And he was looking at her, too. She’d got used to men looking at her, both when she looked like herself and in her Forthwegian disguise. It was, more often than not, an annoyance rather than a compliment. She’d felt that way even before Spinello did so much to sour her on the male half of the human race.
But the drummer wasn’t looking at her as if imagining how she was made under her tunic. He wore a slightly puzzled expression, one that might have said, Haven’t I seen you somewhere? Vanai didn’t think she’d ever seen him before.
The song ended. People clapped again. Vanai still couldn’t, but she did set down some groceries and drop a coin in the bowl. One of the horn players lifted his instrument to his lips to start the next song, but the drummer said, “Wait a bit.” The trumpeter shrugged, but lowered the horn once more. The drummer nodded to Vanai. “Your name’s Thelberge, isn’t it?”
“Aye,” she said, and then wished she’d denied it. Too late for that, though. She countered as best she could: “I may know your name, too.”
He had to be Ethelhelm, in the same sort of sorcerous disguise she wore. His voice was familiar, even if that false face wasn’t. She had seen the disguise once before, but hadn’t noticed it till it suddenly wore off and he turned into Ethelhelm on the street. Now he grinned again, showing that tooth. “Everybody knows Guthfrith,” he said. “People have heard of me as far and wide as … the west bank of the Twegen River.”
That got him another laugh from his little audience. Vanai smiled, too; the west bank of the Twegen couldn’t have been more than three miles away. She said, “You play so well, you could be famous all over Forthweg.”
“Thank you kindly,” he said, “but that sounds to me like more trouble than it’s worth.” As Ethelhelm, he’d been famous all over Forthweg. Before he disappeared, the Algarvians had squeezed him till his eyes popped-that was what his Kaunian blood had got him. No doubt he spoke from bitter experience. He went on, “I’m doing just fine the way I am.”
With the redheads driven out of Eoforwic, he could have stopped being Guthfrith and gone back to his true name. Or could he? Vanai wondered. Mezentio’s men hadn’t just blackmailed him. They’d started putting words in his mouth, too. When it was either obey or go to a special camp, saying no wasn’t easy. Still, some people might reckon him a collaborator.
He pointed to Saxburh, asleep in the harness. “That’ll be Ealstan’s baby, won’t it?”
“That’s right,” Vanai answered.
“How’s he doing?” asked Ethelhelm who was now Guthfrith-just as, in some ways, Vanai was, or could become, Thelberge.
She’d told the truth once without intending to. She wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. Ethelhelm didn’t need to know Ealstan was far away, dragged off into the Unkerlanter army. “He’s fine,” Vanai said firmly. “He’s just fine.” Powers above make it so. Powers above keep it so.
“Glad to hear it,” Ethelhelm said, and sounded as if he meant it. But he and Ealstan hadn’t parted on the best of terms. Ealstan was one who thought he’d gone too far down the ley line the Algarvians had given him. I can’t trust this fellow, Vanai thought. I don’t dare.
A man said, “You going to gab all day, buddy, or can you play, too?”
“Right.” Ethelhelm’s Guthfrith-smile was meant to be engaging but looked a little tight. He nodded to the other musicians. They swung into a quickstep that had been popular since the reign of King Plegmund-not the one, though, that was known as “King Plegmund’s Quickstep.” What with the Algarvian-created Plegmund’s Brigade, “King Plegmund’s Quickstep” seemed likely to go into eclipse for a while.
Vanai thought it a good time for her to go into eclipse, too. She made her way out of the market square. As she went, she imagined she felt Ethelhelm’s eyes on her back, though she didn’t turn around to see if he was really watching her. One other thing she didn’t do: she didn’t leave the square by the way out leading most directly to her block of flats. That meant her arms were very tired by the time she got home, but it also meant Ethelhelm didn’t find out in which direction she lived.
She wasn’t sure that mattered. She hoped it didn’t. But she didn’t want to take chances, either. She ruffled Saxburh’s fine, dark hair as she took her out of the harness. “No, I don’t want to take chances,” she said. “I’ve got more than just me to worry about.”
Saxburh whimpered. She’d emerged from her nap crabby. Sure enough, she was wet. Changing her didn’t take long. Changing her any one time didn’t take long. Doing it half a dozen times a day and more. .
“But everything’s going to be all right. Everything will be just fine,” Vanai said. If she said it often enough, it might come true.
“So this is Algarve,” Ceorl said as the men of Plegmund’s Brigade trudged into a farming village. He spat. The city wind that blew at his back, out of the west, carried the spittle a long way. “I thought Algarve was supposed to be rich. This doesn’t look so fornicating fancy to me.”
It didn’t look so fancy to Sidroc, either. But he answered, “Algarve’s just a place. Gromheort’s right on our side of the border from it. You can see it from there. It doesn’t look any different than Forthweg.”
“You’re a corporal now. You must know everything,” Ceorl said.
“I know I’m a corporal, by the powers above,” Sidroc said. Ceorl made a face at him. He ignored it. “I know this is a cursed miserable place, too. The part of Algarve you can see from Gromheort is a lot better country.”
Down here in the south, the land was flat and damp, sometimes marshy. But some of the marshes froze in the winter. Unkerlanter behemoths had broken through a couple of places where the redheads hadn’t thought they could go. And the men of Plegmund’s Brigade had other things to worry about, too.
“If those whoresons in this village start blazing at us on account of they think we’re Swemmel’s buggers, I say we treat ‘em just like we did the Yaninans who blazed Sergeant Werferth,” Ceorl growled.
They’d already drawn a couple of blazes from panicky redheads. The Algarvians saw swarthy men in tunics and didn’t stop to find out which swarthy men they were or whose side they were on. So far, the troopers of Plegmund’s Brigade hadn’t answered with massacre. “Looks like they’re just running here,” Sidroc said.
Sure enough, Algarvians-mostly women and children, with a few old men- fled the village on foot, on horseback, and in whatever carriages and wagons they could lay their hands on. Some of the redheads on foot carried bundles heavier than a soldier’s pack. Others pulled light carts as if they were beasts of burden themselves. Still others took nothing at all with them, abandoning homes without a backward glance and relying on luck to keep them fed so long as they could escape the Unkerlanters.
“We’re going to stand here,” Lieutenant Puliano said, commanding the Forthwegians with as much aplomb as if he were a marshal. “I’ll need two or three groups forward-that house there, that stand of trees, and that tumbledown barn. You know the drill. Let Swemmel’s buggers come past you, then hit ‘em from the sides and from behind. Questions? All right, then. .”
One of the joys of being a corporal was that Sidroc got told off to lead one of Puliano’s forward groups: the one in the stand of trees. “Dig in,” he told the squad he headed. “This would have been a lot better cover if we were here in the summertime.”
“What was that?” Sudaku asked in Algarvian. The blond from the Phalanx of Valmiera was picking up Forthwegian fast, but still had only so much. Sidroc translated his words into Algarvian. Sudaku nodded agreement.
With his short-handled shovel, Ceorl dug like a mole. He threw another shovelful of dirt on the mound in front of his deepening hole, then said, “Ain’t a futtering one of us going to be here in the summertime.” His Algarvian was as rough and laced with obscenities as his Forthwegian.
“No. We will have retreated by then,” Sudaku said.
“That ain’t what I meant, you stupid fornicating Kaunian,” Ceorl said.
“If your dick were bigger-much, much bigger-you could bugger yourself,” Sudaku replied. They both spoke without heat. Sudaku went on digging. So did Ceorl, who paused only to slice a thumb across his throat to show what he had meant.
A few eggs burst, perhaps a quarter of a mile in front of the grove where Sidroc and his double handful of men waited. “Feeling for us,” Sidroc muttered, more than half to himself. Sure enough, the bursts crept closer, kicking up fountains of snow and dirt.
Only a couple of eggs burst among the trees. The rest marched into the village. Houses and shops crumbled into wreckage. Not all the Algarvian civilians were likely to have got clear. They’d be running around and screaming and getting in the way of the soldiers. As far as Sidroc was concerned, that was about all civilians were good for. But knocking a lot of buildings in the village to pieces wouldn’t hurt the defense. If anything, it might help. Everybody in Plegmund’s Brigade had had plenty of practice fighting in rubble.
“Heads up!” hissed somebody among the trees. “Here they come.”
Sidroc’s heart thuttered. His mouth went dry. He’d been through too many battles, skirmishes, clashes, fights. It never got easier. If anything, it got harder every time. At first, he hadn’t believed he could die. He believed it now. He’d seen far too much to have any possible doubt.
Some of the oncoming Unkerlanters wore snow smocks over their rock-gray tunics. Some didn’t bother. The men in white and those in Unkerlanter rock-gray were about equally hard to see. Winter hereabouts wasn’t quite so harsh, quite so snowy, as it was farther west.
“Remember, let ‘em by, like Lieutenant Puliano said,” Sidroc reminded his men. “Then we give it to ‘em up the arse.”
He studied the way Swemmel’s soldiers loped forward, then gave a soft grunt of satisfaction. Ceorl put that grunt into words: “They don’t move like veteran troops. They ought to be easy meat.”
“Aye-depending on how many of ‘em there are,” Sidroc answered.
“I see no behemoths,” Sudaku remarked.
“Don’t miss those fornicators,” Sidroc said. He saw none of the great armored beasts, either. That was another sign the Unkerlanters moving on the village weren’t first-rate men. Enemy doctrine assigned help first to the soldiers most likely to succeed.
“Ahh, the fools,” Ceorl said as the enemy drew near. “The dick-sucking virgins. They aren’t even sending anybody in here to see if we’ve got any little surprises waiting.” His chuckle was pure evil. “They’ll find out.”
On toward the village trotted the Unkerlanters. “Wait,” Sidroc said, over and over. “Just wait.”
The men in and around the outlying house started blazing at Swemmel’s soldiers first. Sidroc could hear the Unkerlanters’ howls and curses, and even make sense of a few of those oaths. His men sat quietly in their holes, waiting and watching. They all expected the same thing. And they got it: the Unkerlanters wheeled toward the house, intent on flushing out their tormentors.
That that might expose their backs to another set of tormentors never seemed to cross their minds. “Now!” Sidroc shouted, and started blazing. One enemy soldier after another went down. For a couple of minutes, Swemmel’s men couldn’t even figure out where the beams wreaking such havoc among them were coming from. Sidroc laughed. “Easy!”
But then more Unkerlanters came forward, and they had some idea that danger lurked among the trees. Danger also lurked, though, by the tumbledown barn, and that hadn’t occurred to them. The men from Plegmund’s Brigade posted there worked the same kind of slaughter as Sidroc’s squad had a few minutes earlier.
With that, the entire Unkerlanter advance came unglued. Swemmel’s men had been hit from unexpected directions three times in a row. When they could follow orders exactly as they got them, they made fine soldiers. Having spent more than two years in the field against them, Sidroc knew exactly how good they could be. But when they got surprised, they sometimes panicked.
They did here. They streamed back toward the west, dragging some wounded men with them and leaving others, along with the dead, lying on the muddy snow. Sidroc let out a long sigh of relief. “Well, that wasn’t so bad,” he said. “I don’t think we got even a scratch here.”
“Only one trouble,” Sudaku said. “They will come back.”
“Which means we’d better move,” Sidroc said. “They know where we are, so they’ll be sure to give this place a good pounding.” No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a messenger came up from Lieutenant Puliano, ordering the squad to shift to a new position in and around another outlying house. Sidroc preened. “Do I know what’s what?”
“Let me kiss your boots,” Ceorl said, “and you can kiss my-” The suggestion was not one a common soldier usually made to a corporal.
“If we’re both still alive tonight, you’re in trouble,” Sidroc said. Ceorl gave him an obscene gesture, too. Sidroc laughed and shook his head. “You’re not worth punishing, you son of a whore. That would just take you away from the front and make you safer than I am. I won’t let you get away with it. Come on, let’s move.”
They’d just started digging new holes when a storm of eggs fell on the grove they’d abandoned. The house and barn where other squads had taken shelter also vanished in bursts of sorcerous energy. Sudaku spoke in his Valmieran-flavored Algarvian: “Now they think it will be easy.”
“It would be easy-if they were fighting more Unkerlanters,” Sidroc said. “But the redheads are smarter than they are.” If the redheads are so cursed smart, what are they doing with their backs to the wall here in their own kingdom? And if you’re so fornicating smart, what are you doing here with them?
But, in the short run, on the small scale, what he’d said turned out to be the exact truth. On came the Unkerlanters once more, plainly confident they’d put paid to the men who’d tormented them. On they came-and again got caught from the flank and rear and ignominiously fled before setting so much as a foot in the village they were supposed to take.
“This is fun,” Ceorl said. “They can keep the whoresons coming. We’ll kill ‘em till everything turns blue.”
A long pause followed. We’d better move again, before they start pounding this place, too, Sidroc thought. Before he could give the order, though, another runner from the village came up. “Lieutenant Puliano says to pull back,” the man said.
“What? Why?” Sidroc asked irately. “Doesn’t he think the blockheads in rock-gray will fall for it again? I sure do.”
“But he gives the orders, and you sure don’t,” the messenger replied.
Since that was true, Sidroc had no choice but to obey. When he and his men-who still hadn’t lost anybody, despite the slaughter they’d worked on the Unkerlanters-got back into the Algarvian village, he burst out, “Why are you bringing us back here? We can hold ‘em a long time.”
“Aye, we could hold ‘em a long time here.” Puliano didn’t sound or look like a happy man. “But they’ve broken through farther north, and if we don’t pull back a little ways they’ll nip in behind us and cut us off.”
“Oh,” Sidroc said, and then, “Oh, shit.” That was an unanswerable argument. But it also had its drawbacks: “If the army does keep pulling back, what is there left to fight for?” Puliano just scowled by way of reply, from which Sidroc concluded that that had no real answer, either. He wished it did.
Six
Drizzle on the island of Obuda was as natural and unremarkable as snow in Istvan’s home valley. The sergeant stood to attention in his place in the captives’ camp as the Kuusaman guards took the morning roll call and count. He stood in the same place every day, rain or shine. The guards made sure they got the numbers right; when anything went wrong with their count, everything stopped-including the captives’ breakfasts-till they straightened things out.
Beside Istvan, Corporal Kun whispered, “This would go a lot smoother if the goat-eaters could count to twenty-one without playing with themselves.”
That mad
e Istvan laugh. A guard pointed at him and shouted, “To be quiet!” in bad Gyongyosian. He nodded to show he was sorry, then glared at Kun. It was just like his brief time in the village school: somebody else talked out of turn, and he got in trouble for it.
At last, the slanteyes seemed satisfied. Istvan waited for one of them to call out, “To queue up for feeding!” the way they usually did. Instead, though, the Kuusaman captain in charge of the guards said, “Sergeant Istvan! Corporal Kun! To stand out!”
Ice ran through Istvan. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kun start. But they had no choice. The two of them stepped away from their comrades, away from their countrymen. Istvan hadn’t imagined how terribly lonely he could feel with so many eyes on him.
The captain nodded. “You two,” he said, using the plural where he should have used the dual, “to come with me.”
“Why, sir?” Istvan asked. “What have we done?”
“Not know,” the Kuusaman answered with a shrug. “You to come for interrogation.”
He pronounced the word so badly, Istvan almost failed to understand it. When he did, he wished he hadn’t. Gyongyosian interrogations were nasty, brutal things. The Kuusamans were the enemy, so he couldn’t imagine they would play the game by gentler rules.
But it was their game, not his. Under the sticks of the guards, he could obey or he could die. I should have let Captain Frigyes cut my throat after all, he thought. It would have been over in a hurry then, and my life energy might have done something extra to the slanteyes. Now the stars are having their revenge on me.
One of the guards gestured with his stick. Numbly, Istvan started forward, Kun at his side. Kun’s face was a frozen mask. Istvan tried to wear the same look. If the Kuusamans thought he was afraid, it would only go worse for him. And if they don’t think I’m afraid, they’re fools.
But he would do his best to act like a man from a warrior race as long as he could. “You ought to give us breakfast before you question us,” he told a guard as the fellow led him toward one of the gates in the stockade.
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