snow at every stride. But they went forward, which was the point of the exercise. Wherever the Algarvians tried to rally- and, with their usual skill and dash, they tried again and again-eggs from the tossers most behemoths carried, and beams from the heavy sticks the rest bore on their backs, smashed up strongpoints.
“Mezentio!” Leudast had heard that defiant war cry more often than he could recall. This time, it came from a tiny village near the edge of a forest of snow-covered firs. The enemy soldiers holed up in the village blazed at the advancing Unkerlanters. Misses boiled steam from snow. Hits sent men sprawling bonelessly in death. “Mezentio!” The shout rang out again and again.
But it didn’t sound right. Algarvians yelled their king’s name almost as if they were singing it. These soldiers simply shouted it, the same as they might have shouted, “Swemmel!”
The very same as they might have shouted, “Swemmel!”… Leudast stiffened. He shouted, too: “Those aren’t redheads! Those are fornicating Grelzers!”
Men who’d served the Algarvian puppet Kingdom of Grelz couldn’t very well shout, “Raniero!” any more, not after Swemmel had boiled Raniero alive. A lot of the soldiers who’d chosen to wear dark green tunics instead of rock-gray had sneaked away from the fighting, doing their best to pretend they’d been nothing but peasants or shopkeepers while the Algarvians occupied Grelz. Few who tried to surrender to Swemmel’s soldiers succeeded. None had joy of it afterwards.
But here some stubborn souls still did what they could to help Mezentio’s cause. “Forward!” Leudast shouted again. This time, he remembered to blow the whistle. “Let’s give the traitors what they deserve.”
Kilted soldiers slipped away through the trees: the Grelzers were buying time for their Algarvian comrades to get away. Maybe the men who’d followed Raniero and the dream of Grelz as a kingdom of its own realized how little their lives were worth with the duchy back in Swemmel’s hands and the king’s inspectors sure to be hunting them down. Or maybe the Algarvians were simply selling out their erstwhile allies.
Leudast didn’t care why the Grelzers fought. He just wanted to be rid of them as fast as he could so he could go after the escaping redheads. His men converged on the village from three sides. Some of them had a shout of their own: “Death to the traitors!”
By the way the Grelzers blazed, there weren’t very many of them. They didn’t look like holding up the pursuit for long. But, as the men from Leudast’s company came close to the tumbledown shacks in which the enemy fought, they got a nasty surprise: What looked like small pottery jugs flew toward them and burst like miniature eggs when they hit the ground. Several soldiers howled as flying shards scored their flesh. Others hesitated, and the attack wavered.
“Come on, curse it!” Leudast shouted. “I don’t care what sort of toys they’ve got-there can’t be more than a dozen of them!” He got up and went on toward the hamlet. If his men didn’t follow, he wouldn’t last long.
Follow they did. The Grelzers proved to have only a few of those small, throwable eggs. Leudast would have liked to ask them where they’d got the few they did have, but, by the time the fight was over, no Grelzers remained alive to ask.
His broad shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. If the Grelzers had this particular toy, the Algarvians would, too. He was liable to find out more about it than he wanted to know. He shrugged again. “Are we going to let those Algarvians get free of us? We’d cursed well better not!” He plunged into the woods after the redheads. Again, his men followed.
More often than not, MarchionessKrasta worried about no one’s feelings but her own. Thus, when her maidservant, Bauska, came into her bedchamber one morning to help her decide what to wear that day-in Krasta’s mind, always a vitally important choice-she greeted the woman with, “How’s your little bastard doing?”
Bauska’s lips tightened. She’d had a daughter by one of the Algarvian officers billeted in Krasta’s mansion on the outskirts of Priekule. Carefully, she said, “She’s doing very well, milady.”
“Well, good.” Krasta hadn’t intended to be cruel, so she added, “I haven’t heard her howling in the night lately. That’s something.”
“Two-year-olds don’t cry as much as newborn babes, no,” Bauska agreed.
“I suppose not,” Krasta said. “Did you ever hear even a word from the father?”
Bauska shook her head. “Nothing since he went off to Unkerlant to fight.”
“Too bad.” Krasta sighed. “Mosco was a handsome chap, I’ll give you that.” Mosco had been a good deal handsomer thanColonelLurcanio, whose adjutant he’d been. He’d also been a good deal younger than Krasta’s own Algarvian lover. Every so often, she thought Bauska had got the better bargain. Bauska didn’t need to know that, though. Neither did Lurcanio.
“Perhaps the gray silk tunic and trousers, milady?” the maidservant suggested, taking them from one of Krasta’s cavernous closets.
“Powers above, no!” Krasta shook her head. “Do you want me looking like an Unkerlanter soldier?”
“Milady, if you put onKingSwemmel ’s crown, would you look like him?”
“Of course not,” Krasta said indignantly. “He’s dreadfully ugly, from everything I’ve heard, and I’m not.”
“Well, then,” Bauska said.
“Well, then, what?” Krasta snapped. She was impervious to logic, as any number of schoolmasters who’d tried to instill it in her might have told Bauska. “What does that have to do with anything? Get me another outfit and be quick about it, before I box your ears.”
She meant it. Bauska must have known she meant it. The gray tunic and trousers disappeared as if they had never been. Dark blue trousers and a gold tunic met with more approval. As if to prove she could make her own choices, Krasta shrugged on a rabbit-fur jacket and went downstairs, pushing past Bauska without another word. Had the maidservant not got out of her way, Krasta would have pushed right through her. Bauska must have known as much, because she did move.
Down in the front hall, Krasta pointed to another servant. “Tell the driver to ready the carriage. I shall go into Priekule before long.”
“Aye, milady.” The servant went off to do her bidding.
Before the war, hardly anyone had ever said anything but, Aye, milady, to Krasta or done anything but go off to do her bidding. Even now, hardly any Valmierans presumed to go against her wishes. But Valmierans, these days, weren’t the only folk with whom Krasta had to reckon. She was reminded of that as soon as she went into the west wing of the mansion.
The Algarvian occupiers had taken over the west wing without so much as a by-your-leave. They’d made it plain that, if Krasta proved difficult, they were capable of taking over the whole place and throwing her out. Up till then, no one had ever dealt with her on those terms-who would have dared? The redheads dared, and they, unlike her countrymen, had the power to enforce their wishes.
Desks and cabinets full of papers filled the elegant salon of the west wing these days. Algarvian military bureaucrats sat behind the desks, doing what they needed to do to keep Priekule running the way they wanted it to. Krasta had never inquired about the details. Details were for servants and other commoners.
But one detail she did notice: Fewer Algarvian military bureaucrats sat behind the desks this morning than she’d ever seen before. More and more these days, the endless grinding war in Unkerlant pulled Algarvians out of Valmiera and off to the distant, barbarous west. Bauska’sCaptainMosco had been one of the first sent away from civilization, but many, many redheads had followed him since.
Those who remained eyed Krasta with a leering familiarity that would have earned them slaps in the face… had they been Valmierans to be despised rather than Algarvians to be feared. As things were, Krasta swung her hips a little more than usual when she walked past them. They looked, aye, but they couldn’t presume to touch because she belonged to their superior.
CaptainGradasso, the adjutant who’d taken over for the departed Mosco, wasn’t at his desk in the antechamber in front of Lurcanio’s office. Krasta beamed at that. She would have had to try to make sense of his archaic Valmieran, so heavily flavored with the classical Kaunian he knew embarrassingly more of than she did. As things were, she walked straight into Lurcanio’s lair.
Gradasso wasn’t in there, either, as he often was when not out front to block importunate visitors. Krasta’s Algarvian lover glanced up from the papers that covered his desk like snow drifts in a hard winter. How tired he looks, she thought. Lurcanio was in his fifties, close to twice her age. He was a handsome man; more often than not, distinguished came to mind when she thought of him. Not now. Now the only fitting word wasweary.
“Good day, my dear,” he said, bowing in his chair. His Valmieran, unlike his adjutant’s, was fluent, flavored only by a slight Algarvian trill. “You’ve come to say farewell before you venture forth to the shops, unless I miss my
