unsmiling soldiers behind him. 'I have a carriage waiting for you, lord Marshal,' his adjutant said, 'and others for the guards here. If you will come with me…'
The carriage was only a carriage, not a prison wagon. The troopers got into four other carriages. They took station around the one that carried Rathar. No, an assassin wouldn't have an easy blaze at him. The marshal didn't particularly worry about assassins. King Swemmel, now, King Swemmel saw them behind every curtain and under every chair.
Cottbus by night was dark and gloomy. Algarvian dragons still flew over to drop eggs on the Unkerlanter capital. The darkness helped thwart them, even if they didn't come nearly so often or in such numbers as they had the winter before. Algarvian behemoths and footsoldiers had almost broken into Cottbus then. They'd been pushed back a good way since, which meant a longer, harder journey for King Mezentio's dragonfliers.
'Well, what sort of juicy court gossip have you got for me?' Rathar asked his adjutant.
Major Merovec stared; even in the darkness, his eyes glittered as they widened. 'N-Not much, lord Marshal,' he stammered; Rathar was normally indifferent to the petty- and sometimes not so petty- scandal that set tongues wagging at every court on the continent of Derlavai… and every court off it, too.
Horses' hoofbeats muffled by snow on stone, the carriages entered the great empty square around the royal palace. Surrounding the square were statues of the kings of Unkerlant. Swemmel's loomed, twice as tall as any of the others. Rathar wondered how long the outsized image would endure in the reign of Swemmel's successor. That was not a thought he could ever speak aloud.
Inside the palace, lamps seared eyes used to darkness. The king had trouble sleeping, which meant his servitors hardly slept at all. 'His Majesty will see you in the audience chamber,' a messenger told Rathar.
The marshal hung the ceremonial sword of his rank on brackets in an anteroom to that chamber. Unsmiling guards patted him with intimacy few women would have dared use. Only after enduring that could he go on. And then he had to prostrate himself before the king and, face against the carpet, recite his praises until given permission to rise.
At last, King Swemmel gave it. As Rathar climbed to his feet- a knee clicked; he wasn't so young as he had been- the king said, 'We wish to continue the rout of the cursed Algarvians from our land. Punish them! We command you!' His dark eyes flashed in his long, pale face.
'Your Majesty, I aim to do just that,' Rathar replied. 'Now that their army in Sulingen is no more, I can shift soldiers to my columns farther north. With luck, we'll bag most of the redheads still in the southwestern part of the kingdom, trap 'em as neatly as we did the ones who'd reached the Wolter.'
He knew he was exaggerating- or rather, that he would have to be very lucky indeed to bring off everything he had in mind. The Algarvians would have a lot to say about what he did and what he ended up unable to do. Getting his sovereign to understand that was one of the hardest jobs he had. So far, he'd managed. Had he failed, Unkerlant would have a new marshal these days. Rathar didn't particularly fear for himself. He did doubt the kingdom had a better officer to lead her armies.
Swemmel said, 'At last, we have them on the run. By the powers above, we shall punish them as they deserve. When King Mezentio is in our hands, we'll boil him alive, as we served Kyot.' Kyot, his identical twin, had fought him for the throne and lost. Had he won, he would have boiled Swemmel- and, probably, Rathar with him, though he might have contented himself with taking the soldier's head.
As far as Rathar was concerned, his king was putting the unicorn's tail in front of its horn. The marshal said, 'This war is still a long way from won, your Majesty.'
But Swemmel had the bit between his teeth and trampled on: 'And before we do, we'll give Mezentio's cousin Raniero, the misnamed King of Grelz, an end to make Mezentio glad he's just being boiled. Aye, we will.' Gloating anticipation filled his voice.
Rathar did his best to draw the king back from dreams of revenge to what was real. 'We have to beat the redheads first, you know. As I said, I want to keep biting chunks out of their forces in Unkerlant. We bit out a big chunk when we took Sulingen back, but they can still hurt us if we get careless. I aim to pin them against one river barrier after another, make them fight at a disadvantage or else have to make a whole series of difficult retreats…'
Swemmel wasn't listening. 'Aye, when Raniero falls into our hands, we'll flay him and draw him and unman him and- oh, whatever else strikes our fancy.'
'We almost ought to thank Mezentio for him,' Rathar said. 'One of our own nobles on the Grelzer throne in Herborn would have brought more traitors to the Algarvian side than Raniero has a hope of luring.'
'Traitors everywhere,' Swemmel muttered. 'Everywhere.' His eyes darted this way and that. 'We'll kill them all, see if we don't.' During the Twinkings War and even after it, there had been a good many real plots against him. There had also been a good many that existed only in his fevered imagination. Real plotters and imagined ones were equally dead now, with no one to say who was which. 'Traitors.'
To Rathar's relief, Swemmel wasn't looking at him. Almost desperately, the marshal said, 'As I was telling you, your Majesty, our plans-'
Swemmel spoke in peremptory tones: 'Set all the columns moving now. The sooner we strike the Algarvians, the sooner they shall be driven from our soil.' Did he mean the soil of Unkerlant or his own, personal soil? Rathar often had trouble telling.
'Do you not agree, your Majesty, that your armies have had more success when you waited till everything was ready before striking?' Rathar asked. He'd had trouble getting Swemmel to see that throughout the war. He didn't want more trouble now.
Swemmel, of course, cared nothing for what his marshal wanted. Swemmel cared only for what he wanted. And now, glaring down at Rathar from his high seat, he snapped, 'We have given you an order. You may carry it out, or someone else may carry it out. We care nothing about that. We care only that we should be obeyed. Do you understand us?'
Sometimes, a threat to resign would bring Swemmel to his senses when he tried to order something uncommonly harebrained. Rathar didn't judge this would have been one of those times. The king wouldn't have summoned him from the south for anything but a show of unquestioned allegiance. And Swemmel would remove him and likely remove his head if he balked. Rathar looked down at the carpet and sighed. 'Aye, your Majesty,' he said, casting about in his mind for ways to say he obeyed while in fact doing what really needed doing.
'And think not to evade our will with plausible excuses,' King Swemmel barked. He might not have been a very wise man, but no denying he was clever. Rathar sighed again.
Back before the Derlavaian War broke out, Skarnu had been a marquis. He still was a marquis, when you got down to it, but he hadn't lived like one for years. And, if the Algarvian occupiers of his native Valmiera ever got their hands on him, he wouldn't live anymore at all. This was what he got for carrying on the fight against the redheads after King Gainibu surrendered.
Had he made his peace with the conquerors, he could have been living soft in the familial mansion on the edge of Priekule, the capital. Instead, he found himself holed up in a dingy cold-water flat in Ventspils, an eastern provincial town of no great distinction- indeed, of no small distinction he could think of.
His sister still lived in that mansion. He growled, down deep in his throat. Krasta, curse her, had an Algarvian lover- Skarnu had seen them listed as a couple in a news sheet. Colonel Lurcanio and the Marchioness Krasta. Lurcanio, curse him, had come too close to catching Skarnu not long before. He'd had to flee the farm where he'd been living, the widow he'd come to love, and the child- his child- she was carrying. He hoped Lurcanio's men had only been after him, and that Merkela was safe.
Hope was all he could do. He didn't dare write to the farm outside the southern village of Pavilosta. If the Algarvians intercepted the letter, their mages might be able to use the law of contagion to trace it back to him. 'Powers below eat them,' he muttered. He wanted to pour out his soul to Merkela, but the enemy silenced him as effectively as if they'd clapped a gag over his mouth.
He went to the grimy window and looked down at the street three stories down. Wan winter sunshine filtered between the blocks of flats that sat almost side by side. Not even sunshine, though, could make the cobbles in the streets, the worn slates of the sidewalks, and the sooty, slushy snow in the gutters and in the corners by stairways anything but unlovely. The wind shook bare-branched trees; their shifting shadows put Skarnu in mind of groping,
