Leiferde wasn’t on a ley line, but didn’t lie far from one. Leudast needed only half a day to get to the village. After so long cooped up on the wagon and the caravan, getting down and using his own legs felt good. The sun was sliding down the sky toward the western horizon when he strode up the dusty main street. Women peered at him from their vegetable plots and herb gardens. “A soldier,” he heard them murmur. “What’s a soldier doing here now?”
He knocked on the door at Alize’s house. He’d hoped she would open it herself, but she didn’t. Her mother did--a woman who looked much the way Alize would in twenty years or so. “Hullo, Bertrude,” Leudast said, pleased he remembered her name.
The woman’s jaw dropped. “Powers above!” she exclaimed. “You’re that lieutenant. How are you, your Excellency?” She curtsied.
“I’m fine, thank you.” Leudast had never said he was a nobleman. On the other hand, he’d never said he wasn’t. He asked the question that needed asking: “Is Alize anywhere about?”
“She’s out in the fields. She’ll be back for supper,” Bertrude answered. “That shouldn’t be long, sir. Won’t you come in and share what we have?”
“If it’s not too much trouble, and if you have enough,” Leudast said. “I know how things are these days.”
But Bertrude shook her head. “It’s no trouble at all, and we’ve got plenty,” she said firmly. “Come have something to drink while you wait.”
Leudast found the world a rosier place after pouring down most of a mug of spirits. He was fighting to stay awake when Alize and her father, Akerin, walked in. “Leudast!” Alize said, and threw herself into his arms. Her face against his shoulder, she added, “What are you doing here?”
“With the war over, I came back,” he said simply. It had been a long time since he’d had his arms around a woman, even longer since he’d had them around one who wanted to be held.
Alize stared at him. “Men say they’ll do that all the time. I didn’t think anybody really would, though.”
“Here I am,” Leudast said. She seemed glad to see him. That made a good start.
Before he could go on from there, Bertrude broke in: “Supper’s ready.” Leudast sat down with Alize and her mother and father. The stew Bertrude served was full of oats and beets, not wheat and turnips, as it would have been in Leudast’s village in the north. Mutton was mutton, though Bertrude flavored it with mint rather than garlic. Nothing at all was wrong with the ale she gave him to go with the supper.
After he’d eaten, Alize said, “I hoped you’d come back. I didn’t really think you would, but I hoped so. Now that you have come, what exactly do you have in mind? It can’t be just. . . you know.”
You can’t have me for the sport of it, she meant. Leudast nodded. He’d already understood that. He said, “I came to wed you, if you’ll put up with me.”
“I think I can,” Alize said with a smile. Leudast grinned with relief; he hadn’t known how she would answer, though he wouldn’t have returned to Leiferde if he hadn’t had his hopes.
Her father asked, “You aim to settle down here and farm, then?”
The question went to the nub of things. “That depends,” Leudast said. “I might, but then again, I might not. My other choice is staying in the army. The way the world looks, there’ll always be jobs for soldiers.”
“That’s so,” Akerin said, and Bertrude’s head bobbed up and down. Alize’s father asked another question: “How do you aim to make up your mind?”
“Well, if you really want to know, a lot of it depends on what your daughter wants.” Leudast looked to Alize. “If you’d sooner stay in Leiferde, I know how to farm, or I did up north. It can’t be too different here.” He realized he’d just shown he was no noble. Shrugging, he went on, “Or if you’d rather be a soldier’s wife. . .” Again, he shrugged the Unkerlanter peasant’s businesslike shrug, so different from the fancy Algarvian variety. “I can do that, too.”
“Go to a city?” Alize breathed. “Maybe even to Cottbus?” Her eyes glowed. “I’ve seen enough of a farming village to last me the rest of my days. However life turns out in a town, it has to be easier there than here.”
Her father and mother didn’t argue with her. In fact, they nodded solemnly. Leudast thought her likely right, too. He also nodded. “All right, then,” he said. “I’ll stay a soldier.” Captain Dagaric would be pleased. Marshal Rathar might be pleased. Leudast wondered if he’d be pleased himself. That depends on how long peace lasts, he thought. Of course, if war came again, a peasant village near Unkerlant’s eastern border wasn’t safe, either. But if war came again, was any place at all safe? One way or another, he’d find out.
After supper, Ealstan tried to read the news sheet and play with Saxburh at the same time. That didn’t work very well, because he couldn’t give either one of them his full attention. The news sheet didn’t care. His daughter did. “Dada,” she said, and managed to put a distinct note of reproach in her voice.
“You’re fighting a losing battle, son,” Hestan said.
“What other kind is there, for a Forthwegian?” Ealstan answered. That earned him one of Hestan’s slow smiles.
When he was talking to his own father, he wasn’t paying attention to Saxburh, either. “Dada,” she said again, and tugged at his hand. Laughing, he picked her up. She grabbed for his beard.
He managed to fend her off. “No, you can’t do that,” he told her. “That hurts.”
Hestan said, “You got some pretty good handfuls of mine in your day.”
“If I did, she’s giving you your revenge.” Ealstan tickled Saxburh, who squealed. “Aren’t you?” She squealed again.
“If you’re going to play with her, may I see the news sheet?” Vanai asked. Ealstan spun it across the room to her. As soon as Vanai started to read, Saxburh scrambled down off Ealstan’s lap, toddled over to her, and started batting at the news sheet. “Cut that out,” Vanai said. Saxburh didn’t. Vanai rolled her eyes. “She doesn’t want anybody reading--that’s what it is.”
“Maybe she thinks we’ll get too excited when we see that King Penda vows he’ll come back to Forthweg,” Ealstan said.
“Not likely,” Vanai exclaimed. “Who’d want him back, after he led the kingdom into a losing war?”
“That’s the line the story takes,” Ealstan said.
“I’m surprised the news sheet mentioned his name at all,” Hestan said.
“It takes the same tone Vanai did,” Ealstan repeated. “The feeling it wants to give is, Oh, he can’t possibly be serious, and who would care even if he were? It’s not a headline or anything--it shows up at the bottom of an inside page. That’s one more way to show nobody thinks Penda’s very important any more, I guess.”
His father musingly plucked at his beard. “You know, that’s clever,” he said after he’d thought it through. “If they just ignored Penda, people would hear about this vow of his anyhow, and they’d think, King Beornwulf is afraid. See how he’s trying to hide things? This way, they’ll go, Well, Beornwulf is king now, and Penda can make as much noise as he wants off in Lagoas. Aye, clever.”
“Mama!” Saxburh said indignantly, and swatted at the news sheet.
“You know you’re not supposed to do that,” Vanai said. “Are you getting fussy? Are you getting sleepy?”
“No!” Saxburh denied the mere possibility, and burst into tears when her mother picked her up.
“Most babies don’t start saying no till they’re a few months older than that,” Hestan remarked. “Of course, my granddaughter is naturally very advanced for her age.”
“I wish she were advanced enough to stop making messes in her clothes,” Ealstan said. “Is she dry?”
Vanai felt the baby and nodded. “I think she’ll go to sleep, too,” she said, putting the critical word in classical Kaunian so Saxburh wouldn’t follow it. But she’d done that once too often; her daughter had figured it out, and cried harder than ever. Vanai looked half pleased--one day, she did
want Saxburh to learn the language she’d grown up speaking--and half annoyed. “There, there. It’ll be all right.” She rocked the little girl in her arms. Saxburh didn’t think it was all right; she went on wailing. But the wails grew muffled as her thumb found its way into her mouth. After a little while, they stopped.
“Almost like the quiet after the fighting’s over,” Hestan said.
Ealstan shook his head. “No,” he said positively. “That’s different.”
His father didn’t argue. He just shrugged and said, “You’d know better than I, I’m sure. How’s your leg these days?”
“It’s getting better. It’s still sore.” Ealstan shrugged, too. “When the rainy season comes, I’ll make a first-rate weather prophet.”
“I’m sorry about that. I’m more sorry than I can tell you,” Hestan said. “But I’m glad you’re still here to be able to predict bad weather before it comes.”
“Oh, so am I,” Ealstan said. “I’ll tell you what gravels me, though.” He laughed at himself. “I know it’s a small thing, especially when you set it against all the evil that came during the war, but I wish I’d been able to finish my schooling. First the Algarvians watered everything down, and then I had to leave.” He glanced over at Vanai, and at Saxburh, who’d started snoring around that thumb. “Of course, I learned a good many other things instead.”
His wife was wearing her swarthy Forthwegian sorcerous disguise. She turned pink even so. “Everyone learns those lessons, sooner or later,” she said. “I think it’s very fine that you want to learn the others, too.”
Her grandfather had been a scholar, of course. Considering how badly he and she had got along, it was a wonder she didn’t hate the whole breed. But Kaunians had often looked down their noses at Forthwegians as being ignorant and proud of it. Vanai had never said any such thing to Ealstan, which didn’t mean she didn’t think it from time to time: not about him, necessarily, but about his people.
Hestan said, “If there hadn’t been a war, I was thinking about sending you to the university at Eoforwic, or maybe even to the one at Trapani. I doubt either of them is still standing these days, and powers above only know how many professors came through alive.”
“Trapani,” Ealstan said in slow wonder. “If there hadn’t been a war, I would have wanted to go there, too. That’s very strange. The only thing I’d want to do now is drop an egg on the place. It’s had plenty, but one more wouldn’t hurt.” He eyed his father. “Sending me to a university would probably ruin me as a bookkeeper, you know.”
“Bookkeepers make more than professors ever dream of,” added Vanai, sharply practical as usual.
Hestan shrugged. “I do know both those things. But a man who can dream should get his chance to do it. A careful man--which you’ve always been, Ealstan--doesn’t need to be rich; he gets by well enough with a little less. Not having the chance to do what you really want can sour you for life.”
Vanai carried Saxburh off and put her to bed. When she came back, she asked, “You’re not talking about yourself, are you, sir? You don’t seem soured on life, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“Me? No.” Hestan sounded a bit startled. “Not really, anyhow. But then, I’ve been lucky with my wife and--mostly--lucky with my children. That makes up for a good deal, believe me.”
“I believe you,” Ealstan said, and looked at Vanai in a way that made her turn redder than she had before.
His father smiled that slow smile. “That isn’t what I meant, or not all of what I meant, though I expect you’ll have a hard time believing me when I say so. But the truth is, I like moving numbers around. Maybe, if I’d had a chance, I’d be moving them around in different ways from those a bookkeeper uses. But if I tried to tell you I’m pining for a scholarly career I never had, that would be a lie.”
Elfryth ducked her head into the dining room. “I just looked in on Saxburh. She’s so sweet, lying there asleep.”
“Sure she is,” Ealstan said. “She’s not making any noise.”
His mother sniffed indignantly. His father chuckled and said, “Spoken like the proper sort of parent: a tired one.”
“Stop that, Hestan,” Elfryth said. “What were you saying there about telling lies?”
“I was telling them about running off and joining a traveling carnival when I was young,” Hestan answered, deadpan. “Everything went fine till the elephant stepped on me. I used to be a much taller man, you know.”
“Pity the beast didn’t squash the silliness out of you, too,” Elfryth observed.
Vanai looked from Ealstan’s father to his mother and back again. “Is that where we’ll be in twenty years?” she asked.
Ealstan didn’t answer. He didn’t know. Elfryth said, “Either something like this or you’ll shout at each other all the time. This is better.”
“I think so, too,” Vanai said.
Hestan asked, “Are you still interested in going on to the university, Ealstan? We could probably afford it if you are.”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “I never even graduated from the academy.”
“You can always find ways around things like that.” His father spoke with great assurance.
“Maybe,” Ealstan said. “The other thing, though . . . Well, you said it yourself. I’ve got a family to worry about now--and I think I’ve been pretty lucky there, too.” Having a wife and child would make his life as a student more complicated. Having a Kaunian wife and half-Kaunian child might make his life as a student much more complicated. That wasn’t anything he could say to Vanai.
“It does make a difference, doesn’t it?” Hestan said, and Ealstan nodded.
As Ealstan and Vanai lay down together that night, she said, “If you want to be a scholar, we could make it work, I think.”
He shrugged. “Things aren’t the way they were before the war. They’re never going to be the same as they were before the war. I’m sorry.” He took her hand. “I wish they could be, but it’s not going to happen.”
“I know,” Vanai answered. “There are some things that, once you break them, you can’t put them back together again.”
That held nothing but truth. The ancient Kaunian population of Forthweg-- more ancient here than the Forthwegians themselves--would never be the same again. Ealstan caught Vanai to him. “One thing, though,” he said. “Because we met, I’m the luckiest fellow in the world.”
She kissed him. “You’re sweet. I wonder if we would have met anyhow. We might have. I came to Gromheort every now and then. And we--”
“We both knew about that oak grove where we found each other in mushroom season,” Ealstan broke in. “We really might have.”
“My grandfather wouldn’t have approved. He didn’t approve,” Vanai said. “In peacetime, that might have mattered more.”
“I hope not,” Ealstan said.
“So do I,” Vanai said. “But we don’t know. We can’t know. A lot of dreadful things have happened the past six years. I’m just glad we’ve got each other.”
This time, Ealstan kissed her and hugged her to him. “I am, too.”
Vanai let out a small laugh. “You’re very glad, aren’t you?” she said, and reached between them to show how she knew.
“And getting gladder every second, too,” Ealstan told her. She laughed again. He started undoing her tunic. As often as not, that seemed to wake up the baby. Not tonight, though. He teased her nipple with his tongue. Her breath sighed out. In a bit, Ealstan poised himself above her. Not too long after that, he was as glad as he could possibly be that they had each other.
Count Sabrino, former and forcibly retired colonel of dragonfliers, had a roof over his head and, for the most part, enough to eat. In occupied, devastated Trapani, that made him a lucky man indeed. As lucky as an aging cripple can be, anyhow, he thought sourly. Day by day, his crutches seemed more a part of him.
Some men who’d lost a leg preferred a wheeled chair to crutches. Sabrino might have, too, in the Trapani he’
d known before the war: a city of paved boulevards and smooth sidewalks. On the rubble-strewn, cratered streets of the Algarvian capital these days, such chairs got stuck too easily to seem practical to him.
He saw enough mutilated men, of all ages from barely bearded to older than he was, to have plenty of standards of comparison. Each one was an emblem of what Algarve had gone through. Taken together, they made a searing indictment of the darkness through which his kingdom had passed.
He stopped into a tavern not far from his home and ordered a glass of wine. The tapman’s right arm stopped just below his shoulder: no possible hope of fitting him with a hook. But he handled the glass and the wine bottle with his remaining hand as well as anyone possibly could.
When Sabrino praised him, he let out a short, bitter burst of laughter. “It’s not quite what you think, friend,” he said. “I’m well off, if you want to call it that--you see, I’ve always been left-handed.”
“If what you kept is more useful to you than what you lost, that is good fortune,” Sabrino agreed. “Plenty of people have it worse.”
“If a whole man said something like that to me, I’d punch the son of a whore in the nose--with my left hand, of course,” the tapman said. “But you, buddy, you went through it, too. I’ll take it from you. Where’d you get hurt?”
“Not far west of here, not long before the war ended,” Sabrino answered. “I was on a dragon, and it got flamed out of the sky. Some of the flame got my leg, too, and so.. . .” He shrugged, then politely added, “You?”
“On the way to Cottbus, the first winter of the war in the west,” the other cripple told him. “A flying chunk of eggshell tore the arm almost all the way off, and the healers finished the job. The same burst killed two of my pals.”
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