“Tell me, if you would be so kind, what you did to get yourself sent among Yaninans?”
“Do you want to know the truth?” Sabrino asked, and Scoufas dipped his head. Yaninans often did that instead of nodding; Sabrino had seen as much down in the land of the Ice People. He went on, “I toldKingMezentio he was wrong about something, and I happened to be right.”
“Ah,” Scoufas said. “If you had done such a thing withKingTsavellas, it might have proved a fatal error.”
Who says it isn‘t? Sabrino thought. But he would not say that to a Yaninan. Instead, he said, “I’ve been a colonel a long time. I’ll keep right on being a colonel for a long time to come.”Unless I get killed, of course. He shrugged. /have only my wife to provide for these days, now that Fronesia’s squeezing money out of that footsoldier instead.
“What did you, ah, say to your king to fall from his good graces?” Scoufas asked.
Sabrino didn’t intend to answer that, but decided it couldn’t make any difference. “I told him sacrificing Kaunians for the sake of strong sorcery would turn out to be a mistake, and it did.”
“Well.” Whatever Scoufas had expected, that plainly wasn’t it. “You surprise me, Colonel. I thought all Algarvians killed Kaunians with a smile on their faces, I have not seen any who did not, at any rate, not till now.”
“Life is full of surprises,” Sabrino said, at which Scoufas dipped his head again.
Two days later, when Sabrino’s wing flew their first mission alongside Scoufas’ Yaninan dragonfliers, he got another surprise. It wasn’t that the Yaninans performed well enough. He’d looked for that, remembering how wellColonelBroumidis ’ men had flown down on the austral continent. What really startled him was how weak the Unkerlanter forces opposite the Yaninans were. His wing came back from smashing up the enemy’s outposts not only without losing a man but also without the feeling of having been in real danger.
“Maybe I should have said even more rude things to his Majesty,” Sabrino toldCaptainOrosio once they got back to the dragon farm. “This isn’t war-it’s more like the rest cure they give consumptives.”
“Swemmel’s whoresons sure fight us a lot harder than they go after these buggers,” Orosio agreed. “Till we got here, I didn’t think the Unkerlantershad a second team. We’ve never seen it before, by the powers above.”
“Of course,” Sabrino said musingly, “itis all they need against the Yaninans.”
“Oh, aye-no doubt about that.” His squadron commander didn’t bother hiding his scorn. “Powers above, if Swemmel had a third team, he could get away with using that, too. Hit Tsavellas’ odds and sods with a real army and they’d break like a dropped pot.”
“Aye, they would, wouldn’t they?” Sabrino looked around, more than a little nervously. He wished Orosio hadn’t put it quite that way.
Seven
Bembo swaggered through Eoforwic exactly as he’d swaggered through Gromheort farther east. Thanks to Delminio, his new partner, he’d already made the acquaintance of a good many taverns and eateries and bakeries where a hungry man could get what he needed to sustain himself through a long, hard, wearying shift on the beat. He was sustaining himself so much, he was thinking of letting out the belt that held up his kilt another notch.
He didn’t enjoy going into the Kaunian quarter when his partner and he drew that duty, but he didn’t shrink from it. And it had compensations patrolling the rest of Eoforwic didn’t offer. As Delminio put it, “The blond women throw themselves at our feet or on their knees or however we want them.” By the smug smile on his face, he’d had no trouble getting at least one exactly how he wanted her.
“Aye, no doubt about it,” Bembo agreed. He’d had good luck with Kaunian women, too. As an Algarvian constable, one could hardly help having good luck with Kaunian women. “Hardly seems sporting, does it? They’ll do anything, or a lot of ‘em will, on account of they think we can keep ‘em alive if we want to.”
“Sporting?” Delminio shrugged. “Who cares about sporting? What I care about is getting my ashes hauled.”
“Sounds right,” Bembo said. Delminio didn’t hate Kaunians the way Oraste, his old partner, had. But Delminio didn’t hesitate in taking advantage of the blonds whenever he saw the chance, either. Since Bembo rarely hesitated himself when he saw that kind of chance, they got along fine.
After walking on for a few paces, Bembo said, “There are times I wish we hadn’t started sending ‘em west. I don’t know what in blazes it’s got us. The Unkerlanters are doing their own dirty work, and it pretty much cancels ours out.”
With another shrug, Delminio said, “I don’t worry about stuff like that. If it’s good enough forKingMezentio, I figure it’s good enough for me, too.”
“You’ve got a sensible way of looking at things,” Bembo said. That was plenty to make Delminio strut and preen as if he’d just been named a duke. Bembo wished he could take the whole Kaunian business so lightly. He could sometimes, as when he was getting a blond woman to go to bed with him. But he had more trouble shutting down his mind the rest of the time than Delminio seemed to.
A Kaunian woman came out of a block of flats. As soon as they saw her golden hair shining in the sun, Bembo and Delminio both swung their heads toward her, a motion as automatic as breathing to them. And then, when they noticed she was very pregnant, they both looked away again, too.
As for her, she looked through them as if they didn’t exist. That was the common reaction among Kaunian women who didn’t care to give themselves to the Algarvians. “Wonder if one of us stuck that baby in her,” Delminio remarked.
“I doubt it,” Bembo said, as the young woman waddled around a corner. “She doesn’t look like she hates us enough for that.” He fancied himself a connoisseur of such reactions.
“Mm, you’re probably right,” Delminio said. Either he agreed with Bembo or he didn’t feel like arguing. Odds are he thinks I’m right, Bembo thought. We Algarvians, we’re an argumentative bunch.
Bells began ringing, not just in the Kaunian quarter but all over Eoforwic. Blonds started running. Delminio started cursing. So did Bembo. “Stinking Unkerlanter dragonfliers,” he snarled. “Over in Gromheort, we didn’t have to worry about this much.”
“Over in Gromheort, you were a lot farther east,” Delminio pointed out. “Just thank the powers above that our dowsers are getting better at spotting Swemmel’s dragons before the whoresons are right on top of us.”
“Even if they weren’t, I suppose we could always duck into a cellar with the Kaunians,” Bembo said.
“Go ahead if you want to,” Delminio said. “Me, I’d sooner take a chance on Unkerlanter eggs. Not long before you got here, a couple of constables went into a cellar full of blonds. They didn’t come out again-not alive, I mean. And of course the cellar was empty by the time anybody found ‘em. They weren’t pretty,” he added in meditative tones, “and we still don’t know just who did for them.”
“Oh.” Bembo kicked at the slates of the sidewalk. “I hadn’t heard about that.”
“No, you wouldn’t have,” Delminio agreed. “They don’t go out of their way to talk about it, if you know what I mean.” The clanging of the bells grew more urgent. “But we ought to look for a cellar ourselves right about now, and that means one outside the Kaunian quarter.”
“Oh,” Bembo said again. “Right.” He pointed to his partner. “Well, lead the way. You’re the one who’s supposed to know what’s where in this town. If you don’t know where the closest handy cellar is, what good are you?”
Neither of them ran from the Kaunian district. But neither of them dawdled, either. They ducked into a cellar already rapidly filling with Algarvian constables and soldiers and a few trusted Forthwegians just as the first eggs fell on Eoforwic. The floor beneath Bembo’s feet shook. Lanterns swung on their mounting brackets. Shadows swooped and danced. Bembo tried not to think about what would happen if an Unkerlanter egg landed right on top of the cellar.
Savagely, someone said, “I hope we’re paying the Unkerlanters back ten for one.”
Someone else spoke in reassuring tones: “Of course we are.”
Bembo wished he knew where thatof course came from. Blind optimism, probably. Had the war been going altogether in Algarve’s direction, the Unkerlanters wouldn’t have been able to drop eggs on Eoforwic. Had the war been going altogether in Algarve’s direction, Unkerlant would long since have been conquered.
And so Bembo decided there were worse things than huddling in a cellar while dragons painted rock-gray
