when I come to it.”
“Ididn’t expect it of you,” Elimaki said again. “If anybody in the family was going to go off and take a lover, I thought it would be me. Here I was, sitting at home by myself-except for Uto, and that’s a pretty big ‘except.’ But I… sat here. I was lonely, but it wasn’t that bad. And now this.” Her goggle-eyed look also came only in part from the brandy.
“I know. But-” Pekka stopped, unsure how to go on.
Her sister held up a hand. “Never mind. Your face says it all. If I doused every one of the lamps, you’d still glow.”
“Does it? Would I?” Pekka asked. Very solemnly indeed, Elimaki nodded. So did Pekka. “Well, it’s the truth. It’s how I feel. I know it’s not the way I’m supposed to feel, but I do.”
“I don’t know whether to be green with envy of you or to want to hit you over the head with a brick,” Elimaki said. “These things usually don’t have happy endings, you know.”
“Of course I know,” Pekka said. “At least we aren’t Algarvic people, where they go to knives sometimes instead of solicitors.” And then, even before her sister could say anything, she remembered Fernaowas of Algarvic blood. That gave her something brand new to worry about. As if I didn‘t have enough, she thought.
Behind Garivald-who was getting used to thinking of himself as Fariulf- lay the Twegen River. Behind him also lay a good many artificers frantically repairing the bridges over the Twegen the Algarvians had knocked down with their sorcerously guided eggs. Ahead of him, to the east, were the rest of Forthweg and all the redheads trying to keep his countrymen and him from taking any more of it.
To the north, smoke rose from the burning city of Eoforwic. Garivald supposed the Algarvians could have given this bridgehead even more trouble than they had if they weren’t trying to put down the rebellious Forthwegians in their capital.
That didn’t mean Mezentio’s men were idle here. Garivald wished it would have. Eggs started bursting not far away. They were of the plain, ordinary, unsteered variety, but if one burst in the hole where he crouched it would kill him just as dead as the fanciest product of inventive Algarvian sorcery. The eggs kicked up great, choking clouds of brown dust. Coughing a little, Garivald marveled at that. Down in the Duchy of Grelz, it would have been raining now-the fall mud time-with snow on the way. Here, rain fell mostly in the late fall and winter, and snow was uncommon. So he’d been told, anyhow. He had trouble believing it, but it looked to be true.
“Stay alert!”LieutenantAndelot shouted. “They like to attack after they plaster us with eggs. They think that’s an efficient way to do things. Our job is to show ‘em they’re wrong.”
“That’s right,” Garivald said. From what he’d seen of Algarvian soldiers, they were alarmingly efficient, but he had to back up his officer. That was part of what being a corporal was about. And he spoke the absolute truth when he added, “We’ve got to hold on to this bridgehead, no matter what.”
A moment later, somebody else let out a frightened yell: “Here they come!”
Garivald quickly looked every which way. There were the kilted Algarvians loping forward. Some of them shouted, “Mezentio!” as they ran. They still acted as much like world-beaters as they had when they overran his home village of Zossen. True, they’d been driven out of Unkerlant, but that didn’t seem to be because they were bad soldiers, only because there weren’t quite enough of them to overwhelm the larger kingdom.
Every which way also included behind Garivald. He’d learned as an irregular to know where he would retreat before he had to fall back. He’d had that lesson brutally reinforced in Swemmel’s regular army, too. A soldier who didn’t think ahead wouldn’t get many chances to think at all.
“Mezentio!” Aye, the redheads still knew their business. As soon as the Unkerlanters started blazing at them, some of them dove for cover and blazed back. Others scrambled forward. Then they flopped down in turn, while the troopers in back of them ran past them and toward the Unkerlanter front line.
“Get up there, curse it!” Garivald yelled at a soldier too deep in his hole to fight. “You’ve got a better chance if you blaze at them, too.”
The soldier couldn’t have been older than sixteen. He’d had his father yelling at him back in his home village, not an underofficer with all the savage weight ofKingSwemmel ’s army behind him. His father, losing his temper, might beat him. A corporal, losing his temper, could do or cause to be done far worse than that. Garivald didn’t think he could ever make himself give a man over to the inspectors for sacrifice, but the youngster didn’t need to know that.
And his curses did what they were supposed to do: they got the kid up and fighting. He might want to blaze Garivald along with or instead of the Algarvians, but he was blazing at them. Garivald blazed at one of them, too. The fellow kept running, so he must have missed. He cursed again, this time at himself.
He looked back over his shoulder. If the redheads kept coming, he’d have to scurry back toward that next hiding place. He hoped no one else had marked it-it wouldn’t hide a pair of men.
Just as he was about to jump out of his hole and fall back, what seemed like all the eggs in the world descended on the Algarvians. The Unkerlanters had moved a lot of egg-tossers into the bridgehead. A crystallomancer must have reached the men who served them, and the efficient way they responded would have warmedKingSwemmel ’s heart-assuming anything could.
Whatever such efficiency would have done to Swemmel’s heart, it wreaked havoc on the Algarvians. Their onslaught petered out, smashed under a blizzard of bursts of sorcerous energy. The ground shook under Garivald’s feet-not as it would have when one side or the other started sacrificing, but simply because so many eggs were coming down close to him.
“Take that, you whoresons!”LieutenantAndelot screamed at the redheads. He was only a youngster himself. This probably seemed like a great lark to him.
“We ought to go after the stinking buggers,” somebody said.
But, youngster or not, Andelot knew how to follow orders. “No,” he said. “For the time being, we’re just supposed to hold this bridgehead.”
“When do we break out, sir?” the soldier asked.
“When the generals tell us to,” Andelot answered. Garivald found himself nodding. Sure enough, that was how things worked.
Once driven off, the Algarvians didn’t resume their attack. From what the handful of surviving old-timers Garivald had talked with said, that was a change from the earlier days of the war. Mezentio’s men didn’t have the reserves of strength they’d once enjoyed. As far as he was concerned, they were quite bad enough as they were.
Andelot came over to him. “What’s up, sir?” he asked cautiously. He didn’t like drawing official attention to himself.
“Don’t worry, Fariulf-you’re not in trouble,” Andelot said, which did nothing to keep Garivald from worrying. “I just wanted to say you did a good job of handling that fellow who wasn’t blazing at the redheads.”
“Oh,” Garivald said. “Thank you, sir.”
“I think you’ve got the makings of a good soldier-a fine soldier, even,” Andelot said. “Would you like to move up in the army? You might be an officer by the time the war ends. Wouldn’t surprise me a bit.”
Garivald wanted to become an officer about as much as he wanted an extra head. “Sir, I don’t have my letters,” he said, thinking that would dispose of that.
“I’ll teach you, if you like,” Andelot offered.
“Would you?” Garivald stared. “Nobody ever said anything like that to me before, sir. My village didn’t even have a school. The firstman there could read, and maybe a few other people, but not that many. I’d give a lot, sir, to be able to read and write.” /could write down my songs. I could make them better. I could make them last forever.
“It would be my pleasure,” Andelot said. “The more men who do know how to read and write, the more efficient a kingdom Unkerlant becomes. Wouldn’t you say that’s so, Corporal?”
“Aye, sir,” Garivald replied. New thoughts crowded in on the heels of his first excitement. If I do write my songs down, I have to be careful. If the inspectors find them, they’ll know who I really am. And if they know who I really am, I’m in a lot of trouble.
He didn’t show what he was thinking. Showing your thoughts could and often did prove deadly dangerous in Unkerlant. He did his best to look interested and attentive when Andelot pulled a scrap of paper, a pen, and a bottle of ink from his belt pouch. He wrote something on the paper in big letters. “Here’s your name-Fariulf.”
“Fariulf,” Garivald repeated dutifully, wondering what his real name looked like. He didn’t ask. If he ever got
