But most kept on coming toward the beaches of Obuda. A few, the larger ones, glided swiftly along the ley lines whose convergence at the island made it a bone of contention between Gyongyos and Kuusamo. The rest advanced as they might have in the ancient days of the world, pushed by the wind or pulled by oars.

  Small, stocky, dark-haired soldiers crowded the boats. “They don’t look so tough,” said Szonyi, who hadn’t been on Obuda long enough to have seen Kuusamans before. “I could break one of them in half.”

  He was on the weedy side as Gyongyosians went, but that didn’t mean he was wrong. It also didn’t mean being right would do him any good, which he didn’t seem to realize. Istvan made things as plain as he could: “As long as the slanteyes have sticks and know what to do with them -and they do, curse ‘em, they do—you won’t get close enough to break ‘em in half.”

  “That’s the truth.” Sergeant Jokai sounded surprised to be agreeing with Istvan instead of harassing him, but he did. “Don’t think for even a minute that those ugly little bastards can’t fight, because they cursed well can. And don’t think they can’t take this stinking island away from us, because they’ve done that, too. The thing is, we’d better not let ‘em do it again, not if we want to go on looking up at the stars.”

  The Kuusaman captives the Gyongyosians had taken when they last seized Obuda were slave laborers back on the mainland of Derlavai or on the other islands Ekrekek Arpad ruled. Something similarly unpleasant no doubt befell captured Gyongyosians in Kuusaman hands. An enslaved captive might still look up at the stars, but how much joy could he take in doing it?

  Istvan hoped he would not have to find out. Kuusaman boats began beaching. Soldiers jumped out of them and ran for what cover they could find. Istvan and his comrades blazed away at them, and knocked down a good many. But not all the Kuusamans came ashore in front of positions that hadn’t been too badly knocked about. Cries of alarm warned that some of the invaders were outflanking the Gyongyosian defenders.

  “Fall back!” an officer shouted. “We’ll make a stand on Mt. Sorong.”

  Retreat was galling to any troops, and more galling to the Gyongyosians, who fancied themselves a warrior race, than to most. If the choice was retreating or being attacked from the front and flanks at the same time, though, even the fiercest fighters saw where sense lay.

  Eggs burst not far from Istvan and his comrades as they fell back. “Curse the Kuusamans all over again,” Jokai snarled. “They’ve gone and fetched light tossers along with ‘em.”

  “We did the same thing when we took Obuda back,” Istvan said.

  “Curse ‘em anyway,” his sergeant replied, a sentiment with which he could hardly disagree.

  More eggs burst ahead of them, these large, throwing up great columns of riven earth. High in the sky, a dragon screeched harshly. Jokai had been right; the Kuusamans were indeed far better prepared for this attack than they had been for the one the year before.

  Kuusaman eggs had already wrecked some of the defensive positions on the lower slopes of Mt. Sorong. As Istvan wearily stumbled into an undamaged trench, he asked the question surely uppermost in his comrades’ minds as well: “Will we be able to hold out here?”

  Whatever else Sergeant Jokai was, he was forthright. He answered, “It doesn’t really depend on us. If the stinking slanteyes can hold the sea around this miserable island, they’ll be able to bring in enough soldiers to swarm over us and enough dragons to flame all of ours out of the sky. If our ships drive theirs away, we’ll be the ones who can reinforce and they’ll be out of luck.”

  That made sense, even if Istvan didn’t care for the notion that his fate rested in hands other than his own. Now that he wasn’t on the move any more, he realized he was hungry. He had a couple of small rounds of flat-bread in his belt pouch, and wolfed them down. His belly stopped growling. Some of his comrades had already eaten everything they’d brought from the barracks. No one from higher up on Mt. Sorong showed up with more in the way of supplies.

  Istvan wondered if Borsos was safe, and if the dowser had given the Gyongyosians such warning as they’d had. Maybe Borsos was having to fight as a real captain would. Maybe, too, he was dead or captive by this time. Many Gyongyosians surely were.

  “Nothing I can do about it now,” Istvan muttered. It was getting dark. Where, he wondered, had the day gone? Unlike most on Obuda, it hadn’t evaporated in boredom. He wrapped his blanket around himself and did his best to sleep.

  By the way Skarnu swung a hoe, anyone who knew anything about farming and looked closely would have known he hadn’t spent much time working in a field. Some of the Algarvian soldiers trudging along the dirt road surely came from farms themselves. But they didn’t expect to sec anything but farmers in the Valmieran fields, and so they didn’t look closely.

  After the soldiers had vanished behind some walnut trees, Skarnu leaned the hoe against his hip and looked at his hands. They too would have shown he was no farmer. The calluses on his palms weren’t years old and yellowed and hard as horn; he still got blisters at their edges and sometimes even under them.

  His back ached. So did his shoulders and the backs of his thighs. He sighed and spoke in a low voice: “Maybe we should have surrendered after all, Sergeant. It would have been easier.”

  Raunu spread his own hands. They were as raw as Skarnu’s. He was a commoner and a longtime veteran, but he’d never done work like this, either. “Easier on the body—oh, aye, no doubt about it,” he said. “But if it were easier on the spirit, we would have done it when most of the army gave up.”

  “I couldn’t stomach it,” Skarnu said, “so I suppose that proves your point.”

  His coarse wool tunic and trousers itched. Back when he was living the life of a marquis, he would never have let such rough cloth touch his skin. But he could not have kept up the fight against the Algarvians from a captives’ camp, and they would never have let him out of one unless they were sure he had no fight left in him. He didn’t think he could have fooled them into releasing him—and so here he was, pretending to be a peasant instead of pretending to be a collaborator.

  In a matter-of-fact way, Raunu said, “If they catch us now, they’ll blaze us, of course.”

  “I know. They did that in the parts of Valmiera they occupied during the Six Years’ War,” Skarnu said. “I learned about it in school.”

  “Aye, so they did,” Raunu answered. “And afterwards, when we were holding some of the marquisates east of the Soretto, we paid ‘em back in the same coin. Anybody even looked at us sideways, we figured the son of a whore was a soldier who hadn’t had enough, and we gave it to him.”

  Skarnu hadn’t learned about that in school. In his lessons, Valmiera had always had right and justice on her side. He’d believed that for a long time. He still wanted to believe it.

  He stretched and twisted, trying to make his sore muscles relax. He hadn’t learned farm work in school, though. Only a noble addled far past mere eccentricity would have thought learning to till the soil in the least worthwhile.

  He swung the hoe again, and did manage to uproot weed rather than wheat. “Good to know there are some folk besides us who stay loyal to king and kingdom,” he said, and knocked down another weed.

  “Oh, aye, there are always some,” Raunu said. “What’s really lucky is that we found one. If we’d asked for help from half the peasants around these parts—more than half, I shouldn’t wonder—they’d have turned us in to the redheads faster than you can spit.”

  “So it seems,” Skarnu said grimly. “That’s not the way it should be, you know.”

  Raunu grunted and went back to weeding for a while, attacking the dandelions and other plants that didn’t belong in the field with the same concentrated ferocity he’d shown the Algarvians. At last, at the end of a row, he asked, “Sir—my lord—do I have your leave to speak what’s in my mind?”

  He hadn’t called Skarnu my lord in a long time. The title, in his mouth, carried more reproach than respect. Skarnu said, “You’d better, Raunu. I don’t suppose I’ll last long if you don’t.”

  “Longer than you think, maybe, but never mind that,” Raunu said. “From everything I’ve been able to piece together, though, Count Enkuru, the local lord, is a right nasty piece of work.”

  “Aye, I think there’s a deal of truth to that,” Skarnu agreed. “But what has it got to do with—?” He broke off, feeling foolish. “The peasants would sooner have the Algarvians for overlords than Count Enkuru—is that what you’re saying?”

  Raunu nodded. “That’s what I’m saying. Some of the nobles I’ve known, they never would have figured out what I meant.” He took a deep breath. “And that’s part of the trouble Valmiera’s been having, too, don’t you see?”

  “Peasants should be loyal to the nobles, as nobles should be loyal to the king,” Skarnu said.

  “No doubt you’re right, sir,” Raunu said politely. “But the nobles should deserve loyalty, don’t you think?”

  Skarnu’s sister would have said no in a heartbeat. Krasta would have thought—did think—her blood alone was plenty to command loyalty. She would have wanted Raunu flogged for presuming to think otherwise. Skarnu’s attitude had differed only in degree, not in essence, till he took command of his company.

  Slowly, he said, “That does make a difference, doesn’t it? Men will go as far as their leaders take them, and not a step farther.” He’d seen that throughout the recent disastrous campaign.

  “Aye, sir.” Raunu nodded. “And they’ll go as far in the other direction if their leaders push ‘em to it—which is why we’ve got our little game laid on for tonight. We have to show ‘em what we’re against along with what we’re for.”

  Toward evening, the farmer who’d given them shelter came out to look over the work they’d done. Gedominu hobbled on a cane, and had ever since the Six Years’ War. Maybe that was what made him dislike the Algarvians enough to keep working against them. Skarnu couldn’t have proved it, though; Gedominu said little about himself.

  He looked over the field now, rubbed his chin, and said, “Well, it’s not too much worse than if you hadn’t done anything at all.” With that praise, such as it was, ringing in their ears, he led them back to the farmhouse.

  His wife served up a supper of blood sausage and sauerkraut, bread and home-brewed ale. Merkela, a second wife, might have been half Gedominu’s age, which put her not far from Skarnu’s. Skarnu wondered how the half-lame farmer had wooed and won her. He also wondered certain other things, which he hoped he was gentleman enough to keep Gedominu from noticing.

  After full darkness, Gedominu slowly climbed the stairs and as slowly came down again, his cane in his right hand a stick in his left. It wasn’t so potent a weapon as the ones Skarnu and Raunu had brought to the farm, being intended more for blazing vermin and small game for the pot than for men. But a man who met that beam would go down, and might not get up again.

  Gedominu tucked the stick under his arm to blow Merkela a kiss, then led Skarnu and Raunu out into the night. They got their own sticks from the barn. Gedominu moved well enough when he needed to, and took them along winding paths they couldn’t have followed themselves at night. Skarnu doubted he could have done it in broad daylight.

  At a crossroads, someone softly called out, “King Gainibu!”

  “Valmiera!” Gedominu answered. Skarnu would have come up with a more imaginative challenge and countersign; those would the first ones to cross the Algarvians’ minds. But that could wait for another time. Now, four or five men joined his comrades and him. Moving as quietly as they could, they hurried on toward the village of Pavilosta.

  “Pity we can’t pay this kind of call on Count Enkuru himself,” Skarnu said. Seven or eight men were not enough to storm a noble’s keep, not if his guards were alert—and Enkuru’s, by all accounts, were.

  “His factor will do well enough,” one of the locals answered. “His factor will do better than well enough, as a matter of fact. He’s the one who collects the taxes Enkuru screws out of us, and as much more besides to make him near as rich as the count. And you can hear for yourself that he’s in bed with the redheads. Everybody for miles around’ll be glad to see the bastard dead.”

  Before the war, such talk about a noble and his factor would have been treason. Technically, Skarnu supposed it still was. But it was also a chance to strike a blow at Algarve. That counted for more.

  Gedominu underlined the point, saying, “Folks have got to learn they don’t just go ahead and do whatever some turd in a kilt tells ‘em to—not without they pay the price for doin’ it.”

  “Let’s be at it, then,” Raunu said. He pointed to positions that covered the factor’s house—much the largest and finest in the village—but remained in shadow. “There and there, and over there, too. Move!” The locals hurried to obey. Skarnu let his sergeant give orders. Raunu had proved he knew what he was doing. Nodding to Skarnu, he said, “Now we’ll give ‘em what-for.” He pried a cobblestone out of the ground and flung it through one of those invitingly large windows.

  Furious shouts followed the crash of broken glass. The door flew open. A man in velvet tunic and trousers—surely the factor—and a couple of Algarvians ran out on to the street, as ants might run out of their nest if a boy stirred it with a twig. They probably thought some brat was bothering them.

  They soon discovered how wrong they were, but kept the knowledge only momentarily. The raiders blazed them down. They fell without a sound: so quickly and quietly, in fact, that no one else came out to investigate. Raunu solved that by pitching another stone through a different window.

  Two more Algarvians and another cursing Valmieran hurried out. They stopped in the doorway when they saw their friends lying in the street. That was a little too late. Skarnu blazed one of them; a couple of his comrades knocked down the others.

  “Might be more inside,” Raunu remarked. “Shall we go look?” That was strategy, not tactics, so he asked his superior instead of leading.

  After brief thought, Raunu shook his head. “We’ve done what we came to do. This isn’t the sort of business where we want to take losses, I don’t think.”

  “Aye—makes sense,” Raunu said. “All right, let’s disappear.”

  As silently as they’d entered Pavilosta, the raiders slipped out of the village. Behind them, more shouts and a woman’s shrill scream said their handiwork had been discovered. “I think that other bugger in trousers might have been Enkuru his own self, come to visit the factor,” Gedominu said. “Here’s hoping it was.”

  “Aye, that’d be a good blow,” Skarnu agreed. “Whatever we do next, we won’t have such an easy time of it. They weren’t wary this time. They will be.”

  “Let ‘em be wary,” Gedominu said. “We’ll just go back to being peasants, that’s all. Nobody ever pays peasants no mind. When the fuss dies down, we’ll hit the redheads another lick.” He looked over his shoulder. “Keep moving, there. I want to get home to Merkela tonight.” Move Skarnu did. Gedominu could not have given him a more effective goad.

  When Pekka went up to Yliharma this time, her colleagues didn’t put her up at the Principality. Instead, Master Siuntio lodged her in his own home. That he would even think of doing such a thing left her limp with astonishment and awe. Staying in the Principality was a distinction. Staying with the greatest theoretical sorcerer of the age was a privilege.

  “Oh, you think so, do you?” Siuntio said when Pekka couldn’t hold that in after they walked into his parlor from the street. “And what of your husband, young Leino? Is he back in Kajaani, fretting that I, being a widower, would try and seduce you?”

  “He would never imagine such a thing, Master!” Pekka exclaimed. “Never!”

  “No?” Siuntio clicked his tongue between his teeth. “What a pity. I’m not so old as all that, you know.”

  Pekka’s ears got hot. Trying to salvage something from the embarrassing exchange, she said, “He knows you are a man of honor.”

  “He’s a clever young fellow, your husband,” Siuntio said. “He’d have to be, to hold you to him. But is he clever enough to imagine what I was like when I was his age, or maybe even younger? I doubt it; the cleverness of the young seldom runs in such directions.”

  As an exercise, Pekka tried to imagine Siuntio as a man her own age. She filled in wrinkles, darkened hair, added vigor … and whistled softly. “Ah, Master, you must have cut a swath.”

  Siuntio smiled and nodded. His eyes sparkled. Just for a moment, Pekka thought he might try to seduce her—and, for that same moment, wondered if she might not let him. Then he smiled in a different way, and she relaxed (with, perhaps, the tiniest twinge of disappointment). “I would not seek the favors of a guest in my own house: that were unsporting,” he said. “Next time, perhaps, you will stay at the Principality once more.”

  “Perhaps I will—or perhaps I will come back to stay with you, where I know I am safe,” Pekka answered with a sassy grin.

  She blessed Siuntio for letting it lie there. After a last chuckle, he said, “That might be for the best this time, too, as the lot of us will have a great deal to discuss when we assemble tomorrow.”

  “Aye,” Pekka said. “I do not deny being surprised to learn that you duplicated my experimental results.”

  “Every one of us has done so,” Siuntio replied. “Every one of us has done so repeatedly. If we repeated the experiment often enough, we might, I daresay, rid the world of a great many surplus acorns.”

  He still sounded easy, amused, very much as he had when he’d teased her. Under that, she thought, eagerness quivered, the eagerness of a hound on a scent. Pekka could hear it. She felt it herself. Like called to like, as surely as under the law of similarity. She asked, “What do you think is causing it, Master?”

  “Mistress, I do not know,” Siuntio said gravely. “You have found something new and unexpected. It is another reason, aside from purposes of lechery, that I wish I were younger: I would have more time to go down this track. For now, I know it is there, and that is all I know of it.”