“Not enough,” Merkela said when he raised the subject over supper one evening. “Not even close to enough.”
She would have said the same thing if the Valmierans had been on the point of driving King Mezentio’s men from the kingdom, tails between their legs. Had she known how to do it, she would gladly have gone to Algarve herself, to bring the war home to the redheads. She would have tried to kill Mezentio in his palace and wouldn’t have cared at all if she died, so long as she brought him down. Skarnu was sure of that.
Raunu set down a rib bone from which he’d gnawed all the meat; they’d killed a pig the day before. He said, “The more we tie them up here, the less they have to throw at the Unkerlanters. And if they don’t beat the Unkerlanters, they don’t win the war.”
He’d been only a sergeant, but no general could have summed things up better. So Skarnu thought, at any rate. Merkela tossed her head; to her, Unkerlant was too far away, too foreign, to seem either real or important.
But Vatsyunas and Pernavai both nodded. Having come from Forthweg, the escaped Kaunians knew in their bellies the importance and reality of Unkerlant. “He speaketh sooth,” Vatsyunas said, still sounding antiquated as he learned Valmieran after a lifetime of classical Kaunian.
“Aye,” the former dentist’s wife said softly. That was one word that had changed little down through the centuries.
“How much more could we be doing, though?” Skarnu persisted.
“How badly do you want to get yourself killed, and everybody who’s in this with you?” Raunu asked. “If you try and get greedy, that’s what’ll happen.” Merkela glared at the veteran sergeant. He ignored her, which wasn’t easy. Skamu feared he was right. Whenever the Algarvians grew provoked enough to go after irregulars, they could muster enough force to put them down.
Vatsyunas said, “An you tell me what the game requireth, so shall I right gladly undertake it, though I lay down my life in the doing. For I have seen horrors, and long to requite them.”
“Aye,” Pernavai said again.
Neither of them sounded as fierce as Merkela, but she eyed them with nothing but respect. Her hatred for the redheads was personal. So was theirs, but they’d also seen Kaunianity in Forthweg wrecked. They never talked about going home. As best Skarnu could tell, they didn’t think they would have any home to which to return.
Vatsyunas said, “Is’t true, the tale borne hither from Pavilosta, that Lagoas did smite the Algarvians exceedingly down by the shore of the salt sea?”
Skarnu shrugged. “There was a fight. That’s all I know. The Lagoans couldn’t have done all that well, or they’d have kept a grip on the mainland.” He still wanted to look down his nose at the islanders. If they’d done more earlier in the war, maybe Valmiera wouldn’t have fallen. And their kingdom still held out, where his had given up two years before. He resented them for being able to shelter behind the Strait of Valmiera. How would they have done against swarms of Algarvian behemoths? None too bloody well, or he missed his guess.
But Pernavai said, “Methinks you mistake their purpose. For is’t not more likely they came for to hinder the slaughter of more of my kinsfolk than intending invasion of your land?”
Now Vatsyunas spoke up in support of his wife: “Aye, that’s also my conception of the quarter whence bloweth the wind. For surely the redheaded savages would have drained mine energies of vitality and the aforesaid of my lady’s as well, to hurl a stroke thaumaturgic ‘gainst the isle across the sea.”
Slowly, Skarnu nodded. Across the table from him, Raunu was nodding, too. Skarnu clicked his tongue between his teeth. The western Kaunians’ suggestion made more sense than anything he’d come up with for himself. He and his comrades had managed to sabotage one ley-line caravan bringing Kaunians from Forthweg toward the shore of the Strait of Valmiera. If others had got through, if the Algarvians were on the point of serving Setubal as they’d served Yliharma…
Merkela spoke up after unusual silence: “People need to know.”
“People in these parts do know,” Skarnu said. “A lot of the folks who made it off that caravan are still free. People didn’t turn ‘em back to the Algarvians, any more than we did. And all the Kaunians out of Forthweg have tales to tell.”
Merkela shook her head. “That’s not what I meant. People all over Valmiera-people all over the world-need to know what the Algarvians are doing. The more reasons they have to hate the redheads, the harder they’ll fight them.”
Vatsyunas and Pernavai leaned toward each other and whispered back and forth in classical Kaunian, too soft and fast for Skarnu to catch more than a couple of words. Then Vatsyunas asked a blunt, bleak question: “Why think you this news will be of any great import to them that hear it? After all, ‘tis nobbut the overthrow of so many already despised Kaunians. Powers above, ‘tis likelier a matter for rejoicing than otherwise.” He picked up his mug of ale and gulped it dry.
“We’re Kaunians, too!” Skarnu exclaimed. He’d felt it like a beam through the heart when the Column of Victory was felled in Priekule. If that didn’t make him a proper Kaunian, what could?
But Pernavai and Vatsyunas looked at each other and didn’t say anything. Skarnu felt a slow flush rise from his neck to his cheeks and ears and on to the very top of his head. Till the war, no one had rubbed his nose in his Kaunianity every day of the year; he’d been one among many, not one among a few. No one had hated him for what he was. Thinking about that made him shake his head, as if trying to fend off invisible gnats.
“We have to let people know,” Merkela repeated. Once she got an idea, she disliked letting go.
“How?” Raunu asked. “Does Pavilosta even have a printer’s shop? I don’t recall seeing one.”
“No news sheet-I know that,” Skarnu said.
“If we did up one broadsheet, a mage could make copies,” Merkela said, and Skarnu, to his surprise, found himself nodding. Most printing was mechanical, but that was because presses were older and cheaper and needed less skill than the equivalent magecraft, not because sorcery couldn’t mimic what they did.
“Where do we find a mage we can trust?” Raunu asked. “If he sells us out…” He drew this thumb across his throat. Skarnu nodded again. The rebels he knew were farmers, not wizards. Even Merkela looked glum.
Vatsyunas said, “Is’t a mage you need? Perhaps I can be of some assistance to you in this undertaking.”
Skarnu frowned. “Every trade has its own sorcery. I know that.” He didn’t know much more than that; as a rich young marquis, he hadn’t had to have a trade himself. He went on, “How much has dentistry got to do with news sheets?” He couldn’t think of any connection between the two.
But the Kaunian from Forthweg answered, “Both involve copying, which is to say, the law of similarity. I am most certain sure I can do that which the art requireth, provided I be given ample paper for our needs and an original wherefrom to shape simulacra. For whilst I can make shift to speak somewhat the jargon employed hereabouts, I would not be so daft as to set my hand to writing it.”
Everyone at the table looked to Skarnu. Raunu could read and write, but he probably hadn’t been able to before he joined the army during the Six Years’ War. Merkela too had only a nodding acquaintance with letters. And Pernavai, like her husband, was hardly at home in modern Valmieran.
Doing that meant putting together the story of how and why the Algarvians were tormenting and killing the Kaunians from Forthweg. Skarnu understood the redheads’ strategy, but a story that was nothing but strategy turned out to be anything but interesting. He talked with Pernavai and Vatsyunas about what had happened to them and what had happened to people they’d known, people they’d seen. By the time he finished taking notes, he and the ex-dentist and his wife were all in tears.
Skarnu rewrote the story. When he had it the way he liked it, he read it to Merkela and Raunu. They both suggested changes. Skarnu bristled. Merkela flared up at him. He stomped off, the picture of an offended artist. The next day, after he’d cooled down, he put in some of the changes. Even he had to admit they improved the piece.
Then, being without a press, he had to write it out as neatly as he could. When he was done, it didn’t look like a proper news sheet, but no one who could read at all would have any trouble making out what it said. He took it to Vatsyunas in the barn. “All yours. Go ahead. Work your magic.” He made a fist, ashamed of his own sarcasm.
Luckily, Vatsyunas didn’t notice. He inclined his head to Skarnu. “That shall I undertake to do.” His preparations seemed simple, almost primitive. They involved the yolks of half a dozen eggs and a cut-glass bauble
