“We should have done a better job of a lot of things, sir,” Raunu said, and Skarnu could hardly have disagreed with him.

  “How wide a sickle slice have they cut through us, sir?” one of the troopers asked, as the sickly-sweet smell of meat dead too long and the dangerous reality of Algarvian patrols went on and on and on.

  “Too wide,” Skarnu answered: a truth as obvious as Raunu’s.

  After another hour or so, he spotted yet one more patrol, this one, unusually, in a field rather than going down a road. He needed a moment to realize these soldiers wore trousers, not kilts. When he did, his heart leapt within him. Without coming out from behind the bush that concealed him, he called softly: “King Gainibu!”

  The soldiers started. “Who goes there?” one of them rapped out—in Valmieran.

  Skarnu’s own language was sweet in his ears. He gave his name, adding, “My men and I have come across the Algarvian lines from the frontier force.”

  “You’re lucky, then, because cursed few have made it,” the soldier answered. Bleakly, he added, “Cursed few have tried, come to that. Show yourselves, so we know you aren’t redhead raiders.”

  Skarnu emerged from cover ahead of his men. He did it ostentatiously, so the Valmierans wouldn’t take alarm and blaze him. One of the soldiers came up, looked him over, talked with him, and called, “I think he’s the real thing, Sergeant.”

  “All right,” the fellow in charge of the patrol answered. “Lead his pals and him back to headquarters, then. We can use every man we find, and that’s a fact.”

  Headquarters gave Skarnu hope. When he reached them, though, he discovered the senior officer there was an overage, overweight captain named Rudninku, whose command consisted of three understrength companies.

  “Haven’t got anything,” he moaned. “Not enough men, not enough behemoths, not enough armor or weapons for half the ones we do have, not enough horses, no unicorns. I’m supposed to hold a couple of miles of front with this. I can’t attack, not unless I want to kill myself. I can’t stop the redheads if they turn on me, either.”

  “What can you do?” Skarnu demanded, hoping Rudninku would, if prodded, come up with something useful.

  He didn’t. All he said was, “Sit tight and wait to see what happens in the south. If we win, maybe I can pitch into the Algarvians’ flank. If we lose—and things don’t look good down there—I’ll surrender. What else can I do?”

  “Go on fighting,” Skarnu said. Rudninku looked at him as if he’d lost his mind.

  Some of the reports Hajjaj used to mark the progress of the Derlavaian War on the map in his office came from the Zuwayzi ministries in Trapani and Priekule. The two sets of reports didn’t always gibe; the Algarvians had a way of announcing good news for their side days before the Valmierans admitted it was true.

  And some of Hajjaj’s reports came from the news sheets here in Bishah. Every once in a while, those were spectacularly wrong. More often than not, though, they got news from the far east faster and more accurately than either ministry there.

  Hajjaj thrust a brass pin with a green glass head into the map east of the Valmieran town of Ventspils. Seeing just where Ventspils was made him whistle softly: it lay well to the east of Priekule, and was almost as far north. The Algarvians had reached the Strait of Valmiera and made the Lagoans pull their men and dragons out of King Gainibu’s land or see them cut off and killed or captured. The Lagoans had had to slaughter a lot of their behemoths, too, to keep them from falling into Algarvian hands.

  And the Algarvians, having knocked Lagoas out of the fight for the time being, having trapped and reduced to impotence the main Valmieran army, were now executing a grand wheeling movement to the north and east against… against not much, as far as Hajjaj could tell.

  Shaddad, his secretary, came in and interrupted his contemplation. Shaddad, unusually for a Zuwayzi, was wearing a tunic and kilt that would have been stylish during Hajjaj’s university days in Trapani before the Six Years’ War. Bowing to Hajjaj, the secretary said, “Your Excellency, I remind you that the Marquis Balastro will be here in less than half an hour.”

  “Meaning I had better shroud myself, eh?” Hajjaj said.

  Shaddad nodded. “Even so, sir. It were better not to scandalize the Algarvian minister.”

  “Oh, Balastro wouldn’t be scandalized,” Hajjaj said as he walked toward the closet from which he sometimes had to pull out clothes. “He is an Algarvian: he enjoys leering at the women here whenever he has occasion to come out on business. I admit he wouldn’t be so glad to stare at my scrawny old carcass, though, and so I shall deck myself out for him.” He put on a tunic and kilt of somewhat more modern cut than Shaddad’s.

  Being of light, gauzy cotton, the clothing couldn’t have made him much warmer than he was already. He imagined himself sweating more all the same. His body felt confined, clammy. Clucking sorrowfully, he endured.

  Marquis Balastro strutted in at precisely the appointed hour. The strut said he was happy with the world. The gleam in his eye said he had indeed enjoyed the journey from the Algarvian ministry to King Shazli’s palace. A serving woman dressed Zuwayzi-style—which is to say, in sandals and jewelry—brought tea and cakes and wine for him and Hajjaj. The gleam in his eye got brighter.

  A cultivated man, Balastro accommodated himself to Zuwayzi rhythms. Only after the serving woman had taken away the tray—and after he’d finished ogling her while she did it—did he say, “I have news of moment, your Excellency.”

  “By all means, then, tell me what it is,” Hajjaj said. To his annoyance, he’d spilled a drop of wine on his tunic. Another reason not to care for cloth—it was harder to clean than skin.

  Balastro’s eyes gleamed now in a different way. Leaning forward, away from the piled cushions against which he sat, he said, “Valmiera has asked for the terms on which we would consent to ending the war against her. She has, to put it another way, yielded.”

  King Mezentio’s minister spoke of Gainibu’s kingdom as if it were a woman. Aye, very much an Algarvian, Hajjaj thought. Valmiera had yielded—yielded to force. Aloud Hajjaj said, “This is a great day for Algarve.”

  “It is. It truly is.” Balastro’s smile held anticipation no Valmieran would have found pleasant. “We have plenty of scores to settle with the Kaunians, reaching back over many years. And settle them we shall.”

  “What terms will you impose?” Hajjaj asked. He knew more than he liked about imposed terms. Unkerlant had given him painful lessons on the subject.

  “I am not privy to them all,” Balastro replied. “I am not sure all have yet been set. Of a certainty, however, they shall not be light. Rivaroli will return to its rightful allegiance, that I know.” He pointed to the map behind Hajjaj.

  Hajjaj also turned to look at the map. The Zuwayzi foreign minister sighed as he faced Balastro once more. “Algarve is fortunate, to have a lost marquisate returned to her. We of Zuwayza, on the other hand, have had provinces torn away from their rightful sovereign.”

  “I know that. King Mezentio knows that,” Balastro said gravely. “The injustice you suffered grieves him. It surely rankles the spirit of every Algarvian who loves honor and right dealing.”

  “If this be so”—Hajjaj was glad he recalled how to use the Algarvian subjunctive, for he wanted Balastro to know he thought the proposition contrary to fact—“if this be so, I say, King Mezentio might have done a great deal more to show his grief. Forgive me for sounding tart, I beg you, but expressions of sympathy, however gracious, win back no land.”

  “I know that, too, and so does my sovereign.” Balastro spread his hands in an extravagant Algarvian gesture. “But what would you have had him do? When Unkerlant began bullying you, we were at war with Forthweg and Sibiu, with Valmiera and Jelgava. Should we have added King Swemmel to our list of foes?”

  “You have knocked out three of your foes now, even if you added Lagoas to the list,” Hajjaj said. “And Jelgava’s fight against you, by all accounts, has been halfhearted at best.”

  “Kaunians fear us.” Balastro sounded very fierce. “Kaunians have good reason to fear us. We have won our greatest triumph over them since the collapse of the Kaunian Empire.” By the fierce triumph on his face, he might have overthrown the Valmieran army singlehanded. Then he added, “Nor have we finished.”

  Hajjaj would never have been so indiscreet. If he passed those words on to the Jelgavan minister… Well, what then? he wondered. Maybe Balastro had told an open secret after all. If the Jelgavans couldn’t figure out that Mezentio would try to deal with them next, they weren’t very bright. Hajjaj didn’t think the Jelgavan minister to Zuwayza was very bright, but that was Jelgava’s problem far more than his.

  He had more immediately urgent things to worry about, anyhow. “I also notice that, however grieved King Mezentio may be at what Zuwayza has suffered, he had no trouble sharing Forthweg with Swemmel of Unkerlant.”

  “Again, not sharing Forthweg would have led to war with Unkerlant, and Algarve could not afford that,” Balastro answered.

  Listening carefully to the way Algarvians said things had its reward. “You could not afford it,” Hajjaj echoed. “Can you afford it now?”

  “We are still at war in the east,” the Algarvian minister replied. “Algarve fought in the east and west at the same time during the Six Years’ War. The kingdom learned a lesson then: not to be so foolish twice.”

  “Ah,” Hajjaj said, and then, “Suppose Algarve were not at war in the east? What might she do in that case?” He did not want to ask the question. It made him into a mendicant, hand out for alms. For his kingdom’s sake, he asked it anyhow.

  Balastro said, “For the time being we are at peace with Unkerlant. It would hardly be fitting for me to speak of an end to peace, which often proves so hard to come by. For that reason, I shall say nothing.” He winked at the Zuwayzi foreign minister as if Hajjaj were a young, shapely, naked woman.

  “I see,” Hajjaj murmured. “Aye, that is the proper practice.” Balastro nodded, rectitude personified. Hajjaj went on, “Perhaps, though, you might send your attaché here to the palace, on the off chance that he should have something of interest to say to certain of our officers.”

  “I find it very unlikely that he would,” Balastro said, which disappointed Hajjaj—had he misread the Algarvian minister? Balastro continued, “I think they should meet at some quiet place—a tearoom or a cafe or maybe a jeweler’s—so they can have something pleasant to do should it turn out that their conversation is not mutually interesting.”

  “It shall be as you say, of course,” the Zuwayzi foreign minister replied, inclining his head. “You do realize, of course, that any meeting between one of your countrymen and one of mine will be hard to keep secret, however much we try.”

  “Oh? Why is that?” Balastro asked, so innocently that Hajjaj started to laugh. Balastro looked mystified, which made Hajjaj laugh harder. With coppery hair and skins ranging from pink to tawny, Algarvians stood out in Zuwayza even if they went naked. Every once in a while, one of them would, which made them unusual among the pale folk of Derlavai.

  Hajjaj said, “A jeweler’s might be a good place to meet, come to think of it. If your attache happened to wear something other than a uniform, and if the officer with whom he spoke left off his ornaments of rank…”

  “Oh, certainly,” Balastro said, as if he already took that for granted. “Since they will not be meeting in an official capacity, they need not—indeed, they should not—be dressed, or not dressed, in any formal way.”

  “Nicely put,” Hajjaj said.

  “I thank you. I thank you very much.” The Algarvian minister performed a seated bow. “All this is moonbeams and shadows and gossamer, of course. Algarve is at peace with Unkerlant. As a matter of fact, Zuwayza is at peace with Unkerlant.”

  “So we are.” Now Hajjaj did not try to hide his bitterness. “Would that we had been at peace with Unkerlant this past winter as well.”

  “If you cannot live at peace with your neighbors, or if the peace forced upon you is unjust, what better to do than take your revenge?” Balastro asked.

  “In this, you Algarvians are much like my folk,” Hajjaj said, “though we are more likely to feud by clans than either as individuals, as you do, or as a united kingdom. But tell me, if you will, how Unkerlant has offended. King Swemmel, curse him, did not move a step over the border Unkerlant shared with Algarve before the Six Years’ War.”

  “But he wickedly prevented King Mezentio from conquering all of Forthweg, which Algarve might easily have done after we smashed the armies King Penda sent into our northern provinces,” Balastro replied.

  That struck Hajjaj as a flimsy pretext. But a man looking for a fight needed no more than a flimsy pretext, if any at all. Unless Hajjaj altogether misread Balastro, the hot-blooded Algarvians were looking for a fight with Unkerlant, and looking for friends as well. Hajjaj did not know how friendly to Algarve Zuwayza ought to be. But Zuwayza was Unkerlant’s enemy—he did know that. If Unkerlant had more enemies… That will do, he thought.

  13.

  Talsu dug like a man possessed. Beside him, his friend Smilsu also made the dirt fly. A few men over, Vartu, the late Colonel Dzirnavu’s former servant, used his shovel with might and main. By the way they dug, all the men in the regiment might have suddenly imagined themselves turned into moles. All along the western foothills of the Bratanu Mountains, the Jelgavan army was digging in.

  “So much for meeting Forthweg halfway across Algarve,” Talsu said, flinging a spadeful of dirt over his shoulder. “So much for taking Tricarico.” Another spadeful went. “So much for doing anything but waiting for the Algarvians to come and hit us.” Another spadeful.

  Smilsu looked around to make sure no officers were within earshot. Then he said, “Powers above know I think our nobles are a pack of fools. This time, though, they may be right. What if the stinking redheads come and hit us the way they hit Valmiera? We’d better be ready for them, don’t you think?” Like Talsu, he kept digging as he spoke.

  “How can they hit us the way they hit Valmiera?” Talsu demanded. He pointed back toward the east. “We’ve got the mountains to shield us, in case you didn’t notice. I’d like to see the Algarvians try and go through them in a hurry.”

  Vartu put down his spade for a moment and rubbed his palms on his trousers. “That’s what the Valmierans said about their rough country, too,” he observed. “They were wrong. What makes you think you’re right?”

  “More to the Bratanus than ‘rough country’,” Talsu answered. “How are they going to move fast through those passes?”

  “I don’t know,” Vartu said. “I’d bet a good deal that our generals don’t know, either. What I wouldn’t care to bet is that the Algarvians don’t know.”

  “They aren’t mages,” Talsu said, and then amended that: “They aren’t all mages, anyhow, any more than we are.” Now he looked around. “Even with the stupid nobles we’ve got commanding us, we’ve pushed them back till now. Why should things change?”

  Smilsu gnawed at the rough skin by one fingernail. “They can aim their whole cursed army at us now, near enough. They beat Forthweg. They beat Sibiu. They just got done beating Valmiera and chasing all the Lagoans off the mainland of Derlavai. That leaves them—and us.”

  “Hmm.” Talsu hadn’t looked at things from quite that angle. All at once, he started digging harder than ever. Smilsu laughed, took a swig of sour beer from the flask he wore on his hip, and also went back to digging.

  If the Algarvians were about to fall on the Jelgavan army that had moved, however tentatively, into their territory, they gave no sign of it. Every now and then, a dragon would fly by from out of the west. No doubt the redhead aboard was looking down to see what the Jelgavans were up to. But no eggs fell on the trenches Talsu and his friends were digging. No kilted Algarvian troopers trilling out barbarous battle cries swarmed into the trenches, blazing or flinging little hand-tossed eggs or laying about them with knives. It was about as peaceful a war as Talsu could imagine.

  Like any sensible soldier, he enjoyed that while it lasted. He still wondered how long it would last. That wasn’t up to him. And, very plainly, his superiors had decided it wasn’t up to them, either. That left it up to the Algarvians, a notion Talsu enjoyed rather less.

  But the lull did have its advantages. Mail came up to the front line for the first time in weeks. Talsu got a package from his mother: socks and drawers she and his sister had knitted for him. He also got a letter from his father, urging him, in harsh, badly spelled sentences, to go forth and conquer Algarve singlehanded.

  “What am I supposed to do with this?” he asked his friends. “My old man didn’t fight in the last war. He doesn’t know what things are like.”

  “I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it if I were you,” Smilsu said. “They tell all sorts of lies to the people back home. You can’t blame the poor fools for believing some of them. During the last war, my mother told me, they were saying the Algarvians would slaughter everybody with blond hair if they won.”

  “That’s pretty stupid, all right,” Talsu agreed. “I wonder what the Algarvians have to say about us.”

  “Nothing good, that’s for cursed sure,” Smilsu said softly. “You ask me, though, it doesn’t much matter to the likes of us which side wins the war, as long as we don’t get blazed while it’s going on.”

  Talsu looked around again, to make sure he was the only one who’d heard that. “And you say I’m careless about the way I talk,” he murmured. “Do you want to find out how dungeons work from the inside?”

  “Not so you’d notice,” his friend answered. “But I don’t think anybody would turn me in for the sake of licking some noble’s backside.” His mouth twisted into what looked like a smile. “Of course, I could be wrong. In that case, I’d probably have to try and kill the bastard before the nobles’ watchdogs dragged me away.”