Istvan wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that. In fact, he was sure he didn’t like the sound of it. But he was only a sergeant. What could he do but obey? Captain Petofi had some ideas on that score. “One moment,” he said dryly. “A long time ago, I learned never to go anywhere with a stranger.”
“I am not a stranger.” The Eye and Ear tapped his badge to show what he meant. Captain Petofi just stood where he was. With a grimace, Ekrekek Arpad’s man said, “You may call me Balazs, if it makes you happy.”
“After what we have seen, it will take a good deal more than that to make us happy, Balazs,” Petofi said. “Is it not so, Sergeant?”
“Uh, aye, sir, it is.” Istvan stammered a little, surprised the scarred officer had bothered speaking to him.
“Well, part of my job is finding out about all that,” Balazs said easily. “Now that you know who I am, you come along with me, and we’ll see what you think you know.”
Captain Petofi bristled anew at that. Istvan didn’t rise to it; he was watching another Eye and Ear leading Kun away. Now he was alone, all the comrades with whom he’d gone through so much stripped away. He was back among his countrymen, true, but how could the smooth, slick, smug Balazs or the dour Petofi understand what had happened to him these past six years? Petofi might, some: he’d seen war and he’d been a Kuusaman captive, too. But he was an officer and, no doubt, a nobleman, and thus a breed apart from a man who’d come out of a village in a mountain valley.
“Come along, come along,” Balazs repeated: it seemed to be his favorite phrase. Istvan and Petofi followed him down the gangplank and over to one from among the swarm of carriages waiting at the base of the pier. The Eye and Ear held the door open for the two returning captives. When he shut it, it clicked as if locking. There were no handles on the inside, and the windows were too small to crawl through. Balazs got up with the driver. The carriage began to move.
Petofi’s face twisted into what Istvan belatedly recognized as a wry smile; the officer’s scar made his expressions hard to read. “Here we are, captives again,” Petofi said. “The fools think they will sit on what we know, as a duck sits on an egg, and the egg will never hatch-or burst. A billy goat’s cock up their arses couldn’t make them pay heed to what needs doing.”
“Aye, sir,” Istvan answered, but he’d only half heard the captain. The carriage’s windows might be small, but they let him see more of Gyorvar than he ever had before. Individual houses looked familiar: gray stone buildings, mostly of two stories, all vertical lines, with steep slate roofs to help keep snow from sticking. But he’d never seen so many-never seen a tenth so many-all together. And there were so many buildings that, though done in the same style, dwarfed those houses. How many households could inhabit a building eight stories high and half a block wide? How did they keep from feuding with one another? From things Kun had said, he knew clan ties were looser here in the city than they were back in his valley, but he had no feel for what that meant. He also couldn’t imagine why Gyorvar needed so many shops, and so many different kinds of shops. They sold more things than readily came to mind.
Captain Petofi’s chuckle brought him back to himself. “Your first time in Gyorvar, Sergeant?” the officer asked.
“I’ve been through before, sir,” Istvan answered, “but this is the first chance I’ve ever had to look around a little. It’s. not like my home valley.”
“Come from up in the mountains, do you?” Petofi said, and Istvan nodded. Petofi smiled his twisted smile. “I was just a little boy when my father moved the family here-Ekrekek Arpad’s father had summoned him to the city. I’d lived in the mountains myself till then. It’s a different world, sure as sure.”
“Aye, sir, it certainly is,” Istvan agreed.
After an hour or so, though, they came to a part of the world that looked thoroughly familiar. A barracks was a barracks, here or on Obuda. A barracks was a barracks, in fact, whether Gyongyosians or accursed foreigners like Kuusamans ran it. So Istvan had discovered, at any rate.
The carriage stopped. Balazs jumped down and opened the door that couldn’t be opened from the inside. “Come with me,” the Eye and Ear said again. “That hall right there, and we’ll find out what you know.”
Istvan felt a certain amount of relief on discovering the hall didn’t contain a torture chamber. Interrogation, among Gyongyosians, could be a serious business indeed. Balazs even gave Petofi and him food and ale. Coriander and pepper and caraway in the sausage reminded Istvan he was back in his own kingdom, though the pork wasn’t nearly so rich with fat as it would have been back in Kunhegyes.
“Now,” Balazs said once the two returned captives had refreshed themselves, “tell me what the stars- denying slanteyes claim to have shown you.”
“Fire and destruction, sent from afar,” Istvan answered.
“Even so,” Captain Petofi agreed. “Sorcery we cannot hope to match. They chose a worthless island, and made it more worthless still. But they can do the same to Gyorvar, and I see no way we could stop them. My spirit aches to say it, but I do not see how we can hope to win the war against them.”
“They told you they would visit this horror on our stars-beloved capital, did they?” Balazs inquired.
“They did,” Petofi said. “But they hardly needed to. A blind man can see that, if they did it to Becsehely, out in the middle of the Bothnian Ocean, they can do it wherever they choose.”
Balazs’ smile was far smoother than that of the wounded captain. “How do you know this?” he asked. “Again, did they tell you? Did they, perhaps, make a point of telling you?”
“How else could it have been?” Istvan said. “There was just the island, and us watching what happened to it.” He shuddered at the memory of the fire, and of the clouds of steam rising from the tormented sea.
“They could have had mages in the bowels of the very ship you rode, casting these fearsome spells,” the Eye and Ear said. “Or, for that matter, what they said was destruction could have been nothing but illusion. Either of those is easier to believe than that they really have these powers they claim.”
“So speaks a sergeant from back in the Ilszung Mountains,” Balazs said. “Do you claim to know everything of what is possible and what is not when it comes to sorcery?”
“No, sir,” Istvan answered. “All I claim is, I know what happened right in front of my own eyes. If you don’t believe me-if none of you people believe the captives the Kuusamans set free-our land will be sorry on account of it.”
“You should know, Sergeant,” Balazs said, his voice growing cold, “that the laws against treasonous talk and defeatism have been tightened up lately, as they should have been. You would be wise to have a care in what you say.”
Captain Petofi spoke up: “And you, wretch, you would be wise to listen to the underofficer. He spoke with a warrior’s courage, telling nothing but the truth, and you mock him and scorn him and answer him with threats. By the stars, with goatheads like you set over us, it’s no wonder we’re losing the war.”
Like most Gyongyosian men, Balazs let his shaggy, tawny beard grow high on his cheeks. It didn’t grow high enough to hide his flush of anger, though. “You have no business talking to me that way, Captain. I tell you what Ekrekek Arpad has told the land: we shall win this fight against the stars-detested savages of Kuusamo. If the Ekrekek of Gyongyos says a thing is so, how can a couple of ragged captives say otherwise?”
Istvan gulped. If Arpad said something was so, then it was bound to be so. Everything he’d ever learned proclaimed the truth of that. The stars spoke to Arpad, and Arpad spoke to Gyongyos. So it had ever been; so it would ever be.
But Petofi said, “If Ekrekek Arpad had been on that Kuusaman cruiser, he would have known the truth, the same as we did. And if we’re winning the war, how did the slanteyes ravage an island that used to belong to us?”
“I give you one last warning, Captain,” the Ekrekek’s Eye and Ear said. “We have places where we send defeatists, to keep them out of the way so their cowardice can’t infect the true warriors of Gyongyos.”
Petofi bowed. “By all means, send me to one of those places. The company and the wit are bound to be better there than here.”
“You’ll get your wish,” Balazs promised. He rounded on Istvan. “What about you, Sergeant? I trust you have better sense?”
That could only mean,
