wickednesses,” Addanz said in a voice filled with dread. “To take men and women who have done nothing, to use them so, to slay them so as to steal their life energy... I did not think even Algarvians could stoop to such a thing. They fought hard in the Six Years’ War, but they used no more vileness than anyone else. Now . . .” He shook his head.
King Swemmel heard him out. Indeed, Swemmel listened intently. That relieved Rathar, who had feared the king would burst into one of his rages and start shouting for executioners. Then Swemmel’s eyes swung back to him, and he wondered if relief had come too soon. “How do we stop ‘em?” the king asked. Now his voice was calm, dangerously calm.
It was the right question. It was, at the moment, the only question. Still, Marshal Rathar wished his sovereign had not asked it. Though he knew it might cost him his head, he answered with the truth: “I do not know. If the Algarvians will massacre by the thousands those they’ve conquered, we facing them are like a man in a tunic with a knife facing another in chainmail with a broadsword.”
“Why?” Swemmel asked in startled curiosity--so startled, it took Rathar by surprise.
“Because they have no scruples about doing what we will not,” the marshal replied, setting forth what seemed obvious to him.
Swemmel threw back his head and laughed. No, more: he howled. A small drop of spittle flew across the table at which he and his subjects sat and struck Rathar in the cheek. Tears of mirth rolled down the king’s face. “You fool!” he chortled when at last he could do anything but laugh. “Oh, you milk-fed fool! We never knew we had a virgin leading our armies.”
“Your Majesty?” Rathar said stiffly. He hadn’t the faintest notion what King Swemmel meant. He glanced over to Addanz. The archmage’s face held horror of a different sort--to Rathar’s amazement, horror of a worse sort--than it had while Addanz was explaining what the Algarvians had done: That deeper horror told Rathar everything he needed to know. He stared at Swemmel. “You would not--”
“Of course we would.” Laughter dropped from the king like a discarded cloak. He leaned forward in his seat and brought the full weight of his presence to bear on Rathar. “Where else, how else, shall we get chainmail and a broadsword of our own?”
That was another question Rathar wished Swemmel had not asked. Having fallen into the abyss themselves, the Algarvians would now pull him in after them.
He had never been a man to look away from trouble, but he looked away now, trying to distract King Swemmel from a large concern with small ones: “Where would we get the victims?” he asked. “We had but a handful of Kaunians on our soil, and even if you thought to use them for such purposes, they’re in Algarvian hands now. And if we start slaying redheaded captives, they’ll murder ours in place of the Kaunians.”
Swemmel’s shrug chilled the marshal with its indifference. “We have plenty of peasants. We care nothing--nothing at all--if only one of them is left alive when the fighting’s over, so long as the very last Algarvian is dead.”
“I don’t know if we can quickly match them in their magecraft,” Addanz said. “As with so much else, they have been readying themselves for long and long. Even if we are forced to this thing to survive”--he shuddered--”we have much learning to do.”
“Why did you not begin learning before?” the king demanded.
His archmage looked back at him in harassed fury. “Because I never imagined--no one ever imagined--the Algarvians would be so vile. I never imagined anyone could be so vile. And I three times never imagined
Rathar had seen that defiance sometimes got Swemmel’s notice in a way nothing else could. Sometimes a defiant man found he didn’t want Swemmel’s notice once he had it, but that didn’t happen here. In surprisingly mild tones, the king asked, “And would you rather go down to ruin because the redheads were vile and you couldn’t stomach matching them?”
“No, your Majesty.” Addanz had to know his head would answer for any other reply.
“Nor would we,” King Swemmel said. “Go, then. You and your mages had better learn how to do as the Algarvians do, and you had better learn it soon. We promise you, Archmage: if we do fall before the redheads, you will not last long enough for Mezentio’s men to finish off. We shall make certain of that. Do you understand us?”
“Aye, your Majesty,” Addanz said. Swemmel made a peremptory gesture of dismissal. Addanz fled. Rathar did not blame him. The marshal would have liked to flee, too. But the king had not dismissed him.
Swemmel said, “Your task, Marshal, is to make sure the Algarvians cannot finish us before we find out how best to fight back. How do you aim to do that?”
Rathar had been thinking of little else since word of the disasters reached him. He began ticking points off on his
