Through the Darkness

Four

Every so often, Garivald looked at the little enamelwork plaque-striped red, green, white-set into the butt of his stick. He wondered what had happened to the Algarvian invader who’d once carried it. Nothing good, he hoped.

Not that many Algarvians patrolled the forests through which Munderic’s band of irregulars prowled. Mezentio’s men kept the roads and ley lines leading west open as best they could, and rarely batded the Unkerlanters who hadn’t given up despite being far behind the line. When the redheads wanted to make life difficult for the irregulars, they sent in their pet soldiers from the toy Kingdom of Grelz.

“How can we blaze them?” Garivald asked not long after Munderic and his comrades rescued them from the redheads. “They might be our brothers.”

“Some of them are our brothers, the cursed traitors,” the leader of the fighting band answered. “How can we blaze them? If we don’t, they’ll cursed well blaze us. They aren’t playing games when they come after us. They want us dead; as long as we’re alive and free, it reminds them they live their lives in chains, and they put them on themselves.”

“I don’t follow that,” Garivald said.

Munderic spat. “The Algarvians don’t conscript soldiers into the army that sticks its belly in the air for that pimp of a puppet king named Raniero. They don’t dare send out impressers, because most of the men they’d drag in hate Raniero worse than they hate us. Every bugger in that army volunteered to come after us. Now are you ready to blaze ‘em all?”

“Aye,” Garivald answered, adding. “I hadn’t known that-about the Grelzer soldiers, I mean.”

“All sorts of things you don’t know, aren’t there?” Munderic rumbled.

“I find more every day,” Garivald admitted. He’d known just how to live in Zossen. He’d been doing farm work since he was big enough to toddle around after chickens and chivvy them back to his parents’ house. He’d known the people in the village as long as he or they’d been alive, depending on who was older. A tiny world, but one in which he was completely at home. Now he’d been uprooted, thrown into something new, and each day brought fresh surprises.

“It’ll give you more to sing about,” Munderic said, which was also true.

“Where do we go next?” Garivald asked.

“We’ve been gathering supplies from the villages north of the forest,” the leader of the band of holdouts answered, “so we’ll go south for a while. Next one on the list is a little place called Gartz. The redheads don’t even bother putting a garrison there-they just go through now and again.”

“All right. That sounds easy enough,” Garivald said. Several villages around their forest stronghold kept the irregulars in food and tunics and other things they needed. They avoided a couple of others, whose firstmen favored the Algarvians and the puppet King Raniero of Grelz. Munderic kept threatening to wipe those off the face of the earth, but he and his followers hadn’t done it yet.

The irregulars left the cover of the pines and oaks and birches not long after sunset. The band numbered perhaps fifty all together, of whom half a dozen or so were women. That was one more thing Garivald hadn’t known- hadn’t imagined-before Munderic and his comrades rescued him from Mezentio’s men.

One of the women fell into stride beside him. Her name was Obilot. “I wish we were raiding tonight, not just bringing back sheep and rye and oats,” she said. The Algarvians had smashed her village on their way west; she thought she was the only one from it left alive. Now she wanted to go out and raid every night. So did all the women in the band. They hated the Algarvians worse than their male counterparts did.

“We’ve got to eat, too,” Garivald said. Like a lot of people who’d gone hungry, he wanted to make sure he didn’t have to.

“You’re soft,” Obilot said. She sounded soft herself; her voice was high and thin. The top of her head barely came up to Garivald’s chin. She looked more delicate and girlish than Annore. But a scar seamed her left arm from elbow to wrist. She bore the mark with pride-she’d cut the throat of the Algarvian who’d given it to her.

A hideous screech drifted down from high overhead. Garivald looked up, but couldn’t spy the dragon. He wondered if eggs would start dropping on the irregulars. But somebody said, “They’re flying west.” He relaxed. If the beasts were on their way to the big fight, they wouldn’t worry about a band of raiders deep inside territory Algarve was already supposed to have conquered.

Garivald sniffed. “I smell smoke,” he said. “That will be the village we’re going to, won’t it?”

“Aye,” Munderic answered. “You’d better pay attention to your nose. At night, it’ll let you know you’re coming up on people before your eyes will.”

“I’ve noticed,” Garivald answered. He’d usually taken stinks for granted back in Zossen; when he was among them all the time, he hardly noticed them. Only when he’d been out working in fields upwind from the village had he had its odors of smoke and manure and seldom-washed humanity forced upon his consciousness.

Beside him, Obilot spoke suddenly: “That’s too much smoke for a little place like Gartz. And the dogs should be barking, but they aren’t.”

Munderic grunted. “You’re right, curse it.” His call was soft but urgent: “Spread out. Go slow. We’re liable to be walking into something.”

Obilot caught Garivald in the flank with an elbow. “Get off the path. We’ll go through the fields. And be ready to turn around and run like a rabbit with a ferret on its tail if the redheads have an ambush laid on.”

Heart pounding in his chest, Garivald obeyed her. Most of the irregulars were bypassed soldiers; they knew what to do at times like these. The ones who hadn’t been in King Swemmel’s army had more practice fighting the Algarvians than Garivald did. Before joining this band, the worst fights he’d known were a couple of drunken brawls with fellow villagers. This was different. He might die here, and he knew it.

Peering ahead through the darkness, Garivald saw jagged outlines instead of the smooth, pale surfaces of thatched roofs. “They’ve burnt the place,” he burst out.

“That they have.” Beside him, Obilot’s voice went cold as a blizzard. When she continued, it was more to herself than to Garivald: “You never get used to it.” She started cursing the Algarvians with loathing all the more bitter because it was helpless to change whatever lay ahead.

Gratz hadn’t been much of a village; Munderic had been right about that. Now, Garivald discovered, it wasn’t a village at all anymore. Every house had been burned. Bodies lay everywhere: men, women, children, animals. They didn’t stink yet. “This must have happened today,” Munderic said harshly.

“This is what the Algarvians did to a village near Zossen when it rose against them-this or something like it,” Garivald said.

“Gartz wouldn’t have risen,” the leader of the irregulars answered. “Gartz was supposed to stay nice and quiet, so it could go right on giving us what we needed. We didn’t raid here, any more than we do close to our other villages. Only a fool fouls his own nest.”

“Someone betrayed them,” Obilot said, sounding even more wintry than before. “Someone who lives-lived-here, or maybe someone in a traitor village who figured out what Gartz was doing.”

Garivald started to say something, but held his tongue-he’d just stepped out into the village square. The Algarvians had built a gibbet there. Three bodies hung on it, two men and a woman, their heads canted at unnatural angles. Each corpse had a placard fastened to it: a lighter square in the night. He turned away, fighting sickness. He’d seen such things before, when the redheads hanged irregulars they’d caught outside of Zossen.

Munderic went over and cut down one of the placards. He couldn’t have read it in the darkness. Garivald couldn’t have read it at all; he’d never learned his letters. After a moment, Munderic let the placard fall to the ground. “I don’t care why the Algarvians say they killed them,” he muttered. “They killed them because they don’t want our peasants remembering whose kingdom it really is.”

“Vengeance,” Obilot said softly.

More and more of the irregulars gathered in the square, staring at the bodies swaying every so slightly in the breeze. “Another charge on the bill they’ll pay,” Garivald said. “Another reason they’ll rue the day….” The song built itself, a long, furious call for revenge against the redheads.

When it was through, the irregulars’ gaze had swung from the bodies to him. Munderic came up and patted him on the shoulder. “This is why the Algarvians wanted to hang you, too,” he said.

“They were talking about boiling me alive,” Garivald remarked.

Munderic nodded. “That’s the kind of thing they do.” He pointed to the gibbet. “This is the kind of thing they do. Well, here in Unkerlant they’re finding we’re as fierce as they are. We can war like this, same as them. We can, and we are, and we will, till they all flee.”

“Aye,” the irregulars said, an angry, ragged chorus.

“Aye,” Garivald echoed. He turned to Munderic. “I’ll put that last bit into the song. It deserves to be there.”

“Huh,” Munderic said, playing it down, but Garivald knew he’d pleased the leader of the irregulars. After a moment, Munderic went on, “And now we’d better get out of here. Nothing we can do to help Gartz, and we’re not going to get anything out of the place, either. Just have to hope the Algarvians or their Grelzer dogs don’t do the same to all the villages that feed us.”

Before Garivald could say what was on his mind, Obilot exclaimed, “We can do one thing for Gartz, even if we don’t do it here and now: we can kill lots of redheads.”

“Aye.” Another savage growl from the whole band.

As the irregulars started back toward the sheltering woods, Garivald caught up with Munderic and asked, “What happens if they do wreck all the villages that are friendly to us?”

“Then we start raiding the ones that aren’t harder than ever,” Munderic answered. “They’ll find out that Mezentio’s men aren’t the only ones who can tear things to pieces.”

“Our own countrymen. .” Garivald paused a moment in thought. “Aye, if we have to.” Munderic walked on for a couple of paces, then slapped him on the back. In the still night, the noise seemed loud as a bursting egg.

Along with the rest of the Lagoan army, Fernao tramped west across the almost treeless plains of the land of the Ice People. He couldn’t have said how advance felt different from retreat, but it did. When he remarked on that to Affonso, the other mage looked at him as if he were daft. “I’ll tell you how it’s different,” Affonso said. “It’s better, that’s how.”

“Well, so it is,” Fernao agreed. “They’ll make soldiers out of us yet if we’re not careful.”

“I understand soldiers better than I ever did before,” Affonso said. “When the other fellow’s trying to kill you, things that look foolish in peacetime start making more sense all of a sudden.”

“That’s so.” Fernao nodded. “Their discipline isn’t the same as the sort we have, but it’s there. You can’t get around that.”

Up from the south came a band of Ice People leading camels. They exchanged halloos with the Lagoan scouts. After a little while, an army quartermaster went out to dicker with them. Before long, Lagoan soldiers took charge of some of the camels. Pointing, Affonso said, “Another advantage of advancing is that we’re better fed. The Ice People don’t ignore us, the way they did when we were going backwards.”

Fernao shook his head. “We may have more to eat when we’re advancing, but we’re not better fed. The only way we could be better fed would be to go back to Lagoas. And if I ever see a camel in the zoological gardens in Setubal, I’ll spit in his eye before he can do it to me.”

Affonso laughed, though Fernao hadn’t been joking. The other mage said, “We’ve been here too cursed long, that’s certain. By the powers above, even the women of the Ice People are starting to look good to me.”

“Oh, my dear fellow-my deepest sympathies,” Fernao exclaimed, and put an arm around Affonso’s shoulder. The women of the Ice People were as hairy as the men, not just on their faces but all over their bodies. Some distress in his voice, Fernao went on, “They’re starting to look good to me, too. But they still haven’t started smelling good to me, so I’m safe a while longer, anyhow.”

Still, he noticed the rank stink of the Ice People much less than he had when he’d first come to the austral continent. For one thing, he’d grown more used to it. For another, he, like everyone else in the Lagoan expeditionary force, stank much worse than he had back then.

High overhead, a dragon let out a shriek of fury. Fernao looked up to see if he could spot it, but not with the alarm bordering on panic he’d known a few weeks before. Sure enough, it was a Kuusaman beast, and hard to note against the sky. Up until the dragon transports came, shrieks in the air would have burst from the throats of enemy dragons, and would have meant eggs raining down in short order.

No more. Now Lagoan dragons painted red and gold and Kuusaman beasts painted sky blue and sea green took the fight to the Algarvians and Yaninans. Fernao enjoyed picturing in his mind enemy soldiers frantically digging for their lives as sorcerous energy seared them and hurled fragments of lichen-covered stones in all directions. Better them than me, he thought. Aye, better them than me.

Up ahead of the marching footsoldiers, a behemoth paused to tear at the grass and stunted, foot-tall birches that covered the plain. Fernao pointed to it. “I wonder if we can keep all the beasts fed when winter comes again.” he said. “For that matter, I wonder if we can keep all of us fed when winter comes again.”

Affonso shuddered. “I never dreamt we might have to spend a second winter down here-but then, this isn’t a dream; it’s a nightmare. Do you remember when this campaign was supposed to be quick and clean and easy?”

“Did you ever hear of a campaign that wasn’t supposed to be quick and clean and easy?” Fernao asked, and then answered his own question: “The trouble is, the whoresons on the other side keep coming up with ideas of their own.”

“Who ever heard of a Yaninan with any idea except running away?” Affonso asked. Fernao laughed. So did his comrade, but not for long. With a grimace, Affonso continued, “But there are more Algarvians down here than there used to be. And they do have other ideas.”

“Mostly nasty ones,” Fernao agreed. Thinking of the sorceries Mezentio’s men had started using in Unkerlant, he kicked at the grass and the mossy dirt. “Almost all of them nasty ones in this war.”

Behind its screen of scouts on camels and a few unicorns, behind its behemoths, the army slogged on toward a long, low rise. Somewhere on the other side of that rise, the Yaninans and Algarvians waited. It was somewhere not far away, too: Fernao exclaimed as dragons painted in red and white and green streaked out of the west, driving a handful of Kuusaman and Lagoan beasts before them.

Nor did the Algarvians content themselves with that. Their dragons threw themselves at those flying above the Lagoan army. Whenever the Algarvians did anything, they did it with all their might. Fernao watched dragons wheel and twist and flame in the sky-and watched some of them fall out of the sky, too, broken and burning.

Then a unicorn out ahead of the army toppled to the ground, pinning its rider beneath it. A great gout of steam rose from its body: it had been blazed by a heavy stick. Fernao’s gaze went to the top of the rise. Coming over it were behemoths that didn’t belong to the Lagoan army. Lagoan beasts tramped forward to meet them. Both sides began tossing eggs.

“They’ve got more behemoths than I thought they did,” Affonso said in worried tones.

“Aye.” Fernao was worried, too. “If they’ve been reinforced …” His voice trailed off. If the Algarvians had brought more behemoths to the austral continent, they’d surely brought more men down here, too.

Footsoldiers swarmed over the ridge behind and between the enemy behemoths. Affonso cursed. “Yaninans haven’t come forward like that in all the days of the world,” he said bitterly.

“I won’t tell you you’re wrong, however much I wish I could,” Fernao replied. “King Swemmel ought to thank us. Every one of those whoresons we slay is one the Unkerlanters won’t have to worry about.”

“I’m more worried about the Algarvians who’re liable to slay us,” Affonso answered. Fernao didn’t see how he could fault his friend’s thinking there.

He peered nervously toward the south. If the Algarvians had brought in enough behemoths to confront the Lagoan army, had they brought in enough to outflank King Vitor’s men, too? But no cries of alarm rose there, and he saw no great shapes pounding across the plain to cut off the Lagoans. With more than a little relief, he turned his attention back to the battle ahead.

With more relief still, he saw that the Lagoan behemoths were holding their own against the Algarvian animals. There weren’t so many of the Algarvian behemoths as he’d thought at first frightened glance, even if there were plenty to have routed the Lagoan scouts. Indeed, the Lagoan behemoths were starting to push the Algarvians back.

“Vitor!” A great shout rose from the Lagoan ranks. “King Vitor and victory!” The soldiers surged forward. Fernao and Affonso went with them. The Algarvians began falling back faster now. Maybe they’d been running a monster bluff. Sometimes they paid a price for their arrogance.

“Every so often, this business is easier than you think it would be,” Fernao said to Affonso.

“Aye.” The second-rank mage nodded. “Remember how we were worried about the Yaninans the first time they tried to hit us? We didn’t know then they’d run every chance they got.”

“I’m not sorry they did.” Fernao slogged up the rise. The Lagoan foot-soldiers, most of them younger than he and Affonso, moved faster than the mages. They hurried to catch up with their behemoths, which were just reaching the crest of the rise and disappearing as they went down the other side. Panting a little, or more than a little, Fernao went on, “Nice of the Algarvians to do the same.”

“So it is,” Affonso agreed. He was breathing hard, too. “You wouldn’t expect it of them, the way you would of the Yaninans.”

“No. You wouldn’t.” Fernao peered thoughtfully toward the top of the rise. “I wonder if they’ve got something in mind.”

Hardly had the words left his mouth before several behemoths came back over the top of the rise, heading east toward the Lagoan force. “What’s this?” Affonso said, skidding to a halt.

“Nothing good,” Fernao replied. A moment later, he exclaimed, too-in dismay. “Those are our animals. But where are the rest of them?”

“What have Mezentio’s whoresons gone and done?” Affonso asked. Fernao couldn’t answer him, not this time. Whatever they’d done, though, it had worked. Their behemoths thundered after the Lagoan beasts that were advancing no more. This time, the Lagoan behemoths couldn’t halt their charge.

A third of the way up that long slope, Fernao took out his short-handled shovel and began digging himself a hole. He couldn’t dig so deep as he would have liked; he soon found that the soil, as in so many places on the austral continent, was frozen solid the year around only a couple of feet below the surface. But any kind of scrape in the soil was better than none. He heaped up the dirt in front of the scrape and then half jumped, half lay in it. Cold started seeping into his body.

Soldiers were going to earth, too, and so was Affonso. And none too soon, for the Algarvian behemoths started plastering them with eggs again. Some of those behemoths bore heavy sticks instead of egg-tossers. As a beam from one of them could bring a unicorn crashing to the ground, so it could also blaze straight through two or three men before becoming too attenuated to be deadly any more.

A few at a time, King Vitor’s men began falling back from the rise to the flat ground below. As they retreated, Fernao found out what had gone wrong beyond the crest of the rise, on the side he hadn’t been able to see.

“Who’d have thought those buggers would have hauled those really heavy sticks all this way?” one disgruntled trooper said to another.

“Well, they did, curse ‘em,” the second Lagoan trooper answered. “You get a stick that’s heavy enough, and not even a behemoth’s armor will stand up to it.”

The two footsoldiers tramped past before Fernao could hear any more, but he’d heard enough and to spare. Turning to Affonso, he said, “They outfoxed us.”

“It doesn’t do to trust the Algarvians,” Affonso said mournfully. He leaned up on an elbow to peer out over the top of the dirt he’d piled up in front of his own miserable excuse for a hole in the ground. With a grunt, he added, “They’re going to overrun us if we stay here much longer.”

“And they’ll have an easier time killing us if we get up and run,” Fernao said. But Affonso was right. If he didn’t want to be captured or slain in place, he’d have to run. And run he did, abandoning the rise far more quickly than he’d gone up it. Having won their victory, the Algarvians didn’t pursue hard. That was some consolation for Fernao, but not much. He knew too well that Mezentio’s men could come after the Lagoan army any time they chose.

Count Sabrino had strolled through a good many Algarvian camps in Unkerlant the first summer of the war there, when things were going well. The stroll he was making through this encampment on the austral continent put him in mind of those. The encampment was smaller, but filled with the same sense of quiet confidence he’d known before.

In Unkerlant, that confidence was dead, buried by a resistance far stronger and more ferocious than the Algarvians had imagined when they started on the-bad-roads west. Here in the land of the Ice People, it still lived. The Algarvian force here was tiny compared to the armies that had gone into Unkerlant, but it wasn’t facing the whole of Swemmel’s vast kingdom, either.

Algarvian soldiers sat on stones or on the grass, tending to their boots or packs or sticks as if they were so many craftsmen practicing their trades. Behemoth crews tinkered with their animals’ armors or fiddled with their egg-tossers to make them fling a little farther. It was all very businesslike.

Even the wounded, who were tended by mages and surgeons, did their best to make light of their injuries. In best Algarvian style, one cracked a joke so funny, it made the fellow sewing up his leg pause to laugh out loud. Sabrino had seen the same sort of thing in Unkerlant. It had made him proud then. Here, it left him sad.

At last, he found his way to the tent of Brigadier Zerbino, the officer King Mezentio had appointed to command the Algarvian forces in the land of the Ice People. Zerbino, a big, bluff fellow who was marquis of a small domain in southern Algarve, greeted him with a bear hug and a flagon of wine. “We smashed them!” he declared. “Positively smashed them!”

“So we did, sir,” Sabrino agreed; Zerbino held the higher military and social ranks. “Now we can keep the cinnabar going across the Narrow Sea.”

“Oh, aye,” Zerbino said, swigging from his own flagon. “And we can drive the cursed Lagoans right off the austral continent. Traitors to the Algarvic race, that’s what they are. Might as well be Kaunians.” He swigged again. “I’ve sent messages by crystal, asking the king for more. . more of everything, by the powers above. Enough to let us finish the job.”

“Is that a fact, sir?” Sabrino said tonelessly, hoping that tonelessness disguised the alarm he felt.

It didn’t, or not well enough. “What’s biting you, Colonel?” Zerbino demanded. “It’s something besides these cursed mosquitoes, I’ll say. Don’t you want to lick the lousy Lagoans right out of their boots?”

“On the austral continent, sir, everything bites you in the summertime,” Sabrino answered. His joke did not go over so well as the wounded trooper’s had. After a moment, he went on, “I’d sooner lick Unkerlant. If we do that, we can settle Lagoas later.”

“King Mezentio doesn’t think the same way, not at all he doesn’t,” Zerbino said. “We came down here to help the Yaninans. Best way to do it is to give the Lagoans a good boot in the arse, and that’s what we’re doing.”

“But, sir-” Sabrino began.

“But me no buts.” The marquis made a sharp chopping gesture with his right hand. “Just have your dragons ready to go after the Lagoans whenever I give the word. You can do that, can’t you? If you can’t, you’d better give me the reason why right now.”

“I can do that, sir,” Sabrino agreed. Having been doing it for a good deal longer than Zerbino had been on the austral continent, he spoke with some asperity.

If the marquis noticed, he affected not to. “That’s fine, that’s fine,” he said. “Finish your wine and I’ll fill you up again. This isn’t the sort of country you want to face sober, after all.”

Before the Algarvian buildup sent supplies flooding across the Narrow Sea, Sabrino had been drinking camel’s milk, sometimes fermented, sometimes not, and boiled water. He said, “Thank you, sir. I don’t mind if I do. Good to see wine again. Even better to taste it.”

“Enjoy it,” Zerbino said. “We’ll slaughter all the Lagoans and drive them out of this miserable place, and then we won’t have to worry any more about cinnabar going across the Narrow Sea.”

He made it sound so easy. Sabrino wondered where he’d fought before coming to the austral continent. Valmiera, most likely, he thought. Zerbino couldn’t have seen much duty in Unkerlant, or he wouldn’t have been able to keep that particular brand of optimism. Whenever Sabrino thought of Unkerlant, he wished he were back there, in the bigger, harder fight. “This is a sideshow,” he said once more. “The real war’s against King Swemmel.”

“Aye, and we’re winning it,” Brigadier Zerbino answered after his large larynx worked to get down a swallow of wine. “We’re bloody well winning it. We drive them in the south, the same as we drove them all along the frontier last summer.”

Algarve wasn’t driving all along the frontier in Unkerlant this campaigning season. Sabrino understood why: King Mezentio didn’t have the men to do it. Had Zerbino come to the same conclusion? He gave no sign of it. Sabrino upended his goblet to pour the last of the wine down his throat. “I thank you for the hospitality, sir,” he said. “My dragons will be ready for whatever you may need from us.”

“I know that,” Zerbino said. “You’ve even got the Yaninan dragons flying as if the men on them know what they’re doing. That’s not easy. Allies!” He let out a loud, disdainful sniff.

“That’s more Colonel Broumidis’ doing than mine, sir,” Sabrino said. “He’s a good officer, and nobody anywhere would say anything else. Some of his junior men handle themselves well, too. When they get good leaders, the Yaninans can fight.”

“You couldn’t prove it by me, not with what I’ve seen of their foot-soldiers.” Zerbino sniffed again, even more noisily than before. How many goblets of wine had he had before Sabrino came to see him? No way to tell. He bowed, and straightened readily enough. “You are dismissed.”

With a salute, Sabrino left the new commandant’s tent. As he walked back toward the makeshift dragon farm, he had to fight hard to keep from muttering curses under his breath. King Mezentio had decided not just to keep the Lagoans from making trouble for the cinnabar shipments from the austral continent but to conquer it, to the degree that men from Derlavai could conquer the land of the Ice People. Wasteful, Sabrino thought, but the word didn’t pass his lips. King Swemmel would have called the plan inefficient-and, as far as Sabrino was concerned, the half-mad King of Unkerlant would have been right.

Colonel Broumidis came up to Sabrino as he returned to the dragons. As always, Sabrino had trouble fathoming the expression on Broumidis’ face. The Yaninan’s large, dark eyes held depths that made a mockery of the confident way Algarvians viewed the world. Doing his best to hide his unease, Sabrino asked, “And what can I do for you today, Colonel?”

“I do not know if there is anything you can do for me, Colonel,” Broumidis replied. Something sparked in those usually fathomless eyes. “In any case, I should be the one asking you what I can do. This is Algarve’s war now, with Yanina playing the part of the poor relation, as usual. Or am I wrong?”

Policy demanded that Sabrino insist Broumidis was indeed mistaken. Right this minute, he couldn’t stomach policy. He rested his hand on Broumidis’ shoulder for a moment in silent sympathy.

The Yaninan officer said, “You are a good chap-is that the right word?” He didn’t wait to hear whether that was the right word, but went on, “If more Algarvians were like you, I should not mind so much being subordinated to them. As things are, however …”

He didn’t go on. Sabrino understood what he was saying, though. Yaninans didn’t take kindly to being subordinated to their own countrymen, let alone to foreigners. “It can’t be helped, my dear Colonel,” he said. “If only-” He stopped much more abruptly than Broumidis had.

“If only we Yaninans could have beaten the Lagoans on our own-that is what you meant, is it not?” Broumidis asked, and Sabrino could but miserably nod. Broumidis sighed. “I wish it had been so. If you think I enjoy being a joke to my allies, you may think again. Actually, Colonel, I do not believe you believe such a thing yourself, though I would not say the same for a good many of your countrymen.”

“You are a gentleman,” Sabrino answered, uneasily remembering how many unkind things he’d had to say about the Yaninans’ fighting abilities.

Before Colonel Broumidis could politely deny any such thing, an Algarvian dragonflier came running toward him and Sabrino, shouting, “Crystal says the Lagoans and Kuusamans are flying this way.”

Broumidis bowed to Sabrino. “We can take up this discussion another time. For now, we have business.” He ran back toward the dragons he commanded, shouting orders in his own throaty language.

Sabrino started shouting orders, too. He already had dragons in the air; now that both sides had good-size forces of dragonfliers, he always took that precaution. He still wished he’d also taken it before the Lagoans wrecked his earlier dragon farm, though wishes there did no good. If he could prevent another such disaster and make the enemy pay, that would do.

His wing, full of veteran fliers and of dragons trained as well as they could be, wasted no time getting into the air. He noted with approval that Broumidis’ Yaninans were not behind them. In a good army, Broumidis might have gained marshal’s rank. Even as a colonel in a bad army, he made the men he led far better than they would have been without him.

And here came the Lagoans and Kuusamans, half the dragons gaudy in red and yellow, the other half hard to see because their paint blended in with sky and landscape. Zerbino and his reinforcements had driven the Lagoans back from their latest advance on Heshbon, but hadn’t broken their spirits.

Lagoans flew dragons much as Algarvians did: aggressively, thinking the best thing they could do was close with their opponents. The Kuusamans fought in a different style. They were precise and elegant in the air, looking for any chance to cause trouble and causing plenty when they found one.

Their combined force slightly outnumbered the one Sabrino led. They were on the point of gaining the upper hand when Colonel Broumidis, careless of tactics, hurled all the Yaninan dragons against them and threw them into momentary confusion. Sabrino shouted himself hoarse, then shouted into his crystal: “All right, Broumidis-get out now. You’ve done your job, and more than done it.”

“I am so sorry, my dear Colonel, but I cannot understand a word you say,” the Yaninan answered. A moment later, his dragon, assailed by three at once, plummeted to the ground. Sabrino cursed loudly and foully, which did no good at all. His dragons and the remaining Yaninans drove the Lagoans and Kuusamans back toward their own army-and he had the dreadful feeling that did no good, either.

Ealstan was happier when Ethelhelm brought his band back to Eoforwic. The musician was a friend, or as close to a friend as he had in the occupied Forthwegian capital. More than ever, he wished Vanai could meet the band leader. But Vanai couldn’t come out of the flat, and Ethelhelm was far too prominent and easily recognized to let him visit without drawing notice.

“Did you bring back enough from your swing around the kingdom to make reckoning it up for you worth my while?” Ealstan asked him.

“Oh, aye, I expect we did,” Ethelhelm answered. His flat argued that he’d been bringing back plenty from all his swings around the kingdom. It had so many things Ealstan’s lacked. . But Ealstan couldn’t dwell on that, for the musician was continuing, “But you’d better not call Forthweg a kingdom, you know.”

“Why not?” Ealstan asked, taken by surprise. “What else are we?”

“A province of Algarve,” Ethelhelm said. “And if you don’t believe me, you can ask the redheads.”

Forthweg had been provinces of other kingdoms before. For the hundred years leading up to the Six Years’ War, both Algarve and Unkerlant had done their best to make the Forthwegians forget they’d ever been a kingdom. Both had failed. During the chaos after the war, Forthweg wasted no time regaining its freedom.

When Ealstan made a detailed suggestion about where the Algarvians could put their opinion and what they could do with it once it got there, Ethelhelm laughed, but not for long. “You want to be careful where you say that kind of thing, you know,” he remarked. “Some people would make you regret it.”

“You should talk,” Ealstan retorted. “The songs you sing, it’s a wonder Mezentio’s men haven’t found a deep, dark dungeon cell for you.”

“It’s no wonder at all,” the band leader answered. “I’ve paid off so bloody many of them, I’m probably supporting a couple of regiments in Unkerlant by myself.” He grimaced. “I have to stay rich. If I can’t keep paying the whoresons off, they’ll start listening to the words again.”

“Oh.” Ealstan didn’t know why he sounded startled. His father had paid off the Algarvians, too, to keep them from noticing Leofsig. “Well, by your books, you can keep on paying them for quite a while.”

“Good,” Ethelhelm said. “I intend to. I have to, as a matter of fact.” He made another horrible face. “And I’ll tell you something else, too-not everything they want from me is money.”

“Is that so?” Ealstan could tease Ethelhelm: “You have a couple of redheaded women fighting over who gets to make you her pet?”

“Powers above be praised, I’m spared that,” Ethelhelm answered with another laugh. “But I might enjoy myself if they were.” He and Ealstan both laughed this time, conspiratorially. Algarvian women had a reputation for looseness, just as Algarvian men had a name for corruption. What people said about Algarvian men turned out to be largely true, which made thinking about redheaded women more intriguing. But Ethelhelm sobered. “No, I won’t enjoy this, if I end up having to do it: they want the band to perform for Plegmund’s Brigade.”

“Oh,” Ealstan said again-this time a sound of pain and sympathy, not surprise. “What are you going to do?”

“Talk it over with the boys some more first,” the band leader replied. “It’s just what we want, right? — giving shows for a brigade full of traitors. But if it’s the only way we can stay out of trouble with the Algarvians, we may have to.”

At not quite eighteen, some things looked very clear to Ealstan. “If you do play, how are you any different from the fellows who carry sticks for King Mezentio?”

Ethelhelm’s lips tightened. “I wish you hadn’t asked it quite that way.” Now that the words were out of his mouth, Ealstan also wished he hadn’t asked it quite that way. He didn’t want to lose Ethelhelm as a client or as a friend. But he didn’t want to lose his respect for him, either. After a pause, the musician went on, “I don’t know what to tell you about that. There’s some truth to it. But if we don’t play for the Brigade, the Algarvians are liable to shut us up. Is that better?”

He meant it seriously. This time, Ealstan thought before he answered. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “I just don’t know. We have to make some compromises with the Algarvians if we want to live.”

“Isn’t that the sad and sorry truth?” the band leader agreed.

Ealstan waved around the flat. The wave encompassed thick carpets, fine furnishing, books, paintings, drums and viols and flutes. “The other thing you have to ask yourself is, how much is all this worth to you?”

Ethelhelm gave him an odd look. “I never thought I’d see my conscience sitting in a chair talking to me. What do you think I’ve been asking myself ever since the Algarvians came to me? It’s not an easy question.”

“Why not?” It was easy for Ealstan.

Now Ethelhelm did look exasperated. “Why not? I’ll tell you why not. Because I’ve worked a long, long time, and I’ve worked really hard all that time, to get where I am. And now I have to throw it away by making the redheads angry? That’s why it’s not easy.”

Ealstan hadn’t spent a long time working toward anything. The only thing he had that he couldn’t bear to give up was Vanai, and he’d already given up everything else for her. He got to his feet. “I think I’d better go.”

“Aye, I think maybe you’d better,” Ethelhelm replied. “I haven’t told them we would yet, you know. I just haven’t told them we wouldn’t, either.”

With a nod, Ealstan left. As usual, he noted the stairwell didn’t stink of cabbage or of anything worse. As much as all the fine furnishings in Ethel-helm’s flat, that reminded him of what the band leader had to lose.

Heat smote when he left the block of flats. Summer in Eoforwic, like summer in most of Forthweg, was the savage season of the year, the sun beating down from high, high in the sky. Tempers could fray. His almost had, and so had Ethelhelm’s. He sighed, seeing himself in Ethelhelm’s place, listening to himself telling the Algarvians they had no business raising Plegmund’s Brigade, let alone expecting him to play for it.

But he was his father’s son, too. After a moment, he laughed at himself- easy enough for a man with nothing to lose. Ethelhelm had rather more than that. Ealstan had already known as much. This whole block of flats told him as much. Ethelhelm didn’t want to lose it, either. Ealstan hadn’t known that, but he did now. He wondered how the bandleader would get around it, and if Ethelhelm could. For Ethelhelm’s sake and his own, he hoped so.

He passed a recruiting broadsheet for Plegmund’s Brigade, and another, and another. The Algarvians made sure there were plenty about. Had Sidroc finally joined it, as he’d kept saying he would, or had he found better sense somewhere? For his cousin’s sake, Ealstan hoped that last was true.

He walked by another one of those ubiquitous broadsheets. This one, though, had ALGARVE’s DOGS scrawled across it in bold strokes of charcoal. Seeing that made Ealstan smile. In spite of Plegmund’s Brigade, not all, or even most, of his countrymen had any use for their occupiers.

He saw several more defaced broadsheets on his way back toward his own block of flats. They all had different slogans on them: either they’d been written by different hands or by one fellow with a lot on his mind. One of the slogans read, STOP KILLING KAUNIANS! Ealstan almost burst into tears when he spied it. He sometimes wondered if he were the only Forthwegian who cared. Being reminded he wasn’t felt good.

A Forthwegian dashed round a corner and ran toward and then past him with what looked like a woman’s leather handbag pressed to his side. And so it was: a moment later, a couple of Algarvian constables, whistles shrilling, rounded that same corner in hot pursuit. They pointed at the fleeing Forthwegian and shouted, “Stopping thief!”

No one on the crowded street showed the least interest in stopping the thief. Cursing, sweating, the Algarvians pounded after him. They didn’t get far before somebody stuck out a leg and tripped the one who was in front. His partner fell over him. Both of them howled.

They got up with filthy tunics and with bleeding elbows and knees-the kilts they wore made their scrapes worse by leaving knees bare. Each of them yanked his bludgeon off his belt and started belaboring the Forthwegian they thought had tripped them. After he went down with a groan, the Algarvians started beating all the Forthwegians they could reach. One of them swung at Ealstan, but missed.

And then a Forthwegian leaped on one of the constables. The other Algarvian dropped his bludgeon, grabbed for his stick, and blazed the Forthwegian. The fellow let out a shriek that echoed through the street. The redhead he’d jumped scrambled to his feet.

A rock-probably a pried-up cobblestone-whizzed past the Algarvians’ heads. An instant later, another rock caught one of them in the ribs. They both started blazing then, blazing and shouting for help at the top of their lungs. Ealstan had no idea whether any help for them was close by. He didn’t wait around to find out, either, especially not after a beam zipped past his head and burned a scorched, smoking hole in the wooden front of the leather-goods shop by which he was standing.

Forthwegians fell, screaming and thrashing. But more rocks flew, too, along with curses. One of the Algarvians went down when a stone caught him in front of the ear. His comrade stood over him, still blazing. Then someone tackled the standing constable from behind. Baying like wolves, the mob swarmed over both redheads.

Ealstan cheered to see them go down. But he didn’t linger to help stomp them to death. He hadn’t seen a riot in Eoforwic, but the stories he’d heard about the one that had happened not long before Vanai and he came to the city made him want to get away rather than join in. His own countrymen would have things all their own way for a little while, but then the Algarvians would gather enough men to restore order-and they wouldn’t much care whom they killed while they were doing it, either.

Breaking glass announced that the Forthwegians were starting to plunder the shops along the street. Ealstan stepped up his pace, hoping to put as much distance between himself and trouble as he could. He didn’t like to think about Forthwegians robbing other Forthwegians, but he’d heard stories about that, too. He hadn’t believed all of them. Now he realized he might also have been wrong about that.

He’d just turned onto his own street when a couple of squads of Algarvian constables tramped up it, every one of them looking as grim as any soldiers he’d ever seen. The redheads carried infantry-style sticks, not the shorter, less powerful weapons they usually used. Their eyes swung toward him in frightening unison. He shrank away from them. He couldn’t help himself. Had he given them the least excuse, they would have blazed him, and he knew it.

When he got up to his flat, Vanai exclaimed, “Powers above, what’s going on out there?”

“Riot,” he answered succinctly. “For once, you can be glad you’re holed up in here. I’m going to stay right here, too, till things quiet down or till I have to go out for food.” Only after the words were out of his mouth did he realize that sounded less than heroic. After listening to himself again, he decided he didn’t care.

Bembo and Oraste paced along the edge of the district into which Gromheort’s Kaunians and those from the surrounding countryside had been crowded. As long as the blonds stayed inside the district, everything was fine. When they didn’t, the Algarvian constables had to make them regret it.

“Supposed to be a tough time over in that Eoforwic place,” Bembo remarked. “For a couple of days there, I was wondering if they were going to stick us on a caravan and send us over there to help put out the fire.”

With a shrug, his partner answered, “Wouldn’t matter to me. If the Kaunians get out of line, we kick them around. If the Forthwegians get out of line, we kick them around, too.”

“You hate everybody, don’t you?” Bembo meant the question sardonically, but it came out sounding half admiring.

“I’m a fornicating constable,” Oraste answered. “It’s my fornicating job to hate everybody. Back in Tricarico, I hated Algarvians. I can still think of some Algarvians I hate, matter of fact.”

Bembo hoped Oraste was talking about Sergeant Pesaro. He didn’t ask, though. Had Oraste’s disdain been aimed at him, the other constable wouldn’t have hesitated to tell him so. Instead, Bembo said, “How are we supposed to win the war if the places we’ve conquered keep giving us trouble?”

His partner shrugged again. “We kill enough of those whoresons who think they’re so cursed smart, the rest will get the idea pretty stinking quick. One thing about dead men: they hardly ever talk back to you.”

A live man, a scrawny Kaunian with a leather apron over his tunic and trousers, came out of his shop and beckoned to the constables. Bembo and Oraste looked at each other. When a Kaunian actually wanted something to do with them, something fishy was liable to be going on. “What is it?” Bembo growled in his own language; if the blond didn’t speak Algarvian, the powers below were welcome to him.

But the Kaunian did, and pretty well, too: “Can you gentlemen please help me with a quarrel I am having with my neighbor?”

An unpleasant light blazed in Oraste’s eyes. Bembo understood what it meant. The Kaunian shopkeeper, perhaps luckily for him, didn’t. If Oraste decided this fellow was right-or if he could pay-his neighbor would regret it. If the neighbor had a better case-or more silver-this blond would rue the day he was born. Either way, Oraste would end up happy.

“What’s he doing to you?” Bembo asked. “Or what does he think you’re doing to him?”

The shopkeeper started to explain. A moment later, another Kaunian popped out of the shop next door and started screaming at him. This fellow’s Algarvian was worse than the first man’s, but he made up in excitement what he lacked in grammar. Bembo smiled to listen to him. Even if he didn’t talk any too well, in a way he sounded very Algarvian indeed.

Before long, both Kaunians were dropping broad hints about what they would do if only things were decided in their favor. Bembo smiled some more. This was shaping up as a profitable afternoon. And then, just when the excitable blond was about to make a real offer, Oraste gave Bembo a shot in the ribs with his elbow. The other constable pointed. “Look at that old bugger. If he’s not sneaking back after he was out when he wasn’t supposed to be, what is he doing?”

Sure enough, the silver-haired Kaunian was trying to edge past the constables and the argument and go deeper into the part of town where he was allowed to be. Since Bembo and Oraste were only paces inside the edge of that district, the Kaunian had to be coming from outside it. A schoolmaster’s logic couldn’t have cut more sharply.

“Hold up there, pal,” Bembo called to the man, who turned back to him with surprise and alarm on his face. A moment later, Bembo was surprised, too: surprised that he recognized the fellow. “It’s that old son of a whore from Oyngestun,” he said to Oraste.

“Well, kiss my arse if you’re not right,” Oraste said. “I knew he was mouthy. I didn’t know he was sneaky, too.”

Bembo advanced on the Kaunian. So did Oraste. Behind them, the two shopkeepers both exclaimed. The constables ignored them. “All right, pal,” Bembo said. “What were you doing sliding through the parts of Gromheort where you’re not supposed to go?”

“I was looking for word of my granddaughter,” the Kaunian answered in his slow, precise Algarvian. “I am concerned for her safety.”

Oraste laughed. “She’s a Kaunian, right, same as you are? None of your buggers are safe. You sure aren’t safe, old man.” He pulled his bludgeon off his belt and twirled it by its leather thong.

The scar where Bembo had struck the Kaunian on the road from Oyngestun to Gromheort was still bright pink. If he needed another lesson, Oraste looked eager to arrange it. The Kaunian licked his lips. He saw what was on Oraste’s face, too. One of his hands slid into a trouser pocket. Coins jingled. He said, “You never really saw me outside this quarter, did you?”

“I don’t know,” Bembo answered. “I haven’t decided yet.”

Although the Kaunian had proved pretty dense before, he had no trouble figuring out what that meant. He gave Bembo and Oraste enough silver to make them decide they hadn’t seen him sneaking back after all. And then, showing he really could learn, he got out of there in a hurry, to keep the constables from beating him even after he’d paid them.

They turned back to the two Kaunian shopkeepers, only to discover the blonds had made up their quarrel. Oraste hefted his bludgeon. “I ought to bloody both of you for wasting our time,” he growled.

Both the shopkeepers started jingling coins. Bembo, a mild enough sort most of the time, wouldn’t have got so much out of them. They were, however, plainly scared to death of Oraste-and they couldn’t very well bribe him without bribing Bembo, too. The plump constable’s belt pouch grew full and nicely rounded.

“That wasn’t so bad,” he said as he and Oraste returned to their beat. Behind them, the two Kaunians started shouting at each other again. Bembo still had a miserable time following their language, but he thought the excitable one was berating the other for calling the constables.

Oraste spat on the cobblestones. “Oh, aye, it’s some silver,” he said, “but what can we spend silver on? Not much, not in this rathole of a town. I’d sooner have broken some heads.”

“You can always spend money in a tavern,” Bembo said. “If you feel like it, you can break heads in a tavern, too.”

“It’s not the same,” Oraste said. “Breaking heads in a tavern is just brawling. If I do it on the job, I get paid for it.”

Bembo had known a fair number of constables with that attitude, but few so open about it as Oraste. Preferring bribes to brawls, Bembo said, “There’ll be other chances. The way we’ve stuffed all these Kaunians into this little tiny stretch of town, they’re going to be at each other’s throats all the time, so we’ll get plenty to do.”

Oraste looked down a cross street toward the heart of the Kaunian district in Gromheort. The blonds had set up a market along both sides of the street, which was too narrow to begin with. Bembo wondered what they sold one another; none of them could have had very much.

“Aye, they are packed pretty tight,” Oraste allowed. “I just hope there’s no pestilence that starts going through ‘em.”

“Why?” Bembo said in some surprise; his partner usually showed no concern whatever for Kaunians. “Because the pestilence might spread to us, you mean?”

“Oh, that, too,” Oraste said, though he didn’t seem to have thought of it himself. “But what I mostly meant is, a pestilence would kill off the lousy blonds before we got the chance to use their life energy against the Unkerlanters or wherever else we need it.”

“Oh,” Bembo said. “That’s true.” And so it was, even if his stomach did a slow flipflop every time he thought about it. “I wish we could have beaten King Swemmel without using magic like that.”

“So do I, on account of it would have been easier on us,” Oraste said. “But the more Kaunians we get rid of, the better off everybody’ll be after we finally win the war. They’ve been stepping on our faces for too long. Now it’s our turn.”

Bembo couldn’t disagree, not out loud. Oraste would have thought him a slacker or, worse, a closet Kaunian-lover. He wasn’t. He had no use for the blonds. He hadn’t back in Tricarico, and he didn’t here in Gromheort, either. But he was too easygoing to enjoy massacre.

A couple of other constables came out of the district in the company of six or eight young Kaunian women. Half the women looked sullen and bitter, the other half anywhere from resigned to happy. “Where are you taking them?” Bembo called.

“Recruits for a soldiers’ brothel,” one of his countrymen answered. He turned back to the women, saying, “Don’t any of you worry about a thing. By the powers above, you’ll have plenty to eat, and that’s no lie. Got to keep you good and plump to give the boys somewhere nice to lay down.” One of the women translated for the others. A couple of them, the skinnier ones, nodded.

After the little procession was out of earshot, Bembo turned to Oraste and asked, “How long do you suppose they’ll last?”

“In a soldiers’ brothel? Couple-three weeks,” Oraste replied. “They wear ‘em out, they use ‘em up, and then they bring in some fresh meat. That’s how it goes.”

“About what I thought.” Bembo looked after the blondes. He sighed and shrugged. “They don’t know what they’re getting into, poor dears.” Like a lot of Algarvians, he was sentimental about women, even Kaunian women.

Oraste wasn’t. “Maybe they don’t know what they’re getting into, but I bet they’ve got a pretty good notion of what’ll be getting into them.” He threw back his head and guffawed.

“That’s not bad,” Bembo said, and, coming from Oraste, it wasn’t. The constables walked on for a few paces. Then Bembo stroked his chin. “I wonder why that old Kaunian from Oyngestun thought his granddaughter was somewhere outside the Kaunian quarter.”

“Who cares?” Oraste answered, which threatened to kill off conversation altogether. But he went on, “She ran off, remember? That’s what the old geezer told us, anyhow. Maybe some Forthwegian’s hiding her here in town and taking it out in trade.” His leer was lewd, filthy.

“Aye, that could be,” Bembo admitted; however crude Oraste was, he had a good notion of how people worked. “She was prettier than most of these Forthwegian women, anyhow. They’re built like bricks.”

That was unchivalrous, but, from what Bembo had seen, pretty much true (he didn’t think about how he was built). Still crude but very practical, Oraste said, “Well, if we catch her, we can get some of that for ourselves.” He rocked his hips forward and back. Bembo’s nod held nothing but eager agreement.

Even before Leofsig knocked on his own front door, he knew something had gone wrong. He heard shouts from inside the house, as he hadn’t since Sidroc went off to join Plegmund’s Brigade. No sooner had he knocked than he stiffened. One of those raised voices belonged to his cousin.

He must have got leave, Leofsig thought. And, sure enough, when the door swung open, there stood Sidroc, big as life. “Hullo,” he said. “Good to see you again.”

“Hello yourself,” Leofsig answered, and let it go at that. When he and Sidroc clasped hands, it quickly turned into a trial of strength. After a while, they both gave up, with honors about even. Sidroc grinned. Even a few months before, his grip wouldn’t have been a match for Leofsig’s. Not caring to acknowledge that, Leofsig asked, “How long will you be here?”

“Three days,” Sidroc said. Leofsig decided he could probably stand that. His cousin went on, “Then it’s back to the encampment outside of Eoforwic a little while longer. Then advanced training somewhere else-they haven’t told me where yet.”

Leofsig didn’t much care where Sidroc went, so long as he went. “Let me by, will you? I’ve been working all day in the hot sun, and I want to wash.”

“I know that feeling, by the powers above,” Sidroc said. He hadn’t known it before he left; then his main goal had been avoiding as much work as he possibly could. But he didn’t step aside. “They treat us pretty well, though. We even had Ethelhelm and his band come out and play for us the other day.”

“Did you?” Leofsig’s opinion of Ethelhelm dropped a notch or two. This time, instead of asking, he pushed past his cousin and into the entry hall. Sidroc gave him a dirty look, but closed the door after him. Only as Leofsig stepped into the kitchen did he belatedly realize Sidroc was liable to be a very nasty customer in a fight.

In the kitchen, Conberge was chopping leeks and throwing them into the pot over the fire. Mutton stew, Leofsig’s nose told him. Without the slightest effort to keep her voice down, his sister said, “Well, he won’t be staying here very long, powers above be praised. As far as I’m concerned, if the Algarvians want him so much, they can have him.”

Sidroc could hardly miss hearing what she said. The next-door neighbors could hardly miss hearing what she said. Leofsig turned back toward the entry hall. He wondered if he would find out just how nasty a customer his cousin could be.

But Sidroc, to his relief and even more to his surprise, stayed out of the kitchen. “Can I clean up a bit?” Leofsig asked.

Conberge pointed to a kettle next to the pot to which she’d just added the leeks. “Hot water’s right there waiting for you,” she said. She looked past him toward the entry hall. Pointedly, she added, “Some stinks don’t go away no matter how you wash.”

“Let him be,” Leofsig said. His sister’s eyebrows flew up. He went on, “You said it yourself: he’ll be gone soon. If we can stay civil for three days, that will be the end of it.”

“How can there be an end, with a traitor in the family?” Conberge demanded.

Leofsig had no good answer for that. He got out of having to make one by starting to wash. His sister left the kitchen, but left it with her nose in the air. He cleaned up as quickly as he could and went back to his own bedchamber to put on a fresh tunic in place of the dirty, sweaty one he was wearing.

He’d just changed when someone rapped lightly on the door. “Come in,” he called, and his father did. Leofsig nodded. “I thought that was you. Everyone else knocks louder, to make sure I notice.”

Hestan’s smile quirked up only one corner of his mouth. “Sometimes difference is enough to make you notice something. Things don’t always have to be louder. Softer often serves just as well.”

“Maybe,” Leofsig said. After a moment, he went on, “I wish you could convince Sidroc of that.”

His father sighed. “Hengist is still living here. And, apart from him, we’re the nearest kin Sidroc has left. When he got leave, where else would he go?”

“To suck up to his redheaded pals?” Leofsig suggested. “I don’t know why he loves them so much-if it weren’t for them, his mother would still be alive and his house would still be standing-but he does. As far as I’m concerned, they can have him.”

Hestan sighed again. “I can’t very well slam the door in his face, not with Hengist living here. And I don’t want to turn my brother out. That might be … dangerous. You know why.”

“On account of me,” Leofsig said.

“That’s right.” His father nodded. “And so we’ll put up with my charming nephew as best we can for as long as he’s here. It’s only three days, I think. We can manage.”

“Aye, he told me he had to go back then,” Leofsig said. “Then the Algarvians teach him more about murdering Kaunians or terrorizing Unkerlanters or whatever they intend to do with Plegmund’s cursed Brigade. The king would sit up in his grave if he knew what the redheads were doing to his name.”

“I won’t say you’re wrong, because I think you’re right,” Hestan answered. “But having Sidroc off in the west somewhere far, far away won’t be the worst thing in the world for us, no matter what he ends up doing here.” He cocked his head to one side and waited to see how Leofsig would respond to that.

Seeing his father eyeing him made Leofsig think before he spoke. “No matter what happens to him there, you mean,” he said slowly.

Also slowly, Hestan smiled. “Hauling rocks hasn’t taken your wits away, anyhow. The Algarvians wouldn’t be recruiting Forthwegian soldiers if they didn’t intend to throw them into the fire. And the fires in Unkerlant burn hotter than they do anywhere else.”

From the kitchen came Elfryth’s call: “Supper’s ready!”

Leofsig grinned at his father. “The fires in Unkerlant burn hotter than anywhere else except under the supper kettle.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way, but you’re right,” Hestan answered. “And a good thing, too, says I. Come on.” They headed for the dining room together.

When they got there, Uncle Hengist did what he’d started doing again this summer: he waved a news sheet at Hestan. “Here, did you see?” he asked. “The Algarvians are driving everything before them down in the south.” Sounding as cheerful as if he were discussing a football match, he talked about soldiers and behemoths captured, soldiers and behemoths slain, provinces seized, and towns afire from eggs dropped on them from on high.

Beside Hengist, Sidroc sat listening to the recital with a broad grin. As Hestan and Leofsig sat down, neither of them said anything. That seemed to irk Sidroc, who growled, “No stopping the Algarvians. They’ll smash Unkerlant to powder.”

“If they were having everything their own way, why would they need Plegmund’s Brigade?” Leofsig asked. Sidroc didn’t answer him, not in words, but his scowl was eloquent. Leofsig smiled back as nastily as he could. Like most Forthwegians, Sidroc was swarthy, but an angry flush darkened his cheeks above the edge of his beard even so. Leofsig’s grin got wider and more provoking yet.

Before anything could come of that, Conberge and Elfryth brought in olives and bread and olive oil for dipping to start the supper. No matter how much Leofsig enjoyed baiting his cousin, he enjoyed eating more. A day on the roads always left him feeling empty. He noticed that Sidroc displayed the same sort of wolfish appetite, and wondered how hard the Algarvians were working him in the encampment they’d set up.

Both young men also dug into the mutton stew. There wasn’t quite so much mutton in it as Leofsig would have liked; times were hard. His mother and sister had stretched the stew with beans and turnips and parsnips. After two big bowls, he sopped up gravy with a thick slice of bread cut from the loaf. He drank three cups of wine, too.

He still had plenty of room for cheese and candied fruit afterwards. He could have eaten more than he got, but his belly had stopped snarling at him. “Enjoy it while you can,” he said to Sidroc. “When you head for Unkerlant, you’ll be lucky if you get barley mush.”

“We’ll do fine,” Sidroc retorted. “If there’s any food at all, well take it. That’s what being a soldier is all about.”

“That’s what being a thief is all about,” Leofsig said, ignoring his father’s warning look. “And if they send you down south, you’ll find out all about snow, the same way they did last winter. Good luck stealing when everything’s frozen up.”

This time, Hestan did more than send a warning look. His tone sharper that usual, he said, “Leofsig, what were we talking about before supper? Sidroc’s father dwells here, and Sidroc himself is a welcome guest.”

“Aye, Father,” Leofsig answered, but his face betrayed him-it showed exactly how welcome he thought Sidroc was.

Seeing that, Sidroc half rose from his chair. Breathing hard, he said, “I know you all hate me. Do you know what? I don’t care. Do you know what else? Every stinking one of you can kiss my arse.”

“Son-” Uncle Hengist began.

Sidroc cut him off. “Aye, you, too, Father. You were screaming at me to stay out of the Brigade as loud as anybody else. And you were wrong, you hear me, wrong!” His voice rose to a roar. “Best lot of mates I’ve ever found. So you can kiss my arse, too. Just like them!”

“Just like me, Sidroc?” Leofsig got up, walked round the table, and kissed his cousin gently on the lips. “There.”

For a moment, Sidroc simply stared. He wasn’t too bright. But then, with a bellow of rage, he realized what Leofsig had done. He swung on Leofsig without any shift in his eyes to warn what he was going to do-sure enough, the Algarvians had taught him a thing or two.

Leofsig saw stars. He reeled backwards, fetching up against the table. Sidroc swarmed after him, fists flailing. From furious, his cousin’s face had gone deadly cold. He’ll kill me if he can, Leofsig realized.

He threw a punch at Sidroc, but his cousin blocked it with a forearm. His father and Uncle Hengist were brawling, too, but he could pay them no heed-he was indeed fighting for his life.

Conberge screamed curses as vile as any Leofsig had ever heard in the army, but Sidroc flung her back onto her mother when she rushed at him. Conberge and Elfryth went down in a heap. Leofsig grabbed a bowl and hurled it at Sidroc. He missed. The bowl shattered against the wall.

Sidroc kicked Leofsig. Leofsig kicked, too, trying to put Sidroc out of the fight with a well-aimed foot. But Sidroc twisted, quicker and smoother than Leofsig remembered him being, and took the kick on the hip, not between the legs.

Panic surged in Leofsig. What can I do? He reached for the bread knife. At the same moment, Sidroc grabbed one of the chairs. He swung it as if it weighed nothing at all. His first swipe knocked the bread knife flying from Leofsig’s hand. The next caught Leofsig in the side of the head.

He sagged to the floor. Ihave to get up, he thought, but his body didn’t want to hear him. Ihave to… Sidroc hit him again. The lamps seemed to flare red, then guttered toward blackness. He never felt any of the blows that landed after that-or anything else, ever again.