“Why not?” Leino asked. He hadn’t expected to see her, either, but he didn’t care to come right out and say so.
“Well …” Xavega hesitated, but then spoke with her usual frankness: “You are a Kuusaman, after all.” Her usual frankness and her usual ignorance,
Leino thought as she went on, “I did not know if you would be eager to see the fighting up close.”
“My dear, we do not revel in war the way Algarvic folk do,” Leino replied with a sigh. “That does not mean we cannot fight well. We are fighting Gyongyos by ourselves, as near as makes no difference, and two out of every three soldiers from the island in Jelgava are Kuusamans.”
Xavega made a sour face. She had to know Leino was telling the truth. No one, not even the most ardent Lagoan patriot, could deny that. Liking it was another matter. At last, she said, “It is not my fault that your kingdom is bigger than mine.”
“I never said it was your fault. But you must not think that we Kuusamans cannot fight, or that we are afraid to fight.” Leino raised an eyebrow of his own, perhaps imitating Captain Brunho. “Your King Vitor did not think we were afraid to fight. When he went to war against Algarve, he was afraid we would go to war … against Lagoas.”
He remembered some of the hotheads at a party at his brother-in-law’s wanting to do just that. Mezentio’s men wouldn’t have attacked Yliharma then—not in this war, anyhow. But an Algarve bestriding Derlavai would surely have looked across the Strait of Valmiera before long, regardless of whether the kingdom dominant there was a nominal ally.
The boat skimmed up to the edge of the beach. The mage said something in Lagoan, then condescended to translate it into classical Kaunian for Leino: “All out.”
Out Leino went, into calf-deep water. He was glad he didn’t get his duffel wet. Xavega splashed down beside him. The boat slid away toward Habakkuk. As so many soldiers had before, the two mages squelched up onto the Jelgavan sands. Few signs of the fight were left close by the sea, though a handful of sticks, some with Kuusaman hats tied to them, others with Lagoan headgear, had been thrust into the sand to mark soldiers’ final resting places.
A Kuusaman soldier came up to Leino and Xavega and said, “You are the mages we were told to expect?”
“No, just a couple of tourists, a little early in the season,” Leino answered. The trooper grinned. Xavega squawked. That was when Leino realized he’d spoken his own language. He translated for her. She rolled her eyes. Out of bed, she didn’t believe in foolishness.
“Just over that rise is a ley-line caravan depot where you can go forward, up toward the front,” the soldier said.
Again, Leino turned his words into classical Kaunian. After he’d done that, he asked the fellow, “How close to Balvi will the caravan take us?”
“About fifteen miles. That’s where the front is,” the soldier answered. “King Donalitu is practically pissing himself on account of he can’t get back into his precious palace.” He set a hand on his chest. “Breaks my heart, it does.”
“I’ll bet,” Leino said, which made the other Kuusaman laugh out loud. When he translated for Xavega, she laughed, too. Leino did a little laughing himself. He wasn’t angry, or wasn’t too angry, at Donalitu. Without the bad-tempered Jelgavan monarch, he wouldn’t have found himself in Xavega’s arms.
And you wouldn‘t have left Habakkuk to get away from her, he told himself. See how well that worked.
He and Xavega trudged along with the Kuusaman soldier till they got to the depot, which was canvas over bare timbers. A sergeant there checked their names off on a list. Leino threw down his duffel bag with a groan of relief after climbing into a car. Xavega’s didn’t seem to bother her. She sat down beside him, showing a lot of leg and not bothering to fuss with her kilt to show less.
A few soldiers boarded the ley-line caravan, and a couple of men, one Kuusaman, the other Lagoan, with the green sashes of healers. Then the caravan, still not very full, began to glide west, away from the sea and toward the fighting. The country rose rapidly; much of the interior of Jelgava was a high plateau, none too well watered and very hot—especially by Kuusaman standards. Few mountains towered above the plateau. It was as if, having got that high, the land refused to do much more.
Before long, Leino saw fresh signs of war: craters from bursting eggs scarring fields; a grove of apricots ravaged by more eggs and half burned; the carcass of a dragon, with buzzards all over it; a group of men working to get the armor off a dead behemoth. The behemoth was Kuusaman, the armor the ceramic-and-steel composite Leino’s own sorcery had helped create. It was stronger against beams than regular chainmail, but hadn’t saved this particular beast. He hoped the crewmen had managed to escape.
The caravan car glided past trenches, and past hastily dug graves—red-brown lines on green. Still … Leino turned to Xavega and spoke in classical Kaunian: “The Algarvians have not put up the hardest of fights.”
“No. The Lagoans have rolled over them.” She coughed a couple of times, then grudgingly added, “And the Kuusamans as well.” It was more like the Kuusamans and the Lagoans as well, but Leino didn’t bother correcting her.
They also glided past dragon farms and fields full of grazing behemoths and unicorns and horses and rows of egg-tossers and piles of eggs ready to fling and endless files of tents, some Lagoan brown, others—more— Kuusaman green: all the appurtenances of modern war.
And, when they arrived at the sorcerers’ encampment, they found another Kuusaman sergeant. This one used classical Kaunian so well Leino wondered what he’d done before becoming a soldier: “Ah, the pair from Habakkuk. I have you assigned to the same tent.”
Xavega smiled and nodded. The smile was full of promise, so much promise that Leino nodded, too. So much for your good intentions, he thought. Well, you’ll enjoy yourself… till the quarrels start again. He sighed. Odds are, it won’t be long.
Marshal Rathar’s headquarters had moved east, out of Pewsum. Had he stayed there, the front in northern Unkerlant would have left him behind, as the sea leaves bathers behind when the tide goes out. Now he directed the attack against Algarve from a village just west of Sommerda, a village whose name he hadn’t bothered to learn. As things stood, he didn’t think he would ever know it.
He turned to General Gurmun and said, “You know, we’re going to have to move again soon.”
“Looks that way,” Gurmun agreed. “The troopers are getting ahead of us, sure enough. By the time we’re through, this Algarvian army will be gone from the board. Powers below eat all the redheads. I won’t miss ‘em a fornicating bit.”
“Neither will I.” As it had a way of doing, Rathar’s gaze fell on the map pinned to a table undoubtedly stolen from a fancier hut than this one. He shook his head in slow wonder. “It’s going just the way we drew it up back in Cottbus. If anything, we’re ahead of the timeline we drew up back in Cott-bus. Who would have imagined that would happen against the Algarvians?”
Dispassionate as if he had clockwork in his belly, Gurmun answered, “We broke the buggers last year in the Durrwangen bulge. Now it’s just a matter of kicking down the door and charging through.”
Rationally speaking, Rathar supposed he was right. Still, he said, “This is the fourth summer of the war against them. It’s the first time they haven’t tried an attack of their own. Do you wonder that I’m happy at how things are going?”
“No, lord Marshal,” Gurmun said. “You can be happy. Just don’t be surprised.” He sounded like what he was: an officer tough, competent, and altogether confident. Unkerlant hadn’t had many officers like that when the war against Algarve started. She still didn’t have enough, but one Gurmun made up for a lot.
“How are the behemoths holding up?” Rathar asked.
“Losses are within the range we expected,” Gurmun answered. “The farms in the west are sending enough fresh beasts forward. The redheads’ dragons never could fly that far, not even when things looked worst for us. And the Gongs never have put a wh
ole lot of dragons in the air against us. I wouldn’t want to try flying over the Elsung Mountains, either.”
“Something to that,” Rathar agreed.
“A week—maybe even less—and we’ll be swarming over the Forthwegian border,” Gurmun said. “What was the Forthwegian border, I mean.”
Marshal Rathar started to call him a mad optimist. Then he took another look at the map, and at what the Algarvians could put between his behemoths and the old Forthwegian frontier. “You may be right,” he said.
“You bet I’m right,” Gurmun declared.
“Getting more footsoldiers on horseback helps, too,” Rathar said. “Even though they fight on foot, moving ‘em mounted helps ‘em keep up with the behemoths. The redheads used that trick, too, whenever they could scrape up the mounts.”
“Powers below eat the redheads,” Gurmun said again. “The powers below are eating the redheads, and we’re serving them up. The first couple of years of this fight, they taught us lessons. Now we’re better than our schoolmasters.”
Rathar doubted that. The Algarvians still had more flexible arrangements than the soldiers of his own kingdom. They coordinated better among foot-soldiers and behemoths and dragons. Each of their regiments or squadrons had more crystals than its Unkerlanter counterpart, which made them more responsive to trouble. An Algarvian regiment was probably worth close to two Unkerlanter units.
But if King Swemmel’s soldiers threw three or four or five regiments at each Algarvian formation … Here in the north, the Unkerlanters had thrown a lot more than that at each Algarvian regiment at the spearpoint of the attack. And the redheads, however fiercely they’d fought, couldn’t stand up against such an overwhelming weight of numbers. This time, they’d really and truly broken.
“Our way of putting out a fire is throwing bodies on it till it smothers,” Rathar said. “Sorry, Gurmun, but I don’t think that’s the most efficient way to do things.”
“It works,” Gurmun said. “It’s worked.”
“So it does,” Rathar agreed. Again, if it hadn’t worked, Unkerlant would have lost the war. But the price the kingdom was paying … Every ruined, empty village he rode through as his countrymen fought their way east tore at him. How would Unkerlant rebuild once the fighting finally ended? Where would the peasants to fill those villages come from? He had no idea.
Before he could say as much—not that General Gurmun would have worried about such a thing; his mind focused solely on using his beloved behemoths against the Algarvians—the sound of many marching feet came to his ear. His head swung toward it: toward the eastern side of the village, the side closest to the fighting. Gurmun’s head swung the same way. A grin spread over his blunt-featured face as he said, “How much do you want to bet those are captives?”
“I’d sooner keep my silver, thanks,” Rathar answered.
Gurmun’s grin got wider. “Let’s go have a look at the whoresons.” Without waiting for a reply, he hurried out of the peasant hut. Rathar followed a little more slowly. He’d seen captive Algarvians before.
Still, being reminded what these attacks were doing to the enemy wouldn’t hurt. And the column of captives coming through the village represented more than a regiment’s worth of men. The guards in their rock-gray tunics wore grins a lot like Gurmun’s. Some of the Algarvians were grinning, too: the nervous grins of men glad to be alive and unsure how much longer they would stay that way. More of them looked glum. They might be alive, but they didn’t want to be in Unkerlanter hands. Their light brown tunics and kilts were shabbier than Algarvian uniforms had been when the war was new. It wasn’t just that they were filthy and worn; the cloth itself was thinner and cheaper and flimsier than what they’d used then.
Despite everything, a few redheads strode along as if they owned the world. They towered over their captors, as Algarvians usually did tower over Unkerlanters, and gave the impression that the guards were actually escorts, taking them someplace where more Unkerlanters would serve them. Rathar admired Algarvian arrogance and despised it at the same time. Regardless of their true situation, Mezentio’s men still reckoned themselves the masters of Derlavai. Some of them almost made even their foes believe it.
Rathar held up a hand. When the Marshal of Unkerlant gave even an informal order, his mean leaped to obey. “Column halt!” the guards screamed, some in their own language, others in fragments of Algarvian.
“Who here speaks Unkerlanter?” Rathar asked. He had a little Algarvian himself, but only a little, and knew no classical Kaunian, the language that tied together educated men of all kingdoms in the east of Derlavai and on the island Kuusamo and Lagoas shared.
A redhead stepped toward him: one of the ones who’d kept his spirit in spite of captivity. “I being in your kingdom three years,” he said, trilling his words in a way no Unkerlanter would. “I learning your speech, some. What you wanting?”
“Your head on a plate,” Gurmun growled.
But Rathar waved him to silence. “What do you think of things now that we have beaten Algarve in the summer as well as the winter?”
The redhead’s shrug was a masterpiece of its kind. “I being in your kingdom three years,” he repeated. “No Unkerlanters in Algarve. No Unkerlanters ever in Algarve. Sooner or later, we winning war.”
Gurmun wasn’t the only one who growled then. So did all the guards who heard the Algarvian. Rathar waved for quiet again. He got it, but he suspected the captive would have a hard time once out of his sight. “How can you say that,” he demanded, “when we’ve driven your countrymen out of most of what they held here in the north in just a few weeks?”
With another shrug, the Algarvian replied, “We having secret sorceries. We using them soon. Turning Unkerlant upsydown, insyout. You seeing.” He sounded like a man who knew exactly what he was talking about.
And Unkerlant had already known too much horror from Algarvian sorceries. Some of the guards muttered among themselves. A couple made signs the peasants used to turn aside evil omens. And now, instead of growling, Gurmun barked: “What kind of sorceries?”
“Not knowing.” The captive shrugged yet again. “If likes of me knowing”— he had a corporal’s pips on his shoulder boards—”not being secret, eh?”
“I think you’re lying,” Gurmun said in a deadly voice.
“Thinking how you liking.” The Algarvian’s voice made it plain he didn’t care what an Unkerlanter, even an Unkerlanter general, thought. “King Mezentio saying these things so. I believing he.”
Marshal Rathar gestured once more, waving the captives on. The guards screamed at them. They got moving. Before long, the arrogant redhead was lost in the throng. Not soon enough, though, Rathar thought.
“Do you believe the son of a whore?” Gurmun asked, sounding unwontedly nervous.
“I believe he believes himself,” Rathar answered. “Whether Mezentio is telling lies … That’s a different question.”
“It’s not the first we’ve heard of these secret sorceries.” Aye, Gurmun was unhappy. “A lot of the captives we’ve taken lately go on about them. Where there’s smoke, there’s liable to be fire.”
“Where there are Algarvians, there’s liable to be trouble,” Rathar said, and his general of behemoths nodded vigorously. He went on, “Reports have gone back to Cottbus, though, and King Swemmel doesn’t seem to worried about this.”
“Good,” Gurmun said.
Although Marshal Rathar nodded, he wondered whether it was good. True, Swemmel saw plots behind ever chair and under every rug. If he didn’t think these worrisome reports true, it was a good sign he judged them an Algarvian bluff. That was fine—if he proved right. Every once in a while, though, his instinct let him down badly, as when he’d judged that the Algarvians wouldn’t expect an Unkerlanter attack three years before. Maybe the redheads hadn’t expected such an attack, but if not, it was only because they’d been so far along with plans for their own, which had gone in first. No mistake now could cost as much as that one had—o
r so Rathar devoutly hoped— but he didn’t want to have to deal with the king’s mistakes under any circumstances.
A crystallomancer burst out of the hut next to the one in which Rathar made his headquarters. “Lord Marshal!” the young man shouted. “We’ve got men inside Forthweg, sir!”
“Told you so.” General Gurmun went from anxious to smug in a heartbeat.
“This is even faster than you thought it would happen,” Rathar said, and Gurmun nodded. The marshal went on: “We have to move east, we truly do.
We’re getting too far behind the line again.” Gurmun nodded once more. Rathar laughed. “Plenty of worse problems to have, by the powers above.” Gurmun chuckled, too. To the men in charge of an advancing army, life looked good.
Talsu set silver on the grocery counter. Since Gailisa’s father was in the shop, she put the money in the cash box before sliding the jar of green olives in a brine flavored with garlic and fennel across the counter. He spoke in a low voice, so her father wouldn’t hear: “With luck, we won’t have to look at Mainardo’s pointy-nosed Algarvian face too much longer.”
“That would be good,” she agreed, also quietly. Then she raised her voice to tell her father, “I’m going home with Talsu now, Papa.”
“All right,” he answered. “I’ll shut the place up myself. You don’t need to worry about that.” He’d stopped trying to persuade her and Talsu to spend their nights there instead of in the tent on the outskirts of Skrunda.
Gailisa took Talsu’s hand as she emerged from behind the counter. They walked out of the grocer’s shop and into the warm twilight of a Jelgavan summer evening. A couple of news-sheet vendors were still waving leaves of paper and shouting their news: “Invaders thrown back before Balvi! King Mainardo’s heroic Algarvian allies triumph in savage righting!”
When one of the vendors waved his sheet at Talsu, he shook his head and kept walking. To Gailisa, he said, “The redheads keep right on telling lies.”
Jaws of Darkness Page 44