Sabrino flew on for a little while, too numb for the time being to think of doing anything else. Somewhere down on that frozen waste, a hairy old shaman was saying, “I told you so.”
Once upon a time, Sergeant Leudast thought, Sulingen wouldn’t have been a bad town in which to live. Oh, it would get cold in the winter, he had no doubt of that; he came from the north of Unkerlant, which had a milder climate. But it would have been pleasant, sprawled as it was along the Wolter, with plenty of little patches of wood and parkland and with steeply sloping gullies to break up the blocks of homes and shops and manufactories.
But it wasn’t pleasant any more. Algarvian dragons had been plastering it with eggs for weeks, and many of those blocks of homes were nothing but rubble. Leudast, as a matter of fact, didn’t mind rubble as terrain in which to fight. It offered endless places to hide, and he knew how to take advantage of them. The soldiers who hadn’t learned that lesson were mostly dead by now.
Captain Hawart pointed north, though he was careful not to let the motion expose his arm to a beam from the enemy who lurked too close. “Let’s see the cursed Algarvians outflank us and run rings around us in this,” he said.
“Let’s see anybody do anything in this,” Leudast answered, which made his company commander laugh and nod. Men could move freely enough. The company had spent some time digging trenches through the rubble, which made them much less likely to get blazed if they scrambled from one stretch of wreckage to another. But even behemoths had a hard time going where no paths had been cleared among piles of brick and stone and broken boards.
Hawart said, “The only thing they can do now is come straight at us and slug. They’re quicker than we are. They’re more supple than we are. By the powers above, they’re more clever than we are, too. But how much good does any of that do them here?”
“Do you really think they’re more clever than we are?” Leudast asked.
“If we were more clever, we’d be attacking Trapani-they wouldn’t be here,” Hawart answered, and Leudast had a hard time finding a counterargument. But Hawart went on, “But that only takes you so far. If I hit you in the head with a big rock, how clever you are doesn’t matter anymore. And here in Sulingen, we can hit the redheads with lots of big rocks. If they were really clever, they would have made the fight somewhere else.”
Before Leudast could reply, the Algarvians started tossing eggs at the Unkerlanter front line. As usual, Mezentio’s men had made sure that their egg-tossers kept up with their advancing footsoldiers. Leudast cowered in his hole as the rubble around him got ground a little finer. It occurred to him, perhaps more slowly than it should have, that the Algarvians, regardless of whether or not they were clever, could hit the Unkerlanters with big rocks, too.
It also occurred to him that the Algarvians could pin the Unkerlanters in their holes by tossing eggs and then finish them with the horrific magic they made from the life energy of slaughtered Kaunians. He hoped they wouldn’t think of that along this particular stretch of the line.
Off to his right, someone shrieked. Maybe the redheads wouldn’t need to be clever to go forward. Maybe they could just go on killing the way they’d been doing for quite a while.
Another cry rose, this one alarm, not pain: “They’re coming!” Eggs kept right on landing. Maybe Mezentio’s men didn’t care if they killed a few of their own. Maybe they just figured it was a good bargain, and that getting rid of the Unkerlanters counted for more. And maybe they were right about that, too.
If they were coming, Leudast didn’t want-didn’t dare-to get caught in his hole. He popped up and started to blaze. An Algarvian tumbled down, and another. More dove for cover. Some kept coming. His mouth went dry-quite a few were coming, more than he thought he and his comrades could hold back. He’d already made himself expensive. Now he had to see how he could cost the redheads even more before they finally pulled him down.
And then, from the rear, he heard one of the sweetest sounds he’d ever known; officers’ whistles shrilling reinforcements into action. “Urra!” the soldiers shouted. “King Swemmel! Urra!” They rushed past Leudast, meeting the Algarvian charge with one of their own.
They were new men, unblooded, ferried north over the Wolter and thrown straight into the fight. Everything about them proclaimed as much, from their clean, unfaded tunics to the way they ran straight up rather than hunching forward to give the redheads smaller targets. A lot of them fell before they ever came to grips with Mezentio’s veteran troopers. But enough Unkerlanters lived to stop the Algarvian advance before it really got going.
Leudast was already moving forward when Captain Hawart shouted, “Come on-we’re not going to let the new lads have all the fun!”
It wasn’t fun. Only a madman would have reckoned it fun. It was combat at the close quarters of fornication, and hardly less intimate. The Algarvians were as determined to go forward as the Unkerlanters were to drive them back. Men fought one another with beams, with sticks swung like clubs, with knives, with feet and fists and teeth. No one on either side threw up his hands.
An Algarvian who had to be out of charges for his stick tried to brain Leudast with it. Leudast had no time to blaze him; he had all he could do to duck. The redhead threw the dead stick at him. He knocked it aside with his own stick as the Algarvian drew a knife and rushed. He knocked the wicked-looking blade aside, too. Then he could blaze, could and did. The Algarvian howled and toppled. Leudast blazed him again, and the howling stopped.
“Forward!” Captain Hawart shouted again.
Forward Leudast went-a handful of paces, till he spied a likely-looking hole in the ground. He jumped down into it without the slightest sense of shame or embarrassment. Aye, he wanted to drive the redheads out of Sulingen. But he also wanted to live to see them go. He didn’t think that was likely, not the way things stood, but it was what he wanted.
Hisses overhead and crashes behind and near the Algarvians’ lines announced that the egg-tossers on his own side weren’t so sleepy as usual. Captain Hawart had been right-the Algarvians lacked the room to maneuver and deceive here. Out on the plains, the Unkerlanters’ egg-tossers hadn’t always been able to get where they were needed while they were still needed there. In Sulingen, that problem didn’t arise. They were already where they needed to be. All they had to do was toss. They could manage that.
Little by little, the pressure from the redheads eased. Leudast let out a long, weary sigh. “Held ‘em again,” he said to no one in particular.
Soldiers dragged wounded men to the rear, to see what mages and surgeons could do for them. That held true no matter to which side the men at the front belonged, no matter whether they wore gray tunics or tan kilts. The Algarvians rarely blazed at soldiers helping wounded comrades; Leudast and his countrymen usually extended the redheads the same courtesy. It was one of the few courtesies both sides extended.
A runner came up with a big sack full of loaves of black bread. Leudast grabbed one and bit into it. It was heavy and chewy, bound to have more barley and rye flour in it than wheat. He didn’t care. It was food, and food for which he didn’t have to go foraging through the rubble. He didn’t mind taking what had been other people’s dainties; the real trouble was that he didn’t find them often enough to keep his own belly full.
One of the raw Unkerlanter soldiers-a lot less raw now than he had been a couple of hours before-spoke to Leudast: “Sergeant? Sir?”
He was raw. “I’m just a sergeant,” Leudast said gruffly. “You don’t call me sir. You call officers sir. Have you got that?”
“Aye, sir-uh, Sergeant.” Beneath his dirty, swarthy hide, the young soldier blushed like a girl. Leudast didn’t much blame him for being confused. He’d been doing an officer’s work himself, commanding a company, and he was far from the only sergeant who could say that. And not all the real officers in Unkerlant’s army were bluebloods these days, as they had been during the Six Years’ War. King Swemmel had killed off a lot of noblemen during and after
the Twinkings War, and the Algarvians had killed off a lot more since.
“Well, what do you want, then?” Leudast asked, less of a growl in his voice this time. “And who are you, anyway?”
“Oh! My name’s Aldrian.. Sergeant.” The youngster beamed at doing it right. “What I want to know is, is it always going to be like this? His wave encompassed the battered, worthless stretch of ground the Algarvians hadn’t quite been able to seize.
Leudast considered. While he considered, he ate another big bite of bread. Slowly, deliberately, he chewed and swallowed. Then he said, “You figure it out. The redheads want Sulingen. King Swemmel says they can’t have it. If they keep throwing in soldiers and he keeps throwing in soldiers, what do you think will happen?”
By his accent, Aldrian came out of Cottbus. And, again by his accent, he was an educated young man. He really did furrow up his unwrinkled brow and think it over. Leudast could tell to the heartbeat when he reached his conclusion. He could also tell Aldrian didn’t much fancy the answer he got. Turning a stricken face toward Leudast, he asked, “Do you think any of us will be left alive by the time it’s over here, however it turns out?”
After eating some more bread, Leudast answered, “Well, it could be worse.”
“How?” Aldrian’s eyes widened.
“We could be Kaunians,” Leudast said, and drew his thumb across his throat; the nail rasped on whiskers he hadn’t had the chance to shave any time lately. “You know what Mezentio’s mages do to them, and why?” He waited for Aldrian to nod. Then, with deliberate brutality, he went on, “Or we could be old men and women King Swemmel’s inspectors can’t find any other use for any more. You know what our mages do to them, and why?”
“Aye.” Aldrian nodded again. Though his features were pinched as if at the smell of rotting meat-not that there wasn’t plenty of that stink around-he still managed to bring out Swemmel’s favorite catchword: “Efficiency.”
Leudast spat. “That for efficiency.” Back before the war heated up to its present boil, he never would have dared do such a thing, for fear of Swemmel’s inspectors. But they couldn’t condemn him to much worse than what he’d already had: something more than a year of fighting the Algarvians.
He’d shocked Aldrian-he could see as much. “Where would we be if everyone said that?” the youngster asked.
He’d intended it for a rhetorical question. Leudast wasn’t long on rhetoric, and so he answered it anyway: “Where would we be? About where we are anyhow, I expect.” He looked a challenge toward Aldrian, defying the recruit to disagree with him.
Aldrian opened his mouth, then closed it again. “Good fellow,” Leudast told him. “If you live, you’ll learn.”
Once upon a time, the neighborhood through which Bembo and Oraste strolled had been among the better ones in Gromheort. It still showed faint signs of that, as a desperately ill woman of fifty-five might show signs of having been a beauty at twenty. Nothing in Gromheort was very prepossessing these days. Bembo said, “I hate this place.”
Oraste yawned in his face. “So what? There are plenty of places where you’d do a lot more than hate ‘em. Sulingen, for instance. Set Gromheort next to Sulingen and it doesn’t look so bad, you know that?”
“Set anything next to Sulingen and it doesn’t look so bad,” Bembo said with a shudder. “That doesn’t make Gromheort look good. Nothing would make Gromheort look good.”
“Doesn’t seem like anything will make you quit bellyaching, either, does it?” Oraste said.
“Oh, shut up,” Bembo snarled, nettled enough to forget that Oraste wouldn’t have a lot of trouble breaking him in two. A Forthwegian-a middle-aged man, his neat beard going gray-was walking along across the street with his head turned toward the constables. “What’s so fornicating funny?” Bembo yelled at him.
“Nothing in Gromheort is funny these days,” the Forthwegian answered in Algarvian almost as fluent as the constable’s.
Bembo set hands on hips and sent Oraste a triumphant look. “There? You see? Even a Forthwegian can tell.”
The other constable gestured dismissively. “What does he know about it? He’s not going to want to give us a bouquet any which way.” He glowered at the Forthwegian. “What in blazes do you know about how things are, anyway?”
Bembo expected the local to duck his head and make himself scarce. That was what he would have done in the face of a couple of occupiers. It was what most sensible Forthwegians did. And, indeed, the fellow started to do just that.
But then, as if arguing with himself, he shook his head and strode across the cobbles toward Bembo and Oraste. “Do you want me to tell you what I know, gentlemen? I can do that, if you care to listen.”
“Is he nuts?” Oraste whispered to Bembo.
“I don’t know,” Bembo whispered back. The Forthwegian wasn’t acting strange, except for being willing to speak his mind. But, in Gromheort, that was pretty strange in and of itself. Bembo let his right hand fall to the stick he wore on his belt. He raised his voice a little. “That’s close enough, pal.”
The Forthwegian not only stopped, he bowed, almost as if he were an Algarvian himself. He laughed, and his laugh was harsh and bitter. “I am not a dangerous madman. It is a tempting role, but not one I can play. There are times I wish I could, believe you me.”
That was fancy talk. It did nothing for Oraste. He rumbled, “Come to the point or get lost.”
With another bow, the Forthwegian said, “I shall. My nephew beat my son to death with a chair, and nobody did a thing about it. Nobody will do a thing about it. I have no chance of getting anybody to do anything about it, either. Should I think all is well in Gromheort?”
His tunic was pretty clean and pretty stylish-not that Bembo thought the knee-length tunics Forthwegian men wore had much in the way of style. He spoke like an educated man. He had nerve and to spare-that he was speaking so openly to Algarvians proved that. With money, education, and nerve. . “Why can’t you get anybody to do anything about it?” Bembo asked in honest bewilderment.
“Why?” the Forthwegian said. “I’ll tell you why, by the powers above. Because my nephew, may the powers below eat him, was on leave from Plegmund’s Brigade when he did it. Have you any more questions, sir?”
“Oh, you’re that son of a whore,” Oraste said. “I heard about you.” Bembo nodded; he’d heard about this fellow, too. Oraste shrugged. “No, you can’t do anything about that. Go on, get lost.” The words stayed gruff. The tone, now, wasn’t. Had it come from another man, Bembo might even have called it sympathetic. From Oraste, that was hard to imagine.
“I didn’t expect you to do anything,” the Forthwegian answered. “But you asked why nothing was funny. Now I have told you. Good day.” With another bow, he strode off.
“Poor bugger,” Bembo said. “Once you’re in Plegmund’s Brigade, you can do whatever you bloody well please, as long as you don’t do it to an Algarvian.”
“That’s the truth, and that’s the way it ought to be, too,” Oraste said. “But it’s not how that fellow would see things-I can see that.” He shrugged. “Nobody ever said life was fair. Come on.”
On they went. When they turned a corner, Bembo’s gaze fell on a man walking along with the hood to his long tunic pulled up over the top of his head. On a warm summer’s day, that drew the constable’s eye almost as readily as a pretty girl would have. The features under that hood didn’t look particularly Forthwegian: fair skin, straight nose. And then Bembo realized those features did look familiar. “Powers above!” he exclaimed. “It’s that old Kaunian from Oyngestun.”
“What is?” Oraste asked. Bembo pointed. The other constable peered, then nodded. “Well, you’re right for once. He knows he’s not supposed to be out here, too. Now he’s fair game.”
“He sure is.” Bembo raised his voice. “Hold it right there! Aye, you, you ugly old Kaunian sack of manure!”
The old man-Brivibas, that was his name-looked as if he was thinking of bolting. Then hi
s shoulders slumped; he must have realized that was a mistake all too likely to prove fatal. Instead, he turned toward Bembo and Oraste with a curious sort of fatalism. “Very well. You have me. Do your worst.”
Maybe he said something like that in the hope of softening the constables’ hearts. It might have worked with Bembo: not likely, but it might have. With Oraste, such an invitation was just asking for trouble.
Bembo tried to head off his colleague, though he couldn’t really have said why: he had no great use for Kaunians. “All right, what sort of excuse are you going to give us for sneaking out of your district this time?” he demanded of the old man.
“No excuse, only the truth: I am still trying to learn what has become of my granddaughter,” Brivibas answered.
“Not good enough, old man,” Oraste said, and pulled his bludgeon free. The Kaunian bowed his head, waiting.
“Hang on a minute,” Bembo told Oraste, who looked at him as if he were out of his mind. To Brivibas, Bembo said, “Why do you think she’s here? I mean, here in this part of town in particular?” If the Kaunian didn’t have a good answer, nothing Bembo could say would keep Oraste from having his sport.
Brivibas said, “I believe she ran off with a Forthwegian youth named Ealstan, who lives somewhere along this street.”
“I believe you’re a fool,” Bembo said. If the girl was living with a Forthwegian, she was bound to be better off than any of the Kaunians jammed into their crowded district. Nobody would throw her into a caravan car and send her west, or maybe east, to be sacrificed, either. Was the old fool too blind to see that?
To the constable’s surprise, tears glinted in Brivibas’ eyes. “She is all I have in the world. Do you wonder that I want to know what has become of her?”
“Sometimes you’re better off not knowing,” Bembo answered.
Brivibas stared at him as if he’d just declared the world was flat or there was no such thing as magecraft. “Knowledge is always preferable to ignorance,” he declared.
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