Unkerlanters have it, come what may.”
Trasone was more than willing to ignore the dapper little nobleman, but Panfilo, after stuffing a last brick of cheese into his pack, turned away from the caravan car. “Come on,” he told Trasone. “Major Spinello’s not so bad, as officers go.”
“Not
“Oh, aye,” Panfilo said. “Don’t worry, though. I’m still commanding you. Now get moving.”
Get moving Trasone did. Major Spinello was still flitting every which way at once and talking like a man possessed: “Come on, my dears. If the Unkerlanters are going to pay us a call, we must be ready to receive them in the style they deserve. After all, we wouldn’t want to disappoint them, now would we?”
He sounded like a bad caricature of every noble officer Trasone had ever known. Even the dour veteran couldn’t help snickering. Up till very recently, Spinello hadn’t been a combat soldier; he kept going on and on about the Forthwegian village whose garrison he’d headed till the war here in the west yanked him out of it. Not all of his orders made the best sense in the world. But Trasone had already seen that he was recklessly brave. As long as he listened to Panfilo and others who actually knew what they were doing, he’d shape pretty well.
What needed doing here was obvious, and Major Spinello saw it. He posted his battalion in among the ruins at the western edge of Aspang. “Find yourselves some good holes,” he urged the soldiers. “Make sure they’re as tight and as deep as a Kaunian trollop’s twat.” He sighed. “Ah, the one I was laying before duty called me here.” He sighed again and kissed his fingertips.
Trasone would sooner have been laying a pretty blonde than lying in wait for some ugly Unkerlanters, too. Nobody’d given Spinello a choice, and nobody was giving him one, either. He found cover behind a waist-high wall that was all that remained of a house or shop and settled in. Looking around, he spied a couple of other places to which he could withdraw in a hurry if he had to.
Unkerlanter eggs fell closer and closer to the town, then began bursting around him and his comrades. He kept his head down and huddled close to the wall. Before long, the storm of sorcerous energy moved deeper into Aspang. Trasone knew what Swemmel’s men were doing: they were going after the Algarvian egg-tossers. He also knew that meant the attack was on its way.
He looked out over the ruined wall and steadied his stick on it. Sure enough, the Unkerlanters were forming up just out of stick range: row upon close-ranked row of blocky men in white smocks over rock-gray tunics. It was, in its way, an awe-inspiring sight.
To his surprise, he could hear the command the Unkerlanter officer shouted. The enemy soldiers stormed forward, some of them arm in arm. “Urra!” they shouted: a deafening roar. “Urra! Swemmel! Urra!”
Almost at once, eggs began bursting among them, tearing holes in their neat ranks--they hadn’t succeeded in knocking out the Algarvian tossers after all. Still shouting, more Unkerlanters hurried up to fill the gaps. Along with his comrades, Trasone started blazing at them. Soldiers went down as if scythed. The ones who didn’t go down, though, kept on coming, roaring like demons.
Trasone’s mouth went dry. If that human wave broke over his battalion . . . He looked around at his lines of retreat again. Would he have time to use them?
He wished Algarvian mages back of the front would slaughter some Kaunians to get the sorcerous energy for a spell to stop the Unkerlanters in their tracks.
No spell came. But King Swemmel’s men didn’t break into Aspang, either. Some prices were higher than flesh and blood could bear. Just outside the edge of town, the Unkerlanters broke and fled back across the snowy fields, leaving even more dead behind. Major Spinello did not order a pursuit. Trasone nodded somber approval. The major might be raw, but he wasn’t stupid.
Fourteen
Fernao had seen the land of the Ice People in summer, when the sun shone in the sky nearly the whole day through and the weather, sometimes, got warmer than cool. The Lagoan mage had seen it in fall, which put him in mind of a hard winter in Setubal. Now he was seeing it in winter. He’d expected it would be appalling. He was finding out he hadn’t known what
Outside the tent he shared with a second-rank mage named Affonso, the wind howled like a live thing, a malevolent wild thing. The tent fabric was waterproofed and windproofed, but the gale sucked heat out of the tent in spite of the brazier by which the two sorcerers huddled.
“I won’t believe it,” Affonso said. “Nobody could want to live in this miserable country the whole year round.”
“It’s no accident the Ice People are hairy all over, men and women both,” Fernao answered. “And they like the austral
