been sailing here. It is all routine. I wanted the chance to fight the Algarvians on the mainland.”
Xavega threw her arms around him and kissed him. A nearby Lagoan sailor whistled enviously. Squeezed against Xavega’s firm, soft warmth, Leino couldn’t imagine why he’d wanted to leave her. He knew he would remember as soon as he no longer felt her breasts pressing against him, but that would be later. Now… Now he wanted to go back to his cabin with her.
No time for that. They got into the boat, and sailors lowered it down to the sea. Another mage, a Lagoan, stood at the stern to seize the sorcerous energy in the ley line and propel the boat toward the distant shore. Xavega said, “When I volunteered to go to the mainland, I did not think I would see you again.”
“Why not?” Leino asked. He hadn’t expected to see her, either, but he didn’t care to come right out and say so.
“Well…” Xavega hesitated, but then spoke with her usual frankness: “You are a Kuusaman, after all.”Her usual frankness and her usual ignorance,
Leino thought as she went on, “I did not know if you would be eager to see the fighting up close.”
“My dear, we do not revel in war the way Algarvic folk do,” Leino replied with a sigh. “That does not mean we cannot fight well. We are fighting Gyongyos by ourselves, as near as makes no difference, and two out of every three soldiers from the island in Jelgava are Kuusamans.”
Xavega made a sour face. She had to know Leino was telling the truth. No one, not even the most ardent Lagoan patriot, could deny that. Liking it was another matter. At last, she said, “It is not my fault that your kingdom is bigger than mine.”
“I never said it was your fault. But you must not think that we Kuusamans cannot fight, or that we are afraid to fight.” Leino raised an eyebrow of his own, perhaps imitating Captain Brunho. “Your King Vitor did not think we were afraid to fight. When he went to war against Algarve, he was afraid we would go to war… against Lagoas.”
He remembered some of the hotheads at a party at his brother-in-law’s wanting to do just that. Mezentio’s men wouldn’t have attacked Yliharma then-not in this war, anyhow. But an Algarve bestriding Derlavai would surely have looked across the Strait of Valmiera before long, regardless of whether the kingdom dominant there was a nominal ally.
The boat skimmed up to the edge of the beach. The mage said something in Lagoan, then condescended to translate it into classical Kaunian for Leino: “All out.”
Out Leino went, into calf-deep water. He was glad he didn’t get his duffel wet. Xavega splashed down beside him. The boat slid away towardHabakkuk. As so many soldiers had before, the two mages squelched up onto the Jelgavan sands. Few signs of the fight were left close by the sea, though a handful of sticks, some with Kuusaman hats tied to them, others with Lagoan headgear, had been thrust into the sand to mark soldiers’ final resting places.
A Kuusaman soldier came up to Leino and Xavega and said, “You are the mages we were told to expect?”
“No, just a couple of tourists, a little early in the season,” Leino answered. The trooper grinned. Xavega squawked. That was when Leino realized he’d spoken his own language. He translated for her. She rolled her eyes. Out of bed, she didn’t believe in foolishness.
“Just over that rise is a ley-line caravan depot where you can go forward, up toward the front,” the soldier said.
Again, Leino turned his words into classical Kaunian. After he’d done that, he asked the fellow, “How close to Balvi will the caravan take us?”
“About fifteen miles. That’s where the front is,” the soldier answered. “King Donalitu is practically pissing himself on account of he can’t get back into his precious palace.” He set a hand on his chest. “Breaks my heart, it does.”
“I’ll bet,” Leino said, which made the other Kuusaman laugh out loud. When he translated for Xavega, she laughed, too. Leino did a little laughing himself. He wasn’t angry, or wasn’t too angry, at Donalitu. Without the bad- tempered Jelgavan monarch, he wouldn’t have found himself in Xavega’s arms.
And you wouldn‘t have leftHabakkukto get away from her, he told himself. See how well that worked.
He and Xavega trudged along with the Kuusaman soldier till they got to the depot, which was canvas over bare timbers. A sergeant there checked their names off on a list. Leino threw down his duffel bag with a groan of relief after climbing into a car. Xavega’s didn’t seem to bother her. She sat down beside him, showing a lot of leg and not bothering to fuss with her kilt to show less.
A few soldiers boarded the ley-line caravan, and a couple of men, one Kuusaman, the other Lagoan, with the green sashes of healers. Then the caravan, still not very full, began to glide west, away from the sea and toward the fighting. The country rose rapidly; much of the interior of Jelgava was a high plateau, none too well watered and very hot-especially by Kuusaman standards. Few mountains towered above the plateau. It was as if, having got that high, the land refused to do much more.
Before long, Leino saw fresh signs of war: craters from bursting eggs scarring fields; a grove of apricots ravaged by more eggs and half burned; the carcass of a dragon, with buzzards all over it; a group of men working to get the armor off a dead behemoth. The behemoth was Kuusaman, the armor the ceramic-and-steel composite Leino’s own sorcery had helped create. It was stronger against beams than regular chainmail, but hadn’t saved this particular beast. He hoped the crewmen had managed to escape.
The caravan car glided past trenches, and past hastily dug graves-red-brown lines on green. Still… Leino turned to Xavega and spoke in classical Kaunian: “The Algarvians have not put up the hardest of fights.”
“No. The Lagoans have rolled over them.” She coughed a couple of times, then grudgingly added, “And the Kuusamans as well.” It was more like the Kuusamans and the Lagoans as well, but Leino didn’t bother correcting her.
They also glided past dragon farms and fields full of grazing behemoths and unicorns and horses and rows of egg-tossers and piles of eggs ready to fling and endless files of tents, some Lagoan brown, others-more- Kuusaman green: all the appurtenances of modern war.
And, when they arrived at the sorcerers’ encampment, they found another Kuusaman sergeant. This one used classical Kaunian so well Leino wondered what he’d done before becoming a soldier: “Ah, the pair fromHabakkuk. I have you assigned to the same tent.”
Xavega smiled and nodded. The smile was full of promise, so much promise that Leino nodded, too. So much for your good intentions, he thought. Well, you’ll enjoy yourself… till the quarrels start again. He sighed. Odds are, it won’t be long.
Marshal Rathar’s headquarters had moved east, out of Pewsum. Had he stayed there, the front in northern Unkerlant would have left him behind, as the sea leaves bathers behind when the tide goes out. Now he directed the attack against Algarve from a village just west of Sommerda, a village whose name he hadn’t bothered to learn. As things stood, he didn’t think he would ever know it.
He turned to General Gurmun and said, “You know, we’re going to have to move again soon.”
“Looks that way,” Gurmun agreed. “The troopers are getting ahead of us, sure enough. By the time we’re through, this Algarvian army will be gone from the board. Powers below eat all the redheads. I won’t miss ‘em a fornicating bit.”
“Neither will I.” As it had a way of doing, Rathar’s gaze fell on the map pinned to a table undoubtedly stolen from a fancier hut than this one. He shook his head in slow wonder. “It’s going just the way we drew it up back in Cottbus. If anything, we’re ahead of the timeline we drew up back in Cott-bus. Who would have imagined that would happen against the Algarvians?”
Dispassionate as if he had clockwork in his belly, Gurmun answered, “We broke the buggers last year in the Durrwangen bulge. Now it’s just a matter of kicking down the door and charging through.”
Rationally speaking, Rathar supposed he was right. Still, he said, “This is the fourth summer of the war against them. It’s the first time they haven’t tried an attack of their own. Do you wonder that I’m happy at how things are going?”
“No, lord Marshal,” Gurmun said. “You can be happy. Just don’t be surprised.” He sounded like what he was: an officer tough, competent, and altogether confident. Unkerlant hadn’t had many officers like that when the war against Algarve started. She still didn’t have enough, but one Gurmun made up for a lot.
“How are the behemoths holding up?” Rathar asked.
