“Losses are within the range we expected,” Gurmun answered. “The farms in the west are sending enough fresh beasts forward. The redheads’ dragons never could fly that far, not even when things looked worst for us. And the Gongs never have put a whole lot of dragons in the air against us. I wouldn’t want to try flying over the Elsung Mountains, either.”
“Something to that,” Rathar agreed.
“A week-maybe even less-and we’ll be swarming over the Forthwegian border,” Gurmun said. “What was the Forthwegian border, I mean.”
Marshal Rathar started to call him a mad optimist. Then he took another look at the map, and at what the Algarvians could put between his behemoths and the old Forthwegian frontier. “You may be right,” he said.
“You bet I’m right,” Gurmun declared.
“Getting more footsoldiers on horseback helps, too,” Rathar said. “Even though they fight on foot, moving ‘em mounted helps ‘em keep up with the behemoths. The redheads used that trick, too, whenever they could scrape up the mounts.”
“Powers below eat the redheads,” Gurmun said again. “The powers beloware eating the redheads, and we’re serving them up. The first couple of years of this fight, they taught us lessons. Now we’re better than our schoolmasters.”
Rathar doubted that. The Algarvians still had more flexible arrangements than the soldiers of his own kingdom. They coordinated better among foot-soldiers and behemoths and dragons. Each of their regiments or squadrons had more crystals than its Unkerlanter counterpart, which made them more responsive to trouble. An Algarvian regiment was probably worth close to two Unkerlanter units.
But if King Swemmel’s soldiers threw three or four or five regiments at each Algarvian formation… Here in the north, the Unkerlanters had thrown a lot more than that at each Algarvian regiment at the spearpoint of the attack. And the redheads, however fiercely they’d fought, couldn’t stand up against such an overwhelming weight of numbers. This time, they’d really and truly broken.
“Our way of putting out a fire is throwing bodies on it till it smothers,” Rathar said. “Sorry, Gurmun, but I don’t think that’s the most efficient way to do things.”
“It works,” Gurmun said. “It’s worked.”
“So it does,” Rathar agreed. Again, if it hadn’t worked, Unkerlant would have lost the war. But the price the kingdom was paying… Every ruined, empty village he rode through as his countrymen fought their way east tore at him. How would Unkerlant rebuild once the fighting finally ended? Where would the peasants to fill those villages come from? He had no idea.
Before he could say as much-not that General Gurmun would have worried about such a thing; his mind focused solely on using his beloved behemoths against the Algarvians-the sound of many marching feet came to his ear. His head swung toward it: toward the eastern side of the village, the side closest to the fighting. Gurmun’s head swung the same way. A grin spread over his blunt-featured face as he said, “How much do you want to bet those are captives?”
“I’d sooner keep my silver, thanks,” Rathar answered.
Gurmun’s grin got wider. “Let’s go have a look at the whoresons.” Without waiting for a reply, he hurried out of the peasant hut. Rathar followed a little more slowly. He’d seen captive Algarvians before.
Still, being reminded what these attacks were doing to the enemy wouldn’t hurt. And the column of captives coming through the village represented more than a regiment’s worth of men. The guards in their rock-gray tunics wore grins a lot like Gurmun’s. Some of the Algarvians were grinning, too: the nervous grins of men glad to be alive and unsure how much longer they would stay that way. More of them looked glum. They might be alive, but they didn’t want to be in Unkerlanter hands. Their light brown tunics and kilts were shabbier than Algarvian uniforms had been when the war was new. It wasn’t just that they were filthy and worn; the cloth itself was thinner and cheaper and flimsier than what they’d used then.
Despite everything, a few redheads strode along as if they owned the world. They towered over their captors, as Algarvians usually did tower over Unkerlanters, and gave the impression that the guards were actually escorts, taking them someplace where more Unkerlanters would serve them. Rathar admired Algarvian arrogance and despised it at the same time. Regardless of their true situation, Mezentio’s men still reckoned themselves the masters of Derlavai. Some of them almost made even their foes believe it.
Rathar held up a hand. When the Marshal of Unkerlant gave even an informal order, his mean leaped to obey. “Column halt!” the guards screamed, some in their own language, others in fragments of Algarvian.
“Who here speaks Unkerlanter?” Rathar asked. He had a little Algarvian himself, but only a little, and knew no classical Kaunian, the language that tied together educated men of all kingdoms in the east of Derlavai and on the island Kuusamo and Lagoas shared.
A redhead stepped toward him: one of the ones who’d kept his spirit in spite of captivity. “I being in your kingdom three years,” he said, trilling his words in a way no Unkerlanter would. “I learning your speech, some. What you wanting?”
“Your head on a plate,” Gurmun growled.
But Rathar waved him to silence. “What do you think of things now that we have beaten Algarve in the summer as well as the winter?”
The redhead’s shrug was a masterpiece of its kind. “I being in your kingdom three years,” he repeated. “No Unkerlanters in Algarve. No Unkerlanters ever in Algarve. Sooner or later, we winning war.”
Gurmun wasn’t the only one who growled then. So did all the guards who heard the Algarvian. Rathar waved for quiet again. He got it, but he suspected the captive would have a hard time once out of his sight. “How can you say that,” he demanded, “when we’ve driven your countrymen out of most of what they held here in the north in just a few weeks?”
With another shrug, the Algarvian replied, “We having secret sorceries. We using them soon. Turning Unkerlant upsydown, insyout. You seeing.” He sounded like a man who knew exactly what he was talking about.
And Unkerlant had already known too much horror from Algarvian sorceries. Some of the guards muttered among themselves. A couple made signs the peasants used to turn aside evil omens. And now, instead of growling, Gurmun barked: “What kind of sorceries?”
“Not knowing.” The captive shrugged yet again. “If likes of me knowing”- he had a corporal’s pips on his shoulder boards-”not being secret, eh?”
“I think you’re lying,” Gurmun said in a deadly voice.
“Thinking how you liking.” The Algarvian’s voice made it plain he didn’t care what an Unkerlanter, even an Unkerlanter general, thought. “KingMezentiosaying these things so. I believing he.”
Marshal Rathar gestured once more, waving the captives on. The guards screamed at them. They got moving. Before long, the arrogant redhead was lost in the throng. Not soon enough, though, Rathar thought.
“Do you believe the son of a whore?” Gurmun asked, sounding unwontedly nervous.
“I believe he believes himself,” Rathar answered. “Whether Mezentio is telling lies… That’s a different question.”
“It’s not the first we’ve heard of these secret sorceries.” Aye, Gurmun was unhappy. “A lot of the captives we’ve taken lately go on about them. Where there’s smoke, there’s liable to be fire.”
“Where there are Algarvians, there’s liable to be trouble,” Rathar said, and his general of behemoths nodded vigorously. He went on, “Reports have gone back to Cottbus, though, andKingSwemmel doesn’t seem to worried about this.”
“Good,” Gurmun said.
Although Marshal Rathar nodded, he wondered whether it was good. True, Swemmel saw plots behind ever chair and under every rug. If he didn’t think these worrisome reports true, it was a good sign he judged them an Algarvian bluff. That was fine-if he proved right. Every once in a while, though, his instinct let him down badly, as when he’d judged that the Algarvians wouldn’t expect an Unkerlanter attack three years before. Maybe the redheads hadn’t expected such an attack, but if not, it was only because they’d been so far along with plans for their own, which had gone in first. No mistake now could cost as much as that one had-or so Rathar devoutly hoped- but he didn’t want to have to deal with the king’s mistakes under any circumstances.
A crystallomancer burst out of the hut next to the one in which Rathar made his headquarters. “Lord Marshal!” the young man shouted. “We’ve got men inside Forthweg, sir!”
