we’re ruined.”
“That’s about the size of it, lord Marshal,” Vatran agreed unhappily. “They just keep smashing through us. If we don’t fall back, they cut off chunks of the army with their behemoths and chew ‘em up at their leisure. And if we do fall back, we yield up the land they were after.”
“They’re stretched thin,” Rathar said, as much to keep up his own hopes as to hearten Rathar. “They’ve got Yaninans holding quiet stretches of the line, more of them every day. They’re putting Forthwegians and Sibians into uniform to do their fighting for them. If they keep stretching, they’re bound to break sooner or later.”
“Aye, but will it be before they break us?” Vatran said. Rathar took another swig of spirits; he had no answer for that.
Someone rapped on the door. Rathar opened it. A filthy, skeletally lean runner stood there panting. The fellow saluted, then said, “Lord Marshal, the Algarvians are pounding our lines to the northeast. If they don’t get some help, they’re going to have to fall back again.”
By his tone, he’d plainly either heard or heard about King Swemmel’s speech. “Not one step back!” the king had thundered. To start retreating so soon after such an order did not bear thinking about.
Turning to Vatran, Rathar asked, “Have we got dragons we can use to give them a hard time?” Before the general could answer, the marshal stabbed out a forefinger. “Of course we do-that farm not far from here. Order ‘em into the air-we’ll see how Mezentio’s men like getting hammered instead of doing the hammering.” His chuckle was harsh: they wouldn’t like it any better than soldiers ever did. Well, too bad for them.
“What else can we throw in there?” Vatran asked. He wasn’t shy about fighting. None of the Unkerlanter generals left alive was. The war had already weeded out a lot of men who did nothing but look handsome in a uniform tunic. It would, no doubt, weed more. Without bothering to check the map, Rathar started naming regiments and brigades the Unkerlanters could quickly move to defend the threatened area. Vatran did look at the map, and stared. “How in blazes do you keep all that in your head, lord Marshal?”
“I don’t know,” Rathar answered, a little sheepishly. “I’ve always had the knack. It comes in handy every now and again.” Still standing in the door of the hut, he shouted for an orderly.
One came running up. “What do you need, sir?”
“A horse for me, and another one for General Vatran-or a unicorn apiece, if that’s easier,” Rathar told him. “There’s trouble north and east of here. If we’re not on the spot, how can we command the defense?”
Rathar knew he was less than the best rider in the world. He rapidly discovered Vatran was among the worst. The orderly brought them both unicorns, each with its gleaming white hide painted in mud- and dirt- and grass-colored splotches to make it harder to see. Even the unicorns’ iron-shod horns were carefully rusted to stop any betraying glints of light from them. Rathar thought the beasts perfect. Vatran’s opinion was rather different.
“Not so fast, I pray you,” he protested as Rathar sped to a still-modest trot. By the way Vatran clutched the reins and clung to the saddle, he might have been going at a breakneck gallop. If he ever did have to go at a gallop, Rathar thought he would likely break his neck.
Dragons ranged over the battered land behind the battle line, some low, some high-Algarvian dragons. From the air, the two high-ranking officers looked like a pair of nondescript cavalrymen, which suited Rathar fine.
“What will we do if we spy real Algarvian horse, lord Marshal-or if the redheads spot us?” Vatran asked in piteous tones.
“Why, charge them of course,” Rathar answered, deadpan. Vatran groaned, then cursed as he realized the marshal hadn’t meant it seriously. Rathar laughed a little. Finding anything to laugh about wasn’t easy.
In the tradition of battles from long-ago days, he rode toward the sound of the loudest fighting. Vatran managed to stay with him. They trotted past a team of Unkerlanters stripping the armor and egg-tosser off a slain Algarvian behemoth. “That’s good,” Vatran said. “That’s very good. We can use the gear, and that’s a fact. The Algarvians have too fornicating much of everything.”
“Except soldiers, we hope,” Rathar said, and Vatran nodded. The marshal looked over his shoulder at the Unkerlanter workmen. Thoughtfully, he went on, “Have to make sure they slap a coat of rock-gray paint on that mail before they put it on one of our behemoths. Even then, our men are liable to take it for a ruse-the redheads’ patterns are different from ours.”
“Here’s hoping the Algarvians don’t think of a ruse like that,” Vatran said with feeling. “They think of too cursed many things, and that’s the truth.”
“Aye, isn’t it just?” Rathar said. He filed the idea away, as one against which he would have to warn the Unkerlanter soldiery.
Up ahead, dragons swooped again and again. The sharp roars of bursting eggs came ever closer together. And Unkerlanter footsoldiers began streaming away from the center of the fighting before Rathar could get there and take charge of the defense. They had the look he’d seen too often in the fight against the Algarvians: the look of men not just beaten but stunned by what had rolled over them. They gaped at the sight of anyone going toward the battle from which they were retreating. “It’s another cursed breakthrough,” one of them said.
“Didn’t you hear the king’s order?” General Vatran thundered. “Not another step back!”
The soldier came to a ragged sort of attention, realizing the two men on unicornback were officers. He didn’t realize what sort of officers they were; he was too battered and worn to pay attention to the rank badges on their collar tabs. “If old Swemmel went through what I’ve been through, he’d step back himself, and pretty fornicating lively, too.”
Vatran looked about ready to burst like an egg. His fury did him no good. Before he could start thundering again, the weary soldier and his comrades trudged past him and Rathar, heading west and south. They might-they probably would-fight again later, when the odds looked better. For now, they’d taken all they could.
“Come on,” Rathar told Vatran. “We’ve got more important things to worry about than a squad’s worth of stragglers.”
“Ought to line ‘em up against a wall and blaze ‘em,” Vatran said, forgetting his earlier claim that the king had been too merciful. “That’s what we’d have done in the Twinkings War, and you cursed well know it.”
“We’ve done it in this fight, too,” Rathar said. “And we’ll do more of it, if we have to. But not this lot, that’s all.”
Vatran grunted. His unicorn chose that moment to sidestep. It almost threw him, where even an average rider would have shifted his weight a little and gone about his business. By the time the general had his mount under control (Rathar would have taken oath the beast looked scornful, but it might have been the way the paint streaked its muzzle), he’d calmed down a little. “Have to hit the redheads’ column in flank as it punches through. That’ll give ‘em some trouble, if we can bring it off.”
“Good notion,” Rathar told him, and it was. They’d blunted some Algar-vian attacks that way. He wondered if the Unkerlanter forces moving against the breakthrough could cut it off. Even more, though, he wondered where he was going to make the next fight this side of Sulingen.
Under Garivald’s tunic, a drop of sweat ran down his back as he trudged toward the village of Pirmasens. Heat wasn’t what made him sweat, though the weather was as warm and sticky as it ever got down in the Duchy of Grelz. No, he was afraid, and knew how afraid he was.
“Liaz,” he said, over and over again. “Liaz. Liaz.” He couldn’t very well go into any Grelzer village under his own name, not with the whacking great price the Algarvians had put on his head. Most villagers hated King Mezentio and his puppet King of Grelz, his cousin Raniero, more than they hated King Swem-mel. But enough felt the other way about things to make him glad he had an alias. Now if only he could be sure of remembering it!
Pirmasens wasn’t one of the villages from which Munderic’s irregulars usually gathered food and supplies. The Algarvians held it tight, not least because it stood close to a ley line. Munderic needed to know what they were up to. Irregulars from other parts of Unkerlant would have betrayed themselves as soon as they opened their mouths. Garivald would be a stranger in Pirmasens, but a stranger with the right accent.
As he neared the village, he saw it was intact, which meant Unkerlanter soldiers hadn’t made a stand here the summer before. That wasn’t so good; it gave the locals less reason to hate the redheads. It also gave them more reason to betray a fugitive bard named Garivald, if any of them should recognize him in the person of Liaz. Another drop of sweat slid down his spine.
“It won’t be so bad,” he muttered, and did his best to make himself believe it. Before the war, a stranger
