showing her she was. When he wouldn't stop laughing, she flounced out of his office, slamming the door behind her. But she knew that, when he came to her bedchamber that evening, she wouldn't slam the door in his face.
Ten
Sergeant Pesaro glared at the Algarvian constables drawn up at attention in front of the barracks in Gromheort. 'Listen up, you lugs,' he growled. 'You'd better listen up, on account of this is important.'
As imperceptibly as he could, Bembo shifted from foot to foot. 'How many times have we heard speeches like this?' he whispered to Oraste, who stood next to him.
Oraste might have been carved from stone. Even his lips hardly stirred as he answered, 'Too cursed many.'
'Shut up, the lot of you!' Pesaro roared. His jowls wobbled when he opened his mouth very wide. 'You'd better shut up, or you'll bloody well be sorry. Have you got that?' He looked so fierce, even Bembo, who'd known him since dirt, decided he had to take him seriously. After one more glare, Pesaro went on, 'All right. That's better. Our kingdom needs us, by the powers above, and we're going to come through.'
Alarm blazed up Bembo's back. One of the things he'd always feared was that the meat grinder of war might decide to take constables and turn them into soldiers. By the horrified expressions some of his comrades were wearing, the same thing had occurred to them, too.
Pesaro's chuckle was anything but pleasant. 'There. Have I got your attention? I cursed well better have. What we're going to do is, we're going to go into the Kaunian quarter here, we're going to grab as many blonds as we can, and we're going to ship 'em west. The men in the trenches there'll need all the sorcerous help they can get. We're the boys who can give 'em what they need.'
'As long as we're not going into the trenches ourselves,' somebody behind Bembo muttered. Bembo had all he could do to keep from nodding like a fool, because that was exactly how he felt himself.
A constable in front of him stuck up a hand. When Pesaro nodded, the fellow asked, 'What do we do if we run into people who look like Forthwegians?'
'Grab 'em anyhow,' Pesaro answered promptly. 'We'll throw the buggers into holding cells. If they still look like Forthwegians a day later, we'll turn 'em loose. And if they don't- which, you ask me, is a lot more likely- then off they go. If they're in the Kaunian quarter, we figure they're blonds till they show us different.'
Another constable, a young fellow named Almonio, raised his hand. 'Permission to fall out, Sergeant?' He never had had the stomach for seizing Kaunians who would be doomed to massacre.
But Pesaro shook his head, which made his jowls wobble again, this time from side to side. 'No.' His voice was flat and hard. 'You can come along, or you can go to the guardhouse. Those are your choices.'
'I'll come,' Almonio said miserably. 'It's not right, but I'll come.' Bembo knew the youngster would drink himself into a stupor the first chance he got.
'You bet your arse you'll come.' Pesaro wasn't just going to have his way; he was going to rub the other constable's nose in it, so that Almonio wouldn't pester him again with second thoughts. 'This war we're fighting with Unkerlant touches everybody now. We're all fighting it, irregardless of whether we're in the front line or not.' A smile spread over his broad, fleshy face- he plainly thought that rather fine.
Elsewhere on the parade ground in front of the barracks, other sergeants were haranguing other squads of constables. That fit in with what Bembo knew, or thought he knew, of how soldiers and their leaders behaved before a battle. All the sergeants finished at about the same time. That, Bembo suspected, was no accident.
The captain who'd led the raid on the block of flats where the Kaunian robber Gippias' pals had been hiding out was in charge of this assault on the Kaunian quarter. Bembo still didn't know his name. He did know the fellow was from Trapani, and had a vast contempt not only for Kaunians but also for Forthwegians and for his own countrymen who had the misfortune to come from provincial towns.
'We'll get them,' the captain declared as the constables marched toward the little district into which the blonds had been shoehorned. 'We'll get them, and we'll teach them what it means to be Algarve's enemies.'
'He sees what needs doing, anyhow,' Oraste said. But then the captain repeated himself, and then he said the same thing over again for a third and soon for a fourth time. Oraste rolled his eyes. 'All right. We've got the fornicating idea.'
Forthwegians who saw a company's worth of constables bearing down on them sensibly got out of the way as fast as they could. Pride made Bembo suck in his belly, throw back his shoulders, and march as if marching really mattered. Like any Algarvian, he reckoned being part of a parade the only thing better than watching one.
But that thought had hardly crossed his mind before the constables had to halt. It wasn't Forthwegians or Kaunians who stopped them, either: it was their own countrymen. A couple of regiments of soldiers were marching through the city toward the ley-line caravan depot. They didn't swagger, as the constables did; they just tramped along, intent on getting where they were going- probably back to the front in Unkerlant. The ones who weren't lean were downright skinny. Their tunics and kilts were faded and patched. And they all had a knowing look in their eyes, a look that said they'd been places and done things the constables couldn't- and wouldn't want to- imagine.
'Aren't they cute?' one soldier said to another, pointing at the constables. 'Aren't they sweet?'
'Oh, aye, they're just the most precious dears I ever saw,' his friend answered. Both men guffawed. Bembo's ears heated in dull embarrassment.
Another Algarvian trooper was blunter. 'Slackers!' he yelled. 'Whose prong did you suck to stay out of the real fight?' His pals growled and shook their fists at the constables. One of them flipped up his kilt and showed his bare buttocks- he wasn't wearing drawers.
'Get that man's name! Discipline him!' the constabulary captain shouted to the sergeants and lieutenants and captains marching past. But, in spite of his fury, the military officers paid him no attention. The more they ignored him, the angrier and louder he got. It did him no good at all.
He was still steaming when the last footsoldier finally walked past. Some of the other constables had got angry, too. More, like Bembo, were just resigned. 'Soldiers never have any use for us,' he said. 'They're jealous that they have to go forward and we get to stay back here.'
'Wouldn't you be?' Oraste returned.
'Of course I would. You think I'm daft?' Bembo said. 'But I don't have to be jealous of me, on account of I'm a constable, not a soldier.'
Oraste might have had further opinion on just what Bembo was. If he did, he kept his mouth shut about them. The two constables were partners, after all. They marched on till they came to the edge of the Kaunian quarter. There the captain divided them into two groups: a larger one that would go into houses and shops and bring out the blonds, and a smaller one that would guard them and keep them from slipping away in the confusion. Bembo and Oraste were both in the first group.
'This is for Algarve!' the captain declared. 'This is for victory! Go in there and do your duty.'
Had the constables been rookies, they might have charged into the Kaunian district with cheers ringing from their lips. But almost all of them had been through roundups before, both in Gromheort and in the surrounding villages. They had a hard time getting excited about another one.
Oraste might not have been excited, but he enjoyed kicking in a door when no one responded after he yelled, 'Kaunians, come forth!' He liked breaking things and knocking things down. Roundups gave him the chance to have fun.
But he went from gloating to cursing when he and Bembo found nobody in the flat once he had kicked in the door. They went next door. This time, Bembo shouted, 'Kaunians, come forth!' Again, no one came forth. No one responded at all. With a snarl, Oraste put a boot to the door near the latch. It flew open. The constables swarmed in, sticks in hand and ready to blaze. Once more, though, they found only a deserted flat.
'Powers above!' Oraste exclaimed. 'Did all the stinking blonds magic themselves dark and sneak out when nobody was looking?'
'They couldn't have,' Bembo said, though without much conviction. 'Somebody would have noticed.'
'Then where are they?' Oraste asked, and Bembo had no good answer for him. He did hope Doldasai and her family had managed to get out of the Kaunian quarter. If they hadn't, he wouldn't be able to do a thing about it if they got seized again.
They both shouted, 'Kaunians, come forth!' in front of the doorway to the next flat. Once more, no one inside came out or said a word. Yet again, Oraste kicked in the door- not only was he better at it than Bembo, he enjoyed it more. This time, though, they found a man and a woman hiding in a closet under some cloaks. Both of them might have been Forthwegian by their looks.
