seat. The king’s eyes glowed. His shoulders hunched forward, giving him the aspect of a vulture peering around for carrion. His embroidered robe, encrusted with pearls and jewels, seemed hastily thrown on for this audience. “Rest assured, Marshal: did we think that, you would long since have gone forward thus.”
“Good,” Rathar said. A sour odor came to him from Swemmel. Was the king drunk? Or, worse, was he hung over? Were his wits working at all, or would he blindly lash out at whatever displeased him? Rathar took a deep breath. He’d find out.
“What do you propose now?” the king demanded. “You could not defend the border, you could not hold Herborn--and now you must defend Cottbus. How will you go about it?”
“Your Majesty, the enemy has taken Lehesten. He threatens Thalfang. We must retake the one and keep the other from falling, or else we are ruined and Cottbus falls.” There. Now it was said. How would Swemmel take it?
“Cowards,” Swemmel muttered. “Cowards and traitors. They’re everywhere--everywhere, curse it.” His gaze paralyzed Rathar as readily as the marshal had overawed the servant. “How are we to overcome tliem?”
“We’d better beat Mezentio’s men first,” Rathar answered. “If we don’t do that, nothing else matters. We need every soldier now--
“Can our person be properly protected if these men and beasts are taken away?” Swemmel asked anxiously.
“Can your person be properly protected if you have to try to flee for your life from Cottbus with the redheads closing a ring around it after they push on from Thalfang and Lehesten?” Rathar returned.
King Swemmel grunted, a sound full of pain. “Traitors,” he muttered again. “Who will save us from traitors?” He glared at Rathar.
“One way or another, my head will answer for this, your Majesty,” the marshal said. “Whatever happens, I am not going west from Cottbus. If we have to fight here in the city, then here I will fight.”
“If only this whole kingdom had but a single neck!” Swemmel cried. “Then I’d take its head and use its energy to build a magical fire that would burn Mezentio in his palace in Trapani--aye, and all his kingdom with him.”
Rathar believed every word. Could Swemmel have done it, he would joyously have swung the sword. Rathar said, “Your Majesty, we have . . . reduced the power of their magecraft.” He wondered how many Unkerlanter peasants had paid with their lives for that reduction. Better not to know. Aye, better by far. War of a more ordinary sort was his proper business, and he stuck to it: “It’s more nearly man against man and beast against beast than it was for a time. But we need the men and beasts. We need all the men and beasts.” He realized he was pleading. King Swemmel seldom listened to pleas.
After a long pause, the king said, “We have learned there were riots against the Algarvians in Eoforwic yesterday.”
“That’s good news!” exclaimed Rathar, who hadn’t heard it. “Anything that keeps the redheads from using all they have against us is good news.”
“Aye,” Swemmel agreed, though he sounded almost indifferent. “Kaunians and Forthwegians went into the streets together, we have heard. Perhaps your notion of sending Kaunians back to Forthweg with their tales of woe bore fruit after all.”
“I hope so, your Majesty.” Rathar wondered if any Unkerlanter peasants had escaped the clutches of their own kingdom’s mages and brought tales of woe back to their villages. He doubted it. Swemmel preached efficiency more readily than he practiced it, but he’d been most efficient about killing since the days of the Twinkings War.
Somewhere in the middle distance, eggs started bursting: Algarvian dragons over Cottbus again. Swemmel turned and stared east. “Curse you, Mezentio,” he whispered. “You I trusted, and you betrayed me, too.”
How had he trusted Mezentio? To be unready to fight when the time for fighting came? So it had seemed then. It also seemed, as it always had to Rathar, a dreadful miscalculation. The marshal said, “Give me the men, your Majesty. Give me the men and the dragons and the behemoths. We can throw them back.” He didn’t know if Unkerlant could, but he wanted the chance to try.
“Who will protect us?” the king said again. But then, jerkily, he nodded. “Take them. We give them to you. Throw them into the fire, and may they smother it with their bodies. And now, we dismiss you.” Rathar went through the ceremonial involved in leaving the chamber without a shadow of unhappiness. Swemmel had given him the chance. How could he make the most of it?
A blizzard howled around Istvan and his squadmates and all the other Gyongyosian soldiers trying to carry the war in
