Through the Darkness

Eighteen

Sleet and occasional spatters of pea-sized hail pelted Krasta’s mansion on the edge of Priekule. The mood inside the building was as cold and nasty as the weather outside. One of the things that had made Algarvians appealing and attractive to the marchioness was their panache, the sense that nothing could make them downhearted. That sense was conspicuously absent these days.

So were several of the redheaded military bureaucrats who had helped administer Priekule, to whose leers Krasta had resigned herself. And when they absented themselves, no one took their places. Their desks stood empty, abandoned, for day after day.

“Where have they gone? And when will you get replacements for them?” Krasta asked Colonel Lurcanio. “Those desks reflect poorly on you.” And, of course, anything that reflected poorly on Lurcanio also reflected poorly on her.

“Where? They are on holiday in Jelgava, of course,” Lurcanio snapped. Then, seeing Krasta believed him, he abandoned sarcasm (not without rolling his eyes) and gave her a straight answer: “They are bound for Unkerlant, to fight in the west. As for replacements. .” He laughed bitterly. “My sweet, I count myself lucky that I have not been packed aboard a ley-line caravan to join them. Believe me, I count myself lucky indeed.”

“You?” Krasta gestured as if telling him not to be foolish. “How can they pack you off to Unkerlant? You’re a colonel and a count, after all.”

“Aye, so I am,” Lurcanio agreed. “And one of the duties of a colonel and count is to command a regiment or brigade in the service of his king. A good many regiments and brigades want colonels to command them these days, because a good many colonels who commanded them in days gone by are dead.”

The chill that ran through Krasta had nothing to do with the weather. The war hadn’t come to Priekule, not in person; King Gainibu had yielded before the Algarvians attacked the capital of Valmiera. Here and now, though, the war was reaching into Priekule through the bursting eggs and blazing sticks on the far side of the world-which was how she viewed Unkerlant.

Lurcanio went on, “A good many people are pulling all the wires they can to stay in Valmiera. Given the choices involved, I must say I understand this. Would you not agree?”

“No one in his right mind would go to Unkerlant if he could stay in Priekule.” Krasta spoke with great conviction.

“You are right, even if you do not fully understand the reason,” Lurcanio said. With what looked to Krasta like a deliberate effort of will, he grew more cheerful. “I am given to understand that your Viscount Valnu is giving an entertainment this evening. Shall we go and see what new scandal he comes up with?”

“He’s not my Viscount Valnu,” Krasta said with a sniff and a toss of the head, “but I’m always game for scandal.”

“That I have seen.” Maybe Lurcanio was amused, maybe not. “You will, however, do me the courtesy of not making me wait for you tonight.”

Krasta thought hard about making him do exactly that. In the end, she didn’t dare. With Lurcanio’s temper uncertain, he might grow.. unpleasant if crossed.

When she did come downstairs in good time, he nodded grave approval. He could be charming when he chose, and he did choose charm during the carriage ride to Valnu’s mansion. He made Krasta laugh. He made himself laugh, too. If his mirth seemed a little strained, Krasta didn’t notice.

“Hello, sweetheart!” Valnu cried when they arrived. He kissed Krasta on the cheek. Then he turned to Lurcanio and cried, “Hello, sweetheart!” again. Lurcanio got a kiss identical to Krasta’s.

“Your versatility does you credit,” the Algarvian officer said. Valnu sniggered and waved him out of the entry hall and into the enormous front room.

An Algarvian musician tinkled away on a harpsichord. That made Krasta want to yawn. She took a glass of sparkling wine from a maidservant who circulated with a tray. The servant was pretty, and wore the shortest kilt Krasta had ever seen on anyone, man or woman. When she bent down to give an Algarvian in a chair a glass of wine, Krasta noted she wore nothing under the tunic. Quite a lot of Valnu’s male guests noticed that, too. Krasta muttered under her breath. She was a long way from shocked, but didn’t care for such blatant invitations to infidelity. As if men needed them!

“Can’t you afford drawers on what he pays you, dear?” she asked when the maidservant came by again. Valnu was in earshot. She’d made sure of that.

But the serving girl only sighed and replied, “He pays me more when I don’t wear them, milady.” Krasta scowled and turned away. There was no sport in an answer like that.

And there was no sport at the entertainment, either. It was as flat as a glass of sparkling wine left out too long. Now and again, it would come close to livening up. But then someone somewhere in the big room would say the name “Sulingen,” and the freeze that had come to the Algarvian wing of Krasta’s mansion would fall over the entertainment as well. It was as frustrating as a clumsy lover’s caresses.

Having drunk several glasses of wine by the time she noticed that, Krasta wasn’t shy about tracking down Valnu and complaining. “You’ll ruin your reputation for proper parties as thoroughly as you’ll ruin that serving wench’s reputation for-well, for anything,” she said.

Valnu laughed at her. “Darling, I didn’t think you thought servants could even have reputations to ruin.”

In the normal run of things, Krasta didn’t. But this wasn’t normal. She said, “She’ll have more fingerprints on her backside than a shop window does when they put a big SALE! sign in it.”

“You’d better be careful,” Valnu warned her, laughing still. “People will say you’re growing a conscience, and where would you be then?”

“I know what I’m doing,” Krasta said loudly. She waved a forefinger under Valnu’s long, blade-thin nose. “And I know what you’re doing, too, powers below eat me if I don’t.”

She meant no more than that he was mocking her. To her astonishment, he reached out and clapped the palm of his hand over her mouth, hissing, “Then shut up about it, will you, you stupid little slut?”

Krasta opened her mouth to bite him. He jerked his hand away. “What are you talking about?” she demanded.

“I might ask you the same question,” he replied. Suddenly, his lean face acquired a grin that seemed altogether too wide for it. “Instead, I think I’ll do this.” He gathered her in and kissed her with a passion that struck her as altogether unfeigned. She started to bite his probing tongue as she’d almost bitten his hand, but discovered she was enjoying herself. With a small, nasty purr, she pressed her body against his.

He made the most of the embrace, clutching her backside with both hands and sliding his fingers toward her secret place. She rocked her hips forward and back and from side to side. Whatever Viscount Valnu’s other tastes might have been, she was utterly certain he wanted her at the moment.

And she wanted him, too, as much to score one off Colonel Lurcanio as for himself. Having an Algarvian protector was useful, even vital at times-all the more reason for Krasta to chafe at the short leash Lurcanio set her. Or so she told herself, at any rate.

“Well, here we have a charming picture, don’t we?”

The amused contempt in that trillingly accented voice made Krasta spring away from Valnu like a soaked cat. She stared at Lurcanio with fear and defiance in her eyes. Fear won, and quickly. Pointing an accusing finger at Valnu, she exclaimed, “He molested me!”

“Oh, I doubt it not at all.” Lurcanio rocked back on his heels as he laughed mockingly. “Were you any more molested, you would have been wearing lingerie instead of your out-on-the-town clothes.”

“My dear Count-” Valnu began.

Colonel Lurcanio waved him to silence. “I am not your dear, regardless of whether or not certain of my countrymen can make the same statement. I do not particularly blame you-a man will try to get it in. You, I gather, will try to get it in almost anywhere.” He paused. “Aye? You still wish to say something, Viscount?”

“Only that variety, as I am in the habit of remarking, is the life of spice.”

“A point to which my sweet companion would surely agree.” Lurcanio turned to-and turned on-Krasta and bowed. Algarvians could be most wounding when they were most polite. “And now, milady, what have you got to say for yourself?”

Krasta didn’t usually think fast, but self-preservation gave her strong incentive. Haughtily drawing herself up, she replied, “Only that I was having a good time. Isn’t that why one comes to an entertainment: to have a good time?”

Lurcanio bowed again. “I do admire your nerve. Your good sense leaves something to be desired. I am certain I am not the first to tell you this. I am just as certain I am unlikely to be the last. But I am also certain that if you embarrass me in public, I must do the same to you.” Without warning, without wasted motion, he slapped her face.

Heads whipped around at the sound of the slap. Then, very quickly, everyone pretended not to notice. Such things happened now and again. Krasta had seen them. She’d laughed at women foolish enough to get caught. Now, no doubt, other women would laugh at her.

She hated that. But she didn’t think of slapping Lurcanio back, not even for a moment. She’d slapped him once, when she still thought of him as a social inferior rather than a conqueror. He’d slapped her back then, stunning her and establishing a dominance he’d held ever since. What would he do if she dared rebel in any real way? She didn’t have the nerve to find out.

To Valnu, Lurcanio said, “As for you, sir, try your luck elsewhere.”

Valnu bowed low. He wore an Algarvian-style kilt tonight, as he often did, and he also aped Algarvian manners. “As you say, my lord Count, so shall it be.”

“Of course it shall.” Now Lurcanio sounded as smug as if Algarve truly were on top of the world in every way, as if her armies had not fallen short outside of Cottbus the winter before, as if King Swemmel’s men weren’t squeezing another Algarvian army in a mailed fist now, far off in the southwest.

He believed in himself. Because he did, he made Krasta believe in him, too. And he made her forget all about whatever it was she’d said that had so alarmed Valnu.

In the bathroom, she splashed cold water on the red mark on her cheek. Then she had to spend more time repairing her powder and paint. She got drunk afterwards, as she often did at entertainments, but stayed more circumspect than she was otherwise likely to have done.

After the driver brought her and Lurcanio back to the mansion through the cold, slippery streets of Priekule, the Algarvian went up to her bedchamber with her. That took her by surprise; she’d thought he would sleep in his own bed as a sign of his anger. Instead, he used hands and mouth to bring her to a quick, abrupt peak of pleasure. He was always scrupulous about such things.

And then he surprised her again by rolling her onto her belly. When he began, she let out an indignant squawk. “Be still,” he snapped. “Let us call this … a salute to Valnu.”

She had to lie there and endure it. It hurt-not too much, but it did. And it humiliated her, as Lurcanio no doubt intended. When it was over, he patted her on one bare cheek and laughed a little, then dressed and left the bedchamber. Go ahead and laugh, Krasta thought. You don’t know everything there is to know, and I’ll never, ever tell you.

Exile. In essence, Skarnu had been in exile from his own way of life ever since he joined King Gainibu’s army when the war against Algarve was young and fresh and still held the possibility of glory. After he found out what that possibility was worth, he’d made another life for himself, one in most ways more satisfying than that which he’d left behind. And now he’d had that one yanked out from under him, too.

Curse you, Krasta, he thought, staring up at the badly plastered ceiling of the cheap flat the irregulars in Ventspils had found for him. If not for his sister, how would that cursed Lurcanio have known to come hunting for him? He hoped Merkela was all right, Merkela and the child she was carrying. Hope was all he could do. He didn’t dare to post her even the most innocuous letter, lest some Algarvian mage use it to track him down.

Here in Ventspils, he felt suspended betwixt and between. Back in Priekule, he’d been a person of the capital, a man of the big city, who’d enjoyed everything it had to offer. On the farm, even in Pavilosta, he’d learned to find simpler contentments: a good crop of beans in the garden, a laying hen the envy of all his neighbors, a mug of ale after a hard day’s work. And he’d learned the difference between pleasure and love, a distinction he’d never bother drawing in Priekule.

He had no work in Ventspils, not yet. He had no friends here, only a handful of acquaintances among the irregulars who’d installed him in the flat. And Ventspils, off to the east of Priekule, had to be the most boring town in Valmiera. If it wasn’t, he pitied the place that was.

After a while, staring at the ceiling threatened to drive him mad. He got up and put on the coat the irregulars had given him to replace the sheepskin jacket he’d brought from the farm. With its wide lapels, the coat would have been years out of fashion in Priekule, but he’d seen plenty of people here wearing and even showing off equally unstylish garments. He also put on a broad-brimmed felt hat, and wished for one with earflaps like those the Unkerlanters wore.

Not many people were on the streets. The freezing rain had stopped a couple of hours before, but glare ice was everywhere, shining and treacherous. City workers should have been spreading salt to help melt it and to give better footing, but where were they? Nowhere Skarnu could see. He slipped and had to grab a lamp post to keep from falling.

A couple of Algarvian soldiers in hobnailed boots laughed at him. They had no trouble keeping their feet. “I hope you get sent to Unkerlant,” he muttered. “I hope your toes freeze and turn black and fall off.” He made sure the redheads didn’t hear him, though. They might have spoken Valmieran. He took no needless chances.

A news-sheet vendor shouted his wares, and no doubt shouted all the more lustily to help keep his teeth from chattering. “Another Algarvian victory north of Sulingen!” he bellowed, his breath steaming at every word. “King Swemmel’s barbarous hordes hurled back in dismay!”

Skarnu’s laughter sent smoke steaming from his mouth and nose, too. Mezentio’s men were good liars, but not good enough. They had supposedly won all the battles north of Sulingen long ago. Why were they fighting there again if they weren’t in trouble?

But how many people would notice that? How many people would care if they did notice? The Algarvians had to be winning the war, didn’t they? Of course they did. They’d beaten Valmiera. That meant they had to beat everyone else. If they didn’t beat everyone else, how could a Valmieran sleep easy after lying down on his back to expose his throat to the conquerors … or lying down on her back to expose something else?

Krasta. Sometimes Skarnu wanted to kill his sister. Sometimes he wanted to slap some sense into her silly head. He sighed. Somebody should have tried that years before. Too late now, more likely than not. Sometimes he just wanted to sit down beside her and ask her why.

Because I felt like it. He could hear her voice in his mind. She wouldn’t think past that. He knew her too well. She wouldn’t think much about betraying him to the Algarvian colonel to whom she gave herself, either. Skarnu would have guessed that beneath her, but evidently he was wrong.

He walked past the news-sheet vendor, brusquely shaking his head when the fellow waved a sheet at him to try to tempt him to buy. The man couldn’t even curse him, for he might lay out a couple of coppers another time. The vendor could only shake his head and go on calling out the news in the hope that someone else would want to read it.

Half a block farther on, a beggar stood out in front of a jeweler’s. Even though he couldn’t have been more than twelve years old, the place was as much his as the shop full of trinkets belonged to the jeweler. He’d already driven off a couple of grown men, one after the other, to keep it. The placard by his little tin cup read, MY FATHER NEVER CAME HOME FROM THE WAR. PLEASE HELP.

Skarnu tossed him a coin. “Powers above bless you, sir!” the beggar boy cried as it rattled into the cup. Skarnu kept walking. He didn’t know whether the boy was telling the truth or not, but didn’t care to take the chance he was lying, either.

He turned and went into a tavern that called itself the Lion and the Mouse these days. Its signboard was newer than most of those on the frowzy street. Before the war, before the Valmieran collapse, it had been known as the Imperial Lion. Valmierans had been proud to remember the days of the Kaunian Empire. The Algarvian occupiers, though, wanted them to forget.

Thanks to a coal fire, the tavern was warm inside. Skarnu sighed with pleasure and shrugged off the jacket with the wide lapels. A couple of men stood at the bar. One of them was trying to chat up a raddled-looking woman. He wasn’t having much luck, not least because he looked poor. Three more men sat at a table, two of them drinking ale, one nursing a glass of spirits.

The fellow with the spirits nodded to Skarnu and waved for him to join them. He did, setting his backside on a stool that creaked. The raddled-looking woman turned out to be a barmaid. Moving no faster than she had to, she ambled over and asked him, “What’ll it be?” By the way she leaned toward him, and by the number of toggles undone on her tunic, he could have had her as long as he had the price, too.

“Ale,” he answered. “Just ale.” She gave him a sour look, then went off to fetch him a mug.

“Hello, Pavilosta,” said the man with the glass of spirits. Names were in short supply among the irregulars. They called him by that of the village from whose neighborhood he’d had to flee. Considering how urgent his departure had been, even that came too close to identifying him to leave him quite comfortable with it.

“Hello yourself, Painter,” he said. No one could make much out of a nickname taken from a fellow’s job. He nodded to the other men. “Butcher. Cordwainer.”

They raised their mugs in greeting and salute. The barmaid came back with Skarnu’s ale. She pointedly stood by the table till he paid her. Then, her face still pinched with disapproval, she a walked back to the bar.

In a low voice, the fellow who made boots said, “You’re smart not to want any of her. She’s so cold, you’d freeze your joint off once you got it in there.” He sipped from his own mug, then added, “I ought to know.”

“You bragging or complaining?” asked the man who painted houses. Skarnu tried his ale. It wasn’t bad. He sat and waited. Ventspils wasn’t his town, not even by adoption. He couldn’t make plans here, as he had back near Pavilosta. He had to be part of other people’s plans. He didn’t care for that, but he didn’t know what to do about it, either.

“Tell him what you heard,” the bootmaker said, instead of coming back with a sally of his own.

“I’ll get round to it, never fear.” As Skarnu had been a power round Pavilosta, so the painter was a power in Ventspils. He did things his way, not the way anyone told him to do them. As if to say he wouldn’t be rushed, he finished his drink and waved for another one. Only after he’d got it did he remark, “The redheads will be bringing some captured Lagoan dragonfliers through town tonight, on the way to the captives’ camp outside Priekule.”

Lagoans were redheads, too, but nobody used the word to include them. Skarnu asked, “Can we filch ‘em?”

“We’re going to try,” the painter answered. “I know you can use a stick, so I want you in on it.” Skarnu nodded. The underground knew he’d blazed Count Simanu, Count Enkuru’s even more unsavory son. Unfortunately, that meant the Algarvians were also good bets to know. Traitors everywhere, he thought. But some traitor to the Algarvian cause had let them know the dragonfliers would be coming. It evened out-though even wasn’t good enough to suit Skarnu. The man from Ventspils went on, “We’ll meet behind the clock tower a little before midnight.”

Meeting before midnight sounded romantic. In reality, it was bloody cold. Men straggled in a couple at a time. They got sticks easily concealable down a trouser leg-not the sort of weapon Skarnu would have wanted to take to war, but one with which he could walk through the streets of the town.

“They’re not coming by ley-line caravan?” he asked the painter.

“Not from what I heard,” the local answered. “I don’t know whether they got blazed down someplace where there aren’t any ley lines or Mezentio’s men didn’t feel like laying on a caravan, but they’re not. Just a carriage. If they’re coming up through town, they’ll get in by Duchess Maza Road, up from the southeast.”

Having come into Ventspils from the southwest, Skarnu knew nothing of Duchess Maza Road. He tagged along with the other Valmierans who hadn’t given up on their kingdom. He wondered what they would do if they ran into an Algarvian patrol, but they didn’t. With the war in Unkerlant sucking men west, fewer Algarvians were left to watch the streets.

“Keep an eye out for Valmieran constables, too,” the painter warned. “Too many of them are in bed with the redheads.” That made Skarnu think of Krasta again, but he shook his head. Too many Valmierans of all sorts were in bed with the redheads.

They spied only one pair of constables on the way to the road into town from the southeast, and ducked out of sight before the constables saw them. Then it was on to Duchess Maza Road, into ambush positions behind tree trunks and fences, and wait.

Skarnu wondered how they would know the right carriage, but they had no trouble. Four Algarvian horsemen guarded it, two in front, two behind. But, by the way they rode, they thought they were there to make a fine procession, nothing more. Because they weren’t looking for danger, it found them.

“Now!” the painter said in a low, savage voice. His double handful of followers blazed the redheads off their horses and the driver off his carriage. The Algarvians managed only startled squawks before they went down. The next group of redheads who came through Ventspils with captives would doubtless be more alert, but that did these men no good at all.

Skarnu ran toward the carriage. He paused a moment to finish an Algarvian who still writhed on the cobbles, then seized a horse’s head to keep the beast from bolting. Another man blazed off the stout padlock that held the carriage door closed. As it fell with a clank, he spoke in Lagoan.

The door opened. A couple of men jumped down from the carriage. “Away!” the painter said urgently. The men of the underground scattered. One of them led off the rescued dragonfliers. The rest headed back to their homes. Skarnu moved slowly through the dark streets of Ventspils, not wanting to get lost. Another lick against Algarve, he thought, and wondered what the next one would be.

What was left of Plegmund’s battered Brigade welcomed two new regiments hurried down from Forthweg with all the charm veterans usually showed new fish. Now a veteran himself, Sidroc jeered along with his comrades: “Does your mother know you’re here?” he asked a recruit obviously several years older than he was. “Does your mother know they’re going to bury you here?”

He howled laughter. So did his comrades. They were all a little, or more than a little, drunk, having liberated several jars of spirits from a village the Unkerlanters had abandoned in haste. Had the Unkerlanters abandoned it in something less than haste, they would have taken their popskull with them.

Sergeant Werferth said, “Nobody told him that when he comes down here, the buggers on the other side blaze back.”

That set the survivors of overrun Presseck into fresh gales of laughter. The recruits stared at them as if they’d gone mad. Maybe we have, Sidroc thought. He didn’t much care, one way or the other. He swigged from his canteen. More raw spirits ran hot down his throat.

Those spirits gave him most of the warmth he felt. The tents of Plegmund’s Brigade sat on the vast plains of southern Unkerlant, out in the middle of nowhere, so the frigid wind could get a running start before it blew through them. He said, “One thing-the Algarvians with us are every bit as cold as we are.”

“Serves ‘em right,” Ceorl said.

“Together, we and the Algarvians will drive Swemmel’s barbarians back into the trackless west,” the recruit said stiffly.

Together, Sidroc, Werferth, and Ceorl howled laughter. “We’ll try and stay alive,” Sidroc said. “And we’ll try and kill some Unkerlanters, because that’ll help us stay alive.”

“Don’t waste your time on him,” Werferth said. “He’s a virgin. He’ll find out. And if he lives through it, he’ll be telling the new recruits what they need to know next summer. If he doesn’t-” He shrugged.

Sidroc’s head ached the next morning. Ache or not, he drew himself to attention to listen to an Algarvian officer harangue the men of the Brigade. “We are part of something larger than ourselves,” the officer declared. “We shall rescue our brave Algarvian comrades down in Sulingen, we and this force King Mezentio’s might has gathered.”

He let loose with a typically extravagant, typically expansive Algarvian gesture. Sure enough, the tents of Plegmund’s Brigade weren’t the only ones on the plain. Several brigades of Algarvians had been mustered with them, and troop after troop of behemoths. It was a formidable assemblage. Whether it was formidable enough to punch through the cordon the Unkerlanters had drawn around Sulingen, Sidroc didn’t know. He knew it would do all it could.

“We must do this,” the Algarvian officer said. “We must, and so we can, and so we shall. Where the will is strong, victory follows.”

Redheads were drawn up getting their marching orders, too. “Mezentio!” they shouted, with as much spirit as if they were going on parade through Trapani to show off for pretty girls.

Not to be outdone, the Forthwegians who’d taken service with Algarve shouted, “Plegmund!” as loud as they could, doing their best to outyell the men who’d taught them what they knew of war. The Algarvians yelled back, louder than ever. It was a good-natured contest, nothing like the one that lay ahead.

Snow swirled through the air as Sidroc tramped south. “Loose order!” officers and underofficers called. He knew why: to keep too many of them from getting killed at once if things went wrong. He had a heavy cloak, and a white snow smock over it. He wore a fur hat some Unkerlanter soldier didn’t need any more. The weather was colder than any he’d ever known, but he wouldn’t freeze. He hoped he wouldn’t.

Freezing soon proved to be that least of his worries. The soldiers set over him had known what they were talking about when they warned their charges to spread out. The relief force had been moving for only a couple of hours when Unkerlanter dragons appeared overhead. They dropped a few eggs, flamed a few soldiers, and flew away. A pinprick-but the force hadn’t been overstrong to begin with. Now it was a little weaker.

About noon, they neared another of those Unkerlanter peasant villages scattered across the plain. Swemmel’s men held it. Warning shouts of, “Behemoths!” echoed through the army. Sure enough, Sidroc saw them moving inside the village, perhaps milling about in the square. Some of them began lobbing eggs at the advancing Algarvians-and at Plegmund’s Brigade as well.

Out trotted a force of Algarvian behemoths, whose crews skirmished at long range with the Unkerlanters. Even at a glance, Sidroc could see that the Unkerlanters outnumbered them. King Swemmel’s men saw the same thing. They didn’t come charging out after the Algarvians, as they might have when the war was new-from some of the stories the redheads told, they’d been very stupid in the early days. But they did forget about the footsoldiers. They forgot about everything, in fact, except what the Algarvian commander showed them.

And they paid for it. The officer in charge of the Algarvians had more than one string for his bow. “While the Unkerlanters were busy fighting and seemingly repelling the behemoths in front of them, another force entered the village from behind. The fight that followed was sharp but very short. The relief force kept moving south, on toward Sulingen.

“We’ve got a smart general,” Sergeant Werferth said. “That’s good. That’s mighty good. He buggered Swemmel’s boys just as pretty as you please.”

Sidroc snorted, then guffawed when he realized how apt the figure was. “Aye, bugger ‘em he did-came right up their backside.”

But it stopped being easy after that. Sidroc had found in Presseck how dangerous the Unkerlanters could be when they had numbers and power on their side. Now he discovered they didn’t need numbers to be dangerous. They knew what the Algarvians were trying to do, and threw everything they had into stopping them.

As so many had before him, Sidroc grew to hate and dread the cheer, “Urra!” Single Unkerlanters would pop up out of the snow shouting it and blaze down a man-or two, or three, or four-before they died themselves. Companies would fight like grim death in villages, bellowing defiance till the last man was slain. And regiment after regiment would charge across the plain at the relief force, sometimes with their arms linked, all the soldiers roaring, “Urra!”

Nor would those regiments charge alone, unsupported. The Unkerlanters threw behemoths and dragons and egg-tossers into the fight with the same air they threw men into it. Aye, they seemed to say, you ‘II smash these up, but we ‘ve got plenty more.

And the Algarvians did not have plenty more. Sidroc needed only a day or two to see that. Relief forces came in by dribs and drabs, when they came in at all. If the army couldn’t relieve the men in Sulingen with what it had now, it couldn’t relieve them.

“When are they going to break out toward us?” Sidroc asked, six days into the move south. By then, he’d taken to wrapping the lower part of his face in wool rags, so that only his eyes showed. He’d thought he knew how cold Unkerlant could get. Every new day proved him wrong.

“I don’t know what they’re doing down there,” Sergeant Werferth told him. “I don’t give a dragon turd what they’re doing, either. It’s too soon to worry. Whatever they’ve got in mind, right now it doesn’t change my job one fornicating bit.”

Sidroc started to bristle. Ceorl would have, because Ceorl was the sort who bristled at anything. But Sidroc realized Werferth was just giving good advice. Worrying about what he couldn’t help wouldn’t, couldn’t, change things.

At dawn the next morning, the Unkerlanters attacked the relief force before it could get moving. By the time Swemmel’s men sullenly withdrew, the sun was halfway across the sky. The Unkerlanters left hundreds of bodies lying in the snow, but they’d robbed the relief force of men and of time, and it could recover neither.

Despite the troops Swemmel and his generals kept throwing at them, the soldiers and behemoths of the relieving force managed to keep moving south. They crossed the Presseck, from whose banks the men of Plegmund’s Brigade had been so rudely expelled not long before. And they also forced their way over the Neddemin, the next river to the south, in a sharp battle with the Unkerlanters trying to keep them from gaining the fords.

“What’s the river after this one?” Sidroc asked that night as he toasted a gobbet of horsemeat on a stick. He’d never imagined eating horse up in Forthweg. Compared to going hungry, it was tasty as could be.

“That’s the Britz,” Werferth answered. “If we make it over the Britz, the fellows in Sulingen should be able to fight their way out to meet us.” He’d come far enough, he was willing to look ahead a bit.

“They’d better be able to fight their way out to meet us,” Sidroc said. “Curse me if I know how we’ve made it this far. I don’t know how much further we can go.”

“Other question is, how far can they come?” Werferth asked. “What have their behemoths and horses and unicorns been eating down there? Mostly nothing, or I miss my guess. Odds are the men haven’t had much more, either.”

Sidroc took a bite of horseflesh. Juice running down his chin, he said, “It’s not like we’ve got a lot.” The sergeant nodded, but they both knew the men down in Sulingen had less.

On toward the Britz they went. The Unkerlanters attacked again and again, from south and east and west. Swemmel’s cavalry forces nipped in to raid the supply wagons that kept the relieving force fed and supplied with eggs and with sorcerous charges for their sticks. In spite of everything, the Algarvians and the men of Plegmund’s Brigade kept pushing south.

And then, about a day and a half before they would have reached the Britz, most of their behemoths left the army and headed north. “Have they gone out of their fornicating minds?” Sidroc shouted. “The Unkerlanters still have their behemoths, curse them. How are we supposed to lick ‘em without ours?”

No one had an answer for him till later in the day. Then Werferth, who as a sergeant heard things, said, “Swemmel’s whoresons are mounting a big push on Durrwangen, north of here. If they take the place, then they’ve got us in the bag along with the boys down in Sulingen. Can’t have that. It doesn’t work.”

“Getting over the Britz isn’t going to work, either, not without those behemoths,” Sidroc said.

“We’ve got to try,” Werferth answered. Sidroc grimaced and nodded. Deserting and going north on his own was sure death. Advancing with his comrades was only deadly dangerous. Knowing the odds, the men of the relieving force went on.

They reached the river. They couldn’t cross. The Unkerlanters had too many men in front of it, too many egg-tossers on the southern bank. And they had behemoths left to throw into the fight, behemoths the relieving force could no longer withstand. The Algarvians and the men of Plegmund’s Brigade fell back from the Britz, retreating across the frozen plains of Unkerlant.

A blizzard howled through the woods where Munderic’s band of irregulars took shelter from their foes. As far as Garivald was concerned, the tent pitched above a hole in the ground was no substitute for the warm hut in which he’d passed previous winters with his wife and children and livestock. He didn’t have enough spirits to stay drunk through the winter as he normally would have, either.

And he couldn’t even stay in his inadequate shelter and feed the fire a few twigs at a time. As far as Munderic was concerned, blizzards were the ideal time for the irregulars to be out and doing. “Most of the time, we leave tracks in the snow,” the commander declared. “Not now, by the powers above-the wind will blow them away as fast as we make ‘em.”

“Of course it will,” Garivald said. “And it’ll blow us away just as fast.” Perhaps fortunately for him, the wind also blew his words away, so no one but him heard them.

When Munderic gave orders, it was either obey or raise a mutiny against him. Garivald didn’t want to do that. He didn’t much want to go tramping through the snow, either, but nobody asked what he thought about it. The only people who’d ever asked what he thought of anything were his wife and a few close friends, and they were all far away in Zossen.

Munderic led almost the whole band out against the village of Kluftern, which had a small Algarvian garrison and which also sat close to a ley line. “If we can wipe out the redheads there, we can sabotage that line in a dozen different places-take our time and do it properly,” Munderic said. “That’ll keep Mezentio’s mages scratching like they’re covered with lice.”

He was right; if they could bring it off, that would happen. But Garivald turned to the man closest to him and asked, “How often do these things turn out just the way they’re planned? Next time will be the first, as far as I can see.”

The man next to him turned out to be a woman; Obilot answered, “At least he isn’t counting on magecraft this time around.”

“That’s something,” Garivald agreed. The two of them were on wary speaking terms again. Obilot hated the Algarvians too much to stay furious at anyone else who also hated them. As for Garivald, he wasn’t by nature a particularly quarrelsome man. He’d kept speaking softly, not making things worse than they were already, till Obilot’s temper softened.

Once the irregulars left the shelter of the woods, the wind tore at them harder than ever. Algarvians out in such weather might well have frozen. Every one of the Unkerlanters, though, had been through worse. They trudged along, grumbling but not particularly put out.

“We’ll catch the redheads all cozied up to the fire,” somebody said. “Then we’ll make ‘em pay for being soft.”

That brought a rumble of agreement from everyone who heard it. Garivald rumbled agreement, too, but he didn’t really feel it. Had the Algarvians truly been soft, they never would have overrun the Duchy of Grelz or penetrated Unkerlant to Sulingen and to the outskirts of Cottbus.

Snow swirled around Garivald and blew into his face. He cursed wearily and kept walking. He hoped Munderic was keeping track of the direction in which Kluftern lay. He couldn’t have found it himself on a bet.

“Snow bleeding the redheads white,” he muttered under his breath, feeling for the lines of a song. “Brave man putting thieves to flight.” He played with metrical feet while his own feet, even in felt boots, got colder.

Confused shouts from up ahead broke into his thoughts. He cursed again, this time in real anger. There went the song, and most of it would be gone for good. Then he stopped worrying about the song, for one of those shouts was a shriek of agony. If that wasn’t a man who’d just been blazed, he’d never heard one.

Then he heard other shouts. They were battle cries: “Raniero!” “The Kingdom of Grelz!”

He peered ahead through the snow. The last set of Grelzer troops the irregulars ran into hadn’t proved to be worth much. Some Grelzer soldiers passed information on to Munderic’s band. From all that, he’d assumed none of the men who fought for King Mezentio’s cousin would be worth anything.

That turned out to be a mistake. These fellows came at Munderic’s men as fiercely as if their hair were red, not dark. They kept right on shouting Raniero’s name, too. And they cursed King Swemmel as vilely as Garivald had ever cursed the Algarvians.

Garivald expected Munderic would try to break away. His target had been Kluftern, not a platoon of Grelzers. But the irregular leader shouted, “Kill the traitors!” and ordered his men forward with as little hesitation as Marshal Rathar might have shown.

Forward Garivald went, wishing Munderic had shown more sense. Fighting these fellows was different from fighting Algarvians. The soldiers who followed Raniero looked like the irregulars, sounded like them, and wore clothes much like theirs, too-one snow smock couldn’t differ much from another. And, with snowflakes blowing every which way, nobody got a clear look at anybody more than a couple of paces away anyhow.

Munderic rapidly proved Marshal Rathar had nothing to worry about from his generalship. The only thing he had going for him-the thing that had held his band of irregulars together-was his enthusiasm. In this fight, it got in the way. He sent men running now here, now there, till Garivald wasn’t sure where he was supposed to be and who, if anyone, was supposed to be there with him.

Had a competent soldier-say, a veteran Algarvian captain-been leading King Raniero’s troopers, they would have made short work of the irregulars. But the big fight, the fight against the real Unkerlanter army, sucked competent soldiers toward the front. Whoever was in charge of the Grelzers had no more idea of how to handle his men than did Munderic.

What resulted wasn’t so much a battle, even a small one, as a series of skirmishes, men fighting first in this place, then in that one, as they happened to collide. Garivald flopped down in the snow behind some bushes. He blazed at a couple of men he was pretty sure were Grelzer soldiers. Neither of them fell; either the snow, which blew more thickly by the minute, was attenuating his beam or he wasn’t so handy with a stick as he might have been.

A couple of minutes later, somebody else skidded down behind the same bushes. “Stinking whoresons!” he growled, and blazed at the same men Garivald had tried to knock over. “Hate those stinking traitors, serving the false king.”

“Aye.” Garivald blazed again, though by then he could hardly see his targets. He cursed. “Might as well throw rocks at ‘em, for all the good our sticks are doing us.”

“It’s a stinking war, that’s the truth,” the other fellow said. Like a lot of the irregulars, he had a length of wool wrapped around the lower part of his face to keep his nose and mouth from freezing. Bits of vapor came out through it; more had formed icicles in front of where his lips were bound to be.

“Wish I were back in my own village, getting drunk,” Garivald said. “I miss my wife, I miss my brats, I miss my firstman.. well, maybe not.”

The other fighter laughed. “I know just what you mean. Firstman in the place I grew up chewed nails for fun-that’s what everybody said, anyhow.”

“Mine’s just a sneak and a spy. He’d suck up to inspectors and then take it out on everybody else.” No, Garivald didn’t miss Waddo, not a bit.

“They’re like that, all right,” the other fellow said. “Ought to hang every cursed one of them, give a man a little room to live.” They spent the next few minutes maligning firstmen. Neither of them did any more blazing. They had no targets worth blazing at, not with the blizzard closing the walls of the world around them.

Then a couple of shapes did appear through the snow. Both men behind the bush raised their sticks. But one of the newcomers could only have been big, shambling Sadoc. “Take it easy,” Garivald said. “They’re ours.”

“Suits me,” his companion replied, and lowered his stick again.

Maybe Sadoc heard them. Maybe the bumbling mage did have enough skill to sense them there. He started to raise his own stick. “Swemmel!” Garivald called, not wanting a fellow irregular to blaze him. “Swemmel and Unkerlant!”

The words were almost the last ones that ever passed his lips. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the fighter with whom he’d been chatting and cursing roll away to bring his stick to bear on him. Without conscious thought, Garivald leaped after him and knocked the stick out of his hands. It flew off into the snow.

“Grelz!” his erstwhile companion yelled, kicking out at Garivald and catching his stick with a boot heel. It also flew away. Garivald didn’t dare scramble for it-the man who’d chosen the Algarvian puppet might get the other one first. Instead, Garivald grappled with the fellow who, till the war began, had been a peasant just like him.

“Whoreson!” The word came from both their mouths at the same time. They punched and kneed and gouged and kicked at each other. The Grelzer soldier was smaller than Garivald, but lithe and quick. He gave at least as good as he got; had Garivald not twisted aside as the last instant, the fellow would have thumbed out his eye as neatly as if he were scraping the meat from a freshwater mussel.

“Hold it right there, the both of you, or we’ll blaze your balls off!” That shout froze Garivald and his foe. Ever so cautiously, Garivald turned his head. Standing over them were Sadoc and another irregular.

Garivald pushed himself away from the fighter who’d chosen the path opposite his. “He’s one of Ran-” he began, but the fellow wasted no time showing what he was. Fast as a striking serpent, he grabbed for one of the sticks in the snow.

He might have been fast as a serpent, but he wasn’t, he couldn’t be, faster than two beams. At that range, the blowing snow didn’t weaken them enough to matter. One caught him in the chest, the other in the head. He thrashed and died, still reaching for the stick a couple of feet away. His blood stained the white with red.

He was still thrashing when Sadoc kicked him. “Filthy bugger!” the makeshift mage said. “If we’d taken him captive, we’d’ve made him pay proper. We could’ve stretched him out for a day or two, easy.”

“I’m just glad he’s dead,” Garivald said. “I don’t care how it happened.” Little by little, his thudding heart slowed toward normal. “I thought he was one of us-and he thought I was one of them.” He touched his face with a mittened hand. The mitten came away wet with blood. “He could fight. All these fellows could fight-can fight. They hate Swemmel as much as we hate the redheads.” He kicked at the snow. He hadn’t really believed that was true. Now he saw he’d been wrong.

Sadoc pointed in the direction of the main fighting. “We’ve given this here pack of bastards all they wanted, anyhow.”

Sure enough, the men loyal to Raniero sullenly withdrew from the fields. But, after Munderic found what losses the irregulars had taken, he ordered them back toward the woods, too. “We aren’t going to do anything at Kluftern, not beat up like we are,” he said. “We’ll have to wait till the Grelzers and the Algarvians chase some more men into our camp. And they will. Powers above know they will.”

Garivald thought he was bound to be right. But the river ran both ways, if Swemmel and the thought of staying under the rule of Unkerlant roused such passion in the breasts of at least some who fought for Raniero. The river ran both ways. . He saw the beginning of a song there, but deliberately chose not to shape it. He’d already decided which way he was going.

In the ruins of Sulingen, Trasone and Sergeant Panfilo lined up in front of a steaming kettle. “You know what?” Trasone said as the queue snaked forward.

“Tell me,” Panfilo urged. Both Algarvians, by now, sported full bushy beards, their mustaches and side whiskers and chin strips all but lost in the rest of the coppery growth. They had almost no hot water with which to help stay trim. Moreover, the beards went some way toward keeping their cheeks and chins warm.

“I’m bloody jealous of Major Spinello, that’s what,” Trasone said.

“For all you know, he’s dead,” Panfilo said.

“So what?” Trasone said. “I’d still be jealous of him.”

Panfilo considered that, then slowly nodded. “Something to it,” he admitted. “This isn’t where I’d come on holiday, I’ll tell you.” Not even the snow could make the wreckage of Sulingen look anything but hideous. And the Algarvian soldiers who’d trudged all the way to the banks of the Wolter were hardly more lovely than the ruins they’d helped create. Filthy, unshaven, scrawny, hungrier by the day, dressed in clothes half their own and half scrounged from Unkerlanter corpses, they would have cause apoplexy had they paraded through the streets of Trapani.

All they had left, all that hadn’t changed, was their spirit. When Trasone got to the kettle, a cook slapped a chunk-not a very big chunk-of boiled meat onto his mess tin. “What is it?” he asked suspiciously, and poked it with his knife. He eyed the cook. “It’s too tender to be your sister.”

“I’d say it was jackass, but here you are in front of me,” the cook retorted.

Trasone collected a slab of bread-a very small slab-from another cook and sat down on the stone steps of a house that wasn’t there anymore. As Panfilo came over and sat beside him, he took a bite of the meat. When he did, he made a horrible face. “Maybe it is jackass,” he said to Panfilo. “Or else horse or behemoth. What do you think?”

Panfilo ate a little himself. After some thought, he said, “Whatever it is, it’s been dead for a while.”

“Like that’s a surprise,” Trasone said with a snort. “Only meat we get these days, near enough, is from our own beasts the Unkerlanters kill-or from the ones that just fall over dead because they haven’t got anything to eat, either. It’d all be a lot gamier than it is if this lousy place weren’t cold enough to do duty for a rest crate.”

After another bite, Panfilo said, “I’m pretty sure it’s not dragon, anyhow. If I had a choice between starving and eating dragon, I’m buggered if I’d know which one to pick.”

Having choked down dead dragon the winter before, Trasone nodded. “You eat too much of that stuff, the quicksilver’ll poison you, or that’s what they say. I don’t know how you’d eat that much, though.” He paused. His mess tin was empty. He’d disposed of the bread in two bites, too. With a sigh, he said, “When we were hungry enough, though, it didn’t seem that bad, you know?”

“Oh, it seemed bad.” Panfilo had finished his meager meal, too. “But you’re right, I guess: hungry was worse.” He took a handful of snow and scrubbed at his mess tin. “We’re liable to be that hungry again pretty soon. If we don’t break out of here, we’re going to be that hungry again.”

“Afraid you’re right.” Trasone raised an eyebrow at the sergeant. “We get hungry like that again, I will be jealous of Spinello even if he’s dead.”

Before Panfilo could answer, shouts came from the north: “Dragons! Our dragons!”

Trasone and Panfilo both scrambled to their feet and trotted toward the dragon farm in what had been the city square. These days, it was the only part of Sulingen that Unkerlanter egg-tossers couldn’t reach. When the city was first cut off, dragons had come fairly close to bringing in enough supplies to keep the Algarvian army there fighting as well as it ever had. These days, though, the dragons had to fly a lot farther than they had then. Worse, the Unkerlanters knew the routes they had to use, and often lay in wait for them. Every day, it seemed, fewer ran the gauntlet.

“Life’s bloody wonderful, you know?” Trasone remarked as the dragons began spiraling down toward the battered square.

“How’s that?” Panfilo asked.

“If they fly in charges for our sticks and eggs for the tossers, we’ll starve, but we’ll be able to keep fighting while we do it,” Trasone answered. “If they fly in food, we’ll have enough to eat-well, almost-but Swemmel’s whoresons’ll ride roughshod over us. And if they bring in some of each, we’ll sink a couple of inches at a time, the way we’ve been doing.”

“What I wish they’d fly in is enough Kaunians to make a magic that’d fry the Unkerlanters’ toes off,” Panfilo said. “But it doesn’t look like they can do that, either.”

It didn’t look as if the Algarvians outside of Sulingen could do enough of anything to stave off defeat here. Trasone resolutely didn’t think about that. Along with the rest of the Algarvian soldiers in the square, he unloaded crates of food and other crates full of eggs and charges, loaded them onto sledges, and hauled them away. Soldiers were draft animals in Sulingen these days, for most of the real draft animals were dead.

Most of the dragons that flew north out of the square bore only their fliers. Some carried wounded men slung beneath them as the crates of supplies had been. Trasone sighed as he watched one of them get off the ground. “Just about worth taking a beam in the brisket,” he remarked.

In thoughtful tones, Panfilo replied, “These days, they’ve got mages checking the wounded. If you blaze yourself, you don’t go.”

“That’s fair,” Trasone said at once, and then, hotly, “And futter you, too, Sergeant, if you think I’d do that to myself.”

“I don’t.” Panfilo chuckled. “And you can’t get out by being court-martialed for cursing a superior, either.”

Unkerlanter dragons visited the square as the last of the Algarvian beasts were leaving. Heavy sticks around the farm blazed down a couple of the rock-gray dragons. Others attacked the Algarvian dragons in the air. Still others dropped eggs on the square. Huddled in a hole, Trasone said, “If they were as efficient as they like to brag on being, they would have hit us while our dragons were still on the ground here.”

“If they were as efficient as they like to brag on being, they would have killed the lot of us a long time ago,” Panfilo said, and Trasone could hardly argue with him.

A few days later, he and Trasone, along with most of the soldiers who’d been holding the line in the east against the Unkerlanters they’d never quite managed to drive from Sulingen, trudged north toward the outskirts of the city: the great belt of rubble they’d created that now sheltered them against the worst the Unkerlanters could do.

“You think we can break out?” Trasone asked Panfilo: one professional talking to another, figuring the odds.

“Sixty, eighty miles, maybe more than that for all I know? Against all the Unkerlanters in the world, and most of the behemoths? Won’t be easy.” Panfilo gave a professional answer. Still, he added, “If we’re going to try, we’d better try now. We probably should have tried two weeks ago, or longer than that. But I’ll tell you something: we’ve got a better chance now than we would in another couple of weeks. And if we don’t break out, it’s only a matter of time.”

That was professional commentary, too. Trasone thought it over. After a few paces, he kicked at the snow. Panfilo nodded as if he’d answered in words.

All the Algarvians-and the Sibians and Yaninans trapped in Sulingen with them-looked as ragged as Trasone did. He was surprised to see they’d managed to muster a couple of troops of behemoths; he hadn’t thought so many were left alive in the ruined city on the Wolter. An officer not far away was haranguing his men: “Every one of you lousy buggers is a stinking, nasty son of a whore. You ever want to get between your mistresses’ legs again, you’re going to have to fight like it. Just remember, these fornicators who fight for Swemmel are standing between you and all the pussy in Algarve.”

The soldiers cheered. Trasone joined in. The officer swept off his hat and bowed. He knew how to get his countrymen ready to fight, all right.

Egg-tossers sent their cargoes of death flying toward the Unkerlanters entrenched out beyond the northern edge of the city. Chainmail clanking on them, the behemoths lumbered forward to batter a way through the enemy’s lines. And footsoldiers went forward with them, to protect them from Unkerlanter soldiers.

Going forward in the open seemed wonderful to Trasone after so long scuttling among the ruins like a rat. And, for the first few hours, the Algarvians did nothing but go forward, smashing through one Unkerlanter line after another. “They didn’t think we had it in us,” Trasone exclaimed. “They don’t know what we’re made of.”

But the Unkerlanters, though they buckled, did not break. They fought fiercely even when taken by surprise, and soon began throwing swarms of behemoths at the Algarvians. Panfilo had been exaggerating when he said they had most of the behemoths in the world around Sulingen, but not, it seemed, by much. The Algarvian crews were better trained than their Unkerlanter counterparts, but that mattered only so much. Swemmel’s men could afford to lose three, four, five behemoths for every one they slew and still come out ahead in the game.

Despite everything, the Algarvians kept making progress to the north through most of the second day of the attack. By that afternoon, they were down to a bare handful of behemoths. The Unkerlanters still had plenty. And dragons painted rock-gray appeared overhead in large numbers. They dropped eggs on the Algarvians and swooped low to flame soldiers caught out in the open.

“I don’t know how we’re going to go any further tomorrow,” Trasone told Panfilo.

“Got to try,” the sergeant answered.

Try they did the next morning, a convulsive, desperate attack that carried them another couple of miles farther north. And then, try as they would, they could advance no more. When the Unkerlanters counterattacked, behemoths leading the way, the Algarvians fell back before them. They retreated faster than they’d advanced. By the time the sun rose yet again, they-or those of them who still lived-were back among the ruins of Sulingen. The Unkerlanters had fought for those ruins street by street; now Mezentio’s men would have to do the same.

Having beaten the Algarvians into the city once more, Swemmel’s men showed no great eagerness for a final struggle among the ruins. Trasone understood that; it would have cost them more men than even Swemmel might feel comfortable paying. They gave the Algarvians three days of near quiet to rebuild their defenses as best they could.

On the fourth morning-a freezing cold one-Trasone stood sentry at the northern outskirts of the city when he spied a lone Unkerlanter coming toward him. The fellow wasn’t a solitary madman or an infiltrator; he carried a white-and green-striped flag of truce. “Parley!” he shouted in Algarvian. “I come from Marshal Rathar with a message for your commanders.”

“What kind of message?” Trasone asked.

“A call on them to surrender,” the Unkerlanter answered. “If they yield now, they and all of you will be well fed, well housed, generally well treated. So Marshal Rathar swears, by the powers above. But if you go on with this senseless, useless fight, he cannot answer for what will happen to you.”

“Well, I can’t answer for my generals,” Trasone replied. He stood up in his trench and waved the Unkerlanter forward. “Come ahead, pass through. I’ll take you to them-or I’ll take you to somebody who’ll take you to them, anyhow.” He didn’t suppose there’d be any fighting till the generals made up their minds. If nothing else, that bought a little more time.

“And what did the Algarvian generals say, Captain Friam?” Marshal Rathar asked when the young officer who’d gone into Sulingen with his surrender demand came into his presence once more.

“Lord Marshal, they rejected your call out of hand,” Friam answered. “They were full of oily politeness-you know how Algarvians are-but they said no, and they didn’t say anything else.”

“They’re out of their fornicating minds!” General Vatran burst out. “They’re crazy if they think they can hold us back very long. And they’re worse than crazy if they think they can lick us.”

“My guess is, they don’t think either of those things,” Rathar said. “But they know how many men we’ll have to use to slam the lid onto their coffin and nail it down tight. If they give up, we can take all those men and throw them at the Algarvians farther north, the ones who aren’t surrounded.”

Vatran rumbled something deep in his chest. After a moment, he nodded. “Aye, that makes a deal of sense, however much I wish it didn’t. They’re good soldiers, curse them. They’d be a lot less trouble if they weren’t.”

“That’s all too true.” Rathar gave his attention back to Captain Friam. “Take a chair, young fellow. Don’t stand there stiff as a poker.” He raised his voice. “Ysolt! Bring the captain some tea, and pour some brandy in it.”

“Aye, lord Marshal.” Ysolt had a real hearth to work with now. After the attack that cut the Algarvians in Sulingen off from their comrades, Rathar had moved out of the cave overlooking the Wolter and into a village halfway between the encircled city and the Unkerlanter attacks farther north. This surely had been the firstman’s house. The cook gave the captain his tea, and an alarmingly predatory smile to go with it.

After Friam had gulped down the steaming contents of the mug, Rathar asked him, “What did you see? How did things look, there inside Sulingen?”

“Well, as to the city itself, lord Marshal, there’s no city left, not to speak of,” Friam answered. “It’s all rubble and wreckage, far as the eye can see.”

Rathar nodded. He’d already known as much. “What about the Algarvians?” he said. “What sort of shape are they in?”

“They’re worn,” Friam said. “They’re scruffy and they’re hungry and their peckers are drooping on account of they didn’t break through to the north.”

“They never had a chance to break through to the north,” Rathar declared. That was the public face he put on the fighting that had followed the redheads’ desperate push. It was, in fact, likely true. But, considering what the Algarvians had had with which to attack, they’d come appallingly close to success. Vatran hadn’t been wrong-no indeed. Mezentio’s men made good soldiers.

“What happens if we hit ‘em a good lick?” Vatran asked Friam. “Will they fold up and make things easy for us?”

“Sir, I don’t think so,” the young captain replied. “We all know how Algarvians are-when they’re down, they don’t show it much. But I think they’ve still got fight in ‘em. And the field works they’ve built in Sulingen. . they’re formidable people.”

Even trapped, even driven back into their den after daring to stick their noses outside, Mezentio’s men still exerted a malign influence on the Unkerlanters who fought them. Rathar knew too well they exerted a malign influence on him. Because they were so good, they made their enemies believe they were even better. “Have they got any behemoths left?” he asked.

“I saw some,” Friam replied. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they led me past ‘em so I would see. And I saw dragons flying in more supplies and flying out wounded men.”

“We haven’t been able to cut them off,” Rathar said discontentedly. “But I think we will soon-we’ve finally got egg-tossers up to where they can bear on all the parts of Sulingen they hold. They won’t land many dragons once they see the beasts going up in bursts of sorcerous energy as soon as they touch.”

“How long can they go on fighting without supplies?” Vatran asked.

Rathar’s smile was even more predatory than Ysolt’s had been. “That’s what we’re going to find out,” he said, and Vatran and Friam smiled in a way that echoed his. He slapped Friam on the back. “You did very well, Captain. If they won’t yield, they won’t. And if they don’t, we’ll just have to make them. You’re dismissed. Go on, get some rest. We’ve got more fighting ahead of us.”

As the captain saluted and left, one of Rathar’s crystallomancers said, “Lord Marshal, I’ve got a report from the force moving on Durrwangen.”

By his tone, Rathar knew the report wouldn’t be good. “Tell me,” he said.

“They brought up behemoths from down this way and smashed up our attacking column pretty well,” the crystallomancer said. “Looks like they’ll be able to hold west of the city.”

“Oh, a pestilence!” the marshal exclaimed in disgust. General Vatran cursed with a good deal more imagination than that. Rathar said, “I wanted to trap that second army, too, and now those whoresons’ll be able to get out through Durrwangen.”

“If you’d pulled off the double pocket, you’d have gone down in history forever,” Vatran said.

“I’m not going to lose any sleep about history,” Rathar said. “If I’d shut both pockets on the redheads, we could have had the war within shouting distance of being won.” King Swemmel had wanted the war won-had insisted on it-a year before. That hadn’t happened; Unkerlant was lucky the war hadn’t been lost this past summer. That Rathar could speak of such possibilities.. meant nothing at all, because his soldiers hadn’t been able to bag the second army as they had the one down in Sulingen.

Vatran said, “We’ve got some more work to do, sure enough. We’ll grind the army in Sulingen to dust, we’ll run the redheads out of Durrwangen, and we’ll see how far we can chase them before the spring thaw stops everything.”

“And we’ll see what sort of surprises Mezentio’s boys pull out from under their hats in the meantime,” Rathar said. “Do you really think we can just chase them and have them go?”

“Too much to hope for, I suppose,” Vatran said. “Next time the Algarvians do just what we want ‘em toll be the first.”

As if to underscore that, a few eggs fell in and around the village. Rathar wondered if the redheads had somehow learned he was headquartered here, or if Mezentio’s dragonfliers had simply spied soldiers and behemoths in the streets and decided to leave their calling cards. If an egg burst on this house, the hows and whys wouldn’t matter.

The marshal refused to dwell on that. He studied the map to see what sort of reinforcements he could send to the Unkerlanter army west of Durrwangen. The only men he saw were the ones involved in the attack on Sulingen. He grimaced. The Algarvians there had done right by not surrendering.

Vatran was making similar calculations. He said, “Even if we pull soldiers out of the south, we’ve got no guarantee that we’ll take Durrwangen. Mezentio’s men’ll hang on to it tooth and toenail, not only for itself but because it’s the key to their road north. Is it worth risking Sulingen for a chance at seizing Durrwangen?”

“I don’t think we’d risk Sulingen.” But Rathar wasn’t happy as he turned back to the map. “Still and all, if the redheads in there found we had nothing but a little screen up against them, they’d be liable to break out and make trouble all over the landscape.”

“And isn’t that the sad and sorry truth?” Vatran said. “You just can’t trust Algarvians to sit there and let themselves get massacred.”

“Heh,” Rathar said, though it wasn’t really funny. Vatran had a point. If the initiative was there to seize, Mezentio’s men would without fail seize it. He wished the Unkerlanters showed as much drive, as much willingness to do things on their own if they saw the chance. He knew of too many times when they’d let the Algarvians outmaneuver them simply because they didn’t think to do any maneuvering of their own.

Of course, the Algarvians weren’t so burdened with inspectors and impressers. They didn’t need so many people like that. More of them lived in towns, and more of them had their letters. Rathar didn’t know how King Swemmel could run his vast, sprawling, ignorant kingdom without hordes of functionaries to make sure his orders were carried out. Having those functionaries over them, though, meant the peasants didn’t-wouldn’t-do much thinking on their own. They waited for orders instead.

“If we take the sure thing,” Rathar said slowly, “we clear the Algarvians from a big chunk of the south.” Vatran nodded. Rathar went on, “As long as we make sure they never get to the Mamming Hills, we go a long way toward winning the war.” Vatran nodded again. Rathar continued, “We can’t take any chances about that. We can’t let them get into a position of driving deep into the south again. We’ll take the sure thing, and then we’ll bang heads with them farther north. I hate that, but I don’t see that we can do anything else.”

“For whatever it’s worth to you, lord Marshal, I think you’re right,” Vatran said. “And after Sulingen goes down, then we can throw everything we’ve got at Durrwangen. And when we do that, I don’t think the Algarvians can hold it.”

“No, not in the wintertime,” Rathar agreed. “They’re better at that game than they were last year, but they’re not good enough.”

“I wonder when we’ll be able to go forward in summer.” Vatran sounded wistful. “Hardly seems fair, the things the Algarvians do to us when the weather’s good.”

“It isn’t fair,” Rathar said. “But we’re getting better, too. They still have more skill than we do, but we’re gaining. And we’re throwing more men into the fight than they can. We’re throwing more of everything into the fight than they can. Sooner or later, that’s bound to pay off.”

“Sooner or later,” Vatran echoed gloomily. But then he brightened. “I think you’re right. Their big hope was to knock us out of the fight that first summer. When they didn’t do it, they found themselves with a problem on their hands.” He pointed at Rathar. “How does it feel to be a problem, lord Marshal?”

“A lot better than not being a problem would.” Rathar eyed the map once more. Now that he’d made up his mind, he wasted no time on half measures. In that, he was much like his sovereign. “If we’re going to take out Sulingen, let’s throw everything we have at it. The sooner the redheads yield-”

“Or the sooner they die,” Vatran broke in.

“Aye. Or the sooner they die. The sooner they stop fighting down there, anyhow, the sooner we can shift men to the north again.” Rathar drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “And they know it, too, curse them. Otherwise, they would have surrendered. They won’t get terms that good again.”

“They don’t deserve ‘em,” Vatran said. “And I’m amazed the king didn’t pitch a fit when you offered them.”

“Truth to tell, I didn’t ask him,” Rathar said, which made Vatran’s bushy white eyebrows fly upward. “But if they had surrendered, he’d have gone along. That would have gone a long way toward winning the war, too, and winning the war is what he wants.”

“One of the things he wants,” Vatran said. “The other thing is, he wants to grind Mezentio’s pointy nose in the dirt. You’d better not try to take that away from him.”

“I wasn’t,” Rathar said, but he did wonder if Swemmel would see things the same way.