Through the Darkness

Six

In Algarve, ley-line caravans always traveled with the windows shut tight. Hajjaj had rather enjoyed that; it meant the cars were as warm as the Zuwayzi weather in which he’d grown up. In Zuwayza itself, however, the custom was just the opposite. Letting air into the caravan cars helped ensure that they didn’t get too intolerably hot.

As his own special caravan car glided east, Hajjaj sipped date wine and peered out at the sun-blazed landscape through which the ley line ran. Turning to his secretary, he remarked, “It never fails to amaze me that the Unkerlanters wanted this country badly enough to take it away from us so they could rule it themselves.”

Qutuz shrugged. “Your Excellency, I do not seek to fathom Unkerlanters any more than I seek to fathom Algarvians. The ways of the pale men who wrap themselves in cloth are beyond the ken of any right-thinking Zuwayzi.”

“Those ways had better not be, or we’ll end up in trouble without the faintest notion of how we got there,” the Zuwayzi foreign minister answered.

He sipped at his wine again, then let out a wry chuckle. “And if we do understand the clothed ones, we’ll end up in trouble knowing exactly how we got there.”

“Even so, your Excellency,” Qutuz said. “Thus this journey.”

“Aye,” Hajjaj said unhappily. “Thus this journey.” When he thought of it in those terms, he wanted to drink himself into a stupor. Instead, he went on, “I’ve spent most of my life learning everything I could about the Algarvians, admiring them, imitating their style and their energy, yoking my kingdom to Mezentio’s. And then the war came, and with it this.. this madness of theirs.”

“Even so,” his secretary repeated. “Did you see no sign of it before the fighting began?”

Hajjaj considered that. “Not many,” he said at last. “Oh, Kaunians and Algarvians have often been foes down through the years, but men of Kaunian blood taught in the university when I studied at Trapani, and no one thought anything of it. They sought knowledge and truth no less than their Algarvian colleagues-and enjoyed affairs with pretty students no less either, I might add.”

Qutuz smiled, then said, “The days before the Six Years’ War must have been a happier time than the one we live in now.”

“In some ways, and for some people,” Hajjaj said. “I’m an old man, but I hope I’m not such an old fool as to go blathering about how wonderful the days of long ago were. An Unkerlanter grand duke ruled Zuwayza then, remember, and ruled it with a rod of iron.”

“He probably needed one,” Qutuz observed.

“Oh, without a doubt, my dear fellow,” Hajjaj replied. “That made it no more pleasant to be his subject, though. And another Unkerlanter grand duke lorded it over one half of Forthweg, and an Algarvian prince over the other. And the Forthwegians hated them both impartially.”

His secretary nodded thoughtfully. “What you say makes a good deal of sense, your Excellency-as it has a way of doing. But tell me this: In the days before the Six Years’ War, would anyone have used the Kaunians as King Mezentio is using them now-or as King Swemmel is using his own people?”

“No,” Hajjaj said at once. “In that you are right. Mezentio’s father-and Swemmel’s, too-would sooner have leapt off a cliff than ordered such a slaughter.”

He tossed back the rest of the wine in his cup at a gulp, then slammed it down on the little table in front of him. A moment later, the ley-line caravan came up over the top of a little rise. Qutuz pointed eastward. “You can spy the sea from here, your Excellency. We are almost arrived.”

A little reluctantly, Hajjaj turned to look. Sure enough, deeper blue lay between the yellow-gray of sand and stone and the hot blue bowl of the sky above them. The Zuwayzi foreign minister narrowed his eyes to see if he could spy any boats afloat on that deep blue sea. He saw none, but knew that did not signify. Whether he could spy them at this moment or not, they would be out there.

A few minutes later, the caravan glided to a halt in the depot of a little town called Najran, which existed for no other reason than that the ley line ran into the sea there. It wasn’t a proper port; nothing protected it from the great storms that blew in during spring and fall. But boats could go in and out, and what they brought could head straight for Bishah. Thus, Najran.

And thus, too, the camel-hair tents that had sprouted around the handful of permanent buildings Najran boasted. Thus the Zuwayzi soldiers, naked between wide hats and sandals, who patrolled the area. Their commander, a portly colonel named Saadun, bowed low before Hajjaj. “Welcome, welcome, thrice welcome,” the officer said. “And I assure you, your Excellency, that welcome comes not only from my men and me but also from those we guard.”

Bowing in return-not quite so deeply-Hajjaj replied, “They are welcome here, as I have come to make plain to them. I bring no news-sheet scribes with me, for I would not embarrass our allies, but I will not pretend these folk do not exist. Too many people have been doing that for too long.”

“Either pretending they don’t exist or trying to make sure they don’t exist,” Saadun said.

“Even so.” Hajjaj echoed Qutuz. “Take me to them, Colonel, if you would be so kind.”

“Aye.” Saadun bowed again. “Come with me, then.”

As Hajjaj followed him through the streets of Najran, the local Zuwayzin came out of their shops to stare. Till the war, few strangers had come to their hamlet. Who would have wanted to, so long as he had other choices? The folk in the camel-hair tents had none. Had they not come to Najran, Hajjaj wouldn’t have, either.

Somebody in one of those tents stuck out his head. His unkempt golden beard gleamed in the merciless sunlight. When he saw Saadun and Hajjaj approaching, he exclaimed and came all the way out of the tent. More blonds-men, women, and children-spilled from the rest of those makeshift shelters. They still wore whatever clothes they’d had on when they got to Zuwayza. Most of those clothes were tattered, but they’d been mended and were almost painfully clean.

As one, the Kaunian refugees bowed low when Hajjaj walked up to them. The Zuwayzi foreign minister glanced over toward Colonel Saadun. Saadun nodded back, unabashed. “They know who you are, your Excellency. Is it not fitting that they should show their gratitude?”

“I do not see that I did anything particularly requiring gratitude-only what any decent man would do,” Hajjaj said. Saadun’s mouth narrowed as if he were about to speak, but he didn’t. After another few steps, Hajjaj sighed. “With things as they are in the world these days, maybe common decency does rate gratitude. But the world’s a sorry place if it does.”

“The world’s a sorry place, all right,” Saadun said, and said no more.

Before Hajjaj could find an answer, the Kaunians streamed toward him. Despite their clothes, despite the wide straw hats they’d got here in Najran, many of them were badly sunburned. No wonder that, in the days of the Kaunian Empire, the ancestors of these blonds had traded with the dusky nomads who roamed Zuwayza, but had never tried to make it into an imperial province.

“Powers above bless you, your Excellency!” exclaimed the man who’d first peered out of his tent and spied Hajjaj.

He spoke his own tongue, but Hajjaj understood. Any cultured man learned classical Kaunian, but only the Kaunians of Forthweg used it as their milk speech. The accent sounded odd to Hajjaj’s ears, but only a little. “I am glad to see you here and safe,” he replied. He spoke slowly, carefully-though fluent in written Kaunian, he seldom had occasion to use it orally.

“You’ve saved us,” the blond said. “You’ve kept us alive when no one would have cared if you’d killed us.” All the other Kaunians gathered around Hajjaj, even the boys and girls, nodded at that.

Another man said, “We’d join your army and fight your foes for you, if only …” His voice trailed away; he didn’t know how to go on and be polite at the same time.

A woman filled in the blank, saying what had to be in everyone’s mind: “If only you weren’t friends with the Algarvians. You are a good man, your Excellency. You must be a good man. How can you stand to be friends with the Algarvians?” As she asked the question, bewilderment filled her voice and her face.

“Algarve helps my kingdom right wrongs done against us,” Hajjaj answered. “No one else could-no one else would-give us that help.”

“And you help us when no one else could or would,” the first Kaunian man said. “Doing that might turn your friends into your foes.”

Hajjaj shrugged. “It has not happened. I do not think it will happen. Here in the north, Algarve needs us.”

The Kaunians stirred and muttered among themselves. The woman who’d been forthright before was forthright again: “No one needed us in Forthweg- not the barbarians we lived among, and not the barbarians who overran the land, either.”

If the blonds in Forthweg hadn’t reckoned their far more numerous Forthwegian neighbors barbarians, the Forthwegians might have been less enthusiastic about watching them get shipped off to destruction. Or, on the other hand, the Forthwegians might not have. From the clan struggles among his own people, Hajjaj knew neighbor did not necessarily love neighbor even when they looked alike.

A young woman asked, “Your Excellency, what will you do with us now?”

Her voice was husky and sweet. Before she’d suffered on the sea voyage to Zuwayza, she might well have been quite a beauty. Even gaunt and drawn as she was, she remained striking. Hajjaj thought of a thing or two he would have liked to do with her, even if age kept him from doing such things as often as he once had. She was hardly in a position to refuse him. And he’d needed a third wife, a wife for amusement, ever since he’d sent greedy Lalla back to her clan-father.

He shook his head, angry at himself, and ashamed, too. If he took advantage of her weakness, how was he any different from an Algarvian? “For now,” he answered, “you will stay here. No one will molest you. You will have food and water. After the war is over, we shall decide your permanent fate.”

“If the redheads win, we can all go and throw ourselves back into the sea,” a man said.

He was probably-in fact, he was almost certainly-right. But Hajjaj countered, “If Unkerlant wins, what will become of us Zuwayzin? Much the same, I fear. We shall protect ourselves, and we shall do our best to protect you as well.”

“We thank you,” the striking young woman said, and the rest of the blonds, three or four dozen of them, solemnly nodded. She went on, “We feared you would sink our boats or give us over to King Mezentio’s men. Anything this side of that seems a miracle of kindness.”

Again, all the Kaunians nodded. If common decency seemed a miracle. . “What will be left of everything we’ve spent so long building up by the time this cursed war finally ends?” Hajjaj asked. No one answered him. He hadn’t thought anyone would.

The excitement of going up to Yliharma was dead inside Pekka. It had been since the Algarvians, with their brutal sorcery, almost leveled the capital of Kuusamo. But, like it or not, research called her out of the south. She was sure she wasn’t the only nervous passenger on the ley-line caravan.

When the caravan pulled into the depot in Yliharma, Pekka grimaced at the cracked walls patched with pale new cement. She also wondered how well the patches would hold if the Algarvians renewed their sorcerous assault on the city. With all her heart, she hoped she wouldn’t have to find out.

Siuntio stood waiting for her on the platform. “Here, let me take your bag,” the old theoretical sorcerer said, reaching for it.

“I’ll do no such thing, Master,” Pekka said indignantly. “I can carry it myself.” Siuntio had aged visibly since they’d started working together. Maybe the strain of the sorcery was telling on him, or maybe the aftermath of the shock from the attack on Yliharma … or maybe he was simply drawing toward the end of his time. Wherever the truth lay, he looked as if a strong breeze would blow him off the platform. Pekka knew she was stronger than he.

He had to know it, too; his sigh was wistful, not angry. “Well, come along, then,” he said. “I trust the Principality will suffice?”

“Oh, no. I want something grander.” Pekka sounded even more indignant than she had a moment before. Then she laughed. So did Siuntio. Yliharma had no hostel grander than the Principality. Setubal might. On the other hand, it might not, too. Pekka went on, “You’ll spoil me, you know.”

“I doubt it,” Siuntio said. “And even if we should manage it, running around after that scamp of an Uto should unspoil you pretty soon.”

“Hard to be spoiled when you’re exhausted,” Pekka agreed. She gave the senior mage a sidelong glance. “We both have to run around after that scamp of an Ilmarinen, don’t we?”

Siuntio wheezed laughter. “I’ve been running around after Ilmarinen longer than you’ve been alive. I take a certain amount of pride in noting that I’ve made him run around after me a few times, too.” He waved to a horse-drawn cab. The driver descended from his perch and held the door open. “The Principality,” Siuntio said as he handed Pekka up into the cab.

“Aye, sir,” the driver said respectfully. Pekka didn’t think he knew who Siuntio was, but anyone who wanted to go to the fancy hostel had to be a person of more than a little consequence.

The hostel lay only a few blocks from the depot. That was true of most newer hostels, which were sensibly close to the greatest source of travelers. Older ones stood near the hill on which the palace stood and along the road west to Lagoas.

Almost as if they were so many Algarvians, the servitors at the Principality bowed and scraped and fussed over Pekka when she came into the lobby. It wasn’t because she had Siuntio walking by her side, either. To her mind, that would have been reason enough to bow and scrape and fuss. But the folk who worked at the hostel neither knew nor cared who Siuntio was. They fussed over Pekka for no better reason than that she had money. Had she been a trollop rich enough to afford the Principality, they would have treated her the same way. The idea made Pekka angry.

“Money shouldn’t count for more than quality,” she said to Siuntio.

He took her ire in stride. As best she could tell, he took everything-except occasionally Ilmarinen-in stride. “Money is easier to measure,” he replied- and what else was a working theoretical sorcerer likely to say?

Pekka stuck out her chin and looked stubborn. “Sometimes the easy measurement isn’t the important one.” She was a working theoretical sorcerer, too.

Instead of answering right away, Siuntio leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. She spluttered in surprise. The old mage’s smile was saucy. “Go on upstairs. Order yourself a fancy supper the Seven Princes are paying for. Enjoy the steam room and then sluice yourself down with cold water. Some people used to think being a sorcerer meant depriving yourself of everything that made life worth living. Do you still?”

“You know better,” she answered.

“Aye, I do, for I’ve seen your home,” Siuntio said. “You have no home in Yliharma, so you’re doomed to enjoy yourself here. I’ll see you in the morning.” He turned and went out to the waiting cab. Pekka stared after him with mingled exasperation and affection. Then, seeing no other good choice, she went on upstairs and did exactly what Siuntio had suggested.

The mattress in her little suite was wider and sorter and altogether more inviting than the one she used at home. Even so, she didn’t sleep well. For one thing, she didn’t have Leino lying there beside her stealing the coverlets and doing his best to make sure she froze. For another, no matter how inviting the bed was, it was also unfamiliar. Pekka tossed and turned and laughed at herself. I’m too comfortable to doze off, she thought. However absurd it sounded, it was true. Eventually, she did fall asleep.

After an extravagant breakfast of smoked salmon and delicate onions on rye bread, she went downstairs. Siuntio and Ilmarinen waited for her in the lobby. Siuntio looked not much different from the way he had the night before. When she saw Ilmarinen, though, her first thought was that he’d had too much to drink and was suffering on account of it.

“So you’re here to join the vultures’ feast, eh?” he said, and she realized it was fury, not a hangover, that reddened his eyes and made the wrinkles in his cheeks and on his forehead seem deeper and more eroded-looking than she’d ever seen them.

“I’m here, aye,” she said. “As for feasts, I don’t know about any except the one I just finished in my room.”

Ilmarinen rounded on Siuntio. “Powers above, you quack, didn’t you tell her?”

Siuntio shook his head. “No. I wanted her to approach the question with an open mind-which she will do now.” But, despite plainly doing his best to sound assured, he also sounded a little embarrassed.

“What didn’t you tell me, Master Siuntio?” Pekka asked sharply. “Whatever it was, I wish I’d known about it.”

Ilmarinen started to answer. Siuntio held up a hand. For a wonder, that made Ilmarinen hesitate. To Pekka, Siuntio said, “Nothing you won’t find out now: that I promise you. If you come along with this excitable fellow and me, you’ll see as much for yourself.”

He led her toward one of the meeting chambers off the main lobby. Quietly, she said, “Don’t ever keep things from me again, if you please.”

“I did what I judged best,” Siuntio answered.

“And she’s worth three of you because of it, you old fraud,” Ilmarinen growled. He wasn’t enjoying Siuntio’s discomfiture, as he would have most of the time. He was too angry for that. Pekka wondered what could have caused the rift between them, and how she’d somehow landed in the middle of it.

Siuntio opened an ornately carven door. When Pekka saw people already at the table, she expected they’d been Raahe and Alkio and Piilis, the other theoretical sorcerers on the track of the relationship between the laws of similarity and contagion. She and Siuntio and Ilmarinen had outdistanced them, but they weren’t far behind.

Instead, though, two tall men rose from their chairs and bowed to her.

Siuntio said, “Mistress Pekka, I present to you Grandmaster Pinhiero of the Lagoan Guild of Mages and his secretary, Brinco.”

“Good day, Mistress,” Pinhiero said in good, almost unaccented Kuusaman. He was in his late middle years, his hair more gray than red. Brinco, younger and plumper, contented himself with bowing again.

“Good day,” Pekka replied, automatically polite. But then she began to wonder why she and her colleagues were meeting with two of Lagoas’ leading mages. She didn’t wonder for long; the answer seemed only too obvious. Nodding to Pinhiero and Brinco, she said, “I hope you gentlemen will excuse us for a moment. We have something that wants discussing.” She stepped out of the meeting chamber. Ilmarinen seemed glad to go with her, Siuntio rather less so.

“You see?” Ilmarinen said-to Siuntio, not to her, for he went on, “She wants no part of this, either. Letting the Lagoans share what we’ve found. . It’s madness, nothing but madness.”

“Is it?” Siuntio shrugged and then shook his head. “They’re at war with Algarve no less than we are. They have skilled mages, too, and-”

Ilmarinen’s snort cut him off. “Those two? I know their work, such as it is. They’re skilled politicos, but that’s about all. And aye, Lagoas is at war with Algarve-now. What happens when Lagoas is at war with us again, as it’s liable to be one day? The Guild of Mages will use what we teach ‘em and beat us over the head with it.”

“If we do this,” Siuntio said patiently, “we shall do it with precautions. Just as we show the Lagoans what we’ve learned, so shall they be bound to share with us whatever they may discover.”

Ilmarinen threw back his head and laughed so loud, a waiter carrying a tray of smoked whitefish into another chamber stopped and stared. “Did you ever stop to think the Lagoans might cheat? If I were in their boots, I would.”

Pekka wondered if that thought had crossed Siuntio’s mind. He was such a good man himself, he might well reckon others better than they really were. But no, not this time, for he replied, “Aye, they may cheat. So may we. They may be dangerous to us in time to come. The Algarvians are dangerous to us now. Which of these carries the greater weight?”

“You know my answer,” Ilmarinen said. “Were it up to me, I’d tell Pinhiero and Brinco to go chase themselves. Remember that other mage they sent to spy on us, that Fernao? He went away with a flea in his ear, thanks to me.”

“I remember Fernao,” Pekka said. “He wrote to me, trying to find out what I was up to. I didn’t tell him anything.”

“Well, then, let’s send these buggers home, too,” Ilmarinen said. “It’s two to one against you, Siuntio. You can’t go on dickering with them by yourself- or you’d bloody well better not, anyhow.”

“I would not,” Siuntio said. “The choice of whether or not we proceed lies with Mistress Pekka, as you say. But she has not yet stated it, so you may be speaking too soon. I also note that you have not answered the question I set you: which is more important, more dangerous-what Algarve is doing now or what Lagoas may do later?”

He looked toward Pekka. So did Ilmarinen. To Siuntio, she said, “You would have had a better chance of getting me to do what you wanted if you’d talked with me about it first.”

“I suppose so,” he answered. “But then Ilmarinen would be screaming I’d seduced you. However pleasing that prospect may be, it’s not what I had in mind. Do what you think is right. You have an instinct for it. I rely on that.”

An instinct for rightness? Pekka wanted to laugh in the senior theoretical sorcerer’s face. If she had such a gift, why weren’t the experiments going better? She glared at him and at Ilmarinen. They were both older and wiser than she; why were they leaving the choice in her hands?

Because, with all their age and wisdom, they can’t agree. The answer came back as clearly as if she’d shouted the question. She shook her head. But if I’m wrong. . oh, if I’m wrong! And they were waiting for her, waiting with impatience that grew as she looked from one of them to the other. A snap decision-her snap decision-might turn out to be crucial to the way the war turned out, and to the fate of Kuusamo for generations to come.

She almost hated them for putting that burden on her shoulders. But there it lay, and she had to bear it. Slowly, hesitantly, she said, “They are our allies. If they can help us do this thing, they had better know what we know.”

Ilmarinen scowled. Siuntio beamed. Pekka angrily turned away from both of them. They’d forced this choice on her. Now, whether she was right or wrong, she-and everybody else-would have to live with it.

Istvan trudged east along a forest path. He didn’t know what had made the path. Whatever it was, he didn’t think it was a man. The path wandered and doubled back on itself more than a man-made track would have. It hadn’t been improved as a man-made track would have, either. Istvan’s leggings were muddy all the way up to mid-thigh in proof of that.

“Accursed be the Unkerlanters,” he growled as his boots went into yet more mud. Each one made a wet, sucking sound as he pulled it free. “This stinking forest is bigger than most kingdoms, and harder to get through, too.”

“My guess is, they keep it this way on purpose,” Kun said. “With the mountains in front of it, it shields everything beyond from us.”

Szonyi grunted. “May the stars never shine on me again if I’ve seen even a single piece of Unkerlant worth having. What do you want to bet the rest of the kingdom is just as worthless?”

“Wouldn’t touch it,” Istvan said at once.

“I would,” Kun said. “Somewhere in Unkerlant, there’s country that grows pretty good soldiers. They’ve been using them against us, and they’ve been using them against the Algarvians, too. Those goat-eaters have to come from somewhere.”

As far as Istvan was concerned, the Unkerlanters might have come out from under flat rocks, like any other worms and grubs. They certainly seemed to come out from under flat rocks in the forest, striking the Gyongyosians and then slipping away again. Every few miles, they would form a line and fight-either that or, when the wind was with them, they would start a forest fire and let Istvan and his countrymen worry about that instead of any merely human foes.

Something moved in the woods off to Istvan’s left. His head whipped around toward it. “What was that?” he said sharply, raising his hand to keep his squad from moving forward into what might be an ambush.

“I didn’t see anything,” Szonyi said, almost stepping on his boot heels.

“Neither did I.” That was Kun. Though he’d gained corporal’s rank, he still thought enough like a common soldier to enjoy the chance to tell someone superior to him that he was wrong.

But Istvan didn’t think he was wrong, not this time. “Use your little magic,” he told Kun. “You’ll know when someone’s moving toward us, not so?”

“Aye,” Kun said, a little sulkily. “But I won’t be able to tell if he’s friend or foe. You know about that.”

“I’d better,” Istvan said. “You almost blazed me for a Kuusaman when we were out on that island in the Bothnian Ocean instead of stuck here in these accursed woods.”

“All right, then,” Kun said, and worked the small, quick spell-one of the sort a mage’s apprentice might learn even if his master wasn’t inclined to teach him much. After a moment, he let out a soft grunt of surprise and glanced over to Istvan. “It is a man, Sergeant-not a beast and not a bit of fluff from your imagination.”

“I wish it had been,” Istvan said unhappily. “Now we’re going to have to hunt the bugger down and find out who he is.” He waved to his squad. “Into the woods, boys. No help for it.”

Some of the troopers cursed, not at him but at their luck. Kun said, “I hope it’s one of our officers, some popinjay of a captain or even a colonel.” By his tone, he didn’t hope that because he feared to fight an Unkerlanter. No, he hoped to get a chance to give an officer a hard time without fear of punishment.

And Istvan chuckled and said, “Aye,” hoping for the same chance himself. But he stopped chuckling the instant he stepped off the track. If the man he’d spotted was an Unkerlanter, as seemed more likely, he’d have to hunt the fellow down. He would almost have sooner gone unarmed after a tiger. In this trackless forest, the Unkerlanters were better at moving unseen and unheard than most Gyongyosians.

If that was an Unkerlanter there, why had he let Istvan see him? Had he made a mistake? Swemmel’s men seldom made that kind of mistake. If it wasn’t a mistake, what was the Unkerlanter trying to lure him into?

The first thing he found himself lured into was mud up to his knees once more. Cursing wearily, he dragged himself out. After a considerable search, he and his comrades found nothing. “Are you sure your magic knows what it’s talking about?” he asked Kun.

“Aye,” the sorcerer’s apprentice answered. “Someone was moving around here, Sergeant, but I don’t know who and I don’t know where.”

“Oh, huzzah,” Istvan said sourly. “The son of a whore could be sitting somewhere close by gnawing on a big chunk of goat meat, and we’d never know the difference, eh?”

“That’s about the size of it,” Kun said. “I can cast the spell again, if you like. If he’s still moving toward us, I’ll know. But I don’t think it’s very likely.”

Istvan didn’t think it was very likely, either. But, since he couldn’t think of anything better to do, he said, “Go ahead.”

Kun went ahead. After a couple of minutes, he spread his hands. “Nothing. Nothing I can find, anyhow.”

“Huzzah,” Istvan repeated. “So he’s past us, is he?”

“Either that or he’s sitting tight and not moving toward us,” Kun answered. He slapped at a fly that landed on the back of his hand, then asked, “What now?”

It was a good question. Istvan wished he had a good answer for it. He wanted to say, Let’s go back to the path and keep on and forget about it. Then this whoreson, if he is an Unkerlanter, will be someone else’s worry. He wanted to say that, but discovered he couldn’t. He had a stubborn streak that refused to let the words pass his lips. What came out instead was, “We keep looking.”

Kun nodded. A chance streak of sunlight glittered off the gold frames of his spectacles. “All right, Sergeant, we keep looking.” That wasn’t perfect submission, as it would have been in a different tone of voice. As things were, Kun couldn’t have been more emphatic about calling Istvan an idiot if he’d held up a sign.

Istvan knew he was probably wasting his time, and his squad’s as well. What with all the ferns and brambles and thorn bushes on the ground, the Unkerlanter had so many places to hide that the only way to find him would be to stumble over him.

That thought had hardly crossed his mind before one of his troopers gave a shout that abruptly turned into a cry of pain. “Come on!” Istvan said, and scrambled toward the soldier.

The Gyongyosian was down on the ground, but not badly hurt. “That way!” he said, and pointed east. Istvan heard someone running through the woods. He blazed in the direction of the noise. It kept on, so he must have missed. The wounded soldier said, “I never would have known the goat-bugger was there, but I tripped over his foot.”

“Luck,” Istvan muttered. It hadn’t been good luck for the soldier, but it had been for the Gyongyosians as a group. Istvan raised his voice: “After him! Keep him running and we’ll run him down!”

Either that or we’ll run straight into trouble, he thought. But the Unkerlanter was fleeing, whatever he’d planned disrupted. And so Istvan and his comrades pounded after him.

A beam hissed through the forest. Steam spurted from a pine bough not too far above Istvan’s head. He threw himself flat-and landed on his belly in a bramble bush. “There!” Szonyi shouted from off to his left. “I saw where he blazed from.”

“Well, blaze him, then,” Istvan shouted back. No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he crawled through the brambles and briars as fast as he could go. If the Unkerlanter blazed at the sound of his voice, he wanted the fellow blazing in the wrong place.

Again, he wondered if the enemy soldier was leading his comrades and him into a trap. He’d seen no signs of it, but he wouldn’t, not if the Unkerlanter knew what he was doing. In an odd way, it didn’t matter. With the chase on, he and his men could hardly abandon it.

He scuttled over to a tree, ignoring the scratches on his face and arms and the burrs clinging to his tunic and leggings. Cautiously, he peered out from behind the trunk-only for an instant before jerking his head back. He wasn’t so foolish as to peer twice from the same place; that was asking for a beam right between the eyes. Instead, he crawled over to another tree and took a look from behind that one.

He got lucky: he spied the flash from a stick, and it wasn’t aimed at him. He threw his own stick to his shoulder and blazed. A harsh voice cried out in pain. Istvan didn’t break cover to finish off the wounded Unkerlanter. He wasn’t sure the fellow really was wounded, and he wasn’t sure the enemy soldier didn’t have friends close by, either. The most he would do was hurry to another tree closer to the bushes among which the Unkerlanter had hidden himself.

Something thrashed in those bushes, something the size of a man. Istvan blazed again. His was not the only beam biting the bushes, either: here and there, they withered and turned brown, as if stricken by the drought that never came to this forest. After a while, the thrashing stopped.

“Got him!” somebody said in Gyongyosian.

Istvan wasn’t so sure. He’d seen too many wounded Unkerlanters who stayed alive for no other reason than the hope of taking a couple of Gyongyosians with them. King Swemmel’s subjects weren’t a warrior race-as the stars proclaimed, no folk but the men of Gyongyos were true warriors-but they weren’t soldiers to be despised, either. Gyongyos was learning that the hard way.

Kun strode forward. Before Istvan could shout a warning, the mage’s apprentice went in among the bushes, stooped, and then rose and waved. “He’s dead,” he called.

“Where are his friends, though, you fool?” Istvan called back. Kun started as if jabbed by a pin, then dropped down into the bushes again. This time, he didn’t get up right away.

But no Unkerlanters hot for revenge came charging at him. He made his way back to the rest of the squad. “Just one of the goat-eaters,” Szonyi said. “Just one, and now he’s not there anymore, either.”

“Just one,” Istvan agreed. “But he tied us up for quite a while. He wounded one man, and we’ll have to hustle to get back to the path, and hustle even harder to catch up with the rest of the company. He caused almost as much trouble as if he’d blazed us all, may the stars be dark on his spirit.” He trudged back toward the path. No one would ever put this down in a history of the war. He didn’t even know whether to reckon it a success. He didn’t know whether the war was a success, either. Success or not, it went on.

Sunlight sparkled off the greenish blue waters of the Strait of Valmiera. To the north lay the Algarvian-occupied mainland of Derlavai, to the south the great island that held Lagoas and Kuusamo. Cornelu looked up into the sky, watching for dragons.

For the moment, he saw none. He and his Lagoan leviathan might have been alone in the ocean, and that ocean might have stretched unchecked to the end of the world. He wished that were so. He knew too well it wasn’t.

He still hadn’t given this new leviathan a name. One day, he told himself. One day I’ll know. Meanwhile, keeping the beast nameless was one more way for the Sibian exile to keep Lagoas at arm’s length. The leviathan didn’t care one way or the other. So long as it got plenty of squid and mackerel and, those failing, sardines, it stayed happy. Cornelu wished the notion of a full belly cheered him as readily.

At his command, the leviathan reared in the water, working its great tail to propel the front of its body-and him with it-higher above the surface of the sea. But even with that widened circle of vision, he spied no ships. That suited him fine.

He checked the sky again-a beautiful sky, full of puffy white clouds that drifted across it the way dumplings drifted in soup. It remained empty of dragons. He wondered how long it would stay that way. Algarvian beasts flew against Lagoas and Kuusamo, while Lagoan and Kuusaman dragons visited destruction on the mainland of Derlavai.

Sometimes, high overhead, opposing flights met and fought. Sometimes a heavy stick or another dragon would wound a dragon over land, either before or after it dropped its eggs, and the beast and its flier would go into the sea. Fliers hoping for rescue could live for a while in the water.

Ley-line ships weren’t much good for rescuing them. If a flier came down on a ley line, they could scoop him up, aye. But the greater part of the ocean was closed to them. Old-fashioned sailboats and leviathans, both of which could travel anywhere, did far better in such missions.

And so Cornelu traveled with two crystals on this patrol. One was attuned to Lagoan dragonflight headquarters back in Setubal. The messages he got from it would direct him to Lagoan fliers who went into the Strait of Valmiera.

The other crystal had been captured from an Algarvian, and was attuned to the emanations the enemy used. Any Algarvian dragonflier Cornelu captured and brought back to Lagoas was one who wouldn’t fly again for King Mezentio.

Somewhere out in the Strait, no doubt, were Algarvian leviathan-riders with captured Lagoan crystals. There were stories about clashes when men from both sides raced to rescue a downed dragonflier. Cornelu hadn’t been in any of those. In fact, the next dragonflier he brought back would be his first. He understood how war could be that kind of business.

He also understood that the Algarvians would have been happier if their ships and leviathans dominated the Strait of Valmiera and their dragons dominated the sky above it. That meant watching the sky not just for flights of dragons heading south but also for hunters looking for him and others like him.

He felt easier after the sun plunged blazing into the sea. Even with a nearly full moon in the sky, he didn’t have to worry so much about Algarvian marauders-or about Lagoan marauders who might mistake him for the foe. The leviathan liked patrolling at night, too, for larger fish came nearer the surface than they did during the day.

“Attention! Attention!” That was one of the crystals he carried, but which? He had to pause and remember that he’d understood the call without having to think about it-Algarvian was much closer to his native Sibian than was Lagoan. Excitement tingled through him as he brought the captured crystal to his ear to listen better. An urgent Algarvian was saying, “He went into the water after the raid on Branco. We were halfway back to our base at Kursiu, and his dragon just couldn’t fly anymore, poor creature.”

“Noted on the map,” another Algarvian replied. “Will send rescuers as fast as we can.”

“He’s a good fellow,” the Algarvian dragonflier said earnestly. “He doesn’t deserve to drown all alone.”

“No, he deserves worse than that,” Cornelu muttered. Branco lay east of Setubal, and Kursiu … He pulled out a map printed on waterproofed silk and held it close to his face to read it in the moonlight. After a moment, he put it away with a soft grunt. He wasn’t far from where that dragonflier had gone down. Finding him wouldn’t be easy, not in the dark, but it wouldn’t be easy for the Algarvians, either. It ought to be worth a try.

Cornelu tapped the leviathan. It began a search spiral. Lagoans trained their beasts to spiral widdershins, not deasil, as leviathans turned in the Sibian navy. Cornelu knew it didn’t really make a copper’s worth of difference, but he couldn’t help thinking his mount was going in the wrong direction. Trying to retrain the leviathan to Sibian practice would probably just confuse it, though.

“Help me!” came from the Algarvian crystal, so loud and clear that Cornelu thought for a moment he’d come upon the dragonflier without realizing it. The fellow went on, “Don’t know how much longer I can stay afloat.”

An officer, Cornelu thought. A squadron leader, or a flight leader at the least, to have a crystal of his own. That made capturing him all the more important.

Cornelu’s hand slipped to the knife he wore on his belt. If he couldn’t bring the Algarvian back to Lagoas, he’d make very sure the fellow never flew for Mezentio again.

“Help me!” the dragonflier said again. He couldn’t be very far away, not when Cornelu was receiving the emanations from his crystal so clearly.

At Cornelu’s command, the leviathan lifted the front of its body into the air again. The Sibian peered across the moonlit sea, looking for someone bobbing in the water. The leviathan turned this way and that, enjoying the display of strength. Cornelu found nothing but frustration till…

“There, by the powers above!” he muttered, and sent the leviathan racing west. When he drew near, he called out to the man struggling in the water: “Here! To me! Hurry!” He spoke in Algarvian, trilling the r sounds instead of pronouncing them in the back of his throat as he would have in his own language.

“Hurrah!” the downed dragonflier shouted, and swam with sudden surprising strength to the leviathan. Hope of rescue powered him like a shot of strong spirits.

“Give me your knife,” Cornelu said, still in Algarvian. “Don’t want any accidents happening to my beast.”

“You’re the boss,” the Algarvian said, and passed him the weapon. “If you think I’m going to argue with the fellow who fishes me out of the drink, you’re daft.”

“Good,” Cornelu said. “Hold tight to the harness there. I can’t do that for you, and we’re still a long way from home.”

“Too far,” the Algarvian said. “Aye, too stinking far. I thought I’d be able to nurse my dragon across the Strait after that accursed Lagoan flamed him, but no such luck. He sank like a stone when we went into the water, the nasty creature, and I won’t miss him a bit.”

Dragonfliers always talked like that. They had nothing but scorn for their mounts. Cornelu had never understood why they wanted to fly them in the first place. He set his hand on his leviathan’s smooth back. A leviathan, now, a leviathan responded. All a dragon gave you was trouble.

“Hang on,” he told the Algarvian again. The fellow would not have any kind of sorcerous protection against the sea. He might yet freeze before Cornelu could bring him to land-although lying against the warm length of the leviathan would help keep him going.

At Cornelu’s command, the great beast swam south, toward Lagoas. Cornelu’s eyes slid toward the dragonflier. How alert was he? Would he realize what was going on before the Lagoans took him off to a captives’ camp? Cornelu hoped not-his own life would be easier if the Algarvian kept on thinking he’d been rescued, not captured.

For the first half hour or so, everything went as smoothly as the Sibian could have wanted. But then the dragonflier looked back toward the moon, which hung in the northwestern sky-and away from which the leviathan was swimming. “I hate to tell you, my dear fellow, but home is that way.” Mezentio pointed northward, as if certain Cornelu had made a foolish mistake and would turn around once it was pointed out to him.

Getting ready once more to pull out his knife, Cornelu answered, “No, Algarve is that way. My home is-was-in Sibiu, and I’m taking you to Lagoas.” He let his native growl come out as he spoke.

“Why, you son of a whore!” In the moonlight, the Algarvian’s face was a shadowed mask of astonishment. “You cheated me!”

“Ruse of war,” Cornelu said calmly. “I’ll tell you what: if you don’t like it, you can let go and swim back to Algarve. Go right ahead. I won’t stop you.”

For a moment, he thought the dragonflier would let go. Cornelu wouldn’t have missed a moment’s sleep if the fellow had. Then the Algarvian shifted as if thinking about attacking him instead. Cornelu did draw the knife. Its blade gleamed. The dragonflier cursed. “No wonder you wanted me to give you my dagger.”

“No wonder at all,” Cornelu agreed. “But you really don’t want to try anything stupid. You must know the sorts of magic leviathan-riders get. All I have to do is make the beast stay down longer than you can hold your breath.”

The Algarvian didn’t lack for nerve. “Suppose I let go then?”

“You get to swim home, same as before,” Cornelu answered. “Or, if you annoy me enough, you make about two bites for a leviathan.”

“Curse you,” the Algarvian said glumly. “All right, it’s a captives’ camp for me. I wish I could have dropped an egg on your head a year ago.”

Cornelu shrugged. “Then you’d be drowning about now, or maybe a shark or a wild leviathan would have found you before you went under. You ought to thank me, not curse me.”

“I’d thank you if you were one of my countrymen,” the dragonflier said. “You didn’t sound like a stinking Sib.”

“I’ve studied Algarvian,” Cornelu said. “We know our enemies.”

“It didn’t help you,” the dragonflier replied. He didn’t know how close he came to dying in that instant; Cornelu was within a hair’s breadth of drowning him. Only the thought that the fellow might have useful information stayed his hand. The Algarvian went on, “Besides, you Sibs are Algarvic, too. You shouldn’t be fighting King Mezentio. You should join him in the real battle, the battle against Unkerlant.”

“No, thanks,” Cornelu told him. “Getting your kingdom invaded says a lot about whom you ought to be fighting.”

“You don’t understand,” the Algarvian dragonflier insisted.

“I understand well enough,” Cornelu said. “And I understand who’s got whom here.” To that, the Algarvian dragonflier had no answer. At Cornelu’s urging, the leviathan kept swimming south, on toward Lagoas.

Along with the rest of the men in his training platoon, Sidroc ran through the forest. His legs ached. His lungs burned. Sweat poured off him. He dared not slow, even if he did feel as if he were coming to pieces. The Algarvian drill instructors assigned to turn Plegmund’s Brigade into a real fighting outfit seemed to be made of metal and magic. They never got tired and they never failed to notice-and to punish-a mistake.

“Forward!” one of them shouted-in Algarvian, of course-as he trotted along beside the Forthwegian recruits. “Keep moving!”

Both of those were standard Algarvian commands. Sidroc had expected the redheads would make him into a soldier. Before joining the Brigade, he hadn’t thought they would make him into an Algarvian-speaking soldier. He wished he’d studied harder at the academy.

He splashed through a stream. The edge of the forest lay not far ahead. He and his comrades had run this route before. Once they got out from under the trees, they had less than a mile to go to get back to their tents.

“Faster!” the Algarvian shouted.

If I go any faster, I’ll fall over dead, Sidroc thought resentfully. The Algarvians were even worse than Uncle Hestan for making him do things he didn’t want to do. He’d paid Hestan back, paid him in blood: Leofsig’s blood. He hadn’t really intended to kill his cousin, but he wasn’t sorry he had, either. Leofsig had been another one who made him feel like dirt just because he wasn’t a lousy Kaunian-lover. He cursed well wasn’t-and neither was Leofsig, not any more.

Sidroc burst out of the trees and into the sunshine beyond. He could see the tents ahead-and the arch through which he and his comrades would have to run to get to them. He wished he were still back near Eoforwic, but the whole regiment in training had gone to this camp in the uplands of southern Forthweg only days after the Algarvian authorities got him out of gaol in Gromheort.

Another shout from the Algarvian drillmaster: “Keep moving!” He added something to the standard command this time, something Sidroc didn’t quite catch. He did gather the last man from the company into the camp would regret it.

He made his legs pound on. Already he was discovering he could get far more out of his body than he’d ever imagined. Ishouldn ‘t have let Leofiig give me a hard time for as long as I did, he thought. Ishould have whaled the stuffing out of Ealstan, too. Well, maybe the day will come.

As he neared the arch, he noted with fierce pride that only a couple of dozen men were still ahead of him. Passing another one, he looked back over his shoulder. The rest of the company was strung out almost all the way back to the woods. Whatever the Algarvian had threatened, he didn’t have to worry about it-this time.

Above the arch stood a sign whose stark black letters on white announced an equally stark message: WE ARE BORN TO DIE. Sidroc wished he didn’t have to look at that message every time he came in from an exercise. He liked the slogan on the other side of the sign, the one he saw going out, better: WE SERVE PLEGMUND’s BRIGADE. That was what he’d signed up to do, and he’d cursed well do it.

He stopped running as soon as he passed under the arch. What he wanted to do next was fall on the ground and pass out. Had he been foolish enough to try it, an Algarvian drillmaster or one of the men in the company would have booted him to his feet. He could go over to the unicorn trough and splash cold water on his face. Then, dripping, he took his place in the ranks and waited for the rest of the company to come in.

The last staggering soldier did collapse once he got under the arch. And, sure enough, the Algarvian drillmaster who’d gone with the company on its run-and who hardly seemed to be breathing hard-kicked him till he managed to force himself upright again. “Tired, are you, Wiglaf?” the drillmaster said in fluent Forthwegian. “You just think you’re tired. Maybe after you dig us a new slit trench you’ll really be tired. What do you think?”

Even Sidroc, who liked to mouth off, knew better than to answer a question like that. But the luckless Wiglaf said, “Have a heart, sir, I-”

Without visible malice and without hesitation, the redheaded drillmaster kicked him again. “No back talk,” he growled. “We are going to make you the finest fighting men in the world-after Algarvians, of course. Orders are meant to be obeyed. Get moving! Now!”

Wiglaf could barely move, but stumbled off toward the latrines. Sidroc nudged the fellow next to him, a scar-faced bruiser name Ceorl. “Poor miserable whoreson,” he murmured. Almost imperceptibly, Ceorl nodded.

“Silence in the ranks!” the drillmaster bellowed. Sidroc and Ceorl both froze into immobility. If the Algarvian-who might have had eyes and ears in the back of his head-had spotted them, they were liable to end up digging slit trenches with Wiglaf. But luck was with them. The redhead contented himself with glaring this way and that before snarling, “Dismissed to queue for supper.”

Till he heard that, Sidroc would have bet he was too worn to want anything to do with food. His belly had other ideas. Somehow it propelled him forward, so that he was third in line and had his tin mess kit out and waiting. Ceorl was right behind him, and chuckled a little. “Wiglaf’s going to miss supper, too.”

“Too bad.” Sidroc had scant sympathy to waste on anyone but Sidroc. “If he’s not worth anything in drills, odds are he won’t be worth anything in a fight, either.”

He held out the mess tray. A Forthwegian cook filled it with barley mush with onions and mushrooms and with a sharp, rather nasty cheese melted into it. Sidroc hardly cared what the stuff tasted like. He wolfed it down and could have eaten three times as much. He needed fuel for his belly no less than a baker needed it for his ovens.

Somebody with a soft heart, or more likely a soft head, went off to share his supper with Wiglaf. Sidroc wouldn’t have done that. He didn’t suppose anyone would have done it for him, either. Expecting nothing from those around him, he seldom found himself disappointed.

After supper came language drills. The Algarvians were even more ruthless than schoolmasters about pounding their language-or standard commands in it, anyhow-into the men of Plegmund’s Brigade. “You’ll be serving alongside Algarvians, likely under Algarvians,” the instructor growled at them. “If you don’t understand orders, you’ll get them killed-and yourselves, too, of course,” he added as if a few Forthwegians were of but small import.

By the time language lessons ended, it was dark. Sidroc found his cot, pulled off his boots, and was instantly asleep.

Clamor woke him. “Attack!” someone screamed. He put on his boots again, grabbed his kit, and stumbled, rubbing his eyes, out into the darkness.

It was only another drill, of course. But he and his comrades had to respond to it as if it were real, and it bit time out of precious sleep as if it were real, too. When shrill whistles summoned the company to assembly the next morning, Sidroc felt more dead than alive.

After roll call, he ate hard bread and cheap olive oil for breakfast. Breakfast was without a doubt the most relaxed meal of the day. He and his comrades gabbed and complained and told as many lies as they could think of.

One thing they didn’t do: they didn’t ask why their tentmates, their squad-mates, had joined the Brigade. No one, Sidroc had discovered, did that. The rule was unwritten, but might have been all the stronger for that.

He had no trouble seeing the reason behind it. Some men had taken service under Algarvian leadership for the sake of adventure or because they hated Unkerlanters. Sidroc knew that; volunteering information wasn’t against the rules. But some of the men in the Brigade were plainly ruffians or robbers or worse-he wouldn’t have wanted to meet Ceorl in a dark alley. For that matter, few people would have wanted to meet him in a dark alley, either.

One thing united the men of the Brigade-and it, too, was a thing of which they did not speak. Sidroc knew-they all knew, they all had to know- most Forthwegians despised them for the choice they’d made. Sidroc didn’t care what most Forthwegians thought. So he told himself, over and over again. On a good day, he could make himself believe it… for a while.

“Form up!” an Algarvian drillmaster called: another command delivered in standard form.

The redhead, who carried a shouldered stick, marched his charges out of the camp. He pointed to a hill overgrown with bushes about half a mile away and switched to Forthwegian: “That’s the place you have to take. You have to be sneaky and sly. Do you understand me?”

“Aye, sir!” Sidroc shouted with everyone else. “Sneaky and sly!”

“Good.” The drillmaster nodded approval. “I’m going to turn my back for a while. When I turn around again, I don’t want to see you. If I do see you, I’ll try and blaze you. I won’t try to kill you, but my aim’s not perfect. You don’t want to make me do anything we’d both be sorry for later. Have you got that?”

“Aye, sir!” Sidroc yelled again. He’d done this drill before. Once, the drill-master had come within a couple of inches of blazing off his nose. He didn’t want to give the Algarvian an excuse for doing it again. When the fellow ostentatiously turned his back, Sidroc dove into the bushes and did his best to disappear.

He couldn’t just stay there, though. He had to move forward, to get up to the crest of the hill. He scrambled from one bush to another, rarely going from his belly up to his knees, never going from his knees to his feet. Before long, the drillmaster did start blazing. Somebody let out a shriek-a shriek of fear, not one of pain. The Algarvian laughed like a man having altogether too good a time.

Sidroc drew only one beam as he crawled through the brush. It wasn’t even a near miss. He felt good at attracting so little notice. One thing the Algarvians had made very plain during these endless drills: Plegmund’s Brigade would be going where people would do their level best to kill everyone in it.

From bush to boulder to tree stump to bush to … at last, the top of the hill. Sidroc looked down at himself. He’d got filthy on the way, but he didn’t care. For one thing, that proved he was doing a good job. For another, someone else would have to wash his long tunic.

Another member of the brigade, a corporal named Waleran, emerged from cover a moment after Sidroc did. He was good; Sidroc hadn’t had the least idea he was there till he showed himself. “That’s a fine exercise,” he said, flicking a drop of sweat from the end of his nose. “They never worked us so hard in King Penda’s levy, and that’s the truth.”

“No, eh?” Sidroc said. If Waleran was a veteran, that helped explain how he’d got to be a corporal. “If they had, maybe Forthweg would’ve done better.”

“Aye, it could be so,” Waleran agreed. “It could indeed. But I’ll tell you this, boy-we’ll go through the Unkerlanters like a hot knife through butter.”

Sidroc nodded. He was sure of the same thing himself. If he’d doubted it, would he have joined Plegmund’s Brigade in the first place? He had no use for Unkerlanters, any more than he did for Kaunians or (except when it came to fighting) Algarvians or anyone else who wasn’t a Forthwegian. But he said, “King Swemmel’s in charge of an awful lot of butter.”

“Well, what if he is?” Waleran said scornfully. “We’ll just have more to go through, that’s all. And I’ll tell you something else, too.” He waited till Sidroc leaned toward him, then went on, “I don’t think it’ll be long before we get the chance, either.” Sidroc clapped his hands together. He could hardly wait.

Some of the farms around the village of Pavilosta had a new hand or two working on them. Merkela’s did. As for Skarnu, he was glad to have extra help, and especially glad the help came from Forthwegian Kaunians who’d been on their way to almost certain destruction.

These days, Raunu slept downstairs in the farmhouse, leaving the barn for Vatsyunas and Pernavai, a husband-and-wife pair who’d managed to stay together when the ley-line caravan carrying them got wrecked. “You’ll have to find yourself a lady friend, too,” Skarnu teased him one day while they were weeding together. “Then you’ll have somewhere better to sleep than a rolled-up blanket in front of the fire. Powers above, if I managed to find somebody, cursed near anyone can.”

The veteran underofficer snorted. “A blanket suits me fine, Captain,” he answered. “As for the ladies, well, if you know a blind one, she might think I suited well enough.” He ran a hand over his tough, battered features.

“You’re not homely,” Skarnu said, on the whole sincerely. “You’re … distinguished-looking, that’s what you are.”

Raunu snorted again. “And I’ll tell you what distinguishes me, too: that none of the ladies wants to look at me.”

“Shows how much you know,” Skarnu answered. “Take Pernava, now. If she doesn’t reverence the ground you walk on. .”

“It’s not the same.” Raunu shook his head. “She looks at you the same way. It’s because we took her and Vatsunu in instead of giving ‘em to the cursed redheads, that’s all. It’s not because she’s hot for us. She isn’t-she’s got him instead.”

Like Skarnu, he used the Valmieran forms of Pernavai and Vatsyunas’ names, not the classical versions they’d worn in Forthweg. Having ordinary names kept them from drawing Algarvian notice.

And Skarnu had to admit the justice of Raunu’s comment. “All right,” he said, “but she’s not the only woman around, either.”

“You’ve got a woman and you’re happy, so you think everybody needs one,” Raunu said. “Me, I’m fine without, thanks. And when the itch gets strong, I can go into Pavilosta and scratch it without spending a whole lot of silver.”

Skarnu threw his hands in the air. “I’ll shut up,” he said. “This is one argument I’m not going to win-I can see that.” He picked up his hoe, which had fallen down between rows of ripening barley, and beheaded several dandelions growing in a little clump.

“Don’t just let them lie there,” Raunu warned him. “Merkela’ll use the leaves for salad greens.”

“I know.” Skarnu picked up the dandelions and stuffed them into his belt pouch. “This farm was fine for two, and it’s done pretty well for three. Things are liable to be lean if it’s got to feed five, though. Every little bit helps.”

“Pemava and Vatsunu don’t eat as much as two regular Valmierans would,” Raunu said. “They look at what Merkela sets out like they’ve never seen so much food in all their born days.”

“By the look of them, they haven’t seen much food any time lately, that’s for sure,” Skarnu said, and Raunu nodded. Skarnu’s hand gripped the hoe handle as if it were an Algarvian’s neck. “And from what they say about the way the redheads treat our kind back in Forthweg …” He grimaced and hacked down some more weeds, these inedible.

Raunu nodded, once more. “Aye. If I hadn’t wanted to go on fighting Mezentio’s men before, hearing the stories from Forthweg would tip me over the edge. Tip me? No, by the powers above-it’d throw me over the edge.”

“Me, too,” Skarnu said. But not everyone felt that way. For the life of him, he couldn’t understand why. Some of the farmers around Pavilosta were only too glad to let the Algarvians have the Forthwegian Kaunians who’d escaped into the countryside when the ley-line caravan was sabotaged. Some of the local peasants let it go at that. Others went out of their way to betray fugitives to the redheads. Vatsyunas and Pernavai weren’t safe even here. If one of those locals should walk by and spy them working in Merkela’s fields. .

If that happened, the Algarvians were all too likely to learn this farm was a center of local resistance. Logically, Skarnu supposed that meant he and Merkela and Raunu should have sent the Kaunian couple from Forthweg packing when they came out of the woods, lost and hungry and afraid. Somehow, logic hadn’t had much to do with it then.

With shouldered hoes, Skarnu and Raunu trudged toward the farmhouse when the sun sank in the west. Vatsyunas was feeding the chickens, Pernavai weeding with Merkela in the herb garden near the house. Neither of them had known the first thing about farming. Before war swallowed Forthweg, he’d been a dentist and she’d taken care of their two children and those of several of their neighbors. They didn’t know where the children were now. The two girls hadn’t come out of the wreck of the ley-line caravan. Vatsyunas and Pernavai hoped they still lived, but didn’t sound as if they believed it.

“And now they are come in, home from their moils and toils,” Vatsyunas said in what he thought was Valmieran. And so it was, after a fashion: Valmieran as it might have been spoken centuries before, when it remained much closer to classical Kaunian than it was these days. Neither the dentist nor his wife had known any of the modern language when they arrived. Now they could make themselves understood, but no one would ever believe Valmieran was their native tongue.

Merkela got up and dusted off the knees of her trousers. “I’m going in to have a look at the stew,” she said. “I killed that hen-you know the one I mean, Skarnu, the one that wasn’t giving us more than an egg a week.”

“Aye, that one’s better off dead,” Skarnu said. Merkela had made such calculations before. Now they took on a new urgency. If she was wrong too often, people would go hungry. The farm had less margin for error than before the fugitives came.

Chicken stew, bread to sop up the gravy, ale. Peasant food, Skarnu thought. That was what he would have called it, the edge of a sneer in his voice, back in Priekule. He wouldn’t have been wrong, but the sneer would have been. It tasted good and filled his belly. Past that, what more could a man want? Nothing Skarnu could think of.

Vatsyunas said, “I had liefer drink wine at meats, but”-he took a long pull at his cup of ale-”having gone so long without much in the way of either wine or aliment, I’m not fain to play the ungrateful cull the now.”

Just listening to him made Skarnu smile. His speech improved week by week; eventually, Skarnu hoped, he would sound pretty much like everyone else. Meanwhile, he was a lesson in how the Valmieran language had got to be the way it was today.

After another long draught, Vatsyunas set the cup down empty. He said, “What I am fain for is vengeance ‘gainst the scurvy coystril knaves, the flame-haired barbarians of Algarve, who used me so.” He looked from Raunu to Merkela to Skarnu. “Can it be done, without foolishly flinging away the life with which you gifted me anew on taking in my lady and me?”

Pernavai spoke very quietly: “I too would have revenge on them.” She was so pale, she looked almost bloodless. Skarnu wondered what Mezentio’s men had done to her. Then he wondered if Vatsyunas knew everything the redheads had done to her. That was a question to which he doubted he’d find an answer.

He didn’t quite know what to tell the escaped Kaunians from Forthweg, who didn’t know he’d been one of the people who’d wrecked the ley-line caravan that carried them. Cautiously, he said, “All of Valmiera cries out for vengeance against the Algarvians.”

“No!” Pernavai and Vatsyunas spoke together. Her golden hair flew round her head as she shook it. Vatsyunas was bald, but somehow managed to look as if he were bristling even so. He said, “Did you speak sooth, why would the countryside not seethe with strife? Why are so many here so glad to give over to the red wolves their kinsfolk from the distant Occident?”

“Why, an what we hear be true, do so many here give themselves to the conquerors body and soul?” Pernavai added.

Her words were bitter as wormwood to Skarnu, who remembered the news sheet listing his sister with that Algarvian colonel. What did the whoreson call himself? Lurcanio, that was it. One day, Skarnu thought, I’ll have a reckoning with Krasta, But that would be true only if Lurcanio had no reckoning with him. Meanwhile-

Meanwhile, Merkela spoke up while he was still contemplating his own embarrassment: “We have traitors, aye. When the time comes, we’ll give them what they deserve.” She raised her proud chin, drew a thumbnail across her throat, and made a horrible gargling noise. “Some have gotten it already.”

“In sooth?” Vatsyunas breathed, and Merkela nodded. The dentist from Forthweg asked, “Know you, then at whose hands these treacherous wretches of whom you speak lie dead? Right gladly would I join with them, for to commence the requital of that which can never be requited.”

“And I.” Pernavai spoke less than her husband, but sounded no less determined.

Before either Skarnu or Merkela could answer, Raunu said, “Even if we knew anything about that, we’d have to be careful about saying very much. What people don’t know, nobody can squeeze out of ‘em.”

“Think you we’d betray-?” Vatsyunas began angrily, but he fell silent when his wife touched his arm. They spoke back and forth in quick classical Kaunian, for them a birthspeech. As usual, Skarnu could make out words, but rarely sentences: as he seized one phrase, two more would slip past him. After perhaps half a minute, Vatsyunas returned to his archaism-littered version of Valmieran: “I am persuaded you have reason. I crave you pardon for mine earlier hasty speech.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Skarnu spoke as he might have in his days as an officer on pardoning a soldier for some minor offense.

Vatsyunas gave him a measuring stare. Only then did he realize the Kaunian from Forthweg might have recognized that tone for what it was, and might have drawn his own conclusions from it. Skarnu decided that wasn’t so bad. If he could trust any man, he could trust Vatsyunas.

If I can trust any man. Someone-someone who wore patriot’s mask-had betrayed the meeting of resistance leaders at Tytuvenai. No one knew who-or if anyone did, Skarnu hadn’t heard about it. He praised the powers above that no Algarvian patrol had swept down on this farm.

Having Vatsyunas and Pernavai here made such a visit more likely. He knew as much. So did Merkela. So did Raunu. Skarnu poured himself more ale from the pitcher. Some risks weren’t just worth taking. Some had to be taken.