asked, “Did you give Szonyi some of these precious leaves, too?”
If he’d hit the wood harder than he had to, Kun splintered the piece in front of him with his next couple of blows. At last, he answered, “I tried to give him some, but he wouldn’t let me. He’d rather take his chances withCaptainFrigyes. You can, too, if you think he and the Algarvians andMajorBorsos will really do anything worthwhile.”
Istvan wished he thought that. Dying for Gyongyos… What could be more fitting for a warrior from a warrior race? But he wouldn’t be dying for Gyongyos here; he was too mournfully sure of that. He would be dying forCaptainFrigyes, for no one and nothing else. Even if Frigyes and Borsos and the redheads made a sorcery to blast the island of Obuda down to the bottom of the Bothnian Ocean, how much would that help Gyongyos and Ekrekek Arpad in the war against Kuusamo? Not very much, not so far as Istvan could see.
“Never mind,” he said. Now that it came down to the sticking point, he couldn’t stomach betraying his countrymen’s plot to the Kuusamans, but he didn’t want to be part of it, either. Escaping with a sore belly seemed a better way out of the dilemma than most. “I just wish you could have got Szonyi to see sense.”
“So do I,”Kun told him. “But he’s not in the mood to listen. And he told me, ‘Don’t waste the sergeant’s time, getting him to nag me, either. I know what I’m doing.’ I don’t think he does, but…” He shrugged.
“I’m glad you tried,” Istvan said. He also resolved to try to talk to Szonyi himself, no matter what the trooper had toldKun. Wood-chopping seemed to take forever. At last, the guards released the labor detail. Istvan hurried off to try to find his longtime comrade.
But Szonyi wouldn’t talk to him, not about that. “I’ve made up my mind,” was all he would say. “I’d rather go out giving the enemy one more lick than spend the rest of my days rotting away here on Obuda.”
Istvan found no good reply to that. He finally set his hand on Szonyi’s shoulder and said, “May the stars enfold you in their light forevermore, then.”
“May it be so.” Szonyi gave him an anxious glance. “You andKun won’t betray us, will you? I know you’ve talked about it.”
“No, by the stars, neither one of us,” Istvan said. “May they leave us in eternal darkness if I lie. I just don’t think you’ll do as much asCaptainFrigyes thinks you will.”
“I think you’re wrong, Sergeant.” Szonyi turned away. Istvan started to argue some more, then saw it would do no good. He walked off, shaking his head.
When he sawKun a few minutes later, the one-time mage’s apprentice raised a questioning eyebrow. Istvan shook his head. Kun sighed and shrugged.
Along with their suppers, both of them ate the leaves. Istvan had expected, or at least hoped for, a little leisure before they acted and a little dignity while they were working. He got neither. The effect put him in mind of having an egg burst in the middle of his guts. Both he andKun raced for the latrines at a dead run. Kun ’s face was pale as milk. Istvan had no doubt he looked the same way.
Neither of them made it to the slit trenches. They both had to yank down their leggings and squat in the middle of the compound while guards cursed them in Kuusaman and Gyongyosian. Istvan stayed on the ground, clutching at his belly. Kun tried to get to his feet, then sank down again. “Must be something we ate,” he moaned. That was true, too, if not quite in the way he meant it.
The guards had to drag them to the infirmary. They threw them onto cots in a room of their own and gave them chamber pots. That suited Istvan perfectly. He spent a lot of unpleasant time squatting over his as night replaced day.
“When?” he askedKun when they chanced to be squatting side by side.
“I don’t know,”Kun answered. “We’ll find out when it happens. In the meantime, shut up.” That was doubtless good advice. Istvan tried to tell his guts the same thing. They wouldn’t listen to him.
At some point that evening, Istvan asked, “What time is it now?” Since things had started for him, he’d lost a good deal of interest in the outside world, but that still mattered.
Not toKun, not at the moment. “I don’t know, and I don’t care,” he grunted. That he was squatting again no doubt made him even shorter with questions than he would have been otherwise. After a bit, he added, “And I already told you to shut up. Who knows who’s liable to be listening?”
Istvan guessed-and it was only a guess-he fell into an exhausted sleep somewhere around midnight. He knew he hadn’t been asleep very long before getting jolted awake by a short, sharp earthquake. He dove under his bed, as he would have done back in his home valley, and hoped the roof wouldn’t come down on his head.
AlthoughKun came from Gyorvar, he knew enough to dive under his cot, too; most of Gyongyos was earthquake country. Through the roar of the ground and the shudder of the infirmary all around them, he shouted, “This isn’t just a regular earthquake.”
“So what?” Istvan shouted back. “That doesn’t mean it can’t kill us.”Kun didn’t answer that. Istvan concluded that, for once, he’d out-argued his clever comrade.
Even after the ground stopped shaking, rending and tearing noises went on and on, most of them from outside the captives’ camp. Kun stayed right where he was. Istvan started to come out, but seeingKun on his belly made him decide not going anywhere might be a good idea. Kun said, “Well, they managed to get the spell to work, no doubt about it.”
“So they did,” Istvan said. “Now, what have they done with it? If they’ve done enough…”If they’ve done enough, maybe I should have let them cut my throat. Maybe the stars will turn away from my spirit and leave it in eternal darkness. Am I accursed for cowardice?
Kunsaid, “We won’t find out till morning at the earliest.” If he felt the least bit guilty about remaining alive where his comrades had perished, he showed no sign that Istvan could see.
And a Gyongyosian captive in the next chamber of the infirmary proved him wrong a moment later, calling, “By the stars, half the walls have fallen down!”
“We could escape!” Istvan exclaimed.
“Go ahead,”Kun said. “If you want to skulk through the woods up on the slopes of Mount Sorong till the Kuusamans hunt you down with dogs, go right ahead. Me, I don’t see much point to it. If I thought we could get back to an island we still held, or even one where we were still fighting, that’d be different. As things are…” He shook his head. “No, thanks.”
That made more sense than Istvan wished it would have. Some of his countrymen thought otherwise. Outside the infirmary, booted feet pounded across dirt toward what had been the palisade. A Kuusaman shouted in bad Gyongyosian: “To halt! To halt or to blaze!” Those feet kept running. A moment later, a shriek rang out, and then another one. After that, Istvan heard no more running feet inside the captives’ camp.
And then, a few minutes later-after he andKun had cautiously emerged from their shelter-he did. All the shouting this time was in Kuusaman, which he didn’t understand. “The slanteyes will have found the bodies,”Kun said.
“Do you know that, or are you just guessing?” Istvan asked. It did strike him as a good guess.
“I can understand some of what they’re saying,”Kun answered. “Not a lot-Kuusaman is a peculiar language, if anyone wants to know what I think: much worse than Unkerlanter-but enough.”
All Istvan had ever learned of either were such phrases as, Hands high! andCome out of there! “I’ll take your word for it,” he said.
A Kuusaman guard charged into their chamber, stick at the ready. He looked at them, saw they were where they were supposed to be and not making trouble, and relaxed a little. Sounding innocent, Kun asked, “What happened?”
“Magic,” the guard answered. “Bad magic. Many to be dead.” His Gyongyosian was halting but understandable. “To kill themselves to make magic. Bad. Very bad.” Shaking his head, he backed out of the room.
Istvan sniffed. “I smell smoke.”
“Aye, something’s burning,”Kun agreed. He sniffed, too. “Not close, I don’t think. Nothing we have to worry about.” He paused, then went on, “That guard was right, you know. Itwas bad magic, and I don’t care that our allies used it first.”
“Neither do I,” Istvan said, and did his best to believe he was telling the truth.
When the sun rose, he peered eagerly out the window. Sure enough, most of the walls were down, but the Kuusamans had posted an armed man every ten feet or so to prevent escapes. The ley-line depot was also wrecked, and the smoke, he found, came from the direction of the port the Kuusamans had built: he could see as
