Through the Darkness

Three

Leofsig toweled water from his beard and used a hand to slick his damp hair back from his forehead. In summer, he used Gromheort’s public baths more often after a day of road building than he had when tlie weather was cool. The baths weren’t heated so well as they had been before the war, but that mattered less when he would have got sweaty even without a hard day’s labor.

He grimaced as he re-donned his old, filthy, stinking tunic. No help for it, though. He had only a few tunics, and no prospect of getting more till the war ended, if it ever did. The Algarvians took almost all the wool and linen Forthweg made. Only people with the best of connections sported new clothes these days.

When Leofsig left the baths, he looked around warily lest he spy Felgilde. He’d seen the girl he’d jilted only once since backing away from their engagement, and that had been coming out of the baths. He didn’t want to see her again. To his relief, he didn’t see her now. That improved his mood as he headed home.

He turned the last corner and started down his street. He hadn’t taken more than a couple of steps before he stopped in surprise: he’d almost run into a Kaunian. “Are you mad?” he exclaimed. “Get back to your own district before a redheaded constable spots you.”

The blond-actually, his hair was more silver than gold-touched a scabby scar on the side of his head. When he spoke, he used his own tongue rather than Forthwegian: “I have already made the acquaintance of those barbarians, thank you.”

“Then you do not want to make it again,” Leofsig answered, also in Kaunian.

That got the old man’s notice. “Your pronunciation is not all it should be,” he said, “but what, in these wretched times, is! Since you do speak this language somewhat, perhaps you will not betray me. May I trouble you with a question before I go my way?”

“Your being here is trouble,” Leofsig said, but then he relented. “Ask. Better you pick me than someone else.”

“Very well, then.” The Kaunian’s voice, like his bearing, was full of fussy precision. “Ask I shall: am I mistaken, or is this the street on which dwells a young man of Forthweg named Ealstan?”

Leofsig stared. “I haven’t seen Ealstan in months,” he answered, startled back into Forthwegian. “He’s my younger brother. What’s he to you?” He wondered if he should have said even that much. Could the Algarvians have persuaded a Kaunian to spy for them? He knew too well they could-the promise of a few square meals might do the job. But if the redheads were after anybody in his family, they were after him, not Ealstan-he was the one who’d escaped from an Algarvian captives’ camp. Maybe this would be all right.

“What is he to me?” the Kaunian repeated in his own language. “Well, I see I must ask another question beyond the one you gave me: did your brother ever mention to you the name Vanai?”

“Aye,” Leofsig said in a faintly strangled voice. He pointed at the old man. “Then you would be her grandfather. I’m sorry-I don’t recall your name.”

“Why should you? I am only a Kaunian, after all.” As Leofsig had gathered from Ealstan, the old fellow carried venom in his tongue. He went on, “In case your memory should by any chance improve henceforward, I am called Brivibas. Tell me at once whatever you may know of my granddaughter.”

How much to tell? How much to trust? After a few seconds’ thought, Leofsig answered, “Last I heard, she was well, and so was my brother.”

Brivibas sighed. “There is the greatest weight off my mind. But, you see, one question does indeed lead to another. Where are they? What are they doing?”

“I’d better not tell you that,” Leofsig said. “The more people who know, the more people who are likely to find out.”

“Do you think I have a tongue hinged at both ends?” Brivibas demanded indignantly.

Before Leofsig could answer, somebody threw a rock that missed Brivibas’ head by scant inches and shattered against the whitewashed wall behind him. A shout followed the rock: “Get out of here, you miserable, stinking Kaunian! I hope the Algarvians catch you and whale the stuffing out of you.”

The look Brivibas sent the raucous Forthwegian should have left him smoking in the street like dragonfire. When it didn’t, Brivibas turned back to Leofsig. “Perhaps you have a point after all,” he said quietly. “My thanks for what you did tell me.” He hurried away, his shoulders hunched as if awaiting blows only too likely to fall on them.

That could have been worse, went through Leofsig’s mind as he walked on toward his own house. If Cousin Sidroc had come upon them, for instance, it could have been much worse. But Sidroc was away, training in Plegmund’s Brigade with other Forthwegians mad enough to want to fight for Algarve. Or if Brivibas had come to the house and spoken with Uncle Hengist, Sidroc’s father.. Oh, the unpleasant possibilities had few limits.

When Leofsig rapped on the door, Hengist opened it. “Hello, boy,” he said as Leofsig stepped in. Leofsig was taller than he was, and thicker through the shoulders, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“Hello,” Leofsig said shortly. He didn’t mind his father and mother thinking of him as a child; it grated when Uncle Hengist did it. Leofsig strode past his father’s brother and into the house.

As Hengist shut and barred the door, he said, “The Algarvians are on the move in Unkerlant again, no denying it now.”

“Huzzah,” Leofsig said without stopping. If all the Algarvians in the world moved into Unkerlant and got killed there, that would have suited him fine. But Hengist, like Sidroc, kept finding reasons not to hate the invaders so much. Leofsig thought it was because the redheads were strong, and his uncle and cousin wished they were strong, too.

Now, though, Hengist had a new reason for thinking well, or not so badly, of King Mezentio’s men: “As long as the Algarvians move forward, Plegmund’s Brigade won’t be going into such danger.”

“I suppose not,” Leofsig admitted. If he’d been one of Mezentio’s generals, he would have spent Forthwegians’ lives the way a spendthrift went through an inheritance. Why not? They weren’t Algarvians. But he didn’t say that to his uncle. He couldn’t afford to antagonize Hengist, who knew how he’d got out of the captives’ camp. Muttering to himself, he left the entry hall and went into the kitchen.

“Hello, son,” his mother said as she pitted olives. “How did it go today?”

“Not too bad,” Leofsig answered. He couldn’t talk about Brivibas, not with Uncle Hengist still liable to be in earshot. That would have to wait. “Where’s Conberge?” he asked.

“Your sister is primping,” Elfryth answered primly. “She won’t be having supper with us tonight. Grimbald-you know, the jeweler’s son-is taking her to the theater. I don’t know what they’re going to see. Something funny, I hope.”

“Most of the plays they put on these days are funny, or try to be, anyhow,” Leofsig said. He paused in thought. “This isn’t the first time Grimbald’s come by for Conberge, is it?”

His mother laughed at him. “I should say not! And if you’d been paying any attention at all, you’d know how far from the first time it was, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if his father started talking with your father before long.”

That rocked Leofsig back on his heels. Thinking of his sister married. . He didn’t want her to be an old maid, but he didn’t want her moving away, either. For the first time in his life, he felt time hurrying him along faster than he wanted to go.

Quietly, he said, “I have news. It’ll have to keep, though.” He jerked his chin toward the entry hall. He didn’t know that Uncle Hengist was still hanging around there, but he didn’t know that Hengist wasn’t, either.

Elfryth nodded, understanding what he meant. “Good news or bad?” she murmured. Leofsig shrugged. He didn’t know what to make of it. His mother fluttered her hands, looked a little exasperated, and went back to the olives.

When someone knocked on the door a few minutes later, Leofsig opened it. There stood Grimbald. Leofsig let him in, gave him a cup of wine, and made desultory small talk till Conberge came out a couple of minutes later. By the way she beamed at Grimbald, she might have invented him. Away they went, hand in hand.

“Let’s have supper,” Elfryth said after they’d gone. The casserole of porridge and cheese and onions, with the pitted olives sprinkled over the top, filled the pit in Leofsig’s belly. Afterwards, he and his mother and father sat quiet and replete.

Uncle Hengist tried several times to get a conversation going. He had no luck, not even when he twitted Leofsig’s father about the way the Algarvians were still advancing. After a bit, he rose to his feet and said, “I think I’d need to be a necromancer to squeeze any talk from you people. I’m heading off to a tavern. Maybe I can find some live bodies there.” And out he went into the night.

Hestan smiled at Leofsig. “Your mother told me you knew something interesting. My thought was that, if we were all dull enough, my brother might get impatient. Hengist has been known to do that.”

“Well, it worked.” Elfryth rounded on Leofsig. “Now-what happened that you couldn’t tell me about before?”

Leofsig recounted the meeting with Brivibas. When he’d finished, his father said, “I’d heard they’d brought the Kaunians from Oyngestun to Gromheort. I wondered if Ealstan’s… friend had any relatives among them. He had nerve, coming out of the Kaunian district.” He clicked his tongue between his teeth. “I hope I would have done the same for my kin.”

“Ealstan didn’t much like him,” Leofsig said. “I can see why-he thinks he knows everything there is to know, and he’s one of those Kaunians who’ve never forgiven us for coming out of the west and turning Forthweg into Forthweg.”

“And now he’s got a Forthwegian in his family,” Hestan said musingly. “No, he wouldn’t much care for that, would he? No more than a lot of Forthwegians would care to have a Kaunian in theirs.” He left himself out of that group, and after a moment continued, “I’ll have to see what I can do for him, poor fellow. I’m afraid it may not be very much, though.”

“If the Algarvians put him on a caravan and send him west-” Elfryth began.

“I can’t do anything about that,” Hestan answered. “I wish I could, not just for him, but I can’t. Once I find out where he’s staying, I can send him money. If he has any sense about such things, he’ll be able to pay off the redheads. They can be bought.” He glanced over to Leofsig. Several Algarvians had been bought so they wouldn’t notice his unauthorized return to Gromheort from that captives’ camp.

“I’m just glad most of the redheads you paid off are out of Gromheort these days, Father,” Leofsig said. “But I don’t know how much sense this Briv-ibas has. Not a lot, maybe, if his own granddaughter and Ealstan both wanted to stay clear of him.”

Hestan sighed. “You may well be right, but I can hope you’re wrong.”

“I hope I’m wrong, too,” Leofsig said. “He can put us in danger, not just himself.”

Vanai sprawled across the bed in the cramped little flat she shared with Ealstan, reading. The flat, which had had only one abandoned romance-and that a piece of hate translated from Algarvian-in it when they started living there, now boasted a couple of rickety bookcases, both of them packed. Ealstan brought home several books a week. He did work hard to keep her as happy as he could.

But, trained by her grandfather, she’d cut her teeth on the subtleties of Kaunian epics and histories and poetry. Forthwegian romances struck her as spun sugar: straightforward, all bright colors, heroes and villains sharply defined. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy them; she usually did. Still, at least half the time she knew all the important things that would happen before she got a quarter of the way into a book.

The slim little volume in her hands now wasn’t a romance at all. It was called You Too Can Be a Mage. In the preface, the author-who didn’t say what rank of magecraft he held, or if he was a ranked mage at all-didn’t come right out and promise that anyone who finished the book would end up a first-rank mage, but he certainly implied it.

“A likely story,” Vanai muttered. If magecraft were so easy, everybody would have been a mage. But using sorcery and performing it on your own were two very different things.

Despite her doubts, she kept reading. The author had a sprightly style, and seemed convinced he was telling the truth, regardless of how improbable Vanai found that. You can unleash the power within yourself, he insisted.

Back in Oyngestun, she’d tried magic-a cantrip lifted from a text belonging to her grandfather that dated back to the Kaunian Empire-to try to get Major Spinello to leave her alone. A little later, Spinello got posted to Unkerlant. Vanai still didn’t know whether the spell and his departure had anything to do with each other. She didn’t know… but she hoped.

She wondered what had happened to Spinello after he got to Unkerlant. Nothing good was her dearest wish. Many, many Algarvians had met their ends in battle against King Swemmel’s men. Was one more too much to ask?

She doubted she would ever learn Spinello’s fate. She hoped with all her soul she would never see him again. If she didn’t, who would bring word of him to her? No one, if she had any luck at all.

With a deliberate effort of will, she pushed Major Spinello out of her mind and went back to You Too Can Be a Mage. The author concentrated on spells that might bring in money and on those that might lure someone good-looking of the opposite sex, neither of which areas inclined Vanai to trust him very far. But, he insisted, using these same principles can get you anything-aye, anything! — your heart desires.

“What does my heart desire?” Vanai asked, rolling over and looking up toward the poorly plastered ceiling. She’d never had a lot of money, and had got very used to doing without it. She wasn’t looking for anyone but Ealstan. What did she want, then?

If only every Algarvian would vanish off the continent of Derlavai! Now there was a nice, round wish. Regretfully, Vanai laughed at herself. It was also a wish far beyond anything she could learn in You Too Can Be a Mage. It was a wish far beyond the powers of all the non-Algarvian mages in the world put together. She knew that all too well, too.

What could she wish for that she might actually be able to get? “The chance to go out on the streets of Eoforwic if I need to?” she suggested to herself. That wouldn’t be so bad. That, in fact, would be splendid. Ealstan had brought her a Forthwegian-style long tunic. If only she looked like a Forthwegian, now.

She flipped through the pages of the book. Sure enough, there was a section called Improving Your Appearance. Vanai didn’t think looking like a Forthwegian constituted an improvement, but she was willing to settle for a change.

She studied a couple of the suggested spells. One, by its phrasing, was pretty plainly a translation from the Kaunian. She didn’t recall ever running across the original. No doubt her grandfather could have cited exactly the text from which the Forthwegian had filched it, and no doubt Brivibas would have had some pungent things to say about Forthwegians meddling with their betters’ works.

But whatever Brivibas had to say these days, he was saying it to someone else-and, if he was trying to publish it, he was saying it in Forthwegian. He wasn’t Vanai’s worry any more. She hoped the Algarvians hadn’t thrown him into a ley-line caravan and sent him west. Past that, she refused to worry about him.

Still, she intended to try the translated spell, not the other one. Maybe that was because she was a Kaunian herself. And maybe, in some measure, it was because she was her grandfather’s granddaughter.

Whichever was true, she couldn’t even think about trying the spell before Ealstan got home. Even if she’d had all it would need, she wouldn’t be able to see the change if she did it before then, neither on herself nor in a mirror. And if she turned herself into a crone, she wouldn’t want to go out on the streets, either.

When Ealstan gave his coded knock, Vanai threw the door open and let him in. “Ethelhelm and his band are back in town,” he said after he’d hugged her and kissed her. “He’s got more stories to tell than you can shake a stick at.”

“That’s nice.” Normally, Vanai would have been bubbling with eagerness to hear news of the outside world. Now, hoping to see some of it for herself, she cared much less. “Listen, Ealstan, to what I want to do….”

Listen Ealstan did. He had patience. And, as she went on, his own enthusiasm built. “That would be wonderful, sweetheart,” he said. “Do you really think you can do it?”

“I don’t know,” Vanai admitted. “But, by the powers above, I hope so. I’m so sick of being stuck here, you can’t imagine.”

She waited to hear whether Ealstan would claim he could imagine it, even if he didn’t feel it himself. To her relief, he only nodded and asked, “What will you need for the spell?”

Vanai had been pondering that herself. You Too Can Be a Mage didn’t go into a lot of detail. “Yellow yarn,” she answered. “Black yarn-dark brown would be even better. Vinegar. Honey. A lot of luck.”

Ealstan laughed. “I can bring you back everything but the luck.”

“We’ve got honey and vinegar,” Vanai answered. “All you have to buy is the yarn. And you’ve already brought me luck.”

“Have I?” His tone went bleak. “Is this luck, being trapped in this little flat day after day?”

“For a Kaunian in Forthweg, this is luck,” Vanai said. “I came this close”- she snapped her fingers-”to getting sent west, remember. I’m lucky to be alive, and I know it.” Maybe you should be content with that, part of her said. Maybe you shouldn‘t want any more. But she did. She couldn’t help it.

And because she couldn’t, the next day seemed to crawl past. The walls of the flat felt as if they were closing in on her. When Ealstan came home after what seemed like forever, she threw the door open and snatched from his hand the little paper-wrapped parcels he was carrying. He laughed at her. “Nice to know you’re glad to see me.”

“Oh, I am,” she said, and he laughed again. She tore the parcels open. One held pale yellow yarn, a pretty good match for the color of her own hair. The skein of yarn in the other package was dark brown. She nodded to Ealstan. “These are perfect.”

“Hope so,” he said. “Will the spell wait till after supper? I’m starved.” He gave his belly a theatrical pat.

Even though Vanai didn’t want to wait any more, she did. And then, at last, there wasn’t anything left to wait for. She got the honey and the vinegar. She got lengths of each color yarn. And she got You Too Can Be a Mage. After studying the spell it gave as carefully as if she were a first-rank theoretical sorcerer essaying some conjuration that had never been tried before, she nodded. “I’m ready.”

“Good,” Ealstan said. “You don’t mind if I watch?”

“Of course not,” she said. “Just don’t jog my elbow.”

Ealstan didn’t say a word. He pulled up a chair and waited to see what would happen next. Vanai began to chant. She felt strange incanting in Forthwegian rather than classical Kaunian, though the tongue in which a spell was cast had nothing to do with how effective it was. A lot of history had proved that.

As she chanted, she dipped the yellow yarn first into the vinegar, then into the honey. She laid it on top of the length of dark brown yarn. She frowned a little while she was doing that. The phrasing for the spell there seemed particularly murky, as if the translator, whoever he was, had had trouble following the Kaunian original. She hurried on. A last word of command and the spell was done.

“You don’t look any different,” Ealstan remarked.

He’d stayed quiet all the time Vanai was working. She’d almost forgotten he was there. Now, sweat streaming down her face from the effort she’d just put forth, she looked up-and froze in horrified dismay. No wonder she didn’t look any different. The spell hadn’t worked on her; it had worked on Ealstan. He made a very handsome Kaunian, but that wasn’t what she’d had in mind.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. He couldn’t see the effects on himself, any more than Vanai would have been able to on herself.

With a curse, she flung You Too Can Be a Mage across the room. The translator hadn‘t known what he was doing-and he’d landed her and Ealstan in a dreadful fix. How was Ealstan supposed to go out if he looked like a blond? Her heart in her shoes, Vanai told him what had happened.

“Well, that’s not so good,” he said, easier-going than she could have been. “Try it again-the exact same spell, I mean-except this time put brown on yellow. With a little luck, that’ll get us back where we started.”

She envied him his calm. Forthwegians were supposed to have terrible tempers, to fly off the handle at any excuse or none. Here, though, she was furious while Ealstan took things in stride. And he’d come up with what sounded like a good idea. She went over and picked up You Too Can Be a Mage. The cover was bent. She wished she could bend the author, too.

Ealstan, still looking like a Kaunian, came over and gave her a kiss. It almost felt as if she were being unfaithful to the real him. But part of her also wished he could stay a Kaunian … except when he had to go outside. “You too can be a mage,” he said, “provided you have more going for you than this fool book.”

“I’ll try the spell again,” Vanai said. “Then I’ll throw the book away.”

“Keep it,” Ealstan said. “Read it. Enjoy it. Just don’t use it.”

Grimly, Vanai set about the spell once more, with the reversal Ealstan had suggested. She wanted to correct the Forthwegian text where she knew it had gone awry, but she didn’t. And when she called out the word of command, Ealstan went back to looking like himself.

“Did it work?” he asked-he couldn’t tell.

“Aye.” Vanai heard the relief in her own voice. “You won’t have to go through what I go through for looking like this.”

“I like the way you look,” Ealstan said. “And I wouldn’t mind looking like a Kaunian, except that I can do a better job of keeping you safe if I don’t.”

That was no doubt true. Vanai hated it, but couldn’t argue it. She slammed the cover of You Too Can Be a Mage shut. She never intended to open it again.

Splashing through muck toward yet more trees ahead, Sergeant Istvan said, “I never thought the stars looked down on such a forest.” The big Gyongyosian plucked on his curly, tawny beard; as far as he could tell, the forest in which he was fighting went on forever.

Corporal Kun said, “Sooner or later, it has to stop. When it does, there’s the rest of Unkerlant ahead.” Kun’s beard grew in lank clumps; he was lean and would have been clever-looking even without spectacles. He’d been a mage’s apprentice before going into the Gyongyosian army, and seldom let anyone forget it.

“I know,” Istvan answered morosely. “I wonder if any of us’ll be left alive to see it.” He had no great desire to see the rest of Unkerlant. As far as he was concerned, the Unkerlanters were welcome to their kingdom. He wanted nothing to do with it. The mountains that were the borderland between Gyongyos and Unkerlant had been bad. This endless forest, in its own way, was worse. He wouldn’t have bet that whatever lay beyond it made for much of an improvement. But he did want to live to find out.

More men with tawny yellow hair and beards who wore leggings like Ist-van’s waved his squad and him forward. “All safe enough,” one of them said. “We’ve cleared the Unkerlanters out of the stretch ahead.”

Istvan didn’t laugh at his countrymen, but keeping quiet wasn’t easy. Brash Kun did speak up: “Nobody knows whether those goat-eaters are cleared out till after they blaze half a dozen men in the back. Some of them will be lurking there, you mark my words.”

“You have no faith,” said one of the warriors beckoning the squad onward.

“We have plenty of faith,” Istvan said before Kun could answer. “We have faith there will be some Unkerlanters all our patrols haven’t swept up. There always are.” He didn’t waste any more time with the guides, but tramped east past them, ever deeper into the woods.

Behind their spectacles, Kun’s eyes were puzzled. “You don’t usually stick up for me like that, Sergeant,” he said.

“I’ll take you over those know-it-alls any day,” Istvan answered. “They haven’t done any real fighting, or they wouldn’t talk like a pack of idiots. Besides, you’re mine. If anybody rakes you over the coals, it’s me. Let them tend to their own. That’s fair. That’s right.”

A few minutes later, off to one side, someone let out a shriek. “He’s been blazed!” someone else shouted. Gyongyosian troopers scurried this way and that, trying to flush out the Unkerlanter sniper. They had no luck.

“No, none of King Swemmel’s men in these parts,” Istvan said. “No chance of that at all.”

“Goat shit,” Kun said. They both laughed, though it wasn’t really funny. Snipers and holdouts took a constant toll on the Gyongyosians trying to force their way through the vast pine forests of western Unkerlant. Endless ferns and tree trunks to hide behind; endless branches on which to perch; endless foliage with which to conceal. . no, rooting out the enemy was next to impossible. Kun looked now this way, now that. He knew, as the guides had not, that where there was one sniper, there were likely to be more.

Somewhere up ahead, eggs were bursting. Istvan wondered who was tossing them at whom. With the breeze blowing from out of the east, bringing the sound toward his ears, he had trouble being sure. He hoped those eggs were landing on the Unkerlanters’ heads.

“Come on! Come on!” That was Captain Tivadar’s voice. Istvan relaxed a little; if he’d found his company commander, he’d brought the squad somewhere close to where it was supposed to be. Tivadar caught sight of him and waved. “The party’s up ahead.”

“Aye.” Istvan turned to his men. “Come on, you lugs. Back into the line we go.”

“Not enough time pulled back, and we didn’t pull back far enough, either,” Szonyi said. Istvan remembered when he’d been new to the game. He wasn’t any more. He picked the same thing to complain about as Istvan would have, or, for that matter, as a fellow who’d been in the army since before Istvan was born would have.

“They can’t very well give us a proper leave, not when it’s a week’s march back to the nearest ley line that could take us anywhere worth going,” Istvan told him. Istvan had been a sergeant long enough by now to know how to squelch grumblers, too.

“Then they cursed well ought to bring some whores forward,” Szonyi said. Since Istvan thought that was a good idea, too, he didn’t argue any more.

Captain Tivadar fell into step beside him. “Swemmel’s boys are up to something,” he said. “Nobody knows what yet, but they haven’t been standing and fighting the past couple of days the way they would before.”

“Maybe they finally know they’ve been licked.” Istvan threw up a hand. Tivadar sputtered raucous laughter all the same. Istvan went on, “No, I didn’t mean it. They’re tough, no doubt about it.”

“And they’ve got more lines in these woods than a thief has on his back after he takes his forty lashes,” Tivadar added. “No, if they don’t fight now, it’s because they’re plotting something nasty for later.”

“Aye, you’re likely right, sir,” Istvan agreed with a sigh.

More eggs burst, closer now. Istvan looked around for the nearest hole in which he could hide, something he did as automatically as he breathed, and because he wanted to keep breathing. That also made him take more notice of the forest through which he was marching. Tivadar noticed him noticing; the captain didn’t miss much. “You see what I mean?”

“Aye,” Istvan said again, nodding. “If they’d fought the way they usually do, the woods here would be beaten flat. Instead, most of the trees are still standing.”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” the company commander agreed. “When they’ve always done one thing and they all of a sudden change to another, anybody with any sense starts wondering why.”

An egg burst close enough to send branches crashing down only a few strides away. “They haven’t quite given up yet,” Istvan remarked dryly.

Tivadar chuckled. “No, it doesn’t seem that way, does it? But it’s not the same kind of fight as it has been, and I don’t trust it.”

The breeze from out of the east blew smoke into Istvan’s face. He coughed a couple of times. A moment later, he smelled something else: the sickly-sweet reek of corruption. Sure enough, a few paces farther on he strode past a bloated corpse in a rock-gray tunic. He jerked a thumb toward it. “Good to see we got one of those sons of goats, anyhow.”

“Oh, we’ve hurt them,” Tivadar said. “But what they’ve done to us.. ”

“The whole cursed country is too big and too far from everything to make it easy to fight over,” Istvan said. “We can’t get at it, and the Unkerlanters can’t get very many men into it, either. But as long as they can keep us from getting into country that really is worth something, they’re ahead of the game.”

“That’s about the size of it,” Captain Tivadar agreed. The breeze out of the east picked up, and tried to lift his service cap off his head. He tugged it down over his curly hair. “Sooner or later, we will break out. Then, by the stars, we’ll make them pay. Till then …” He grimaced. “Till then, the debt just keeps getting bigger.”

Cries echoed through the forest as Istvan’s squad neared the front. He had trouble sorting out Gyongyosians and Unkerlanters. No matter which kingdom wounded men came from, their moans and screams sounded very much alike. Telling how far away the racket came from wasn’t easy, either. Istvan kept expecting attackers to burst out of the bushes at any moment, only to realize a heartbeat later that the noises he’d heard came from a long way off.

“They’ve stopped tossing eggs,” Tivadar said. He frowned and plucked a hair from his beard. “I wonder why. They’ve got more egg-tossers than we do: they don’t have to manhandle them over the mountains to get them here.”

“Only the stars know why Unkerlanters do things.” But Istvan frowned, too. “When they don’t do what they usually do, you wonder what they’re up to, like you said.”

“You’d better, too, if you want to keep the stars shining on you,” the company commander answered. He started to say something else, but coughed a couple of times instead. “Smoke’s getting thick.”

“Aye, it is.” Istvan’s eyes stung and watered. He pointed east. “It’s coming from that way, too. Maybe Swemmel’s men are burning themselves up, and that’s why they aren’t using their egg-tossers.” He laughed, then coughed himself. “Too much to hope for.”

“No doubt it is,” Tivadar said, “but we have to-”

Before he could tell Istvan what the Gyongyosians had to do, a couple of his countrymen burst out of the woods ahead. Istvan almost blazed them for Unkerlanters. But Swemmel’s men didn’t wear leggings or bushy yellow beards, and they didn’t yell, “Fire!” at the top of their lungs in his language, either.

While Istvan was gaping, Captain Tivadar rapped out, “Where? How bad?”

“Bad,” the men said in the same breath. One of them added, “The accursed goat-eaters have fired the whole forest against us.” And then, without waiting for any more questions, they both dashed off toward the west.

Istvan and Tivadar stared at each other. While they were staring, the breeze-no, more than a breeze now, a freshening wind-blew thick smoke into their faces. They both coughed, and both looked as if they wished they hadn’t. Istvan heard other shouts of, “Fire!” He also heard more Gyongyosian soldiers plunging through the woods, fleeing the flames.

And then he heard the fire itself, crackling with insane glee. A moment later, he saw it through the branches and brambles ahead: a wall of flames, licking up tree after tree and advancing on him as fast as a man could walk. He turned to Tivadar. “What do we do, sir?”

“We-” The company commander bit back whatever he’d been about to say and answered, “We fall back. What else can we do? It’ll cook us if we stay.” He shook his fist at the fire, and at the Unkerlanters behind it. “May the stars never shine on them! Who would have thought to use fire as a weapon of war?”

Whoever had thought of it had had a good idea. Istvan didn’t need to order his squad away from the flames; he had to work to keep them from fleeing like so many panicked horses. He had to work to keep panic from sinking its teeth into him, too. The fire was frightening in a way war wasn’t. It wasn’t trying to kill him; it was just doing what it did, and the only thing he could do about it was run.

Run he did, hoping he could go faster than the flames. Behind him-ever closer behind him, it seemed-trees turned into torches. Smoke got thicker and thicker, till he could hardly breathe, could hardly tell in which direction he should run. Away from the flames-that was all he knew.

At last, when he was beginning to wonder how much farther he could run, he plunged into the bog from which he’d emerged earlier that day. He slogged into the mud, rejoicing at what he’d cursed then. Now the fire had trouble following. He shook his fist at it, as Tivadar had shaken his fist at the Unkerlanters who’d started it. When the flames died down, he and his comrades would go forward again. And what would King Swemmel’s men have waiting for them then?

For the first time in a very long while, the Marchioness Krasta made the acquaintance of someone who not only could outshout her but paid no attention to her desires whatever. Her maidservant Bauska’s bastard by the Algarvian Captain Mosco, a girl the mother had named Malya, howled as loud as she wanted whenever she wanted.

“Powers above,” Krasta complained to Colonel Lurcanio. “You’d think the mansion would be big enough to shield me from the racket of a squalling brat, but it isn’t. Doesn’t she ever shut up?”

“She is in training to become a woman,” Krasta’s lover replied in Valmieran with only a slight trilling accent. She glared, which only made the Algarvian nobleman laugh. He said, “Perhaps we will go out to supper tonight. Then you will not have to listen to this noise that so distresses you.”

“Good,” Krasta said. “Anything to get away. And Bauska is just useless- useless, I tell you. If this is what having a baby does to a woman, I’m glad I haven’t had any.”

“Even so.” Lurcanio scratched at the new pink scar on his forehead, one of the souvenirs of the concealed egg that had burst at a Valmieran noble’s mansion. The redheads still hadn’t arrested anyone for that. Krasta wished they would. For one thing, the egg might have harmed her, too. For another, Lurcanio grew quite tediously dull when he tried to track the culprit, whoever he was.

“Where shall we go?” Krasta asked, trying to decide what she felt like eating.

“I had in mind the Imperial,” Lurcanio answered. “I’ve seen talk about that place in romances two hundred years old. It would be a shame not to get to know it while I am in Priekule.”

“All right,” Krasta said. “I’ve heard the service is slow there, though.” Normally, she hated anything that smacked of delay, but now she brightened. “So much the better. The longer I’m away from the baby, the better I’ll like it.”

“Babies are enjoyable-in moderation,” Lurcanio said.

Krasta thought babies were enjoyable, too-at a distance, preferably a distance of several miles. With the prospect of supper before her, her mind turned to more important things. “What shall I wear?” she murmured. She couldn’t make up her mind down here in Lurcanio’s office; she needed to see what was in her closet. Making her excuses to the Algarvian, she hurried back to her own wing of the mansion and upstairs to her bedchamber.

For a wonder, Malya wasn’t screeching her head off. That let Krasta go through her wardrobe in peace. But it didn’t make her any more decisive than she would have been otherwise. She had so many clothes, she needed help narrowing down her choices.

“Bauska!” she shouted. If the brat was taking a nap, Krasta’s serving woman could start earning her keep again. When Bauska didn’t come right away, Krasta called for her again, even louder.

Malya started to cry. Krasta cursed. Bauska came into her bedchamber a moment later, carrying her daughter and wearing a resentful expression. Reproach in her voice, she said, “She was asleep, milady.”

“If she was asleep, you should have come in here faster,” Krasta answered, a retort that made perfect sense to her. She glowered at Bauska. The serving woman was still doughy and fat, with a pale face marred by purple circles under her eyes. Malya woke her up all the time. Malya sometimes woke Krasta, too, which infuriated the marchioness.

“How may I serve you?” Bauska asked through clenched teeth. She rocked the baby back and forth in the cradle of her arms.

“Help me pick an outfit,” Krasta said. She’d given that order any number of times before. Bauska was efficient about obeying it. Once she’d got Krasta to choose a pair of dark green trousers, picking three tunics that went with them let her mistress decide which one she wanted: a coppery shade brighter than that of Lurcanio’s hair, which was going gray. As Bauska withdrew, Krasta pursued her with words: “There. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

It was, in fact, easy enough that she could have done it herself. But what point to having servants if you didn’t use them?

When she came downstairs, Colonel Lurcanio beamed and kissed her hand. “Do you see?” he said. “You can, if you put your mind to it, look lovely even without making me wait.”

“I don’t want you to take me for granted,” Krasta answered. And that was true in ways she hoped Lurcanio didn’t fully grasp. If she began to bore him, all he had to do was crook a finger to get himself another mistress. That was how things were in occupied Valmiera these days. Of course, he might also crook his finger so if she angered him, a point that didn’t cross her mind.

He laughed now. “I may do many things,” he said, “but I would never be so rash as to do that. Let’s go.”

As always, Krasta missed the bright lights Priekule had shown before the war. Lurcanio’s driver, an Algarvian like his master, got lost a couple of times, and finally had to ask a patrolling Valmieran constable for directions to the Imperial. Even when he got there, Krasta wasn’t sure he had; the restaurant, like every other building in the capital, remained dark on the outside to make things difficult for Lagoan dragons.

The entry hall was dark, too. Only after a servitor closed the door did he open the black curtains at the other end of the hall. The sudden brilliance he revealed made Krasta’s eyes water, almost as if she’d looked up at the noonday sun.

Lurcanio blinked a couple of times, too. As a fawning waiter escorted Krasta and him to the table, he said, “Eateries with indifferent food keep things dark, so you don’t know exactly what you’re getting. The Imperial, now, the Imperial has confidence.”

“Yes, sir, we do,” the waiter said, drawing out Krasta’s chair so she could sit down. “I hope, sir, when your meal is done, you will be able to tell me our establishment deserves to have such confidence.”

“I hope so, too,” Lurcanio answered. “As a matter of fact, I had better be able to.” His smile had sharp edges, reminding the waiter who was occupier and who occupied. The fellow gulped, nodded, and fled.

When he returned, he brought menus and a list of potables. Krasta chose a dark ale, Lurcanio wine from the Marquisate of Rivaroli. “An excellent selection, sir,” the waiter said.

“I think so,” Lurcanio said. “Now that Algarve has taken Rivaroli back from Valmiera, the least I can do is take a bottle of her wine.” That sent the waiter away in a hurry again. Krasta stared across the table in some annoyance; she’d been ready to order supper, too, and now she couldn’t.

She looked around the Imperial. More than half of the men eating supper were Algarvians. The blond men with them had the sleek look of those who’d done well for themselves since Valmiera fell to King Mezentio’s men. Their yellow-haired lady friends were almost as elegant, almost as lovely, as those who accompanied the redheads.

Idly, Lurcanio asked, “Does the name Pavilosta mean anything to you?”

“Pavilosta?” Krasta shook her head. “It sounds like it ought to be a town. Is it? Out in the provinces somewhere, I suppose. Who cares where?” As far as she was concerned, the civilized world ended a few miles outside of Priekule. Oh, it had extensions in fashionable resorts, but she was certain Pavilosta wasn’t among them. She would have known more about it if it were.

“Aye, out in the provinces,” Lurcanio said. “You would not by any chance have got a letter from there lately?”

“Powers above, no!” Krasta exclaimed. She wasn’t clever in most senses of the word, but she did have a certain shrewdness to her. Pointing at her companion, she went on, “And if I had, you’d know about it before I did.”

Lurcanio chuckled. “Well, I hope I would, but you never can tell.”

He might have said more, but the waiter came back with his wine and Krasta’s ale. This time, Krasta got to order. She chose the pork chop stuffed with crayfish meat. “Ah, you’ll enjoy that, milady,” the waiter said. He turned to Lurcanio and dipped his head. “And for you, sir?”

“Roast chicken-dark meat, not white,” Lurcanio answered. “Very simple-just brush it with olive oil, garlic, and pepper. All the rich things you Valmierans eat, I marvel that you’re not round as footballs.”

“We’ll need a little time to prepare it that way, sir,” the waiter warned. Lurcanio nodded in acquiescence. The waiter departed once more.

“If you come to a place like this, you shouldn’t be simple,” Krasta said. Simplicity, to her mind, was anything but a virtue.

Lurcanio had different ideas. “Done well, simplicity makes for the highest art,” he said. Krasta shook her head again. No, that wasn’t how she looked at the world. With a whimsical shrug, Lurcanio changed the subject: “Shall we return to the uninteresting village of Pavilosta?”

“Why, if it’s so uninteresting?” Krasta asked, sipping her ale. “Let’s talk about interesting things instead. How many drops of poppy juice do you suppose I’d have to give Bauska’s little bastard to make her stop yowling so much?”

“I am a good many things, but an apothecary I am not,” Lurcanio replied. “You might silence the baby for good if you gave it too much. I do not think this a good idea.”

“That’s because you don’t have to listen to it-except when you’re up in my bedchamber, that is,” Krasta said. “When you’re over in the west wing, you probably don’t even know when it’s pitching a fit.”

Instead of answering that, Lurcanio made a steeple of his fingertips. “If you brother the marquis were still alive, do you think he would have done his best to reach you and let you know his situation?”

“Skarnu?” Krasta raised an eyebrow. She didn’t think of her brother much these days-what point, when he hadn’t come home from Valmiera’s debacle? “Aye, I think so. I’m sure of it, in fact.”

Lurcanio eyed her, not as a man eyes a woman but more like a cat eyeing a mouse. She glared at him; she didn’t care for that. More often than not, he ignored her glares. This time, he looked away. “It could be,” he said at last. “The investigators in those parts do not know everything there is to know. They’ve proved that often enough-too often, in fact.”

“What are you talking about?” Krasta asked crossly.

“Nothing,” Lurcanio answered with another fine Algarvian shrug. “It might have been something, but it turns out to be nothing.” He sipped the golden wine he’d ordered, then nodded solemn approval.

“I’ll tell you what,” Krasta said. “If I ever get a letter from my brother-or from anyone else in this Pavilosta-in-the-wilderness place-you’ll be the first to know about it.”

“Oh, I expect I will, my dear-you said so yourself,” the Algarvian colonel answered with a laugh. Krasta took offense at its tone. They might have squabbled some more, but the waiter chose that moment to bring their suppers on a tray. Not even Krasta felt like quarreling when faced with that lovely food. And Lurcanio, having tasted his chicken, said, “Aye, simplicity is best.” He beamed at Krasta. “You prove that every day, my dear.” She smiled back, taking it for a compliment.

Pekka sat in her Kajaani City College office staring up at the ceiling, staring up through the ceiling. After a long stretch where the theoretical sorcerer scarcely moved, she bent to the paper in front of her and scribbled two quick lines and then, after a moment, another. A smile chased the abstracted expression she had worn from her broad, high-cheekboned face.

This is real sorcery, she thought. The other part, the part that goes on in the laboratory, that hardly matters. Without this, laboratory experiments would be nothing but guesswork.

Plenty of mages would have disagreed with her. That bothered her not at all. Her husband was one of those mages. That bothered her only a little. Leino was good at what he did. And I, by the powers above, am good at what I do, too, Pekka thought.

Through her open window, she heard a mason’s trowel scraping across mortar as he set bricks in place to repair a wall damaged in a laboratory accident. That was all most people knew about what had happened here a few weeks before. Pekka devoutly hoped it was all the Algarvians knew about what had happened here. She, though, she knew better.

After looking up at the ceiling a while longer, she wrote another line and slowly nodded. One step at a time, she and Siuntio and Ilmarinen were learning more about the energy that lay at the heart of the relationship between the laws of contagion and similarity. The hole in the wall the mason was repairing was one of the lessons the master mages hadn’t learned quite so well as they thought they had.

“If we figure out how to release the energy where and when we need it, we can shake the world,” Pekka murmured.

Sometimes, thinking about what they might do terrified her and made her wish they’d never started down this ley line. But whenever she thought about what Mezentio’s wizards had done first against Unkerlant and then to Yliharma, the capital of her beloved Kuusamo, she hardened her heart. The Algarvians hadn’t needed the new sorcery to shake the world. Old-fashioned sorcery on a large and bloodthirsty scale had been plenty for that.

We won’t slaughter people to get what we want, Pekka thought. We won’t, no matter what. I would sooner see Kuusamo plunge into the Bothnian Ocean. And with this new sorcery, we won’t have to.

Kuusamo wouldn’t have to, if Pekka and her colleagues could gain the understanding they needed. If they didn’t, the land of the Seven Princes was liable to plunge into the sea. Pekka stared down at her latest sheet of calculations. If she couldn’t come up with answers fast enough … She’d never imagined that sort of pressure.

When someone knocked on the office door, she jumped in surprise. It was still light outside, but it would stay light outside the whole day through, or almost. Kajaani lay so far south, it made the most of summer.

Pekka opened the door. There stood Leino. “Another day done,” her husband said. He worked in neat chunks of time, not as mood and inspiration struck him.

“Let me pack up my things,” Pekka said. She didn’t leave calculations lying around the office, as she had in safer, happier, more innocent times.

“How’s it going?” Leino asked as they walked across the campus toward the caravan stop where they’d board the car that would take them close to their home.

“Pretty well,” Pekka answered. She gave her husband a wry grin. “I always seem to do my best thinking just before you come and get me.” The breeze, smelling of the sea, blew a lock of her coarse black hair across her face. She flipped it back with a toss of the head.

“Aye, that’s the way of it,” Leino agreed. “I hope I didn’t knock right in the middle of an inspiration, the way I have a few times.”

“No, it wasn’t too bad,” she said. “I’d just written something down, so I have a fair notion of where I ought to be going when I pick up in the morning.” She sighed. “Now I have to hope the ley line I’m traveling actually leads somewhere.”

“I don’t think you need to worry about that,” Leino said. “If it led anywhere more important, dear Professor Heikki would have to worry about a whole new laboratory wing, not just a chunk of wall.”

“Don’t say that.” Pekka looked around anxiously, though none of the other students and scholars on the walks was paying any attention to her husband and her. “Anyway, it’s not so much what we’re doing as controlling what we’re doing that’s turning into the biggest problem--aside from the department chairman, of course. And even she wouldn’t be so bad if she’d just leave me alone.”

“You’ll manage.” Leino sounded more confident than Pekka felt. A fair-sized crowd of people was waiting at the caravan stop. He fell silent. He didn’t worry about spilling secrets quite so much as she did, but he was no blabbermouth.

Somebody at the stop was waving a news sheet and exclaiming about what a splendid job Kuusaman dragons were doing against the Algarvians down in the land of the Ice People. “There’s good news,” Pekka said.

“Aye-for now,” Leino replied. “But if we poke the Algarvians down there, what will they do? Send more men across the Narrow Sea, most likely- they can do it easier than we can.” He paused. “Of course, everybody they send to the austral continent is somebody they can’t use against the Unkerlanters, so that might not be so bad after all.”

“Then again, it might,” Pekka said. “I know Swemmel’s an ally these days, but we’re mad if we fall in love with him. The only reason he’s better than Mezentio is that he wasn’t the one who started slaughtering people to make his magic stronger. But he didn’t wait very long before he started doing it, too, did he?”

“If he had waited, Cottbus probably would have fallen,” Leino said, and held up a hand before his wife could snap at him. “I know, he’s no great bargain. But we’d be worse off if the Algarvians weren’t fighting him, too, and you can’t tell me that isn’t so.”

Since Pekka, however much she wished she could, truly couldn’t tell him that, she pointed down the ley line and said, “Here comes the caravan.”

“I hope we’ll be able to get seats and not have to wait for the next one,” Leino said.

As things turned out, Pekka got a seat. Her husband stood beside her, hanging onto the overhead rail, till a good many people got out at the downtown stops and not so many came aboard. Then he sat down beside her. They rode together as the caravan glided along the energy line of the world’s grid to their stop. When they got out, they climbed the hill that led up to their house hand in hand.

Before they got home, they stopped next door to pick up their son from Elimaki. “And how was Uto today?” Pekka asked her sister.

“Not so bad,” Elimaki answered, which, given Uto, wasn’t the smallest praise she might have offered.

“Have you heard from Olavin lately?” Leino asked. Elimaki’s banker husband had gone into the service of the Seven Princes, to keep the army’s finances running smoothly.

“Aye-I got a letter from him in the afternoon post,” Elimaki said. “He’s complaining about the food, and he says they’re trying to work him to death.” She laughed a little. “You know Olavin. If he said everything was fine, I’d think someone had ensorceled him.”

Pekka took her son’s hand. “Come on, let’s get you home. I’m going to give you a bath after supper.” That produced as many piteous howls and groans and grimaces as she’d expected. Indifferent to all of them, she gave her sister relief from Uto and took charge of him herself.

“What’s for supper tonight?” Leino asked as they went into the house.

“I have some nice mutton chops in the rest crate, and a couple of lobsters, too,” Pekka answered. “Which would you rather have? If you’re starving, I can do the chops faster than the lobsters.”

“Let’s have the mutton chops, then,” Leino said.

“No, let’s have lobster,” Uto said. “Then I won’t have to have a bath so soon.”

“Maybe I could use the hot water from the lobsters to bathe you in,” Pekka suggested. Uto fled, squalling in delicious horror. “Mutton chops,” Pekka said to remind herself. She shook her head. If she wasn’t acting like one of the absent-minded mages comics made jokes about, what was she doing?

She took the lid off the rest crate, which broke the spell that kept the crate’s contents from aging at the same rate as the world around them. In a different way, the crate did some of the same things as her experiments, but it did them undramatically, by conserving sorcerous energy rather than releasing it in bursts. She reached into the crate for the mutton chops, which lay wrapped in butcher paper and string.

A moment later, she called for her husband. When Leino came into the kitchen, she thrust the package of chops at him. “Here,” she said. “You can throw these in a pan as well as I can. I need to do some calculating.”

“You’ve had an idea,” Leino said in accusing tones.

“I certainly have,” Pekka answered. “Now I want to get some notion of whether I’m right or not.”

“All right,” Leino said. “If you’re not going to worry about whether they come out half done or burnt, I won’t, either. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Aye, there is,” Pekka said. “Keep Uto quiet. I’m going to need to be able to hear myself think.”

“I’ll try,” Leino said. “I make no guarantees.” Pekka blazed him a look that warned he’d better do his best to offer a guarantee. His grimace said he understood that, even as Pekka understood life-and Uto-could include the unexpected.

She went into the bedchamber she shared with her husband, took out pen and paper, and began to calculate. She knew the parameters of rest crates well; it wasn’t as if she were stumbling around half in the dark, as she so often was while calculating implications of the still-murky relationship between the laws of similarity and contagion.

“It could work,” she breathed. “By the powers above, it truly could.” She hadn’t been more than half serious when she gave her husband the chops. By the time he called that they were ready, she’d found most of what she needed to know. The results startled her.

“You’ve got something,” Leino said as he served up mutton chops and a salad of spinach and scallions. “I can see it on your face.”

“I do,” Pekka agreed, still sounding surprised. “And I want to kick myself for being such a fool, I didn’t see it before. I want to get on the crystal and talk with Ilmarinen and Siuntio. They might have better notions of where to go with this than I do.”

“Either be vague or send them a letter,” Leino answered. “You never can tell who’s liable to be listening.”

“That’s true enough. It’s too true, in fact,” Pekka said. Absently, she added, “These chops are good.” That surprised her almost as much as the possible new use for rest crates had.

“Thanks.” Leino turned to Uto. “There. Do you see? I wasn’t trying to poison everybody after all. Now eat up.”

“Did he really say that?” Pekka asked. Leino nodded. Pekka wagged a forefinger at their son. “Don’t say things like that again, or you’ll spend some more time sleeping without your stuffed leviathan.”

That was a threat to make Uto behave himself, at least for a little while. If only the Algarvians were so easy, Pekka thought. But they weren’t, and wouldn’t be. Despite her new idea, the war was a long way from won. She laughed, not very happily. She needed some more progress on some of the other ideas she’d had before the new one would be worth anything at all.

As Skarnu buried the egg in the middle of the ley line that ran between the farm on which he lived and Pavilosta, he wondered where the Valmieran underground had come up with it. “Jelgavan army issue,” he remarked, leaning on his spade for a moment. “How did it get down here from the north?”

In the darkness, he couldn’t see the expression on Raunu’s face. But what the veteran sergeant said made his feelings plain: “Don’t worry about hows and whys, sir. Somebody got hold of it, somebody else got it to us, and now we’re going to make the redheads’ lives miserable with it.”

“That’s good enough, all right,” Skarnu agreed. He peered both ways along the ley line. If an unscheduled caravan should come gliding up before he and Raunu had the egg buried, they wouldn’t get a second chance to do the job properly. The same held true if an unexpected Algarvian patrol picked the wrong time to make sure the ley line stayed safe and secure.

But everything was quiet. Crickets chirped. Somewhere in the distance, an owl hooted. Breathing a little easier, Skarnu started digging again. So did Raunu. Twinkling stars watched them work. There was no moon.

“Think that’s deep enough?” Skarnu asked after a bit.

“Aye, should do,” Raunu answered. Grunting, he picked up the egg and lowered it into the hole. “It had better have the proper spell on it, so it’ll burst when a caravan goes over it,” he said. “Otherwise, we’d be doing just as much good hiding a rock down here.”

“They said it did,” Skarnu reminded him. “Of course, they’ve probably been wrong before.”

“Huh,” Raunu said: a sound of reproach. “Your lady wouldn’t care to hear you talk like that, and you can’t tell me different.”

What would Merkela have to say? Probably something on the order of, Shut up and dig. It was good advice, even if it came from Skarnu’s own mind. He shut up and dug. When he and Raunu had filled in the hold and tamped down the dirt, he said, “Now let’s get out of here. We don’t want the Algarvians to find us toting spades back to the farm.”

“That’d take a bit of explaining, wouldn’t it?” Raunu yawned, there in the darkness. “Getting late for explanations, too.” He shouldered his shovel as if it were a stick and started off toward Merkela’s farm. Skarnu followed.

They hadn’t gone more than a quarter of a mile before Skarnu heard the soft whoosh of a caravan sliding down the ley line. He turned to Raunu in surprise. “Must be a special. They haven’t got anything scheduled for this time of night.” Had the Algarvians had anything scheduled, he and Raunu would have picked a different time to visit the ley line.

Before Raunu could answer, the caravan passed over the egg Skarnu and he had buried. The egg released its energy in a short, sharp roar. The rattles and bangs that followed were caravan cars crashing to the ground. Shouts and screams pierced the nighttime quiet.

Skarnu turned to Raunu. Solemnly, the two Valmieran soldiers who hadn’t given up the fight against Algarve clasped hands. Then they hurried away, moving faster than they had before. King Mezentio’s men would surely flood the area around the ley line with soldiers, both to help the injured on the caravan and to search for the folk who’d planted the egg beneath it.

When they got back to Merkela’s farm, Raunu went off to sleep in the barn, as he always did. Skarnu went into the farmhouse, barred the door behind him, and climbed the stairs to the bedchamber he shared these days with Merkela. She’d been lying in bed, but she hadn’t been asleep. “Did I hear the egg burst?” she asked, sitting up. “I thought I did.”

“You were right,” Skarnu said. “It was a special caravan, too-had to be. That means it was probably packed full of Algarvian soldiers. We might have struck them an even better blow than we’d hoped.”

“Whatever you did to them, it’s less than they deserve.” Merkela’s voice held a purr. She flipped back the blankets that covered her. Beneath them, she was bare. “And so-would you sooner celebrate or sleep?”

Skarnu had swallowed a yawn as he went up the stairs. Now, around another one, he said, “My sweet, I mean no disrespect when I say I’d sooner sleep. We’ll have to get up with the sun, and there’s always too much work to do.”

“This is what life is on a farm,” Merkela said. Skarnu didn’t answer. He knew she knew how ignorant he’d been when he first came to the farm. She also knew he’d been an officer, which meant he was a nobleman-which, she would doubtless think, meant he’d never done any work to speak of before he came to the farm. She wasn’t so far wrong, but he didn’t care to be reminded of it.

He took off his boots, stripped to his drawers, and lay down beside her. The next thing he knew, sure enough, the sun was shining through the window. He dressed again, feeling as if he’d gone to bed only moments before. Bread and honey and a mug of ale sent him out of the house still trying to rub sleep from his eyes. I’ll stumble through the day, he thought, and sleep like a stone tonight.

Raunu looked worn, too. Seeing that salved Skarnu’s pride. The sergeant wasn’t far from twice his age, but had the endurance of granite. If he showed the strain of the night’s work, Skarnu didn’t need to be ashamed of his own exhaustion.

“My day to go weeding, too,” Raunu said mournfully.

“You can tend the livestock, if you’d rather,” Skarnu told him. Minding the cattle and sheep was easier work-or was most days, anyhow.

But Raunu shook his head. He had a stubborn pride of his own. “I won’t fall over,” he said. With that, he went back to the barn and came out with a hoe. As he had with the shovel, he carried it with a military precision he would have used with a stick. By the determined look on his face, he would have taken argument as insult. Raunu waved him out to the fields and went to get a long staff with a crook for himself.

As he drove the animals out to the meadow, he shaded his eyes with his free hand and looked over toward Raunu, who bent his back to grub weeds out of the ground. Skarnu sighed. The sergeant would ache tonight. Skarnu would also have ached had he gone weeding today, but he would have got over it faster than his comrade.

And the animals didn’t look as if they would give him any trouble today. They grazed contentedly, the cows not very far away from the sheep. By all the signs, they’d be content to keep on doing it till Skarnu drove them back into their pens when the sun set. For all they needed him, he could have lain down in the tall, thick grass and caught up on his sleep.

Then the first two men stumbled out of the woods that marked the border of the meadow.

They were both Kaunians: they had yellow hair and wore tunics and trousers, though of a cut that hadn’t been stylish in Valmiera since not long after the end of the Six Years’ War. They were also both filthy and unshaven and so scrawny that their old-fashioned clothes hung loosely on them.

Seeing Skarnu, they hurried toward him, arms outstretched beseechingly. They called out to him, their voices harsh, dry-throated croaks. He stared, clutching the staff, half ready to use it as a weapon, for he understood not a word they said.

But then, after a moment, he did, or thought he did. They weren’t speaking Valmieran. What came from their mouths was classical Kaunian, though with an accent different from the one he’d learned in school. They’re Kaunians from Forthweg, he realized, and a shiver ran through him.

He tried to remember the classical tongue, which he’d used little since his schooling stopped. “Repeat yourselves,” he said. “You are from the caravan?”

“Aye.” Their heads bobbed up and down together. “The caravan.” Then they both started talking at the same time, too fast for Skarnu to follow when they used what was for him a foreign tongue, and one spoken with an intonation he’d hardly ever heard before.

“Slowly!” he said, proud that he’d remembered the word. He pointed to the taller of them. “You. Talk.” Too late, he realized he’d used the intimate rather than the formal pronoun and verb form. His schoolmaster would have striped his back.

But the Kaunian from Forthweg didn’t criticize his grammar. Talk he did, though not so slowly as Skarnu would have liked. Out of the corner of his eye, Skarnu saw Raunu scramble over the fence that kept the livestock out of the crops and trot toward him, the hoe most definitely a weapon now.

After listening for a bit, Raunu asked, “What’s he saying? I can make out a word here or there, but that’s all.” As a sausage-seller’s son, he’d never had occasion to learn the classical language.

“I’m only getting about every other word myself,” Skarnu answered. Distracted by the veteran’s question, he didn’t even follow that much for a couple of sentences. But he thought he had the gist. “Unless I’m wrong, the redheads were sending them somewhere so they could kill them to draw their life energy for magic.”

As he understood bits and pieces of classical Kaunian, so the blonds from Forthweg could follow scraps of Valmieran. “Aye,” they said. One of them drew his thumb across his throat.

Raunu grunted. “Like they did against Yliharma this past winter, eh?” He nodded. “Sounds likely, powers below eat Mezentio and all his people. Wonder if they aimed to have another go at Kuusamo or hit Setubal in Lagoas.”

“They would know. I don’t,” Skarnu answered. His gaze met Raunu’s for a moment. They’d done more and better than they could have guessed by wrecking this ley-line caravan. Skarnu remembered the one he’d seen with Merkela not long before the attack on Yliharma, the one with shutters over all the windows. Had it been hauling doomed Kaunians down to the edge of the Strait of Valmiera?

“Help us,” one of the men from the caravan said. “Feed us.”

“Hide us,” the other one added.

Before Skarnu could answer, a man and a woman came out of the woods hand in hand. Seeing their countrymen, they pointed back toward the caravan. “Algarvian soldiers!” the woman exclaimed.

“Hide us!” the Kaunian man in the meadow said again.

But, before Skarnu could answer, all the Kaunians from Forthweg began running. They couldn’t stand the idea of being anywhere near King Mezentio’s soldiers. “Stop!” Skarnu and Raunu called after them, but they wouldn’t stop. And, when three more blonds burst out of the woods, they pelted past Skarnu and Raunu, too.

They’d all managed to get out of sight when half a dozen redheaded men in kilts stepped out onto the meadow. They came up to the two Valmierans. “You seeing escaping criminals?” one of them asked.

Skarnu looked at Raunu. Raunu looked at Skarnu. They both looked back at the Algarvian with the stolid, uncaring gaze of peasants. “Didn’t see nobody,” Skarnu answered. Raunu nodded agreement.

The Algarvian muttered something in his own language that sounded like a curse. As the Kaunians from Forthweg had done, he and his comrades ran on.

“They’ll catch a lot of them,” Raunu said out of the corner of his mouth.

“I suppose so. But they won’t do it right away, and it won’t be easy,” Skarnu answered. “And anyone who speaks even a little of the old language will find out what the Algarvians have been doing to our cousins in Forthweg. If we don’t see a lot more people in this part of the kingdom starting to fight the redheads now, we never will.” Raunu thought that over, nodded, and headed back toward the fields. He had more weeding to do.