Those shouts were in Algarvian. Algarvian officers commanded Plegmund's Brigade, and all orders came in their tongue. In a way, that made sense: the Brigade had to fight alongside Algarvian units and work smoothly with them. In another way, though, it was a reminder of who were the puppets and who the puppeteers.
'Let's go,' Werferth said. He would never be anything more than a sergeant. Of course, had Forthweg's independent army survived, he would never have been anything more than a sergeant, either, for he had not a drop of noble blood.
Sidroc winced and cursed as the icy wind tore at him when he left the shelter of the peasant's hut. But he and his comrades were grinning at one another as they formed up and advanced toward the behemoths and toward the tumbled Unkerlanter corpses in the snow.
The Algarvian behemoth crews weren't grinning. 'Who are these whoresons?' one of them shouted to a recognizably Algarvian lieutenant among the Forthwegians. 'They look like a pack of Unkerlanters.'
'We're from Plegmund's Brigade,' the lieutenant answered. Sidroc followed Algarvian fairly well. He'd learned some in school, mostly beaten in with a switch, and more since joining the Brigade, which had ways of training harsher yet.
'Plegmund's Brigade!' the redhead on the behemoth burst out. 'Plegmund's bloody Brigade? Powers above, we thought we were rescuing real Algarvians.'
'Love you too, prickface.' That was a trooper named Ceorl, like Sidroc in the squad Werferth led. He always had been and always would be more a ruffian than a soldier. Here, though, Sidroc completely agreed with him.
Major Spinello eyed the approaching Algarvian physician with all the warmth of a crippled elk eyeing a wolf. The physician either didn't notice or was used to such glances from recuperating soldiers. 'Good morning,' he said cheerfully. 'How are we today?'
'I haven't the faintest idea about you, good my sir,' Spinello replied- like a lot of Algarvians, he was given to extravagant flights of verbiage. 'As for myself, I've never been better in all my born days. When do you propose to turn me loose so I can get back into the fight against the cursed Unkerlanters?'
He'd been saying the same thing for weeks. At first, the healing mages had ignored him. Then he'd been turned over to mere physicians… who'd also ignored him. This one said, 'Well, we shall see what we shall see.' He pressed a hearing tube against the right side of Spinello's chest. 'If you'd be so kind as to cough for me…?'
After taking a deep breath, Spinello coughed. He also had the Algarvian fondness for overacting; with the energy he put into his coughs, he might have been at death's door from consumption. 'There, you quack,' he said when he let the racking spasm end. 'Does that satisfy you?'
Perhaps fortunately for him, the physician was harder to offend than most of his countrymen. Instead of getting angry- or instead of continuing the conversation through seconds, as some might have done- the fellow just asked, 'Did that hurt?'
'No. Not a bit.' Spinello lied without hesitation. He'd taken a sniper's beam in the chest- powers above, a sniper's beam right through the chest- down in Sulingen. He had the feeling he'd hurt for years to come, if not for the rest of his life. That being so, he could- he had to- deal with the pain.
'I was listening to you,' the physician said. 'So that you know, I don't believe you, not a word of it.'
'So that you know, sirrah, I don't care what you believe.' Spinello hopped down from the infirmary bed on which he'd been sitting and glared at the physician. He had to look up his nose, not down it, for the doctor overtopped him by several inches: he was a bantam rooster of a man, but strong for his size and very quick. He also had a powerful will; under his gaze, the physician gave back a pace before checking himself. Voice soft and menacing, Spinello demanded, 'Will you write me out the certificate that warrants me fit to return to duty?'
To his surprise, the physician said, 'Aye.' He reached into the folder he'd set on the bed and pulled out a printed form. 'In fact, I have filled it out, all but the signature.' He plucked a pen and a sealed bottle of ink from the breast pocket of his tunic, inked the pen, and scrawled something that might have been his name or might equally have been an obscenity in demotic Gyongyosian. Then he handed Spinello the completed form. 'This will permit you to return to duty, Major. It doesn't warrant you as fit, because you aren't fit. But the kingdom needs you, and you're unlikely to fall over dead at the first harsh breeze. Powers above keep you safe.' He bowed.
And Spinello bowed in return, more deeply than the physician had. That was an extraordinary courtesy; as a count, he surely outranked the other man, who was bound to be only a commoner. But the physician had given him what he wanted most in all the world. He bowed again. 'I am in your debt, sir.'
With a sigh, the physician said, 'Why a man should be so eager to rush headlong into danger has always been beyond me.'
'You said it yourself: Algarve needs me,' Spinello replied. 'Now tell me at once: is it true the last of our brave lads have had to yield themselves in Sulingen?'
'It's true,' the physician said grimly. 'The crystallomancers can't reach anyone there, and the Unkerlanters are shouting themselves hoarse at the victory. Not a word about the price we made them pay.'
Spinello cursed. The Algarvians had fought their way into Sulingen the summer before- fought their way into it and never fought their way out again. South beyond the Wolter River lay the Mamming Hills, full of the cinnabar that made dragonfire burn so hot and fierce. Take Sulingen, storm over the Wolter, seize the mines in the hills- it had all seemed so straightforward.
It would have been, too, had the Unkerlanters not fought like demons for every street, for every manufactory, for every floor of every block of flats. And now, even though Swemmel's men had, as the physician said, surely paid a great price, an Algarvian army was gone, gone as if it had never been.
'I hope they send me west again in a tearing hurry,' Spinello said, and the physician rolled his eyes. Spinello pointed to the closet at the far end of the room. 'I'm sick of these cursed hospital whites. Is my uniform in there?'
'If you mean the one in which you came here, Major, no,' the physician replied. 'That one, as I hope you will understand, is somewhat the worse for wear. But a major's uniform does await you, aye. One moment.' He went over to the closet, set a hand on the latch, and murmured softly. 'There. Now it will open to your touch. We couldn't very well have had you escaping before you were even close to healed.'
'I suppose not,' Spinello admitted. They'd known him, all right. He walked over to the closet and tried the latch. It did open. It hadn't before; he'd tried a good many times. With a squeak of dry hinges, the door opened, too. There on hooks hung a tunic and kilt of severe military cut. The tunic, he saw to his pride, had on it a wound ribbon. He was entitled to that ribbon, and he would wear it. He got out of the baggy infirmary clothes and put on the uniform. It was baggy, too, baggy enough to make him angry. 'Couldn't they have found a tailor who wasn't drunk?' he snapped.
'It is cut to your measure, Major,' the physician answered. 'Your former measure, I should say. You've lost a good deal of flesh since you were wounded.'
'This much?' Spinello didn't want to believe it. But he couldn't very well call the physician a liar, either.
Also hanging in the closet was a broad-brimmed hat with a bright feather from some bird from tropical Siaulia sticking up from the leather hatband. Spinello clapped it on. His head hadn't shrunk, anyhow. That was a relief.
The physician said, 'I have a mirror in my belt pouch, if you'd like to see yourself. We don't keep many in infirmaries. They might dismay patients like you, and they might do worse than dismay others, the ones unlucky enough to receive head wounds.'
'Ah.' Contemplating that was enough to make Spinello decide he hadn't come out so bad after all. In unwontedly quiet tones, he said, 'Aye, sir, if you'd be so kind.'
'Of course, Major.' The physician took it out and held it up.
Spinello whistled softly. He had lost flesh; his cheekbones were promontories just under the skin, and the line of his jaw sharper than it had been since he left his teens- an era more than a dozen years behind him now. But his green eyes still gleamed, and the attendants who'd trimmed his coppery mustache and little chin beard and side whiskers had done a respectable job. He tilted the hat to a jauntier angle and said, 'How ever will the girls keep their legs closed when they see me walking down the street?'
With a snort, the doctor put the mirror away. 'You're well enough, all right,' he said. 'Go back to the west and terrorize the Unkerlanter women.'
'Oh, my dear fellow!' Spinello rolled his eyes. 'A homelier lot you'd never want to see. Built like bricks,
