Lieutenant.”
“You can’t say things like that,” Leudast answered, which didn’t mean the underofficer was wrong.
“I just thought you’d like to get back to Leiferde and your lady friend there,” Kiun said, his smile disarming now. “I’ve got a lady friend back there myself, matter of fact.”
“Have you?” Leudast said, and Kiun nodded. “I didn’t think you meant anything you shouldn’t have,” Leudast continued, “but you never can tell who may be listening.”
Kiun’s grimace said he understood exactly what Leudast meant. KingSwemmel saw traitors everywhere. That he saw so many had helped create a good many here in the Duchy of Grelz. It had probably helped create a good many elsewhere in Unkerlant, too. But any Swemmel could reach suffered for it: a potent argument against treason.
Captain Recared, the regimental commander, came up to Leudast. “I think things here have settled down for a while,” he said.
“Aye, sir.” Leudast nodded. “Just one more little fight.”One more little fight I’m lucky I lived through. How many didn ‘t this time? How many have I got left?
“We’ve held the bridgehead,” Recared went on, and Leudast nodded again. His superior said, “That’s what really matters. Sooner or later, we’ll break out and give the Algarvians another good kick in the teeth.”
“We’ve given them a lot of kicks, the past year and a half,” Leudast said. “Feels good to be the foot and not the backside.”
Recared laughed. He’d seemed impossibly young when he first took command of the regiment where Leudast commanded a company. His features were still youthful-he couldn’t have been much above twenty years old- but he’d been through a lot since then, just as all Unkerlanter soldiers had. All of us who are still breathing, anyhow, Leudast thought.
“You saw how they threw a few behemoths at us and tried to make them count for a lot,” Recared said. “That’s what they’re reduced to these days. They’re still dangerous-I expect they’ll always be dangerous-but we can beat them.”
They’re still dangerous-but we can beat them. Almost three years before, Leudast had been near the border between Unkerlanter and Algarvian-occupied Forthweg. He and his comrades had been on the point of attacking the Algarvians, but the redheads struck first. After that, Leudast had done nothing but retreat for a long time, till Mezentio’s men finally stalled in the snow of an Unkerlanter winter just outside Cottbus.
He’d done more retreating the following summer, down in the south, and missed some of the fight in Sulingen because he’d been down with a leg wound that still pained him now and again. But he’d come a long way east since then.
They’re still dangerous-but we can beat them. It would have seemed absurd in the days when the Algarvians swept all before them. Now it was simply truth.
“Do you know what I wish, sir?” Leudast asked.
“Probably,” Recared answered. “You wish you were back on the other side of the Fluss, finding some way or other to be alone with that girl you met there. Am I right, or am I wrong?” He chuckled. He knew he was right.
And Leudast could only nod once more. “If I live through the rest of the war, I think I’ll come back here.”
“Who knows whether you’ll think the same way then?” Recared said. “A girl goes to bed with you a few times, you decide you’re in love.” That was cynical enough to have come from an Algarvian’s throat. Before Leudast could say anything or even shake his head, the regimental commander changed the subject: “Do you know, Lieutenant, we’ve been promised a new field kitchen, and it never did show up.”
“Sir?” Leudast said blankly; this was the first he’d heard about a field kitchen. It was news to him that the Unkerlanter army boasted such things. In the field, even the Algarvians mostly cooked catch as catch can.
But Captain Recared nodded. “I’ve sent complaints west by crystallomancer, but you know what that’s worth. They might as well be written on the air. I really need someone to look into it. Why don’t you commandeer a horse or a mule or a unicorn and go raise a stink?”
“Me, sir?” Leudast squeaked. “I’m just a-”
“You’re a lieutenant,” Recared said. “And you’re not justa lieutenant. MarshalRathar personally promoted you, and everybody knows why. You’ll have my written authorization, too. I’ll make sure you take it with you.” He smiled a small, thoughtful smile. “The cursed thing is supposed to be somewhere not too far from a wide spot in the road called Leiferde. I expect you’ll be able to track it down in those parts, eh?”
Leudast stared at him. Recared looked back. No, he wasn’t so young and innocent as he had been. “Thank you, sir,” Leudast said.
“For what?” Recared answered. “You came back with that field kitchen and I’ll thank you. With it or without it, be back here in three days.”
“Aye, sir.” Leudast saluted. Leiferde was about a day away. That would leave him a day-or whatever was left of a day after he chased after a field kitchen{was there one somewhere near Alize’s village?)-to do what he pleased. And he knew exactly what he pleased. “Let me round up a mount…” He wasn’t much of a rider, but he would manage. After all, he had an incentive.
“You do that.” Recared sounded professionally brisk. “While you’re doing it, I’ll prepare your orders.”
Leudast took charge of a horse that had been pulling a wagon now down with a broken axle. Getting riding gear took rather longer than scaring up the animal. He felt very high off the ground when he rode back to Recared.
“Here you are,” Recared said. “Now you’re official. Go find that field kitchen-and whatever else you happen to find around Leiferde.” That was as close as he came to admitting he knew Leudast might have anything else in mind.
Saluting again, Leudast rode off. He wanted to boot the horse up to a gallop, to get to Alize’s village as fast as he could. Only the accurate suspicion that he would fall off on his head long before he got to Leiferde kept him at a more sedate pace.
Unkerlanter artisans had thrown a couple of quick bridges of precut lengths of timber across the Fluss. Military constables stood at the eastern end of the one Leudast approached. They inspected the order Recared had given him, then nodded and stood aside. “Pass on, Lieutenant,” one of them said, and grudged him a salute. “Youare authorized.” He sounded as if he’d turned back plenty who weren’t. He probably had.
More artisans were bringing up the timbers for another bridge. Leudast waved to them as he headed west past their wagons. He neared Leiferde early the next morning, after sleeping rolled in his cloak by the side of the road. Before going into the village, he went to the supply dump in search of the possibly mythical field kitchen.
To his amazement, he found a sergeant who knew what he was talking about. “Aye, Lieutenant, your regimental commander’s been bending everybody’s ear about the cursed thing,” the fellow said. “We’re bloody short of draft animals, is the trouble. You can haul it away with your horse there right now, if you want to.”
“I’ve got some other business on this side of the Fluss I need to take care of first,” Leudast said. “I’ll be back for it tomorrow morning.”
“Suits me,” the supply sergeant said. “It’ll be ready and waiting.”
It suited Leudast, too. He mounted the horse and rode into Leiferde. Most of the peasants ignored him: what was one more soldier, after so many?
He found Alize weeding the vegetable plot by her father’s house. She let out a squeal of delight and sprang to her feet. “What are youdoing here?” she asked.
He grinned. “I was in the neighborhood, so I just thought I’d drop by.”
Nine
Some people had always turned their backs on Talsu when he walked through the streets of Skrunda. They were the folk who thought no one could come back from a dungeon without giving himself to the Algarvians. Now that he’d come out of the constabulary building without visible damage, more people turned their backs on him. They thought no one could do that without telling the redheads what they wanted to hear.
Most of the time, Talsu was able to ignore such snubs. But when they came from young men who had been
