A team of horses was dragging the body of a dragon painted in Algarvian colors across the square. Mezentio’s dragonfliers kept trying to drop eggs on the palace. They had no easy time of it; heavy sticks all around made the immense building perhaps the toughest target in all of Unkerlant.
One of the men in charge of the horses waved to Rathar. He waved back. Seeing men going about their business as if the Algarvians were two hundred miles away--as if there were no war at all--cheered him.
“Good morning, lord Marshal,” his adjutant said when he strode into his office.
“Good morning, Major Merovec,” Rathar answered, hanging his cloak on a hook. The colder it got outside, the warmer the palace was heated. That was the ancient Unkerlanter way of doing things. Doctors said it helped lead to apoplexy, but who listened to doctors? Glancing toward the map, Rathar asked, “What change in the situation since last night?”
Merovec often looked gloomy. Today he looked like midwinter midnight on the far side of the Barrier Mountains. Pointing, he said, “In the north, sir, the Algarvians have pushed us out of Lehesten. And in the south”--he pointed again--”they’re threatening Thalfang.” With a certain somber satisfaction, he added, “We do seem to be holding them in the center.”
“That’s not good enough,” Rathar said. “Curse it, Lehesten should have held. I thought it would hold. . . longer than this, anyhow. And Thalfang? Powers above, you can see Thalfang from the tops of the palace spires! If they take it and sweep west from there, they can put a ring around Cottbus, the same way they put a ring around Herborn down in Grelz. We have to hold them out of Thalfang, no matter what. Draft orders to shift troops south.”
“Lord Marshal, everything we have in the vicinity is already committed,” Merovec answered worriedly. “I don’t know where we’re going to come up with more.”
“If we don’t come up with more in the next few days, we won’t have the chance to do it later,” Rathar said, and Merovec nodded; he understood the problem as well as the marshal of Unkerlant did. Rathar smacked a fist into the palm of his other hand. “We have a lot of things we’re right on the edge of trying. If we can’t buy a little time to finish getting them ready, we’ll lose the war before we have the chance to use them.”
“Aye,” Merovec nodded again. “But we have so many men committed on other fronts, I don’t know where we can find more for this one.”
“King Swemmel won’t turn enough men loose for this front. That’s what you mean,” Rathar said, and his adjutant nodded once more. The marshal sighed. “I’d better have a talk with him, hadn’t I?”
“Lord Marshal, someone had better, anyhow,” Merovec answered. He opened his mouth to say something more, then shut it again. Rathar knew what would have come out--something like,
Even so, he said, “I’ll do it. Anyone else would have to work up his nerve before he tried, and we don’t have the time to wait. Better to do it now than before everybody has to run west for his life.”
He walked out of that part of the sprawling palace where the high officers in the Unkerlanter army worked and into the core of the building, the king’s residence. “I don’t know if he will see you, Lord Marshal,” a servitor said doubtfully. “I don’t know if he will see anyone.”
Rathar fixed him with a stare that would have chilled the heart of every Unkerlanter breathing--except King Swemmel. “Well, go find out,” he growled, and folded thick arms across his broad chest, as if to say he wouldn’t move from where he stood till he got an answer. The servant eyed him, then fled.
He came back looking very unhappy. Rathar would have bet Swemmel had scorched him, too. But he said, “His Majesty will receive you in the audience chamber in a quarter of an hour.” Rathar nodded, a single sharp jerk of his big head. He cared not a copper for the servitor’s feelings. Getting to see King Swemmel . . . aye, he cared about that.
In the anteroom in front of the audience chamber, the marshal endured removing his sword and permitting the guards their intimate search of his person. He endured the prostrations and acclamations he had to make before Swemmel once admitted to the royal presence. At last, with security and ritual satisfied, the king rasped, “Get up and say whatever it is you have to say. “We shall listen, though why we should, with the kingdom in such straits, is beyond us.”
“Your Majesty, I ask you one question,” Rathar said: “Would the kingdom be in better straits with another man commanding your armies? If you think so, give him my sword and my baton and give me a stick, so I can go out and fight the Algarvians as a common soldier.”
Swemmel stared down at him from his high
