When the Algarvians murdered Kaunians by the hundreds, perhaps by the thousands, to fuel their military sorcery against Unkerlant, Pekka had felt it, as had sorcerers throughout the world. She’d felt it, too, when the Unkerlanters fought back by murdering their own. But those slaughters, however horrific, had been far to the west. The massacre she felt now was close, close. It was like the difference between feeling an earthquake far away and one right under her feet.
She was feeling an earthquake right under her feet. Even as the building groaned, as cages flew through the air and shelves toppled, her mind leaped. “The Algarvians!” she cried, as Siuntio had before her. She could hardly hear herself through the din. “The Algarvians are turning their death-powered magic against us!”
The war against King Mezentio hadn’t come home to Kuusamo till now. Oh, a handful of Algarvian dragons flying from southern Valmiera had dropped a few eggs on the coast, and ships clashed in the Strait of Valmiera that severed Kuusamo and Lagoas from the mainland of Derlavai. But the Seven Princes had thought--as what Kuusaman had not?--they could prepare behind the Strait and strike at Algarve when they were ready. Algarve, unfortunately, had other ideas.
As earthquakes will, this one seemed to last forever. How long it really went on, Pekka couldn’t have said. At last, it stopped. Rather to her surprise, it hadn’t shaken the building down around her ears. The lamps had gone out, though. Everything in the chamber lay on the floor. Some cages had broken open; rats were scurrying for hiding places. The tremor had knocked Siuntio and Ilmarinen off their feet. Pekka had no idea how or why she was still standing.
Ilmarinen got up without help. He and Pekka pulled some shelves off Siuntio so he could rise. Siuntio was bleeding from a cut above one eye, but that wasn’t why anguish filled his face. “Our city!” he cried. “What the Algarvians have done to our city!”
“We had better find out what they’ve done to our city,” Ilmarinen said grimly. “We had better get out of here, too, before the building falls down on us.”
“I don’t think it will, not if it hasn’t already,” Pekka said. “This isn’t like a natural earthquake--I’ve been through some. There are no aftershocks.” But she hurried out with Ilmarinen and Siuntio.
When she was standing on the snow-dappled dead grass in front of the thaumaturgical laboratory, Pekka gasped. She could see a great deal of Yliharma, and much of what she could see had fallen down. Pillars of smoke rose here and there from rapidly spreading fires. And, when she looked toward the high ground at the heart of the city, she let out an agonized waiclass="underline" “Not the palace, too!”
“They have struck us a heavy blow,” Siuntio said, wiping blood from his face as if he’d just realized it was there: “heavier than I ever dreamt they could.”
“That they have.” Ilmarinen still sounded like a wolf, a hungry wolf. “Now it’s our turn.”
“Aye,” Pekka said fiercely.
King Swemmel paced back and forth, back and forth, in Marshal Rathar’s office. With his body hunched forward and his jewel-encrusted robe swirling out behind him, the king of Unkerlant put his marshal in mind of a hawk soaring over a field, waiting for a rabbit to show itself.
The difference was that, unlike a hawk, King Swemmel wasn’t inclined to wait. He stabbed out a long, thin finger at the map tacked to the wall. “We’ve got the redheads on the run now!” he gloated. “All we have to do is hit them hard everywhere, and they’ll shatter like a dropped plate.”
Swemmel’s moods swung wildly; he could despair--or grow furious--as readily as he exulted. One of the things Rathar had to do, along with the small task of commanding Unkerlant’s armies, was to try to keep the king on something close to an even keel. “Aye, we have forced them back some, your Majesty,” he said, “but they’re still fighting hard, and they’re still too close to Cottbus.”
Now he pointed toward the map. Gray-headed pins showed Unkerlanter positions, green-headed ones Algarvian forces. He hardly looked at the pins; he knew where the armies were at the moment. He looked at the pinholes west of the present positions, the pinholes that showed how far the Algarvians had come. There was a hole in the middle of the dot labeled Thalfang, terrifyingly near the capital of Unkerlant. On a clear day, you could see Thalfang from the spires of Swemmel’s castle. The redheads had fought their way into the town, but they hadn’t fought their way through it.
“Aye, they are still too close to Cottbus,” the king agreed. “They were too close the instant they crossed our border. That is why we have to hammer them hard all along the line, to drive them from our kingdom.”
Rathar chose his words with great care: “Hammering them all along the line may not be--I do not think it is--the best way to beat them back.”
“Say on.” Suspicion gleamed in Swemmel’s dark eyes. Had he not had those eyes and dark hair, he would have looked more like an Algarvian than an Unkerlanter. But in his ability to smell plots whether they were there or not, he was very much a man of his kingdom. And like every king of Unkerlant since its earliest days, he didn’t fancy contradiction.
Knowing that, Marshal Rathar kept on speaking carefully: “Look how the Algarvians attacked us, your Majesty. They didn’t just swarm across the border from south to north.”
“No?” Swemmel growled. “Then why does the fighting run all the way from the icy Narrow Sea up to the desert the treacherous Zuwayzin infest?”
Rathar vividly remembered the sorts of things King Swemmel did to those who displeased him. But more than any other courtier who served Swemmel, he also remembered what Unkerlant needed. He spoke more frankly to the king than did anyone else in the palace. One day, that would probably cost him his head. Meanwhile ... “Don’t look only at what the Algarvians did, your Majesty. Look at how they did it.”
“Vile, treacherous dogs,” Swemmel muttered. “Traitors everywhere. They will pay. How diey will pay! How everyone will pay!”
Pretending not to hear, Rathar went on, “They used behemoths and dragons massed together to tear holes in our lines, then met behind the front and cleaned out the pockets they made. If they’d attacked all along the line, they wouldn’t have been able to find or make so many weak places.”
“And you want us to imitate them.” By King Swemmel’s tone, he wanted to do anything but.
“If we aim to beat them back, we’d better,” Rathar said. “Whatever else they are, man for man they’re the best warriors in Derlavai.”
Whatever else they are. The Algarvians had also turned out to be the most accomplished murderers in Derlavai. They wouldn’t have come so far so fast without their murders, either. That sickened Rathar. Swemmel hadn’t been shy about imitating them there--not a bit. That sickened his marshal, too.
“Are they?” Swemmel said. “We doubt it. If they were, how could our armies have beaten them back?” He sniffed contemptuously.
“Because we have more men than they do. Because we put snowshoes on our behemoths, where they didn’t think of that. Because we had the sense to give our soldiers white smocks. Because we understand winter better than they do.” Rathar ticked off the points on his fingers one by one. He went on, “But you must recall, your Majesty, they’re learning, too. Unless we can hurt them badly while they’re still off balance, our job gets harder.”
He wished King Swemmel would trust him to command Unkerlant’s armies and would stay out of his way. While he was at it, he wished for the moon. He had about as much chance of getting one as the other. Swemmel stayed strong not least because he allowed no subjects too much strength. Rathar was, without a doubt, the second most powerful man in Unkerlant. To those looking up, that made him great and mighty. But if the king crooked a finger, the kingdom would have a new marshal the next instant. Rathar understood that all too well.