different kinds of horror. Istvan hoped he never found out, either. Eating goat's flesh was the worst abomination Gyongyos recognized. Istvan and several of his comrades knew the sin from the inside out. If anyone but Captain Tivadar ever discovered that they knew, they were doomed. Some of their horror was disgust at themselves, some a fear others might learn what they'd done.
'How did they come to do that?' asked Lajos, who'd already shown more interest in goats and goat's flesh than Istvan was comfortable with.
'They overran one of those little forest villages you stumble across every once in a while,' Hevesi answered. Istvan nodded. He and his squad had overrun such a village himself, and doubted if any mountain valley in all of Gyongyos were so isolated. Hevesi went on, 'The accursed Unkerlanters keep goats, of course. And these three just slaughtered one and roasted it and ate of the flesh.' He shuddered.
'Of their own free will?' Kun asked. 'Knowingly?'
'By the stars, they did,' Hevesi said.
Kun bared his teeth in what was anything but a smile. In the tones of a man passing sentence, he said, 'I expect they deserved it, then.'
'Aye.' Istvan could speak with conviction, too. 'If they did it and they knew what they were doing, that sets them beyond the pale. There might be some excuse for letting them live if they didn't.' He wouldn't look at the scar on his hand, but he could feel the blood pulsing through it.
'I don't know that it really much matters, Sergeant. If they ate goat…' Hevesi drew his thumb across his throat.
'By the stars, that's right,' Lajos said. 'No excuse for that sort of filthy business. None.' He spoke with great certainty.
'Well, there are those who would tell you you're right, and plenty of 'em,' Istvan said, wishing with all his heart that Hevesi had come back to his squad with any other gossip but that. The way things looked, he would never be able to escape from goat-eating and stories about goat-eating as long as he lived.
'What was that?' Szonyi suddenly pointed east. 'Did you hear something from the Unkerlanters?'
The question made soldiers separate as fast as Hevesi's gossip had brought them together. Men snatched up their sticks and scrambled off to loopholes and good blazing positions. Istvan wouldn't have thought that standing on the defensive came naturally to the warrior race the Gyongyosians prided themselves on being. But they'd seemed willing enough to give the Unkerlanters the initiative; by all the signs, they'd never quite known what to do with it themselves.
After an anxious pause here, they relaxed. 'Looks like you were wrong,' Istvan told Szonyi.
'Aye. Looks like I was. Doesn't break my heart.' Szonyi's broad shoulders went up and down in a shrug.
Kun said, 'Better to be alert about something that isn't there than to miss something that is.'
'That's right,' Istvan said gravely. The three veterans, and a couple of other men in the squad, nodded with more solemnity than the remark might have deserved. Istvan suspected Szonyi hadn't heard anything whatsoever out of the ordinary. He had managed to get Hevesi and the rest of the squad to stop talking about- more important, to stop thinking about- the abomination of goat-eating, though, and that, as far as Istvan was concerned, was all to the good.
Kun might have been thinking along with him. Behind the lenses of his spectacles, his eyes slid toward Szonyi. 'Sometimes you're not as foolish as you look,' he remarked, and then spoiled it by adding, 'Sometimes, of course, you bloody well are.'
'Thanks,' Szonyi said. 'Thanks ever so much. I'll remember you in my nightmares.'
'Enough,' Istvan said. 'I've had enough of saying, 'Enough,' to the two of you.'
And then he made a sharp chopping motion with his right hand, urging Szonyi and Kun and the rest of the squad to silence. Somewhere in the woods out in front of them, a twig had snapped- not an imaginary one like Szonyi's, but unquestionably real. There was plenty of snow and ice out there; its weight sometimes broke great boughs. Those sharp reports could panic a regiment. This one might have been something like that, but smaller. Or it might have been an Unkerlanter making a mistake.
'What do you think, Sergeant?' Kun's voice was a thin thread of whisper.
Istvan's shrug barely moved one shoulder. 'I think we'd better find out.' He made a little gesture that could be seen from the side but not from ahead. 'Szonyi, with me.'
'Aye, Sergeant,' Szonyi said. Istvan could hear the answer. He didn't think any of Swemmel's men would be able to, even if they were just on the other side of the redoubt.
Kun looked offended. Istvan didn't care. Kun was a good soldier. Szonyi was a better one, especially moving forward. But then, instead of getting angry, Kun said something sensible: 'Let me use my little sorcery. That will tell you if anyone's out there before you go.'
After a couple of heartbeats' thought, Istvan nodded. 'Aye. Go ahead. Do it.'
The charm was very simple. If it hadn't been very simple, the former mage's apprentice wouldn't have been able to use it. When he was done, he said one word: 'Somebody.'
'There would be.' Istvan gestured to Szonyi. 'Let's go find out. The idea is to come back, understand, not just to disappear out there.'
'I'm not stupid,' Szonyi answered. Istvan wasn't altogether sure that was true, but he didn't argue.
They left the redoubt to the rear, shielded from the enemy's sight- and from his sticks- by the snow-covered logs piled up in front. Istvan gestured to the left. Szonyi nodded. Both the gesture and the nod were small, all but unnoticeable. In their white smocks, Istvan and Szonyi might have been a couple of moving drifts of snow. Istvan felt cold as a snowdrift.
But, even as he muttered inaudibly to himself about that, he also felt like a proper warrior again. He wondered about that. It perplexed him. Saying it alarmed him wouldn't have been far shy of the mark, either. He'd seen enough fighting to last him a lifetime, probably two. Why go looking for more?
Because that's what I've been trained to do, he thought, but that wasn't the whole answer, or even any great part of it. Because if I don't go looking for it, it'll come looking for me. At that, he nodded again, though he was careful to keep the hood of his smock low and expose none of his face to an enemy's beam.
He knew what he was doing in the snow. He'd had enough practice in it, after all; his home valley was worse in winter than these woods ever dreamt of being. He got within five or six feet of an ermine before it realized he was there. He'd spotted it by the triangle of black dots that marked its eyes and nose and the black spot at the very tip of its tail that never went white in winter. It drew back in sudden horror when it spied or scented him, baring a pink mouth full of needle teeth. Then it scurried behind a tree trunk and vanished.
Istvan followed it, not in any real pursuit but because that beech also gave him cover from the east. The ermine, by then, was gone, only tiny tracks in the snow showing where it had run.
Szonyi had found cover behind a pine not far away. He glanced toward Istvan, who paused for a moment, taking his bearings. Then Istvan pointed in the direction from which he thought the suspicious noise had come. Szonyi considered, then nodded. They both crawled forward again.
Now they advanced separately, each one taking his own path to the target. If something happens to me, Szonyi will get back with the word, Istvan thought. He hoped the converse was in Szonyi's mind. He hoped even more that the two of them were right.
Have to be close now, went through his mind a few minutes later. He looked around for Szonyi, but didn't see him. He refused to let that worry him. Despite the stories told, silently killing a man wasn't that easy. Had something gone wrong, he would have heard the struggle. So he told himself, at any rate.
He started to come out from behind a birch, then froze in the sense of not moving as opposed to the sense of being cold. In the snow in front of the tree were tracks- not the little marks of an ermine, but those of a man on snowshoes. The Unkerlanters were very fond of snowshoes, and Istvan didn't think any of his own folk had come this way lately.
A scout, he thought. Doesn't look like more than one man. Just a scout, snooping around to see what we're up to. That wasn't so bad. He vastly preferred it to coming across the forerunners of a brigade about to sweep down on him. Maybe the rumor of attack Hevesi had brought was nothing but a rumor. The Unkerlanters have as much trouble putting enough men into this fight as we do. Different reasons, but as much trouble.
No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than the Unkerlanter soldier came out from behind a tree a couple of hundred yards away. Istvan got only a glimpse- other trees blocked his view and gave him hardly any chance for a good blaze.
