two-humped camels watched the Lagoan army. They’d been shadowing the force ever since it landed at the edge of the ice shelf that formed around the edge of the austral continent every winter. The nomads of the frozen waste had laughed then to see King Vitor’s men struggling over the ice. They weren’t laughing anymore. Fernao hoped they weren’t passing the army’s movements on to the Yaninans. If they were, the Lagoans couldn’t do anything about it; the Ice People could have run rings around them.
Man by man, the lines at the cook fires moved forward. A cook who looked not only cold but also bored slapped a glob of mush and a strip of fried camel meat--mostly fat--into Fernao’s tin. “Eat fast,” the fellow advised. “Otherwise you’ll break teeth on it after it freezes up again.”
He wasn’t joking. Fernao had seen that. The mage was also ravenous. In this weather, a man needed far more food than he would have in a better climate. Affonso ate with the same dedication. Only after their tins were empty did Affonso remark, “I wish this cursed country didn’t hold any cinnabar. Then we could let the Yaninans have it.”
“Then King Tsavellas wouldn’t want it,” Fernao answered. “Nobody would ever come to visit the Ice People, except once in a while to buy pelts from them.”
“Dragons.” Affonso turned the word into a curse. Fernao nodded. Quicksilver came from cinnabar. Without it, dragons couldn’t flame so hot or so far. Algarve, Yanina’s ally
Taking the cinnabar away from Algarve was making Fernao’s life harder. The army trudged toward Mizpah. The town had been a Lagoan outpost till the Yaninans seized it after Lagoas went to war with Algarve. Fernao had been in it then. He counted himself lucky to have escaped and something less than lucky to have returned to the austral continent.
Grudgingly, as if resenting the necessity, the sun rose. Fernao’s shadow, far longer than he was tall, stretched off to his left. Because the sun couldn’t get far above the horizon, its light remained red as blood. It was about to set when a couple of Ice People rode toward the Lagoan column on camelback, shouting at the tops of their lungs.
Lieutenant General Junqueiro, who commanded the Lagoan force, hurried over to Fernao. He was a big, bluff fellow with a bushy red mustache streaked with white. “What in blazes are they saying?” he asked the mage. “You speak their language.”
“Not a word of it,” Fernao answered, which made Junqueiro’s eyes open very wide. “If you listen closely, though, you’ll discover they’re speaking Lagoan, after a fashion.”
Junqueiro cocked his head to one side. “Why, so they are.” He sounded astonished. Then his expression changed. “Is what they’re saying true? Are the Yaninans really moving against us?”
Fernao eyed him in some exasperation. “I don’t know--this country isn’t friendly to magecraft, except the sort the shamans of the Ice People use. But don’t you think you’d better get ready to receive them, on the chance those nomads aren’t lying?”
“It’s almost night again,” Junqueiro said. “Not even the Yaninans would be mad enough to attack in the darkness ... I don’t think.” But he began shouting orders, and the army shook itself out from column into line of battle.
And, sure enough, the enemy did attack. Eggs started bursting not far from the Lagoan forces--releasing energy like that was sorcery so basic, it worked all over the world. The Yaninans swarmed forward, howling like mountain apes. Beams from their sticks pierced the darkness. Junqueiro held back response as long as he could. Then all the light egg-tossers the Lagoans had brought with them began flinging eggs back at the Yaninans. The Lagoan footsoldiers, waiting behind cover, blazed away at the men who followed King Tsavellas.
To Fernao’s delighted astonishment, the Yaninans broke in wild disorder. They must have thought they would be able to steal the battle by night, catching the Lagoans by surprise. When that didn’t happen, some fled, some threw down their sticks and surrendered, and only a stubborn rear guard kept Junqueiro’s army from bagging them all.
Even before twilight began to gray the northern horizon the next morning, the Lagoan commander declared, “The way to Mizpah is open!”
“You wouldn’t sound so happy if you’d ever seen the place,” Fernao said, yawning. Junqueiro paid him no attention. He hadn’t really expected anything different.
Talsu had got used to Algarvians swaggering through the streets of Skrunda. He felt less embittered toward the redheads than did a lot of Jelgavans, not least because he’d done more against them in the war than had most of his countrymen. His regiment had invaded Algarve, even if it never had succeeded in breaking out of the foothills of the Bratanu Mountains and seizing Tricarico. And he hadn’t thrown down his stick till Jelgava was truly beaten. Beaten his kingdom remained, but he didn’t blame himself for it.
His father had other ideas. Looking up from the tunic he was sewing for an Algarvian officer, Traku sighed and said,
