He made for the grocer’s shop his father-in-law ran. Maybe Gailisa would be there. If she wasn’t, her father would surely know where she was—and he would know about Talsu’s mother and father and sister, too.
But the grocer’s shop wasn’t there anymore. Talsu stared in startled dismay. He’d been away from Skrunda for a couple of months now. How many times had dragons come over the town and dropped eggs on it? In one of those visits, the grocer’s shop had gone up in flames, as his own family’s tailor’s shop had earlier. Now he had to hurry toward the tent city on the west side of town, where refugees like his family had been staying. Maybe he could find Gailisa’s father there, too.
Maybe Gailisa’s father and Gailisa herself had been in the grocer’s shop when eggs fell on and around it. Talsu tried not to think about that.
A couple of people who knew him nodded cautiously as he hurried past them. A couple of others turned their backs. Some folk in Skrunda still thought the Algarvians had let him out of their dungeon because he’d betrayed his countrymen for them. There was very little truth in that, but how could he prove it?
He was about the plunge into the tent city and make for the tent where he’d been sheltering before he had to flee when someone called his name: “Talsu!”
“Ausra!” he said, whirling toward his sister, recognizing her voice even before he saw her. She threw herself into his arms. He squeezed the breath out of her and kissed her on the cheek. “Are you all right? Is Gailisa? Are Father and Mother?”
“Aye, we’re all fine,” she answered, and he kissed her again, harder this time. But she went on, “Gailisa’s father …”
“Oh, powers above!” Talsu said. “I saw the shop on the way here. He didn’t get out?”
Ausra shook her head. “I’m afraid not. Gailisa’s taken it pretty hard.”
“I believe that,” Talsu said, though he’d always thought of his father-in-law as a plump, not particularly good-natured nonentity, one of the least interesting people he’d ever known. “When did it happen? The ruins looked pretty fresh.”
“Just last week,” his sister told him. He ground his teeth. Ausra took his arm. “But come on. I don’t think the redheads are looking for you anymore.”
“I didn’t see any Algarvians in town,” Talsu said, “and I think Skrunda is as good as free, because the Kuusamans have broken through beyond the town, and the redheads will have to pull back or be trapped.”
“How do you know that?” Ausra asked.
“Because I showed the Kuusamans the route they could use to break through,” Talsu answered proudly. This time, Ausra kissed him.
That was nice, but the looks on the faces of Traku and Laitsina and, best of all, Gailisa were finer still a couple of minutes later. And kissing his wife was ever so much finer than kissing his sister. “You’re home!” Gailisa said. “You’re safe!” She started to laugh and cry at the same time.
“I’m home. I’m safe,” he agreed. “And we’re free. We’re rid of the redheads for good.”
“Here you go, Sergeant,” Kun said as he and Istvan cut wood together in the captives’ camp on Obuda. “You might want these.” He took a few sickly-green leaves from his pocket and held them out to Istvan.
“Oh, I might, might I?” Istvan didn’t take the rather wilted leaves. “Stars above, why?”
Kun leaned closer and spoke in a hissing whisper: “Because they’ll give you a good two-day dose of the galloping shits, that’s why.”
Istvan gaped at him. “Are you out of your mind? Why would I want a dose of the shits? They’re too stinking easy to get here anyway, the kind of slop the slanteyes feed us.”
“Will you take the accursed weeds before the guards start giving us the fishy stares?” Kun snapped. Startled—Kun didn’t usually sound so vehement—Istvan did stick the leaves in his own pocket and go back to chopping. Kun started swinging his axe again, too. Nodding, he said, “That’s more like it.”
“More like what?” Istvan said plaintively. “I still haven’t got the faintest idea what under the light of the stars you’re talking about.”
Corporal Kun rolled his eyes, as he had a habit of doing when sorely tried. “You’re such a natural-born innocent, who can guess how you’ve managed to live this long? But if you’ve got any sense at all, you’ll chew those leaves tonight right around suppertime.” His axe bit into a chunk of pine. Chips flew. He smote again. The chunk split in two.
“I’m not going to do any such thing till you tell me why and have it make sense,” Istvan said stubbornly.
That only made Kun roll his eyes again. “Just as you say, then.” He was most dangerous when most exquisitely polite. “Tonight, you’ve got yourself a choice. You can leak out your arsehole and go into the infirmary and feel better in a couple of days, or else you can leak out of a cut throat and not feel better ever again. That’s it. Depending on how you choose, it may be the last choice you ever get to make.”
“Oh!” No matter how naive Istvan was, he couldn’t very well misunderstand that. He attacked the chunk of pine in front of him with more violence than it really needed. “They’re going to do it tonight?”
“No, I just want to give you the shits,” Kun replied. “That way, when you get over them, you can come back and beat the stuffing out of me. I really enjoy having people beat the stuffing out of me, especially when they’re twice my size.”
“You have leaves of your own?” Istvan asked.
“Of course not,” the former mage’s apprentice said. “I really enjoy having my own throat cut, too, so I gave you all the leaves I had.”
Istvan’s ears heated. Maybe Kun didn’t deliberately treat him as if he were an idiot. On the other hand, maybe Kun did, too—and maybe he’d earned it with that particular question. But he didn’t worry about it for long. He asked, “Did you give Szonyi some of these precious leaves, too?”
If he’d hit the wood harder than he had to, Kun splintered the piece in front of him with his next couple of blows. At last, he answered, “I tried to give him some, but he wouldn’t let me. He’d rather take his chances with Captain Frigyes. You can, too, if you think he and the Algarvians and Major Borsos will really do anything worthwhile.”
Istvan wished he thought that. Dying for Gyongyos … What could be more fitting for a warrior from a warrior race? But he wouldn’t be dying for Gyongyos here; he was too mournfully sure of that. He would be dying for Captain Frigyes, for no one and nothing else. Even if Frigyes and Borsos and the redheads made a sorcery to blast the island of Obuda down to the bottom of the Bothnian Ocean, how much would that help Gyongyos and Ekrekek Arpad in the war against Kuusamo? Not very much, not so far as Istvan could see.
“Never mind,” he said. Now that it came down to the sticking point, he couldn’t stomach betraying his countrymen’s plot to the Kuusamans, but he didn’t want to be part of it, either. Escaping with a sore belly seemed a better way out of the dilemma than most. “I just wish you could have got Szonyi to see sense.”
“So do I,” Kun told him. “But he’s not in the mood to listen. And he told me, ‘Don’t waste the sergeant’s time, getting him to nag me, either. I know what I’m doing.’ I don’t think he does, but…” He shrugged.
“I’m glad you tried,” Istvan said. He also resolved to try to talk to Szonyi himself, no matter what the trooper had told Kun. Wood-chopping seemed to take forever. At last, the guards released the labor detail. Istvan hurried off to try to find his longtime comrade.
But Szonyi wouldn’t talk to him, not about that. “I’ve made up my mind,” was all he would say. “I’d rather go out giving the enemy one more lick than spend the rest of my days rotting away here on Obuda.”
Istvan found no good reply to that. He finally set his hand on Szonyi’s shoulder and said, “May the stars enfold you in their light forevermore, then.”
“May it be so.” Szonyi gave him an anxious glance. “You and Kun won’t betray us, will you? I know you’ve talked about it.”
<
br /> “No, by the stars, neither one of us,” Istvan said. “May they leave us in eternal darkness if I lie. I just don’t think you’ll do as much as Captain Frigyes thinks you will.”
“I think you’re wrong, Sergeant.” Szonyi turned away. Istvan started to argue some more, then saw it would do no good. He walked off, shaking his head.
When he saw Kun a few minutes later, the one-time mage’s apprentice raised a questioning eyebrow. Istvan shook his head. Kun sighed and shrugged.
Along with their suppers, both of them ate the leaves. Istvan had expected, or at least hoped for, a little leisure before they acted and a little dignity while they were working. He got neither. The effect put him in mind of having an egg burst in the middle of his guts. Both he and Kun raced for the latrines at a dead run. Kun’s face was pale as milk. Istvan had no doubt he looked the same way.
Neither of them made it to the slit trenches. They both had to yank down their leggings and squat in the middle of the compound while guards cursed them in Kuusaman and Gyongyosian. Istvan stayed on the ground, clutching at his belly. Kun tried to get to his feet, then sank down again. “Must be something we ate,” he moaned. That was true, too, if not quite in the way he meant it.
The guards had to drag them to the infirmary. They threw them onto cots in a room of their own and gave them chamber pots. That suited Istvan perfectly. He spent a lot of unpleasant time squatting over his as night replaced day.
“When?” he asked Kun when they chanced to be squatting side by side.
“I don’t know,” Kun answered. “We’ll find out when it happens. In the meantime, shut up.” That was doubtless good advice. Istvan tried to tell his guts the same thing. They wouldn’t listen to him.
At some point that evening, Istvan asked, “What time is it now?” Since things had started for him, he’d lost a good deal of interest in the outside world, but that still mattered.
Not to Kun, not at the moment. “I don’t know, and I don’t care,” he grunted. That he was squatting again no doubt made him even shorter with questions than he would have been otherwise. After a bit, he added, “And I already told you to shut up. Who knows who’s liable to be listening?”
Istvan guessed—and it was only a guess—he fell into an exhausted sleep somewhere around midnight. He knew he hadn’t been asleep very long before getting jolted awake by a short, sharp earthquake. He dove under his bed, as he would have done back in his home valley, and hoped the roof wouldn’t come down on his head.
Although Kun came from Gyorvar, he knew enough to dive under his cot, too; most of Gyongyos was earthquake country. Through the roar of the ground and the shudder of the infirmary all around them, he shouted, “This isn’t just a regular earthquake.”
“So what?” Istvan shouted back. “That doesn’t mean it can’t kill us.” Kun didn’t answer that. Istvan concluded that, for once, he’d out-argued his clever comrade.
Even after the ground stopped shaking, rending and tearing noises went on and on, most of them from outside the captives’ camp. Kun stayed right where he was. Istvan started to come out, but seeing Kun on his belly made him decide not going anywhere might be a good idea. Kun said, “Well, they managed to get the spell to work, no doubt about it.”
“So they did,” Istvan said. “Now, what have they done with it? If they’ve done enough …” If they’ve done enough, maybe I should have let them cut my throat. Maybe the stars will turn away from my spirit and leave it in eternal darkness. Am I accursed for cowardice?
Kun said, “We won’t find out till morning at the earliest.” If he felt the least bit guilty about remaining alive where his comrades had perished, he showed no sign that Istvan could see.
And a Gyongyosian captive in the next chamber of the infirmary proved him wrong a moment later, calling, “By the stars, half the walls have fallen down!”
“We could escape!” Istvan exclaimed.
“Go ahead,” Kun said. “If you want to skulk through the woods up on the slopes of Mount Sorong till the Kuusamans hunt you down with dogs, go right ahead. Me, I don’t see much point to it. If I thought we could get back to an island we still held, or even one where we were still fighting, that’d be different. As things are …” He shook his head. “No, thanks.”
That made more sense than Istvan wished it would have. Some of his countrymen thought otherwise. Outside the infirmary, booted feet pounded across dirt toward what had been the palisade. A Kuusaman shouted in bad Gyongyosian: “To halt! To halt or to blaze!” Those feet kept running. A moment later, a shriek rang out, and then another one. After that, Istvan heard no more running feet inside the captives’ camp.
And then, a few minutes later—after he and Kun had cautiously emerged from their shelter—he did. All the shouting this time was in Kuusaman, which he didn’t understand. “The slanteyes will have found the bodies,” Kun said.
“Do you know that, or are you just guessing?” Istvan asked. It did strike him as a good guess.
“I can understand some of what they’re saying,” Kun answered. “Not a lot—Kuusaman is a peculiar language, if anyone wants to know what I think: much worse than Unkerlanter—but enough.”
All Istvan had ever learned of either were such phrases as, Hands high! and Come out of there! “I’ll take your word for it,” he said.
A Kuusaman guard charged into their chamber, stick at the ready. He looked at them, saw they were where they were supposed to be and not making trouble, and relaxed a little. Sounding innocent, Kun asked, “What happened?”
“Magic,” the guard answered. “Bad magic. Many to be dead.” His Gyongyosian was halting but understandable. “To kill themselves to make magic. Bad. Very bad.” Shaking his head, he backed out of the room.
Istvan sniffed. “I smell smoke.”
“Aye, something’s burning,” Kun agreed. He sniffed, too. “Not close, I don’t think. Nothing we have to worry about.” He paused, then went on, “That guard was right, you know. It was bad magic, and I don’t care that our allies used it first.”
“Neither do I,” Istvan said, and did his best to believe he was telling the truth.
When the sun rose, he peered eagerly out the window. Sure enough, most of the walls were down, but the Kuusamans had posted an armed man every ten feet or so to prevent escapes. The ley-line depot was also wrecked, and the smoke, he found, came from the direction of the port the Kuusamans had built: he could see as much through the gaps in what had been the palisade. But he could also see that the Kuusamans remained in firm control of the island of Obuda, regardless of what Frigyes and Borsos and the redheads and—most important—Szonyi and the other Gyongyosians who’d laid down their lives had done.
“It was a waste of magic,” he said, and would have felt vindicated if he hadn’t felt so bad.
“Halt!” Garivald called. “What are you doing?” Seeing any movement was enough to make him swing his stick toward it.
What he saw in the bridgehead by Eoforwic wasn’t an Algarvian soldier, but a gray-bearded Forthwegian with a stooped back. When the old man smiled a placating smile, he showed a mouth full of bad teeth. “Nothing, sir,” he said. “I’m only … mushrooms.”
Garivald didn’t know the missing word, but had no trouble figuring out what it meant. Even a Grelzer could follow bits and pieces of Forthwegian, just as the locals could understand a little of what he said. “Come with me,” he commanded. “Come with me to my lieutenant.”
“Why?” the Forthwegian asked. His smile got wider. He said something else. Garivald couldn’t understand it, but could make a good guess—probably something like, I wasn‘t doing any harm.
He shrugged. “Come,” he repeated. “Orders. All civilians to be questioned when they’re found where they’re not supposed to be.”
“Only mushrooms,” the Forthwegian said. He held up his basket, then held it out to Garivald. “I’ll give them to you.”
“No.” Garivald liked mushrooms, but not so much as the locals did— cer
tainly not enough to let himself be bribed with them. “Come along right now, or you’ll be sorry.”
Muttering under his breath, the old man came. None of what he said sounded like a compliment. As they went deeper into the bridgehead, he spoke a few words Garivald could understand: “Need to piss.”
“Later.” With a stick in his hand, Garivald could afford to be heartless.
But the old man whined, “Need to piss,” again with such dramatic urgency that Garivald relented. He pointed to a stout tree somehow still standing despite all the eggs that had landed on the bridgehead.
The old man disappeared behind it. Perhaps a heartbeat slower than it should have, that roused Garivald’s suspicions. “Hey! What are you doing back there?” he barked, and hurried over to find out for himself. The old man wasn’t standing there easing himself. He was loping toward a fallen tree not far away, keeping the still-standing one between himself and where Garivald had been. “Halt!” Garivald shouted again.
The old man ran harder than ever. Nobody, though, nobody could outrun a beam. Garivald’s caught him in the middle of the back just as he was about to dive behind the tree trunk. He shrieked and went over on his face.
He was still moving feebly when Garivald trotted up to him. With a glare, he said something Garivald couldn’t understand: the blood running from his mouth garbled it. Whatever it was, it didn’t sound like Forthwegian. Garivald wished he hadn’t blazed to kill—but that, he’d found, was almost always what a soldier intended to do. He hadn’t thought of doing anything else till much too late.
With a last unintelligible mumble, the old man died. Garivald knew the exact instant life left his body, for his looks changed in that instant. Suddenly, he no longer looked like a Forthwegian, but like an Algarvian who’d let his beard grow out, as Forthwegians were in the habit of doing.
“Magic!” Garivald exclaimed. His hands twisted in the sign Grelzers used when they ran across magecraft where they didn’t expect to. In an abstract way, he admired the redhead’s thoroughgoing imposture. It wasn’t just the beard: the fellow had spoken good, maybe perfect, Forthwegian, and had even acted as if he liked mushrooms, which Mezentio’s men weren’t in the habit of doing.
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