“Zuwayza is our ally, and needs must aid our cause,” Balastro said.
Hajjaj shook his head. “No, your Excellency. Zuwayza is your cobelligerent. We war against Unkerlant for our own reasons, not yours. And, since this discussion is hypothetical, I might add that the vengeance you are wreaking on your neighbors leaves me somewhat relieved not to be one.”
“We have been foes to the cursed Kaunians for time out of mind,” Balastro said with a shrug. “Now that we have the whip hand, we shall use it. Tell me you love the Unkerlanters. Go ahead--I need a good laugh today.”
“We have been known to live at peace with them,” Hajjaj said, “even as you Algarvians have been known to live at peace with the Kaunians.”
“Peace on their terms.” Balastro had no bend in him (and was, Hajjaj knew, forgetting long stretches of his homeland’s history). “Now it is peace on our terms. That is what victory earned us. We are the valiant. We are the strong.”
“Then surely, your Excellency, you will not need much in the way of help from Zuwayza in reducing Glogau, will you?” Hajjaj asked innocently.
Balastro gave him a sour look, got to his feet, and departed with much less ceremony than was customary. Hajjaj stood in the doorway and watched his carriage start back toward the Algarvian ministry back in Bishah. As soon as it rounded a corner--but not an instant before--the Zuwayzi foreign minister let himself smile.
Istvan eyed the pass ahead with something less than delight. “There’ll be Unkerlanters up yonder,” he said, with as much gloomy certainty as a man eyeing dark clouds billowing up from the horizon might use in saying,
“Aye, no doubt.” That was Szonyi. “And we’ll have to pay the bill for digging them out, too.”
“There won’t be very many of them.” Kun, of all people, was looking on the bright side of things.
“There won’t
Szonyi nodded, looking no more happy than Istvan felt. “Aye, the sergeant’s right, Kun. Ever since the Unkerlanters decided they were going to fight after all, this is the game they’ve played. They aren’t trying to stop us. They’re trying to slow us down, to give us as little as they can till winter comes.”
“And winter in this country won’t be any fun at all.” Istvan eyed the sun. It still stood high in the northern sky at noon, but a tiny bit lower each day. Winter was coming, as inexorably as sand ran through the neck of a glass and down into the bottom half.
Trouble was coming, too. From the strong position they’d set up for themselves in that pass, the Unkerlanters started tossing eggs at the advancing Gyongyosians. Their aim wasn’t particularly good; many of the eggs, instead of bursting on the paths Istvan and his countrymen were using, smote the mountainsides above them. Before long, Istvan discovered the Unkerlanters knew what they were doing after all. One of those bursts touched off an avalanche that swept several soldiers and several donkeys off a path and down to their doom.
“Whoresons!” Istvan shook his fist toward the east. “That’s a coward’s way to fight.”
“They have no honor,” Kanizsai said. “They do nothing but toss eggs and blaze at us from ambush.”
“That’s
“No honor,” the young recruit repeated.
“Whether they do or whether they don’t, we still have to shift the goat-buggers,” Istvan said. As if to underscore his words, an egg burst close by, hurling a big chunk of stone past his head.
Kun asked a question Istvan wished he would have kept to himself: “How?”
Since the whole squad was looking at him, Istvan had to answer. Since he didn’t know, he said, “That’s for the officers to figure out.”
“Aye, but it’s for us to do,” Szonyi said. “We do the work, and we do the bleeding, too.”
“We are warriors,” said Kanizsai, who, not yet having been in any big fights, didn’t realize how quickly most of them could become dead warriors if they rushed a strong position manned by stubborn troops.
