Pekka studied. She nodded. “Thank you,” she said. “I missed that when I hurried through. I think you’re right. I’m not sure, but I think so. But if the spell does fail, how will it fail?”
Some spells that didn’t work just didn’t work: the world went on as if nothing had happened. Others … Fernao summed up the others in one classical Kaunian word: “Energetically.”
She feared he was right. They both got to their feet. “Your breakfast, Mistress Pekka!” the serving woman said. Pekka ignored her, but hurried out of the refectory, out of the hostel, with Fernao. He limped and leaned on his stick, but still moved fast enough to suit her.
When they went to the stable for a carriage, they discovered one was already gone. “Are you heading out to the blockhouse with Master Ilmarinen?” their driver asked. “He left a while ago.”
“Did he?” Pekka said tonelessly. “Well, then, maybe you’d better hurry, hadn’t you?” The fellow barely had time to nod before she scrambled into the passenger compartment with Fernao. She looked at the Lagoan mage. “If it does fail energetically, it occurs to me that we might get there just in time to be caught in the energy release.”
“Aye, that occurred to me, too,” Fernao agreed. “We have to try, though, don’t we?” He waited for her to nod, then went on, “There’s a worse possibility, too, you know: he might succeed.”
“In going back through time? In changing things?” Pekka shook her head. “I don’t believe that. Powers above, I don’t want to believe it. And if he does it no matter what I believe …” She shuddered.
Fernao took her hand. She let him; she was glad of the contact. “If he can meddle, others will be able to do it, too,” he said. “And we won’t have a past to call our own anymore.”
Pekka leaned out the carriage. “Faster!” she told the driver. Obligingly, he got the horses up to a trot.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” Fernao said. “If we’re late—”
“We have to try,” Pekka said, though every instinct in her shouted for turning around and going the other way. If Ilmarinen failed … energetically, Leino would lose his wife and Uto would grow up not remembering much of his mother. Pekka clutched at Fernao’s hand. Suddenly, absurdly, she wanted him very much. No chance of that, not now. I know I might die at any moment. That’s what it is.
The carriage stopped. Pekka and Fernao piled out. She ran for the blockhouse. He followed at the best pace he could manage. In spite of the stick, his long legs made him not much slower than she.
When Pekka threw open the door, her worst fear was finding the place empty. That would mean Ilmarinen had done what he’d set out to do, and that would mean disaster. But there stood the elderly mage, still incanting. “Stop!” Pekka shouted. He hadn’t come to the indeterminacy, but he couldn’t be far away.
He smiled and shook his head and kept on with what he was doing. Fernao wasted no time talking. He simply tackled Ilmarinen and knocked him down. Ilmarinen shouted in fury, but Fernao, bad leg and all, was much bigger and younger and stronger than he. Pekka quickly chanted a counterspell to neutralize the sorcerous potential Ilmarinen’s magecraft had built up.
“You idiots!” Ilmarinen cried, and then several choicer epithets.
“No,” Fernao and Pekka said together. She went on, “Your calculations have an error in them. Fernao found it, and I’m sure he’s right.” Ilmarinen kept right on cursing. Pekka didn’t care. She still had a future—and the world, despite Ilmarinen’s best efforts, still had a past.
King Donalitu of Jelgava paced along Habakkuk’s icy deck once more. Leino made a wish. Wishes had very little to do with magecraft; the Kuusaman sorcerer knew as much. He made this one anyhow.
And, whether by the powers above or just dumb luck, it came true. As Donalitu was pompously declaiming, “And so we approach once more the land from which I was unjustly driven almost four long years ago—” his feet went out from under him and he landed, hard, on the royal backside.
Leino had all he could do not to clap his hands in glee, as Uto would have done. Like everyone else aboard Habakkuk, Donalitu wore shoes with cleats or spikes to keep such mishaps from occurring. Maybe he hadn’t paid attention when people had explained how to walk in them. He didn’t seem much in the habit of paying attention to anything.
Beside Leino, Xavega did clap her hands. But even she tried to pretend she hadn’t done it afterwards. She grinned at Leino. He smiled back. If it hadn’t been for Donalitu, they never would have ended up in bed together. If it hadn’t been for Donalitu, she still would have looked down her nose at him—not hard, when she was taller than he was.
He wasn’t about to arrange a dissolution from Pekka to spend the rest of his days with Xavega. She remained bad-tempered, arrogant, difficult, prejudiced. He could see all that clearly enough. But when she stripped off her clothes and lay down beside him, there was never a dull moment. He hadn’t been sleeping well aboard Habakkuk. He did now.
Assisted by Captain Brunho, Donalitu got to his feet and managed to stay upright. He started to go on with his remarks, but didn’t get the chance. One after another, screeching with fury, dragons flapped their way into the air and flew off toward the west. Not even a king so manifestly foolish as Donalitu was foolish enough to try to outshout a dragon.
Leino looked around and then back over his shoulder. Every ley line leading west toward the Jelgavan mainland was full of ships. Some of them flew Lagoas’ crimson and gold banners. Quite a few more, though, showed the sky blue and sea green of Kuusamo. Xavega might not think much of either his homeland or his countrymen, but Kuusamo was stronger than her kingdom.
Since she thought well enough of him to open her legs, her other opinions distressed him less than they had. He knew that was wrong, but had trouble doing anything about it.
He didn’t want to think about her other opinions just now, anyway. He said, “I hope the ruse worked. When the fleet sailed from Kihlanki, we made it very plain we were sailing against Gyongyos—so plain, the Algarvians couldn’t help but find out about it. All the ships flew Kuusaman flags then, till we were out of sight of land.”
“Everything seems fine so far,” Xavega said. “We are close enough to the Jelgavan coast to send out our dragons, and the Algarvians have not troubled us with dragons of their own, or with ships of their own, or with leviathans. It looks as if our surprise is complete.”
“It will not stay complete for long,” Leino said. “Having dragons drop eggs on you and flame your soldiers will probably draw your notice.”
“Aye, I suppose so,” Xavega said. Leino hid a sigh. He’d tried to be playful with his classical Kaunian—the only language they had in common, since he’d never needed to learn Lagoan and Xavega showed less than no interest in everything Kuusaman except him. Had she even noticed? He shook his head. She hadn’t.
So what are you doing with her? he wondered. But the answer to that was as obvious as it was trite: I’m screwing her till we annoy the people in the cubicles on either side of ours. He’d been surprised at how much a man in his mid-thirties could do—pleasantly surprised. Very pleasantly.
“We have to smash them,” Xavega said. “If we do not smash them, the landing on the Jelgavan coast will fail. And it must not fail.”
“It had better not, anyhow,” Leino agreed. “And so the war comes back to eastern Derlavai. I wonder if the Jelgavans will thank us for it.”
“Of course not,” Xavega said—she was no more fond of Jelgavans as a people than of Kuusamans as a people. But then she asked a perfectly reasonable question: “Does King Donalitu seem grateful?”
“No. As far as King Donalitu is concerned, he is doing us a favor by allowing us to convey him back to Jelgava on Habakkuk?
That made Xavega laugh, though Leino hadn’t been joking. He looked toward the west. More dragons were flying in that direction, not only from Habakkuk but also from other ice-ships in her class and from the smaller, more conventional (which, to his way of thinking, als
o meant old-fashioned) dragon-haulers Kuusamo had devised to fight the war against Gyongyos in the wide reaches of the Bothnian Ocean. Again, some of the dragons were painted red and gold, but more were Kuusamo’s sky blue and sea green.
Along with the ships that carried dragons were a great many more that bore soldiers, and others with behemoths and horses and unicorns and egg-tossers and all the other supplies an army needed to fight on land these days. Xavega said, “This is a far mightier armada than the one the Algarvians used to take Sibiu.”
“So it is,” Leino said. “But the Algarvians were sneaky in a different way, for their ships did not use the ley lines at all: they were just sailing ships, like those of ancient days. They got into the Sibian ports before the defenders even realized they were there.”
Xavega cared nothing for such details. “This fleet is mightier,” she said again, which was indeed true. “Lagoas is mightier than Algarve.” Taken by itself, that struck Leino as much less obviously true.
Coughing a couple of times, he said, “Kuusamo has also had a certain amount to do with this fleet”—that certain amount being about two parts in three.
“Well, aye, a certain amount,” Xavega allowed reluctantly. By her tone, that certain amount might have been about one part in ten.
A shout rose from Habakkuk tall watchtower: “Land ho!” Down on the deck, Leino couldn’t see the Derlavaian mainland, not yet. Before long, though, he would. Habakkuk and the other dragon-haulers would want to stay as close to the mainland as they could, to let the beasts aboard them fly as far into Jelgava as they could. Before too long, the Kuusaman and Lagoan dragons would fly from farms on Jelgavan soil, but Kuusaman and Lagoan footsoldiers would first have to take that soil away from the Algarvians.
Xavega said, “Still no trouble from King Mezentio’s men. They are all looking across the Strait of Valmiera, thinking we would try to strike against them there. But we fooled them by sailing out of that eastern port.” She didn’t remember the name.
Leino nodded. “We seem to have fooled them. The better our job of that, the smaller the price we shall have to pay.” He pointed. “Look—some of the ships are sending their landing boats toward the shore.”
Sure enough, men were scrambling down nets and rope ladders from the ley-line transports to the smaller craft that would take them up onto the beaches of southeastern Jelgava. Because a good many ley lines ran toward those beaches, the smaller craft also had sorcerers aboard to take advantage of the world’s energy grid. In earlier invasions by sea, some Kuusamans had had to try to reach Gyongyosian-held islands from their transports in rowboats and little sailboats. Logistics here had improved.
“They are not going to be able to make behemoths, or even unicorns, climb down ladders,” Xavega said. “How do they propose to get them into the battle?”
“I do not know,” Leino answered with a shrug. “I have not tried to find out, either, I must admit. Keeping Habakkuk going has been plenty to occupy me for now. If I thought they did not have a way, I would worry. But I expect they do. If I transfer to the land campaign, I suppose I will have to worry about that kind of thing.”
He looked west again. Now he could see the mainland of Jelgava. He’d been here on holiday with Pekka, but that was at the resorts of the far north. Whatever this was, a holiday it was not. I hope it’s not a holiday for the Algarvians, either. It had better not be, or we’re all in trouble.
He didn’t just see the mainland. He saw smoke rising from whatever Algarvian fortresses or barracks or other installations the dragons could find. And he also saw fountains of water rising from the sea not far in front of the foremost ships of the invasion fleet. He cursed softly in Kuusaman: cursing in classical Kaunian never satisfied him. The dragons haven’t wrecked all their egg-tossers. Too bad.
An egg landed on one of the small craft taking soldiers toward the shore. After Leino blinked away the flash of light from the burst of sorcerous energy, he stared at the spot, hoping to spy survivors clinging to bits of wreckage. But he saw only empty sea there, empty sea and other landing boats hurrying toward the shore.
Xavega had chanced to be looking in the same direction. “Brave men,” she said quietly.
“Aye.” But Leino wondered. Then he shrugged. Whether they’d been brave or terrified, what difference did it make? The egg hadn’t cared. And what they were now, irretrievably, was sunk. A moment later, another egg struck a boat. That vessel too, vanished as if it had never been.
And, a moment later, alarm bells aboard Habakkuk clanged. A dowser shouted, “Enemy dragons!” and pointed toward the west.
For a long moment, Leino didn’t spot them: he was looking high in the sky, where the Lagoan and Kuusaman beasts had flown. When his gaze fell closer to the sea, he spied the dragons—two of them, a leader and his wingman—driving straight toward the fleet just above the wavetops. Each of them flamed a light craft full of soldiers. Then they pressed on toward the bigger ships of the fleet itself.
Every heavy stick aboard those bigger ships started blazing at the Algarvian dragonfliers. None struck home, though. The dragons flamed a few men on the deck of a ley-line cruiser not far from Habakkuk. That done, they dodged their way back toward the Jelgavan mainland.
“I hope they get home safe,” Xavega said. “I do not care if they are the foe. They have great courage.”
Algarvic peoples—Lagoans as well as Algarvians—were prone to such chivalrous notions. Leino didn’t argue with Xavega, but he didn’t agree with her, either. As far as he was concerned, a particularly brave enemy was an enemy who particularly needed killing.
The Algarvian dragons did escape the massed blazing power of the whole allied fleet. But they were the only two enemy dragons Leino saw that whole day long. And, even as they escaped, the first small craft let their soldiers out on the beaches of Jelgava. Now the Algarvians had a new fight on their hands.
Talsu was discovering that life in a tent was less different from life in his home than he’d expected. He was warm enough. He had a roof over his head. True, it was a cloth roof, but with spring edging toward summer that mattered very little in Skrunda. If he was still under canvas when rain came with fall and winter, that would be a different story. He’d worry about it then, though—he couldn’t change it now. After the eggs from Kuusaman and Lagoan dragons burned him and his family out of their house, he was glad they were all alive and in one piece.
Worst about sharing the tent on the edge of town—one of many—with his father and mother and sister was that he and Gailisa had so little privacy. His parents were considerate enough to go out walking every now and then, and he and his wife did the same for them (both pairs taking Ausra along as needed), but still… .
He also went out walking and into town for other reasons than privacy these days. For most of four years, ever since the Jelgavan army collapsed and King Donalitu fled to Lagoas, he’d taken Algarvian occupation for granted. It wasn’t that he liked the redheads—he despised them. But he hadn’t seen anything that would get them out of his kingdom. In certain minimal ways— accepting coins with King Mainardo’s beaky profile on them, in making clothes for Algarvian officers, in not using his every waking moment thinking up ways to dismay or kill them—he’d acquiesced in their presence in Skrunda.
Everything was different now. After days of uneasy silence, Skrunda’s news sheets had to catch up with rumor and admit what could no longer be denied: the islanders had landed on the Derlavaian mainland. They’d landed, in fact, not far from Balvi—the capital of Jelgava lay close to the beaches where they’d come ashore.
After fetching a news sheet back to the tent, Talsu waved it in his father’s face. “Just listen to this.”
“Well, I will, if you ever read it to me,” Traku answered.
“All right.” Talsu stopped waving the sheet and started reading from it: “ ‘King Mainardo, the rightful ruler of the Kingdom of Jelgava, expresses his complete confidence that his forces and those of his valiant Algarvian
allies will succeed in repelling the vicious invasion by the air pirates whose raids have already caused the Jelgavan people so much hardship.’ “
“He’d be pissing in his pants if he wore pants instead of Algarvian kilts.” Traku had heard enough news-sheet stories to have little trouble extracting accurate meaning from deliberately inaccurate words. He screwed up his face and made as if to spit. “I’m sure Mainardo loses hours and hours of sleep worrying about the Jelgavan people. Aren’t you?” He spoke in a low voice; canvas walls were thinner than those of brick and wood.
“Aye, worrying about how to do more and worse to us than he has up till now,” Talsu said, also quietly. “But wait—there’s more. ‘Jelgavan forces and their bold Algarvian comrades have inflicted heavy losses on the enemy and are making gains in several areas. Fierce fighting continues all along the line. The invaders’ hopes for a speedy triumph are doomed to disappointment.’ You know what that’s really saying, don’t you?”
“Of course I do.” His father looked irate. “Think I’m stupid or something? It means the redheads tried to boot ‘em back into the ocean and they cursed well couldn’t do it. Or d’you think I’m wrong?”
“Not me.” Talsu shook his head. “That’s what I think it means, too. And here’s the best part of all: ‘An impostor claiming to be the abdicated fugitive King Donalitu has been reported to be in the grasp of the invaders. This effort to incite the contented populace of Jelgava will surely meet the failure it deserves.’ “
“So the real king’s back, eh?” Traku said.
“Can’t very well mean anything else, can it?” Talsu returned.
“No.” Traku’s tough, rather battered features wore a thoughtful expression. “Those fellows who were scrawling street signs about the king coming back knew what they were talking about, didn’t they?”
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