Authors: Harry Turtledove
A Kuusaman, either wild with panic or more likely caught away from shelter and running in search of some, tripped over one of his legs and crashed to the ground. That was the first either of them knew of the other’s presence. They both cried out. Istvan’s knife rose and fell. The Kuusaman cried out again, this time in anguish. Istvan drove the knife into his throat. His cries cut off. He thrashed for a couple of minutes, ever more weakly, they lay still.
Istvan let out a rasping sigh of relief and went through the fellow’s pockets and pack. He found hard bread, smoked and salted salmon—a Kuusaman specialty—and dried apples and pears. The dead soldier’s canteen proved to hold apple brandy, something else of which the Kuusamans were inordinately fond. Istvan took a nip. He sighed with pleasure as fire ran down his throat.
“Szonyi?” he called in a low voice. When he got no answer, he called again, louder this time. He could have shouted and not been heard far in the din of bursting eggs.
He peered around. The only company he had was the dead Kuusaman. He cursed under his breath. He couldn’t go back up Mt. Sorong without knowing what had happened to his comrade. One warrior did not abandon another on the field. The stars would not shine for any man who did so base a thing as that.
“Szonyi?” Istvan called once more.
This time, he got an answer: “Aye?” Szonyi came through the curtain of rain toward him. The youngster had a smile on his face and a Kuusaman canteen in his hand. “I nailed one of the little whoresons,” he said. “How about you?”
“This fellow here won’t need his supper any more, so I may as well eat it for him,” Istvan said, which drew a laugh from Szonyi. Istvan went on, “Now that we’ve got a little food, let’s slide back up the side of the mountain.”
“I suppose so.” Szonyi didn’t sound happy about it. “If we do, though, we’ll have to share it with people who didn’t get any of their own.”
“And nobody has ever shared with you?” Istvan asked. Szonyi hung his head. Istvan slapped him on the shoulder. “Come on. We won’t starve for a while longer, anyhow, even if we do have to share.”
With eggs still falling almost at random, getting back up Mt. Sorong was easier than going down the sloping side of the low mountain had been. The Gyongyosian soldiers could make more noise, for with the bursting eggs it went largely unnoticed. But, just before they reached their own line, a sharp challenge rang out: “Halt! Who goes there?”
Istvan was glad to hear that challenge. If he couldn’t sneak up on his comrades, maybe the Kuusamans couldn’t, either. He gave his own name and Szonyi’s, then added, “Is that you, Kun?”
“Aye.” The mage’s apprentice sounded reluctant to admit it. He returned to soldierly formality: “Advance and be recognized.”
“Here we come,” Istvan said. “Don’t start blazing at us now, or we won’t give you any of the Kuusaman treats we’ve brought back.” Szonyi sent him a reproachful look. He pretended not to see it. With the rain, the pretense was easy enough.
Raindrops dappled the lenses of Kun’s spectacles as he too showed himself. “Salmon?” he asked hopefully. When he had the chance, he ate like a dragon, and his scrawny carcass never put on an ounce. When he couldn’t eat so much as he wanted, he got skinnier still.
“Aye, salmon, and bread and fruit, too. And that applejack the slanteyes brew,” Istvan said. “Szonyi and I have put a dent in what we got of that, but you can have a slug or two, and some of the food to go with it.”
What would have been plenty for two men wasn’t quite enough for three, but even Szonyi didn’t complain out loud. The two canteens held enough apple brandy to make complaint seem pointless to all three Gyongyosians. Presently, Szonyi landed back against the trunk of a tree and asked, “How did you spot us, Kun? You can’t be able to see much in the rain with your spectacles, and I don’t think we made any noise. Even if we did, the racket down the hill should have covered it.”
“I have my methods,” Kun said, and said no more.
His smile was so superior, Istvan wanted to kick him in the teeth. “Some fifth-rank magical trick, I don’t doubt,” he growled. “Would it have spotted Kuusamans, too? Tell me the truth, by the stars. Our necks may ride on what you know and what you don’t.”
“Unless they’re specially warded, it would,” Kun answered. “It spies men moving forward toward me.”
It didn’t spy men moving toward him from higher up Mt. Sorong, as a crashing in the brush proved a moment later. Istvan stared in astonishment at the apparition before him: an officer with the large six-pointed star of a major on each side of the collar of a uniform tunic surprisingly clean and fresh. He couldn’t have been living in that tunic for weeks, as Istvan had in his.
Istvan and Szonyi saluted without rising. Despite Kun’s assurances, Istvan didn’t know the Kuusamans hadn’t sneaked a sniper somewhere close. He noticed Kun didn’t spring to his feet, either. The major returned the salutes, then said, “Those goat-bearded lackwits said Istvan’s unit was somewhere around these parts. They had no sure notion where. Do you know of it? Am I close to it?”
“Sir—” Now, cautiously, Istvan did rise. “Sir, I am Istvan.”
“A common soldier?” The major’s eyes got wide. “By the way they spoke of you farther up the hill, I expected a captain.” He shrugged. “Well, no matter. Gather your warriors, Istvan, however many they be, and accompany me to the shipping that awaits. In this beastly weather, we need fear no Kuusaman dragons.”
“Shipping, sir?” Now Istvan was the one taken by surprise.
“Aye,” the major said impatiently. “We are transferring certain units back to the mainland, for purposes I need not discuss. Yours is among them; folk spoke highly of its fighting qualities. Now show me they were right.”
Numbly, Istvan obeyed.
I’m escaping Obuda,
he thought.
The stars be praised. I’m escaping Obuda.
The sun shone blindingly on the snow-covered fields surrounding the village of Zossen. The glare did nothing to ease Garivald’s hangover. But he bore the pain more readily than he would have during the tail end of most winters. He’d spent less time drunk this season than in any winter since he’d started shaving.
He shook his head, even though it hurt. He’d spent less time drunk on spirits this past winter than any since he’d become a man. The rest of the time, though, he’d been drunk on words.
He glanced at the sun out of the corner of his eye. It climbed higher in the north every day. Spring wasn’t far away. The snow would melt, the ground would turn to muck, and, when the muck grew firm enough, it would be planting time. Most years, he’d looked forward to that. Not now. He’d have to work hard for a while. The more he worked, the less time he would have to make songs.
I
never knew I could,
he thought, and then, automatically, made a couplet of it:
I
never knew it could be so good.
He felt like a middle-aged man who’d never had a woman till he married a young, beautiful, passionate bride: he was doing his best to make up for all the time he’d gone without.
Already, the villagers of Zossen sang his version of the now sacrificed captive’s song in preference to the one the luckless convict had known. They sang a couple of other songs of his, too, one his own try at a love song and the other an effort at putting into words what being cooped up through a longer winter in southern Unkerlant was like.
He wondered if he could make a song about what being worked to death most of the year felt like. No sooner had he wondered than words started lining up in neat rows inside his head, as if they were soldiers taking their formation at an officer’s command. Even so, he wondered if that song would be worth making. Everybody already understood everything there was to understand about working too much, understood it in the head and the heart and the small of the back, too. Songs were better when they told you something you didn’t already know.
He took a couple of steps, his boots crunching on crusted snow. Then he stopped again, a thoughtful expression on his face. He spoke the idea aloud. That helped him hold it in his mind: “I wonder if I could make a song that told people something they already know as well as the taste of black bread but made them think of something different, something they’d never thought of before.”
That would be something special,
he thought.
A song like that would last forever.
He kicked at the snow, sending little clumps of it flying. Now he would be thinking about that to the exclusion of everything else. He saw it was a thing that might be done, but had no idea how to go about it. He wished he knew more. He had no formal training in music or song-making. He had no formal training in anything. He’d learned how to farm by watching his father, not by having a schoolmaster beat lessons into his back with a switch.
Standing out here at the edge of the village was peaceful. After so much time in the company of his wife and son and daughter and animals—in their company whether he wanted to be or not, for the most part—he savored as much peace as he could find.
He couldn’t find much, even on the outskirts of Zossen. Here came Waddo, waving his arms and bearing down on him like a behemoth in rut. A rhyme flew out of Garivald’s head, never to return. He glowered at the village firstman. “What is it now, Waddo? Whatever it is, couldn’t it have waited?”
He was, perhaps, lucky. Waddo was so full of himself, he paid no attention to anything Garivald said. “Have you heard?” he demanded. “Powers above, have you heard?” Then he shook his head. “No, of course you haven’t heard, and I’m an idiot. How could you have heard? I just got it off the crystal myself.”
“Why don’t you back up and start from the beginning?” Garivald asked. Whatever Waddo had heard had upset him beyond the mean.
“Aye, I’ll do that,” the firstman said, nodding. “What I heard is, the lousy, stinking Algarvians have gone and invaded Yanina, that’s what I heard. King Swemmel is hopping mad about it, too. He’s calling it a breach that will not stand, and he’s moving soldiers to the border with Yanina.”
“Why?” Garivald wondered. “From everything I’ve heard about Yanina”—he hadn’t heard much, but had no intention of admitting it -“Algarve is welcome to the place. People with pompoms on their shoes?” He shook his head. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want anything to do with ‘em.”
“You don’t understand,” Waddo said, which was likely to be true. “Yanina borders Algarve, right? And Yanina borders Unkerlant, too, right? If the redheads march into Yanina, what’s the next thing they’re going to do?”
“Catch the clap from all the loose Yaninan women,” Garivald answered, “and maybe from the loose Yaninan men, too, if half the stories they tell about them are true.”
Waddo exhaled in half scandalized exasperation. “That’s not what I meant,” he said, “and it’s not what his Majesty meant, either.” His chest swelled with self-importance; he’d heard King Swemmel with his own ears. “The next thing the Algarvians are going to do is keep right on marching, straight on into Unkerlant, and we aren’t going to let that happen.”
Impressers will be coming,
Garivald thought. If Unkerlant got into a fight with Algarve, she’d need all the men she could find. The Six Years’ War had written out that lesson in letters of blood. Aside from that, though … “Zossen’s a long way from the border with Yanina,” he said. “I don’t see how it’s going to matter to us, any more than the war with Zuwayza did. Just another loud noise in a room far away.”
“It’s an insult to the whole kingdom, that’s what it is,” Waddo said, no doubt echoing the angry voice he’d heard in the crystal. “We won’t stand for it. We won’t take it lying down.”
“What will we do, then?” Garivald asked reasonably. “Sit on a bench? That’s about the only thing left for us, wouldn’t you say?”
“You’re being absurd,” the firstman said, though Garivald wasn’t the one who’d used the figures of speech. “As soon as the ground is dry enough, we’re going to have to drive the Algarvians out of there.”
“Aye, that sounds efficient—if we can do it,” Garivald said. “Can we do it, do you think?”
“His Majesty says we can. His Majesty says we will,” Waddo said. “Who am I to argue with his Majesty? He knows more about the business than I do.” He fixed Garivald with a sour stare. “And, before your mouth runs away with you again, he knows more about this business than you do, too.”
“Well, that’s likely so,” Garivald admitted. “But talk with some of the older men here, Waddo. See how they like the idea of another war with the redheads.”
“Maybe I will,” said Waddo, who, like Garivald, was too young to have fought in the Six Years’ War. The firstman went on, “But whether they like it or not doesn’t matter. If King Swemmel says we’re at war with Algarve, why then, by the powers above, we’re at war with Algarve. And if we’re at war with Algarve, we’d better lick the redheads, or else they’ll lick us. Isn’t that right?”
“Aye, it is,” Garivald said. The only other choice was going to war against King Swemmel. Garivald was old enough to remember the Twinkings War. He didn’t see how fighting Algarve could be worse than civil war in Unkerlant. After what Swemmel ended up doing to Kyot, he didn’t see how any other challenger for the throne would dare try unseating the king, either.
“There you have it, then,” Waddo said. “What his Majesty tells us to do, we’ll do, and that’s all there is to it.”
Garivald couldn’t argue with that, either. Something else occurred to him: “How did the Algarvians go marching into Yanina just like that? Yanina’s down south, same as we are. The going can’t be easy there. I’m not a king and I’m not a marshal, but I wouldn’t want to go invading anybody at this time of year.” He waved at the snowdrifts covering the fields.
“I don’t know anything about that,” said Waddo, who plainly hadn’t thought about it, either. “King Swemmel didn’t say how the cursed redheads did it. He just said that they did it. How doesn’t matter. The king wouldn’t lie to us.”
Why not?
Garivald wondered. He would have spoken that thought aloud with Annore. He might have spoken it aloud with Dagulf. Speaking to his wife or his trusted friend was one thing. Speaking to the firstman was something else again. Waddo was more Swemmel’s man than a proper villager.