for bears or possibly trolls. He knew there were no such things as trolls, but that didn’t keep him from worrying about them, not in a place like this.
Without warning, the trooper tramping along three men in front of him went down as if all his bones had turned to jelly. Sidroc hurried up to him. He had a neat hole in his left temple; the beam that killed him had blown off much of the right side of his skull. Blood soaked into the pine needles on the path.
“By squads!” an Algarvian officer shouted. “Into the woods on either side. We won’t let the buggers get away with this.”
Into the woods Sidroc went. He hoped somebody in his squad could find the way back to the path, because he soon lost track of it. He could hear himself and his comrades blundering along. He couldn’t hear anyone else-but at least one Unkerlanter irregular had been there somewhere, and probably more. They knew the woods, the whoresons. If he heard them at all, it would be because they were laughing their heads off.
“Back!” The command came in Algarvian. It also told Sidroc where the path lay. Back he went. He didn’t care that he’d caught no irregulars. He just wanted to escape the woods alive.
He did. A little village lay beyond the forest. Farmers and their wives looked up curiously at the bearded men in strange uniforms. Without a word, the men of Plegmund’s Brigade started blazing. They killed as many as they could catch, and left the village a smoking ruin behind them. Sidroc laughed. “Welcome to Grelz!” he said. “As long as we’re here, we may as well make ourselves at home.”
“Another pack of murdering goons to worry about,” Munderic said, leaning against the trunk of a spruce. “That’s all Algarve’s brought to Grelz-foreign murdering goons.”
“Aye,” Garivald said: one voice in a general rumble of agreement from the irregulars.
Another fighter said, “These Forthwegian buggers are even nastier than the redheads, powers below eat ‘em.”
“That’s bad, but it’s not so bad,” Garivald said. People turned to look at him, puzzlement on a good many faces. He tried to put it into words: “The more people who hate these buggers, the more who’ll come over to our side.”
“Here’s hoping, anyway,” Munderic said. “But we’ve got to show folks we can stand up to the whoresons, hurt ‘em bad when we find the chance. Otherwise they’ll just be afraid, and do whatever the foreigners say.”
“We blazed that one fellow just to give ‘em a hello, like,” somebody said, “and then they wrecked a village to pay it back. What’ll they do if we nail a proper lot of ‘em?”
“See? They’ve already put you in fear,” Munderic said. “We’ll find a time to give ‘em a good boot in the arse, see what they do then. If we can prod ‘em into something everybody’s bound to hate, all the better.”
“They must look like a pack of wild beasts, with all that hair on their faces people talk about,” Garivald said. He had a good deal of hair on his face, too; chances to scrape it off were few and far between. But he still thought of himself as clean-shaven, which the Forthwegians weren’t.
“They act like a pack of wild beasts, that’s certain,” Munderic said. “Off what they’ve shown so far, they
“A mean man will keep a meaner dog,” Garivald said, and then, musingly, tasting the words, “Sometimes you have to whack it with a log.” He made a face. That didn’t work. Around him, irregulars nudged one another and grinned. They knew the signs of a man with a song coming on.
Munderic didn’t give Garivald any time to work on it now. He said, “We’re going to hit them. We’re going to teach them this is our countryside, and they can’t come along and tear things up whenever they get the urge.”
Obilot stuck up a hand. When Munderic pointed to her, she added, “Besides, with these cursed Forthwegians beating on us here in Grelz, the redheads can send more of their own soldiers against our regular armies.”
“That’s so.” Munderic grinned at her. “You make quite a little general there.” Most of the irregulars-most of the male irregulars, anyhow- grinned and chuckled, too. Obilot’s jaw set, though she didn’t say anything. Most of the men viewed the handful of women who’d joined them as something more than conveniences, but something a good deal less than full-fledged fighters.
In a way, Garivald understood that. The only reason he’d gone easier on his wife back in Zossen than most Unkerlanter peasants did was that he had a wife of unusually forceful character. But all the women here fit that bill-and most of them had been through worse than any of the men. He sent Obilot a sympathetic glance. She didn’t seem to notice. He shrugged. She probably thought he was leering at her, the way the men often did.
Someone said, “Those Forthwegians are no cursed good in the woods.”
“They don’t seem to be,” Munderic agreed. “They’re even worse than the Algarvians, I think. The redheads act like they think woods ought to be parks or something, but the Forthwegians, I think half of’em never saw a tree before in all their born days.” He smacked one fist into the palm of his other hand. “And we’ll make ‘em pay for it, too, as soon as we get the chance.”
Three days later, an Unkerlanter slipped into the irregulars’ camp with word that the Forthwegians would make another sweep through the eastern part of the forest, the part closest to Herborn, before long. Garivald never saw the fellow, but such things happened all the time: people who had to work with the Algarvians-and, now, with their Forthwegian flunkies-were only too glad to let the irregulars know what was going on.
“I’ve got just the spot for an ambush,” Munderic said with a broad smile that showed broken teeth. He walked over to Garivald and slapped him on the shoulder. “It’s not far from where we nailed those redheads and picked you up, as a matter of fact.”
“Sounds good by me,” Garivald said. “Let’s do it.”
“We will,” Munderic declared. “And maybe Sadoc can cast a glamour over the roadway, so we make extra sure nobody spots us.”
“Aye, maybe,” Garivald said, and said no more. Before the fighting started, King Swemmel had sent a drunken wreck of a mage to Zossen to conduct the sacrifices that powered the village’s crystal. Next to Sadoc, who’d joined the irregulars a couple of weeks earlier, that fellow looked like Addanz, the arch-mage of Unkerlant. Garivald didn’t know where, or even if, Sadoc had learned magecraft. He did know the fellow hadn’t learned much, and hadn’t learned it very well.
But Munderic liked Sadoc: the leader of the irregulars finally had someone who could work magic, no matter how feebly, and Sadoc was recklessly brave when he wasn’t working-or more likely botching-magic. Garivald liked him, too-as an irregular. As a mage, he made a good peasant.
Munderic at their head, the irregulars moved out to await the soldiers of Plegmund’s Brigade. Garivald had heard of Plegmund; some old songs called him the biggest thief in the world. By all the signs, Forthwegians hadn’t changed much from his day till now.
Garivald couldn’t have said whether Munderic’s chosen spot was close to the place where he’d been rescued. He wasn’t all that good in the woods himself, though he was getting better. And, back then, he’d been too busy fearing the death he was sure lay ahead of him to take much notice of his surroundings.
He couldn’t help agreeing the spot was a good one, though. The woods track widened out into a little clearing, around whose edges the irregulars grouped themselves. They could punish the Forthwegians who tramped into the trap. Garivald looked forward to it.
He kept sneaking glances at Obilot, who crouched behind a thick, rough-barked pine a few feet away. She went right on paying no attention to him. He sighed. He missed Annore. He missed women, generally speaking-and he looked likely to keep on missing with Obilot.
Sadoc, a big, unkempt fellow, chanted a spell that would, with luck, make the concealed Unkerlanters harder for the men of Plegmund’s Brigade to spot. Garivald couldn’t tell whether it did anything. He had his doubts. From everything he’d seen, Sadoc would have had trouble enchanting a mouse away from a blind cat.
Munderic, though, Munderic surely did think the world of his more-or-less mage. “Use your powers to let us know when the Forthwegians draw near,” he said.
“Aye, I’ll do it.” Sadoc was eager. No one could have denied that.
Time crawled slowly past. Garivald kept glancing toward Obilot. Once, she was looking back at him. That flustered him enough to make him keep his eyes to himself for quite a while.
Sadoc stood some way off, behind a birch with bark white as milk. Suddenly, he stepped out into the clearing for a moment. “They’re coming!” he exclaimed, and pointed up the track the men of Plegmund’s Brigade were likely to use. Then, for good measure, he pointed off into the woods, in a direction from which no one was likely to
