anyhow,” Istvan answered. “A good thing, too-anybody did call me anything like that, I’d have to try to kill him for my honor’s sake: either that or admit it.”

“You couldn’t admit it!” Kun exclaimed in horror. “The stars wouldn’t shine on you if you did.”

“Of course they wouldn’t,” Istvan said. “That’s why I’d have to do what a warrior should do. Maybe people know what happened and they’re keeping quiet because they know what I’d have to do, too. Or maybe they really don’t know. Captain Tivadar was the only one who came up to the clearing, after all, and he wouldn’t blab, not after he cleansed us he wouldn’t.”

Slowly, Kun nodded. “I keep telling myself the same thing. But the other thing I keep telling myself is, that sort of business doesn’t stay a secret. Somehow, it doesn’t.”

Istvan nodded, too. The same fear filled him. Having done what he’d done was bad enough. Having others-people who hadn’t done it, who weren’t linked to one another by that strange bond-know would be far, far worse.

Meanwhile, along with worrying about the state of his sins, he also had to worry about staying alive. Every time he scurried from pine to birch to clump of ferns, he took his life in his hands. Kun hadn’t seen any Unkerlanters in this stretch of the endless forest, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

A flick of motion caught his eye. He swung his stick toward it and blazed without conscious thought. Had it been an Unkerlanter, the fellow would have died. As things were, a red squirrel toppled off a branch and lay feebly kicking among the pine needles. After a minute or so, it stopped moving.

“Nice blazing,” Kun said. “Ought to bring it along and throw it in the pot when we stop. Nothing wrong with squirrel.”

“No,” Istvan said. He didn’t know whether Kun meant that the meat tasted good or that the animal was ritually clean. He didn’t want to ask; that would have involved comparisons with animals that weren’t ritually clean.

As he stopped to pick up the squirrel, he realized he could have blazed a countryman as readily as a foe. If, in some dreadful accident or in the heat of battle, Captain Tivadar went down and did not rise again, who but for Istvan and his equally guilty squadmates would know on what accursed meat they’d supped?

Horrified, he violently shook his head. That was the curse speaking inside him. Tivadar had cleansed when he might have condemned, and Istvan wanted to repay him for that with death? Some part of the goat’s meat had to be working inside him, corrupting him.

“No,” he said aloud.

“No what, Sergeant?” Kun asked. Istvan didn’t answer. A moment later, an Unkerlanter’s beam burned a hole in a tree trunk behind him, and almost burned off part of his beard, too. Throwing himself flat and rolling toward another tree felt more like a relief than anything else. Compared to what had been going through his mind, worries about his own death or mutilation seemed simple and clean.

“Urra!” the Unkerlanters shouted. “Swemmel! Urra!” Either they had an accomplished mage with them, to make a few men sound like a host, or they outnumbered the Gyongyosians approaching them.

Again, Istvan saw something move. This time, a human howl of pain rewarded his blaze. His own men were shouting, too, trying to sound like more than they were. He yelled along with the rest of them: “Arpad! Arpad!” He didn’t know how much good crying out his sovereign’s name would do, but it couldn’t hurt.

And then, as if the stars chose to grant a favor he hadn’t even asked for, eggs began falling on the Unkerlanters. Moving egg-tossers forward along the miserable tracks through these miserable woods wasn’t easy; Istvan hadn’t known the Gyongyosians had any close by. For once, the surprise he got was pleasant.

The Unkerlanters didn’t think so. How they howled when bursts of sorcerous energy knocked down trees and sent men flying-but not for long. Some of them kept on yelling Swemmel’s name, but they didn’t sound nearly so fierce as they had before.

“Come on! Let’s make them pay!” That was Captain Tivadar. Istvan hadn’t known the company commander was so close by, either. The horrid thought that had sprung up like a toadstool from the rot at the bottom of his mind returned once more. He shook his head again, and asked the stars to hold that idea away from the minds of his squadmates.

Going forward seemed easier. As long as he was fighting, he wouldn’t have to think. That suited him fine. “Ekrekek Arpad!” he cried.

No one asked whether he’d liked the goat he ate, not while the Gyongyosians were advancing. By what seemed another special miracle, the egg-tossers lengthened their range so their eggs didn’t burst on men from their own side. That didn’t happen all the time, either, as Istvan remembered too well from the fighting on Obuda.

He snorted as he ran past a dead Unkerlanter. You could lift that island out of the Bothnian Ocean and throw it down anywhere in this vast forest, and it would vanish without a trace. He wished the stars would lift it from the ocean and throw it down somewhere near here, with luck someplace where it would crush a good many of Swemmel’s soldiers.

“Forward!” Tivadar shouted. “We’ve punched a hole in their line. If the stars shine bright, we can unravel them like a cheap pair of leggings.”

“You heard the captain!” As a sergeant, one of the things Istvan had to do was back up his superior’s orders. “Keep moving, you lazy lugs! No time to stop and rest now. We’ve got to keep pushing the Unkerlanters.”

Earlier in the campaign, he would surely have called the men of his squad a pack of useless goat-eaters or some similar sergeant’s endearment. Not now. They wouldn’t have taken it the right way. He wouldn’t have felt right saying it, either.

Szonyi emerged from behind the trunk of a stout spruce a few yards away from Istvan. “We really are driving them this time, aren’t we, Sergeant?” he said.

“Aye, for now,” Istvan answered. “We’d better enjoy it while it lasts, on account of it probably won’t.”

Szonyi nodded and ran on, his stick ready to blaze, his eyes moving back and forth, back and forth, to make sure he didn’t run past any Unkerlanter who might still be alive. Istvan nodded to himself. Szonyi was about as good a common soldier as he’d ever seen-surely a better warrior than he’d been when he was a common soldier himself.

And, for once, the Unkerlanters didn’t look to have three or four separate lines waiting for the Gyongyosians. With every step Istvan moved forward, his confidence grew. Aye, Swemmel’s men had put up a good fight for a long time, but could they really hope to withstand a warrior race forever? It didn’t seem likely.

Ever more Gyongyosian troopers flooded into the gap Istvan’s squad had forced. For three days, he and his countrymen had everything their own way. He thought they moved farther in those three days than they had in the whole month before. The Unkerlanters who did keep fighting began to grow desperate. Some of them began to lose hope. Instead of fighting on after their positions were overrun, they began throwing down their sticks and surrendering.

Istvan wanted to go forward day and night. “I wonder where this accursed forest ends,” he said to Kun as they paused-only for a moment-to stand in front of a tree. “I wonder what’s on the other side of it. Maybe we’ll find out.”

Instead of laughing at him, Kun nodded. “Maybe we will,” the mage’s apprentice said slowly. “Maybe the stars will show us.”

“War out in the open again,” Istvan said dreamily. “We’d truly trample the Unkerlanters then.”

He was setting his leggings to rights when Kun cried out in-alarm? It sounded more like terror. Istvan was about to ask what was wrong when the ground began to shake under his feet. Not far away, someone shouted, “Earthquake!”

“No!” Kun screamed. “Worse!”

As far as Istvan was concerned, hardly anything could be worse than a big earthquake. The valley were he’d grown up had known a couple of them, and till he’d been in combat he hadn’t dreamt anything could be more terrifying.”

Kun screamed again: “Vileness! Filth! They defile themselves! They defile the world!”

For a moment, Istvan didn’t know what his comrade was talking about. Then livid purple flames shot from the ground only a few feet in front of him. Some of the trees the temblor had shaken down caught fire. Some Gyongyosians caught fire, too. “Magecraft!” Istvan cried.

“Foul magecraft!” Kun shouted back. “They slay their own to power it. Thank the kindly stars you can’t sense what that felt like. I wish my head would fall off.” He looked like a man with a ghastly hangover.

By the time the ground stopped shaking and breaking apart, by the time the flames stopped spurting and the fires they started stopped spreading, the spearpoint of the Gyongyosian advance had been blunted. The Unkerlanters got enough breathing space to bring more soldiers forward. . and the fight went back to being hard again. Glad he’d lived through the sorcerous onslaught, Istvan resigned himself to more time in the forest.

One of Trasone’s comrades pointed south. “Look,” he said. “You can see the Wolter from here. We can’t be more than half a mile away.”

“I think you’re lying through your teeth, is what I think,” Trasone said. “Here, give me that stinking thing.”

The other Algarvian trooper handed him the contraption he’d made from a board and a couple of pieces of a broken mirror. Trasone stuck the top of the contraption above the lip of the trench in which he huddled. By looking at the lower mirror, Trasone could use the upper one to show him what lay ahead. Without a doubt, he would have been blazed if he’d poked up his head to look.

“Well, I’ll be a son of a whore,” he said softly. “You’re right, Folvo. There it is-or the bluffs on this side of it, anyhow. We get there, we get over to the other side, and we can put this lousy war in our belt pouch.”

“Aye-if we get there,” Folvo answered. “What’s ahead doesn’t look like a whole lot of fun, though.”

And that, worse luck, was nothing but the truth. A couple of enormous buildings lay between the leading Algarvians in Sulingen and the river. One was a granary. It had been built of massive bricks and blocks of stone to hold vermin at bay, but that also made it a powerful fortress. The other was larger still, though of somewhat less sturdy construction: far and away the biggest iron manufactory in Sulingen. Sometimes the Unkerlanters would bring behemoths across the Wolter into the city, load them with armor and weapons, and throw them straight into the fight. Some of the behemoths lay dead not far from the manufactory. Others, unfortunately for Mezentio’s soldiers, got farther and did worse.

A flight of dragons painted in bright Algarvian colors swooped down on the ironworks, dropping eggs as they dove. The eggs burst on and around the building. Some more of the roof came down. Trasone didn’t get excited about that, as he might have a couple of weeks earlier. He knew all too well that the Unkerlanters, those whom the bursts didn’t slay, went right on working in the ruins.

And they kept fighting back, too. They had a lot of heavy sticks crowded into the parts of Sulingen they still held-beams stabbed into the sky after the dragons. Those beams might have done more harm than they did if the smoke that rose from countless fires hadn’t spread and weakened them. As things were, one of the dragons staggered in the air. It didn’t plummet, as Trasone had seen so many plummet, but it couldn’t go on with its flightmates, either. It did manage to come to earth in Algarvian-held territory. Trasone hoped the dragonflier wasn’t badly hurt. He had to be better off than Algarvian dragon-fliers who fell into Unkerlanter hands.

Then Trasone stopped worrying about dragonfliers. The Unkerlanters had dragons, too, flying north from farms on the far side of the Wolter. They seldom fought the Algarvians in the air; most of them lacked the skill for that. But, as Mezentio’s men pounded their positions, they returned the disfavor.

Eggs fell around Trasone. He rolled himself into a ball in the trench, as if he were a pillbug. But he didn’t even have an armored exterior to present to the world. All he could do was make himself small and hope. A shard of something bit into his little finger. He yelped and pulled out a sliver of glass-Folvo’s improvised periscope was no more.

Trasone braced himself for the shouts of “Urra!” that were bound to follow the rock-gray dragons. He’d long since lost track of how many Unkerlanter counterattacks he and his friends had beaten back. Too many of his friends were wounded or dead because of them, though-he knew that.

Beneath him, the ground shook slightly. He cursed and braced himself again, this time to withstand sorcery-whether from his own side or the Unkerlanters he couldn’t yet guess. But it wasn’t the onset of magecraft: instead, it was four or five Algarvian behemoths lumbering up to the battle line. “Huzzah!” Trasone shouted. He waved his hat-though not very high. He didn’t want to get blazed while celebrating, after all.

“Here they come!” That was Sergeant Panfilo’s shout. Trasone couldn’t see his sergeant, which was all to the good. He hoped the Unkerlanters couldn’t see Panfilo, either.

He peered up out of his own hole, peered up and whooped with glee. “They waited too stinking long this time,” he said, and settled down and started to blaze.

He would never have made a general. The officers set over him had decided he wouldn’t even make a good corporal. He’d long since stopped worrying about not getting promoted. All he wanted to do was stay alive and make sure a good many Unkerlanters didn’t. But he was no fool. When it came to measuring a narrow little battlefield, he could do the job as well as any nobleman with fancy rank badges.

Here came Swemmel’s soldiers, picking their way through the rubble toward the trenches the Algarvians held. They were shouting “Urra!”-and their king’s name, too. As always, they were game. Trasone wondered how many of them were drunk. He knew their officers served up raw spirits before sending the men to the attack. Assailing a position like the one he and his comrades held, he would have wanted to be drunk, too.

An Unkerlanter fell, and another. Trasone had no idea whether his beam was the one that had knocked either of them over. A lot of Algarvian troopers had popped up from their shelters at the same time as he had from his.

And then another Unkerlanter went down, this one with a hole in him you could have thrown a dog through. No footsoldier’s weapon could have made such a wound, only a heavy stick mounted on the back of a behemoth. That stick found one foe after another. When the Unkerlanters dove for cover, it blazed right through the boards and sheet metal some of them chose.

The rest of the behemoths carried egg-tossers. They rained death down on the Unkerknters: not death at random, but death precisely aimed, death that pursued them, death that found them. The charge faltered. When his comrades lay broken and bloodied all around him, not even a bellyful of raw spirits would take a man forward any more.

Along with the behemoths, fresh troops in Algarvian uniform came up on the right of Trasone’s regiment. For a moment, he didn’t recognize the patch each newcomer wore on his left sleeve: a sea-green shield with five gold crowns. Then he did, and his jaw dropped. “Powers above!” he exclaimed. “They’re fornicating Sibs!”

Folvo nodded. “Didn’t you hear about that?” he said. “They’ve recruited a couple of regiments’ worth of men on the five islands. They’re supposed to be tough enough to suit anybody.”

“What’s the world coming to?” Trasone shook his head. “Yaninans for flank guards, now these Sibs right alongside us-and I did hear tell we’ve got Forthwegians doing something or other, too. What’s next? Are we going to start setting up regiments of Kaunians?”

“I’d sooner there were Kaunians here than me,” Folvo said.

“Oh, aye, but all the same…” Trasone turned and called to one of the Sibians: “Hey, pal, you speak my language?”

“At least as well as you do,” the Sibian answered in cold, precise Algarvian. “Probably better.”

“Well, you can go futter yourself, too,” Trasone muttered, but not so loud as to make the newcomer-who was, after all, supposed to be on his side- notice.

Officers’ whistles screeched and wailed, both among the Sibians and in his own regiment. At the same time, the Algarvian behemoths lumbered forward, the heavy stick blazing Unkerlanter after Unkerlanter, the egg-tossers making the enemy burrow for his life instead of fighting back. “Let’s go!” Major Spinello shouted. “One more good push and we’re at the Wolter. That’s where we want to be. That’s where we have to be, if we’ve ever going to go any farther. Mezentio!” As usual, the battalion commander was the first man out of his whole, the first man rushing toward the enemy.

“Mezentio!” Trasone shouted. Bent at the waist, he scuttled forward, too, dashing from one pile of rubble to the next, blazing any Unkerlanters he ran past in case they were playing dead and would rise up to blaze his countrymen if they got the chance. He knew the men of his regiment would go forward, too. They always had. He trusted them with his life, and they trusted him with theirs.

He wasn’t so sure about the Sibians. They were foreigners, after all, so what could you expect from them? The Algarvians had licked them, too, which automatically made them suspect in his eyes. They shouted something in their own language instead of “Mezentio!” or “Algarve!” That would get some of them blazed by their allies if they weren’t careful or lucky. But everything Folvo had said about them looked to be true. They went forward just as fast and just as hard as the Algarvians on their left. And their companies and battalions, unlike Trasone’s, were at full strength, which gave their attack extra weight.

“There it is!” Trasone said. He didn’t need Folvo’s contraption to see the Wolter up ahead now. There was the river, and there were the piers sticking out into it at which boats coming from the far side unloaded Unkerlanter reinforcements. If he and his comrades-or even the Sibians fighting alongside them-could take those piers and hold them or burn them, how would Swemmel’s soldiers bring new men up into Sulingen?

But it wouldn’t be easy. He didn’t take long to discover that. Advancing over the ground on which the Unkerlanters had attacked was easy. Past that ground, though, they had their own field works, starting in the mean little workmen’s hovels in front of the great ironworks and extending back line after line, all the way to the river. Unkerlanter soldiers popped up out of cellars to blaze at the Algarvians, then disappeared again. Even more than Mezentio’s men, they lived like moles, tunneling from one hut to the next and only showing themselves above ground to blaze or to charge.

Major Spinello’s whistle squealed. “Come on, boys! Reach out and grab it, the way you’d grab a pretty Kaunian girl’s tits!”

Again, the Algarvians and Sibians went forward in a desperate push toward the riverbank. But the Unkerlanters were desperate, too. They funneled more and more men into the fight. For all Trasone knew, they had tunnels leading all the way back to the ironworks and the granary, strongpoints Mezentio’s men had yet to clear. The Algarvian advance stalled.

Trasone glanced toward the sky. Seen through shifting plumes of smoke, the sun had slid a long way down toward the western horizon. It was setting earlier now than it had not so long before. The start of fall couldn’t be more than a few days away. And after fall came winter. The thought of another winter in southern Unkerlant chilled Trasone to the marrow.

“We’d better win now, then,” he muttered, and crawled a few feet farther forward, into the crater a bursting egg had left.

A beam started a fire in the pile of rubble he’d just vacated-the beam from a heavy stick. It had come from up ahead. Somewhere up there, an Unkerlanter behemoth prowled. One of the Algarvian beasts had already gone down, blazed in the vulnerable belly by an Unkerlanter who came out of a hole below it and then ducked down again.

Dragons dove flaming. They were Unkerlanter beasts. Screams rang out among the Sibians. Trasone didn’t blame them. No troops had an easy time facing dragons. The sun set. Night fell. The Algarvians huddled in the ruins of Sulingen, only a couple of furlongs, maybe only one, from the Wolter. “We’ll get ‘em tomorrow!” Spinello called cheerfully.

In his gullyside headquarters, Marshal Rathar turned to General Vatran. “Can we hold them?” the marshal asked anxiously.

“We have to hold them,” Vatran answered. “If we don’t hold the buggers, we don’t hold Sulingen. And if we don’t hold Sulingen …”

“We get boiled alive, and so does the kingdom,” Rathar said. Vatran’s grunt might have been laughter. The only trouble was, Rathar wasn’t joking. The Algarvians had been advancing through Sulingen street, by street-slowly, but with grim persistence. Unkerlant had few streets left to lose.

Eggs burst not far from the mouth of the cavern in which Rathar and Vatran made their headquarters. The Unkerlanters moved soldiers up from the river through the gullies piercing Sulingen, and the Algarvians knew it. Their egg-tossers and dragons kept pounding away at those gullies. They took a horrible toll, but it would have been worse had Swemmel’s men gone forward any other way.

“If we lose those piers, we’re ruined,” Vatran said. “What have we got there to keep the redheads from reaching the river?”

“One behemoth and a couple of battalions, or whatever’s left of them by now,” Vatran told him. The general scowled at the map. “There are a lot more Algarvians in that part of town right now.”

“Our men have to hold anyway,” Rathar said. “We’ve got three good brigades waiting on the southern bank of the Wolter. They can’t get over the river till nightfall. If they try, the Algarvian dragons will have a field day. So we have to hang on to that landing area no matter what. Who’s in command there?”

“Powers above only know,” Vatran answered. “Whoever’s seniormost and hasn’t taken a beam through the brisket.”

“Aye, no doubt you’re right about that,” Rathar said. He turned his head and raised his voice to a shout: “Crystallomancer!”

“How may I serve you, lord Marshal?” asked one of the military mages in charge of keeping the cave in touch with the battle raging all through Sulingen.

Rather pointed to the map. “Get me the senior officer in this sector. I don’t know who he’ll be. I only hope his crystallomancer’s still breathing.”

The mage murmured over his glassy sphere. Moments later, an image formed in it: that of another crystallomancer, huddled in the ruins of what had been an ironworker’s hut. When Rathar’s crystallomancer told him what the marshal required, he nodded and said, “Wait.” He crawled off. A moment later, he came back with a soldier even grimier than he was. “Here is Major Melot.”

“Major, you are to hold the Algarvians away from the piers until nightfall, come what may,” Rathar said.

“Lord Marshal, you don’t know what you’re asking,” Melot said. “I’m down to about my last hundred men here. My only behemoth has a broken leg. And it looks like every Algarvian in the world is out there.”

“Hold,” Rathar repeated, his voice deadly cold. “Blaze the behemoth and use the carcass for a strongpoint. Rally your men around it. If you don’t hold off the redheads till the sun goes down, I’ll have you blazed first thing tomorrow morning. Have you got that?”

“Aye, lord Marshal.” Melot shrugged. “We’ll do what we can, sir. That’s all we can do.” Raising one shaggy eyebrow, he stared at Rathar. “The way things are, I’m not much afraid of you blazing me. The Algarvians’ll take care of it for you, never fear.”

A moment later, the crystal flared light for a moment. The images of the embattled major and his mage faded. Rathar’s crystallomancer said, “They’ve broken the link, sir.”

“That fellow is insubordinate,” Vatran grumbled.

“He’s on the spot,” Rathar said mildly. “He’ll do what I told him to do, or he’ll die trying.” He made a fist and pounded it down on his knee. “I don’t mind if he dies trying, but he has to do it. If he doesn’t, they cut Sulingen in half. How long till sunset?”

He couldn’t tell by looking: shadow already shrouded the far wall of the gully. Vatran spoke in reassuring tones: “Only a couple of more hours, lord Marshal. Let’s get some food in you first. What do you say to that?”

“All right.” Rathar realized how empty he felt. He would have made sure his army’s behemoths were well fed, but didn’t bother giving himself the same care.

Vatran nodded, as if to say he knew as much. “Hey, Ysolt!” he shouted. “Bring the marshal a big bowl of whatever’s in the pot, and a mug of spirits to go with it.”

“Ill do that,” the cook said, and she did. She handed Rathar a bowl of buckwheat groats and onions, with bits of meat floating in it.

He dug in, pausing now and again to swig from the mug of spirits. “Good,” he said with his mouth full, and then pointed at the bowl. “What’s the meat?”

“Unicorn, lord Marshal,” Ysolt answered. She was nearing middle age, wide in the shoulder and wider in the hips, her face always red from the cook-fires she tended. “One of the ones the Algarvians killed out in the gully. Seemed a stinking shame to let the flesh go to waste.”

“Unicorn,” Rathar echoed. He wasn’t sure he’d ever eaten it before. He’d eaten horse, but this was less gluey on the tongue, more flavorful. “Not bad. Can you fill up the bowl again?”

“Why not?” The cook took it from him and went back to the fire, her big haunches rolling as she walked. Vatran eyed her with appreciation. Rathar didn’t think the general was sleeping with her, but he wasn’t sure. The past few days, nobody in this hole in the ground had been sleeping much.

After a while, darkness did fall. Vatran said, “Well, we haven’t heard that the piers are lost, anyhow.”

“Would we?” Rathar asked. “If everyone over there is dead, nobody’d be left to tell us everything had fallen apart.” He raised his voice once more. “Crystallomancer! Get me Major Melot again.”

The mage cast his spell. After what seemed a very long time, someone’s face appeared in the crystal. Whose? Too dark to tell. “Report your situation,” Rathar said, wondering if he was taking with an Algarvian who’d overrun the Unkerlanter defenders.

“We’re still here, sir.” The fellow sounded like an Unkerlanter, anyhow.

“Where’s Major Melot?” Rathar rapped out.

“Dead,” the Unkerlanter soldier answered. “There’s maybe fifty of us left-but Mezentio’s men have settled down for the night. We gave ‘em all they wanted and then some. Plenty of those whoresons down for good, too, you bet.”

Maybe he didn’t know to whom he was speaking. Maybe he was too worn to care. Rathar remembered fights like that, back in the Twinkings War. If he had to, he’d grab a stick and go into battle himself once more-that was how vital he reckoned holding Sulingen to be. “Good enough, soldier,” he said gruffly, and nodded to the crystallomancer, who dissolved the link. Rathar turned to Vatran. “What do you think?”

“If we don’t send those brigades across, lord Marshal, we may as well pack it in,” Vatran answered. “Even if the redheads have a trap waiting to close on ‘em, we’ve got to try it. Without ‘em, the Algarvians have it all their own way in Sulingen. You’ll do what you’ll do-you’re the marshal. But that’s how it looks to me.”

“And to me,” Rathar said. He tapped the crystallomancer on the shoulder. “Get me Major General Canel, on the southern bank of the Wolter.” A couple of minutes later, Canel’s image appeared in the crystal. The Unkerlanter officer had a bloody bandage wrapped loosely around his head. “Redheads come calling?” Rathar asked.

“It’s only a scratch,” Canel answered. “They didn’t hit more than a couple of boats, either, lord Marshal. I can move if you want me to.”

“Stout fellow,” Rathar said. “I want you to, all right. First thing you do is, you throw the Algarvians back from the pier. Then reinforce the ironworks and the granary, and then the hill east of the ironworks.”

Canel nodded, which made the bandage flop down over his left eye. “Never a dull moment in these parts, is there? Cursed Algarvians.”

“If you wanted a nice, easy job, you should have chosen something quiet and safe-tiger-taming, maybe,” Rathar said. Canel grinned at him. Lantern light shone from the major general’s teeth. Rathar went on, “Hit ‘em hard.” He didn’t think Canel’s brigades would turn the tide by themselves. He expected them to get chewed up, in fact. Too many of Mezentio’s men were in Sulingen for anything else to be likely. But Canel led good troops. They’d do some chewing of their own, too.

Rathar could tell just when the Unkerlanters crossed from the southern bank of the Wolter into Sulingen. The din of battle, which had quieted after sunset, picked up again. Vatran chuckled. “We’ll shake the Algarvians out of their feather beds, by the powers above.”

“Well, maybe we will. Here’s hoping, anyhow.” Rathar yawned. “I’m going back to my own feather bed now.” Vatran laughed at that. Like everyone else in the gullyside headquarters, Rathar slept on a cot in a tiny chamber scraped from the dirt and shored up with boards to keep the earthen roof from falling in if an Algarvian egg burst right overhead. A curtain over the entrance was the only sign of his exalted rank; not even Vatran had one. As he headed off to the chamber, Rathar looked back over his shoulder and added, “Wake me the instant you need me. Don’t be shy.”

He said that whenever he went to bed. As always, Vatran nodded. “Aye, lord Marshal.” About a third of the time, Rathar got to sleep as long as he wanted; he was lucky in not needing a lot of sleep. A marshal who had to have eight hours every night would have been useless in wartime.

Sure enough, someone shook him in the middle of the night. He came awake at once, as he always did, and tried to gauge the hour by the noise outside the curtain. It was pretty quiet out there. “What’s toward?” he asked.

Usually, that would get him a crisp explanation from Vatran or from one of the junior officers in the cave. Tonight, he was answered by-a giggle? Whoever was there sat down on the cot beside him. “You threw them back, lord Marshal,” a low, throaty voice said. “Now we celebrate.”

“Ysolt?” Rathar asked. He got another giggle by way of reply. He reached out-and touched smooth, bare flesh. His ears heated. “Powers above, Ysolt, I’m a married man!”

“If your wife was here, she’d take care of this,” the cook answered. “But she’s not, so I’ll do it for her.”

Before he could say another word-and whatever he said couldn’t be very loud, for he didn’t want anyone outside to find out what was going on in here-Ysolt pushed him over onto his back. She hiked up his tunic, yanked down his drawers, and took hold of him. His ears weren’t what heated then.

Ysolt chuckled. “You see, lord Marshal? You’re as ready as the army was tonight.” She straddled him and impaled herself. Almost of their own accord, his arms came up and folded around her back. In the darkness, her mouth found his.

And then the only thing he wondered was whether the cot would collapse under the strain of two good-sized people energetically making love. But it proved sturdier than he’d expected, and held. Ysolt gasped and quivered. A moment later, Rathar groaned.

She kissed him on the cheek, then slid off him. A brief rustle was her putting on the tunic she’d shed before waking him. “Conqueror,” she whispered, and slipped out of the tiny chamber. Feeling more conquered than anything else, Rathar set his clothes to rights. Had they not been disarranged, he might have thought he’d been dreaming. A moment later, he was asleep again.

“Do you think we got rid of those cursed Forthwegians by ourselves?” Garivald asked Munderic. He didn’t think so himself, not for a minute. Those bearded demons had given Munderic’s band of irregulars everything they wanted and then some.

Munderic said, “I can’t tell you one way or the other. All I can tell you is, nobody’s seen the buggers anywhere around for the past week or so. They’re like a squall, is what they are. They blew in, they tore things up, and now they’ve blown out again.” He spat. “I’m cursed if I’m going to tell you I miss ‘em, either.”

“They were trouble,” Garivald agreed. “Now that they’re gone, what do we do?”

“Have to remind folks we’re still around,” Munderic said, and Garivald nodded. The band had spent most of its time deep in the woods since the Forthwegians outdid them at the game of ambush.

“We ought to hit a Grelzer patrol,” Garivald said. “If we can send Raniero’s pups home with a jug tied to their tails, we’ll have things to ourselves for a while here.”

“That’s so,” Munderic agreed. “The other thing we have to do is, we have to keep hitting the ley lines that run south and west. The harder the time the Algarvians have moving men forward, the better our armies will do.”

Ley lines hardly seemed real to Garivald. Zossen had been a long way away from any of them; for all practical purposes, his home village lived as it had two centuries before, when all traffic moved on wheels or on the backs of beasts or men in summer and what traffic there was in winter went by sled. Even so, he nodded and said, “Aye, makes sense to me.”

Munderic’s face was rarely cheerful. Now it went savage indeed. “And I’ll find out who sold us to the Forthwegians. When I do, he’ll die, but he’ll spend a long time wishing he was dead first.”

Garivald nodded again. “Have to get rid of traitors,” he said. He wasn’t surprised there were some, though. He knew the irregulars had spies among the Grelzers who followed King Raniero: only natural the backers of the puppet king should try to return the favor.

“Maybe Sadoc’ll be able to sniff out the son of a whore,” Munderic said.

“Sadoc couldn’t sniff out a week-dead horse if you put him ten feet downwind of it,” Garivald said. “He’s a good fighter, Munderic. I’ll never say anything about his nerve. But he’s no mage, and you’ll get hurt if you count on him to be one.”

The leader of the irregulars glared at him. “He knew the Forthwegians were coming down out of the north, not just along the path through the woods.”

“All right. Have it your way. You will anyhow.” Back in Zossen, Garivald wouldn’t have got into an argument with Waddo the firstman. He didn’t argue with Munderic here. Arguing with a man who had more power than you did you no good. Even when you were right, you were wrong. Sometimes you were especially wrong when you turned out to be especially right.

There was a song in that somewhere. Garivald felt it. He wondered if he ought to go looking for it. Ordinary peasants would laugh themselves silly. Firstmen and nobles and inspectors and impressers wouldn’t think it was so funny. He had no trouble figuring out what they’d do to someone who sang a song mocking them: about the same as the Algarvians would have done to him for singing songs about them.

Munderic and the irregulars had rescued him when he wrote songs about the redheads. They wanted him to go right on doing it. Suppose by some miracle the war were won tomorrow. Suppose he went right on singing songs about firstmen and inspectors, songs as biting as the ones he sang about the Algarvians. When King Swemmel’s men came after him then, who would rescue him? Nobody he could think of.

That made him wonder for the first time whether he’d chosen the right side. It also made him understand for the first time the men and women who followed Raniero of Grelz and not Swemmel of Unkerlant. He shook his head. Raniero was an Algarvian, propped up by the might of the Algarvians. And the redheads were even harder on the peasants of Unkerlant than Swemmel’s men.

He looked up through the branches overhead. A dragon was circling in the sky, so high that it looked like nothing so much as a worm gliding on little batwings. But Garivald knew what sort of worm it was. He also knew-though he couldn’t see-whose great worm it was: it would surely be painted in the green and red and white of Algarve.

What could the man on it see down here? Not much, Garivald hoped. He glanced around. No campfires burning, no cookfires burning: nothing to draw a dragonflier’s eye. He hoped nothing to draw a dragonflier’s eye. Maybe, after a while, the redhead up there would get sick of staring at trees and fly off.

If Garivald hadn’t been looking up at the sky, maybe Sadoc wouldn’t have looked up, either. But nothing makes one man want to crane his neck like seeing another man already doing it. Sadoc spied the dragon in short order. He shook his fist at it. “Cursed thing!” he growled.

“It’s a nuisance, all right,” Garivald agreed. “I don’t think the fellow on it knows we’re down here, though.”

Sadoc shook his fist again. “I ought to knock it right out of the sky, that’s what I ought to do.”

Garivald eyed him. “Can you?”

Almost as if he were an Algarvian, Sadoc struck a pose redolent of affronted dignity. “Do you doubt me, songster? Do you doubt my magecraft?”

Aye. Garivald knew he should have said it, but he didn’t. He’d already been too frank with Munderic. All he did say was, “It wouldn’t be easy, I don’t think.”

“In a pig’s arse, it wouldn’t,” Sadoc snarled, drawing himself up with even more offended pride. “I can do it. I will do it, by the powers above.” He stomped off.

Garivald thought of running after him to stop him. But Sadoc was bigger than he was, meaner than he was, and already angry at him. He didn’t think he could either talk the other irregular out of trying his magecraft or beat him in a fight. Instead, he hurried back to Munderic and told him what Sadoc had in mind.

To his dismay, Munderic said, “Good for him. The Algarvians have been putting us in fear with their wizardry. High time we paid ‘em back in their own coin.

“But what if something goes wrong?” Garivald said. “Then he won’t knock the dragon down, and he likely will give away where we’re hiding.”

“You worry too much,” Munderic told him. “Sadoc isn’t as bad a mage as you think.”

“No, he’s worse,” Garivald retorted. Munderic jerked his thumb in a brusque gesture of dismissal. Having just argued twice with the leader of the irregulars, Garivald supposed he understood why Munderic responded as he did. That didn’t mean he thought Munderic was right. It didn’t mean he thought Sadoc could sorcerously bring down a dragon, either.

But Munderic wouldn’t listen. And Sadoc gave every sign of going ahead with his wizardry. A crowd of irregulars gathered round him, watching his preparations. Garivald wanted nothing to do with them. He strode away from what he feared would be the scene of a disaster-and almost bowled over Obilot, who was coming up to see what Sadoc was up to.

“Don’t you want him to knock down the beast?” Obilot asked.

“If I thought he could, I would,” Garivald said. “Since I don’t..” He started to snarl something, then bit it back. “Do you think he can?”

Obilot pondered, then shook her head. “No. He’s not much of a mage, is he?”

“Oh, good!” Garivald exclaimed. “Here’s another question for you: If he tries to bring down the dragon and doesn’t manage it, do you want to be anywhere close by?”

Obilot considered that, too, but then she shrugged. “Probably won’t matter much. If he botches the job, this whole stretch of forest will catch it.”

That bit of common sense made Garivald stop and think. He had to nod. “All right. Shall we see what happens?”

Sadoc had started a fire from the embers of one of the morning’s cook-fires. He was throwing powders of one sort or another onto it, and incanting furiously while he did. Each new powder made the flames flare a different color-yellow, green, red, blue-and send up a new, noxious cloud of smoke. If the Algarvian dragonflier hadn’t spotted the irregulars’ campsite, he would in short order.

Sure enough, the circles the dragon was making in the sky suddenly stopped being lazy. They grew smaller, more purposeful. “How long before he starts talking to his pals with his crystal?” Garivald murmured to Obilot.

“With a little luck, Sadoc will bring him down before he can do that.”

Obilot checked herself. “With a lot of luck.” She also spoke quietly. They might-they did-both doubt Sadoc’s ability, but they didn’t want him to hear any words of ill omen while trying to work magic that would benefit them if he could bring it off.

He was giving it everything he had; Garivald couldn’t deny that. He pointed toward the dragon and cried out what sounded like a curse in a voice so loud, Garivald thought the Algarvian on the beast could have heard it. At the word of command, the smoke from the fire started to form into a long, narrow column aimed up toward the dragon. Awe trickled through Garivald-maybe Sadoc really could do what he claimed after all.

But then, instead of rising through the branches of the trees and enveloping the dragon, the column of smoke fell apart as if a mischievous small boy had blown on it. Sadoc cried out again, this time in fury. Garivald and Obilot and the other irregulars cried out, too, in disgust. The smoke stank of rotten eggs and latrines and long-dead corpses and puke and sour milk and rancid butter and every other dreadful smell Garivald had ever know. It filled the camp with its horrible stench.

It filled Garivald’s nose, too. His stomach lurched. An instant later, he was down on his knees, heaving his guts out. Obilot crouched beside him, every bit as sick as he was. “You were right,” she wheezed between spasms. “We should have tried to get away.”

“Who knows-if it-would have helped?” Garivald answered. Tears streamed down his face.

They weren’t the only irregulars bent over and heaving. Hardly anyone stayed on his feet. Munderic kept trying to curse Sadoc, then interrupting himself to vomit again. And Sadoc kept puking in the middle of his explanations.

“See if I ever trust you again!” Munderic shouted before doubling up once more. Garivald tried to say, I told you so, but he kept on puking, too.

And, no more than a quarter of an hour after the sorcery went awry, just when most of the irregulars could stand on their own two feet again, eggs started falling from the sky. They were centered on the fire with which Sadoc had thought to assail the Algarvian dragon. Men and women stumbled into the woods, some of them still vomiting. Garivald found a hole in the ground by falling into it. He lay there, having no strength to look for better shelter. Screams rose from irregulars even less lucky than he.

At last, the Algarvians stopped pounding the encampment. Maybe they ran out of eggs, Garivald thought. He couldn’t think of anything else that would have made them stop. He got to his feet. Obilot was rising from another hole a few feet away. They gave each other shaky smiles, glad to be alive.

“No more magecraft!” Munderic was screaming at Sadoc. “No more, do you hear me?” Garivald couldn’t make out what Sadoc answered. He just wished Munderic had done his screaming sooner.

Vanai’s heart thudded. She hadn’t known such a blend of fear and hope and excitement since that time in the oak woods when she first decided to give herself to Ealstan. She glanced over to him. “You know what to do in case this goes wrong?”

“Aye.” He held up the leaf of paper she’d given him. “I recite this and, if the powers above are in a kindly mood, it cancels the whole spell, including whatever’s gone awry.” He looked anything but sure the counterspell would perform as advertised.

Since Vanai wasn’t sure it would, either, she said, “I hope you won’t have to worry about it.” She took a deep breath. “I begin.”

This time, the spell was in Kaunian. Logically, she knew that didn’t matter; mages who worked in Forthwegian-or Algarvian-could perform as well as any others. But, as soon as the first words fell from her lips, she felt far more confident than she had when reciting the muddy, muddled Forthwegian spell in You Too Can Be a Mage. Here, in this version she’d shaped, was what that spell should have said. Rightness seemed to drip from every word.

She hadn’t changed the passes much, nor the contact between the lengtlis of golden and dark brown yarn. The trouble had lain in the words. She’d known as much when she tried the Forthwegian version. Now she’d fixed those words, or thought she had.

I’ll know soon. She wanted to look at Ealstan, to judge by his expression how things were going. But she didn’t. She made herself concentrate on what she was doing. She was no great mage. She would never make a great mage, and knew as much. But that was all the more reason to concentrate. A great mage might get away with a lackluster bit of sorcery. She never would. She knew that, too.

“Transform!” she said, first in the imperative-a command to the spell-and then in the first person indicative-a statement about herself. And then she did let her eyes go to Ealstan. Either the spell had worked, or it hadn’t.

To her intense relief, Ealstan still looked like his Forthwegian self. She hadn’t given him the seeming of a Kaunian, as she had in her last foray into magecraft. But what, if anything, had she done to herself? She looked down at her hands. They hadn’t changed, not to her eyes. But then, they wouldn’t have. She couldn’t see the effects of a transformation spell on herself, not even in a mirror.

Ealstan’s eyes widened. Something had happened to her, but what? When he didn’t say anything, Vanai asked, “Well? Am I still me, or do I look like a golden grasshopper?”

He shook his head. “No, not a golden grasshopper,” he answered. “As a matter of fact, you look just like Conberge.”

“Your sister? A Forthwegian? Really?” Vanai sprang out of her chair and threw herself into his lap. After she kissed him, she leaped up again. She wanted to bounce off all the walls at once, because the flat would imprison her no more. “A Forthwegian! I’m free!”

“Hang on.” Ealstan did his best to sound resolutely sensible. “You’re not going out into Eoforwic just yet.”

Vanai put her hands on her hips. “And why not?” She did her best to sound dangerous. “I’ve been cooped up here the past year and a half. If you think I’m going to wait one instant longer than I have to, you’d better think again.” She glared at him as fiercely as she could.

Instead of intimidating him, the glare made him laugh. “Now you look the way Conberge does when she’s mad at me. But I don’t care whether you’re mad at me or not. I’m not going to let you go out that door till we find out how long the spell lasts. Wouldn’t do for you to get your own face back in front of a couple of redheaded constables, would it?”

As much as she wanted to stay angry at him, Vanai discovered she couldn’t. He was sensible, and he’d just proved it. “All right,” she said. “I don’t suppose I can quarrel with that. And I don’t suppose”-she sighed- “another little while in here will matter too much. But oh! — I want to get out so much.”

“I believe it,” Ealstan said. “How long do you think the spell will last?”

She could only shrug. “I have no idea. I’ve never done this before-except when I turned you into a Kaunian that one time, I mean. It might be half an hour. It might be three days, or even a week.”

“All right.” Ealstan nodded. “We’ll find out. I’d bet practiced mages can tell right from the beginning how strong a spell they’re making.”

“Probably, but I’m not a practiced mage. I’m just me.” Vanai was still astonished and delighted the spell had worked at all. And delight of one sort made her think of delight of another. She gave Ealstan a saucy smile. “Remember how you were saying it would be like having a different girl if we made love while I looked like a Forthwegian? Well, now you can.”

He usually leaped at any chance to take her to the bedchamber. To her surprise, he hesitated now. “I hadn’t expected you’d look quite so much like my sister,” he said, his face reddening beneath his swarthy skin.

Vanai blushed, too, and wondered if it showed. She said, “What I look like doesn’t matter.” Her whole life and most of Forthweg’s history gave that the lie, but she went on, “I’m not your sister. I’m just me, like I said before.” She stepped forward, into his arms. “Do I feel like a Forthwegian, too?”

He hugged her. His face was the picture of confusion. He said, “When I see you, you feel the way you would if you were a Forthwegian-we’re made a little wider than Kaunians, after all. But when I close my eyes”-he did-”you feel the way you used to. That’s funny, isn’t it?”

“If I were a better mage, I bet I’d feel right all the time.” Vanai tugged at him. “Come on. Let’s see how I feel in bed.” She could hardly believe she’d said anything so brazen. Major Spinello would have laughed and cheered to hear her. She hoped the Unkerlanters had long since made Spinello incapable of laughing, cheering, or hearing ever again.

“This is very strange,” Ealstan muttered when she took off her clothes. He ran his hand through the tuft of hair at the joining of her legs. Then, before she could stop him, he plucked out a hair.

She yelped. “Ow! That hurt!”

“It looks blond now,” Ealstan said, holding it up. “It didn’t before. You can’t go to a hairdresser, or you’ll give yourself away.”

“Pay attention to what you’re supposed to be doing, if you please,” Vanai said tartly. Ealstan did, with results satisfying to both of them.

When they went to bed that evening, Vanai still looked like a Forthwegian. When they woke in the morning, Ealstan said, “You’re a blonde again. I like you fine either way.”

“Do you?” Vanai seldom felt interested early in the morning, but this proved an exception. “How do you propose to prove that?” He found the way she’d hoped he would.

Afterwards, he went off to cast accounts. Vanai used the spell again. It looked to be good for several hours, anyhow. She started to put on trousers and short tunic, then stopped, feeling like a fool. That wasn’t what Forthwegian women wore. Ealstan had bought her one long, baggy, Forthwegian-style garment. She drew it down over her head, thinking, I’ll have to ask him to buy me some more clothes.

Then she stopped again, feeling even more foolish. If she could go out and about in Eoforwic, she could buy clothes for herself. Why hadn’t that occurred to her sooner? Because I’ve been locked away from everything for so long, that’s why. The answer formed itself as fast as the question had. Because I’m not used to doing things for myself any more. High time I start again.

She was so nervous, she almost tripped going down the stairs. What if she’d done something wrong this time? She’d betray herself the instant she walked out the door of her block of flats. I should have had Ealstan tell me everything was all right.

But she couldn’t stand going back up to the flat. Defiantly, she threw open the door and walked down the stone steps to the sidewalk. No cries of “Cursed Kaunian!” rose from any of the people walking up and down the street. No one paid any attention to her at all. Hers had to be the most unnoticed defiance in the history of Forthweg.

Vanai walked along, staring in wonder at buildings and pigeons and wagons and all the other things she’d had little chance to see close up lately. Seeing people who weren’t Ealstan up close felt strange, too. And seeing Forthwegians who didn’t react to her Kaunianity at all felt stranger than anything. As far as they could tell, she wasn’t a Kaunian.

Two Algarvian constables came round a corner and headed straight toward her. She wanted to flee. She couldn’t. That would give the game away. She knew it, and made herself keep walking toward them. “Hello, sweetheart!” one of the redheads chirped in accented Forthwegian. Vanai stuck her nose in the air. Both constables laughed. Vanai kept walking. They didn’t bother her any more, as they surely would have bothered a Kaunian woman even before Kaunians were forced into their own tiny districts. And they’d told her she was at least passably pretty as a Forthwegian. She liked that.

She didn’t stay out long, not on her first foray into Eoforwic. She still wasn’t sure how long she could rely on the spell-and leaving the flat and going through the city threatened to overwhelm her. At first, she felt a pang of regret at returning to confinement, but it didn’t last long. I can go out again, she thought, looking at the words of the spell she’d adapted from the useless version in You Too Can Be a Mage.

Then she looked at the paper again, this time in a different way. Her eyes went big and round. She’d adapted the spell thinking of herself, no one else. That was selfish, but selfishness had its place, too; without it, she wouldn’t have started trying to fix the spell at all. Since she had. .

She found another leaf of paper, and copied the spell onto it. She also wrote out instructions for the passes to make, for using the lengths of yarn, and on what she knew about how long the spell could disguise a Kaunian. When Ealstan got home that evening, she told him what she’d done and what she had in mind doing. He thought it over, then said, “That would be wonderful-if you can find a safe way to do it.”

“I have one,” Vanai said. Ihope I have one. But she wouldn’t let Ealstan hear anything but confidence in her voice.

He raised an eyebrow even so. Vanai nodded emphatically. “Are you sure?” he asked. She nodded again. He studied her, then nodded himself. “All right. May it do some good, by the powers above.”

Vanai cast the spell again the next morning and, cloaked in her sorcerous disguise, went to the apothecary’s shop where she’d bought medicines when Ealstan was so sick. The Forthwegian behind the counter had given her what she needed even though she was a Kaunian. Now she handed him the spell and the commentary she’d written and asked, “Can you get this into the Kaunian quarter?”

“Depends on what it is,” the apothecary answered, and began to read. Halfway through, his head came up sharply and he stared at her. She looked back. He couldn’t have known her face. Did he recognize her voice? He’d heard it only once. He finished reading, then folded the paper in half. “I’ll take care of it,” he promised, in perfect classical Kaunian.

“Good,” Vanai said, and left. Another pair of Algarvian constables leered at her as she headed back to the flat. Because she looked like a Forthwegian, they did nothing but leer. If a lot of Kaunians suddenly started looking like Forthwegians… Vanai walked on, a wide, joyous smile on her face. She didn’t think she could have hurt the redheads more if she’d grabbed a stick and started blazing at them.