about it in the news sheets.'
'Here's hoping you're right,' Vanai said. 'The thinner they spread themselves, the better.' She stooped and plucked up a couple of horse mushrooms, slightly more flavorful cousins to ordinary meadow mushrooms. As she put them in her basket, she sighed. 'I don't think there are as many interesting kinds around Eoforwic as there were back where we came from.'
'I think you're right.' Ealstan started to add something else, but broke off and looked at her with an expression she'd come to recognize. Sure enough, he said, 'Your sorcery's slipped again.'
Vanai's mouth twisted. 'It shouldn't have. I renewed it not long before we walked to the caravan stop.'
'Well, it has,' her husband said. 'Is it my imagination, or has the spell been fading faster since you got pregnant?'
'I don't know,' Vanai said. 'Maybe. It's a good thing nobody's close by, that's all.' Now she hurried for the shelter of the oaks- not that they gave much shelter, with most of the leaves off the branches. She took out her two precious lengths of yarn, twirled them together, and made the spell anew. 'Is it all right?' she asked.
'Aye.' Ealstan nodded. Now he looked thoughtful. 'I wonder why it isn't holding so long these days. Maybe because you've got more life energy in you now, and so the spell has more to cover.'
'It could be. It sounds logical,' Vanai said. 'But I hope you're wrong. I hope I just didn't cast the spell quite right. I could have lost the disguise on the caravan car, not out here where no one but you saw me.' Her shiver, again, had nothing to do with the chilly, nasty weather. 'That would have been very bad.'
'Forward!' Sergeant Leudast shouted. 'Aye, forward, by the powers above!' Since the great battles in the Durrwangen bulge, he'd shouted the order to advance again and again. It still tasted sweet as honey, still felt strong as spirits, in his mouth. He might almost have been telling a pretty woman he loved her.
But the men holed up in the village ahead didn't love him or his comrades. The ragged banners flapping in the chilly breeze there were green and gold- the colors of what the Algarvians called the Kingdom of Grelz. As far as Leudast was concerned, that kingdom didn't exist. The Grelzers blazing at his company from those battered huts had a different opinion.
'Death to the traitors!' Captain Recared yelled. Somewhere in the long fight between Durrwangen and west-central Grelz, a promotion had finally caught up with him. Leudast couldn't remember where. It didn't matter to him. Promotion or no, Recared kept doing the same job. Leudast kept doing the same job, too, and nobody would ever promote him to lieutenant's rank. He was sure of that. He had neither the bloodlines nor the pull to become an officer. 'Death to the traitors!' Recared cried again, from behind a pale-barked birch tree.
Leudast crawled over toward Recared. Somebody in the village saw the motion and blazed at him. The ground was wet: steam puffed up where the beam bit, a few feet in front of his head. He froze. In southern Unkerlant, with winter coming on fast, that could easily be a literal as well as a metaphorical statement. After shivering for half a minute, he dashed forward again, and found shelter behind another tree trunk. The Grelzer blazed at him again, and missed again.
'Death to those who follow the false king!' Captain Recared roared.
'Sir,' Leudast said, and then, when Recared didn't notice him right away, 'Sir!'
'Eh?' That second time, he'd spoken loud enough to make Recared jump. The young regimental commander turned his head. 'Oh, it's you, Sergeant. What do you want?'
'Sir, if you don't mind, don't shout about death so much,' Leudast answered. 'It just makes the cursed Grelzers fight harder, if you know what I mean. Sometimes they'll surrender, if you give 'em the chance.'
Recared chewed on that: visibly, for Leudast watched his jaw muscles work. At last, he said, 'But they deserve death.'
'Aye, most of 'em do.' Leudast didn't want to argue with his superior; he just wanted him to shut up. 'But if you tell 'em ahead of time that they'll get it, then they've got no reason not to fight as hard as they can to keep from falling into our hands. Do you see what I'm saying?'
The winter before, Recared wouldn't have. Now, reluctantly, he nodded, though he said, 'I still have to make our men want to fight.'
'Haven't you noticed how it is, sir?' Leudast asked. 'Advancing makes a big difference there.' Unkerlanter egg-tossers began pelting the enemy-held village. Leudast grinned wider at each burst. 'And so does efficiency. They see we really can lick the whoresons on the other side.'
'Of course we can,' Recared exclaimed, as if the first two desperate summers of the war against Algarve had never happened. He knew how to take advantage of the egg-tossers, though. He raised his voice to a shout again: 'They've got to keep their heads down, boys, so we can take 'em. Forward! King Swemmel and victory!'
'Swemmel and victory!' Leudast echoed, also at the top of his lungs. Nothing wrong with that war cry, nothing at all. A lot of Unkerlant- and a good big stretch of the Duchy of Grelz here- had been recaptured behind it.
Recared ran forward- he was brave enough and to spare. Leudast followed him. So did everybody within earshot, and then the rest of the Unkerlanter soldiers who saw their comrades moving. 'Urra!' they shouted, and, 'Swemmel and victory!'
Shouts rose from inside the village: 'Raniero!' and 'Swemmel the murderer!' Advancing Unkerlanters went down. Some howled out cries that held no words, only pain. Others lay very still. These Grelzers weren't about to surrender regardless of what the Unkerlanters yelled.
They'd buried eggs in the mud in front of their village, too. An Unkerlanter soldier trod on one. He shrieked briefly as the released energies consumed him. Leudast cursed. His own countrymen had stalled Algarvian attacks in the Durrwangen salient with belt after belt of hidden eggs. Having the stratagem turned against them seemed anything but fair.
Then Recared pointed south of the village and said the happiest words any Unkerlanter footsoldier could use: 'Behemoths! Our behemoths, by the powers above!'
Even with snowshoes spreading their weight, even with the way made easier with brush and logs spread in front of them, the great beasts made slower, rougher going in the mud than they had on the hard ground of summer. But they moved forward faster than men could, and they and their armored crewmen were much harder to kill than ordinary footsoldiers.
Leudast said, 'Let's go with them and bypass this place. Once we get behind it, it won't be worth anything to the Grelzers anymore.'
Recared frowned. 'We ought to go straight at the enemy. He's right there in front of us.'
'And we're right here in front of him, where he's got the best blaze at us,' Leudast answered. 'When the Algarvians were driving us, they'd go around the places that fought hard and let them wither on the vine. They'd advance where we were weak, and we couldn't be strong everywhere.'
'That's so,' Recared said thoughtfully. He hadn't been there to go through most of that, but he knew about it. A great many of the soldiers who had gone through it were dead; Leudast knew how lucky he was to be among the exceptions. To his relief, Recared nodded again, blew his whistle, and shouted for his men to swing south of the village and go with the behemoths. 'The men who come after us, the ones who aren't good enough to fight in the first rank, can mop up these traitors,' he declared.
As Leudast hurried toward the behemoths, he wondered if the Grelzers would sally to try to stop them. But the men who followed King Mezentio's cousin stayed under cover; they knew they'd get slaughtered out in the open. Leudast expected them to get slaughtered anyway, but now it would take longer and cost more.
The Unkerlanters pressed on for another couple of miles before a well-aimed beam from a heavy stick left one of their behemoths kicking its way toward death in the mud. Another beam, not so well aimed, threw up a great gout of nasty-smelling steam between a couple of other behemoths. All the crews frantically pointed ahead. When Leudast saw Algarvian behemoths at the edge of some woods, he threw himself flat in the muck. The redheads didn't seem to have so many behemoths left these days, but they used the ones they did have with as much deadly panache as ever.
Still, two and a half years of war had taught King Swemmel's soldiers several painful but important lessons. Their behemoths didn't charge straight at the Algarvian beasts. Some of them traded beams and sticks with the
