"Aye, your Excellency, so they are." Qutuz took his cue from Hajjaj, but he had less practice at seeming dispassionate while actually frightened or furious.
More roars of bursting eggs beat against Hajjaj's ears. They were coming closer to the palace now, too, so he no longer had any doubt what they were. The ground started shaking under his fundament, as if at an earthquake. Pen cases and leaves of paper on his desk trembled and quivered.
"Perhaps," Qutuz said, "we ought to look for shelter."
"Where?" Hajjaj asked, not at all rhetorically. He'd read that people in Setubal and Sulingen and other places that often came under attack from the air took refuge in cellars. Cellars, however, had never been a part of Zuwayzi architecture, and no one had ever dreamt the Unkerlanters would really pummel Bishah.
"I'm getting under my desk," Qutuz declared, and hurried off to do just that. Hajjaj nodded approval. It wasn't a bad notion at all. He crawled under his own. For once, he wished he were in the habit of working at it in a chair rather than sitting on the floor; he would have had more room under there. His joints creaked as he tried to fold himself into as small a space as he could.
Then the first eggs fell on the royal palace. For the next little while, Hajjaj had nothing whatever to do with whether he lived or died. The ground shook. Windows blew out. Walls fell in. Chunks of the roof came crashing down. One of them landed where he'd been sitting while talking with his secretary. Another came down on the desk, but wasn't heavy enough to crush it-and, incidentally, Hajjaj.
Someone was screaming. After a moment, Hajjaj realized that was his own voice. He bit down hard on his lower lip to make himself stop. Then he wondered why he bothered. Plenty of people, surely, were screaming right now. But he kept on
biting his lip instead. Pride is a strange thing, he thought, a strange thing, but a very strong one.
An eternity later-an eternity probably measurable as a couple of minutes-the eggs stopped landing on and around the palace and started falling farther north in Bishah. Hajjaj had to fight his way out from under the desk; some of the rubble all but caged him there.
"Qutuz!" he called. "Are you all right?"
"Aye, your Excellency." The secretary came running into Hajjaj's office. "Powers above be praised that you're safe."
"I'm well enough," Hajjaj said, "but you're bleeding." He pointed to a gash on Qutuz's left calf.
His secretary looked down at it. When he looked up again, astonishment filled his face. "I didn't even know it was there," he said.
"Well, it needs bandaging-that's plain." Hajjaj used a letter-opener to cut up cushions to get cloth to wrap around Qutuz's leg. He would have had a simpler time of it had either of them worn clothes.
"I thank you, your Excellency," Qutuz said. "There are bound to be plenty of people hurt a lot worse than I am. We'd better see what we can do for them."
"You're right." Hajjaj went over to the little closet that opened onto his office. His ceremonial wardrobe lay in chaos on the floor. He didn't care. He tossed his secretary a couple of tunics and kilts and grabbed some for himself. Seeing Qutuz's bewilderment, he spoke aloud his thought of a moment before: "Bandages."
"Ah." Qutuz's face cleared. "That's clever. That's very clever."
"It's cleverness I wish we didn't need," Hajjaj said grimly. "Come on. Let's make for the audience chamber and the throne room." That was as close as he would come to admitting he was worried about King Shazli. His secretary's eyes widened, but Qutuz didn't worry out loud, either.
And they both had plenty to do before they got anywhere near the throne room. People were down and groaning in the hallways. Some of them, the ones with broken bones, needed more than bandaging. Some were beyond all help. Hajjaj and Qutuz found not only bodies but buried bodies and pieces of bodies. Before long, their sandals left bloody footprints at every stride.
Someone around the corner of a corridor barked peremptory orders: "Get that rubble off him! Grab that roof beam and lift! Maybe we can still save his leg!"
Hajjaj's heart leaped within him. He knew that voice. "Your Majesty!" he called. Behind him, Qutuz whooped.
"Is that you, Hajjaj?" the king asked. "Powers above be praised you're whole and hale. Powers below eat the Unkerlanters for doing this to us." He went back to the rescue he was leading: "Heave there, all of you." A shriek-not King Shazli's-followed. "Easy there, my friend," Shazli said. "It'll be better now."
Dust and dirt and blood covered Shazli when Hajjaj finally reached his side. But the king needed no fancy trappings to gain obedience. When he gave a command, everyone who heard hurried to carry it out. People respected him for the man he was as well as for the rank he held.
"Very good indeed to see you in one piece, your Excellency," he told Hajjaj when the foreign minister reached his side. "Swemmel's whoresons have struck us a heavy blow here."
"Aye, your Majesty." Hajjaj knew more than a little gratitude that the king didn't blame him for the Unkerlanter attack-or, if he did, didn't say so in public.
"We are going to have to strengthen our defenses against dragons around the city," Shazli said. "If the Unkerlanters did this once, they'll come back to do it again."
"That's... true, your Majesty." Hajjaj bowed with no small respect. "I hadn't thought so far ahead." That such a thing could happen once to Bishah was appalling enough. That it might happen again and again... He shivered.
"Do you know whether General Ikhshid lives?" King Shazli asked.
"I'm sorry, but no," Hajjaj answered. "I have no idea. The eggs stopped falling, and the first thing I wanted to do was make sure you were safe."
"Here I stand." Shazli had lived the softest of soft lives. He was inclined to be pudgy, and had never looked particularly impressive. But there was iron in him. "King Swemmel will think he can put fear in us, so that we will do whatever he wants. He will find he is wrong. He will find he cannot make us bend our necks by dropping eggs from the sky."
Several of the people in the damaged hallway clapped their hands. Hajjaj almost clapped himself. He did bow again. "This is the spirit that led your father to reclaim our freedom after the Unkerlanters ruled us for so long."
King Shazli nodded. "And we shall stay free, come what may. Are we not still the men of the desert our forefathers were in days gone by?"
"Even so, your Majesty," Hajjaj replied, though he and the king both knew the Zuwayzin were no such thing. This generation was more urban, and more like townsfolk in the rest of Derlavai, than any before it. But Shazli had to know saying such things was the best way to rally his people.
Neither of them mentioned that the king's father had needed to free Zuwayza because the Unkerlanters had been strong enough to hold it down f or generations, and neither of them mentioned that enough blows like the one the Unkerlanters had just delivered might break any people's will-to say nothing of ability-to keep on fighting. Hajjaj understood both those things painfully well. This did not seem the best time to ask Shazli whether he did, too.
"I shall find out what we need to learn about Ikhshid," the king said. He pointed at Hajjaj. "I want you to find a crystallomancer and speak to Marquis Balastro. Assure him we are still in the fight, and see what help we can hope to get from Algarve."
"As you say." Hajjaj's cough had nothing to do with the dust and smoke in the air. It was pure diplomacy. "Seeing how things are going for them in their own fight against Unkerlant, I don't know what they'll be able to spare us."
Shazli, fortunately, recognized a diplomatic cough when he heard one. "You may tell the marquis that we need tools to stay in the fight. They have more dragons than we do. They also have more highly trained mages than we do; they're bound to be better off when it comes to things like heavy sticks that can knock a dragon out of the sky."
"Every word you say there is true," Hajjaj agreed. "I'll do what I can." He nodded to Qutuz. "To the crystallomancers." His secretary nodded and followed.
One of the thick mud-brick walls of the crystallomancers' offi
ce had a new, yard-wide hole in it. Some of their tables were overturned; some of their crystals were bright, jagged shards on the floor; some of them were bleeding. But one of the men who hadn't been hurt quickly established an etheric connection with the Algarvian ministry. Balastro's image stared out of a surviving crystal at Hajjaj. "Good to see you in one piece, your Excellency," the redhead said.
"And you," Hajjaj answered. "King Shazli expects the Unkerlanters to pay us more such calls."
"I shouldn't be surprised," Balastro said. "They missed me this time, so they'll have to come back and try again."
Hajjaj smiled at his self-importance, which was partly an act and partly typical of a lot of Algarvians. The Zuwayzi foreign minister said, "Any help you can give us, we'll be grateful for and put to good use. We have the men to serve heavy sticks and the men to fly dragons, if only we could get them. Then the Unkerlanters wouldn't have such an easy time of it."
"I'll pass that along," Balastro said. "When we haven't got enough of anything ourselves, I don't know what they'll say about it back in Trapani. But I'll pass it on with my recommendation that they give you all they can." His eyes narrowed. He was shrewd, was Balastro. "After all, we have to keep you fighting Swemmel, too."
"You and King Shazli see things much alike here," Hajjaj said. "I am glad of it." And I hope it does some good. But will it? Will anything?
***
Captain Orosio stuck his head into Colonel Sabrino's tent. "Sir, the field post is here," the squadron commander said.
"Is it?" Sabrino rose from his folding chair. He winced. The blazed shoulder he'd taken escaping the Unkerlanters after his dragon was flamed out of the sky still pained him. He wore a wound badge along with his other decorations now. He knew how lucky he was to be alive, and savored survival with Algarvian gusto. "Let's see what we've got, then."
He wore the furs and leather in which he would have flown into the frigid upper air. It was frigid enough down here on the ground in the Kingdom of Grelz. The third winter of the war against Unkerlant, he thought with a sort of dull wonder. He'd never imagined, not that first heady summer when the Algarvians plunged ahead on their western adventure, that the war against King Swemmel could last into its third winter. He'd found a lot of things here that he'd never imagined then.
The postman, who wasn't a dragonflier, looked cold, but Algarvian soldiers who stayed on the ground weren't always freezing, as they had that first dreadful winter, for which they'd been so woefully unprepared. The fellow saluted as Sabrino came up to him. "Here you go, Colonel," he said, and handed the wing commander an envelope.
"Thanks." Sabrino recognized the handwriting at once. To Orosio, he said, "From my wife."
"Ah." Orosio stepped back a couple of paces to give him privacy to read it.
Opening the envelope with gloved hands was a clumsy business, but Sabrino managed. Inside were two pages closely written in Gismonda's clear, precise script. As was her way, she came straight to the point. I have good reason to believe that your mistress has taken up with another man, she told him. Fronesia has been seen too much with an infantry officer-some say a major, others a colonel-to leave any doubt that he has seen too much of her. That being so, I suggest you let him pay for her flat and her extravagances.
"And so I shall," Sabrino muttered.
"What's that, sir?" Oraste asked.
"Cut off my mistress' support," Sabrino answered. "My wife tells me some colonel of footsoldiers, or whatever he may be, is getting the benefits from her these days. If he's getting the benefits, by the powers above, he can bloody well pay the freight, too."
"I should say so." But Orosio's rather heavy features clouded. "As long as you're sure your wife's telling the truth, that is."
Sabrino nodded. "Oh, aye, without a doubt. Gismonda has never given me any trouble about Fronesia. I should hope she wouldn't. My dear fellow, do you know a proper Algarvian noble who hasn't got a mistress or two? -aside from the handful who have boys on the side instead, I mean."
"Well..." Captain Orosio hesitated, then said, "There's me."
Sabrino slapped him on the back. "And we know what your problem is: you've been here fighting a war and serving your kingdom. You get back to civilization, you'll need to carry a constable's club to beat the women back."
"Maybe." Orosio kicked at the frozen dirt like a youth just beginning to think about girls. "It'd be nice."
Sabrino slapped him on the back again. "It'll happen," he said, wondering if it would. Orosio was a nobleman, all right, or he'd have had an even harder time making officer's rank than he had, but you needed to squint hard at his pedigree to be sure of it. He'd have risen further and faster otherwise, for he was a first-rate soldier. There were times when Sabrino was glad Orosio hadn't been in position to hope for a wing of his own to command; he was too useful and able a subordinate to want to lose.
"Well, maybe," Orosio said again. He knew what held him back. He could hardly help knowing. After another kick at the dirt, he went on, "The way our losses are these days, we're getting more out-and-out commoners as officers than we probably ever did in all our history till now."
"It could be," Sabrino agreed. "The Six Years' War was hard on our noble families, too. Put it together with this one, and..." He sighed. "When the war is over, the king will have to grant a lot of patents of nobility, just to keep the ranks from getting too thin."
"I suppose so." Orosio's laugh sent fog spurting from his mouth. "And then the families who were noble before the war will spend the next five hundred years looking down their noses at the new ones."
"That's the truth." Sabrino laughed, too. But, as happened so often these days, the laughter didn't want to stick. "Better that than having some other king tell us who our nobles will be and who they won't be."
In centuries gone by, Valmiera and Jelgava and Forthweg and even Yanina had meddled in Algarvian affairs, backing now this local prince, now that one, as puppet or cat's-paw. Once upon a time, Sibiu had ruled a broad stretch of the coastline of southern Algarve. Those bad days, those days when a man was embarrassed to admit he was an Algarvian, were gone. Algarve had taken its right place in the sun, a kingdom among kingdoms, a great kingdom among great kingdoms.
But Algarve didn't hold Sibiu anymore. And, not far away, eggs burst, a quick, hard drumbeat of noise. Sabrino's head swung in that direction as he gauged the sound and what it might mean. So did Orosio's. "Unkerlanters," Orosio said.
"Aye." Sabrino hated to nod. "They didn't even let the mud slow them down this autumn. Now that the ground's hard again, I don't know how we're going to hold them out of Herborn."
"Neither do I," Orosio said. "But we'd cursed well better, because we'll have a demon of a time hanging on to the rest of Grelz if we lose it."
"Oh, it's not quite so bad as that, I wouldn't say-not good, mind you, but not so bad as that," Sabrino said. Orosio looked glum and cold and disbelieving and said not a word. Sabrino had been hoping for an argument. Silence, skeptical silence, gave him nothing to push against.
A crystallomancer hurried over to his tent and stuck his head inside. Not seeing him, the fellow drew back in confusion. "Here I am," Sabrino called, and waved. "What's gone wrong now?" He assumed something had, or the fellow wouldn't have been looking for him.
With a salute, the crystallomancer said, "Sir, the wing is ordered to attack the Unkerlanter ground forces now pushing their way into map square Green-Three."
"Green-Three? Powers below eat me if I remember where that is," Sabrino said. "Tell the dragon handlers to load eggs onto the beasts. Orosio, call out the dragonfliers, and I'll go find out what in blazes we're supposed to be doing."
While the crystallomancer and Orosio shouted, Sabrino went back to his tent and unfolded the situation map. For a moment, he didn't see any square labeled Green-Three, and he wondered whether the crystallomancer had got the order straight. Then he noticed that the vertical column of squares labeled Green lay east of Herborn, not west where he'd been looki
ng. He cursed under his breath. No, the capital of the Kingdom of Grelz wasn't going to hold. If the Unkerlanters were already beyond Herborn, the fight had to be to keep a corridor open so the troops in the city could pull out.
No help for it, he thought. If we lose Herborn and those men, we'll be worse off than if we just lose Herborn.
He hurried out of the tent again, shouting orders of his own. "Come on, you whoresons!" he yelled to the men of his wing. "Time to make some Unkerlanters sorry they were ever born."
Even now, after so many bitter battles, his dragonfliers gave him a cheer. Somehow, that rocked him. He had trouble believing they had anything to cheer about, or that he'd done anything to deserve those shouts. Waving a mittened hand, he scrambled up onto his dragon and took his place at the base of its neck. The dragon's screech rang high and shrill in his ears. It was younger and smaller than the beast he'd taken into all the fights before it got blazed out of the sky-younger and smaller and, if such a thing was possible, stupider, too.
Turtledove, Harry - Darkness 04 - Rulers Of The Darkness Page 70