dripping, he took his place in the ranks and waited for the rest of the company to come in.
The last staggering soldier did collapse once he got under the arch. And, sure enough, the Algarvian drillmaster who’d gone with the company on its run-and who hardly seemed to be breathing hard-kicked him till he managed to force himself upright again. “Tired, are you, Wiglaf?” the drillmaster said in fluent Forthwegian. “You just think you’re tired. Maybe after you dig us a new slit trench you’ll really be tired. What do you think?”
Even Sidroc, who liked to mouth off, knew better than to answer a question like that. But the luckless Wiglaf said, “Have a heart, sir, I-”
Without visible malice and without hesitation, the redheaded drillmaster kicked him again. “No back talk,” he growled. “We are going to make you the finest fighting men in the world-after Algarvians, of course. Orders are meant to be obeyed. Get moving! Now!”
Wiglaf
“Silence in the ranks!” the drillmaster bellowed. Sidroc and Ceorl both froze into immobility. If the Algarvian-who might have had eyes and ears in the back of his head-had spotted them, they were liable to end up digging slit trenches with Wiglaf. But luck was with them. The redhead contented himself with glaring this way and that before snarling, “Dismissed to queue for supper.”
Till he heard that, Sidroc would have bet he was too worn to want anything to do with food. His belly had other ideas. Somehow it propelled him forward, so that he was third in line and had his tin mess kit out and waiting. Ceorl was right behind him, and chuckled a little. “Wiglaf’s going to miss supper, too.”
“Too bad.” Sidroc had scant sympathy to waste on anyone but Sidroc. “If he’s not worth anything in drills, odds are he won’t be worth anything in a fight, either.”
He held out the mess tray. A Forthwegian cook filled it with barley mush with onions and mushrooms and with a sharp, rather nasty cheese melted into it. Sidroc hardly cared what the stuff tasted like. He wolfed it down and could have eaten three times as much. He needed fuel for his belly no less than a baker needed it for his ovens.
Somebody with a soft heart, or more likely a soft head, went off to share his supper with Wiglaf. Sidroc wouldn’t have done that. He didn’t suppose anyone would have done it for him, either. Expecting nothing from those around him, he seldom found himself disappointed.
After supper came language drills. The Algarvians were even more ruthless than schoolmasters about pounding their language-or standard commands in it, anyhow-into the men of Plegmund’s Brigade. “You’ll be serving alongside Algarvians, likely under Algarvians,” the instructor growled at them. “If you don’t understand orders, you’ll get them killed-and yourselves, too, of course,” he added as if a few Forthwegians were of but small import.
By the time language lessons ended, it was dark. Sidroc found his cot, pulled off his boots, and was instantly asleep.
Clamor woke him. “Attack!” someone screamed. He put on his boots again, grabbed his kit, and stumbled, rubbing his eyes, out into the darkness.
It was only another drill, of course. But he and his comrades had to respond to it as if it were real, and it bit time out of precious sleep as if it were real, too. When shrill whistles summoned the company to assembly the next morning, Sidroc felt more dead than alive.
After roll call, he ate hard bread and cheap olive oil for breakfast. Breakfast was without a doubt the most relaxed meal of the day. He and his comrades gabbed and complained and told as many lies as they could think of.
One thing they didn’t do: they didn’t ask why their tentmates, their squad-mates, had joined the Brigade. No one, Sidroc had discovered, did that. The rule was unwritten, but might have been all the stronger for that.
He had no trouble seeing the reason behind it. Some men had taken service under Algarvian leadership for the sake of adventure or because they hated Unkerlanters. Sidroc knew that; volunteering information wasn’t against the rules. But some of the men in the Brigade were plainly ruffians or robbers or worse-he wouldn’t have wanted to meet Ceorl in a dark alley. For that matter, few people would have wanted to meet him in a dark alley, either.
One thing united the men of the Brigade-and it, too, was a thing of which they did not speak. Sidroc knew- they all knew, they all had to know- most Forthwegians despised them for the choice they’d made. Sidroc didn’t care what most Forthwegians thought. So he told himself, over and over again. On a good day, he could make himself believe it… for a while.
“Form up!” an Algarvian drillmaster called: another command delivered in standard form.
The redhead, who carried a shouldered stick, marched his charges out of the camp. He pointed to a hill overgrown with bushes about half a mile away and switched to Forthwegian: “That’s the place you have to take. You have to be sneaky and sly. Do you understand me?”
“Aye, sir!” Sidroc shouted with everyone else. “Sneaky and sly!”
“Good.” The drillmaster nodded approval. “I’m going to turn my back for a while. When I turn around again, I don’t want to see you. If I do see you, I’ll try and blaze you. I won’t try to kill you, but my aim’s not perfect. You don’t want to make me do anything we’d both be sorry for later. Have you got that?”
“Aye, sir!” Sidroc yelled again. He’d done this drill before. Once, the drill-master had come within a couple of inches of blazing off his nose. He didn’t want to give the Algarvian an excuse for doing it again. When the fellow ostentatiously turned his back, Sidroc dove into the bushes and did his best to disappear.
He couldn’t just stay there, though. He had to move forward, to get up to the crest of the hill. He scrambled from one bush to another, rarely going from his belly up to his knees, never going from his knees to his feet. Before long, the drillmaster did start blazing. Somebody let out a shriek-a shriek of fear, not one of pain. The Algarvian laughed like a man having altogether too good a time.
Sidroc drew only one beam as he crawled through the brush. It wasn’t even a near miss. He felt good at attracting so little notice. One thing the Algarvians had made very plain during these endless drills: Plegmund’s Brigade would be going where people would do their level best to kill everyone in it.
From bush to boulder to tree stump to bush to … at last, the top of the hill. Sidroc looked down at himself. He’d got filthy on the way, but he didn’t care. For one thing, that proved he was doing a good job. For another, someone else would have to wash his long tunic.
Another member of the brigade, a corporal named Waleran, emerged from cover a moment after Sidroc did. He was good; Sidroc hadn’t had the least idea he was there till he showed himself. “That’s a fine exercise,” he said, flicking a drop of sweat from the end of his nose. “They never worked us so hard in King Penda’s levy, and that’s the truth.”
“No, eh?” Sidroc said. If Waleran was a veteran, that helped explain how he’d got to be a corporal. “If they had, maybe Forthweg would’ve done better.”
“Aye, it could be so,” Waleran agreed. “It could indeed. But I’ll tell you this, boy-we’ll go through the Unkerlanters like a hot knife through butter.”
Sidroc nodded. He was sure of the same thing himself. If he’d doubted it, would he have joined Plegmund’s Brigade in the first place? He had no use for Unkerlanters, any more than he did for Kaunians or (except when it came to fighting) Algarvians or anyone else who wasn’t a Forthwegian. But he said, “King Swemmel’s in charge of an awful lot of butter.”
“Well, what if he is?” Waleran said scornfully. “We’ll just have more to go through, that’s all. And I’ll tell you something else, too.” He waited till Sidroc leaned toward him, then went on, “I don’t think it’ll be long before we get the chance, either.” Sidroc clapped his hands together. He could hardly wait.
Some of the farms around the village of Pavilosta had a new hand or two working on them. Merkela’s did. As for Skarnu, he was glad to have extra help, and especially glad the help came from Forthwegian Kaunians who’d been on their way to almost certain destruction.
These days, Raunu slept downstairs in the farmhouse, leaving the barn for Vatsyunas and Pernavai, a husband-and-wife pair who’d managed to stay together when the ley-line caravan carrying them got wrecked. “You’ll have to find yourself a lady friend, too,” Skarnu teased him one day while they were weeding together. “Then you’ll have somewhere better to sleep than a rolled-up blanket in front of the fire. Powers above, if I managed to find somebody, cursed near anyone can.”
