Through the Darkness

Five

Vanai heard what she thought were Ealstan’s familiar footfalls coming up the hall toward their flat. But when the knock on the door came, it was several harsh bangs, not the coded raps Ealstan always used.

Ice shot up Vanai’s back. Had someone betrayed Ealstan to the redheads? Had someone betrayed her! Heart thudding, she waited for the harsh cry: “Kaunian, come forth!”

She wondered if she would do better to come forth or to go out the window headfirst. It would be over in a hurry then, and it wouldn’t hurt much. Who could guess what the Algarvians did to Kaunians in their labor camps before they finally slew them? But while Vanai was wondering, the knock came again-the right knock, this time.

Cautiously, she approached the door. “Who is it?” she asked in a low voice.

“It’s me,” Ealstan answered. “Let me in.”

It was unquestionably Ealstan, but he didn’t sound right. Were a couple of Algarvians standing behind him in the hall, one maybe holding a stick to his head? What disaster would descend on her if she opened the door? She didn’t know, but she knew Ealstan wouldn’t have left her to face disaster alone. That decided her. She unbarred the door and pulled it open.

Ealstan stood there alone. Breath whooshed out of Vanai in a long sigh of relief. Then she saw the look on his face. She gasped as involuntarily as she’d sighed. “What is it?” she demanded. Ealstan didn’t answer. He didn’t move, either. She had to grab him by the arm and tug him into the flat and then tug him again so she could close the door. Once she’d barred it, she spun round to face him. “What is it?” she repeated.

Ealstan still didn’t answer, not with words. Instead, he thrust a sheet of paper at her. She hadn’t even noticed he was holding it. Of themselves, her eyes went down to it. The Forthwegian script was exceptionally clear, but she hadn’t read more than a couple of lines before it seemed to blur. “Your brother,” she whispered.

“Aye. My brother. Dead.” The phrases jerked from Ealstan one by one, as if from a clockwork toy that was running down. But then, unlike such a toy,

Ealstan somehow found the energy to say more: “My stinking cousin killed him. Beat him to death the way you’d beat… you’d beat… I don’t know what.” Tears started running down his cheeks and into his beard. Vanai didn’t think he knew he was crying.

She made herself keep reading the letter Ealstan’s father had sent. “They didn’t do anything to him,” she said in disbelief. “They didn’t do anything to him at all.”

“To Sidroc, you mean?” Ealstan asked, and Vanai foolishly nodded, as if she might have meant someone else. Ealstan went on, “Why should they do anything to him? Leofsig was just a Forthwegian, and Sidroc’s in Plegmund’s Brigade. They’ll probably pin a medal on him for it.”

“Didn’t you tell me Plegmund’s Brigade was training outside of Eoforwic?” Vanai answered her own question: “Of course you did. That singer you like went out with his band and performed for them.”

“Ethelhelm.” Ealstan sounded amazed he’d come up with anything so mundane as the musician’s name. “Aye, the Brigade is here-or some of it’s here. Some of it’s gone off to train somewhere else. I found out about that from him.”

“But.. won’t the soldiers do something to your cousin?” Vanai was faltering, and she knew it. “They can’t want somebody who’s nothing but a murderer. . can they?”

“What do you think soldiers are?” Ealstan answered bleakly. “Especially soldiers who fight for King Mezentio. But it doesn’t matter anyhow. Look at the date on the letter.”

Vanai hadn’t. Now she did. “That’s-three weeks ago,” she said. “And it just got here now?”

Another foolish question. Ealstan, fortunately, took it as a matter of course. He said, “Aye. What do the Algarvians care about how the post runs in Forthweg, or even if the post runs in Forthweg? We’re lucky it got here at all- if you call that luck. But you’re right, or I hope you’re right-I want to go out and see if I can get the Algarvians to do something about Sidroc. If he’s still here, I mean. He’s liable not to be.”

“Don’t do that!” Vanai exclaimed.

“Huh? Why not?” Ealstan asked, as if he intended heading for the encampment of Plegmund’s Brigade that very moment. Shock had to have dulled his wits.

Patiently, Vanai answered, “Because you still might be wanted in Gromheort, that’s why. Do you plan to show up there and have them arrest you?”

“Oh.” Ealstan sounded astonished. No, that hadn’t crossed his mind at all. When it did, he nodded. “You’re right, curse it. Well, he might not even be there. Powers above, I hope he’s not there. I hope he goes out and the Unkerlanters kill him first thing. I wish I could do it myself. I wish I had done, it, back there in Gromheort. A million Sidrocs aren’t worth one of my brother.”

“I’m sorry.” Vanai went to him and held him. They clung to each other for a while. Vanai hoped that did Ealstan some good. She doubted it would do much. But maybe if he thought she thought he felt better, he really would feel a little better. She shook her head. She wasn’t used to needing such convoluted thoughts.

“Oh,” Ealstan said again, this time as if remembering something. “There’s a piece of the letter right at the end that’s meant for you.”

“There is?” Vanai hadn’t read the whole thing; the crushing bad news that headed it had been enough. Now she pulled back so she could look at the rest. Sure enough, Ealstan’s father wrote, Your friend’s grandfather has been asking after her. We have said that, so far as we know, she is well. We shall say nothing more without your leave and hers. Vanai said, “I don’t want him knowing any more than that. I don’t even want him knowing that much, but it can’t be helped.”

“Don’t worry,” Ealstan told her. “My father knows how to keep his mouth shut-a bookkeeper has to. And my mother and sister won’t blab, either.” Thinking about her kept him from thinking about the rest of the news-but only for a moment. Then his face crumpled, for he went on, “Leofsig won’t say anything. Leofsig ca-ca-can’t say anything, not any more he can’t.” He started to weep again.

Vanai went into the kitchen, took down a bottle of spirits, and poured a full glass for Ealstan and half a glass for herself. “Here,” she said, handing him his. “Drink this.”

He knocked it back as if it were so much water. Vanai blinked: he didn’t usually drink like that. She sipped her own, letting the spirits slide hot down her throat. When Ealstan spoke, his voice held an eerie calm: “Maybe Ethelhelm can find out for me whether Sidroc is still in the camp near here. If he is …

“What could you do?” Vanai asked. She held up her hand, palm out, as if to stop him from doing whatever he was thinking, and she feared she knew what that was. As if to a child, she said once more, “You’re not going out there yourself.”

“All right,” he said, so readily that she looked at him in surprise and sharp suspicion. But he went on, “I’m a bookkeeper, too, remember? If you read the romances, bookkeepers don’t do their own dirty work. They hire somebody else to do it for them.” He plucked at his beard. “I wonder if I’ve got enough to have a man killed. Maybe Ethelhelm would know.” He still spoke very clearly. The spirits certainly weren’t affecting him much.

“Are you sure you want to ask him?” Vanai could feel what she’d drunk, which was a good deal less than what Ealstan had put down. She had to form her words with care: “He did go out and play for the Brigade, remember.”

“Aye, that’s so,” Ealstan said unhappily. “Don’t know who I can trust any more. Don’t know if I can trust anybody any more.” He sounded on the edge of tears again. That might have been the spirits working in him, but it might have been simple grief, too.

“You can trust me.” Vanai set down her glass and took his hands in hers. “And I can trust you. You’re the only person in the world I can trust, I think. You have your family, anyhow.”

“What’s left of it,” Ealstan said, and Vanai bit her lip. But then he nodded. “Aye. I know I can trust you, sweetheart.” This time, he reached for her.

He didn’t use endearments very often, which made them all the more welcome when they came. If he’d wanted to take her back to the bedchamber, to lose himself in her flesh for a little while, she would gladly have given herself to him. But he didn’t. He held her, then let her go. “Can you eat?” she asked, and he nodded. She went back to the kitchen. “I’ll fix something.”

Bread and olives and cheese and salt fish in oil weren’t very exciting, but they filled the belly. Ealstan methodically ate whatever Vanai set before him, but gave no sign of noticing what it was. She might have fed him earth and ashes and sawdust, and he would have disposed of those the same way. She gave him more spirits, too. Again, they could have been water by the way he drank them and for all the effect they had on him.

After he’d finished eating, he said, “I wish I could have been there for the memorial service. I can’t believe it’s done-it’ll be a long time done now. Curse the miserable slow post.”

Had he been able to go to the memorial service, he would have gone without Vanai. She couldn’t go out on the streets without fear now, let alone step into a caravan car. But Ealstan wasn’t even thinking about her. The only person on his mind was poor dead Leofsig.

She couldn’t blame him for thinking of his blood kin first. She kept telling herself that. He’d known them all his life, and her, really, only a few months. But she wished he would have shown a few more signs of recalling what her special problems were.

And she cursed the useless, worthless, hope-lifting, heartbreaking author of You Too Can Be a Mage. Had he really known what he was doing, she could have made herself look like a Forthwegian instead of turning Ealstan into a counterfeit Kaunian. She wondered if her curse would bite. She hoped so. She had been able to work some sorcery, even if it hadn’t turned out the way she wished.

“Do you want anything else?” she asked Ealstan. He shook his head. She got up and carried the few plates to the sink. Washing them took only a handful of minutes. When she turned back to Ealstan, she found him slumped down onto the table asleep, his head in his hands.

She shook him, but got only a snore. She shook him again, and roused him to a sludgy semi-consciousness, but nothing more: all the spirits had caught up with him at once. Half supporting him, she got him into the bedchamber. It wasn’t easy; she was as tall as he, but not much more than half as wide.

And when he landed on the bed, he sprawled diagonally across it, still wearing his shoes. That left no room at all for her. She thought about rearranging him, but decided not to bother. Instead, she took her own pillow and curled up on the sofa. It was cramped, but on a warm night she didn’t need a blanket. After a while, she fell asleep.

Her back creaked when she got up at sunrise the next morning. Ealstan, she discovered, had scarcely moved. She didn’t have the heart to wake him. She didn’t think he would be very happy with the world when he did wake up, and not only because he would have to remember his brother had died. She’d seen plenty of drunken Forthwegians-and, more to the point, hung-over Forthwegians-in Oyngestun. She knew what to expect.

She poured out a cup of wine. It wouldn’t stop the pain, but might ease it a little. Presently, she heard a groan from the bedchamber. Treading as softly as she could, she carried the wine in to Ealstan.

Walking through Skrunda, Talsu felt like a man who’d been interrupted in the middle of something important. The whole town had been interrupted in the middle of something important. The townsfolk had been on the point of a major uprising against the Algarvian occupiers when dragons from Lagoan or Kuusaman ships dropped enough eggs on Skrunda to confuse a lot of people about who the true enemy was.

Talsu wasn’t confused. With that big scar on his flank, he would never be confused. Were the Algarvians not occupying Jelgava, their enemies wouldn’t have needed to drop eggs on Skrunda. That seemed plain enough to him. He couldn’t understand why some of the townsfolk had trouble seeing it.

Jelgavans cleared debris from ruined houses and shops. The Algarvians made the news sheets trumpet their labors. If Talsu heard one more hawker shouting about air pirates, he thought he would deck the luckless fellow.

He wanted to shout himself: shout that the news sheets were full of tricks when they weren’t full of lies. But he didn’t, and he didn’t deck any of the vendors, either. Back when he’d fought in the Jelgavan army-and back before that, too, back to the days when he was a child-he’d feared King Donalitu’s dungeons, as had any of his countrymen who presumed to criticize the king and the upper nobility. Had the Algarvians opened all the dungeons, freed all the captives, and taken no more, King Mainardo might have won a good-sized following, redhead though he was.

They had freed some of King Donalitu’s captives. But, in Mainardo’s name, they’d taken many more. And Algarvian torturers enjoyed a reputation about as black as that of the men who’d served Donalitu before he fled. Silence, then, remained the safest course.

Going back into the family tailor’s shop made Talsu sigh in relief. Here if anywhere he could breathe free. His father looked up from a cloak he was sewing-for once, for a Jelgavan customer, not for one of the occupiers. “Did you get those hinges I wanted?” Traku asked.

Talsu shook his head. “I went to all three ironmongers in town, and they all say they’re not to be had for love nor money, not in iron and not in brass, either. The Algarvians are taking all the metal they can out of the kingdom. Before long, we’re liable to have trouble getting needles.”

Traku looked unhappy. “Your mother’s been after me to fix those cabinets for weeks. Now I’m finally getting around to doing it, and I can’t get what I need for the job? She won’t be very happy to hear that.”

“You can’t very well put the hinges on if you can’t get them, now can you?” Talsu gave his father a conspiratorial wink.

“Well, that’s true.” Traku brightened, but not for long. “She’ll say I could have gotten ‘em if I’d gone out and done it right away instead of sitting around on my rump all day long.” He managed to sound a lot like his wife-enough so to land him in trouble if she’d heard him.

“They’re talking about tin, or maybe pewter,” Talsu said.

His father made a face. “Not very strong, either one of ‘em. And who says the Algarvians won’t start stealing tin, too, and leave us with nothing but lead?”

“Nobody,” Talsu answered. “I wouldn’t put anything past ‘em. They’d steal anything that wasn’t nailed down.”

“And now they’re stealing the nails, too,” Traku said. He laughed. Talsu grimaced, annoyed he hadn’t thought of the joke himself.

Before he had the chance to try to top it, the door swung open and the bell above it jangled. In came an Algarvian officer, swaggering as Mezentio’s subjects had a way of doing. Talsu had practice changing his tone on the spur of the moment. “Good day, sir,” he said to the redhead. “How may we serve you today?” That was what the occupiers wanted: to have the people they’d conquered serve them.

When the Algarvian answered, it was in classical Kaunian. Talsu and his father exchanged looks of alarm. Talsu remembered scant bits of the old language from his school days, not that he’d had many of those. Traku, further removed and with even less formal schooling, knew only a handful of words. “Do you speak Jelgavan at all, sir?” Talsu asked.

“No,” the redhead answered-in the classical tongue.

Talsu flogged his memory and essayed a few words of classical Kaunian himself: “Talk slow, then.”

“Aye, I shall talk slowly,” the Algarvian said, and then proceeded to start talking too fast. Talsu and Traku both waved their hands in something approaching despair. How dreadful to lose a sale because a foreign soldier spoke the grandfather to their language when they had so little of it themselves. For a wonder, the Algarvian understood the problem. “Here. Is this slow enough?”

“Aye,” Talsu said. “Think so.” He paused again to think. “Want-what?”

“Kilts,” the officer answered. He patted the kilt he was wearing, in case Talsu didn’t get the idea. “Two kilts.” Numbers hadn’t changed much. The Algarvian showed “two” with his fingers anyhow. Instead of thumb and forefinger, he used forefinger and middle finger; to Talsu, that made him seem to give an obscene gesture.

After Talsu translated for his father-which he probably didn’t need to do-Traku nodded. “Aye, I can make ‘em,” he said. “Find out when he wants ‘em, though. That’s the other thing I’ve got to know.”

“I’ll try,” Talsu answered. He looked hopefully at the Algarvian, but the fellow couldn’t have understood a word of Jelgavan. Talsu couldn’t come up with the classical Kaunian word for when, either. He kicked at the floorboards in frustration. But then he had a good idea. Instead of fumbling around for a word he couldn’t find, he pointed to a calendar hanging on the wall behind his father.

“Ah,” the Algarvian said, and then a spate of the classical tongue too fast for Talsu to follow. But he was nodding and smiling, so he must have understood what Talsu meant. To prove he did, he went over and touched the day’s date on the calendar. Then he touched one two weeks hence. Having done so, he looked a question toward Talsu and Traku.

Talsu thought the date looked reasonable, but Traku was the man who had to decide. “Aye,” he said, and then, “as long as the price is right.” He’d been talking as much to his son as to the Algarvian. Now he turned toward the Algarvian and named a price he thought right.

The Algarvian affected not to understand. King Mezentio’s men always overacted in a dicker, though. Traku must have sensed the same thing Talsu did. He found a pencil and a scrap of paper, wrote out the price, and gave it to the Algarvian.

“No,” the fellow said again-the word remained similar to what it had been in the days of the Kaunian Empire. He had a pencil of his own in the breast pocket of his tunic. He scratched out the figure Traku had written and substituted one half as large.

Traku shook his head. To emphasize the point, he crumpled up the piece of paper and tossed it into the trash can. He picked up the cloak he’d been working on and got back to it. “Good day,” Talsu told the Algarvian. He would have enjoyed telling him some other things, too, but didn’t know the words for those in classical Kaunian.

With an exasperated sniff, the redhead opened his belt pouch and took out a sheet of paper of his own. He wrote another price, this one higher. Traku looked at it, shook his head, and kept on sewing. The Algarvian thrust the paper and pencil at him. As if doing the fellow a great favor, Traku wrote a slightly lower price than the one he’d first proposed.

“Haggling with paper and pencil, Father?” Talsu said. “I’ve never seen the like.”

“Neither have I, but I won’t worry about it if I can get the deal I want,” Traku said. “If I can’t, I’ll just keep on doing what I’m doing here.” He spoke slowly and distinctly, in case the Algarvian knew more Jelgavan than he let on.

Pantomime and scribbles took the place of the shouts and insults that often went into a hot dicker. The Algarvian could have taken his act to the stage and made more money than King Mezentio was likely to be paying him. By his agonized grimaces, Traku might have been cutting off his fingers one at a time with pinking shears. Traku’s style was more restrained, but he didn’t bend much. They finally settled on a price closer to his first one than to the redhead’s counteroffer.

“Half now, half on delivery,” Traku said, and Talsu had to try to get that across to the Algarvian. As the fellow had before, he did a good game job of not understanding. At last, looking as if he were biting down hard on a lemon, he paid. Only then did Talsu take out a tape measure and note down his waist size and the length of his kilt. After the measurements were done, the Algarvian bowed and left.

“We’ll make some silver off him,” Traku said.

“Aye,” Talsu agreed. “You fought him hard there.”

“I wish I could have done it with a stick in my hand,” his father answered. Having been too young to fight in the Six Years’ War and too old to be called out with Talsu, Traku imagined army life as being more exciting than the terror-punctuated boredom Talsu had known as a soldier.

“It wouldn’t have made much difference,” Talsu told him, which was undoubtedly true. After a moment, he went on, “Doesn’t seem right, listening to one of Mezentio’s whoresons spouting the old language when we can’t hardly speak it ourselves.”

“That’s a fact,” his father said. “I’m cursed if I know what we can do about it, though. I couldn’t stay in school; I had to buckle down and make a living. And it worked out the same way for you.”

“And if anybody thinks I miss school, he’s daft,” Talsu said. “Still and all, if the Algarvians can speak classical Kaunian, there’s got to be something to it, wouldn’t you say? Otherwise, they wouldn’t have it in their schools.”

“Who knows what the redheads would do?” Traku said.

But Talsu wouldn’t be pushed off his ley line, not even by scorn for the Algarvians. “And they’re wrecking all the monuments from the Kaunian Empire, too,” he persisted. “They know classical Kaunian, and they don’t want us to know anything about the old days. What does that say to you?”

“Says we used to be on top, and they don’t want us knowing about it now that we’re on the bottom,” Traku answered.

Talsu nodded. “That’s what it says to me, too. And if they don’t want me to know it, seems like I ought to, doesn’t it? There’d be people in town who could teach me the old language without putting stripes on my back if I did a verb wrong, I bet.”

His father gave him an odd look. “I thought you were the one who just said he didn’t miss school.”

“It wouldn’t be school, exactly,” Talsu said. “You go to school because you have to, and they make you do things whether you want to or not. This would be different.”

“If you say so.” Traku sounded anything but convinced.

But Talsu answered, “I do say so. And do you know what else? I’d bet plenty I’m not the only one who thinks the same way, either.”

Traku went back to work on the cloak once more. No, keeping the past alive didn’t matter that much to him. It hadn’t mattered to Talsu, either, not till the Algarvian showed greater knowledge of an important part of that past than he had himself. And if other people in Skrunda felt the same way… Talsu didn’t know what would happen then. Finding out might be interesting.

As Krasta was in the habit of doing, she made her way through the Algarvian-occupied west wing of her mansion toward Colonel Lurcanio’s office. She ignored the admiring looks the redheads gave her as she walked past them. No: she didn’t ignore those looks, though she affected to. Had the clerks and soldiers not glanced up as she went past, she would have been offended.

Lurcanio’s new aide, Captain Gradasso, rose, bowed, and spoke in classical Kaunian: “My lady, I am sorry, but the colonel has given me specific orders to the effect that he is not to be disturbed.”

Krasta could be devious, especially where her own advantage was concerned. “I don’t understand a word you’re saying,” she replied in Valmieran. That wasn’t quite true, but Gradasso would have had a hard time proving it. Gradasso, for that matter, would have had a hard time understanding the modern language. Krasta strode past him and into Lurcanio’s office.

Her Algarvian lover stared up from the papers strewn across his desk. “I don’t care to see you right now,” he said. “Didn’t Gradasso tell you as much?”

“Who knows what Gradasso says?” Krasta replied. “The old language is more trouble than it’s worth, if anyone wants to know what I think.”

“Why would anyone want to know that?” Lurcanio sounded genuinely curious.

“Why don’t you care to see me now?” Intent on her own thoughts, Krasta paid no attention to his.

“Why?” Lurcanio echoed. “Because, my rather dear, I have been far too busy, and I will be for quite some time.”

“Doing what?” Krasta demanded. If it didn’t have to do with her, how could it possibly be important?

“Running enemies of my kingdom to earth,” Lurcanio answered; his tone reminded her why she feared him.

Still, she tossed her head, as if deliberately tossing aside the fear. “Why do you need to waste your time doing things like that?” she asked. “Valmiera is yours, after all. Don’t you have more important things to worry about?” Shouldn‘t you be worrying about me? was what she meant.

By the way Lurcanio raised an eyebrow, he understood her perfectly well. “My sweet, nothing in Valmiera is more important to me than the triumph of my kingdom,” he told her. “Nothing. Do you follow that, or shall I draw you a diagram?”

Krasta glared. “I don’t know why I put up with you.”

“No one requires you to do any such thing,” Lurcanio said. “If I do not please you, go find someone else, and I will do the same. It shouldn’t be that hard for either one of us.”

She kept on glaring, harder than ever. As no Valmieran lover had ever done, Lurcanio used indifference as shield and weapon both. He knew he could find another lover without much trouble; plenty of Valmieran women were looking to form connections with the occupiers. If Krasta went looking for another Algarvian, she would have to compete with all of them. Was she likely to find one as well placed as Lurcanio? She didn’t think so. Was she likely to find one as irksome? She doubted that, too, but it counted for less than the other.

“Curse you, you infuriating man!” she snarled.

Colonel Lurcanio bowed in his seat, infuriating her still more. “You are welcome to try,” he said. “I doubt you will have much luck. And now, please leave. I will talk to you more later, but that can keep. My work cannot.”

“Curse you!” Krasta said again-this time, in fact, she shrieked it. She spun on her heel and stomped out, slamming the door behind her as she went. Captain Gradasso stared at her. She made a suggestion she couldn’t possibly have translated into classical Kaunian. Gradasso might not have understood it, but he did realize it was no compliment. That sufficed.

Krasta stalked through the Algarvian functionaries. She made similar incandescent suggestions to the ones who presumed to look at her. Some of them did speak Valmieran, and some of those made suggestions of their own. By the time Krasta got back to her own wing of the mansion, she was in a perfect transport of temper.

She thought about tormenting Bauska, but that was too easy to give her much satisfaction. She thought about going out to the Avenue of Equestrians to wander from shop to shop, but that would make her rage go away. She didn’t want it to go away. She wanted to savor it, as she would have savored a fine ale.

And she wanted to do something with it. She wanted to hit back at Lurcanio, who had provoked it in the first place. With that in mind, she paused somewhere she didn’t usually stop: in front of the large bookcase downstairs. Most of the volumes there had gone unexamined-certainly by her-since the days when her mother and father were still alive.

She pulled one off the shelf. When she blew on it, she raised a puff of dust. She made a mental note to berate the cleaning women, but that could wait. What she had in mind couldn’t. Smiling a predatory smile, she carried the book up to her bedchamber and barred the door behind her.

“Dare me, will he?” she muttered. “Well, I’ll teach him, powers below eat me if I don’t.”

Her heart sank when she opened the volume. All the curses were in classical Kaunian, which meant Krasta didn’t understand at first glance what they would do to an indifferent lover. And, in fact, she had trouble finding one aimed at an indifferent lover. Plenty cursed faithless lovers, but that wasn’t Lurcanio’s flaw-or Krasta didn’t think it was, anyhow.

Even the headings above the spells were written in an annoyingly antique style, halfway back toward the classical language. She considered A conjuring that induceth love between a man and a woman, if it be used in their meats, but then shook her head. She didn’t want to restore Lurcanio’s ardor through magecraft. She wanted to punish him for not having enough.

That a man may be always as a gelded man seemed more promising, and also seemed easy enough to manage. All she needed to do was give Lurcanio a glowworm in his drink. Plenty of them sparked on and off in the garden during mild summer evenings. “That will teach him,” she said, and slammed the book shut.

She hadn’t tried to catch glowworms since she was a little girl, but it didn’t turn out to be hard. Since Lurcanio was too busy with his precious work to bother coming to her bedchamber that evening, he had no way of knowing she went out into the garden and gathered half a dozen in five minutes. She carried them back into the mansion in a little marble box that had once held face powder.

When she got up the next morning, she used the handle of a brush to mash the glowworms into a revolting paste. She reasoned that would be easier to mix into a cup of wine or a mug of ale than would whole bugs. Having a pretty good notion of when the cook would be fixing Lurcanio’s breakfast, she went down to the kitchens just then.

“Aye, milady, it is ready,” the cook said, bowing; Krasta seldom stuck her nose into his domain. “I was setting things on his tray, as a matter of fact.”

“I shall carry it to him,” Krasta said. “We quarreled yesterday, and I want to show him all is forgiven.” The cook bowed again, in acquiescence. If the idea of Krasta forgiving anyone startled him, he gave no outward sign. He simply handed her the tray when it was ready, then held the door open for her so she could take it into the west wing.

Before she got there, she stirred some of the glowworm paste into Lurcanio’s ale. Watching him drink it would be revenge in and of itself, even if the spell didn’t work. But Krasta wanted it to work. Lurcanio enjoyed mocking her. If she left him impotent, she could do the mocking, and could also enjoy acting as seductive as she could, making him pant for what he couldn’t have.

Seeing her with the breakfast tray, Gradasso didn’t try to keep her out of Lurcanio’s office. “What’s this?” Lurcanio said when she came in. “Have we got a new maid?”

“Aye.” Krasta did her best to sound contrite, which wasn’t easy for her. “I was down in the kitchens, and thought I would bring you what the cook had made. And”-she looked down at her toes in pretended maidenly embarrassment-”I thought tonight you might bring me something, too.”

“Did you, now?” Lurcanio boomed laughter. “Some sausage, maybe? Is that it?” Still affecting innocence, Krasta shyly nodded. Lurcanio laughed again, and raised the mug of ale in salute. “Well, since you ask for it so prettily, perhaps I shall.” He drank. Krasta had to fight hard not to hug herself with glee. She wondered if he would notice anything odd about the taste, but he didn’t.

The rest of the day passed most happily. Krasta didn’t scream once at Bauska, not even when her maidservant’s bastard brat spent half an hour howling like a wolf with a toothache. Bauska eyed her as if wondering what was wrong. Most days, that would have been plenty to anger Krasta by itself. Today, she didn’t even notice, which made Bauska more curious and suspicious than ever.

Krasta also ate her own breakfast, and luncheon, and supper, without sending anything back to the cook. By the time evening came around, everyone at the mansion was wondering whether she was really herself-and hoping she wasn’t.

For bed, she put on almost transparent silk pajamas, slid under the covers, and waited. Not too much later, someone knocked on the door to the bedchamber. “Come in,” Krasta said sweetly. “It’s not barred.”

In came Lurcanio. He barred the door, and wasted no time taking off his tunic and kilt. When he flipped back the sheets, he paused a moment to admire Krasta in her filmy nightclothes, then got her out of them. And then, with his usual panache, he proceeded to make love to her. He had no trouble whatever. Krasta was so surprised, she let him bring her to her peak of pleasure before she realized she wasn’t supposed to be enjoying it.

“How did you do that?” she asked, still breathing a little hard.

“How?” Lurcanio leaned up on an elbow and raised an eyebrow. “The usual way. How else?” But he paid more attention to her tone than she was in the habit of giving his. “Why? Did you think I would be unable? Why would you think I might be unable?”

“Well… er … I… uh …” Krasta had seldom made heavier going of an answer.

To her mingled mortification and relief, Lurcanio started to laugh. “Little fool, did you try to curse me with impotence? I told you it was a waste of time. Soldiers are warded against much magic from real mages, let alone from lovers who work themselves into a snit because they don’t get enough attention.” He reached out and stroked her between the legs. “Did you think I paid enough attention to you just now?”

“I suppose so,” she said sulkily.

“If I were younger, I would go another round,” the Algarvian said. “But even though I am not so young, I can still pay you more attention.” He brought his face down where his hand had been. “Is this better?” he asked as he began. Krasta didn’t reply in words, but her back arched. Presently, it was a great deal better indeed.

With a weary sigh, Trasone tramped east, away from the fighting front in southern Unkerlant. “By the powers above, it sure feels good to get pulled out of the line for a few days,” he said.

“Enjoy it while it lasts,” Sergeant Panfilo answered, “on account of it won’t.”

“Don’t I know it?” Trasone said mournfully. “Aren’t enough of us to do all the job that needs doing. I hear tell there are a couple of regiments of Yaninans off on the left of the brigade, because there aren’t enough real Algarvian soldiers to hold the whole line.”

“I’ve heard that, too,” Panfilo said. “I keep hoping it’s a pack of lies.”

“It had better be.” Trasone’s tone was dark. “If the Unkerlanters start running behemoths at a bunch of lousy Yaninans with pom-poms on their shoes, you know what’ll happen as well as I do.”

“They’ll run so fast, they’ll be back in Patras day after tomorrow,” the veteran sergeant replied, and Trasone nodded. Panfilo went on, “Half the time, I think we’d do better if those buggers were on Swemmel’s side instead of ours.”

“Aye.” Trasone trudged on up the road. It was summer, and dry, so a cloud of dust, like thick brown fog, obscured his comrades more than a few yards away. That was better than slogging through mud or snow, but not much. The dead, bloated carcass of a unicorn, feet sticking up in the air, lay by the side of the road. He smelled it before he could see it. Pointing to it, he said, “I thought that was going to be soldiers, not just a beast.”

“The stink’s a little different,” Panfilo said. “Unicorns are. . sweeter, maybe.” His prominent nose wrinkled. “It’s not perfume, though, any which way.”

“Sure isn’t.” Trasone pointed ahead. “What’s the name of that town there? We just took it away from the Unkerlanters last week, and already I can’t remember.”

“Place is called Hagenow,” Panfilo told him. “Not that I care, as long as the lines in front of the brothels don’t stretch around the block, and as long as they’ve got plenty of popskull in the taverns.”

Trasone nodded. Strong spirits and loose women … he was hard pressed to think of anything else he required from a leave in the rear areas. After a moment, though, he did. “Be nice to go to sleep and not worry about waking up with my throat cut.”

“And that’s true, too,” Panfilo said. “If the dice are hot, I’ll win enough silver to make myself armor out of it when I go back.”

“In your dreams,” Trasone said, and then, remembering proper military etiquette, “In your dreams, Sergeant.”

They marched along in silence for a while, two weary, filthy men in a battalion full of soldiers just as weary and just as filthy. From somewhere up ahead, Major Spinello’s bright tenor came drifting back on the breeze. Somehow or other, Spinello kept the energy to sing a dirty song. Trasone envied him without wanting to imitate him.

Something else came drifting back on the breeze, too: a stink of unwashed humanity worse than that rising from the soldiers, along with a strong reek of nasty slit trenches. “Phew!” Trasone said, and coughed. “If that’s Hagenow, the Unkerlanters are welcome to it. I don’t remember that it smelled all that bad when we went through it before.”

“Neither do I.” Panfilo peered ahead, shading his eyes-not that that did much against the dust. Then he pointed. “Look there, Trasone, in that barley field. That’s not Hagenow, not yet. We haven’t gone over the little river in front of it. So what in blazes is that? I’d take oath it wasn’t here when we headed west over this stretch of road.”

“So would I.” Trasone narrowed his eyes, also trying to pierce the dust. After a little while, he grunted. “It’s not a town-it’s a captives’ camp.”

“Ah, you’re right,” Panfilo said. The guards and the palisade around the place helped make its nature clear … or so it seemed. Then a gate opened so more people could go into the camp.

Trasone grunted again. “Those aren’t Unkerlanters-they’re blonds.” His laugh was nasty. “Well, I don’t expect they’ll be in there stinking up the place all that long. And when they go, I hope our mages give Swemmel’s whoresons a good kick in the balls with their life energy.”

“That’s the truth,” Panfilo agreed. “If it weren’t for the Kaunians, we wouldn’t have a war. That’s what everybody says, anyhow, so it’s likely right.”

“Well, by the time this war’s over, there won’t be a whole lot of Kaunians left,” Trasone said. “Maybe that means the next one’ll be a long time coming. Hope so.”

Half an hour later, they got into Hagenow. It was more than a village and less than a city, and had taken a beating when the Algarvians managed to drive the Unkerlanters out of it. Not many Unkerlanters were on the streets now. The ones who were flinched away from the Algarvian soldiers. As far as Trasone was concerned, that was how things were supposed to be.

Major Spinello turned to his men. “Listen, you rogues, I expect you to leave bits and pieces of this town still standing so the next gang of soldiers coming in have somewhere to enjoy themselves, too. Past that, have yourselves a time. Me, I aim to screw myself dizzy.” And off he went, plainly intent on doing just that.

“He’s got it easy,” Trasone said, a little jealous. “He won’t have to stand in line at an officers’ brothel.”

“He pulls his weight,” Panfilo said. “We’ve had plenty of worse officers over us, and cursed few better ones. Go on, tell me I’m wrong.”

“Can’t do it,” Trasone admitted. He pointed to the queue in front of the closest brothel for ordinary troopers. It wasn’t quite so long as Panfilo had feared, but it wasn’t what anybody would call short. “Can’t get my ashes hauled right away, either. Might as well pour down some spirits first.”

An Algarvian soldier served as tapman in a tavern that had surely belonged to an Unkerlanter before Mezentio’s army swept into and then past Hagenow.

Trasone wondered what had happened to the Unkerlanter, but not for long. “What have you got?” he demanded when he elbowed his way up to the bar.

“Ale or spirits,” the fellow answered. “Wasn’t much wine in town, and the officers have it all.”

“Let me have a slug of spirits, then,” Trasone told him, “and some ale to chase it.” The tapman gave him what he asked for. He knocked back the spirits, then put out the fire in his gullet with the ale. Before other thirsty troopers could shove him away from the bar, he got a refill.

He thought about drinking till he couldn’t stand up any more. He thought about getting into a dice game, too. Three or four were going on in the tavern. But he had other things on his mind. He looked around for Panfilo, but didn’t see him-maybe the sergeant had other things on his mind, too.

Panfilo wasn’t in the line Trasone chose. It snaked forward. With a few drinks in him, he didn’t mind it’s not moving faster. When a drunken soldier started cursing how slowly it moved, two military constables hustled him away. Trasone was glad he hadn’t complained.

After what seemed a very long time, he got inside the brothel. In the downstairs parlor sat six or eight weary-looking women in wide-sleeved long tunics of red or green or yellow silk: almost the uniform of whores down in Forthweg or Unkerlant. About half the women were Unkerlanters, the others Kaunians. Blonds didn’t live in this part of Unkerlant; the Algarvian authorities must have shipped them in for their soldiers’ pleasure. They’d likely get shipped off to a captives’ camp when they wore out, too. Trasone thought most Forthwegian women dumpy and plain. He pointed to a Kaunian. She nodded, slowly rose from her chair, and led him upstairs.

In a little room up there, she pulled off her tunic and lay down naked on the pallet. Trasone quickly got out of his own clothes and lay down beside her. When he began to caress her, she said, “Don’t bother. Just get it over with.” She spoke good Algarvian.

“All right,” he said, and did. She lay still under him. Her eyes were open, but she looked up through him, looked up through the ceiling, to somewhere a million miles away. He had to close his own eyes, because the empty expression on her face put him off his stroke. He didn’t think she’d last much longer. When he grunted and spent himself, the whore pushed at him so she could get up and put her tunic back on.

Trasone went back across the street to the tavern and did some more drinking. After a while, he got back into the line for the whorehouse. This time, he chose a Forthwegian woman. She proved a little livelier; he didn’t feel as if he were coupling with a corpse.

The leave passed that way. He had a dreadful hangover when Major Spinello collected the battalion and started everyone toward the front again. Sergeant Panfilo kept bragging about the havoc he’d wreaked in the brothels of Hagenow. Trasone didn’t mind the boasts; he’d heard their like before. But he kept wishing Panfilo wouldn’t talk so loud.

They were marching west past the labor camp when Trasone said, “Look-they’re taking out a bunch of blonds.”

“What are they going to do with ‘em?” Panfilo asked. “And how do you know they aren’t getting away on their own?”

“They’d be running harder if they were getting away, and they wouldn’t have soldiers standing watch over ‘em.” Trasone’s pounding head made him testy. He pointed again. “And look there-those aren’t just soldiers. They’re mages. They’ve got to be. Nobody in uniform who isn’t a mage stumbles around like that.”

Panfilo chuckled. “Well, I won’t say you’re wrong. And if those are mages …” His voice dropped. “If those are mages, I think I know what they’re going to do with the Kaunians. So this is how it goes.”

“Aye, this is how it goes,” Trasone agreed. He’d felt the strong lash of Algarvian sorcery passing over him to fall on the Unkerlanters. And he’d been on the receiving end as the Unkerlanters massacred their own people to build a sorcery to strike back at the Algarvians. But he’d never seen how such mage-craft was made. Now he would, unless his squad marched past before the slaughter began.

They didn’t. The Algarvian soldiers in the field lined the Kaunians up in neat rows. Then, at a shouted order Trasone clearly heard, they raised their sticks and started blazing. The blonds who didn’t fall at once tried to run now. That did them no good. The soldiers kept on blazing, and the Kaunians had no place to flee. After a few minutes, they all lay dead or dying.

And the mages got to work. Trasone could hear their chants rising and falling, too, but couldn’t understand a word of them. After a moment, he realized why: they weren’t incanting in Algarvian, but in classical Kaunian. He started to laugh. If that didn’t serve the blonds right, what did?

He felt the power the mages were raising. The soldiers had killed hundreds of Kaunians. How much life energy was that? He couldn’t measure it-he was no wizard. But it was enough and more than enough to make his hair stand on end under his broad-brimmed hat even though he was getting only the tiniest fringe of it as it built.

Then it flashed away. He could tell the very instant the mages launched it at King Swemmel’s men. The feel of the air changed, as it did just after a thunderclap. All that energy would come down on the Unkerlanters’ heads. He turned to Sergeant Panfilo. “Better them than us,” he said. “Powers above, a lot better them than us.” The sergeant didn’t argue with him.

As always, Marshal Rathar was glad to get out of Cottbus. Away from the capital, he was his own man. When he gave an order, everyone leaped to obey. It was almost like being king. Almost. But he’d seen the kind of obedience King Swemmel commanded. He didn’t have that. He didn’t want it, either.

What he did have was a hard time making his way into the south, where the worst of the fighting was. The Algarvians, having punched through the Unkerlanter defenses, now stood astride most of the direct routes from Cottbus to the south. To get where he was going, Rathar had to travel along three sides of a rectangle, taking a long detour west to use ley lines still in Unkerlanter hands.

When he got to Durrwangen, he wondered if he’d come too late. Algarvian eggs were bursting just outside the city, and some inside it as well. “We have to hold here as long as we can,” he told General Vatran. “This is one of the gateways to the Mamming Hills and the cinnabar in them. We can’t just give it up to the redheads.”

“I know how to read a map, too,” Vatran grunted. “If we don’t hold ‘em here, there’s nowhere else good to try and stop ‘em this side of Sulingen. But the whoresons have the bit between their teeth again, the way they did last summer. How in blazes are we supposed to make ‘em quit?”

“Keep fighting them,” Rathar answered. “Or would you sooner let them have all the cinnabar they need?”

Would you sooner lie down and give up? was what he really meant. He studied Vatran. He’d urged Swemmel to keep the officer in charge down here. Now he was wondering if he’d made a mistake. Vatran’s attack south of Aspang had failed. There were reasons it had failed; neither Vatran nor any other Unkerlanter had realized the Algarvians were concentrating so many men in the south. But Vatran hadn’t covered himself with glory since, either. The question was, could anyone else have done better?

Vatran understood that question behind the question. He glared up at Rathar, who stood a couple of inches taller. Vatran’s nose was sharp and curved as a sickle blade; had it been one in truth, he might have used it to cut the marshal down. “If you don’t care for the job I’m doing,” he ground out, “give me a stick, take the stars off my collar, and send me out against the Algarvians as a common soldier.”

“I didn’t come here to put you in a penalty battalion,” Rathar answered mildly. Officers who disgraced themselves sometimes got the chance for redemption by fighting as ordinary soldiers. Penalty battalions went in where the fighting was hottest. Men who lived got their rank back. Most didn’t.

“Well, then, let’s talk about how we’re going to hold on to what we can down here,” Vatran said.

That was a good, sensible suggestion. Before Rathar could take him up on it, eggs crashed down around the schoolhouse Vatran was using for a headquarters. Rathar threw himself fiat. So did Vatran and all the junior officers in the chamber. Most of the glass in the windows had already been shattered. What was left flew through the air in glittering, deadly arcs. A spearlike shard stuck in the floorboards a few inches from Rathar’s nose.

“Never a dull moment,” Vatran said when the eggs stopped falling. “Where were we?”

“Trying to stay alive,” Rathar answered, getting to his feet. “Trying to keep our armies alive, too.”

“If you know a magic to manage it, I hope you’ll tell me,” Vatran answered. “The Algarvians have more skill than we do; the only thing we can do to stop ‘em is put more bodies in their way. We’re doing that, as best we can.”

“We have to do it better,” the marshal said. “Down here now, it’s the way things were in front of Cottbus last fall; we haven’t got a lot of room to fall back. If we do, we lose things we can’t afford to lose.”

“I know that,” Vatran said. “I need more of everything-dragons, behemoths, men, crystals, you name it.”

“And you’ll have what you need-or as much of it as we can get to you, anyhow,” Rathar told him. “Moving things down from the north isn’t easy these days, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“I’ll bet you did.” By the look Vatran gave Rathar, he would have been just as well pleased if the marshal hadn’t been able to come down from Cottbus.

In a way, Rathar sympathized with that. No general worth his salt should have been eager to have a superior looking over his shoulder. Had the fight in the south been going well, Rathar would have stayed up in the capital, even if that meant enduring King Swemmel. But, with the Algarvians bulling forward, Vatran could hardly expect to have everything exactly as he wanted.

Rathar asked the question that had to be asked: “Will we hold Durrwangen?”

“I hope so,” General Vatran answered. Then his broad shoulders moved up and down in a shrug that held none of the jauntiness an Algarvian would have given it. “I don’t know, Marshal. To tell the truth, I just don’t know. The cursed redheads have been moving awful fast. And…” He hesitated before going on, “And the soldiers aren’t as happy as they might be, either.”

“No?” Rathar’s ears pricked up. “You’d better tell me more about that, and you’d better not waste any time doing it, either.”

“It’s about what you’d expect,” the general said. “They’ve been licked too many times, and some of ‘em don’t see how anything different’s going to happen when they bump up against the Algarvians again.”

“That’s not good,” Rathar said in what he thought a commendable understatement. “I haven’t seen anything about it in your written reports.”

“No, and you won’t, either,” Vatran told him. “D’you think I’m daft, to put it in writing where his Majesty could see it? My head would go up on a pike five minutes later-unless he decided to boil me alive instead.” He spread his hands-broad peasant hands, much like Rathar’s. “You hold my life, lord Marshal. If you want it, you can take it. But you need to know the truth.”

“For which I thank you.” Rathar again wondered whether he wanted Vatran dead. Probably not: who could have done better here in the south? No one he could think of, save perhaps himself. “Don’t the men remember what we did to the Algarvians last winter?”

“No doubt some of ‘em do,” Vatran answered. “But it’s not winter now, and it won’t be for a while, even down here. And in summer, when their dragons can fly and their behemoths can run, nobody’s beaten Mezentio’s men yet.”

“We’ve made them earn it,” Rathar said. “If we can keep on making them earn it, sooner or later they’ll run out of men.”

“Aye,” Vatran said, “either that or we’ll run out of land we can afford to lose. If we don’t hold Sulingen and the Mamming Hills, can we keep on with the war?”

People had asked that about Cottbus the summer before. Unkerlant hadn’t had to find out the answer, for the capital had held. Rathar hoped his kingdom wouldn’t have to find out the answer this time, either. He had no guarantee, though, and neither did Unkerlant.

Doing his best to look on the bright side of things, he said, “I hear they’re starting to put Yaninans in the line. They wouldn’t do that if they didn’t have to.”

“That’s so-to a point,” Vatran said. “But they’re no fools. They wouldn’t be so dangerous if they were. They give the boys with the pretty shoes the quiet stretches to hold. That lets them concentrate more of their own men where they have to do real fighting.”

Before Rathar could reply, more eggs fell on Durrwangen. Again, he and Vatran stretched themselves on the floor. The schoolhouse shook and creaked all around them. Rathar hoped the roof wouldn’t come down on his head.

Still more eggs fell. The Algarvians couldn’t have moved so many tossers so far forward … could they? More likely, dragons with redheads atop them were dropping their loads of death on the Unkerlanter city. And Vatran had already said he lacked the dragons to repel them.

A runner with more courage than sense rushed into Vatran’s headquarters even while the eggs were falling. “General!” he cried. “General!” By his tone, Rathar knew something had gone badly wrong. Sure enough, the fellow went on, “General, the Algarvians have broken through our lines west of the city. If we can’t stop them, they’ll slide around behind us and cut us off!”

“What?” Vatran and Rathar said the same thing at the same time in identical tones of horror. Both men cursed. Then Vatran, who know the local situation better, demanded, “What happened to the brigades that were supposed to hold the buggers back?”

Unhappily, the runner answered, “Uh, some of them, sir, some of them went and skedaddled, fast as they could go.”

Rathar cursed again. In a low voice, Vatran said, “Now you see what I meant.”

“I see it,” the marshal said. “I see we’ll have to stop it, too, before the rot gets worse.” He climbed to his feet. The runner stared at him. “How bad a breakthrough is it?” he snapped.

“Pretty bad, sir,” the messenger replied. “They’ve got behemoths through, and plenty of footsoldiers with ‘em. They’re astride-no, they’re past-the ley line leading west out of Durrwangen.”

That was also Rathar’s most direct route back to Cottbus, not that any route from the embattled south to the capital was direct these days. “Can we drive them back?” he asked both the runner and General Vatran.

“Sir-uh, lord Marshal-the redheads have pushed a lot of men through,” the runner said. His gaze swung toward Vatran.

So did Rathar’s. Vatran licked his lips. “I don’t know where we could scrape up the men,” he said at last, most unhappily. “And coming at Durrwan-gen from out of the west! Who would have thought the Algarvians-who would have thought anybody-could come at Durrwangen from out of the west? We haven’t got the defenses there that we do east of the city.”

“Probably why the Algarvians chose that direction for their attack,” Rathar said. Vatran gaped at him as if he’d suddenly started declaiming poetry in Gyongyosian. The marshal repeated the question he’d asked before: “Can we hold Durrwangen?”

“I don’t see how, lord Marshal,” Vatran answered.

“I don’t, either, but I was hoping you did, since you’ve been on the spot here longer than I have,” Rathar said. “Since we can’t hold the place, we’d better save what we can when we pull out, don’t you think?”

A loud thud outside the schoolhouse-not a bursting egg, but a heavy weight falling from a great height-made Vatran smile savagely. “That’s a dragon blazed out of the sky,” he said, as if one downed Algarvian dragon made up for all disasters. “Aye, we’ll get out and we’ll keep fighting.”

“And we’d better make sure there are no more skedaddles,” Rathar said. “Whatever we have to do to stop them, we’d best do it.” King Swemmel might have spoken through his mouth. He was ready to be as harsh as Swemmel, to get what he had to have-no, what Unkerlant had to have. Somewhere not far away, another dragon slammed to the ground. Rathar nodded. Once more, the Algarvians were paying a price.

Along with his men, Leudast squatted in a field of sunflowers. It would have been a dangerous place to have to fight. With the plants nodding taller than a man, the only way to find a foe would be to stumble onto him.

For the moment, the Algarvians were a couple of miles to the north-or so Leudast hoped with all his heart. He leaned forward to listen to what Captain Hawart had to say. The regimental commander spoke in matter-of-fact tones: “The kingdom is in danger, boys. If we don’t stop Mezentio’s whoresons before too long, it won’t matter anymore, because we’re licked.”

“You wouldn’t be talking like that if we’d hung on to Durrwangen,” somebody said.

“That’s so, but we didn’t,” Hawart answered. “And some soldiers got blazed because they didn’t fight hard enough, too. Not just ground-pounders, either; there are a couple of dead brigadiers on account of that mess.”

“We’ve done everything we could.” That voice came from behind Hawart. Leudast didn’t see who’d spoken up there, either. Whoever it was hadn’t stood up and waved, that was for sure. Leudast wouldn’t have, either, not if he’d said something like that.

The regimental commander whirled, trying to catch the soldier who’d let his mouth run. Captain Hawart couldn’t, which meant he glared at everyone impartially. “Listen to me,” he said. “You’d cursed well better listen to me, or you’ll all be dead men. If the Algarvians don’t kill you, your own comrades will. It’s that bad. It’s that dangerous. We can’t fall back any more.”

“What’s this about our comrades, sir?” Leudast said. Hawart had ordered him to ask the question.

With a flourish, Captain Hawart took from his belt pouch a sheet of paper. He waved it about before beginning to read it. Leudast watched the soldiers’ eyes follow the sheet. A lot of the men were peasants who could no more read than they could fly. To them, anything on paper seemed more important, more portentous, simply because it was written down.

Leudast knew better, at least most of the time. But Hawart had told him what this paper was. Now the officer explained it to the rest of the regiment: “This is an order from King Swemmel. Not from our division headquarters. Not from General Vatran. Not even from Marshal Rathar, powers above praise him. From the king. So you’d better listen, boys, and you’d better listen good.”

And the troopers he commanded did lean forward so they could hear better. The king’s name made them pay attention. Leudast knew it made him pay attention. He also knew he didn’t want the king or the king’s minions paying attention to him, which they were too likely to do if he disobeyed a royal order even to the slightest degree.

“Not one step back!” Hawart read in ringing tones. “Iron discipline. Iron discipline won the day for the right in the Twinkings War. Even when things looked blackest, our army held firm against the traitors and rebels who fought for that demon in human shape, Kyot.”

Kyot, of course, had been Swemmel’s twin brother: an inconvenient twin, who refused to admit he was the younger of them. He’d paid for his claim. The whole kingdom had paid-and paid, and paid. But if Kyot was a demon in human shape and was also Swemmel’s twin, what did that make the present king of Unkerlant?

Before Leudast could dwell on that for very long, Hawart went on, “The Algarvian invaders shall not be permitted to advance one foot farther onto the precious soil of Unkerlant. Our soldiers are to die in place before yielding any further territory to Mezentio’s butchers and wolves. The enemy must be checked, must be halted, must be driven back. Any soldiers who shirk this task shall face our wrath, which, we assure all who hear these words, shall blaze hotter than anything the redheaded mumblers can possibly inflict on you.”

Here and there, soldiers looked at one another. Leudast looked up at the sky and the nodding sunflowers. He did not want to have to try to meet anyone else’s eyes. From everything he’d heard, from everything he’d seen, Swemmel was neither lying nor boasting. However much Leudast feared the Algarvians, he feared his own sovereign more.

“Any soldier who retreats without orders shall be reckoned a traitor against us; and shall be punished as befits treason,” Hawart read. “Any officer who gives the order to retreat without direst need shall be judged likewise. Our inspectors and impressers shall enforce this command by all necessary means.”

“What does that mean?” Haifa dozen soldiers asked the question out loud. Leudast didn’t, but it blazed in his mind, too. After the impressers caught him and made sure he had a rock-gray tunic on his back, he’d thought he was done worrying about them. Was he wrong?

Evidently he was, for Captain Hawart said, “I’ll tell you what it means, boys. Somewhere back of the army, there’s a thin line of impressers and inspectors. Every one of them has a stick in his hands. You try running away, those buggers’d just as soon blaze you as look at you.”

Leudast believed him. By the way soldiers’ heads bobbed up and down, everybody believed him. Anyone who’d ever dealt with inspectors and impressers could have no possible doubt that they would blaze their own countrymen. But how many of them would get blazed in return while they were doing it?

No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than he shied away from it, as a unicorn might shy from a buzzing fly. If Unkerlanters began battling Unkerlanters, if the Twinkings War, or even some tiny portion of it, visited the kingdom once again, what would spring from it? Why, Algarvian conquest, and nothing else Leudast could see.

“So,” Hawart said. “There it is, lads. We don’t go back any more, not if there’s any help for it. We go forward when we can, we die in place when there’s no other choice, and we don’t go back, not unless.. ” He paused and shook his head. “We don’t go back. We can’t afford to, not anymore.”

“You heard the captain,” Leudast growled, as any sergeant might have after an officer gave orders. He’d heard the captain, too, and wished he hadn’t. Swemmel’s orders left no room for misunderstanding.

Hawart put the paper back into his belt pouch. He had to look up, orienting himself by the sun, before he could point east and north. “That’s where the Algarvians are,” he said. “Let’s go find them and give them a good boot in the arse. They’ve already done it to us too many times.”

“Aye,” Leudast said. A few other troopers snarled agreement. But most of the men, though they obeyed Hawart readily enough, did so without any great eagerness. They’d seen enough action by now to understand how hard it was to halt the redheads in the open field. Leudast had seen more action than almost any of them. He wondered why he retained enough enthusiasm to want to go forward against the Algarvians. I’m probably too stupid to know better, he thought.

Sunflower leaves rustled, brushing against his tunic and those of his comrades. Dry, fallen leaves crunched under his boots. The plants bobbed and shook as he pushed his way through them. The sunflowers were taller than a man, but an alert Algarvian with a spyglass could have tracked from afar the marching Unkerlanters by the way the plants moved without a breeze to stir them. Leudast hoped Mezentio’s men weren’t so alert-and also hoped that, even if they were, they had no egg-tossers nearby.

Coming out from among the sunflowers was almost like breaking the surface after swimming underwater in a pond: Leudast could suddenly see much farther than he had been able to. Ahead lay the village whose peasants would have harvested the sunflowers. Dragons-perhaps Algarvian but perhaps Unkerlanter, too-had visited destruction on it from the air. Only a few huts still stood. The rest were either blackened ruins or had simply ceased to be.

People moved amongst the ruins, though. For a moment, Leudast admired the tenacity of his countrymen. Who but Unkerlanter peasants would have tried so hard to go on with their lives even in the midst of war’s devastation?

Then he stiffened. Unkerlanters would have been more solidly made than these tall, scrawny apparitions. And no matter how tall and scrawny Unkerlanters might have been, they would never, ever, have worn kilts.

Leudast’s body realized that faster than his mind. He threw himself to the ground. At the same time, someone else shouted, “Algarvians!”

“Forward!” Captain Hawart called: he was going to obey King Swemmel’s order. Or die trying, Leudast thought. But Hawart didn’t want to do any more dying than he had to, for he added, “Forward by rushes!”

“My company-even squads forward!” Leudast commanded. He got up and went forward with the even-numbered squads. He’d learned from Hawart not to order anything he wouldn’t do himself. The men in the odd-numbered squads blazed at the Algarvians in the village ahead. As Leudast dove to the ground again, he wondered how many Algarvians the village held and how many more were close enough to join the fight. He’d find out before long.

He’d done a good job of teaching the raw recruits who flooded into his company’s ranks what needed doing. Even before he screamed the next order, the soldiers from the odd-numbered squads were running past their comrades and toward the Algarvians in the village. He blazed at the redheads. The range was still long for a handheld stick, but beams zipping past them and starting house fires would make Mezentio’s men keep their heads down and interfere with their blazing.

Captain Hawart’s regiment had worked its way across half the open country between the edge of the sunflower field and the village when eggs began dropping on the Unkerlanter soldiers. Leudast cursed in weary frustration. He’d seen that sort of thing happen too many times before. The Algarvians had too many crystals and used them too well to make them easy foes.

But the Unkerlanters kept moving forward. More slowly than they should have, their egg-tossers started pounding the village. The huts that were still standing went to pieces. “We can do it!” Leudast shouted to his men. He hadn’t seen any reinforcements running up to bolster the redheads in the place. It would be hard work, expensive work-it would probably get down to knives in the end-but he didn’t think the Algarvians could hold against a regiment.

He’d just got to his feet for another rush toward the village when dragons swooped down on his comrades and him. His first warning was a harsh, hideous screech that seemed to sound right in his ear. A moment later, with a belching roar like a hundred men puking side by side, a dragon painted in bright Algarvian colors poured flame over half a dozen Unkerlanters.

Leudast dove for cover and blazed at dragons and dragonfliers. The redheads aboard the dragons were blazing at soldiers on the ground, too. Other dragonfliers let eggs fall from hardly more than treetop height. They burst among King Swemmel’s men with deadly effect.

“Behemoths!” This summer, the cry wasn’t usually so full of panic and despair as it had been the year before. Now. .

Now, seeing the regiment falling to pieces around him, Leudast shouted, “Back!” A moment later, others took up the cry. The Unkerlanters who still lived stumbled and staggered off toward the sunflowers from which they’d emerged. King Swemmel could give whatever orders he liked. In the face of overwhelming enemy superiority, not even fear of him would make his men obey.