The mage murmured over his glassy sphere. Moments later, an image formed in it: that of another crystallomancer, huddled in the ruins of what had been an ironworker’s hut. When Rathar’s crystallomancer told him what the marshal required, he nodded and said, “Wait.” He crawled off. A moment later, he came back with a soldier even grimier than he was. “Here is Major Melot.”
“Major, you are to hold the Algarvians away from the piers until nightfall, come what may,” Rathar said.
“Lord Marshal, you don’t know what you’re asking,” Melot said. “I’m down to about my last hundred men here. My only behemoth has a broken leg. And it looks like every Algarvian in the world is out there.”
“Hold,” Rathar repeated, his voice deadly cold. “Blaze the behemoth and use the carcass for a strongpoint. Rally your men around it. If you don’t hold off the redheads till the sun goes down, I’ll have you blazed first thing tomorrow morning. Have you got that?”
“Aye, lord Marshal.” Melot shrugged. “We’ll do what we can, sir. That’s all we can do.” Raising one shaggy eyebrow, he stared at Rathar. “The way things are, I’m not much afraid of you blazing me. The Algarvians’ll take care of it for you, never fear.”
A moment later, the crystal flared light for a moment. The images of the embattled major and his mage faded. Rathar’s crystallomancer said, “They’ve broken the link, sir.”
“That fellow is insubordinate,” Vatran grumbled.
“He’s on the spot,” Rathar said mildly. “He’ll do what I told him to do, or he’ll die trying.” He made a fist and pounded it down on his knee. “I don’t mind if he dies trying, but he has to do it. If he doesn’t, they cut Sulingen in half. How long till sunset?”
He couldn’t tell by looking: shadow already shrouded the far wall of the gully. Vatran spoke in reassuring tones: “Only a couple of more hours, lord Marshal. Let’s get some food in you first. What do you say to that?”
“All right.” Rathar realized how empty he felt. He would have made sure his army’s behemoths were well fed, but didn’t bother giving himself the same care.
Vatran nodded, as if to say he knew as much. “Hey, Ysolt!” he shouted. “Bring the marshal a big bowl of whatever’s in the pot, and a mug of spirits to go with it.”
“Ill do that,” the cook said, and she did. She handed Rathar a bowl of buckwheat groats and onions, with bits of meat floating in it.
He dug in, pausing now and again to swig from the mug of spirits. “Good,” he said with his mouth full, and then pointed at the bowl. “What’s the meat?”
“Unicorn, lord Marshal,” Ysolt answered. She was nearing middle age, wide in the shoulder and wider in the hips, her face always red from the cook-fires she tended. “One of the ones the Algarvians killed out in the gully. Seemed a stinking shame to let the flesh go to waste.”
“Unicorn,” Rathar echoed. He wasn’t sure he’d ever eaten it before. He’d eaten horse, but this was less gluey on the tongue, more flavorful. “Not bad. Can you fill up the bowl again?”
“Why not?” The cook took it from him and went back to the fire, her big haunches rolling as she walked. Vatran eyed her with appreciation. Rathar didn’t think the general was sleeping with her, but he wasn’t sure. The past few days, nobody in this hole in the ground had been sleeping much.
After a while, darkness did fall. Vatran said, “Well, we haven’t heard that the piers are lost, anyhow.”
“Would we?” Rathar asked. “If everyone over there is dead, nobody’d be left to tell us everything had fallen apart.” He raised his voice once more. “Crystallomancer! Get me Major Melot again.”
The mage cast his spell. After what seemed a very long time, someone’s face appeared in the crystal. Whose? Too dark to tell. “Report your situation,” Rathar said, wondering if he was taking with an Algarvian who’d overrun the Unkerlanter defenders.
“We’re still here, sir.” The fellow sounded like an Unkerlanter, anyhow.
“Where’s Major Melot?” Rathar rapped out.
“Dead,” the Unkerlanter soldier answered. “There’s maybe fifty of us left-but Mezentio’s men have settled down for the night. We gave ‘em all they wanted and then some. Plenty of those whoresons down for good, too, you bet.”
Maybe he didn’t know to whom he was speaking. Maybe he was too worn to care. Rathar remembered fights like that, back in the Twinkings War. If he had to, he’d grab a stick and go into battle himself once more-that was how vital he reckoned holding Sulingen to be. “Good enough, soldier,” he said gruffly, and nodded to the crystallomancer, who dissolved the link. Rathar turned to Vatran. “What do you think?”
“If we don’t send those brigades across, lord Marshal, we may as well pack it in,” Vatran answered. “Even if the redheads have a trap waiting to close on ‘em, we’ve got to try it. Without ‘em, the Algarvians have it all their own way in Sulingen. You’ll do what you’ll do-you’re the marshal. But that’s how it looks to me.”
“And to me,” Rathar said. He tapped the crystallomancer on the shoulder. “Get me Major General Canel, on the southern bank of the Wolter.” A couple of minutes later, Canel’s image appeared in the crystal. The Unkerlanter officer had a bloody bandage wrapped loosely around his head. “Redheads come calling?” Rathar asked.
“It’s only a scratch,” Canel answered. “They didn’t hit more than a couple of boats, either, lord Marshal. I can move if you want me to.”
“Stout fellow,” Rathar said. “I want you to, all right. First thing you do is, you throw the Algarvians back from the pier. Then reinforce the ironworks and the granary, and then the hill east of the ironworks.”
Canel nodded, which made the bandage flop down over his left eye. “Never a dull moment in these parts, is there? Cursed Algarvians.”
“If you wanted a nice, easy job, you should have chosen something quiet and safe-tiger-taming, maybe,” Rathar said. Canel grinned at him. Lantern light shone from the major general’s teeth. Rathar went on, “Hit ‘em hard.” He didn’t think Canel’s brigades would turn the tide by themselves. He expected them to get chewed up, in fact. Too many of Mezentio’s men were in Sulingen for anything else to be likely. But Canel led good troops. They’d do some chewing of their own, too.
Rathar could tell just when the Unkerlanters crossed from the southern bank of the Wolter into Sulingen. The din of battle, which had quieted after sunset, picked up again. Vatran chuckled. “We’ll shake the Algarvians out of their feather beds, by the powers above.”
“Well, maybe we will. Here’s hoping, anyhow.” Rathar yawned. “I’m going back to my own feather bed now.” Vatran laughed at that. Like everyone else in the gullyside headquarters, Rathar slept on a cot in a tiny chamber scraped from the dirt and shored up with boards to keep the earthen roof from falling in if an Algarvian egg burst right overhead. A curtain over the entrance was the only sign of his exalted rank; not even Vatran had one. As he headed off to the chamber, Rathar looked back over his shoulder and added, “Wake me the instant you need me. Don’t be shy.”
He said that whenever he went to bed. As always, Vatran nodded. “Aye, lord Marshal.” About a third of the time, Rathar got to sleep as long as he wanted; he was lucky in not needing a lot of sleep. A marshal who had to have eight hours every night would have been useless in wartime.
Sure enough, someone shook him in the middle of the night. He came awake at once, as he always did, and tried to gauge the hour by the noise outside the curtain. It was pretty quiet out there. “What’s toward?” he asked.
Usually, that would get him a crisp explanation from Vatran or from one of the junior officers in the cave. Tonight, he was answered by-a giggle? Whoever was there sat down on the cot beside him. “You threw them back, lord Marshal,” a low, throaty voice said. “Now we celebrate.”
“Ysolt?” Rathar asked. He got another giggle by way of reply. He reached out-and touched smooth, bare flesh. His ears heated. “Powers above, Ysolt, I’m a married man!”
“If your wife was here, she’d take care of this,” the cook answered. “But she’s not, so I’ll do it for her.”
Before he could say another word-and whatever he said couldn’t be very loud, for he didn’t want anyone outside to find out what was going on in here-Ysolt pushed him over onto his back. She hiked up his tunic, yanked down his drawers, and took hold of him. His ears weren’t what heated then.
Ysolt chuckled. “You see, lord Marshal? You’re as ready as the army was tonight.” She straddled him and impaled herself. Almost of their own accord, his arms came up and folded around her back. In the darkness, her mouth found his.
And then the only thing he wondered was whether the cot would collapse under the strain of two good-sized people energetically making love. But it proved sturdier than he’d expected, and held. Ysolt gasped and quivered. A moment later, Rathar groaned.
