almost all of them. I had better luck when I was on occupation duty in Forthweg. This little blond Kaunian, couldn't have been above seventeen' -his hands shaped an hourglass in the air- 'and she'd do anything I wanted, and I do mean anything.'
'How many times have you told me about her since you've been in my care?' the physician asked. 'Her name was Vanai, and she lived in Oyngestun, and-'
'And every word of it true, too,' Spinello said indignantly. He took a cloak from the closet and threw it on, then dealt with shoes and stockings. He was panting by the time he finished dressing; he'd spent too long flat on his back. But he refused to admit how worn he was, even to himself. 'Now, then- what formalities must I go through to escape your lair here?'
He presented the certificate of discharge to the floor nurse. After she signed it, he presented it to the nursing station downstairs. After someone there signed it, Spinello presented it to the soldier at the doorway. The man had won the soft post with a right tunic sleeve pinned up short. He pointed along the street and said, 'The reassignment depot is three blocks that way, sir. Can you walk it?'
'Why? Is this a test?' Spinello asked. Rather to his surprise, the one-armed soldier nodded. He realized it made a certain amount of sense: you might browbeat a doctor into giving you a certificate, but no one who couldn't walk three blocks had any business going off to the front. The soldier signed the certificate quite legibly. Spinello asked him, 'Were you lefthanded… before?'
'No, sir,' the fellow answered. 'I got this in Forthweg, early on. I've had two and a half years to learn how to do things over again.'
With a nod, Spinello left the infirmary for the first time since being brought there and headed in the direction the disabled soldier had given him. Before the war, Trapani had been a gay, lively city, as befit the capital of a great kingdom. The gray gloom on the streets now had only a little to do with the overcast sky and the nasty, cold mist in the air: it was a thing of the spirit, not of the weather.
People hurried along about their business without the strut and swagger that were as much a part of Algarvian life as wine. Women mostly looked mousy, which wasn't easy for Spinello's redheaded compatriots. The only men in the streets who weren't in uniform were old enough to be veterans of the Six Years' War a generation before or else creaking ancients even older than that.
And everyone, men and women alike, looked grim. The news sheets the vendors sold were bordered in black. Sulingen had fallen, all right. It had been plain for a long time that the town would fall to the Unkerlanters, but no one here seemed to have wanted to believe it no matter how plain it was. That made the blow even harder now that it struck home.
Big signs outside the entrance named the reassignment depot. Spinello bounded up the marble steps, threw the doors wide, and shouted, 'I'm fit for duty again! The war is won!'
Some of the soldiers in there laughed. Some of them snorted. Some just rolled their eyes. 'No matter who you are, sir, and no matter how great you are, you still have to queue up,' a sergeant said. Spinello did, though he hated lines.
When he presented the multiply signed certificate of discharge to another sergeant, that worthy shuffled through files. At last, he said, 'I have a regiment for you, Major, if you care to take it.'
That was a formality. Spinello drew himself up to stiff attention. 'Aye!' he exclaimed. The catch in his breath was partly from his healing, partly excitement.
The sergeant handed him his orders, as well as a list of ley-line caravans that would take him to the men who held the line somewhere in northern Unkerlant. They were waiting for him with bated breath. They just didn't know it yet. 'If you hurry, sir, there's a caravan leaving from the main depot for Eoforwic in half an hour,' the sergeant said helpfully. 'That'll get you halfway there.'
Spinello dashed out of the reassignment depot and screamed for a cab. He made the ley-line caravan he needed. As he glided southwest out of Trapani, he wondered why he was in such a hurry to go off and perhaps get himself killed. He had no answer, any more than the physician had. But he was.
Marshal Rathar wished with all his heart that he could have stayed down in southern Unkerlant and finished smashing the Algarvian invaders there. They were like serpents- you could step on them three days after you thought they were dead, and they'd rear up and bite you in the leg. Rathar sighed. He supposed General Vatran could handle things till he got back. King Swemmel had ordered him to Cottbus, and when King Swemmel ordered, every Unkerlanter obeyed.
As it was, Rathar wouldn't reach Cottbus as fast as Swemmel hoped and expected. Now that the Algarvians had been crushed in Sulingen and driven back from it, more direct ley-line routes between the south and the capital were in Unkerlanter hands once more. The trouble was, too many of them weren't yet usable. Retreating Algarvian mages had done their best to sabotage them. Retreating Algarvian engineers, relentless pragmatists, had buried eggs along the ley lines that traveled them after the Algarvian mages' efforts were overcome.
And so, Rathar had to travel almost as far out of a straight line to get from the vicinity of Sulingen to Cottbus as he had when coming south from Cottbus to Sulingen when things looked blackest the summer before. The steersman for the caravan kept sending flunkies back to Rathar with apologies for every zigzag. The marshal's displeasure carried weight. After Swemmel- but a long, long way after Swemmel (Rathar was convinced only he knew how far) -he was the most powerful man in Unkerlant.
But the marshal wasn't particularly displeased, not when he didn't want to go to Cottbus in the first place. He said, 'I do prefer not getting killed on the journey, you know.' The steward who'd brought him news of the latest delay had been pale under his swarthy skin. Now he breathed easier.
When the steward left the caravan car, a breath of chill got in, reminding the marshal it was winter- and a savage Unkerlanter winter at that- outside. Inside, with all the windows sealed, with a red-hot coal stove at each end of the car, it might as well have been summer in desert Zuwayza, or possibly summer in a bake oven. Rathar sighed. Unkerlanter caravan cars were always like that in winter. He rubbed his eyes. The hot, stuffy air never failed to give him a headache.
He yawned, lowered the lamps, and went to sleep. He was still sleeping when the ley-line caravan silently glided into Cottbus. An apologetic steward shook him awake. Yawning again, the marshal pulled off the thin linen tunic he'd been wearing and put on the thick wool one he'd used in the caves and ruined houses that had been his headquarters buildings down in the south. For good measure, he added a heavy wool cloak and a fur cap with earflaps.
Sweat rivered off him. 'Powers above, get me out of here before I cook in my own juices,' he said hoarsely.
'Aye, lord Marshal,' the steward said, and led him to the door at the end of the car. He had to go past a stove to get there, and did come perilously close to steaming. Then the steward opened the door, and the frigid air outside hit him like a blow in the face. Cottbus was well north of Sulingen, and so enjoyed a milder climate, but milder didn't mean mild.
Rathar sneezed three times in quick succession as he walked down the wooden steps from the ley-line car- which floated a yard off the ground- to the floor of the depot. He pulled a handkerchief from his belt pouch and blew his large, proudly curved nose.
'Your health, lord Marshal,' his adjutant said, coming to attention and saluting as Rathar's feet hit the flagstones. 'It's good to see you again.'
'Thank you, Major Merovec,' Rathar answered. 'It's good to be back in the capital.' What a liar, what a courtier, I'm getting to be, he thought.
Merovec gestured to the squad of soldiers behind him. 'Your honor guard, sir, and your bodyguard, to make sure no Algarvian assassin or Grelzer turncoat does you harm on the way to the royal palace.'
'How generous of his Majesty to provide them for me,' Rathar said. The soldiers looked blank-faced and tough: typical Unkerlanter farm boys. They were, no doubt, equally typical in their willingness to follow orders no matter what those orders were. If Swemmel had ordered them to arrest him, for instance, they would do it, regardless of the big stars on the collar tabs of his tunic. Swemmel stayed strong not least by allowing himself no strong subjects, and Rathar knew he'd won a good deal of fame for his operations in and around Sulingen.
If Swemmel wanted to seize him, he could. Rathar knew that. And so he strode up to Merovec and the
