At last, after what seemed like a little longer than forever, the dragon glided down to a ship sliding along a ley line. As dragons had a way of doing, it landed clumsily. The pallet on which he’d been lashed thudded down onto the deck. The jolt made him shriek and faint. Unfortunately-or so he thought of it-he woke up again.
When he did, a man he’d never seen before was staring down at him. “I’ll soon have you out again,” the stranger promised. “I hope my spell will hold long enough to get you back to Lagoas. They’ll put you together again. Powers above willing, you’ll be good as new again in a while.”
Fernao couldn’t imagine being as good as new again. He had trouble even imagining being conscious and out of pain. “Hurts,” he groaned.
“Oh, I bet it does,” the ship’s mage said. “Now, just give yourself to the magic. Let it take you, let it sweep you away. . ”
Again, oblivion descended on Fernao. Again, it swept over him so abruptly, he had no idea it was there. Again, he woke to agony-but agony of a different sort, for now he found himself on a soft bed with a cast on his leg, another on his arm, and a bandage round his battered ribs. When he whimpered, a nurse said, “Here. Drink this.”
Drink it he did, hoping it was poison. It wasn’t; it tasted overwhelmingly of poppy seeds. It was so concentrated, he wondered if he could keep it down. Somehow, he did. After a while, the pain receded. No, he thought dreamily. It’s still there, but I’ve floated away from it. With the drug in him, it didn’t seem to matter so much. Nothing seemed to matter very much.
“Where am I?” he asked. He didn’t particularly care about the answer, either, but asking about anything but the pain that had crushed him seemed a delightful novelty.
“Setubal,” the nurse told him.
“Ah,” Fernao said. “With any luck at all, I’ll never leave again.” Then the poppy juice made him sleep, a natural sleep different from the time-frozen comas the emergency sorcery had brought on. Little by little, his body began to repair itself.
King Swemmel’s long, pale face stared out of the crystal, straight at Marshal Rathar. Everywhere in the broad kingdom of Unkerlant-everywhere the Algarvians hadn’t overrun, at any rate-peasants and soldiers and townsfolk who could get to a crystal were listening to the king.
“Durrwangen has fallen,” Swemmel said without preamble. “Unkerlant is in danger. We tell you that some of the soldiers who were posted there ran away instead of doing all they could against the invaders who want to enslave us. They have been punished as they deserve for their cowardice, and shall never have the chance to betray the kingdom again.”
General Vatran, who shared an abandoned peasant hut with Rathar, grimaced. “He executed more men than he needed to,” Vatran said. “A lot more men than he needed to.”
Rathar agreed with him, but waved him to silence all the same. He counted himself lucky not to be among the executed, and counted Vatran even luckier. And he wanted to hear what Swemmel had to say.
“Not one step back!” the king shouted, his tiny image clenching a tiny fist. “Not one step back, we say again. We shall never yield another inch of our sacred soil to the Algarvian savages. If they advance, they shall advance only over the bodies of our warriors, warriors who will never again turn their backs to the barbarous foe. Attack, we say! Attack and triumph!”
King Swemmel’s image vanished from the crystal, which flashed and went dark. With another grimace, Vatran said, “I wish it were as easy as he makes it sound.”
“So does the whole kingdom,” Rathar answered. “But he’s right about one thing: if we don’t fight the Algarvians, we won’t drive them away. We haven’t got much room for retreat, not anymore.”
“I don’t care what Swemmel says,” Vatran declared, a reckless statement from any Unkerlanter. “I don’t see how we’re going to stop the redheads this side of Sulingen. Do you, lord Marshal?” He made Rathar’s title half a challenge, half a reproach.
They were alone in the hut. Otherwise, without a doubt, Vatran would have kept his mouth shut. And otherwise, without a doubt, Rathar would not have answered, “No.” Even saying it where only Vatran could hear was a risk; the general might become a marshal if he could persuade Swemmel that the word had passed Rathar’s lips. Of course, Rathar would call him a liar, but still….
But Vatran said, “Well, you’re honest, at any rate.” He tore a chunk off the very stale loaf of black bread they’d found in the hut and passed it to Rathar. Rathar chewed and swallowed and thanked the powers above for a good set of teeth. His canteen was full of spirits. He swigged, then offered Vatran a drink. Maybe the general thought it was water. He took a big swallow. His eyes went wide. He coughed a couple of times, but held the spirits down.
“Fooled you,” Rathar said with a chuckle. But his amusement soon faded. “Now if we could only fool the redheads.”
“If we don’t-” Vatran shook his head. Not even to Rathar’s ear alone, not even with a good slug of spirits in him, would he saw what was in his mind.
Rathar didn’t have much trouble figuring out what that was. He said it, even if Vatran wouldn’t: “If we don’t, we’re ruined.”
“That’s about the size of it, lord Marshal,” Vatran agreed unhappily. “They just keep smashing through us. If we don’t fall back, they cut off chunks of the army with their behemoths and chew ‘em up at their leisure. And if we do fall back, we yield up the land they were after.”
“They’re stretched thin,” Rathar said, as much to keep up his own hopes as to hearten Rathar. “They’ve got Yaninans holding quiet stretches of the line, more of them every day. They’re putting Forthwegians and Sibians into uniform to do their fighting for them. If they keep stretching, they’re bound to break sooner or later.”
“Aye, but will it be before they break us?” Vatran said. Rathar took another swig of spirits; he had no answer for that.
Someone rapped on the door. Rathar opened it. A filthy, skeletally lean runner stood there panting. The fellow saluted, then said, “Lord Marshal, the Algarvians are pounding our lines to the northeast. If they don’t get some help, they’re going to have to fall back again.”
By his tone, he’d plainly either heard or heard about King Swemmel’s speech. “Not one step back!” the king had thundered. To start retreating so soon after such an order did not bear thinking about.
Turning to Vatran, Rathar asked, “Have we got dragons we can use to give them a hard time?” Before the general could answer, the marshal stabbed out a forefinger. “Of course we do-that farm not far from here. Order ‘em into the air-we’ll see how Mezentio’s men like getting hammered instead of doing the hammering.” His chuckle was harsh: they wouldn’t like it any better than soldiers ever did. Well, too bad for them.
“What else can we throw in there?” Vatran asked. He wasn’t shy about fighting. None of the Unkerlanter generals left alive was. The war had already weeded out a lot of men who did nothing but look handsome in a uniform tunic. It would, no doubt, weed more. Without bothering to check the map, Rathar started naming regiments and brigades the Unkerlanters could quickly move to defend the threatened area. Vatran did look at the map, and stared. “How in blazes do you keep all that in your head, lord Marshal?”
“I don’t know,” Rathar answered, a little sheepishly. “I’ve always had the knack. It comes in handy every now and again.” Still standing in the door of the hut, he shouted for an orderly.
One came running up. “What do you need, sir?”
“A horse for me, and another one for General Vatran-or a unicorn apiece, if that’s easier,” Rathar told him. “There’s trouble north and east of here. If we’re not on the spot, how can we command the defense?”
Rathar knew he was less than the best rider in the world. He rapidly discovered Vatran was among the worst. The orderly brought them both unicorns, each with its gleaming white hide painted in mud- and dirt- and grass-colored splotches to make it harder to see. Even the unicorns’ iron-shod horns were carefully ru
sted to stop any betraying glints of light from them. Rathar thought the beasts perfect. Vatran’s opinion was rather different.
“Not so fast, I pray you,” he protested as Rathar sped to a still-modest trot. By the way Vatran clutched the reins and clung to the saddle, he might have been going at a breakneck gallop. If he ever did have to go at a gallop, Rathar thought he would likely break his neck.
Dragons ranged over the battered land behind the battle line, some low, some high-Algarvian dragons. From the air, the two high-ranking officers looked like a pair of nondescript cavalrymen, which suited Rathar fine.
“What will we do if we spy real Algarvian horse, lord Marshal-or if the redheads spot us?” Vatran asked in piteous tones.
“Why, charge them of course,” Rathar answered, deadpan. Vatran groaned, then cursed as he realized the marshal hadn’t meant it seriously. Rathar laughed a little. Finding anything to laugh about wasn’t easy.
In the tradition of battles from long-ago days, he rode toward the sound of the loudest fighting. Vatran managed to stay with him. They trotted past a team of Unkerlanters stripping the armor and egg-tosser off a slain Algarvian behemoth. “That’s good,” Vatran said. “That’s very good. We can use the gear, and that’s a fact. The Algarvians have too fornicating much of everything.”
“Except soldiers, we hope,” Rathar said, and Vatran nodded. The marshal looked over his shoulder at the Unkerlanter workmen. Thoughtfully, he went on, “Have to make sure they slap a coat of rock-gray paint on that mail before they put it on one of our behemoths. Even then, our men are liable to take it for a ruse-the redheads’ patterns are different from ours.”
“Here’s hoping the Algarvians don’t think of a ruse like that,” Vatran said with feeling. “They think of too cursed many things, and that’s the truth.”
“Aye, isn’t it just?” Rathar said. He filed the idea away, as one against which he would have to warn the Unkerlanter soldiery.
Up ahead, dragons swooped again and again. The sharp roars of bursting eggs came ever closer together. And Unkerlanter footsoldiers began streaming away from the center of the fighting before Rathar could get there and take charge of the defense. They had the look he’d seen too often in the fight against the Algarvians: the look of men not just beaten but stunned by what had rolled over them. They gaped at the sight of anyone going toward the battle from which they were retreating. “It’s another cursed breakthrough,” one of them said.
“Didn’t you hear the king’s order?” General Vatran thundered. “Not another step back!”
The soldier came to a ragged sort of attention, realizing the two men on unicornback were officers. He didn’t realize what sort of officers they were; he was too battered and worn to pay attention to the rank badges on their collar tabs. “If old Swemmel went through what I’ve been through, he’d step back himself, and pretty fornicating lively, too.”
Vatran looked about ready to burst like an egg. His fury did him no good. Before he could start thundering again, the weary soldier and his comrades trudged past him and Rathar, heading west and south. They might-they probably would-fight again later, when the odds looked better. For now, they’d taken all they could.
“Come on,” Rathar told Vatran. “We’ve got more important things to worry about than a squad’s worth of stragglers.” If we can’t stop the Algarvians from breaking through whenever they press hard, the whole kingdom will go over a cliff.”
“Ought to line ‘em up against a wall and blaze ‘em,” Vatran said, forgetting his earlier claim that the king had been too merciful. “That’s what we’d have done in the Twinkings War, and you cursed well know it.”
“We’ve done it in this fight, too,” Rathar said. “And we’ll do more of it, if we have to. But not this lot, that’s all.”
Vatran grunted. His unicorn chose that moment to sidestep. It almost threw him, where even an average rider would have shifted his weight a little and gone about his business. By the time the general had his mount under control (Rathar would have taken oath the beast looked scornful, but it might have been the way the paint streaked its muzzle), he’d calmed down a little. “Have to hit the redheads’ column in flank as it punches through. That’ll give ‘em some trouble, if we can bring it off.”
“Good notion,” Rathar told him, and it was. They’d blunted some Algar-vian attacks that way. He wondered if the Unkerlanter forces moving against the breakthrough could cut it off. Even more, though, he wondered where he was going to make the next fight this side of Sulingen.
Under Garivald’s tunic, a drop of sweat ran down his back as he trudged toward the village of Pirmasens. Heat wasn’t what made him sweat, though the weather was as warm and sticky as it ever got down in the Duchy of Grelz. No, he was afraid, and knew how afraid he was.
“Liaz,” he said, over and over again. “Liaz. Liaz.” He couldn’t very well go into any Grelzer village under his own name, not with the whacking great price the Algarvians had put on his head. Most villagers hated King Mezentio and his puppet King of Grelz, his cousin Raniero, more than they hated King Swem-mel. But enough felt the other way about things to make him glad he had an alias. Now if only he could be sure of remembering it!
Pirmasens wasn’t one of the villages from which Munderic’s irregulars usually gathered food and supplies. The Algarvians held it tight, not least because it stood close to a ley line. Munderic needed to know what they were up to. Irregulars from other parts of Unkerlant would have betrayed themselves as soon as they opened their mouths. Garivald would be a stranger in Pirmasens, but a stranger with the right accent.
As he neared the village, he saw it was intact, which meant Unkerlanter soldiers hadn’t made a stand here the summer before. That wasn’t so good; it gave the locals less reason to hate the redheads. It also gave them more reason to betray a fugitive bard named Garivald, if any of them should recognize him in the person of Liaz. Another drop of sweat slid down his spine.
“It won’t be so bad,” he muttered, and did his best to make himself believe it. Before the war, a stranger wandering into a peasant village would have been a surprise, especially if he was just another peasant and not a merchant with something to sell. The fighting, though, had torn things up by the roots. So Munderic had told Garivald, anyhow. Garivald hoped the irregulars’ leader was right.
Hoofbeats made him look back over his shoulder. An Algarvian trooper on a lathered horse cantered past him and into Pirmasens. The redhead eyed him on riding by, just as he watched Mezentio’s soldier. Any man who trusted another, even for a moment, risked his life these days.
Well behind the horseman, Garivald came into Pirmasens. It was a bigger place than Zossen, which remained his touchstone, probably because it lay close to the ley line and so drew more trade. It looked achingly normal: men out in the fields around the village, women in the vegetable plots by their houses, children and dogs and chickens underfoot. A lump came into Garivald’s throat. This was the way life was supposed to be, the way he’d always known it.
Then a couple of kilted Algarvians strode out of one of the few buildings in the village that wasn’t somebody’s house: the tavern, unless he missed his guess. He’d planned on going in there himself-how better to find out what was going on in Pirmasens than over a few mugs of ale? Now he wondered if that was such a good idea.
A dog came yapping up to him. He stamped his foot and growled back, and the dog ran away. “That’s how you do it, all right,” a villager called. Garivald had to work hard not to stare at the fellow. He’d never seen an Unkerlanter with a fancy waxed mustache before. He hoped he’d never see another one, either; such fripperies might do well enough for an Algarvian, but they struck him as absurd on one of his countrymen.
“Aye, sure is,” Garivald replied.
Hearing Grelzer dialect identical to his own coming out of Garivald’s mouth, the man with the mustache grinned. It was a fine, friendly grin, one that should have made Garivald like him at sight. But for the hair on his
lip, it might have. Even seeing the mustache-surely the mark of someone currying favor with the redheads-Garivald warmed somewhat. The local said, “Haven’t seen you in these parts before, have I?”
Now Garivald smiled back. He might be an amateur spy, but he recognized a counterpart on the other side when he heard one. “Wouldn’t think so. I’m from east of here-a little place called Minsen.” That was a village not far from Zossen. “Swemmel’s soldiers, curse ‘em, fought hard to hold it, so it’s not there anymore. Neither is my wife. Neither are my son and daughter.” He made himself sound grim.
“Ah, I’ve heard tales like that so many times,” the fellow with the mustache said. He came up and draped an arm around Garivald’s shoulder, as if he were a sympathetic cousin. “I’m not sorry we’re out from under Swemmel’s yoke, and that’s a fact. Look at the price you paid for getting stuck in the middle of a lost war.”
“Aye,” Garivald said. “You’ve got a good way of looking at things, ah …”
“My name’s Rual,” the man from Pirmasens said.
Garivald clasped his hand, which also let him shake off that arm. “And I’m Liaz,” he said. He’d got it right the first time, anyhow.
“Let me buy you a mug of ale, Liaz,” Rual said. “We can sit around and swap stories about what a son of a whore Swemmel is.”
“Suits me fine,” Garivald said. “I’ve got plenty of ‘em.” And he did, too. Loving Swemmel wasn’t easy. After what he’d seen, after what he’d been through, hating the redheads more was. “I’ll buy you one afterwards, too. I’ve got enough coppers for that, anyhow.”
“Well, come on, then. Let’s get out of the hot sun.” Sure enough, Rual led him to the building from which the Algarvians had come.
More Algarvians sat inside. One of them nodded to Rual in a familiar way. As if the mustache hadn’t been enough, that told Garivald all he needed to know about the other peasant’s allegiance. It also told him he had to be extra careful if he wanted to get out of Pirmasens in one piece.
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