Through the Darkness

Eight

Don’t just stand there!” Major Spinello shouted. Somehow, he managed to stay dapper when all the Algarvians he commanded looked like a pack of tramps. “You’d bloody well better not just stand there. We’ve got to keep moving. If we aren’t moving forward, you can bet your last copper the cursed Unkerlanters will be.”

Trasone waved a hand. Spinello swept off his hat and bowed, as if he were recognizing a duke, not an ordinary trooper. Trasone said, “Nothing to worry about, sir. I mean, with the Yaninans guarding our flank, we’re safe as can be, right?”

Sergeant Panfilo let out a warning grunt. Several other Algarvian soldiers tramping down the dusty road cursed their allies. And Spinello threw back his head and laughed. “You’re a menace, you are,” he told Trasone. “Aye, the Yaninans are heroes, every stinking one of em. But we saved their bacon when they looked like giving way, now didn’t we?”

“Aye.” Trasone cocked his head to one side and spat out the husk of a sunflower seed. “We had to double back to do it, though. I thought the idea was that they would cover our flank so we could smash all the Unkerlanters in front of us and go on into the hills for the cinnabar.”

“Oh, aye, that’s the idea they had back in Trapani,” Spinello agreed. A wave of his hand told how much, or rather how little, the officers and nobles back in Trapani knew. “Only trouble is, every once in a while the Unkerlanters have ideas, too. They kept an army in front of us and hit us from the side with another one, that’s all.” Another wave said it was perfectly simple if you looked at it the right way.

But Trasone wasn’t in the mood to look at it like that. “If they’ve got enough soldiers to hold some in front of us and to hit us from the flank with more, how are we going to keep on moving forward?” he demanded.

Panfilo grunted again, and this time followed the grunt with words: “Worrying about how isn’t your job. Doing what you’re told is.”

“I do what I’m told.” Trasone gave the sergeant a dirty look. “You don’t suppose I’d’ve come all this way because I like the scenery, do you?”

That made Spinello laugh once more, but he grew serious again in a hurry. “The Unkerlanters have more men than we do. Nothing we can do about that-except to go on killing the whoresons, of course. But if they’ve got more, we’ve got better. And that’s why we’ll win the war.”

Where Trasone and Panfilo and just about everybody else in the battalion trudged south and west along that road, cursing and coughing in the clouds of dust their comrades kicked up, Spinello strutted along as if on parade. Trasone didn’t know whether to envy him or to feel like strangling him.

Somebody-he couldn’t see who-said, “We may be better than the lousy Unkerlanters, but bugger me with a cheese grater if the Yaninans are.”

“They’re our allies,” Spinello said. “We’re better off with ‘em than without ‘em.”

He’d mocked ideas that came out of the capital of Algarve before, but he was echoing one there. When Trasone said, “Allies,” he made the word into a curse. “If they were fighting my granny, I’d bet on gran.”

“Nasty old bitch, is she?” Spinello said, which jerked a startled guffaw from Trasone. But instead of going on to defend the Yaninans some more, Spinello half changed the subject: “They do say the Sibs taking service with Mezentio are really good fighters, and this brigade of Forthwegians they’re putting together is supposed to be full of tough customers, too.”

Having fought in Sibiu, Trasone knew the men who came out of the island kingdom could indeed fight hard. But that wasn’t the point, or wasn’t the whole point. “Do we really need all those foreign buggers? And if we do, are there going to be any Algarvians left alive by the time this war is through?”

“It’s like any other brawl,” Sergeant Panfilo said. “Last man standing wins.”

The road came up to and into a wood full of pines and beeches and birch. Pointing ahead, Trasone said, “How many Unkerlanters are hiding in there? And how many of us’ll be standing by the time we come out the other side?”

Nobody answered. Any Algarvian officer who fought in Unkerlant hated forests. The Unkerlanters were better woodsmen, and had the advantage of preparing their positions ahead of time. Digging them out always cost.

A kilted soldier at the edge of the woods waved the battalion forward. Forward Trasone went, not without a pang. He’d had other Algarvians wave him forward into woods-and forward into trouble.

He waited nervously for Unkerlanters in hidden holes to start blazing at his comrades and him from behind-or for a whole swarm of squat men in rock-gray tunics to charge from one side of the road or the other, half of them drunk, all of them roaring, “Urra!” as loud as they could. If they got the chance, they’d knock the Algarvians into the undergrowth and maul them like wild beasts.

With every quiet, peaceful step he took, he grew more suspicious. Sparrows chirped. A rabbit peered out at the Algarvians, then ducked back behind a bush. “All right,” Trasone said. “Where are they?”

“Maybe we really did clear this wood,” Panfllo said. “Stranger things have happened… I suppose.”

“Name two,” Trasone challenged.

Before the sergeant could take him up on it, the earth began to shake beneath their feet. Here and there along the road, purplish flames shot up out of the ground. Men caught in them screamed horribly, but not for long. Along either side of the roadway, trees shivered like men caught naked in an Unkerlanter winter. Some of them toppled. As they did, their crowns caught fire. More Algarvians screamed in torment.

Trasone was screaming, too, screaming in terror. Sergeant Panfilo’s shout had words in it: “Magecraft! Unkerlanter magecraft!”

He was right, of course. Knowing he was right didn’t make the sorcerous onslaught any easier for Trasone or his comrades to bear. Had King Swemmel’s men started tossing eggs at him, normally he would have scraped a hole in the ground and waited them out as best he could. He didn’t want to do that here, not when any hole he dug was liable to close up on him as soon as he dove into it.

He knew the danger because he’d seen it happen to Unkerlanters when his own army’s mages sacrificed a regiment’s worth of Kaunians. But the Kaunians, as far as he could see, had it coming, and so did the Unkerlanters. Trasone was no more likely than anyone else to think he deserved to be on the receiving end of anything unpleasant.

The moment the ground stopped quivering, the moment trees stopped falling, Major Spinello shouted, “Be ready! Those ugly buggers are going to try to throw us out of here now, you mark my words. Are we going to let ‘em?”

As far as Trasone was concerned, the Unkerlanters were welcome to this stretch of forest, especially after they’d rearranged it so drastically. But he yelled, “No!” along with everybody else still able to talk.

“Well, then, we’d better get ready to give ‘em a proper greeting, hadn’t we?” Spinello said. Suiting action to word, he sprawled behind one of the pines that had come down but hadn’t caught fire.

Trasone was still looking for his own place to hide when eggs did start falling in the woods. He ducked down behind a big, gray, lichen-covered rock. Panfilo sprawled a few feet away, digging himself a hole with a short-handled spade while lying on his belly. “Aren’t you afraid that’ll swallow you if the Unkerlanters throw more magic at us?” Trasone asked.

“Aye, but I’m more afraid of getting caught in the open if an egg bursts close by,” the sergeant answered. Trasone pondered that, but not for long. After a moment, he yanked his own spade off his belt and started digging.

“Urra! Urra! Urra!” That cry, swelling like surf as the tide came in, announced an Unkerlanter attack. Through it, Major Spinello let loose a cry of his own: “Crystallomancer!”

“Sir?” The soldier who kept the battalion in touch with the army of which it was a part crawled toward Spinello. The major spoke urgently to him, and he in turn spoke into the clear, polished globe he carried in his pack.

“Urra! Urra! Swemmel! Urra!” Here came the Unkerlanters, pushing their way up into the wood from the south. They’d brushed aside the Algarvians who’d already passed through the trees; now they were intent on taking back the forest.

“They think we’ll be easy meat,” Spinello said. “They think they’ve rattled us. They panic when we hit them a good sorcerous lick, and they figure we’ll do the same. But they’re only Unkerlanters, and we’re Algarvians. Now we’re going to show them what that means, aren’t we?”

The only other choice was dying. Trasone didn’t think much of that. And if Spinello figured the sorcerous attack hadn’t rattled him, the dapper little major was out of his mind. The difference between a veteran and a raw recruit-Trasone had no idea whether it was the difference between Algarvians and Unkerlanters-was that he could keep going no matter how rattled he was.

Peering over the top of his boulder, he saw Unkerlanters in rock-gray rushing up the road and through the woods toward the line the Algarvians were holding. His lips skinned back from his teeth in a savage grin-by the way they were advancing, Swemmel’s men didn’t know a solidly held line was waiting for them. Well, they’d find out.

He brought his stick up to his shoulder and blazed down a couple of Unkerlanters who took no pains to hide themselves. Nor was he the only Algarvian blazing. King Swemmel’s men fell one after another. But they kept coming. As always, they were recklessly brave. And, as always, they had soldiers to spare. Soldiers to burn, Trasone thought, doing his best to make sure plenty of them did.

But, before long, he had to scramble backwards to a new hiding place to keep from getting flanked out. He wasn’t the only one, either; he wondered if Spinello could keep any kind of control over his line for long.

Then eggs started dropping on the Unkerlanters, both in the woods and beyond them. Dragons shrieked fury as they flew past at treetop height. Cries of panic replaced cries of “Urra!” The enemy attack foundered, cut off at the root.

Major Spinello blew a shrill blast on his whistle. “Forward!” he shouted. “They had their chance. Now it’s our turn. Mezentio!” He was the first to rush against the Unkerlanters. Recklessly brave fit him as well as the enemy.

“Mezentio!” Trasone yelled, and went forward, too. Caught by surprise by the dragons the crystallomancer had summoned, the Unkerlanters gave ground more readily than usual. Trasone’s battalion burst out into the open company south of the forest. Some of the grass was burning there, thanks to the Algarvian dragons. And on the blackened grass lay blackened bodies. Trasone trotted past them with hardly a sideways glance; he’d already seen plenty of dead Unkerlanters.

And, a couple of miles farther south, he saw more: not soldiers, these, but row on row of peasants-old men and women, mostly-with their hands bound behind them and their throats cut. Those corpses did make him grimace: they were the fuel for the sorcery the Unkerlanter mages had aimed at him and his comrades. The mages, unlike their victims, had fled. Grimly, Trasone trudged after them.

“Camel.” Sabrino spoke the word as if it were an obscure but potent obscenity. “If I never taste camel again, I’ll count myself lucky.”

“Dragons like it well enough,” Lieutenant Colonel Caratzas said. As far as Sabrino was concerned, the new Yaninan senior officer wasn’t a quarter the man Colonel Broumidis had been. He was, among other things, much too fond of the anise-flavored spirits his countrymen brewed. About all he really shared with Broumidis-and most other Yaninans-was a passion for expressive gestures. “The only other real choice we have is eating marmots and voles and grubs.”

“They’d have to be tastier,” Sabrino insisted. “They’d have to be more tender, too. Tell me I’m wrong. Go on, sir-I dare you.”

Instead of answering right away, Caratzas scratched his mustache, which always made Sabrino think a large black moth had landed on his upper lip. “Even if I did tell you differently, you would not think it mattered. And why should you? I am only a Yaninan, after all, good for nothing but running away.” He breathed potent, licorice-scented fumes into Sabrino’s face.

“Oh, my dear fellow!” Sabrino exclaimed. He didn’t want Caratzas knowing he thought he couldn’t rely on him; that would just make the Yaninan all the more unreliable. “I do not question your courage. Yaninan dragonfliers here have performed as well as anyone could wish-look at your predecessor’s extraordinary valor.”

“You are gracious,” Caratzas said with a sad, half-sozzled smile. “You do not speak of the sorry performance of our footsoldiers here, nor of the even sorrier performance of our footsoldiers in Unkerlant. Not all of your followers, not all of your countrymen, show so much forbearance.”

“Is that so?” Sabrino said, and the Yaninan officer inclined his head to show it was. Sabrino had a low opinion of the general level of Yaninan military skill himself. Caratzas doubtless knew as much, even if Sabrino didn’t trumpet that opinion to the skies. For his part, Sabrino had already known not all his fellow Algarvians in the land of the Ice People were so polite. “I shall discipline any man under my command who has offended you. We are allies, Algarve and Yanina.”

And what a hypocrite I am, Sabrino thought. He would sooner have been fighting in Unkerlant himself. Had the Yaninans been able to hold their own against Lagoas here on the austral continent, he would have been able to do that. As things were …

As things were, Lieutenant Colonel Caratzas said, “It cannot be helped. We are the small tagalong cousin. But it grows wearisome.”

Sabrino didn’t know what to say to that. Yanina was Algarve’s small tagalong cousin in this war, and Algarve had to keep dragging that cousin out of trouble. No wonder some of his fliers had been less courteous than they might have. Staying courteous and telling the truth weren’t easy to do in the same breath. Still, the Yaninan dragonfliers had fought well-though better when Broumidis led them. What more could Sabrino tell this tipsy lieutenant colonel?

He did his best: “As I say, I will punish any man who maligns you or your kingdom. Algarve needs your aid.”

“It is better than nothing,” Caratzas said. “I myself, you understand, am able to keep my temper in the face of these insults.” He hiccuped. Those sweet-smelling spirits no doubt helped blunt the sting of any insults he heard. After another hiccup, he went on, “But we Yaninans are a proud folk, and some of us will have blood to repay any slight.”

“I understand.” Sabrino wished the Yaninans were as prickly about doing a good job at war as they were about their honor. That was one more thing he couldn’t tell Caratzas.

He looked east across the broad, rolling plains where the austral continent sloped down from the Barrier Mountains to the Narrow Sea. Somewhere out there was the Lagoan army. It had been driven a long way back from Heshbon, but it was still there, still dangerous, still very much in the fight. Both the Lagoans and Sabrino’s army kept dragons in the air all the time now, watching one another’s movements and making sure nobody got any unpleasant surprises.

“If we had more men, more behemoths, more dragons, we could drive the Lagoans into the sea,” Caratzas remarked.

“Well, so we could, but that might mean we didn’t have enough men to finish off the Unkerlanters, too,” Sabrino said. “The fight up on the Derlavaian mainland is more important than the war here.”

Something glowed for a moment in Caratzas’ dark eyes, then vanished in their depths before Sabrino was sure he saw it. The Yaninan said, “In getting into a fight, or several fights, it is better to be sure one has enough men beforehand, not afterwards.”

That was a painfully obvious truth. “If we’d taken Cottbus …” Sabrino’s voice trailed away. “Well, one way or another, we’ll just have to lick Swemmel’s men. We’re driving them in the south. The cinnabar there and the cinnabar we get here should keep us going till we beat all our enemies.”

“Now there is a thought,” Caratzas said, sozzled awe in his voice. “Beating all of one’s enemies. .” Had he been an Algarvian, he would have bunched his fingers and kissed their tips. Yaninans used different gestures, but the naked longing on Caratzas’ face said more than any of them.

For a Yaninan, beating all of one’s enemies had to be a dream, and an impossible dream at that. For an Algarvian … Sabrino remembered the heady days of the summer before, when Unkerlant looked on the point of collapse. Had Swemmel fled off into the uncharted west, how long could Lagoas have lasted without coming to terms with King Mezentio? Not long, by his way of thinking. And Kuusamo had still been neutral then. Sabrino sighed. Algarve had been on the brink, right on the brink.

“It could still happen,” Sabrino murmured. “By the powers above, it could.” Unkerlant hadn’t been knocked out of the war, but she might yet be. If that happened, Lagoas and Kuusamo together could hardly stand against the united might of the entire continent of Derlavai. The world would be Mezentio’s-if Swemmel couldn’t contest it any more.

Horns blew the alarm, startling Sabrino out of his reverie. Cries of alarm shredded dreams of all-embracing victory. “The Lagoans!” someone shouted from the direction of the crystallomancers’ tent. “The Lagoans are on our flank!”

Cursing foully, Sabrino sprang from the rock on which he’d been sitting. “How did they get there?” he demanded, as if Caratzas would know.

To his surprise, the Yaninan did, or at least had an idea: “I wonder if they made an arrangement with shamans from the Ice People. Magic down here is a funny business. I don’t pretend to understand all of it.”

“Do you understand that we’re all liable to get killed if we can’t throw the Lagoans back?” Sabrino snapped. “How did they come up on our flank?” Like any Algarvian, he had trouble taking the Ice People seriously.

The Lagoans, on the other hand, were deadly dangerous. He knew that. He’d known it since his days as a footsoldier during the Six Years’ War, when he’d faced them in southern Valmiera. Come to think of it, he’d been lucky to come through in one piece then.

His dragonfliers rushed up to their beasts as the handlers got them ready to fly and to fight. Sabrino scrambled aboard his own mount while a handler detached the chain that bound it to its stake. He whacked the dragon with his goad. It let out a hideous, raucous screech and bounded into the air.

As the ground fell away beneath him-and as, at the same time, his field of vision widened-Sabrino discovered how, if not why, the Lagoans had managed to escape the Algarvian scouts’ notice. Even knowing they were there, he had trouble seeing them. It was as if his eyes wanted to rest anywhere but on marching men and hurrying horses and bulky behemoths.

That struck him as magecraft closely linked to the land, the sort of thing the shamans might do. The military mages attached to the army hadn’t tried any serious sorcery down here because the land felt strange, alien. It wasn’t alien to the hairy nomads who’d roamed it for eons. If they’d thrown in with the Lagoans. .

“In that case, we have to smash them, too,” Sabrino told his dragon. It screeched again. Maybe that was approval-dragons liked nothing better than smashing things. More likely, it was random chance.

And the dragon had no trouble seeing the Lagoans, even if he did. As soon as he gave it leave, it folded its wings and hurtled toward them in as terrifying a dive as Sabrino had ever known. The dive was terrifying for a couple of reasons: not only was he afraid the dragon would smash into the ground without being able to pull up, he also feared a heavy stick would blaze it-and him with it.

But the heavy sticks some of the Lagoan behemoths carried weren’t so accurate when the behemoths were on the move. And the enemy started blazing later than they might have; maybe they thought for too long that the Algarvians didn’t know they were there.

If they thought that, they were wrong. Sabrino’s dragon flew along just above their heads. The Algarvian wing commander gave the great beast what it wanted: the command to flame. He thought it would have flamed the Lagoans without the command, and didn’t want it breaking away from his control like that.

Fumes loaded with brimstone and quicksilver made him cough. This can’t be good for my lungs, he thought, as if any dragonflier really expected to live long enough to have his lungs wear out. But breathing the fumes from dragonfire was better by far than being bathed in it. Some Lagoans shriveled and died where they stood. Others writhed on the ground or ran screaming, human torches who could ignite their friends.

He and his wing hadn’t had such an easy time wrecking an enemy column since the early days of the war against Unkerlant. The Lagoans, aiming at surprise, hadn’t brought their dragons with them, so the Algarvians had the air to themselves. And even when King Vitor’s men did blaze down an Algarvian dragon, the dead beast fell among them and wrecked most of a company in its death throes.

Sabrino’s dragon clawed its way higher. It was ready and more than ready for another run at the Lagoans. Looking down on them, though, Sabrino saw they’d been thrown into enough disorder. Their attack on the Algarvian expeditionary force would not come off. No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than Captain Domiziano’s image appeared in his crystal. “Enemy dragons flying hard out of the east,” the squadron commander reported.

Sabrino looked that way. Sure enough, he saw them himself. “Back to our own men,” he said. “We can defend them, and they can defend us with their heavy sticks. And now, instead of the Lagoans’ moving on our soldiers on the ground, we’ll move on theirs. Try and pull the wool over our eyes, will they?”

“We’ve already taught ‘em a good lesson,” Domiziano said.

“So we have,” Sabrino agreed, waving for the wing to break off the attack on the Lagoans. “We’ve taught ‘em the magic the shamans of the Ice People use isn’t as good as they thought it was.”

“We ought to see if we can find some friendly shamans ourselves, though, and use it along with everything else we’ve got,” Captain Domiziano said. Sabrino started to tell him that was nothing but foolishness. He stopped with the words unspoken. The more he thought about the idea, the better he liked it.

Somewhere above Sergeant Istvan and his comrades, the moon and stars shone down. He couldn’t see them, though, except in brief, scattered glimpses through the treetops as he crept along on hands and knees. He knew they looked down on the whole world. The vast forests of western Unkerlant only seemed to cover the whole world. He’d been in them for what felt like forever, but that stood to reason.

From a few feet away, Szonyi whispered, “Good thing we don’t need to see where we’re going, not for a while, anyway.”

“Aye.” Istvan chuckled and sniffed. “We can follow our noses instead.”

Kun was off to the other side of Istvan. He said, “Smells a lot better than anything our cooks have dished out lately.”

Kun could always find something to complain about. As often as not, Istvan thought he was complaining to hear himself talk. This time, he thought Kun was dead right. The rich, meaty odor that wafted from an Unkerlanter cook pot somewhere up ahead would have draw him as rubbed amber attracted straws and bits of parchment even if his squad hadn’t been ordered out on a night raid against King Swemmel’s forward positions.

One of the other troopers in the squad let out an all but voiceless hiss: “There’s their fire up ahead.”

Istvan didn’t see the light till he’d scrambled past the trunk of a pine so huge, it might have been standing there since the day the stars chose the Gyongyosians, out of all the peoples of the world, as the folk they claimed for their own. Once he did spy it, he moved even more slowly and carefully than before. The Unkerlanters had proved time and again they were more woods-wise than his countrymen. The last thing he wanted was to give the game away before his comrades and he got the chance to steal that stew.

The firelight ahead did draw him more accurately than the delicious smell coming from the pot had. He stretched out on his belly behind a clump of ferns and stared at the handful of Unkerlanters gathered around their little fire. They looked more alert than he would have liked; one of them sat a good way away from the flames, with his back to the fire and a stick in his lap: their lookout, without a doubt.

He has to be the first one we kill, Istvan thought. If we blaze him down without making any noise, we can get rid of the rest of the goat-eaters a lot easier. He couldn’t pass the order along, even in a whisper-too risky. He had to hope the troopers in his squad would be able to figure things out for themselves. The men who couldn’t do that kind of figuring were mostly dead by now.

One of the Unkerlanters walked over to the fire and stirred the pot with a big iron spoon. Another one asked him a question in their guttural language. Before the first fellow answered, he licked the spoon. Then he grinned and nodded. If that didn’t mean the stew was ready. .

Istvan’s stomach thought that was what it meant. The growl that rose from his midsection might have come from a hungry wolf. He glanced anxiously toward the Unkerlanters in the clearing. Attacks could go wrong all sorts of ways, but he’d never heard of one betrayed by a rumbling belly.

Alarm ran through him when one of Swemmel’s soldiers looked his way.

I’m not here, he thought, as loudly as he could. You didn’t hear that. After a moment, the Unkerlanter looked away. Istvan didn’t even dare sigh with relief.

Ever so slowly, he brought his stick up to his shoulder. He had a clear blaze at the enemy sentry. He couldn’t assume any of his comrades did. If he managed to knock the fellow over, the rest of the soldiers in the squad would take that as their signal to blaze at the other Unkerlanters. If everything went right, the clearing-and the cook pot-would be theirs in minutes.

If anything went wrong.. Istvan didn’t dwell on that. He’d seen too many things go wrong since getting hauled out of his valley and into the army. All you could do was make the best of them.

His finger slid toward the touch hole at the base of the stick. The Unkerlanter sentry leaned forward, suddenly wary. He lifted his hand to point into the woods, not toward Istvan, but about where Szonyi would have been.

Istvan blazed him. The beam caught the Unkerlanter just in front of the right ear. He toppled forward, dead before he could finish his motion. His stick made only a small thump as it fell out of his lap.

But that thump was enough to make some of the soldiers by the fire turn their heads his way. The Unkerlanters got out a startled yelp or two before a storm of beams from the woods cut them down. Istvan and his comrades rushed forward into the firelight to finish them with knives.

It was all over faster than Istvan had dreamt it could be. His squadmates and he dragged corpses in rock-gray tunics away from the campfire. “This position is ours,” he said happily. “So is this stew.”

No one cheered. That might have drawn Unkerlanters down on the squad. But smiles stretched wide behind tangled tawny beards. As one man, the Gyongyosians brought out their tin mess kits. Istvan grabbed the iron spoon that still stuck out of the pot. He held the highest rank here, so he had the right to serve the other soldiers according to how well they’d fought.

As far as he could tell, everyone had fought splendidly. And the pot held plenty of stew: more than those Unkerlanters could have eaten by themselves, he was sure. He spooned out carrots and onions and big chunks of turnip and even bigger chunks of meat, all in a thick gravy that said the Unkerlanters had been cooking it for a long, long time.

“Benczur,” he called to one of the troopers, “eat yours on the way back to the company’s encampment. Tell Captain Tivadar we’ve taken this clearing. Tell him we’ll save some of what’s in the pot for him, too.”

“Aye, Sergeant,” Benczur said around a big mouthful of meat. “Seems a shame to waste such good stuff on officers, but what can you do?” He slipped off into the woods, heading west, the direction from which the Gyongyosians had come.

Istvan also sent Szonyi and another soldier into the woods to the east, to give a little warning if the Unkerlanters counterattacked. Then he happily settled down by the fire and started spooning up stew himself.

“Wouldn’t mind some ale or honeywine to wash it down,” he said. “They threw in too much salt.” He grinned as he spoke; too much salt or not, it was better food than he could have got from the cooks who accompanied the Gyongyosian army.

In a similar vein, and even with a similar grin, Kun said, “And I don’t care how long they cooked this mutton, it wasn’t long enough. Might as well be chewing old clothes.”

“Aye, it’s pretty tough,” Istvan agreed. “But are you sure it’s mutton? I think it tastes more like beef.”

“I used to think all your taste was in your mouth, Sergeant,” Kun said, planting his barb with relish. “Now I see you haven’t got any there, either.”

“Go ahead and argue, you two,” one of the ordinary troopers said. “I don’t care if it’s mountain ape, by the stars. Whatever it is, it’s a lot better than empty.” He took another mouthful.

Istvan could hardly quarrel with that. His own mess tin had emptied with astonishing speed. He was working his way through a second helping when Benczur came out of the woods, Captain Tivadar right behind him. Istvan sprang to his feet and saluted. Tivadar spied the corpses at the edge of the firelight and nodded. “Nicely done,” he said. “And that stew does smell good.”

“Have some, sir,” Istvan said. “Maybe you can tell us what’s in it. I say it’s beef, Kun here thinks it’s mutton.”

“What I think is, you fellows can’t be very sharp if you don’t know what goes into a stew,” the company commander said. He held out his mess kit. “Give me some and I’ll tell you what I think.”

After Istvan had filled the tin with stew, Tivadar sniffed it, eyed it, and poked at the pieces of meat with the tip of his knife. He speared on, started to bring it to his mouth, and then hesitated. Kun said, “Don’t be shy, Captain. The way you’re playing with it, anybody’d say you thought it was goat, or sometliing.”

Tivadar wasn’t smiling any more. He put the chunk of meat back in the mess tin, then set the tin down. “Corporal, I’m afraid I do think that-or I think it may be, anyhow. You know the Unkerlanters eat goat. This isn’t beef-I’d take oath on that-and I don’t think it’s mutton, either.”

Behind his spectacle lenses, Kun’s eyes went wide. Istvan’s stomach lurched like a ship in a storm. “Goat?” he said in a small, sick voice. The horror that filled the word was on the face of every other soldier in the squad. Istvan wouldn’t have eaten goat meat if he were starving and set down in the middle of a herd of the beasts. No Gyongyosian would have. Goats ate filth and were lecherous beasts, which made them unfit for a warrior race to touch. Only perverts and criminals proved what they were by touching goatflesh and sealing themselves away from all their countrymen.

And now he had, or he might have. And he’d eaten it with enjoyment, too. He gulped. Then he wasn’t gulping any more. He was running for the edge of the clearing the squad had taken from the Unkerlanters. He fell to his knees, leaned forward, and stuck a finger down his throat. Up came the stew, all of it, in a great spasm of sickness that left him dizzy and weak.

Kun knelt beside him, puking his guts up, too. Benczur spewed a few feet away. Everyone in the squad vomited up the tasty but forbidden flesh.

But that wasn’t enough. Tears in his eyes, the inside of his nose burning and full of the sour stink of vomit-the same nasty sourness that filled his mouth- Istvan knew it wasn’t enough. He got to his feet and staggered toward Captain Tivadar. “Make me pure again, sir,” he croaked-his throat burned, too.

“And me.” Again, Kun was right behind him. “Make me clean again. I polluted myself, and I stand filthy below the stars.” The rest of the troopers echoed them.

Tivadar’s face was grave. He would have been within his rights to turn his back and walk away. He could have left the squad outcast, to wander the trackless wood without any further aid till the Unkerlanters or their own righteous countrymen slew them. But he didn’t. Slowly, he said, “You did not kill the goat yourselves, nor did you knowingly eat of it.”

Istvan and his comrades nodded with pathetic eagerness. All that was true. It might not be enough, but it was true. “Make me pure again, sir,” he whispered. “Please make me pure.” Szonyi and the other sentry came out of the woods, begging as he and the rest of the squad were begging.

Captain Tivadar drew his knife again. “Give me your hand,” he told Istvan. “Your left-it will hinder you less.” Istvan did. Tivadar gashed his palm. Istvan stood silent and unflinching, welcoming the bright pain. Only when Tivadar said, “Bind it up now,” did he move. Had Tivadar ordered him to let the wound bleed, he would have done that, too.

One by one, Tivadar purified the rest of the soldiers. None of them jerked or cried out. As he bandaged himself, Istvan knew he would wear the scar the rest of his days. He didn’t care. He might lose the worse scar on his soul. That mattered far, far more.

Marquis Balastro made himself comfortable on the cushions that did duty for furniture in Hajjaj’s office. “Well, your Excellency,” said the Algarvian minister to Zuwayza, “aren’t you proud of yourself for taking in a pack of ragged Kaunians?”

“As a matter of fact, I am,” Hajjaj answered coldly. “I thought it was quite clear that my king’s views on the subject of these refugees are very different from those of your sovereign.”

“Clear?” Balastro nodded. “Oh, aye, that it is. But it is still not palatable to King Mezentio, who has ordered me to make that clear to you as well.”

Hajjaj’s courtesy grew even more frigid. “I thank you,” he said, inclining his head. “Now that you have delivered your sovereign’s message, I assume you have no further business here. Perhaps I will see you again on a happier occasion. Until then, good day.”

Balastro grimaced. “By the powers above, sir, I’ve known dentists who used me more gently than you do.”

“Do you speak for yourself now, or as Mezentio’s man?” Hajjaj inquired.

“For myself,” Balastro replied.

“If I’m speaking to Balastro, then, and not to Mezentio’s minister-who could, after all, be anyone-I’ll say that your dentist figure is an apt one, because dealing with Mezentio’s minister is like pulling teeth.”

“Well, if you think dealing with the Zuwayzi foreign minister is easy for King Mezentio’s minister-who could, as you say, be anyone-you’d better think again, your Excellency,” Balastro said. “I believed our kingdoms were supposed to be allies.”

“Cobelligerents,” Hajjaj said, admiring the precision of the Algarvian language; the distinction would have been harder to draw in Zuwayzi. “We have had this particular discussion before.”

Balastro’s sigh seemed to start at his sandals. “We’ve been friends a long time, you and I. Our side is winning this cursed war. Why are we quarreling more than we ever did when times were harder for us?”

“We’ve had that discussion before, too,” Hajjaj replied. “The answer is, because some of the things Algarve has done make my blood run cold. I don’t know how to put it any more plainly than that.”

“We will do whatever we have to do to win,” Balastro said. “We’ll have Sulingen soon, and all the cinnabar in the hills behind it. Let’s see King Swemmel keep fighting us then.”

“Didn’t I hear this same song sung about Cottbus something less than a year ago?” Hajjaj asked. “Algarvians sometimes boast about what they will do, not what they have done.”

Balastro heaved himself to his feet. That meant Hajjaj had to rise, too, even if his joints creaked. Bowing, Balastro said, “You make it very plain I’ve come on a bootless errand. Perhaps we’ll do better another time.” He bowed again. “No need to escort me out. Believe me, I know the way.” Off he went, strutting as if Algarve’s armies had taken Cottbus and Sulingen and Glogau, too.

Hajjaj’s secretary stuck his head into the office, an inquiring look on his face. “Go away,” the Zuwayzi foreign minister snarled. His secretary disappeared. Hajjaj scowled, angry at himself for letting his temper show.

A few minutes later, the secretary came in again. “Your Excellency, one of General Ikhshid’s aides would speak with you, if you are available to him.”

“Of course, Qutuz,” Hajjaj said. “Send him in. And I am sorry I snapped at you a moment ago.”

Qutuz nodded and went out without a word. He returned a moment later, saying, “Your Excellency, here is Captain Ifranji.”

Ifranji was an intelligent-looking officer whose medium-brown skin and prominent nose suggested he might have had an Unkerlanter or two down near the roots of his family tree. He carried a large envelope of coarse paper: carried it very carefully, as if it might bite him if he didn’t keep an eye on it. When Qutuz brought in tea and wine and cakes, the captain took two token sips and one token nibble and gazed expectantly at Hajjaj.

With a smile, Hajjaj asked, “Is something on your mind, Captain?”

“Aye, your Excellency, something is,” Ifranji answered, not smiling back. He tapped the envelope with his forefinger. “May I show you what I have here?”

“Please do.” Hajjaj opened a desk drawer, pulled out his reading glasses, and held them up while raising a questioning eyebrow. Ifranji nodded. Hajjaj slipped the spectacles onto his nose.

Ifranji opened the envelope and pulled out a folded, rather battered broadsheet. He passed it to Hajjaj, who opened it and read,

FORMATION OF A LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT OF ZUWAYZA. By agreement with a number of nobles of Zuwayza and with Zuwayzi soldiers who refuse to fight further for their corrupt regime, a new government of Zuwayza-the Reformed Principality of Zuwayza- has been formed at the town of Muzayriq under the rule of Prince Mustanjid. All Zuwayzin are urged to give their allegiance to the Reformed Principality, and to abandon the insane and costly war the brigands of Bishah have been waging against Unkerlant.

“Well, well.” Hajjaj peered over the tops of his spectacles at Captain Ifranji. “I have been called a great many things in my time, but never before a brigand. I suppose I should be honored.”

Ifranji’s mouth set in disapproving lines. “General Ikhshid takes a rather more serious view of this business, your Excellency.”

“Well, when you get down to it, so do I,” the Zuwayzi foreign minister admitted. He read the broadsheet again. “There’s more subtlety here than I would have looked for from Swemmel. Up till now, he’s always said Zuwayza has no business existing as a kingdom at all. Now he seems to be content with turning us into puppets, with him pulling a tame prince’s strings.”

“Even so,” Ifranji said, nodding. “General Ikhshid knows no noble by the name of Mustanjid, and has no notion from which clan he might come. He charged me to ask if you did.”

Hajjaj thought, then shook his head. “No, the name is not familiar to me, either. Ikhshid knows our clans as well as I do, I am sure.”

“He said no one knew them so well as you, sir,” Ifranji replied.

“He flatters me.” And Hajjaj was flattered, which didn’t mean he thought the praise false. He thought some more. “My guess is, the Unkerlanters found some merchant or captive and gave him a choice between losing his head and becoming a false prince. Or perhaps there is no Prince Mustanjid at all, only a name on the broadsheets to seduce our soldiers.”

“The seduction is what concerns General Ikhshid,” Ifranji said. “His thought marched with yours: King Swemmel has not tried a ploy like this before.”

“How much have we got to worry about?” Hajjaj asked. “Are our soldiers throwing down their sticks and going over to King Swemmel in droves?”

“Your Excellency!” Indignant reproach filled Ifranji’s voice. “Of course not. The men carry on as they always have.”

“In that case, Ikhshid hasn’t got much to worry about, has he?” Hajjaj said. His feeling was that Ikhshid didn’t have much to worry about as long as the war went well. If things went wrong, who could guess what might happen?

Ifranji said, “Is there nothing we can do on the diplomatic front to weaken the force of these broadsheets?”

“I don’t suppose King Swemmel will accept a formal protest,” Hajjaj said dryly, and General Ikhshid’s aide had to nod. Hajjaj went on, “Our men know what the Unkerlanters have done to us in years gone by. They know what the Unkerlanter invasion did to us a couple of years ago, too. That’s our best guarantee no one will want to have much to do with this Reformed Principality.”

Now Captain Ifranji looked happier. “That is a good point, sir. I shall take your words back to the general.” He reached for the broadsheet. Hajjaj handed it to him, and he refolded it and put it back in its envelope. Then he got to his feet, which meant Hajjaj had to do the same. They exchanged bows; Hajjaj’s back clicked. Ifranji, young and straight, hurried away.

With a sigh, Hajjaj sank back to the pillows behind his low desk. He sipped at the date wine left almost untouched during the ritual of hospitality. His face bore a scowl that drove Qutuz away when his secretary looked in after Ifranji left. Hajjaj didn’t know he seemed so grim. “Swemmel has no business trying anything new,” he muttered under his breath. Of itself, this ploy didn’t feel dangerous; if anything, it might even help incite the Zuwayzin against Unkerlanter domination. But, if Swemmel tried one new thing, who could say he wouldn’t try another one, one that might prove more effective?

No doubt King Shazli would hear of the Reformed Principality of Zuwayza from General Ikhshid. Hajjaj inked a pen and set it to paper even so. He was sure the king would ask his opinion, and he would look good in his sovereign’s eyes if he gave it before it was asked.

He’d almost finished when a horrible banging overhead made his hand jerk. Glaring at the ceiling, he scratched out the word he’d ruined. The banging went on and on. “Qutuz!” Hajjaj called irritably. “What is that hideous racket? Are the Unkerlanters dropping hammers on us instead of eggs?”

“No, your Excellency,” his secretary answered. “The roofers are making repairs now against the winter rains.”

“Are they?” Hajjaj knew he sounded astonished. “Truly his Majesty is a mighty king, to be able to get them out before urgent need. Most folk, as I know too well, have trouble persuading them to come forth even at direst need.” Doing his best to ignore hangings and clatterings, he wrote a sentence, then handed the paper to Qutuz. “Please take this to his Majesty’s secretary. Tell him the king should see it today.”

“Aye, your Excellency.” As Ifranji had before him, Hajjaj’s secretary hurried away.

The Zuwayzi foreign minister finished the goblet of date wine and poured himself another one. Normally a moderate man, Hajjaj felt like getting drunk. “Algarve or Unkerlant? Unkerlant or Algarve?” he murmured. “Powers above, what a horrible choice.” His allies were murderers. His enemies wanted to extinguish his kingdom-and were murderers themselves.

He wished the Zuwayzin could have dug a canal across the base of their desert peninsula, hoisted sail, and floated away from the continent of Derlavai and all its troubles. If that meant taking along some Kaunian refugees, he was willing to give them a ride.

Had he been able to float away, though, Derlavai would probably have come sailing after him and his kingdom. That was how the world worked these days.

“Reformed Principality of Zuwayza.” Hajjaj tasted the words, then shook his head. No, that didn’t have the right ring to it. King Swemmel hadn’t figured out how to interest the Zuwayzin in betraying their own government- not yet, anyhow. But could he, if he kept trying? Hajjaj wasn’t sure. That he wasn’t sure worried him more than anything else about the whole business.

Even though Bembo couldn’t read all of the message painted in broad strokes of whitewash on the brick wall, he glowered at it. He could tell it contained the word Algarvians. No whitewashed message containing that word in Gromheort was likely to hold a compliment.

Bembo grabbed the first Forthwegian he saw and demanded, “What does that say?” When the swarthy, bearded man shrugged and spread his hands to show he didn’t understand the question, the constable did his best to turn it into classical Kaunian.

“Ah.” Intelligence lit the Forthwegian’s face. “I can tell you that.” He spoke Kaunian better than Bembo did. Almost anyone who spoke Kaunian spoke it better than Bembo did.

“Going on,” Bembo urged.

“It says”-the Forthwegian spoke with obvious relish-”Algarvian pimps should go back where they came from.” He spread his hands again, this time in a show of innocence. “I did not write it. I only translated. You asked.”

Bembo gave him a shove that almost made him fall in the gutter. To the constable’s disappointment, it didn’t quite. He made as if to grab the bludgeon he carried. “Getting lost,” he growled, and the Forthwegian disappeared. “Pimp,” Bembo muttered in Kaunian. He switched to Algarvian: “Takes one to know one.”

Before walking on, he spat at the graffito. Some Forthwegian or other thought himself a hero for sneaking around with a paint brush in the middle of the night. Bembo thought the Forthwegian, whoever he was, nothing but a cursed nuisance.

Half a dozen Forthwegians in identical tunics came up the street toward him. After a moment, he realized they belonged to Plegmund’s Brigade. He eyed them warily, much as he would have eyed so many mean dogs running around outside a farm. They were useful creatures, no doubt about it, but liable to be dangerous, too. And, by the way they looked at him, they were thinking about being dangerous right now.

He’d moved out of their way before he quite realized what he was doing. They realized it fast enough; a couple of them laughed as they tramped past. His ears burned. Forthwegians weren’t supposed to intimidate Algarvians-it was supposed to be the other way round.

“Bugger ‘em,” Bembo said under his breath. “They don’t pay me enough to be a hero.” He laughed a nasty laugh. They doubtless didn’t pay those young toughs in Plegmund’s Brigade enough to be heroes, either. All he had to do was pound the pavement here in Gromheort. The Forthwegians would get shipped off to the west to fight King Swemmel’s troopers. They might not make heroes, but a lot of them would end up dead.

Serve ‘em right, too, Bembo thought. Let ‘em laugh now. They’ll be laughing out of the other side of their mouths soon enough.

Once he’d got round the corner from the men of Plegmund’s Brigade, he started swaggering once more. Why not? No one who’d seen him embarrass himself was around now. As far as he was concerned, what had happened back there might as well have belonged to the days of the Kaunian Empire.

No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than he saw a Kaunian on the street. He reached for his bludgeon. A Forthwegian woman who saw him and the blond called out in Algarvian: “Make him wish the powers below had hold of him instead of you!”

“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” Bembo answered, even though the woman was ten years older than he was, shapeless, and homely to boot. She got even homelier when she smiled, which she did now. Bembo didn’t have to look at her for long, though. He swung his attention-and his anger-toward the Kaunian. “You there! Aye, you, you miserable son of a whore! Who let you out of your kennel?”

The Forthwegian woman giggled and clapped her hands and hugged herself with glee. She stared avidly. If anything dreadful happened to the Kaunian, she wanted to watch. The blond turned out to speak Algarvian. Bowing to Bembo, he said, “I am sorry, sir.”

“Sorry doesn’t cut it.” Bembo advanced on him, club upraised. The Forthwegian woman clapped her hands again. “Sorry doesn’t begin to cut it,” the constable growled. “I already asked you once, what are you doing running around loose? This isn’t your part of Gromheort, and you’ll pay for poking your nose out of the part that is.”

“Do what you want to me.” The Kaunian bowed again. This time, he kept on looking down at the cobbles. “My daughter is sick. None of the Kaunian apothecaries has the drug she needs. And so”-he shrugged-”I went outside to find it. If you had a daughter, sir, would you not do the same?”

Since he’d got out of the Kaunian district, odds were he’d already bribed one Algarvian constable. Bembo was as sure of that as he was of his own name. “Have you got any money left?” he demanded.

“Aye, some,” the blond answered, and the Forthwegian woman let out an angry, thwarted screech. The Kaunian went on, “If it is all the same to you, though, I think I would sooner take a beating. I will need the money for more medicine, and for food.”

Bembo stared at him. Either the blond was serious, or else he’d just come up with the most outlandish scheme to escape a beating Bembo had ever heard of. He didn’t know whether to admire the fellow’s nerve or to beat him to within an inch of his life to teach him not to try that sort of nonsense again. The Forthwegian woman had no doubts. “Wallop him!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “He deserves it. He said so himself. Wallop him!”

Reluctantly-he didn’t want to do anything the noisy woman suggested- Bembo decided he had to give the Kaunian a lesson. If the blonds got the idea they could shame the Algarvians into leaving them alone, who could guess how much trouble they’d cause? And so, raising the bludgeon, he advanced on the blond.

He hoped the Kaunian would run. The fellow was skinny and looked agile. The constable wasn’t like to be able to catch him. He could prove his own ferocity and still not beat a man who wasn’t fighting back.

But the Kaunian just stood there waiting. Bembo didn’t soften. Instead, he got angry. The club thudded down on the Kaunian’s back. The blond grunted, but held his ground. That made Bembo angrier. His next stroke laid open the Kaunian’s scalp.

And that proved too much for the blond to bear. With a howl of pain, he turned and fled. His trousers flapped at his ankles. Bembo tried to kick him in the backside, but missed. He ran after him for half a block. By then, he was panting; his heart thudded in his chest. He slowed, then stopped. He’d done his duty.

“You should have blazed him!” the Forthwegian woman shouted. “It would have served him right.”

“Oh, shut up, you old hag,” Bembo said, but not very loud. He didn’t want her screeching at him anymore. What he wanted was a simple, quiet tour on the beat, a tour where he didn’t have to do anything but stop in at some shops he knew to cadge a few cups of wine and some cakes and sausages and whatever else he might happen to crave. He sighed. What he’d been through felt too much like work. And his day wasn’t even half over yet.

A few blocks later, he came to the park where he and Oraste had met and blazed a drunken Kaunian mage. It was daytime now, not the middle of the night, and all-or at least most-Kaunians were closed up in their own district nowadays. On the other hand, the park was even more decrepit than it had been a few months before. No one had bothered cutting grass or trimming weeds. He could hardly make out the paved paths along which Oraste and he had walked.

He wanted to go through the park as much as he would have wanted to go fight Unkerlanters alongside the men of Plegmund’s Brigade. He stood at the edge, indecisive. A gust of wind sprang up and wrapped long stalks of grass around his ankles, as if trying to pull him in. He made a disgusted noise and hopped back.

But that wouldn’t do. He realized as much, however unhappy the knowledge made him. Sergeant Pesaro would have some pungent things to say if he funked the job. And if Pesaro didn’t just ream him out but told his superiors, Bembo knew he was liable to get shipped off to Unkerlant. And so, with a melodramatic sigh, he plunged into the park.

Dry grass scrunched under his sandals. Sure enough, staying on the paths was next to impossible. Weeds and shrubs grew higher than a man’s middle. Here and there, they grew higher than a man’s head. When Bembo looked back over his shoulder, he could hardly see the street from which he’d come. If anything happens to me in here, he thought nervously, nobody’d find out for days.

That wasn’t quite true. If he didn’t come back from his shift, people would go looking for him. But would they find him soon enough to do him any good? He had his doubts.

A Kaunian Emperor from the days of old might have held court on the benches in the middle of the park without anyone outside being the wiser. When Bembo got to them, he found not a Kaunian Emperor but a couple of Forthwegian drunkards. By their unkempt, shaggy beards and filth, they made the park their home.

Bembo’s hand went not to his bludgeon but to the short stick he carried next to it. The Forthwegians watched him. He nodded to them. They didn’t move. He walked past them. Their eyes followed him. He didn’t want to turn his back on them, but he didn’t want them to see he was afraid, either. He ended up sidling away from them crab-fashion.

A rustling in the bushes made him whip his head around. Another Forthwegian, as grimy and disreputable as the two on the benches, waved his arms and shouted, “Boo!”

He laughed like a loon. So did the other two drunks. “You stupid bald-arsed bugger!” Bembo screamed. “I ought to blaze you in the belly and let you die an inch at a time!” As a matter of fact, he wasn’t sure he could blaze the Forthwegian; his hand shook like a fall leaf in a high breeze.

The fellow who’d frightened him hawked and spat. “Oh, run along home to mother, little boy,” he said in good Algarvian. “You cursed well don’t belong anywhere they let grown-ups in.” He laughed again.

“Futter your mother!” Bembo was still too rattled to hang on to his aplomb as a proper Algarvian should.

His shrill voice made all the Forthwegians start laughing. He thought about blazing them. He thought about blazing the tall grass that choked the paths, too, in the hope of roasting them alive. The only thing wrong with that was, he might end up roasting himself, too.

Instead, after cursing all the drunks as vilely as he knew how, he pushed on down the path toward the far side of the park. He passed two more Forthwegians, both of them curled up asleep or blind drunk in the grass with jars of spirits or wine beside them. One wore a tattered Forthwegian army tunic.

Seeing that made Bembo laugh, and he was sure his laugh was last and best. “Worthless clots!” he said, as if the three back by the benches were still close enough to hear. “This is what you get. This is what all of Forthweg gets. And oh, by the powers above, do you ever deserve it.”

Every time Ealstan saw a broadsheet praising Plegmund’s Brigade, he felt like tearing it from the wall to which it was pasted. He didn’t much care what happened to him afterwards-after what Sidroc had done to his brother, and after Sidroc had got away with it because he’d joined the Algarvians’ hounds, Ealstan ached for vengeance of any sort.

The only thing that held him back was fear of what would happen to Vanai if he were seized and cast into prison. She depended on him. He’d never had anyone depend on him before. On the contrary-he’d always depended on his father and his mother and poor Leofsig and even on Conberge. He hadn’t thought about everything loving a Kaunian woman meant when he started doing it. He’d thought about little except the most obvious. But now. .

Now, very much his father’s son, he refused to evade the burden he’d assumed. And so, in spite of scowling at the broadsheets, he walked on toward Ethelhelm’s flat without doing anything more. Scowling wouldn’t land him in trouble; most of the Forthwegians in Eoforwic scowled when they walked by broadsheets urging them to join Plegmund’s Brigade.

Most, but not all. A couple of fellows not far from Ealstan’s age stared at one of the broadsheets, their lips moving as they read its simple message. “That wouldn’t be so bad,” one of them said. “Cursed Unkerlanters deserve a good boot in the balls, you ask me.”

“Oh, aye.” His pal nodded; the sun gleamed off the grease with which he made his hair stand up tall enough to give him an extra inch or so of apparent height. The nasty-sweet odor of the grease didn’t quite cover the reek that said neither he nor his friend had gone to the baths any time lately. Their tunics were grimy, too; if they’d ever had any luck, they were down on it now.

“I bet they feed you good there,” the first one said, and his friend nodded again.

Both of them eyed Ealstan as he went by. He didn’t need to be a mage to see into their thoughts: if they knocked him over the head and stole his belt pouch, they might also eat well for a while. He hunched his shoulders forward and let one hand fold into a fist, as if to say he wouldn’t be easy meat. The two hungry toughs turned away to watch a girl instead.

When Ealstan got to Ethelhelm’s building, the doorman gave him the once-over before letting him in. In this prosperous part of Eoforwic, his own ordinary tunic seemed almost as shabby and worthy of suspicion as those of the young men who’d been looking at the broadsheet. But then the doorman said, “You’re the chap who casts accounts for the band leader, right?”

“That’s me,” Ealstan agreed, and the flunky relaxed.

Up the stairs Ealstan went. As usual, he contrasted the stairwell in this block of flats with the one in his own. The stairs here were clean and carpeted and didn’t stink of boiled cabbage or of sour piss. Neither did the hallways onto which the stairs opened.

After he knocked, Ethelhelm opened the door and pumped his hand, saying, “Come in, come in. Welcome, welcome.”

“Thanks,” Ealstan said. Ethelhelm lived more splendidly than his own family had back in Gromheort. Living large was part of what made a bandleader what he was, while a bookkeeper who did the same would only make people wonder if he skimmed cash from his clients. Even had his father been a bandleader, though, Ealstan doubted Hestan would have flaunted his money. Powers above knew Ealstan didn’t-couldn’t-do any flaunting of his own.

“Wine?” Ethelhelm asked. When Ealstan nodded, the musician brought him some lovely golden stuff that glowed in the goblet and sighed in his throat. Ealstan wished Vanai could taste it. Calling it by the same name as the cheap, harsh stuff he brought home to their flat hardly seemed fair. Ethelhelm, by all appearances, took it for granted. That hardly seemed fair, either. The bandleader said, “Shall I bring you tea and little cakes, too, so we can pretend we’re naked black Zuwayzin?”

“No, thank you.” Ealstan laughed. Ethelhelm waved him to the sofa. When he sat down, he sank into the soft cushions there. Fighting against the comfort as he fought against the languor the wine brought on, he asked, “And did this latest tour go well?”

“I think so, but then I’ve got you to tell me whether I’m right,” Ethelhelm answered. “Everywhere we went, we played to sold-out houses. I’ve got a great big leather sack full of receipts that’ll let you figure out whether we made any money while we were doing it.”

“If you didn’t make enough to pay me, I’m going to be upset with you,” Ealstan said.

Both young men laughed. They knew it wasn’t a question of whether Ethelhelm’s band had made money, but of how much. The bandleader and drummer said, “I expect you’ll find enough in the books for that, and who’ll know whether it’s really there or not?”

To any honest bookkeeper, that was an insult. Hestan would have been coldly furious to hear it, regardless of whether he showed his anger. Ealstan forgave Ethelhelm, reasoning the band leader knew no better. He said, “It’s a wonder the Algarvians let you travel so widely.”

“They think we help keep things quiet,” Ethelhelm answered. “And I’ll be cursed if I haven’t had a good many Algarvian soldiers and functionaries listening to me this tour. They like what we’re doing, too.”

“Do they?” Ealstan said tonelessly.

“Aye.” Ethelhelm didn’t notice how Ealstan sounded. He was full of himself, full of what he and the band had done. “Everybody likes us, everybody in the whole kingdom. And do you know what? I think it’s bloody wonderful.”

More slowly than he should have, Ealstan realized Ethelhelm had already had a good deal of wine. That didn’t keep his own anger from sparking, and he wasn’t so good at hiding it as his father would have been. “Everybody, eh?”

“Aye-no doubt about it,” Ethelhelm declared. “Laborers, noblemen’s sons-and daughters-recruits for the Brigade, even the redheads, like I said. Everybody loves us.”

“Even Kaunians?” Ealstan asked.

“Kaunians.” Ethelhelm spoke the word as if he’d never heard it before. “Well, no.” He shrugged. “But that’s not our fault. If the Algarvians would have let them listen to us, they would have loved us, too. Or I think so, anyhow. A lot of them aren’t that keen on Forthwegian music, you know.”

“So I do,” Ealstan said, remembering Vanai’s reaction when he’d smuggled her to a performance of the band.

“But I’ll bet they would have liked us on this tour.” Ethelhelm rolled on as if Ealstan had sat quiet. “These new songs we’ve been doing-it doesn’t matter who you are these days. You’ll like ‘em.”

Now Ealstan did sit quiet. He didn’t care for Ethelhelm’s latest songs nearly so well as he’d liked the earlier ones. They still had the pounding rhythms that had made the band popular in the first place, but the words were just. . words. They lacked the bite that had made some of Ethelhelm’s earlier tunes grab Ealstan by the ears and refuse to let him go.

Sadly, he said, “Let me have that sack of receipts you were talking about, and I’ll see how much sense I can make of it.”

“Of course.” Even drunk--both on wine and on his own popularity- Ethelhelm remained charming. “Let me get them for you.” He heaved himself up off the sofa and went back into the bedchamber, wobbling a little as he walked. He returned with the promised leather sack, which he thumped down at Ealstan’s feet. “There you go. Let me know where we stand as soon as you have the chance, if you’d be so kind.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Ealstan promised.

“I’ll see you soon, then,” Ethelhelm said-a dismissal if ever there was one. He didn’t ask about Vanai, not a single, solitary word. He couldn’t have forgotten her; he had an excellent memory. He just-couldn’t be bothered? That was how it seemed to Ealstan.

He picked up the sack of receipts and headed for the door. The sack felt unduly heavy, as if it were more than leather and papers. Ealstan wondered if he were carrying Ethelhelm’s spirit in there, too. He didn’t say anything about that. After a while-as soon as he got outside Ethelhelm’s block of flats-he decided he was imagining things: the sack weighed no more than it should.

Every trash bin, every gutter on the way home offered fresh temptation. Somehow, Ealstan managed not to fling the sack away or to drop it and then keep walking. He was sure no beautiful woman, no matter how wanton, could arouse his desires like the sight of an empty, inviting bin. But he resisted, though he doubted Vanai would have been proud of him for it.

When he gave the coded knock at the door to his flat, Vanai opened it and let him slip inside. “What have you got there?” she asked, pointing to the leather sack.

“Rubbish,” he answered. “Nothing but rubbish. And I can’t even throw it away, worse luck.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked. “Those are Ethelhelm’s things, aren’t they?”

“Of course they are. What else would they be?”

“Why are you calling them rubbish, then?”

“Why? I’ll tell you why.” Ealstan took a deep breath and did exactly that. The more he talked, the more the outrage and sense of betrayal he’d had to hide while he was at Ethelhelm’s bubbled to the surface. By the time he finished, he was practically in tears. “He’s making all the money in the world-or all the money that’s left in Forthweg, anyhow-and he’s stopped caring about the things that got him rich in the first place.”

“That’s. . too bad,” Vanai said. “It’s even worse because he probably does have some of my blood in him. Forgetting his own kind-” She grimaced. “Probably plenty of Kaunians who’d like to forget their own kind, if only the Forthwegians and Algarvians would let them.” She set a hand on Ealstan’s shoulder for a moment, then turned back toward the kitchen. “Supper’s almost ready.”

Ealstan ate in gloomy silence, even though Vanai had made a fine chicken stew. After sucking the last of the meat off a drumstick, he burst out, “I’ve been afraid this would happen since the first time the redheads asked his band to play for Plegmund’s Brigade when those whoresons were training outside of Eoforwic.”

Vanai said, “It’s not even treason, not really. He’s looking out for himself, that’s all. A lot of people have done a lot worse.”

“I know,” Ealstan said. “That’s all Sidroc was doing, too: looking out for himself, I mean. That’s how it starts. The trouble is, that’s not how it ends.” He thought of what had happened to Leofsig. Then he thought about what might happen to Vanai. He had been angry. Now, all at once, he was afraid.