“These two, they fighting,” one of the Algarvian guards said.

  “Oh, aye, I can see that,” Cynfrid said. “The question is, why were they fighting?” The guard gave back an extravagant Algarvian shrug, one that declared he not only didn’t know but found beneath him the idea of wondering why Forthwegians did anything. The brigadier sighed, evidently having encountered that attitude before. He examined Leofsig and Merwit. “What have you men got to say for yourselves?”

  “Sir, this stinking Kaunian-lover called me a filthy name,” Merwit said, his voice dripping with righteous innocence and indignation. “I got sick of it, so when he started the fight, I did my best to give him what-for.”

  “I didn’t start the fight,” Leofsig exclaimed. “He did! And he’s been calling me names since we got here—you just heard him do it again now. I finally called him one back. He didn’t like that so much. Most bullies are better at giving it out than taking it.”

  “Conflicting stories,” Cynfrid said with another sigh. He glanced over toward the guards. “I don’t suppose you gentlemen know who did start the fight?” The redheads laughed, not so much at the idea that they should know, but at the notion that they might care. The Forthwegian brigadier sighed yet again. “Any chance of witnesses?”

  Now Leofsig had all he could do not to start laughing himself. His fellow captives wanted as little to do with the guards as they could. They would make themselves scarce and deny seeing anything … or would all of them? Slowly, he said, “Sir, I think the Kaunians in my barracks would tell the truth about what went on.”

  “They’d lick your arse for you, you mean, like you lick theirs,” Merwit snarled, his eyes blazing.

  Leofsig had succeeded in gaining the guards’ attention. He wasn’t nearly sure he wanted it. To Cynfrid, one of the Algarvians said, “The Kaunians, they is no to being trusted, eh?”

  “No, probably not,” the Forthwegian brigadier said, “although they haven’t done nearly so much to Forthweg as you Algarvians, wouldn’t you think?”

  If the Algarvians thought any such thing, their faces didn’t show it. With a dismissive gesture, the one who did most of the talking said, “You no can trusting nothing no yellowheads telling you.”

  “That’s right,” Merwit said. “That’s just right, sir.”

  “Is it?” Cynfrid didn’t sound convinced. “You seem none too trustworthy yourself there, soldier.” But he failed to follow through, just as Forthwegian officers had failed to follow through on their early victories over Algarve. “Well, if we’ve got no trustworthy witnesses, these two chaps will have to share and share alike. A week’s latrine duty each ought to teach them to keep their hands to themselves.”

  Merwit jerked a thumb toward Leofsig. “He likes latrine duty. He gets to hang around with his Kaunian chums.”

  “They’re better company than you are,” Leofsig retorted. “They smell better than you do, too.”

  Only the presence of the Algarvian guards kept the fight from flaring again. “That will be quite enough, both of you,” Brigadier Cynfrid said sternly. “The order holds—a week’s latrine duty for each of you. Any further incidents between you two, and we shall see what sort of view the Algarvian authorities take of such business.”

  “Aye, sir,” Merwit and Leofsig said together. Leofsig did not want to go before the redheads, not after he’d got a name for sticking up for Kaunians. The Algarvians lorded it over his own people, aye, but their feud with folk of Kaunian blood went back into the ancient days of the world.

  He hoped Merwit wouldn’t be clever enough to see that. Merwit, fortunately, had never struck him as very clever. Merwit had struck him, though—struck him with fists like rocks. He knew no small pride at having come close to holding his own against the other captive.

  “You hearing the brigadier,” the talky Algarvian guard said. “Now you coming, you do your deservings. You do the shovelings of shits, aye?” He and his comrades both gestured with their sticks. Leofsig and Merwit left. Looking back over his shoulder, Leofsig saw Brigadier Cynfrid return to the paperwork he’d had interrupted.

  Merwit did as little as he could on latrine duty, or perhaps a bit less. Leofsig had expected nothing else; he’d already seen that Merwit was a shirker even by the lax standards of the captives’ camp. He did his own work, not as if he were in a race but steadily nonetheless.

  Late that afternoon, a shout made his head whip around. Somehow, Merwit had contrived to fall into a slit trench about due to be covered over. When he scrambled out again, he was as magnificently filthy a man as Leofsig had ever seen. He glared at Leofsig, but Leofsig hadn’t been anywhere near him.

  At the moment, none of the Kaunians who did most of the latrine work was anywhere near him, either. Leofsig hadn’t noticed any of them hurrying away. Maybe Merwit had been clumsy. Maybe some Kaunian had been sneaky. By the way Merwit stared wildly around him, he thought some Kaunian had been sneaky.

  The Kaunians ignored him. They didn’t even suggest that he pour a bucket of water over himself because he stank. If they looked pleased with themselves—well, Kaunians often looked pleased with themselves, that being one of the characteristics that failed to endear them to their neighbors. If they’d been sneaky enough to dump Merwit into the slit trench without getting caught: if they’d been that sneaky, Leofsig wondered how sneaky they might be in other ways. That might be worth finding out one of these days, if he could figure out how.

  Down in the farming villages of the Duchy of Grelz, fall gave way to winter early. Most of Unkerlant had a harsh climate; that in the south was far worse than the rest. Animals that hibernated went into their burrows sooner there than anywhere else in the kingdom.

  People in those farming villages went into their burrows sooner than anywhere else in the kingdom, too. Like dormice and badgers and bears, Garivald and his fellow farmers had stuffed themselves and filled their larders. Now, with the harvest gathered, they had little to do but keep themselves and their livestock alive till spring eventually returned.

  Garivald had mixed feelings about the long winters. On the one hand, he didn’t have to work so hard as he did when the weather was better. If he felt like pulling out a jug of raw spirits and spending a day—or a couple of days, or more than a couple of days—drunk, he could. It wouldn’t mean starvation because he hadn’t done something that vitally needed doing. The worst it would mean was a disastrously thick head when he stopped drinking. He was used to those, and sometimes even took a certain melancholy pleasure in them. They were one more way of helping time go by in winter.

  As far as he was concerned, making time go by was the biggest trouble winter offered. Unlike a dormouse or a badger or a bear, he couldn’t sleep away the whole season. Except when very drunk, he remained aware: aware he was cooped up in a none-too-big farmhouse with his wife and son and daughter and with a lot of livestock that would otherwise have starved or frozen.

  Annore, his wife, liked it even less than he did. “Can’t you keep anything clean?” she shouted when he threw the shell of a hard-boiled egg on the floor after scooping out white and yolk with a horn spoon.

  “I don’t know what you’re fretting about,” he answered in what he thought were reasonable tones. “There’s cow shit over there”—he pointed—“and pig shit over there”—he pointed again—“and the hens shit all over everywhere, so why are you shouting at me over an eggshell?” Trying to be helpful, he ground it into the dirt floor with the sole of his boot.

  Annore put her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes, so maybe he hadn’t been so helpful after all. “Can I make the cows do their business where I tell them to? Can I do that for the pigs? Can I do that for the miserable, stinking chickens? They won’t listen to me. Maybe you will.”

  Garivald didn’t feel like listening. He’d been drunk up until the day before, and was still feeling the effects. He’d beaten Annore only a couple of times, which made him a prodigy, as husbands in the village of Zossen went. That was only partly because he had a milder temper than most of the other village men. The other side of the coin was that Annore had a fiercer temper than most of the other village women. If he beat her too hard or too often, she was liable to cut his throat or break his head while he lay in a drunken stupor. Almost every winter, someone in Zossen met an untimely demise.

  Garivald’s son Syrivald grunted like a pig. He was looking at Garivald as he did it, mischief on his face. Garivald grunted, too, and got to his feet. The mischief vanished from Syrivald’s face; alarm replaced it. Garivald caught him and thumped him a couple of times. “Don’t call me a hog—have you got that?” he demanded.

  “Aye, Father,” Syrivald blubbered. Had he been rash enough to say anything else, his father would have made him regret it.

  As things were, Garivald found a different way to make him regret getting out of line: “Since you haven’t got anything better to do with yourself, you can clean up after the animals. And while you’re at it, you can pick up my eggshell, too.”

  Syrivald got to work, not with any enormous enthusiasm but with a very plain sense that he’d be sorry if he didn’t go at it fast enough to suit his father. In that, he was absolutely right. Garivald kept a sharp eye on him till he was almost done, then turned to Annore and said, “There. Are you happier now?”

  “I’d be really happy if this house didn’t turn into a sty every winter,” she said. She wasn’t looking at the pigs. She was looking at Garivald.

  Her words could have held any of several meanings. Having been married to her a good many years, Garivald knew which one was likeliest. He also knew he would be foolish to acknowledge that one. He said, “Only way I can think of to keep a house clean through winter is by magic.”

  “I believe that,” Annore said, a reply not calculated to warm his heart. Before she could elaborate on it, Leuba woke from her nap and started to cry. Annore took care of the baby, whose soiled linen added to the winter atmosphere of the farmhouse. But, after Annore put her daughter to her breast, she resumed: “How much magic can anyone work here?”

  “I don’t know,” Garivald answered grouchily. “Enough, maybe.”

  Annore shook her head. Leuba, following the motion, found it very funny. “Not likely,” Annore said. “This far from a power point, this far from a ley line, you’d need a first-rank mage. Where would we get the silver to pay a first-rank mage?” Her bitter laugh said she knew that question had no answer even as she asked it.

  Garivald said, “I like living without much magic fine, thanks. If we had power points and ley lines coming out of our ears, this place would be just like Cottbus, you know that? We’d have inspectors and impressers peering at us every minute we weren’t squatting on the pot, and half the time we were, too.”

  Syrivald wrinkled up his nose at that idea. So did Garivald. In a couple of sentences, he’d summed up everything he knew about the capital of Unkerlant: that it was full of magic and full of people who spied on other people for King Swemmel. He had no notion that that wasn’t a full and complete portrait of Cottbus. How could he? He’d never seen a city, and had been to the market town nearest his village only a couple of times. That didn’t make his opinions any less certain—on the contrary.

  “Hurry up there, Syrivald,” he snapped, also having definite opinions on how much work his son ought to be doing. Syrivald’s occasional failure to meet his standards made him add, “Of course, if we offer a sacrifice, we don’t need a power point, let alone a first-rank mage.”

  “Stop that!” Annore said at Syrivald’s horrified stare. Garivald laughed; he’d succeeded in getting his son’s attention. “It isn’t funny,” his wife told him.

  “Oh, I think it is,” Garivald said. “Look—I’ve worked a magic of my own, and the farmhouse is getting clean. If you think you can get better sorcery around these parts, you’d better to talk to Waddo or to Herka.”

  “I don’t want to talk to the firstman or his wife, thank you,” Annore said tartly. “They wouldn’t be able to help me, anyhow. If they knew anything about getting real magic out here, don’t you think they’d have a crystal in their own house?”

  “Maybe they don’t want one.” But Garivald shook his head before Annore could correct him. “No, you’re right; never mind. Waddo and Herka always want things. If they didn’t, would they have built that second floor on to their house?” He chuckled. “I bet Waddo has fun getting up there these days, on his bad ankle.”

  But that second floor let the firstman and his family live above the livestock during the winter, not with it, as everyone else in the village did. Building a second floor on to his own home would have let Garivald satisfy Annore’s longing for a clean house, or at least part of a clean house, without magic and without threatening to make Syrivald a blood sacrifice. But he and Annore both thought Waddo’s addition a piece of big-city pretentiousness. Doing anything like it had never crossed his mind, nor his wife’s, either.

  Annore sighed and said, “It’s no use. I know it’s no use. But I couldn’t help wishing sometimes …” She sighed again. “I might as well wish you were a baron.”

  “That would be something, wouldn’t it?” Garivald got off the stool on which he was sitting and puffed out his chest. “Baron Garivald the Splendid,” he boomed in a deep voice bearing little resemblance to the one he usually used.

  Syrivald snickered. Annore laughed out loud. Leuba didn’t understand why her mother was laughing, but she laughed, too. So did Garivald. The idea of him as a baron was even funnier than the idea of a farmhouse that stayed clean through the winter. It would need a stronger magic, too.

  “Maybe I’d better be happy with things the way they are now,” Annore said.

  Garivald snorted. “You think I’d make a lousy baron.” He scratched. He was probably lousy now. People got that way when winter closed down on the land. Nobody bathed often enough to hold the nasty little pests at bay. Sitting in the steam bath till you couldn’t stand being baked any more and then running out and rolling in the snow felt wonderful—once a week, or once every other week. More often than that, it felt like death. And that often wasn’t enough to kill lice and nits. Garivald scratched some more. Can’t be helped, he thought.

  Annore didn’t answer him, which might have been just as well. Instead, she put Leuba on her shoulder till the baby rewarded her with a belch. “There’s a good girl,” Annore said. “Don’t you feel better now that that’s out?” She seemed to feel better now that she’d got her complaints out, too.

  “Winter,” Garivald said, more to himself than to anyone else. Here he was, in the house with his family and his livestock, and he wouldn’t be going anywhere—or nowhere far, and not for long—for quite a while. Neither would Annore. No wonder she felt like complaining sometimes.

  One of the cows dropped more dung on the floor. The only thing Annore said was, “Clean that up, Syrivald.”

  She still held Leuba. Syrivald knew better than to think that meant she wouldn’t get up and wallop him if he didn’t hop to it. He’d made that mistake a couple of times. He wouldn’t make it any more.

  “Just as well Waddo and Herka don’t have a crystal,” Garivald said. “We’d get endless yattering about the war against the black people up in the north, and how we’d won another smashing battle.” He snorted again. “Don’t they know we know the war would be over by now if it were really going well? And besides”—he added the clincher—“if they had a crystal, the inspector and impressers would be able to give them orders without bothering to come out here.”

  “Powers above!” Annore exclaimed. “We wouldn’t want that. I think I am happier with things the way they are now.”

  “I think I am, too.” Garivald knew perfectly well he was happier with things as they were. He couldn’t imagine a peasant in Unkerlant who wasn’t happier with things as they were. The only thing change and fancy magic got Unkerlanter city folk was going right under King Swemmel’s thumb. Nobody could want that. He was sure of it.

  Nine

  MARSHAL RATHAR peered north across the Zuwayzi desert. Had King Swemmel let him use the plan his aides had long since developed, he might well have been in Bishah by now. So he reminded the king in every despatch he sent him. Maybe King Swemmel would pay attention and not start his next war too soon. Rathar sighed. Maybe dragons would stand up and start giving speeches, too, but he wasn’t going to hold his breath waiting for that, either.

  And Rathar might well not have been in Bishah by now. He’d been forcibly made aware of that, though not a hint of it got into the letters he sent Swemmel. The Zuwayzin had had plans of their own, and they might have made them work even against the full weight of the Unkerlanter army.

  Unkerlant had not had to fight a desert campaign since bringing Zuwayza under the rule of Cottbus. No one was left alive from those days, and the art of war had changed a good deal since. The Unkerlanter officer corps had not figured out how best to apply all the changes: the plan with which Unkerlant had gone to war involved nothing more complicated than hammering at Zuwayza till she broke.

  “The black men know us better than we know them,” Rathar muttered discontentedly. That the Zuwayzin should have a good notion of what Unkerlant intended made all too much sense. Unkerlanters had been overlords in Zuwayza for more than a hundred years. Their resentful subjects had had to learn to know them well. The reverse, unfortunately, did not apply. All the Unkerlanters had done in Zuwayza was give orders. That hadn’t encouraged them to try to understand the dusky people on the other end of those orders.

  A messenger came up and stood to attention, awaiting Rathar’s notice.

  At last, Rathar nodded to him. The fellow said, “My lord, I have the honor to report that General Werpin’s force is ready for the attack over the Wadi Uqeiqa.” His tongue stumbled over the unfamiliar syllables, so different from those of Unkerlanter.