“I don’t know,” Lurcanio said thoughtfully. The neutral kingdom was much closer than Gyongyos. Even so … “I don’t know what things are like in the west of Algarve right now. If you try to get to Ortah, you’re liable to run right into the Unkerlanters’ arms. You wouldn’t like that.”
“It’s the best chance we have, I think,” Smetnu said. The other Valmierans nodded. The news-sheet man went on, “We have a better chance with the Unkerlanters than with our own folk or the islanders.”
He was probably-almost certainly-right. “Very well,” Lurcanio said. He went into the farmhouse and wrote out a ley-line caravan pass for all six of them, explaining who they were and how they’d served Algarve. They took it and made for Carsoli’s caravan depot. Lurcanio hoped it would do some good. His own honor, at least in this small matter, remained untarnished. His kingdom’s honor? He resolutely refused to think about that.
Somewhere not far from Garivald, a wounded man moaned. Garivald wasn’t sure whether he was an Unkerlanter or an Algarvian. Whoever he was, he’d been moaning for quite a while. Garivald wished he would shut up and get on with the business of dying. The noise he was making wore on everyone’s nerves.
Dragons dropped eggs on the Algarvian town ahead, a place called Bonorva. It lay south and east of Gromheort. The plains of northern Algarve weren’t much different from those of Forthweg. The Algarvians themselves had fought just as hard in Forthweg as they were here in their own kingdom. Indeed, they were still fighting in Forthweg: Gromheort stubbornly held out against everything King Swemmel’s men could throw at it.
Lieutenant Andelot nodded to Garivald. “Well, Fariulf, even with their fancy steerable eggs, they weren’t able to throw us back. Not enough men, not enough behemoths, not enough anything.”
“Looks that way, sir,” Garivald agreed. With ingrained peasant pessimism, he added, “We don’t want it to rain right at harvest time, though. It’d be a shame to get killed with the war about won-or any other time, come to that.”
Andelot nodded. “We can’t get slack, though. The redheads are still fighting. It’s good we’re on their soil-they should know what they put us through, powers below eat them-but these are their homes. They won’t want us to take them away, any more than we wanted them to take away our homes in Unkerlant.”
He spoke like a man from Cottbus. Odds were, he hadn’t lost his home to the Algarvians. He knew that would be bad, but he didn’t know how bad it was. Garivald had watched the invaders storm into, storm past, his home village. He’d lived under their boot. He’d watched them hang a couple of irregulars in the market square. They might have hanged him there, when they found he was putting together patriotic songs. Instead, they’d hauled him off to Herborn to boil him alive, and the irregulars had rescued him before he got there.
“Better for everybody if this cursed war had never happened,” he said.
“Aye, of course,” Andelot replied. “But it’s a little too late to wish for that now, wouldn’t you say?”
Garivald only grunted. Andelot was right, no doubt about it. But Garivald could still wish, even if he knew what he wished for had no chance of coming true.
The next morning, he trudged past a column of Algarvian refugees Unkerlanter dragons had caught on the road. It wasn’t pretty. It must have happened only the day before. The bodies didn’t stink yet, but the almost cheerful odor of burnt meat lingered in the air. The dragonfliers had dropped eggs first, then come back so their beasts could flame the redheads the eggs hadn’t knocked over-and, he was sure, some they had.
“Good riddance,” was all Andelot said, and, “When the civilians run from us, they clog the roads. That makes it harder for Mezentio’s soldiers to get where they need to go.”
“Aye,” Garivald answered. He’d hated the Algarvians ever since they broke into his kingdom. He’d killed his share of them-more than his share, very likely. He should have wanted all of them dead. A substantial part of him did want all of them dead, or thought it did. But. . some of the scattered, twisted, charred corpses were very small. He thought of Syrivald and Leuba, his own son and daughter, no doubt as dead as these Algarvians. Thinking of them didn’t make him want to see more redheads dead. It just made him wish no more children had to die, regardless of what color hair they had.
Somewhere not far away, a woman started screaming. Garivald had heard women scream on that particular note before. So had the men in the squad he led. Some of them, he was sure, had made Algarvian women scream on that note. They grinned and nudged one another.
“Keep moving,” Garivald called to them. “We haven’t got time to stop and have fun.” They nodded and tramped on, but the grins stayed on their faces.
He’d thought his countrymen would run the Algarvians out of Bonorva that afternoon. So had Andelot, who’d said, “We’ll be sleeping on real beds tonight, men.” They all got a rude surprise. As they neared the outskirts of the city, Algarvian egg-tossers greeted them with a heavier pounding than any in which Garivald had been on the receiving end.
Unkerlanter egg-tossers quickly answered back; they were more efficient now than they had been when Garivald got dragooned into King Swemmel’s army. From what the handful of men who’d been in the fight a good deal longer than he said, they were much more efficient now than they had been in the early days of the war.
It didn’t do them much good, not here. Alarmed cries rang out: “Behemoths! Algarvian behemoths!”
Hearing that was plenty to make Garivald throw himself down on his belly in the middle of a muddy field. Sure enough, a column of behemoths with redheads atop them came lumbering up out of the south. Footsoldiers in kilts loped along with the behemoths to keep the Unkerlanters from getting close enough to have an easy time harming the beasts.
Garivald looked around for Unkerlanter behemoths to blunt the head of that column. He didn’t see very many. An Algarvian crew flung an egg that burst too close to him for comfort. The blast of sorcerous energy picked him up and slammed him to the ground. Clods of dirt rained down on him.
Orders were to stand your ground no matter what. Garivald looked around. If he and his men stood their ground here no matter what, they would all end up dead in short order. Lieutenant Andelot had praised his initiative before. He used it again, this time to shout, “Fall back!”
Some of the Unkerlanters had begun to retreat even without orders. The din of bursting eggs was loud off to the east, too, suggesting the Algarvians had another force of behemoths on the move there. King Swemmel’s army had stormed across northeastern Unkerlant and Forthweg and into Algarve. Mezentio’s men struck back when and as they could, but Garivald had never seen a counterattack like this before.
There was Andelot, trying to rally his men. Garivald shouted, “Sir, we’re going to have to give back a little ground. They’ve got too many men and too many behemoths for us to hold them off right now.”
He waited to see if Andelot would order him to try to hold at all hazards. He wondered if the company commander might have to suffer an unfortunate accident so someone with real sense could take over and do his best to lead the men to safety. But, biting his lip, Andelot nodded. “Aye, Sergeant, you’re right, worse luck.” He snapped his fingers. “I know what’s gone wrong, curse it.”
“Tell me,” Garivald urged.
“There are some little cinnabar mines south of Bonorva,” Andelot said. “You get quicksilver for dragonfire from cinnabar. The Algarvians haven’t got much left. No wonder they’re fighting like madmen to hold on to what they do have.”
Garivald managed a haggard grin. “So much nicer to know why you’re about to get killed.”
“Isn’t it, though?” Andelot replied. “Let’s see what we can do about making the Algarvians do the dying instead.”
What a company of footsoldiers could do on a battlefield swarming with behemoths was depressingly obvious: not much. More Unkerlanter behemoths did come down from out of the north to challenge the Algarvian beasts, but not enough. A
s if it were the early days of the war, the redheads had the bit between their teeth.
A week later, spring was in the air. Garivald was sure it would still be snowing down in the Duchy of Grelz, but northern Algarve was a long, long way from home. The wind blew warm from the sea. Birds started chirping in the trees. Fresh green grass sprang up; a few flowers bloomed. It would have been beautiful… if so much of the countryside hadn’t been wrecked by war’s fiery rake. And that rake had gone across the landscape first one way, then the other.
By that time, Garivald counted himself lucky to be alive. He’d never seen such a sustained Algarvian push before. It had driven his countrymen and him back a good thirty miles from the outskirts of Bonorva. He’d had to fight his way out of two encirclements, and sneak past Algarvian footsoldiers to escape a third. A lot of Unkerlanters hadn’t made it.
“They’re bastards, aren’t they?” he said to Lieutenant Andelot as the two of them sprawled by the bank of a little stream. They were both filthy and unshaven and desperately in need of sleep.
“We knew that from the start,” Andelot answered. “They’ve pushed us back some, aye, but look at the price they’ve paid. And they’re just about stopped now-we’re hardly lost any ground today. When we start moving forward again, what will they use to stop us?”
“I don’t know.” Garivald didn’t care about such things. I’m no officer. I don’t want to be an officer, he thought. Let them worry about where the fornicating war is going. I just want to stay alive till it finally gets there and stops, so I can get off.
By all the signs, Andelot knew what he was talking about. Streams of Unkerlanter soldiers and behemoths were moving up toward the front. Rock-gray dragons swarmed overhead, with few in Algarvian colors in the air to hold them back. The redheads had done everything they could to drive back the men of Unkerlant, and it hadn’t been enough.
More dragons flew by, all of them heading northeast to strike the enemy. Some had eggs slung under their bellies; others carried only dragonfliers. They protected the ones with the eggs, fought off the handful of Algarvian beasts that rose to oppose them, and swooped low to flame soldiers and civilians on the ground.
“They’ll make Mezentio’s men wish they were never born,” Garivald said smugly.
But then, as he watched, the whole flight of Unkerlanter dragons tumbled out of the sky. It wasn’t as if they’d been blazed down. It was more as if they’d run headlong into an invisible wall. Some of the eggs they carried burst while they were still in the air, others when they hit the ground.
“What in blazes-?” Garivald exclaimed.
Andelot took things more in stride. “Curse them, they made it work again,” he said. Garivald’s questioning noise held no words. Andelot went on, “The redheads keep coming up with new sorceries, powers below eat ‘em. This one congeals the air some sort of way. Don’t ask me how-I’m no mage. I don’t think our mages know how this spell works, either, come to that. The one thing we do know is, for every ten times the Algarvians try it, they bring it off once, twice if they’re lucky.”
“That’s too often,” Garivald said.
“I know,” Andelot said. “But it’s only a toy. It won’t change the way the war turns out, not even a copper’s worth. Most of the time, our dragons do get through.”
Garivald nodded. Looked at from the perspective of the war as a whole, that did make perfect sense. Looked at from the perspective of the dragonfliers who’d just run into the Algarvian sorcery. . He tried not to think about that. Before long, the regiment was moving forward again, so he didn’t have to.
Ilmarinen stood in one of the passes that cut through the Bratanu Mountains. The air was as clear as mountain air was said to be. Finding a cliche that turned out to be true always amused him. Looking west-and looking down-he could see a long way into Algarve. There not too far away lay the town of Tricarico, with olive groves and almond orchards and rolling fields of wheat sweeping away till detail was lost even with this clear, clear air.
Beside Ilmarinen stood Grand General Nortamo, the commander of Kuusaman soldiers in Jelgava. He was, in fact, the overall commander of the Lagoans in Jelgava, too, however little they cared to acknowledge it. Grand general was not a usual rank in the Kuusaman army; it had been created especially for this campaign, to give Nortamo rank to match that of the Lagoan marshal who led King Vitor’s men.
Nortamo was tall by Kuusaman standards; he might have had a little Lagoan blood in him. That would have helped explain his baldness, too. Most Kuusaman men, Ilmarinen among them, kept their hair. Nortamo hadn’t. He wore hats a lot. Up here in the chilly mountains, nobody could smile at him because of it.
He was one of the blandest men Ilmarinen had ever met. How did you get your job? wondered the sardonic mage, who was a great many things, but none of them bland. By making sure you never offended anybody? Seems more trouble than it’s worth.
“We took a little longer than we should have, getting through the mountains,” Nortamo said. “But now, sorcerous sir, we are going to finish driving the Algarvians, and I don’t see how they can stand in our way.”
He also had a nearly infallible gift for stating the obvious. Ilmarinen sighed. Is that what it takes to lead lots of men? A good smile and no surprises? Powers above be praised, all I ever wanted was to go off by myself and cast spells.
“They probably won’t stand in our way,” he remarked now. “They’ll probably hide behind things and blaze at us.”
“Er-aye,” Grand General Nortamo said. As befit a man with a gift for the obvious, he also owned a remorselessly literal mind. “Well, we’ve got the men and the behemoths and the dragons to root ‘em out if they do. And we’ve got you wizardly types, too, eh?” He patted Ilmarinen on the back.
Ilmarinen had never been called a wizardly type in his entire life. He hoped with all his heart never to be called such again, either. “Right,” he said tightly.
Oblivious to any offense he might have caused, Nortamo went on, “And you’ll shield us from whatever funny sorceries Mezentio’s men fling our way, won’t you?”
“I do hope so,” Ilmarinen answered. “It’s my neck on the line, too.”
“We’ll do just fine.” Nortamo spoke not so much in response to what he heard as to what he expected to hear. A lot of people were like that now and again. He had the disease worse than most.
He’s brave, Ilmarinen reminded himself. He’s not particularly stupid. The men like him. They rush to do what he tells them. They think it’s an honor. He repeated that to himself several times. It kept him from trying to strangle Grand General Nortamo. Murdering the commanding general would get him talked about, however much satisfaction it might bring. And some people probably wouldn’t understand at all.
In lieu of throttling Nortamo, Ilmarinen said, “As soon as I can, I’ll want to talk with some captured Algarvian mages. The more I find out about what they’re up to, the better the chance I have of stopping it.”
“That makes sense,” Nortamo said, though he didn’t sound as if it had made enough sense to occur to him before Ilmarinen mentioned it. “I’ll do my best to arrange it for you, sorcerous sir. I’ll do my best to forget about it, and to make you nag, was what that sounded like. Ilmarinen’s hands twitched. Could I strangle him before anyone noticed? Tempting, tempting. Nortamo gave him a cheery little wave. “Now if you’ll excuse me. .” Off he went, unthrottled. Ilmarinen sighed.
Flashes of light in front of and then inside Tricarico showed where eggs were bursting-and where, Ilmarinen presumed, Kuusaman soldiers either were going forward or would be soon. He’d never been in Tricarico. He wondered how many Kuusamans had, back in more cheerful days. Not many, or he missed his guess. The provincial town didn’t look to have much to recommend it.
No ley line ran through this pass. The road that did go through left a good deal to be desired. It might have been better before the war. In fact, it surely had been better. As Ilmarinen jounced along in a buggy, a second-rank mage ga
ve him a happy wave and said, “Good to see you, sir. We’re just about sure we’ve found all the eggs the Algarvians planted by now.”
“That’s nice,” Ilmarinen answered. “If you turn out to be wrong, I’ll write you a letter and let you know about it.” The other wizard laughed. Occasional craters in the surface of the road said some of the Algarvian eggs had found Kuusaman soldiers before they were found. If one of them found him, he probably wouldn’t be interested in writing letters for a while.
At some point in the descent, the driver paused to look back over his shoulder and remarked, “Well, we’re in Algarve now.”
Ilmarinen would argue with anybody at any time for any reason. “And how, precisely, do you know that?” he demanded. By way of reply, the driver jerked a thumb off to the right. Ilmarinen turned to look. An enormous dragon done in white, green, and red adorned a boulder. It was partly defaced; Kuusaman soldiers had added several rude scrawls to it. But it was unquestionably an Algarvian dragon. Ilmarinen nodded. “You’re right. We’re in Algarve.”
A thin but steady stream of wounded soldiers came back from the fighting. The ones who weren’t too badly hurt still had plenty of spirit. “We’ll get ‘em,” said a fellow with his hand wrapped in a bloody bandage. “They haven’t got hardly any behemoths left. Pretty cursed hard to win a war without ‘em.”
That made sense to Ilmarinen. What made sense, though, wasn’t necessarily true. By that afternoon, the Kuusamans were over the river both north and south of Tricarico, pushing hard to cut the city off and surround it. And then, just as the sun was setting on the broad Algarvian plain, the world suddenly seemed to hold its breath. Ilmarinen didn’t know how else to put it. He’d felt the Algarvians’ murderous magic so many time, he’d grown inured to it, as had most other mages. This. . This was something else.
What are they doing? flashed through his mind when the sorcerous storm broke. A heartbeat later came another, perhaps even more urgent thought: how are they doing it? He’d heard that the Algarvians were pulling out all sorts of desperate spells, but hadn’t really encountered one till now.
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