Ealstan picked his way through rubble up to the barricade of brickwork and boulders and benches behind which the rebels sheltered. A fellow named Beortwulf, who’d been a sergeant in the Forthwegian army and served as a captain here, nodded to him. “Pretty quiet right now. The redheads have been busy further west.” He pointed across the Twegen before continuing, “To them, we’re an afterthought. They’re really sweating about Swemmel’s men.”
“Afterthought, eh?” Ealstan bared his teeth in a fierce grin. “Let’s seem ‘em try moving men through Eoforwic and call us an afterthought.”
“Something to that,” Beortwulf agreed. “Far as I’m concerned, the powers below can eat Algarve and Unkerlant both.”
“Aye.” Ealstan nodded. “It’d make things a lot easier for Forthweg, that’s certain.”
Before Beortwulf could answer, a runner called Ealstan’s name. When he admitted to being in the neighborhood, the fellow said, “Come on with me. The big boss wants to have a chat with you.”
“Oh, he does, does he?” Ealstan said. “Suppose I don’t feel like talking to him?” But he followed the man deeper into Eoforwic, to find out what Pybba had in mind. Whatever it was, the Algarvians wouldn’t like it.
Pybba still worked out of the pottery, and ran the rebellion from there as he’d run the underground before seizing the chance to strike at Mezentio’s men. The Algarvians still hadn’t figured out who their chief tormentor was. Had they done so, eggs would surely have smashed Pybba’s establishment to potsherds.
“What now?” Ealstan asked when he came into Pybba’s sanctum. “Do you want me to cast accounts for you?”
“I’d ask you to if I didn’t have something better for you to do,” the pottery magnate replied with a laugh. He turned to the two Forthwegians already in the room with him and said, “Here’s the clever lad who figured out how to make us look like Algarvians when we need to.”
Both the other Forthwegians were in their mid-to late thirties: old men, Ealstan thought uncharitably. Then he took a second look at them and realized either one could tear him to pieces without breaking a sweat. He prudently kept his unkind thought to himself. Pybba’s pals were looking him over, too. One of them said, “I suppose he’ll have to come along, then. He looks like he might be able to cut it.”
“He’s already got himself an Algarvian stick,” the other noted, approval in his voice.
Ealstan refused to let himself be baited. He also refused to show undue curiosity, no matter what he felt. He just nodded to Pybba and said, “Tell me what you need me to do.”
Pybba nodded, too. So did the other two, unnamed, Forthwegians. The one who’d spoken first said, “Kid sounds like he’s got his head on straight. He may do.”
“He’s got gall,” Pybba said, high praise from him. He turned back to Ealstan. “The redheads are still hanging on to the royal palace and the ley-line caravan depot and one ley-line route through Eoforwic. That lets ‘em ship some men west, and it lets ‘em give us a hard time. If their military governor all of a sudden came down with a slight case of loss of life …”
“Ah.” Ealstan nodded again, doing his best to stay dispassionate. “You’ll have the right kind of Algarvian uniforms to let us get away with a masquerade?”
“Kid’s no dummy, sure enough,” one of the—assassins?—said to his comrade. The fellow suddenly switched to unaccented Algarvian: “You understand me, kid? Can you talk like this, too?”
“I understand,” Ealstan answered in the same language. “If I talk much, I give us away. I do not talk well.”
“Could be worse,” the other Forthwegian said. “All right, you’ll be junior to us. We’ll do the talking. At least you’ll know what’s going on. How long does your fancy spell hold?”
“Six or eight hours,” Ealstan said.
That seemed to please both of the men in the office with Pybba and him, and the pottery magnate as well. “Plenty of time,” Pybba said. “You can get into your new clothes just before sunup and sneak into Algarvian territory, do what you want to do, and then lie up somewhere till you can get back to our lines.”
“Why lie up?” Ealstan asked. “Why not hustle back to our lines?”
“Ha! You don’t think of everything after all,” one of the rough men said. “We hustle back looking like redheads, our fornicating pals’ll fornicating blaze us before we can tell ‘em who we are.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Ealstan said. “I can turn us back as easy as I can make us look like Algarvians.” Everyone else beamed; maybe he hadn’t mentioned that part of the sorcery to Pybba before.
Before sunrise the next morning, Ealstan put on an Algarvian sergeant’s uniform, while his comrades—he still didn’t know their names—donned the clothes of a captain and a major. Ealstan had to fiddle with his cantrip a little to shift it from first person to third so it would work on the other two men. He cast it twice in quick succession, and the other two men took on the appearance of the enemy. Then he used the original version on himself. A grunt from one of the others told him it had worked; he couldn’t sense it on himself, any more than Vanai could tell that she looked like a Forthwegian after casting her own disguising spell.
“Good thing we saw you do that,” a Forthwegian fighter said, “or we’d kill you on the spot.” One of his pals nodded.
Ealstan was content to follow the older men’s lead as they sneaked out of the Forthwegian positions and toward the corridor through Eoforwic the Algarvians still held. As soon as they were on a street where redheads might see them, the two Forthwegians in officers’ clothing became Algarvians themselves, with what seemed a deeper magic than the one with which Ealstan had disguised them. It wasn’t just that they spoke the language. They imitated the strut and swagger that distinguished Mezentio’s men, imitated those things so well that it did not seem an imitation, but rather something real.
Ealstan had to work hard to imitate them. His own swagger seemed painfully artificial to him, but none of the real Algarvians pointed his way and shouted, “Impostor!” After a bit, he noticed that a lot of underofficers and troopers—not all of them, but a good many—were less flamboyant than their officers. Once he’d seen that, he stopped worrying so much about having to overact.
What amazed him as he pressed on toward the royal palace was how ordinary the Algarvians acted among themselves. He’d seen them up to now only as occupiers, harassing his fellow Forthwegians and doing worse than harassing the Kaunians of Forthweg. Now, though, even more than when he’d sneaked into the Kaunian quarter looking for Vanai, he might have been an Algarvian among Algarvians, which gave him a whole different perspective.
Among themselves, they were just people, going on about their business and laughing and joking as he might have done with his friends. No one is ever the villain in his own story, Ealstan reminded himself. It was a far cry from what he usually thought of the Algarvians, and far from the most comfortable notion he’d ever had.
If he hurried after the other two, he didn’t have to think. Redheaded guards in short tunics and kilts ringed the palace from which King Penda had once ruled Forthweg. The palace had suffered worse indignities than Algarvian guards, too. The Forthwegians had made a stand there when Unkerlant stabbed Ealstan’s kingdom in the back, and the Unkerlanters in their turn had tried and failed to keep the Algarvians from capturing it. Many of the towers famous throughout the kingdom had fallen in one fight or another. But the Algarvian banner still flew from a tall flagstaff in front of the palace, and an Algarvian military governor still ruled Forthweg for King Mezentio from inside it.
One after another, the guards stiffened to attention as Ealstan’s comrades and he went past them. No one barked a challenge. If they looked like Algarvians, they were assumed to be Algarvians. Ealstan had to fight down the urge to snicker. That might have given the game away.
“We have a situation report for the governor from the west,” said the Forthwegian who looked like an Algarvian major. He kept saying that,
again and again; it was plenty to get him and his companion who was dressed like a captain and Ealstan with them whisked through the palace and toward the governor, their target. The speed with which it got them whisked through the palace again told Ealstan what the redheads truly reckoned important. The Forthwegian uprising in Eoforwic was a nuisance to Algarve; the endless grinding war against Unkerlant really mattered.
Ealstan had expected to see some of the magnificent trappings of the Forthwegian monarchy on display in the palace. He didn’t. Before long, he realized he’d been naive. What the Unkerlanters hadn’t stolen, the Algarvians surely had.
He was halfway through the throne room, in fact, before he recognized it for what it was. The throne remained, but only as a chair; all the gold leaf had been stripped off. He hadn’t even time to feel outrage. Before it could start to grow, he was pressing on toward the governor’s office, which had been the king’s.
Although the governor—a fat man with a duke’s silver dragon perched on the left breast of his uniform tunic—was talking with some other, lesser, official, he sent the man away at once, declaring, “The front comes first.” Ealstan understood him very clearly. When the other redhead went out, Ealstan shut the door behind him. The governor went on, “What is the latest, gentlemen? Will we be able to keep Swemmel’s men from crossing the Twegen and aiding these stinking Forthwegians?”
The two men dressed as officers led him toward a map. He paid no attention whatever to Ealstan. Why should a governor notice a sergeant? Ealstan unslung his stick. He had all the time in the world to blaze the Algarvian duke in the back of the head. The man crumpled without a sound.
“Good work,” the Forthwegian dressed as a major said. “Let’s get out of here.” Out they went, locking the door behind them. “His Grace is preparing a response for us,” the counterfeit major told the fellow who’d been conferring with the governor. “He’ll need a little while.” The genuine redhead nodded.
Ealstan and his comrades were out of the palace and in the back room of an abandoned house two blocks away when the hue and cry began. By then, he’d already turned the other two men who looked like Algarvians back into Forthwegians, and they’d pulled ordinary Forthwegian tunics from their packs and put them on. He gave himself his proper appearance, too. Leaving their sticks behind was a nuisance, but couldn’t be helped.
They went out onto the street once more without the slightest trace of fear. Ealstan felt like cutting capers. Mezentio’s men were looking for three of their own kind. They paid no attention to lowly unarmed Forthwegians, just as the governor had paid no attention to a lowly sergeant. Ealstan grinned and clapped his hands together once, liking the comparison very much.
For once, even Marquis Balastro’s bravado failed him when Hajjaj called on him at the Algarvian ministry in Bishah. The Zuwayzi foreign minister took that as a bad sign. Doing his best to conceal his worry, he said, “You are gracious for agreeing to see me on such short notice, your Excellency.”
“You are gracious for wanting to see me at all, your Excellency,” Balastro returned. “I am glad you do not find Algarve a sinking ship, to be abandoned as soon as possible.”
As a matter of fact, Hajjaj did reckon Algarve a sinking ship. Abandoning it was another matter. Abandoning Algarve meant casting Zuwayza on King Swemmel’s mercy, and Swemmel hardly knew the meaning of the word.
“I am sorry to find our officers were right about the building Unkerlanter offensive in the north,” Hajjaj said, “and even sorrier you have not had better fortune repelling it.”
“So am I,” Balastro said bleakly.
“Do you think you will be able to hold on the line of the Twegen?” Hajjaj asked.
“For a while,” the Algarvian minister replied. “Perhaps for a long while.” Hajjaj wondered if that was bravado returning. But Balastro went on, “After all, Swemmel lets us do him a favor if he stops there.”
“A favor?” Hajjaj scratched his head. Having to wear clothes on a blisteringly hot day like this, he felt like scratching everywhere at once, but refrained. “I’m sorry, your Excellency, but I don’t follow that.”
“We did the Forthwegians a favor. We got rid of their Kaunians for them, and precious few of them miss the blonds even a little bit,” Balastro said. “Now we’re getting rid of a whole great whacking lot of Forthwegians who enjoy rising up and causing trouble. If we kill them, they can’t very well rise up and cause trouble for the Unkerlanters, now can they?”
“Oh,” Hajjaj said. “I see what you mean. Do you really think King Swemmel is that devious?”
“When it comes to getting rid of people who might cause him trouble one fine day, nobody’s better than Swemmel.” Marquis Balastro spoke with great conviction.
And he was probably right, too. Turning the subject away from Forthweg and toward something more immediately important to him, Hajjaj said, “You will understand that King Shazli has a certain amount of concern because the front has shifted so far to the east.”
That was a diplomatic way to say, King Shazli is scared green because there aren‘t any Algarvian soldiers anywhere close enough to help us hold back the Unkerlanters, and we can’t do it by ourselves. We already tried, and we lost. To Hajjaj’s relief, the Algarvian minister understood it as such. Balastro said, “We will send you more dragons, your Excellency. We will send you as many behemoths as we can spare. We will send as many soldiers and mages as we can spare, too.”
“Thank you for your generosity,” Hajjaj said. “You might have done better to send us all these things earlier, you know.”
“Maybe.” Balastro sounded bland. “But King Mezentio has not forgotten you, and that is something you must always remember.”
Hajjaj nodded. Now he understood. The more worried Algarve was that Zuwayza might drop out of the war, the more the redheads would do to keep her in it. The more enemies Unkerlant had to fight, the better off Algarve was. In a way, that was reassuring. In another way, as the Zuwayzi foreign minister had said, it was liable to be too little, too late. Hajjaj rose and bowed. “I shall take your reassurances back to the palace. His Majesty will be glad to have them.”
When he got back to the palace, though, he went to General Ikhshid before calling on the king. Ikhshid’s fleshy face was unhappy. “So they’ll send us more dragons and behemoths, will they?” he said, one white eyebrow rising. “They’d better do it fast, if they’re going to do it.” He didn’t sound convinced. He didn’t sound cheerful, either.
“Fast?” Hajjaj raised an eyebrow, too. “Do you know something I don’t?”
“Maybe,” Ikhshid answered, “but it’s nothing that’d surprise you very much, I’d bet. The Unkerlanters are starting to bring more and more soldiers up against our lines in the south.”
That didn’t surprise Hajjaj. It did alarm him. “Can we beat them back?” he asked anxiously.
“We’ll do the best we can with what we’ve got and whatever the Algarvians give us,” General Ikhshid said. “You hit anything hard enough, though, and it’ll break. If the Unkerlanters put enough men in the fight, we’re in trouble. We saw that four and a half years ago.”
“Do you think they can?” Hajjaj asked.
“Depends on how they’re doing against Algarve and Gyongyos.” Ikhshid’s jowls wobbled as he frowned. “Odds are better now that they can than they were six weeks ago. They’ve gone a long way east, and the redheads don’t seem able to stop them anywhere.” Hajjaj explained Balastro’s theory of why the Unkerlanters had paused on the Twegen. It made Ikhshid no more cheerful. He said, “I wish that made less sense than it does.”
“My thought exactly,” Hajjaj said. “Have you told the king what you just told me?”
General Ikhshid shook his head. “Not yet.”
“I have to see him now,” Hajjaj said. “I’ll give him the broad outline, if that’s all right with you, and you can fill in the details later.”
“Fine. Fine.” Now Ikhshid nodded. “He’ll likely take it better from
you than he would from me.”
Hajjaj thought the general overestimated his powers of persuasion, but headed off to see Shazli nonetheless. The king served him tea and wine and cakes, and didn’t take the royal privilege of cutting short the small talk that accompanied the refreshments. Having played many such games himself, Hajjaj judged that Shazli knew the news would be bad and didn’t much want to hear it.
At last, though, with a sigh, King Shazli said, “I’m comfortably certain this is no mere social call, your Excellency, although I am always glad of your company.”
“No one ever pays a king a mere social call, save perhaps another king,” Hajjaj said, and quickly summarized what he’d learned from Balastro and Ikhshid.
King Shazli sighed when he finished. “We knew this day was coming when the Unkerlanters began driving the Algarvians back this summer.” Before Hajjaj could speak, Shazli held up a pale-palmed hand. “We knew this day might come when the Algarvians failed before Cottbus, and we knew it probably would come when they failed in Sulingen. Now we have to deal with it as best we can.”
Hajjaj gave the king a seated bow. “Just so, your Majesty. As long as you keep that view of the world, Zuwayza is in good hands.”
“Provided the Unkerlanters don’t end up parading through Bishah,” Shazli said. “Well, if worse comes to worst, your Excellency, I rely on you to keep that dark day from dawning.”
“I’ll do my best,” Hajjaj promised, though he thought the king relied on him for altogether too much.
After his busy and gloomy morning, after a nap in the heat of noontime, Hajjaj left Bishah and went up into the hills to pass the rest of the day at home. “I didn’t expect you back so soon, young fellow,” Tewflk said when Hajjaj alighted from his carriage.
“Life is full of surprises,” Hajjaj said, doing his best to forget how many of them were unpleasant. “Would you be so kind as to have a servant”—he would never have offended the majordomo by saying another servant—”bring some date wine to the library for me?”
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