Through the Darkness

Fifteen

For the first time since he’d been injured, Fernao forgot the pain of his hurts without distillates of the poppy to help him do it. Work, exciting work, proved an anodyne as effective as drugs. Ever since Grandmaster Pinhiero gave him that first summary of what the Kuusaman mages had done, he’d burned to take part in their experimental program. And now, at last, here he was in Yliharma. Broken leg? Healing arm? He didn’t much care.

Courteously, Siuntio and Ilmarinen and Pekka kept speaking mostly classical Kaunian among themselves as they set up their rows of rats in cages. Fernao wished he understood Kuusaman, to catch what they said in asides in their language. Like a lot of Lagoans, he hadn’t taken his neighbors to the west seriously enough.

He also quickly discovered he hadn’t taken Pekka seriously enough. Siuntio and Ilmarinen? Being in the same sorcerous laboratory as the two of them was an honor in itself. But he didn’t take long to notice that they both deferred-Siuntio graciously, Ilmarinen with bluster masking a peculiar, mocking sort of pride-to the younger theoretical sorcerer.

She said, “In this experiment, we shall align the cages of the related rats in parallel. In the next-”

“Assuming we live to make the next,” Ilmarinen put in.

“Aye.” Pekka nodded. “Assuming. Now, as I was saying, in the next experiment we shall align the cages of the related rats in the reverse order, to see if reversing them will strengthen the spell by emphasizing the inverse nature of the relationship between the Two Laws.”

Ilmarinen preened; he’d discovered that the relationship between the laws of similarity and contagion was inverse, not direct. But he never would have had the insight without the data from Pekka’s seminal-literally, since it had involved acorns-experiment. And Pekka wasn’t bad at coming up with startling insights herself. She hadn’t done a bad job of quashing Ilmarinen there, either.

Fernao said, “I never would have thought of altering the positions of the cages.”

Pekka shrugged. “That is what lies at the heart of experimenting: changing every variable you can imagine. Since we are so ignorant here, we need to explore as wide a range of possibilities as we can.”

“I never would have reckoned that a variable,” Fernao answered. “It would not have occurred to me.”

“It did not occur to me, either,” Siuntio said, “and I have some small experience in the game we are playing.”

“Which game?” Ilmarinen asked. “Embarrassing Pekka?”

“I am not embarrassed,” Pekka said tightly. But she was; Fernao could see as much. His own praise had flustered her, and Siuntio’s rather more. Fernao understood that; praise from the leading theoretical sorcerer of the age would have flustered him, too.

He said, “It is always good to see a theoretical sorcerer who does not have to be told what the apparatus in the laboratory is for.”

That flustered Pekka, too. She said, “I have more luck than anything else in the laboratory. I would sooner be back at my desk. I truly know what I am doing when I am there.”

She meant it. Fernao could see that. He studied her. He didn’t usually find Kuusaman women interesting; next to his own taller, more emphatically shaped countrywomen, they struck him as boyish. As far as her figure went, Pekka did, too. But he’d never known a Lagoan female mage he thought could outdo him. He didn’t just think Pekka could. She already had.

“Shall we get on with it now?” she asked, her voice sharp. “Or shall we keep playing till the Algarvians come up with some new dreadful sorcery and drop Yliharma into the Strait of Valmiera?”

“She is right, of course,” Siuntio said. Fernao nodded. Ilmarinen started to say something. All three of the other mages glared at him. He held his peace. By the startled quality of Siuntio’s smile, that didn’t happen very often.

“Master Siuntio, Master Ilmarinen, you know what we shall undertake here today,” Pekka said, taking the lead. “As always, your task is to support me if I blunder-and I may.” She looked over to Fernao. Had he angered her by calling her a good experimenter? Some theoretical sorcerers were oddly proud of being inept in the laboratory, but he hadn’t taken her for one of those. She went on, “Our Lagoan guest is to aid you as best he can, but with the spell being in Kuusaman, you will have to move first, because he may not realize at once that I have gone astray.”

Ilmarinen said, “If we drop Yliharma into the Strait of Valmiera, that will be a good clue.”

“I do not think we can do that with this experiment,” Pekka said. “Quite.” She shifted to Kuusaman for several rhythmic sentences. Fernao couldn’t have claimed to understand them, but he knew what they were: the Kuusaman claim to be the oldest, most enduring folk in the world. He thought that claim nonsense almost on the order of the Ice People’s belief in gods, but he kept quiet. And then, after a brief pause, Pekka returned to classical Kaunian for two words: “I begin.”

She wasn’t the smoothest incantor Fernao had ever seen, but she was a long way from being the clumsiest. Because the spell was in Kuusaman, he couldn’t tell whether it went as it should-she’d been right about that. But she sounded confident, and both Siuntio and Ilmarinen nodded approval every now and then.

The Kuusamans hadn’t been lying about the magnitude of the forces they were manipulating. Fernao felt that at once. The air of the laboratory seemed to quiver with the energy that built as Pekka chanted on. Ilmarinen and Siuntio weren’t sitting back and taking it easy, either. They quivered, too, with tension. If something went wrong here, it would go horribly wrong. And it would go horribly wrong in the blink of an eye.

Even the rats felt something was strange. The young animals in one row of cages scrabbled frantically at the iron bars, trying to break free. One gnawed at the bars till its front tooth broke with an audible snap! The older rats in the other cages burrowed down into the sawdust and cedar shavings from which they made their nests, as if trying to hide from the building sorcerous storm. It would do them no good, of course, but they didn’t know that. The only knew they were afraid.

Fernao knew he was afraid, too. He realized Ilmarinen and Pekka hadn’t been joking when they talked about generating almost enough sorcerous energy to sink Yliharma in the sea. And that from a few rats.

What would the Algarvians do, he wondered, if they tried this experiment with Kaunian children and grandparents? How much sorcerous energy would that yield? And Swemmel of Unkerlant was already killing his own peasants. Would he worry about killing a few, or more than a few, more? Not likely.

Will there be anything left of the world by the time this cursed war is done? Fernao wondered. The more he saw, the less hope he had.

It was building to a peak. Without understanding the words of the spell, Fernao could tell that from Pekka’s intonation … and from the feeling in the air, like that just before lightning flashes.

Hardly had that thought crossed his mind before Pekka cried out one last word. Lightning did crackle between the rows of cages then, and went on and on. Once, fast as a striking serpent, Siuntio rapped out a word, right in the middle of that spectacular discharge. Fernao couldn’t see that it made any difference, but Ilmarinen patted his fellow mage on the back as if he’d done something more than considerable.

At last, the lightnings faded. Pekka slumped, and held herself up by hanging on to the table in front of which she stood. “Well, we got through another one,” she said in a gravelly voice. Through dazzled eyes, Fernao saw the sweat on her forehead, saw the skin stretched tight on her high cheekbones. Casting that spell looked to have aged her five years, maybe ten.

Fernao started to say something, but drew in a breath and coughed. The breath was ripe-rank-with the odor of corruption. Ilmarinen coughed, too, coughed and said, “We ought to do more work with the windows open.”

“Or else work with a convergent series,” Siuntio put in.

“These are the older animals?” Fernao asked.

“A lot older now,” Ilmarinen said. “Actually, you’re smelling the way they were a while ago, so to speak. They don’t stink at all now; they’re long past that.”

“I… see,” Fernao said slowly. “This is what the mathematics said you would be doing, but seeing the mathematics is not the same as seeing the thing itself.”

“It should be.” Siuntio’s voice held a touch of disapproval.

He was a master mage indeed, a master at a level to which Fernao could only aspire. If he truly did see the mathematics and the reality as one and the same-and Fernao was willing to believe he did-his powers of visualization were also well beyond those of the Lagoan mage. Somewhat cowed, Fernao said, “And what of the younger rats?”

Siuntio clucked again. He said, “You know what the mathematics say. If you must have the confirmation, examine their enclosures.”

“Aye, Master,” Fernao said with a sigh. He knew what he would find when he walked over to that row of cages, and find it he did: they were empty. There was no sign that rats had ever lived in them. He whistled, one soft, low note. “ Were they ever really there? Where did they go?”

“They’re gone now, by the powers above-that’s where the energy discharge came from,” Ilmarinen said. “And suppose you define real for me, when you’ve got a year you’re not doing anything else with.” No, he had no trouble being colloquially rude in classical Kaunian.

“In any case, where-or when-they may have gone is mathematically undefined, and so must be meaningless,” Siuntio said.

Femao made a discontented noise, down deep in his throat. “I have not been through the calculations as thoroughly as you have, of course, but this solution does not strike me as if it ought to be undefined.”

Pekka stirred. She didn’t seem quite so ravaged as she had just after she finished the spell. “I agree,” she said. “I believe there is a determinate solution to the question. If we can find it, I believe it will be important.”

“I’ve looked. I haven’t found one,” Ilmarinen said. He didn’t say, If I can’t find one, it isn‘t there, but that was what he meant.

“It may be just as well if we don’t look too hard,” Siuntio said. “The implications of the convergent series are alarming enough-how long before mages start robbing the young of time to give to the old and rich and vicious? But if you youngsters are right, the possibilities from the divergent series are even worse.”

“More paradoxical, certainly,” Pekka said. Fernao thought about the young rats. He nodded. The Kuusaman mage had found the right word.

“Sorcery abhors paradox.” Siuntio’s voice was prim.

“Most of the sorcerers here at the university abhor us,” Ilmarinen said. “We scare them to death, too: almost literally, after a couple of our experiments. This one didn’t even break any windows; we’re getting better control. Shall we go celebrate living through another one with some food and some spirits?”

“Aye!” Pekka said, as if he’d thrown her a cork float while she was drowning. Siuntio nodded. So did Fernao. But he ate and drank absently, for the distinction between the real world and the world of calculation blurred in his mind. By Pekka’s abstracted expression, he thought her mind was going down the same ley line as his. He wondered if it led anywhere.

Trasone stood on the northern bank of the Wolter and looked across the river toward the Mamming Hills beyond. He couldn’t see much of the hills; snow flurries cut his vision short. Chunks of drift ice floated down the Wolter toward the Narrow Sea.

Here in Sulingen, the snow that stuck on the ground was gray, ranging toward black. So much of the city had burned as the Algarvians battled block by block to seize it from King Swemmel’s men. Trasone turned to Sergeant Panfilo, who stood a few feet away. He waved a magnificent, all-encompassing Algarvian wave. “It’s ours at last!” he shouted. “Isn’t that bloody fornicating wonderful?”

“Oh, aye, it’s terrific, all right.” Panfilo pointed east. “We still haven’t got quite all of it.” Fresh smoke rose from the pockets where Unkerlanter soldiers still stubbornly hung on. The sergeant turned away from them, back toward the parts of Sulingen the Algarvians had won. Fresh smoke rose from them, too, here and there-Unkerlanter dragons and egg-tossers kept reminding the Algarvians the war went on. Panfilo gestured in disgust. “It wasn’t supposed to be a fight about Sulingen. We were supposed to take this place and then go on to the cursed hills and the cinnabar in them.”

Trasone spat. “You know that. I know that. Nobody bothered to tell the stinking Unkerlanters.”

“Now, boys!” That was Major Spinello’s cheery voice. Trasone didn’t know how the battalion commander did it. Had he not known better, he would have suspected Spinello of keeping his spirits up with nostrums and potions. But even food had a hard time coming into Sulingen, let alone drugs. Spinello went on, “Aren’t you proud of our magnificent victory?”

“One more victory like this and we won’t have any soldiers left at all,” Trasone answered. Spinello didn’t mind if his soldiers spoke their minds. He always spoke his.

Panfilo said, “Even if we do finally clean out the Unkerlanters, we won’t be able to cross the Wolter and get into the Mamming Hills till spring. That’s not how it was supposed to work.”

“How many things do work out just the way you want them to?” Spinello asked. “I can only think of-” He stopped, a surprised look on his face. In normal, conversational tones, he said, “I’ve been blazed.” He crumpled to the snow- and soot-streaked ground.

“Sniper!” Trasone screamed as he threw himself flat. Panfilo also lay on the ground; he was shouting the same thing. Trasone crawled over to Major Spinello and started to drag him off toward some rubble nearby. Panfilo helped. “How bad is it, sir?” Trasone asked.

“Hurts,” Spinello answered. When the two soldiers dragged him over a broken brick, he began to shriek.

Once they got him behind the wreckage-so the Unkerlanter sniper, wherever he was, would have a harder time getting a good blaze at any of them-Trasone and Panfilo examined the wound. It went through the right side of Spinello’s chest and back. The major kept on shrieking and writhing while they looked him over. Trasone took that in stride. He’d helped too many wounded men to do anything else.

“Through the lung,” Panfilo said. “That’s not good.”

“No,” Trasone said. “But he’s not bleeding too much, the way they do sometimes. If we can get him out of here and the healers can slow him down and work on him, he’s got a chance. He’s an officer, and he’s a noble-if we can haul him out of here, they’ll sure as blazes sling him under a dragon and fly him off.”

“All right, let’s try it,” Sergeant Panfilo said. “He’s not a bad fellow.”

“Pretty fair officer,” Trasone agreed as each of them draped one of Spinello’s arms over his shoulder. “Of course, if it was you or me, we’d take our chances right here in Sulingen.” Panfilo nodded. They both scrambled to their feet and hauled Spinello off toward the closest dragon farm, a few hundred yards from the Wolter. Perhaps mercifully, the wounded major passed out before they got there.

“We’ll get him away,” the chief dragon handler promised. “He’s not the first one that stinking sniper’s nailed. Somebody ought to give the whoreson what he deserves.” The Algarvian slashed a forefinger across his throat to show what he meant.

“Where are our snipers, the lazy buggers?” Trasone grumbled as he and Sergeant Panfilo made their way toward the front once more.

“We’ve got a good one in that Colonel Casmiro,” Panfilo answered. “He’s sent dozens of Swemmel’s men down to the powers below. They say he learned his business hunting big game in Siaulia.”

“Maybe so,” Trasone said, “but the tigers and elephants and what-have-you don’t blaze back. It’d be a lot easier if the Unkerlanters didn’t.”

They were both crawling by the time they got to the place where Spinello was blazed. Trasone wasn’t so cold as he had been the year before. This time, warm clothes had got to the men before snow started falling. He wished that had happened the year before. He and Panfilo also wore white smocks not much different from those King Swemmel’s men had.

That evening, a couple of squads of Unkerlanters sneaked out of their pocket and prowled among the Algarvians, doing all the damage they could till they were hunted down and killed. When the wan sun of fading autumn rose in the northwest, Trasone was running on wine and fury, for he hadn’t had any sleep.

He was, then, the wrong man to greet the dapper officer who came up to the front with a fancy stick that had a spyglass screwed to the top of it. “Is this where we’ve had trouble with snipers?” the fellow demanded.

“What if it is?” Trasone growled. Belatedly-very belatedly-he added, “Sir?”

“I am Colonel the Count Casmiro,” the officer replied in a snooty accent that said he’d been born and raised in Trapani, no matter where he’d hunted big game. “You will have heard of me.” He struck a pose.

Trasone, worn and filthy and burning inside, was in no mood to back down from anybody. “Blaze the bastard who bagged my battalion commander and I’ll have heard of you. Till then, you can go jump off the fornicating cliffs into the fornicating Wolter for all I care.”

Casmiro’s nose was almost as beaky as King Mezentio’s. He looked at Trasone down it. “Curb your tongue,” he said. “I can have you punished.”

“How?” Trasone threw back his head and laughed in Casmiro’s face. “What can you do to me that’s worse than this?”

The hulking trooper waited to see if Colonel Casmiro had an answer for him. The Algarvian noble pushed past him toward the front, muttering, “I will rid the world of that Unkerlanter for good and all.”

“He doesn’t lack for confidence,” Sergeant Panfilo observed when Trasone recounted the conversation to him. The sergeant laughed. “Why should he? He’s an Algarvian, after all.”

“He’s an officer, too,” Trasone said darkly.

Casmiro prowled the forwardmost trenches and foxholes all that day, flitting from one pile of ruined brickwork to the next as if he were a ghost. He did know something-quite a bit-about moving without drawing notice. At some point that afternoon, Trasone wrapped himself in his blanket and went to sleep. When he woke, night had fallen-and Colonel Casmiro was nowhere to be found.

A pot full of pillaged buckwheat groats and what was probably dog meat interested Trasone more, anyhow. Only after he’d filled his belly did he bother asking, “Where’d that know-it-all sniper get to?”

“He crawled out toward the Unkerlanters,” somebody answered.

“Where’d he go?” Trasone asked.

No one knew. A soldier said, “You don’t want to stick your head up to find out, you know what I mean? Not when Swemmel’s stinking whoresons’ll drill you a new ear hole first chance they get.”

“That’s the truth-no doubt about it.” Trasone felt better for some food in him. The Unkerlanters weren’t tossing very many eggs. After their raid the night before, they didn’t try another one. Nobody ordered the Algarvians forward in a night attack. Trasone cleaned his mess tin and went back to sleep. No one bothered him till dawn. That left him only about a year behind.

When he woke, he yawned and stretched and made his slow, careful way up to the front. He didn’t think it was light enough for Swemmel’s soldiers to have an easy time spying him and blazing him, but he didn’t want to find out he was wrong, either. “Anything going on?” he asked when he reached the battered trenches nearest the enemy.

“Seems quiet enough,” answered one of the men unlucky enough to be there already.

“Any sign of the sniper?” Trasone asked. Everybody shook his head.

Cautiously, Trasone looked out from the rubble the Algarvians occupied toward the rubble the Unkerlanters still held. He saw no trace of Colonel Casmiro. With a shrug, he ducked down again. “Maybe the powers below ate him,” he said, and his comrades laughed. They had no love for snipers on either side. He doubted whether even Swemmel’s men loved snipers on either side.

It was a quiet day, punctuated only by occasional screams. He had time to wonder how Major Spinello was doing, and if Spinello was doing at all. After darkness fell-and it fell horribly early-Colonel Casmiro appeared, complete with his stick with the spyglass on it, for all the world as if he’d been conjured up. He might have been speaking of leopards or large flightless birds when he said, “I bagged four today.”

“Where were you hiding, sir?” Trasone asked, and the master sniper gave him nothing but a smug smile. Trasone found another question: “Any sign of the bugger who’s been blazing us?”

“Not a single one,” Casmiro answered. “I begin to doubt he’s there anymore.” Even in those dismal surroundings, he managed a swagger; he would have got on well with Spinello. “He likely got word I was coming and fled.”

“Here’s hoping,” Trasone said. As long as the Unkerlanter sniper wouldn’t put a beam between his eyes, he cared about nothing else.

But Casmiro said, “No, I want him dead at my hands. In his last moment of pain, I want him to know I am his master.”

Day after day, the count and colonel went out before dawn and came back after sunset with tales of Unkerlanters he’d blazed. But he saw no sign of the enemy sniper. Neither did Trasone-till two of his countrymen in quick succession died after incautiously exposing a tiny part of their persons for half a heartbeat.

Casmiro vowed a terrible revenge. Trasone didn’t see him go out before dawn the next morning, but Panfilo did. The veteran sergeant was wide-eyed with admiration. “He’s got a regular little nest there, under a chunk of sheet iron,” he told Trasone. “No wonder the Unkerlanters can’t spy him.”

“He’d better get that lousy bugger,” Trasone said. “Otherwise, we’ll never be free of him.”

Trasone peered east more often than was really safe, hoping to watch the Unkerlanter sniper meet his end. And he thought he had, when an Unkerlanter screamed and toppled from the second story of a burnt-out block of flats a couple of furlongs away. An instant later, though, another scream rose, this one from between the lines, not far from the trench in which Trasone stood. His gaze flashed to the sheet iron under which Colonel Casmiro sheltered. He felt like a fool. How could he tell what was going on under there?

He found out that evening, when Casmiro did not come back inside the Algarvian lines. The chill that went through him somehow sank deeper than that from the snow gently falling on King Mezentio’s men in Sulingen.

During the day, Talsu hardly felt married. He went downstairs to work with his father, while Gailisa walked the couple of blocks back to her father’s grocery to help him there. The only difference in the days was that they both got wages, out of which they paid for food and the tiny lodging that was Talsu’s room.

At night, though. . Talsu wished he’d got married a lot sooner. He seemed to come to work every morning with an enormous grin on his face. His father eyed him with amused approval. “If you can stay happy with your lady when you’re cooped up together in a room where you couldn’t swing a cat, odds are you’ll be happy anywhere for a long time to come,” Traku remarked one morning.

“Aye, Father, I expect so,” Talsu answered absently. It was a cool day, so he wore a wool tunic, and it rubbed at the scratches Gailisa had clawed in his back the night before. But then, thinking about that anywhere, he went on, “We’ve been looking at flats. Everything is so cursed expensive!”

“It’s the war.” Traku blamed the war for anything that went wrong. “Not just flats are dear these days. Everything costs more than it should, on account of the Algarvians are doing so much thieving. Isn’t enough left for decent folks.”

“I shouldn’t wonder if you’re right.” Like his father, Talsu was willing to blame Mezentio’s men for any iniquity. Even so … “If it weren’t for the redheads, though, we’d have a lot less work ourselves, and that’d mean a lot less money.”

“I won’t say you’re wrong,” Traku answered. “And do you know what?” He waited for Talsu to shake his head before continuing, “Every time I turn out something in an extra-heavy winter weight, I’m not even sorry to do it.”

“Of course you’re not-it means one more Algarvian heading out of Jelgava and off to Unkerlant.” Talsu thought for a moment, then spoke in classical Kaunian: “Their wickedness goes before them as a shield.”

“Sounds good,” his father said. “What’s it mean?” Talsu translated. His father thought about it, then said, “And with any luck at all, the Unkerlanters’ll smash that shield all to bits. How long have the news sheets been bragging that the redheads’ll have the last Unkerlanter out of that Sulingen place any minute now?”

“It’s been a while,” Talsu agreed. “And they say it’s already started snowing down there.” He shuddered at the very idea. “Only time I ever saw snow was up in the mountains when I was in the army. Nasty cold stuff.”

“It snowed here the winter before you were born,” Traku said reminiscently. “It was pretty as all get-out, till it started melting and turning sooty. But you’re right-it was bloody cold.”

Before Talsu could answer, the front door opened. The bell above the door jingled. In walked an Algarvian major with bushy red side whiskers with a few white hairs in them and a little chin beard. “Good day, sir,” Traku said to him. “What can I do for you?” The Algarvians had occupied Skrunda for more than two years; if the locals weren’t used to dealing with Mezentio’s men by now, they never would be.

“I require winter gear,” the major said in good Jelgavan. “I mean to say, tough winter gear, not winter gear for a place like this, not winter gear for a place with a civilized climate.”

“I see.” Traku nodded. He said not a word about Unkerlant. Talsu understood that. Some Algarvians got very angry when they had to think about the place to which they were bound. “What have you got in mind, sir?”

The officer started ticking things off on his fingers. “Item, a white smock. Item, a heavy cloak. Item, a heavy kilt. Item, several pairs of thick wool drawers reaching to the knee. Item, several pairs of thick wool socks, also reaching to the knee.”

During the first winter of the war in the west, Algarvians bound for Unkerlant had been a lot less certain about what they needed. They’d learned, no doubt from bitter experience. Talsu wasn’t sorry; the redheads had given a lot of other people bitter experience, too. He said, “How many do you reckon go into several, sir?”

“Say, half a dozen each,” the Algarvian answered. He pointed one forefinger at Talsu, the other at Traku. “Now we shall argue over price.”

“You’ll argue with my father,” Talsu said. “He’s better at it than I am.”

“Then I would sooner argue with you,” the major said, but he turned to Traku. “I have some notion of what things should cost, my dear fellow. I hope you will not prove too unreasonable.”

“I don’t know,” Traku answered. “We’ll see, though. For everything you told me-” He named a sum.

“Very amusing,” the Algarvian told him. “Good day.” He started for the doorway.

“And a good day to you, too,” Traku replied placidly. “Don’t forget to shut the door when you go out.” He picked up his needle and went back to work. Talsu did the same.

The officer hesitated with his hand on the latch. “Maybe you are not madmen, merely brigands.” He named a sum of his own, a good deal lower than Traku’s.

“Don’t forget to shut the door,” Traku repeated. “If you want all that stuff for that price, you can get it. But you get what you pay for, whether you think so or not. How do you suppose those cheap drawers you find will hold out in an Unkerlanter blizzard?”

Mentioning that name was a gamble, but it paid off. Scowling, the Algarvian said, “Very well, sir. Let us dicker.” He drew himself up and approached the counter again.

He proved better at haggling than most of the redheads who’d gone up against Talsu’s father. He kept starting for the door in theatrical disbelief that Traku wouldn’t bring his price down further. The fourth time he did it, Talsu judged he really meant it. So did his father, who lowered the scot to something not too much higher than he would have charged one of his own countrymen.

“There, you see?” the Algarvian said. “You can be reasonable. It is a bargain.” He stuck out his hand.

Traku shook it, saying, “A bargain at that price?” After the major nodded, Traku said, “You might have screwed me down a little more yet.”

“I do not quibble over coppers,” the redhead said grandly. “Silver, aye; coppers, no. You look to need coppers more than I do, and so I give them to you. I shall return in due course for my garments.” He swept out of the shop.

Traku couldn’t help chuckling. “Some of them aren’t so bad,” he said.

“Maybe not,” Talsu said grudgingly. “But I’ll bet he would have stabbed me if he’d been in the grocer’s shop, too.” Traku coughed a couple of times and made a point of looking busy for a while.

When Talsu told the story over the table the next morning, Gailisa said, “I hope all the Algarvians get sent to Unkerlant. I hope they never come back, either.”

Talsu beamed at his new bride. “See why I love her?” he asked his family- and, by the way he said it, the world at large. “We think alike.”

His sister Ausra snorted. “Well, who doesn’t want the Algarvians gone? Powers above, I do. Does that mean you want to marry me, too?”

“No, he’d know what he was getting into then,” Traku said. “This way, he’ll be surprised.”

“Dear!” Laitsina gave her husband a reproving look.

“Let discord not come among us,” Talsu said in the old language. Classical Kaunian came close to making common sense worth listening to. Then he had to translate. In Jelgavan, it came out sounding like, “We’d better not squabble among ourselves.”

“That’s what our nobles kept telling us,” Gailisa said. “And we didn’t squabble with them, and so they led us into the war against Algarve-and right off a cliff.” She started to say something else in that vein, but suddenly stopped and looked at Talsu-not at his face, but toward his flank, where the redhead had stuck a knife into him. When she did speak again, it was in a subdued voice: “And now, the way Mezentio’s men have treated us, I wouldn’t be sorry to see the nobles back again.”

“Aye, that’s the truth.” Talsu nodded toward his wife. “Next to the Algarvians, even Colonel Dzirnavu seems.. well, not too bad.” The rabid patriotism of a man whose kingdom groaned under the occupier’s heel couldn’t make him say more than that for the fat, arrogant fool who’d commanded his regiment.

Traku said, “Anyhow, half the nobles have gone to the court at Balvi to suck up to the king the redheads gave us. If they suck up to the Algarvians, how are they any different than the Algarvians?”

“I’ll tell you how,” Ausra said hotly. “They’re worse, that’s how. The Algarvians are our enemies. They’ve never made any bones about that. But our nobles are supposed to protect us from our enemies, instead of… sucking up, like Father says.” She looked on the point of bursting into tears-tears of fury more than sorrow.

Gailisa got to her feet. “I’d better go on over now.” She bent and brushed Talsu’s lips with her own. “I’ll see you tonight, sweetheart.” Her voice was full of delicious promise. Talsu wondered if he were the only one who heard it. By the way his mother and father and even his sister grinned at him, he wasn’t.

As soon as the door downstairs closed, showing Gailisa was on her way to her father’s shop, Ausra said, “You turned pink, Talsu.” She laughed at him.

He glared. “Somebody ought to turn your backside red.”

“That will be enough of that,” his mother said, as if he and Ausra were a couple of small, quarrelsome children. She turned toward him. “Remember what you said in the old-time language? You should have paid more attention to it.”

“She started it.” Talsu pointed at his sister. He felt like a small, quarrelsome child-a small, quarrelsome, embarrassed child.

“Enough,” Laitsina repeated. His mother could have given Colonel Dzirnavu lessons in command. She went on, “Now you and Traku had better go on down and get some work done. Your poor wife shouldn’t have to do it all.”

The unfairness of that took Talsu’s breath away. Before he could find a comeback, Traku said, “Aye, we’ll get downstairs, won’t we, son? That we, we’ll have half a chance to hear ourselves think.” He left in a hurry. Talsu, no fool, followed in a hurry.

As they worked away on the Algarvian officer’s winter outfit, Talsu said, “I wish our nobles weren’t sucking up to King Mezentio’s pointy-nosed brother. I wish they were doing something to get rid of the redheads. I wish somebody was doing something to get rid of the miserable redheads.”

His father finished threading a needle before answering, “Somebody is. Who painted all those slogans in classical Kaunian a few weeks ago?”

“Algarvians haven’t caught anybody.” Talsu gestured dismissively. “Besides, who cares about slogans?”

“Maybe there’s more to it than slogans,” Traku said. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

“I haven’t seen any.” Talsu went back to basting together the redheaded major’s white smock. After a while, his silence grew thoughtful. The people with whom he studied classical Kaunian didn’t care for the Algarvians, not even a little. What all were they doing? Could he find out without putting his own neck on the line? That was a good question. He wondered what sort of answer it had. Maybe I ought to see, he thought.

“Do you ever hear anything from Zossen?” Garivald asked Munderic. “Seems like I’ve been gone-forever.” A cold, nasty wind whipped through the forest west of Herborn. Garivald could smell snow on the breeze. It had already fallen a couple of times, but hadn’t stuck; along with the autumn rains, it left the ground under the trees a nasty, oozy quagmire.

Munderic shook his head. “Nothing to speak of. The Algarvians still have their little garrison in it, if that’s what you mean.”

“I figured that,” Garivald said.

“I figured you did,” the leader of the band of irregulars answered. “But I don’t know if the firstman’s wife is sleeping with the redheads, or whether swine fever’s gone through, or if the harvest is good-haven’t heard anything like that. Too far away.”

“If the Algarvians are sleeping with Herka, they’re a lot more desperate than anybody thought they were,” Garivald said, and Munderic laughed. Garivald started to walk off, then turned back. “What about the fight at that Sulingen place?”

“Still going on.” Now Munderic spoke with great assurance. “By the powers above, the redheads stuck their dicks in the sausage machine there, and now they can’t get ‘em out. Breaks my heart, that it does.”

“Mine, too.” Now Garivald did walk away.

Munderic’s voice pursued him: “We’re going after that ley line tonight, remember. Got to keep the Algarvians from moving things through.”

“I hadn’t forgotten.” Garivald paused to look back over his shoulder. “That’ll get harder when the snow does start sticking, and it won’t be long. Cursed Algarvians will be able to follow our tracks a lot easier.”

“We lived through last winter and kept fighting,” Munderic answered. “We can do it again, I expect. Maybe Sadoc will figure out a way to hide our tracks.”

Garivald rolled his eyes. “Maybe Sadoc will figure out a way to get us all killed, not just some of us. The longer it is since he’s tried to work wizardry, the better the mage you misremember him to be.”

“When you work better, you can pick nits,” Munderic said angrily. “Till then, he’s the only excuse for a mage we’ve got.”

“You said it, I didn’t. But I’ll say this: from everything I’ve seen, no mage-craft is better than bad magecraft.” Garivald kept on walking this time, and paid no attention to whatever Munderic shouted after him.

He walked right out of the clearing where most of the irregulars squatted or lounged. Just beyond it, he almost fell when his feet slipped in wet, rotting leaves. He had to grab for a tree trunk to keep from landing on his backside.

From behind another tree, he heard a snicker. Obilot stepped out. She’d been on sentry-go; she had a stick in her hand. “I’ve seen that done better,” she said. “You looked as clumsy as a redhead there.”

Having just quarreled with Munderic, Garivald found himself in a sour mood. Instead of laughing at himself, as he usually would have, he growled, “And if you’d put your foot where I did, you’d look even clumsier.”

Obilot glared at him. “I got out here without slipping and sliding like an otter going down a bank.”

Garivald glared back. He bowed low, almost as if he were an Algarvian and not a poorly shaved Unkerlanter peasant in a dirty tunic and muddy felt boots a couple of sizes too big. “I’m so sorry, milady. We can’t all be as beautiful and graceful as you.”

Obilot went white. When she started to swing the business end of her stick toward him, he realized that was killing rage. She realized it a moment later, and lowered the stick before Garivald had to decide whether to try to jump her or to dive behind the tree he’d grabbed.

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” she whispered, very likely more to herself than to him. She took a deep breath, and got back a little color. When she spoke again, she did aim her words at him: “Be thankful you don’t know what you’re talking about. Be thankful you don’t know where I’ve heard things like that before.”

She never had said much to him about what had driven her into the irregulars. “Something to do with one of Mezentio’s men,” he guessed.

Her nod was jerky. “Aye. Something.” Her voice made the cutting wind seem a warm breeze out of the north. “Something.” She gestured with the stick again, this time in a peremptory way. “Go on. Leave me in peace. Peace!” She laughed. Garivald all but fled.

Compared to facing Obilot, going out and trying to sabotage an Algarvian-held ley line seemed safe and easy to Garivald. Or it would have, had she not been one of the irregulars coming along on the raid. Garivald stayed as far away from her as he could.

He also wanted to stay away from Sadoc. Since the would-be mage and Obilot wouldn’t stay close to each other, Garivald had to balance repulsions as best he could.

Munderic was blind to all that. He had other things to worry about. “Careful with the eggs,” he kept telling the irregulars who carried them. “If you’re not careful, we’ll all end up very unhappy.”

Where the eggs had come from, Garivald didn’t know. They appeared in the camp every so often, almost as if they were magicked into being. They had plenty of magic inside them; Garivald knew that. The characters on their cases weren’t in Unkerlanter. He couldn’t read, but he could recognize the characters of his own language. If these weren’t Unkerlanter, they had to be Algarvian. Had Munderic stolen them out from under the redheads’ noses? Or had the Algarvians given them to puppet King Raniero’s Grelzer troops, with a Grelzer soldier friendlier than he seemed passing them on to the irregulars?

Asking Munderic struck Garivald as more trouble than it was worth. He and the leader of the band had dickered too often to make him think he would get a straight answer. He slogged along down the muddy path under the ever barer branches of the trees.

And then, quite suddenly, the irregulars weren’t under the shelter of the trees any more, but tramping up the path through an overgrown meadow that hadn’t been grazed for at least a year. Munderic waved the men with the eggs- and a good many others with them-off the path and into the grass. “Have a care, lads,” he said. “The redheads have gone to burying eggs in the roadway again.”

That made several more irregulars skitter off the track. Then Obilot spoke up, her voice a clear bell in the darkness: “Sometimes they bury eggs alongside the roads, too, to get the clever buggers who know enough to get off onto the safe ground-only it isn’t.”

Sadoc said, “I’ll douse out any eggs; see if I don’t.” Carrying a forked stick, he strode boldly down the middle of the road, as if daring an Algarvian egg to burst under him.

“If he doesn’t douse out an egg, we’ll see it, all right,” Garivald murmured to another irregular nearby. The fellow chuckled, though it was funny only in a grisly way. Garivald didn’t think Sadoc could find the sun at noon, with or without a dowsing rod, but he held his tongue. If Sadoc proved him right, everyone would know about it.

He tramped along under the dark, moonless sky. Nights grew ever longer. That gave the irregulars an advantage they lacked in summertime: they could travel farther under cover of darkness at this season of the year. If he were back in Zossen now, he would be wondering if he had enough jars of spirits to keep him drunk through most of the winter. Unless this winter were very different from any that had gone before, he would have enough, too.

But this winter was different, and Zossen a long way away. Instead of the redheads who’d garrisoned his village, Garivald had to worry about whatever Grelzer troops were guarding the ley line for their Algarvian masters.

He wondered how hard the men who served King Raniero would fight. They weren’t Algarvians, which was doubtless all to the good. But they wouldn’t have only the weapons they could steal or scrounge. The Algarvians would want to make sure they could fight, whether they would or not.

Munderic spoke in a low but urgent voice: “We’re getting near the ley line. Keep your eyes skinned, every cursed one of you. We want to slide past the Grelzer traitors; we don’t want to get into a fight with them. If we can plant our eggs and then sneak back to the woods, we’ve done what we came for.”

Somebody said, “We’ll have to kill those whoresons sooner or later. Might as well start now.”

“If we have to, we will,” Munderic answered. “But hurting the Algarvians is more important now. That’s what we aim for first.”

With more than a little reluctance, Garivald admitted to himself that Munderic was right. He paused and peered ahead through the night. In the name of efficiency, King Swemmel had ordered shrubbery planted to either side of a lot of ley lines in Unkerlant, to keep people and animals from blundering unawares into the path of a caravan. How much labor that had taken hadn’t been measured against men or beasts saved. Garivald wondered why not, but not for long. Because Swemmel gave the order, that’s why. He still feared the king more than he loved him. But he feared-and hated-the Algarvians still more.

“Halt!” someone called from the darkness ahead, in accents much like his own. “Who goes there!”

Garivald went down onto his belly. He couldn’t see the man who had challenged, and he didn’t want the fellow seeing him, either. For all he knew, the Grelzer carried a crystal and was calling reinforcements. But Sadoc’s voice rang out, harsh and proud: “Free men of Unkerlant, that’s who!”

A beam came out of the night, aimed at the loudmouthed would-be mage. Garivald and his comrades blazed back, trying to hit the Grelzer before he could hit any of them. By the way he was shouting-screaming-he had no crystal to summon aid. A moment later, the screams changed note, from fear to anguish. A moment after that, most abruptly, they cut off.

From behind the hedge-how had he got there so fast? — Munderic called, “Stinking whoreson’s dead-scratch one traitor. But come on. We’ve got the get these eggs planted fast now. Sadoc, are you hale?”

“Aye,” Sadoc answered.

“Get up here, then,” Munderic snapped as irregulars dug a hole in the dirt between the hedgerows marking the ley line’s path. “Say the words over these eggs and we’ll get out of here.”

“Aye,” Sadoc repeated. Say the words he did, in a rapid singsong. Garivald didn’t think it was in Unkerlanter, but wasn’t sure. With Sadoc saying the words, he wasn’t sure they would work, either. As soon as they were through, he helped his comrades fill in the hole they’d dug. Then they started for the shelter of the woods again. No more Grelzer soldiers came over to see what might have happened or to pursue. That told Garivald more than a little about the quality of the men who served Raniero.

The irregulars were more than halfway back to the forest when a distant roar from behind them made them burst into cheers. If any villagers heard them, they might have taken their noise for the baying of a wolf pack that had killed. They wouldn’t have been far wrong, either. Even Garivald slapped Sadoc on the back.

Just outside the woods, an irregular trod on an egg buried in the meadow. That roar was louder, more intimate. His screams were more dreadful than the Grelzer’s, but faded to nothingness almost as fast. Obilot said, “One of us for one of their caravans-fair exchange.” She was right… but Garivald’s shiver had nothing to do with the cold.

Marshal Rathar and General Vatran had a new headquarters these days; the Algarvians had finally overrun the gully from which they’d directed the fight for Sulingen for so long. This one was also a cave, a cave dug into the side of the bluffs that tumbled down to the Wolter. Runners had to make their way along a narrow, twisting, dangerous path to bring new from the few bits of the city to Unkerlanters still held and to take back orders.

After one runner did make the journey, Vatran started cursing. Rathar had been studying the map; the general’s fury made him look up from it. “What now?” he asked.

“I’ll tell you what,” Vatran growled. “You know Colonel Chariulf?”

“Of course,” Rathar answered. “He finally put paid to that Algarvian master sniper, and a good thing, too-the whoreson was bleeding us white.”

“Aye, well, now he’s had his own letter posted, poor bugger,” Vatran told him. “He got caught away from a hole when the Algarvians started tossing eggs, and there’s not enough of him left to bury in a bloody jam tin.”

This war is bleeding the whole kingdom white, Rathar thought. He’d thought the same thing during the Twinkings War. Men a little older, a little more traveled, than he had surely thought the same thing during the Six Years’ War. And they’d been right, and he’d been right, and he was right again. What would be left of Unkerlant by the time this fight was over?

He hoped something would be left of Unkerlant by the time this fight was over. His job down here was to help make sure something would be left of his kingdom when the fight was over. If the Algarvians took it all… If that happened, they would make people long for the good old days of King Swemmel, which, to a man who’d lived through those days, was a genuinely frightening thought.

“Poor Chariulf,” he said. “He was good at what he did.”

Vatran grunted. “Aye, he was. And that’s more praise than most of us will get after we’re dead and gone.”

“If you and I don’t get that kind of praise, it’ll mean we lost the war,” Rathar said.

“Maybe,” Vatran answered. “But maybe not, too. Maybe it’ll just mean Swemmel got sick of us, threw us in the soup pot when it was boiling hard, and then went on and won the war anyhow, with whatever other generals he scrounged up.”

“Now there’s a cheerful thought,” Rathar said. “I like to think of myself as indispensable.”

“I like to think of myself the same bloody way,” Vatran replied. “But the way I look at it and the way his Majesty looks at it aren’t necessarily one and the same, however much I wish they were.” He raised his voice: “Ysolt! How about another mug of tea?”

“I’ll fetch you one, General,” the cook answered from the back of the cave. “Do you want one, too, Marshal Rathar?”

“No, thanks,” he said; he had some sour ale in front of him as he examined the map, and that would do well enough.

“Can I get you anything else, then, lord Marshal?” she asked, her voice an inviting croon. If Rathar’s ears didn’t turn as red as the embers of the fire that kept the cave a little warmer than freezing, he would have been astonished. He’d bedded her a couple of times since that first one, or rather, she’d bedded him. He’d discovered he had an easier time resisting the Algarvian army than his own hefty cook.

Vatran chuckled under his breath; he would have had to be a moron not to know what Ysolt’s tone meant. “Don’t worry about it, lord Marshal,” he said in a stage whisper. “Keeps the juices flowing, or that’s what they say.” He chuckled again. “Never a dull moment there, either, even if she’s no beauty.”

“No,” Rathar said, admitting what he could hardly deny. He’d wondered whether Vatran had slept with Ysolt-or perhaps the better way to phrase it was whether she’d slept with Vatran. Now he knew.

“You didn’t answer me, Marshal,” she said reprovingly as she brought General Vatran a steaming mug of tea and a little pitcher of milk beside it on the tray. “Can I get you anything else?”

“No, that’s all right,” he said. “I’m fine.”

“Well, I thought so,” she answered, with a girlish giggle that didn’t fit her bulk. Then she had mercy on the marshal and turned back to General Vatran. “It’s goat’s milk, General. I’m sorry. It’s all I could get.”

“Doesn’t bother me,” Vatran said as Ysolt went back to her cooking. “Cursed sight better than no milk at all, even if the bloody Gyongyosians would shit their drawers about it.” He poured some into the tea, then nodded. “Cursed sight better than no milk at all.”

“The Zuwayzin drink their tea without milk,” Rathar remarked. “They pour in the honey instead.”

“That’s not my problem-and if I took off my clothes in this weather, it’d freeze right off,” Vatran answered. “I can’t use it as often as I did when I was your age, but I’ve still got a blaze left in the stick every now and again.”

“Good for you,” Rathar said. Like him, Vatran also had a wife somewhere far away from the fighting. Considering what Rathar was doing, he hardly found himself in a position to criticize the general. His attention went back to the map. “They aren’t getting over the Wolter now, by the powers above.”

Carrying his mug, Vatran came to stand by him and study the situation, too. “That’s the truth, unless they scramble down the bank to the river and hop from one ice floe to the next.”

“We’ve got plenty on the other side to stop ‘em if they try it.” Rathar took another pull at his ale. “And they’re still in play here in the city, so they won’t.” He clicked his tongue between his teeth. “The ice doesn’t make it any easier for us to get reinforcements and supplies up here, but I’m cursed if I know what to do about it.”

“It’ll all freeze solid before too long,” Vatran answered. “It’s already doing that farther south. And that’ll solve the problem-if it’s still a problem then.”

“Aye. If.” Rathar made a discontented noise, down deep in his throat. “Even if they can’t break into the Mamming Hills, powers below eat the Algarvians for pushing as far south as they have. Do you know what a demon of a time we’ve had moving things from hither to yon?” He traced what he meant with the blunt, dirty, callused forefinger of his right hand.

“I wouldn’t be worth bloody much if I didn’t know it, would I?” Vatran said. “Haven’t I been screaming at the crystallomancers and at every dunder-headed officer they’ve managed to raise for as long as you have? Haven’t I been screaming even louder than you have? Do you think there’s one officer between here and Cottbus who doesn’t want to wear my guts for garters?”

“I can think of one,” Rathar said. Vatran gave him an indignant look. But then the marshal jabbed a thumb at his own chest. “That’s me. You’ve been a workhorse, and I thank you for it.”

“Considering that you could have sacked me after Durrwangen went down the drain, I’m the one who ought to thank you, and I do,” Vatran answered. “But do you know what it is?” Rathar shook his head, waiting to see what the older man would say. Vatran went on, “We’re too cursed stubborn to quit-you, me, the king, the whole kingdom. When the redheads kicked Valmiera and Jelgava in the balls, the blonds just folded up and died. We’ve done a lot of dying-we’ve done way too bloody much dying-but we never did fold up. And we could have.”

“I know,” Rathar said. “And we’re lucky. If the Algarvians had used a little more honey, if they’d had the wit to prop up a Grelzer noble in Herborn. .”

“They didn’t think they needed to,” Vatran said scornfully. “They figured they could do whatever they pleased, same as they did in the east. Now they’ve found out they were wrong-but it’s a little fornicating late for that, wouldn’t you say?”

“Here’s hoping,” answered Rather, whose greatest fear all along had been that the Unkerlanter peasantry, after more than twenty years of King Swemmel’s rule, would prefer any other overlords, even ones with red hair. But that hadn’t happened, and it didn’t look like happening now. He pointed to the map, north and east of Sulingen. “Before too long, maybe we can start giving them back some of their own.”

“Ground’s not frozen hard enough yet,” Vatran observed.

“I said, ‘before too long.’ “ Rathar sighed. “Do you know what I’ve had more trouble about than anything else?”

“Of course I do,” Vatran answered. “Keeping King Swemmel from ordering us to do things before we’re ready to do them.” He lowered his voice. “If Kyot hadn’t been the same way, Swemmel never would have won the Twinkings War.”

“I know.” Memories of that confused, vicious struggled crowded forward in Rathar’s mind. He shoved them down again; none taught much about the general’s art. “But we’ve managed it this time-so far, anyhow. Easier when I’m away from Cottbus than when I’m there.”

“Aye-his Majesty’s not bending your ear so much,” Vatran said. “Only question is, who’s bending his ear while you’re down here?”

“I do wonder about that every now and then: when I have time to wonder about anything except what the Algarvians are doing, I mean,” Rathar said. “We haven’t had any trouble so far.”

“So far.” Vatran freighted the words with ominous import, as if he were a fortune-teller seeing doom ahead.

“His Majesty wants this war won,” Rathar said. “Till you understand that, you understand nothing about him. He is as inflexible now as he ever was in the days when Kyot offered to split the kingdom.”

“All right.” Vatran leaned forward and spoke in a very, very low voice: “Where d’you suppose we’d be if Kyot had won the civil war?”

“You and I?” Rathar didn’t need long to think that over. “We’d be dead. Kyot didn’t love his enemies any more than Swemmel did-does. They were twins, after all, like as two peas in a pod.”

“That’s not what I meant, and you bloody well know it,” Vatran said. “Where would the kingdom be? Better? Worse? The same?”

“How can you judge?” Rathar answered with a shrug. “Not much different, odds are. The faces would be, but not Unkerlant. Or do you think otherwise?”

“No, not really.” Vatran sighed. “It would be nice if we could be efficient without talking about efficiency all the time, if we could be a proper Derlavaian kingdom instead of a great slapdash thing that never manages to get it right the first try, and usually not the second one, either. Do you know what I’m saying, lord Marshal, or is this all just moonshine and hogwash to you?”

“I know what you’re saying, all right,” Rathar answered. “Anybody who’s ever led troops against Algarvians knows what you mean: either he knows or he gets killed before he can find out. But I’ll tell you something, General.”

“What’s that?” Vatran sounded like a man who’d drunk himself sad, even if he’d had nothing stronger than tea.

“The more we fight the Algarvians, the more efficient we get,” Rathar replied. “We have to. Either that, or we go under. And I’ll tell you something else, too: the redheads never figured we’d last this long. We’ve already given ‘em one surprise. Now we find how many more we’ve got.” He nodded, liking the sound of those words. “We find out pretty soon, by the powers above.”

“Come back here, you miserable, cursed thing!” Skarnu called to a sheep that had broken away from the flock. The sheep showed no interest in coming. It had found some good grass near the edge of the woods, and its thick woolly coat, which hadn’t been sheared in a while, shed the cold, nasty rain that pelted down out of a sky gray to begin with and now darkening toward evening.

Skarnu’s hooded cape shed rain, too, but not so well. He squelched toward the sheep, temper fraying with every step he took. He hefted his crook. When he got close enough to the infuriating animal, he intended to teach it who was boss, and in no uncertain terms.

But the sheep might have known what he had in mind-and it certainly knew just how far he could reach with that crook. Nimble as if it had grown up hopping from crag to crag in the Bratanu Mountains, it skipped away from him again and again. He wondered if it would try to jump the fence and cross the road so it could get in among the oaks and forage for acorns like a wild boar.

It didn’t jump, but it did evade him again, almost as if it were playing with him. Longingly, he looked back toward the farmhouse. Merkela would have a big pot of stew bubbling over the fire. He didn’t care if it was only barley and peas and beans and cabbage. It would fill him up and warm him from the inside out. As things were, he’d be lucky if he didn’t come down with chest fever by the time he finally chased down this pestilential sheep.

“You’d make good mutton,” he growled. “You’d make bloody wonderful mutton, do you know that?”

He wondered what Merkela would say if he cut the sheep’s throat when he finally caught it, gutted the carcass, and dragged it back to the farmhouse. He sighed. No, he didn’t really wonder what Merkela would say. He knew. The sheep would live, no matter how much he wished it dead.

In the driving rain and deepening gloom, he didn’t see the horsemen coming up the road till they were quite close. They didn’t see him, either-and then, all at once, they did. One of them called out in accented Valmieran: “You are being the peasant calling self Skarnu?”

Skarnu didn’t wait to admit or deny he was himself. He stood only a couple of strides from the rail fence. He scrambled up over it, dashed across the road, and ran off into the woods.

“Halting!” yelled the Algarvian who spoke his language. But Skarnu had no intention of halting. He could think of only one reason the redheads would want him, the same one that had made him hide in the woods before. He cursed his sister again for betraying him to her Algarvian lover.

Mezentio’s men didn’t just shout at Skarnu. They started blazing at him, too. Beams sizzled past, boiling raindrops as they went. But in weather like this, the beams weakened rapidly. When one struck him, it had enough force left to burn through his cloak, enough to burn through his trousers, but not enough to do much more than scorch his backside. On a rainless day, it might have brought him down.

As things were, he howled and yelped and sprang in the air and clapped a hand to the singed part, almost as if he were a comic actor up on the stage. He ran on for a couple of steps, wondering how bad the wound was. Then he decided he couldn’t be too badly hurt if he could keep on running so fast. He dodged in and out among the trees, trying to put as many trunks as he could between himself and the Algarvians.

They pounded after him on foot, calling to one another in their own language. There were four or five of them; he hadn’t bothered to count before fleeing. They all had sticks, and his throbbing right buttock proclaimed they weren’t shy about using them. But it was getting dark, and he knew the woods, and they didn’t. Once he stopped running in blind panic and started using his head, he had little trouble shaking them off.

Hood drawn down over his face, he sheltered in a thick clump of bushes while they ran past. One came within fifteen or twenty feet, but had no idea he was anywhere close by. Once they were all out of earshot, he got up and moved off to the side, away from the track they would have to take going back to their horses.

He was tempted to go back to the horses himself, to ride off on one and lead the others away after it. But he didn’t know whether the redheads had left a man to watch the animals. He would have, in their boots. And so, however alluring the prospect of giving them a good tweak was, he decided to content himself with escape.

He spent a long, cold night in the woods. Without the cloak, he might have frozen. With it, he was merely miserable. He slept very little, no matter how tired he was. However much he wanted to, he couldn’t go back to the farm. He hoped the Algarvians had only been after him, not after Merkela and Raunu and the two Kaunians from Forthweg who’d joined them. He didn’t dare find out, though, not now.

What do I do? Where do I go? The questions ate at him. For the time being, he wasn’t going anywhere, not unless he heard the Algarvians coming after him in the darkness. He was too likely to blunder into them. Instead, he waited for dawn or something close to it, and tried to stay as dry as he could. That wasn’t easy, not the way the rain kept pouring down.

When at last he could see his outstretched hand in front of his face, he got moving. He struck the northbound road about where he thought he would. A slow smile stretched itself across his face. After a couple of years here, he was starting to know his way around as well as the locals did. No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than he chuckled. Any local to whom he was rash enough to say that would laugh himself silly.

The redheads had men posted about where he thought they would: at the main crossroads. Had he been panicked, they would have nabbed him with ease. But he saw them before they spied him, and slipped in among the trees to slide around them.

Before long, he left the road for one of the many little paths that meandered from one farm to another. He stayed on the verge wherever he could; the path was almost as full of water as a creek. It was lower than the surrounding countryside, which made it the drainage channel. He wondered how long people and animals and wheels had been wearing it down. Since the days of the Kaunian Empire? He wouldn’t have been surprised.

After half a mile or so of hard, wet, slippery going, he walked up to another farmhouse. Rain rivered down the wood shakes of the roof and off the eaves, making a small lake around the house. Skarnu splashed through it, went up the stairs, and knocked on the front door.

For a few minutes, nothing happened. He knocked again, and called: “It’s me. I’m by myself.” Then he had to wait some more.

At last, though the door, did swing open. The farmer who stood in the doorway had a Valmieran military stick in his hands. Behind him, his hulking son held another. “It’s all right,” the farmer said, and they both lowered their weapons. The farmer stood aside. “Come in, Skarnu, before you catch your death.”

“My thanks, Maironiu,” Skarnu answered. “I won’t stay long. The redheads were on my trail, but I lost ‘em. Some food, maybe a chance to rest a little-and whom do you know that lives east of here?”

“Shed your cloak. Shed your boots. Eat some bread,” Maironiu said. “You’re sure you lost the redheaded buggers?” At Skarnu’s nod, he relaxed a little, but not much. His wife brought out the bread, and a mug of ale to go with it. Skarnu tore into the food like a starving wolf. Maironiu asked, “Did they scoop up everybody at old Gedominu’s place, the way they do sometimes?”

It would be Gedominu’s place till the last man who’d known Merkela’s husband died of old age. Skarnu had long since resigned himself to that. He shook his head now. “I don’t think so. I think they were after me in particular.”

Maironiu scowled. “That’s not good. That’s not even close to good. How could they know about you? Somebody blab?”

Skarnu nodded again. My sister, he thought. He didn’t want to believe it of Krasta, but he didn’t know what else to believe. “I don’t think they know about anybody else in these parts,” he said. “I hope they don’t, anyhow.”

“They’d better not,” Maironiu’s son burst out. “Life’s hard enough around here as is.”

Seeing how Skarnu ate, Maironiu’s wife brought him another big chunk of bread. He bowed to her as he might have bowed to a duchess. He didn’t usually show off his court manners. For one thing, he seldom had the need. For another, he was so tired now, he hardly knew what he was doing. Maironiu and his wife exchanged glances; they knew what that bow was likely to mean. Maironiu asked the question with surprising subtlety: “You have enemies in the big city?”

“Huh?” Skarnu needed a moment to figure out what that meant. He’d almost forgotten about his noble blood; a couple of years of farm work made him think it nothing very special after all. “It could be,” he said at last.

“Well, go on out to the barn and curl up for a few hours, whoever you were once upon a time,” Maironiu told him. “Then I’ll take you east. I do know somebody who’s not part of our regular group, but he’ll know somebody else. They’ll pass you along, get you away from here.”

“Thanks,” Skarnu repeated, though leaving Merkela, leaving the child she was carrying, was the last thing he wanted to do. One more reason to curse the Algarvians, he thought. Calling Mezentio’s men to mind made him ask, “What’ll you do if the redheads come while I’m in the barn?”

“Get you away if we can,” Maironiu answered. “If we can’t…” He shrugged broad shoulders. “We’ll pretend we didn’t know you were there, that’s all.”

“Fair enough.” Skarnu didn’t think he could have come up with a better response, not when he was endangering Maironiu and his family by being here. He picked up his sodden cloak and put it back on. Maironiu’s wife exclaimed at the puddle it left on the floor.

Skarnu hadn’t slept on straw for a while, not since he’d started sharing Merkela’s bed. Exhausted as he was, he could have slept on nails and broken glass. He felt deep underwater when Maironiu shook him awake. The farmer had on a cloak much like his. “Hate to do it to you, pal,” Maironiu said, “but some things just won’t wait.”

“Aye.” Skarnu hauled himself to his feet. The first few steps he took, out to the barn door, he stumbled like a drunken man. Then the cold rain hit him in the face. That woke him up, and sobered him up, in a hurry. “Where are we going?” he asked as he followed Maironiu away from the farm.

“Like I told you, I know somebody,” Maironiu replied. “You don’t really want a name, do you?” Skarnu considered, then shook his head. Maironiu grunted approval. “All right, then. Once you’re out of this part of the kingdom, you should be pretty safe again, eh?”

“I suppose so.” Skarnu kept looking back over his shoulder, not toward Maironiu’s farm but toward Merkela’s. Old Gedominu’s place, he thought. Everything in the world that mattered to him was there, and he couldn’t go back, not if he wanted to live. Cursing under his breath, he squelched after Maironiu.