get many more answers from his superior.
But Skarnu gave him one more after all: “Everything’s turned out fine so far, hasn’t it, Sergeant? Our armies will be in Trapani next week at the latest, and Gedominu should have a fine harvest come fall. Or have you heard something different?”
“Well, I walked into that, didn’t I? I only wish we were in the Algarvians’ capital and not the other way round.” Raunu lay down, too; the straw rustled once more. The sergeant sighed and said, “I’ll see you in the morning, sir.”
“Aye.” Now that Skarnu was off his feet, his yawn had nothing forced about it. He fell asleep almost as fast as Merkela had, up in her room.
In the morning, he drew up a bucket of water from the well and splashed it over his face and hands. Raunu used some, too. Then they went into the farmhouse. Merkela fed them fried eggs and bread and butter and beer: all from the farm, nothing bought in town but the salt that went on the eggs.
Thus fortified, they went out to tend the crops and the cattle and sheep, leaving Merkela behind to bake and wash clothes and weed the vegetable garden and feed the chickens. She and Gedominu had got a good enough living from the farm. Skarnu marveled at that. He and Raunu together had trouble doing as much as Gedominu had managed by himself.
“Ah, but there’s a difference, sir,” Raunu said when Skarnu grumbled about it, which he did every now and then. “The old man had a lifetime to learn what he was doing. We’ve had not quite a year.”
“Aye, I suppose so.” Skarnu glanced over toward the veteran. Raunu had had a lifetime to learn how to be a soldier . . . and then Skarnu, with a good deal less than not quite a year’s experience, had been set over him.
Skarnu was weeding--somewhat more expertly than he had the year before, if not with Gedominu’s effortless skill--when a couple of Algarvians came riding along the path that ran by the fields. They dismounted not far away. One of them nailed a broadsheet to an oak tree. The other one kept him covered, which meant that, for most of the time he was busy, the fellow pointed his stick not quite straight at Skarnu. Once the broadsheet was in place, the Algarvians swung back up onto their unicorns and rode away.
Only after they were out of sight did Skarnu amble over to see what the broadsheet said. In rather stilted Valmieran, it offered a reward for information leading to the capture of soldiers who had gone into hiding rather than surrendering, and a double reward for information leading to the capture of officers.
He stood rocking back and forth on his heels, the picture of rustic indifference. Then, with a shrug more convincing than his yawns had been the night before, he went back to work. Maybe someone in the countryside knew what he and Raunu were and felt like turning a profit on his knowledge. Whether that was so or not mattered little at the moment; Skarnu couldn’t do anything about it. He could do the work. If he didn’t, no one would.
When he and Raunu came in for their midday meal--big bowls of bean soup, with more beer to wash them down--he mentioned the broadsheet. Raunu shrugged. “Figures the redheads would try it sooner or later,” he said. “But not many people like ‘em well enough to talk with ‘em even for money.”
“Someone will,” Merkela said. “Someone will want silver, or will remember an old quarrel with Gedominu or with me. There are always people like that.” She tossed her head to show what she thought of them, a gesture even Skarnu’s sister Krasta might have envied. Skarnu wondered how many of the people who’d had quarrels with Gedominu were jealous of him for taking such a woman to wife.
He chuckled. He hadn’t imagined farmers might have feuds as serious and as foolish as those of the nobility. “Can you think of anyone in particular?” he asked Merkela. “Maybe someone needs to have an unfortunate accident.”
Her eyes flashed. Skarnu would not have wanted that wolfish smile aimed at him. “Or even a fortunate one,” she said.
Captain Hawart said, “Gather round, men.” Corporal Leudast and the other Unker-lanter survivors from his regiment obeyed. They might have filled out three full-strength companies. Hawart was the senior officer still alive. Colonel Roflanz hadn’t lived through the counterattack he’d stupidly ordered against the Algarvian invaders.
Lieudast marveled that he himself was still breathing. The regiment had been encircled twice during the grinding retreat through Forthweg. Once, the men had slipped through the Algarvian lines a few at a time under cover of night. The other time, they’d had to fight their way clear--which was one reason so few of them gathered to listen to Captain Hawart.
He pointed back toward the village in eastern Unkerlant through which they’d retreated the day before. The Algarvians held the place now, or what was left of it: a breeze from out of the east blew stale, sour smoke into Leudast’s nostrils. “Men, we have to retake Pfreimd,” Hawart said, “Once we do it, we can form a line along the western bank of the
