Krasta shrugged. "He seemed more interested in throwing it in my face than in really telling me anything about Skarnu, so I wouldn't give him the satisfaction. He doesn't like Skarnu much, does he?"
"One need hardly be a first-rank mage to see that," Lurcanio remarked. "Your brother, I gather, gave Amatu a good set of lumps before the count decided he might be better served on the Algarvian side."
"Did he?" Krasta said. "Well, good for him."
"I never claimed Amatu was the most lovable man ever born, though he does love himself rather well, would you not agreed?" Lurcanio said.
"Someone has to, I suppose," Krasta said. "He makes one."
"Sweet as ever," Lurcanio said, and Krasta smiled, as if at a compliment. Her Algarvian lover went on, "What do you think of what he did have to tell you?"
"I can't believe my brother would take up with a peasant girl," Krasta said. "It's... beneath his dignity."
"It also happens to be true," Lurcanio said. "Her name is Merkela. We were going to seize her, to use her as a lure to draw your brother, but she seems to have got wind of that, for she fled her farm."
"What would you have done with Skarnu if you'd caught him?" Krasta didn't want to ask the question, but didn't see how she could avoid it.
"Squeezed him for what he knew about the other bandits, of course," Lurcanio answered. "We are fighting a war, after all. Still, we wouldn't have done anything, ah, drastic if he had come out and told us what we needed to learn. Does Amatu look much the worse for wear?"
"Well, no," Krasta admitted.
"There you are, then," Lurcanio said. But Krasta wondered if it were so simple. Amatu, unless she misread things, had had a bellyful of Algarve's foes and had gone to the redheads of his own accord. No wonder they'd taken it easy on him, then. Skarnu wouldn't have had that on his side of the ledger.
I went to the redheads of my own accord, too, Krasta thought. No wonder they've taken it easy on me, then. To her amazement-indeed, to something not far from her horror-she burst into tears.
***
Had Sidroc sat any closer to the fire, his tunic would have started smoldering. Fall here in southern Unkerlant was as bad as winter back in Gromheort. He'd seen what winter was like here. He never wanted to see it again, but he would, and soon... if he lived long enough.
He didn't want to think about that. He didn't want to think about anything. All he wanted was the simple animal pleasure of warmth. A pot atop the fire was starting to bubble. Pretty soon, he'd have the animal pleasure of food, too. For the moment-and what else mattered in a soldier's life? -things weren't so bad.
Sergeant Werferth got to his feet and stirred the pot with a big iron spoon that had come from an Unkerlanter peasant hut. "Pretty soon," he said, settling back down on his haunches again.
"Good," Sidroc said. A couple of other men from Plegmund's Brigade nodded.
Werferth let out a long sigh. "We were that close to smashing them," he said, holding up his thumb and forefinger almost touching. "That close, curse it."
Ceorl held up his thumb and forefinger the same way. "I'm about that close to starving," the ruffian said. "That close, curse it."
Everybody laughed: even Werferth, whose dignity as an underofficer was menaced; even Sidroc, who still despised Ceorl whenever the two of them weren't fighting the Unkerlanters. Werferth said, "I told you it'd be done soon. Did you think I was lying?"
Somewhere off in the distance-not too far-eggs burst. Everyone's head came up as the soldiers gauged the distance and direction of the noise. "Ours," Sidroc judged. He waited to see if anybody would argue with him. When no one did, he relaxed-a little.
Werferth said, "Powers below eat me if I know how we figure out who's tossing those eggs and what it means. The way things have been going, we're not even sure where in blazes we're at."
"Somewhere this side of the Gifhorn River," Sidroc said. "Somewhere this side of the western border of Grelz, too, or we'd have those fellows in the dark green tunics fighting on our side." They were somewhere a long way north and west of Durrwangen, but he didn't mention that. Everybody around the fire already knew it too well.
"We hope we would, anyhow," Werferth said. "From what I hear, the Grelzers are getting shaky."
"Fair-weather friends." Ceorl spat into the campfire. "Blaze a few of 'em to remind the rest who they work for and they won't give you much trouble."
Sidroc found himself nodding. Even though Ceorl was the one who'd said it, it made good sense to him. Werferth stirred the pot again, lifted out the spoon to taste a mouthful, and nodded. "It's done."
The stew was cabbage and buckwheat groats and turnips and meat from a dead unicorn, all boiled together with some salt. Back in Gromheort, Sidroc wouldn't have touched it. Here, he wolfed it down and held out his mess tin for more. His comrades were doing the same, so he didn't get much of a second helping.
A sentry called out a challenge. The Forthwegians by the fire grabbed for their sticks. Nobody from Plegmund's Brigade ever left his weapon out of reach, not even for a moment. Anybody who did that in this country was asking to get his throat cut. But the answer came back in Algarvian: "You are Plegmund's Brigade, is it not so? I've got letters for you: soldiers' post."
They greeted him almost as enthusiastically as if he were a woman of easy virtue. He got whatever stew was left in the pot, and a swig of spirits from somebody's water bottle. Once he figured out which squad from which company they were, he started passing out letters. Some of them got passed back to him, with remarks like, "He's dead," or, "He got wounded and taken off a couple weeks ago," that took the edge off the excitement of seeing mail.
Sidroc leaped in the air when the Algarvian called his name. He hadn't heard from Gromheort in a long time. The only person there who cared to write him was his father. The rest of his family were either dead or hated him, and that ran both ways.
Sure enough, the envelope the redhead handed him bore his father's familiar handwriting. It also bore a prewar Forthwegian value imprinted in one c orner, and a green handstamp that said MILITARY POST over it. People who collected envelopes might have paid a fair bit of silver for this one. Sidroc wasn't any of those people, and so he tore it open to get at the letter inside.
My dear son, his father wrote. It was good to hear from you, and good to hear that you came through the hard fighting around Durrwangen safe. I hope this finds you well. Powers above grant it be so. I am well enough, though a toothache will send me to the dentist when it gets bad enough.
After I got your last letter, I paid a call on your dear Uncle Hestan. Sidroc grunted at that; Ealstan and Leofsig's father wasn't dear to him these days, nor he to Hestan. His own father went on, I told him what you had to say to me about the Kaunian wench named Vanai, and about the way his precious son Ealstan had been panting after her for years. I also told him she was an Algarvian officer's plaything in Oyngestun.
He only shrugged and said he didn't know anything about it. He said he hadn't heard a word from Ealstan since the day you got hit in the head (however that happened) and the self-righteous little brat disappeared (however that happened).
I don't believe him. But you know Hestan too well, the same as I do. He never tells his face what he is thinking. A lot of people think he is clever just because they don't know what's going on inside his head. And he may even be clever, but he is not as smart as he thinks he is.
"Ha! That's the truth, by the powers above," Sidroc said, as if his father were standing there beside him.
I am afraid I will never be able to get to the bottom of this by myself, the letter went on. Maybe I will see if the Algarvians are interested in getting to the bottom of it for me. Hestan is my own flesh and blood, but that gets hard to remember after all the names he's called me since things went sour between you and his sons.
You are everything I have left. Stay safe. Stay warm. Be brave-I know you will. Love, your father.
"Powers below eat Uncle Hestan," Sidroc muttered. "Powers below
eat Ealstan, too. He'd always suck up to the schoolmasters, and I'd get the stripes."
"Who's it from, Sidroc?" Sergeant Werferth asked. "Anything juicy in it?" The soldiers who got letters from sweethearts often read out the livelier bits to amuse their comrades.
But Sidroc shook his head. "Not a thing. It's just from my old man."
"Well, is he getting any?" Ceorl demanded. Sidroc shook his head again and put the letter in his belt pouch. Ceorl looked to be about to say something else. Sergeant Werferth set him to gathering more wood to throw on the fire. Werferth knew Sidroc and Ceorl had no love lost between them. He did his best not to give them any chance to quarrel.
"Halt! Who goes there?" the sentry called again.
"I have the honor to be Captain Baiardo," another Algarvian answered. "Do you have the honor to be the men of Plegmundo's-no, Plegmund's-Brigade?"
"Aye," the sentry answered. "Advance and be recognized, sir."
Sidroc turned to Sergeant Werferth. "Too bad they wouldn't let you keep the company, Sergeant. You've done as well with it as any of the redhead officers they put over us."
"Thanks." Werferth shrugged. "What can you do? They give the orders."
But Baiardo, when he came up to the fire, proved not to be the new company commander. Along with his rank badges, he wore that of a mage-he was an officer by courtesy, not by blood. And it took a lot of courtesy to reckon him an officer: he looked like an unmade bed. "Who's in charge here?" he asked, peering from one Forthwegian to another.
The men of Plegmund's Brigade wore their own kingdom's markings of rank; Sergeant Werferth's single chevrons couldn't have meant anything to Baiardo. "I am, sir," Werferth said resignedly. "What do you want?"
"I need a volunteer," Baiardo said.
Silence fell on the Forthwegians. They had seen plenty to teach them that the war was bad enough when they did what they had to do. Doing more than they had to do only made it worse. Baiardo looked expectantly from one soldier to the next. Maybe he hadn't seen all that much himself. Nobody could tell him no, not straight out. He was an Algarvian, and an officer-well, an officer of sorts-to boot. At last, Sergeant Werferth pointed to Sidroc and said, "He'll do whatever you need, sir."
"Splendid." Baiardo clapped his hands in what looked like real delight.
Sidroc thought it anything but splendid. He glared at Baiardo and Werferth in turn. Glaring, of course, was all he could do. Whatever happened to him would be better than what he'd get for disobeying an order. With a sigh, he asked the Algarvian mage, "What do you need from me, sir?"
If Baiardo noticed his reluctance, he didn't let it show. "Here." He unslung his pack and handed it to Sidroc. "Carry this. Come with me."
He's arrogant enough to make a proper Algarvian, Sidroc thought. The pack might have been stuffed with lead. He carried it and his own pack and his stick and followed Baiardo away from the fire. The mage blithely strode southwest. After a little while, Sidroc said, "Sir, if you keep going, you'll see the Unkerlanters closer than you ever wanted to."
"Their lines are close?" Baiardo sounded as if that hadn't occurred to him.
"You might say so, aye," Sidroc answered dryly. Baiardo clapped his hands again. "Powers above, keep quiet!" Sidroc hissed. "Are you trying to get both of us killed?" As far as he was concerned, Baiardo was welcome to do himself in, but Sidroc resented being included in his suicide.
But the mage shook his head and said, "No. Set down the pack" -an order Sidroc was glad to obey. Baiardo took from the heavy pack a laurel leaf of the sort often used in Forthwegian cookery and a small, dazzlingly bright opal. He wrapped the stone in the leaf and chanted first in Algarvian, then in classical Kaunian. Sidroc stared, for the mage's outline grew hazy, indistinct; at last, Baiardo almost disappeared. "Stay here," he told Sidroc. "Wait for me." Still in that wraithlike state, he started for the Unkerlanters' line.
How long do I wait? Sidroc wondered. Baiardo wasn't fully invisible. If Swemmel's soldiers were alert, they would spot him. If they did, Sidroc was liable to have a very long wait indeed. Muttering a curse under his breath, he started digging a hole. He felt naked on the Unkerlanter plain without one. The dirt he dug up made a breastwork in front of his scrape. It wouldn't protect him if a regiment of Unkerlanters came roaring after Baiardo, but it might keep a sniper from parting his hair with a beam.
He'd just scrambled down into the hole when a voice spoke out of thin air behind him: "We can go back now." He whirled, and there stood Baiardo, as haggard and unkempt as ever, putting the laurel leaf and the opal back into his pack. The mage added, "I got what I came for."
"And you almost got blazed before you could deliver it, whatever it was, you cursed fool," Sidroc said angrily. "Don't you have any sense at all?"
Baiardo gave that serious consideration. "I doubt it," he said at last. "It doesn't always help in my business."
They trudged back toward the fire, Baiardo pleased with himself, Sidroc still a little-maybe more than a little-twitchy. The mage, he noticed, had sense enough not to carry his own pack when he didn't have to. He left that to Sidroc.
***
"Welcome back," people kept telling Fernao, in Kuusaman and in classical Kaunian. Some of them added, "How well you are moving!"
"Thank you," Fernao said, over and over. The mages and the cooks and maids in the hostel in the Naantali district were just being polite, and he knew it. He would never move well again, not as long as he lived. Maybe he was moving a little better than he had when he went off to Setubal. Maybe. He remained imperfectly convinced.
Ilmarinen helped him put things in perspective. The master mage patted him on the back and said, "Well, after so much time off in that miserable little no- account excuse for a city, you must be glad to come back here, to a place where interesting things are happening."
His classical Kaunian was so fast and colloquial-so much like a living language in his mouth-that at first Fernao thought he meant the Naantali district was the sleepy place and Setubal the one where things happened. When he realized Ilmarinen had said the opposite, he laughed out loud. "You always have that knack for turning things upside down," he told the Kuusaman mage. His own Kaunian remained formal: a language he could use, but not one in which he felt at home.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Ilmarinen answered. "I always speak plain sense. Is it my fault the rest of the world isn't ready to see it most of the time?"
Pekka came into the dining room in time to hear that. "A madman's ravings always seem sensible to him," she remarked, not without affection.
Ilmarinen snorted and waved to a serving woman. "A mug of ale, Linna," he called before turning back to Pekka. "You sound as if sense were sensible in magecraft. A thing has to work. It doesn't have to be sensible."
"Oh, nonsense," Fernao said. "Otherwise, theoretical sorcery would be a dry well."
"A lot of the time, it is," Ilmarinen retorted, reveling in his heresy. "A lot of the time, what we do is figure out after the fact why an experiment that had no business working did work in spite of what we-wrongly-thought we knew." He waved. "If that weren't so, what would we all be doing here?"
Fernao hesitated. Ilmarinen enjoyed tossing eggs into a conversation. But being outrageous wasn't necessarily the same as being wrong.
Pekka, now, wagged a finger under Ilmarinen's nose, as if he were a naughty little boy . "We can also go from pure theory to practical sorcery. If that isn't sense, what is it?"
"Luck," Ilmarinen answered. "And speaking of luck..." Linna came up with the mug of ale. "Here it is now. Thank you, sweetheart." He bowed to the serving girl. He hadn't given up chasing her-or maybe he had while Fernao was away, and then started up again. You never could tell with Ilmarinen.
Linna went off without a backwards glance. Plainly, the next time Ilmarinen caught her would be the first. Whatever else Fernao couldn't tell about the master mage, that was glaringly obvious.
Ilmarinen took a long pull at the ale. "Curse King Mezentio," he ground
out. "Curse him and all his clever mages. Now the rest of the world has to deal with the question of how in blazes to beat him without being as vile as he is."
"King Swemmel worries about that not at all," Fernao pointed out, which only prompted Ilmarinen to make a horrible face at him.
"We are still fighting King Mezentio, too, and we have resorted to none of his barbarism," Pekka said primly.
Ilmarinen got down to the bottom of his mug and smacked it down on the table almost hard enough to shatter it. He said, "We've also got the luxury of the Strait of Valmiera between us and the worst Mezentio can do. The Unkerlanters, poor buggers, don't. What'll we do when we've got big armies in the field against Algarve?"
"A good deal of the answer to that depends on whether we succeed here, would you not agree?" Fernao said. Pekka nodded; she agreed, at any rate.
Turtledove, Harry - Darkness 04 - Rulers Of The Darkness Page 59
