Authors: Harry Turtledove
She shook her head. “It’s like something out of a fairy tale. Nobles don’t come to farms and want to marry peasant girls, not in real life they don’t.”
“No, they don’t get that lucky,” Skarnu said, which brought a smile to her face. He went on, “Having the Algarvians swallow up the whole kingdom isn’t something out of a fairy tale, either. It’s out of a nightmare.”
Merkela nodded. Before she could say anything, someone knocked on the door. At a good many times over the past couple of years, that would have brought panic to Skarnu. No more. Merkela walked to the door and opened it. “Raunu!” she exclaimed, real pleasure in her voice. “Come in. Let me pour you a mug of ale.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” Skarnu’s veteran sergeant said. “Don’t mind if you do, either.” He looked down at Gedominu, who had drool on his chin—he was cutting a tooth. “He’s just about big enough to march.”
“Seems that way,” Skarnu agreed. Merkela came back with not one but three mugs of ale on a wooden tray, and a pitcher from which to refill them, too. Skarnu eyed Raunu. “But you didn’t come here to tell me what a big boy I’ve got, not unless I miss my guess.”
“No.” Raunu took a pull at his ale, then nodded to Merkela. “Now this is your own brewing—I can taste it.”
“Aye.” She looked pleased, but not for long. “Skarnu’s right. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t need him to do something. A while ago, you would have needed us both to do something. That’s not so simple anymore.” Her glance toward Gedominu was fond, but also wistful. She missed the days when she could easily go forth against the redheads, too.
“Well, I’m always glad to come here,” Raunu said, “but you’re right—it’s got to do with business.” He nodded to Skarnu. “We’ve had some practice wrecking the redheads’ ley-line caravans, you and me—and you to, milady,” he added, as if Merkela were already a marchioness. “But you’ve got other things on your mind for a spell.” She nodded. Her eye kept going back to Gedominu.
“Where?” Skarnu asked. “What needs doing?”
“Up in the north,” Raunu answered. “They’ll be moving a good many caravans before long, using the ley lines through that rugged country to get soldiers to Jelgava by the shortest way. It’d be nice if some of ‘em didn’t get there.”
“It would be nice if a lot of them didn’t get there,” Skarnu said, and both Raunu and Merkela muttered agreement. He added, “Fitting if we give them a hard time up in the north, too.” That puzzled his lover and the sergeant. He didn’t try to explain, but still thought he was right. Four years earlier, Mezentio’s men had moved footsoldiers and, more important still, masses of behemoths through country Valmiera had thought too rough for such maneuvers. The Valmierans, full occupied with another Algarvian attack down in the south, hadn’t noticed the stroke till it had already slipped between their ribs and into their heart. Revenge, even a small measure of revenge, would be sweet.
“You’ll come, then?” Raunu asked. He meant it seriously; the underground wasn’t like the army, even if most of its members had been soldiers.
“Of course I will,” Skarnu answered.
As he’d gone down to the southern seacoast, so he rode the ley-line caravan from the little town of Ramygala up to the wooded hills and gullies of northern Valmiera. He felt like a stranger there, half a foreigner, wary of opening his mouth: the local dialect was a long way from the brand of Valmieran he spoke. “Don’t worry about it,” Raunu told him when he worried out loud. “The cursed Algarvians can’t tell the difference between how they talk here and the right way.”
“No, the Algarvians can’t,” Skarnu agreed, “but there are bound to be traitors here. There are traitors everywhere.” If he’d seen one thing in occupied Valmiera, that was it.
“Some of them have had accidents,” was all Raunu said to that. “The rest of the whoresons … they’re thoughtful, you might say.” Skarnu hoped he was right.
Right or wrong, they both had work to do. The locals had got them papers showing they were foresters, and other papers—which they were not to display—that gave them enough jargon to pass as the real article unless questioned by someone who really knew what he was talking about. With luck, that wouldn’t happen. The papers gave them the excuse they needed for going out into the woods.
As Skarnu tramped those hills and valleys, as he eyed the narrow, winding roads—in the stretches of the landscape where there were any roads at all—he grew to admire more and more what the Algarvians had accomplished by making a thrust through such terrain. “No matter how much you hate them, you can’t ignore them,” he told Raunu.
“No. They’re too dangerous for that—like any other snakes,” Raunu said. Skarnu laughed and nodded, though the veteran underofficer hadn’t been joking.
In all that contorted country, the only straight lines were the ley lines.
The world’s energy grid ran where it would. Once mages learned to exploit the ley lines, men had to hack down trees if caravans were to glide where they needed to go. And so many long, narrow stretches of cleared ground marked the ley lines’ paths through the woods. Algarvian patrols marched along the ley lines, too. The redheads were no fools; they knew the underground would try to disrupt their movements.
But knowing and being able to do anything about it were liable to prove two different things. Here as elsewhere in Valmiera, as elsewhere throughout the east of Derlavai, Mezentio’s men were stretched too thin to do everything that wanted doing. They couldn’t patrol all the ley lines all the time, or even most of them most of the time.
“I think this seems a likely spot,” Skarnu said at last. “The ley-line caravan will be just coming over that rise”—he pointed—”and won’t have the time to stop even if the conductor should notice anything wrong about the line. What say you?”
Raunu considered briefly. “Aye, it suits me.”
“Good enough, then. See how simple it is?” Skarnu suspected—indeed, he was sure—Raunu could have found the spot as readily as he had. But he was here. He took a crystal from his trouser pocket, activated it, and spoke briefly, using code phrases to give the bearings of the stretch of ley line they’d chosen while not calling it that. Then he and Raunu left in a hurry. He didn’t know the redheads had overheard him, but had to act as if they were tracking every emanation around.
“Pity we can’t be here when they do the job,” Raunu remarked.
“Aye.” Skarnu nodded. Somewhere not far away, a team of his countrymen had assuredly heard what he’d said. He didn’t know where; what he didn’t know, Mezentio’s men couldn’t pry from him. “But knowing we helped, knowing we told them where to bury the egg—that counts for something, too.”
“Reminds us we’re still in the war, like,” Raunu said.
“That’s it,” Skarnu agreed. “That’s just it. In fact, when you knocked on my door, I was complaining to Merkela that the Algarvians were going to the powers below everywhere but in Valmiera. It’s still true, more or less, but we’ve helped make it not quite so true.”
“Sooner or later, the redheads’ll get what’s coming to era,” Raunu said.
“I don’t just want them to get it,” Skarnu said. “I want to be the one who gives it to them, and now I am—at least a little.”
Back when the Unkerlanter attack on Algarve in the north was new, Major Scoufas had called it a catastrophe and Colonel Sabrino had told the Yaninan dragonflier he didn’t think it was quite so bad as that. Since then, King Swemmel’s men had pushed the Algarvians out of the north of Unkerlant. They’d pushed them out of western Forthweg and had fought their way to the line of the Twegen River, the river that ran by Eoforwic. If that wasn’t a catastrophe, Sabrino didn’t know what would be.
But catastrophe or no, the wing of dragonfliers he commanded remained here in the south. He had even gone so far as to send a written petition to King Mezentio, begging his sovereign to send him into the urgent fighting. Mezentio hadn’t told him no. Mezentio hadn’t deigned to reply at all. More than anything else, that told him in how bad an odor with the king he really was.
Major Scoufas had stopped twitting him about it. Yaninans were politer, or at least more formal, people than his own countrymen. The officers in his wing hadn’t stopped grumbling about their fate.
At last, Sabrino took aside Captain Orosio, who’d been with him longer than anyone. He said, “If you want to transfer, I won’t stand in your way. I don’t blame you for wanting to go where the action is. I want to go up north myself, but nobody will listen to me. Nobody will listen to you, either, as long as you serve under me. But if you don’t, I have the feeling you’ll get what you want.”
To his surprise, Orosio shook his head. “No, thank you, sir,” he said. “I don’t know anyone who wants to leave the wing, sir. That’d just be another slap at you. We want the wing to get what it deserves, and we want to give the Unkerlanters what they deserve.”
Touched, Sabrino set his hand on Orosio’s shoulder. “One thing Algarvians are, by the powers above, is loyal to their friends.”
The squadron commander nodded. “Well, of course, sir,” he said, though in the world at large it was anything but
of course.
“And the king bloody well ought to be loyal to you, too. You gave him the best advice you knew how, and not only that, you were right, too.”
“And much good it did me,” Sabrino said. “I told that to Scoufas: You can get in every bit as much trouble with a king for being right as you can for being wrong. Maybe even more trouble.”
“Scoufas.” Orosio looked around before continuing. The two of them stood off to one side of the dragon farm; from the beginning, this hadn’t been the sort of conversation for which they wanted eavesdroppers. Satisfied no Yaninans were in earshot, Orosio went on: “I wish we were by ourselves and not tied to Tsavellas’ people. It’s like being married to a dead woman.”
“I know,” Sabrino answered, “but I don’t know what to do about it. If we were here by ourselves, we’d be here
by ourselves,
if you know what I mean: no Algarvian footsoldiers for miles around. Out here in the west, we’re stretched too thin. We’ve got to use whatever allies we can scrape up.”
“Yaninans.” Captain Orosio rolled his eyes. “Forthwegians. Powers above, do I hear right? Is there really a Kaunian regiment somewhere down here?”
“I’ve heard that, too,” Sabrino answered. “Kaunians from Valmiera, I think.”
“Those people are crazy,” Orosio declared.
Since Sabrino thought he was right, he didn’t argue. In fact, he waved Orosio to silence: A Yaninan was trotting toward them. In accented Algarvian, the fellow called, “Colonel Sabrino to tent of crystallomancers.”
“I’m coming.” Sabrino hurried after the fellow. He wondered what had gone wrong now. He also had to do his best not to laugh at the way the pompoms on the Yaninan’s shoes bounced up and down. Algarvians always had a hard time taking their Yaninan neighbors seriously.
All but a couple of the crystallomancers inside the tent were Yaninans. For some reason or other, Sabrino had trouble getting Algarvian replacements. He had to admit the little swarthy men did know their business. Their specialists—which also included dragonfliers—were pretty good. Their army as a whole …
He sat down at the crystal to which a Yaninan waved him. “Sabrino here.”
An Algarvian face looked back at him. “Hello, Colonel. I am Major Ardalico. I want to let you know that I am establishing a special camp a couple of miles to the rear of your position.”
“A special camp?” Sabrino repeated tonelessly.
“That’s right.” Ardalico’s voice was bland. Even the Algarvians who slaughtered Kaunians from Forthweg for the sake of their life energy weren’t comfortable about saying that straight out.
Special camp
was their favorite euphemism.
“Why are you setting up a special camp back there?” Sabrino asked.
Major Ardalico’s image in the crystal gave him a large, hearty, false smile. “Because I’ve been ordered to, sir.”
“Thank you so much,” Sabrino said, and the major’s smile got larger and falser. “Now be so good as to tell me
why
you were ordered to put that camp there.”
“Sir, I wouldn’t care to speculate about that.” Ardalico was smooth. He was so smooth, he was downright greasy. Colonel Sabrino hated him on sight.
“Powers below eat you, you miserable little turd,” Sabrino ground out. “You’re going to tell me the truth, or I’ll get my dragons in the air and knock that camp down around your ears. And if you don’t think I’ll do it, you can bloody well think again.”
He’d succeeded in knocking the smug, self-satisfied smirk off Ardalico’s handsome face. “You wouldn’t dare,” blurted the officer in charge of the special camp.
“Sonny boy, you just go ahead and try me,” Sabrino said. “I’m already under a cloud in Trapani. What can King Mezentio do to me? Send me to the west to fight the Unkerlanters? I’ve been here since you were in diapers. Now are you going to talk to me, or do I pay you a visit on dragonback?”
He wasn’t bluffing. Some few of his own men might balk, but the Yaninans would surely follow him. For one thing, it would infuriate Algarve. For another, the idea of sacrificing Kaunians appalled them. They weren’t really hard enough to fight in a war like this, but what choice did they have when they found themselves sandwiched between Mezentio and Swemmel?
Major Ardalico licked his lips. He wasn’t stupid, except in the particular way that had let him become an officer heading up a special camp in the first place. He had to realize Sabrino meant what he said. But he tried one last delaying tactic: “What was it you wanted to know?”
“Why are you running up that bloody murder manufactory of yours?” Sabrino demanded. Ardalico winced; thinking of it as a special camp probably helped him sleep at night. Sabrino didn’t care. He had his own worries. Most of them—the ones that weren’t centered in Trapani—lay due west of him. He went on, “Are you putting it up because it looks like the Unkerlanters are going to mount an attack in these parts, and we need some way to stop them?”
“I shouldn’t be speaking of this by crystal,” Ardalico said unhappily. Sabrino drummed his fingers on the tabletop. The motion drew Ardalico’s eyes: Sabrino could see as much from his image. More unhappily still, the young major said, “Aye, there is some fear of that.”