Fighting in Plegmund’s Brigade, Sidroc gathered strength for himself.
When the Algarvians, including their alarming physical trainer, decided his regiment was ready to fight, the Forthwegians left the encampment in the southwest of their kingdom and went south and south again, sometimes by ley-line caravan, sometimes by shank’s mare, till they reached the Duchy of Grelz.
Until he joined Plegmund’s Brigade, Sidroc had never been far from Gromheort. What he saw of southern Unkerlant didn’t impress him. Even the houses that hadn’t been wrecked in the fighting struck him as shabby. So did the Unkerlanters, especially the men. Their custom was to stay clean-shaven, but most of them wore a few days’ worth of stubble, giving them the look of derelicts. When they spoke, he could sometimes understand a word or two of their tongue, which was related to his own, but never a full sentence. That made them seem suspicious to him, too.
His squad leader was a scarred veteran sergeant named Werferth, who’d fought in the Algarvian army during the Six Years’ War and for Forthweg in the early days of the Derlavaian War. Werferth seemed happy as long as he was fighting for someone, or perhaps against someone. For or against whom? As best Sidroc could tell, the sergeant didn’t care. He said, “You’d fornicating well better be suspicious of these cursed Unkerlanters. Turn your back and they’ll cut your balls off.”
“They’ll be sorry if they try.” At eighteen, after weeks of hard training, Sidroc felt ready to take on the world.
Werferth laughed in his face. Sidroc bristled-inside, where it didn’t show. He didn’t think he was afraid of any Unkerlanters, but he knew he feared the sergeant. Werferth said, “You’re liable to be sorry if they try, on account of they’re sneaky whoresons and you’re still wet behind the ears. Like I said, the trick of it is not to give the buggers the chance.”
Sidroc nodded and did his best to look wise. Werferth laughed at him again, which made him grind his teeth. But that was all he did. After one more chuckle, Werferth went off to terrorize some other common soldier.
For the first time, all of Plegmund’s Brigade assembled together just outside Herborn, the capital of Grelz. The regiments already down there were as full of cutthroats and men down on their luck as the one of which Sidroc was a part. But that didn’t matter when the Brigade drew itself up for King Raniero’s review.
Algarvian officers and Forthwegian underofficers scurried among the men, making sure not a speck of dust lay on a tunic sleeve or a boot top, not a hair was out of place. To his dismay, Sidroc had discovered sergeants insisted on even more in the way of cleanliness and tidiness than mothers or aunts. He could give them what they wanted, but he resented the need.
Drawn up to one side of Plegmund’s Brigade stood a regiment of Grelzer infantry in dark green tunics that looked to have been recently dyed. Like Sidroc and his comrades, they had Algarvian officers. They looked very serious and solemn about what they were doing. The couple of companies of Algar-vians on the other side of Plegmund’s Brigade looked anything but. They stood at attention and their faces were quiet, but mischief still gleamed in their eyes and blazed forth from every line of their bodies.
A band marched out from Herborn blaring a tune that might have been the Grelzer national hymn-Sidroc presumed it was. Guarded by a squad of horsemen in dark green tunics, King Raniero rode a fine white unicorn. Three or four high-ranking Algarvian officers accompanied him. He was an Algarvian himself, of course, but wore a long tunic of the same color as his soldiers’, but of finer fabric and cut.
He swung down from the unicorn with surprising grace and began the inspection. The Grelzer soldiers gave him a curious little half bow by way of a salute. He was half a head taller than most of them. Sidroc wondered what they thought of having a foreign sovereign. If they had any doubts, they would be wise to keep quiet about them.
When Raniero came to Plegmund’s Brigade, he startled Sidroc by speaking good Forthwegian: “I thank you all for joining my Algarvian allies in helping to assure my kingdom’s safety.”
“Huzzah!” the Brigade’s Algarvian officers shouted. “Huzzah!” the Forthwegian troopers echoed a moment later. The redheads swept off their hats and gave Raniero extravagant bows. Sidroc was cursed if he’d do any such thing. Like the rest of the ordinary soldiers, he stayed at stiff attention.
“I know how brave you men are,” Raniero went on. “During the Six Years’ War, I commanded a regiment of Forthwegians, and they fought like lions.” Sidroc hadn’t done well in school, but he knew Algarve and Unkerlant had divided Forthweg between them like a couple of hungry men cutting up a slab of roast beef. Any Forthwegians Raniero commanded would have been fighting for Algarve-as Werferth had done-not for their own kingdom.
And now that was so again. Sidroc shrugged. Nothing he could do about it. And he didn’t like Unkerlanters, not even a little. If fighting for Algarve was how he got to fight against King Swemmel, then it was, that was all.
Raniero said, “Bandits and brigands still trouble my land. I know you will help put them down. For that, you will have not only my thanks but also the thanks of all the great and ancient Kingdom of Grelz.”
Beside Sidroc, Sergeant Werferth snickered, just loud enough to let him hear. He understood what that snicker meant, more from dining-room talk between his father and Uncle Hestan than from anything he’d learned in school. Grelz hadn’t been a kingdom for three hundred years. The Algarvians had revived it not for the sake of the Grelzers but to complicate life for Swemmel of Unkerlant.
How many Grelzers really thought of Raniero as their king? If the Algarvians had named one of their own King of Forthweg after King Penda fled, Sidroc wouldn’t have thought of him as his king. He’d always said pretty much what he thought, but saying that struck him as a bad idea.
Raniero strolled through the ranks of Plegmund’s Brigade. He smelled of sandalwood, which almost made Sidroc crack a smile. But he’d learned that wasn’t a good idea, either. Then Raniero went over to the Algarvian companies. He had no compunction about joking with the redheads, nor they with him. Guffaws floated up to the sky. Sidroc tried to remember his Algarvian so he could find out what was funny, but couldn’t make out enough to tell.
And then the ceremony was done. Raniero got back onto his unicorn and rode away. So did his Algarvian commanders and his Grelzer bodyguards. The regiment of Grelzers marched back toward Herborn, as did the Algarvian companies. That left Plegmund’s Brigade alone on the vast plain of southern Unkerlant.
They set up camp as if in the middle of hostile company-which in fact they were, or why else would Raniero have wanted them? Sentry posts surrounded the encampment on all sides. Seeing them, Sidroc said, “Well, at least we’ll be able to rest easy tonight.”
Sergeant Werferth snickered again, this time at him. “Oh, aye, if you want to wake up with your throat cut. You got to figure the Unkerlanters for sneaky whoresons. What happens if they slide past the sentries? They’re liable to, you know. How well can
“I don’t know,” Sidroc answered. “I guess I’ll just have to be ready to get up and fight in a hurry if I have to.”
That made Werferth nod and thump him on the back. “Aye, so you will. There-you see? You’re not as dumb as you look.”
Worries about sleep turned out to be largely academic. As soon as the sun went down, mosquitoes came out by armies, swarms, hordes. The tents the Brigade had brought from Forthweg lacked the netting they needed to hold the mosquitoes at bay; Forthweg was a drier, hotter land, with fewer bugs.
When Sidroc got up the next morning, he was yawning and irascible and covered with bites. So was Werferth, who looked no happier than he did. “And we aren’t the worst of it,” the sergeant added. “Cursed mosquitoes flew off with two men from another company. They raise ‘em the size of dragons around here.” Sleepy and grouchy, Sidroc believed him for a moment. Then he snorted and went off to stand in line for breakfast.
The Brigade broke up into regiments and then into companies, and began prowling across the countryside looking for Unkerlanter irregulars. What they found were farmers doing their best to get a crop out of their land. Few of the farmers seemed very friendly, but few seemed actively hostile, either.
Werferth hated all of them, for no better reason Sidroc could see than that they were there. “Some of ‘em are irregulars, sure as I stand here farting,” the veteran sergeant said. “And a lot of the ones who haven’t got the ballocks for that will tell the irregulars where we’ve been and where we’re going. Bugger the bunch of’em, is what I’ve got to say.”
After a couple of days of marching, Sidroc’s company went into a forest that astonished him. Forthweg didn’t have woods like these, dark and brooding and wild, with the air chill and damp even in summertime under pines and beeches and firs and birches and larches and spruce. Sidroc kept looking around not for Unkerlanter irregulars but
