“But...” Cornelu said helplessly. He ached to see his wife. More than that, he ached to touch her. He didn’t know whether he could have managed either of those things, especially the latter, but he wanted the chance to try. Thinking of Costache under siege from three lecherous Algarvian officers--and what other sort was there?--ate at him. Next to that, haggling seemed of small import. So did anyone else’s troubles.
Giurgiu folded massive arms across his massive chest. “That’s what I’m telling you now, and that’s how it’s going to be.” He looked Cornelu up and down. “If you don’t like it, you can leave, or else you can make me change my mind.”
The rest of the woodcutters chuckled. Giurgiu wasn’t the gang boss only because he knew the business inside and out. He was also stronger and tougher than any of the men he led. From what Cornelu heard, no one had challenged him for a long time. But Cornelu knew skill counted for as much as strength. He set down the bowl from which he’d been eating and got to his feet. “All right, I’ll have a go at that,” he said.
Giurgiu stared. So did the other woodsmen. Giurgiu walked out onto the meadow. “Come on, then,” he said over his shoulder. “You’ve got stones in your bag, anyhow, but I don’t think it’ll do you much good. And you’ll go out and work after they throw water in your face, too.”
“No, I won’t,” Cornelu said. “I’ll drive the wagon instead of Levaditi.” He wondered how foolish he’d just been. Giurgiu moved more like a cat than a bear, and he was a lot bigger than Cornelu. The woodcutters gathered in a circle around the two men.
“Come on,” Giurgiu said. “You want me, come and get me. Either that or pick up your axe and get back to work.”
With a silent sigh, Cornelu approached. No, it wouldn’t be easy. But he couldn’t back down now, not unless he wanted to lose all his pride. He rushed at the boss woodcutter, deliberately making his attack look clumsy. Fooling Giurgiu into overconfldence seemed his best hope.
And it worked. Giurgiu let fly with a haymaker that would have knocked Cornelu through a boulder had it landed. But Cornelu seized the woodcutter’s beefy arm, bent his own back, and threw Giurgiu over it and down to the dying grass. He started to leap on the bigger man. But Giurgiu didn’t land like a falling tree, as he’d hoped. The boss woodcutter rolled away and bounced to his feet while the rest of the gang exclaimed in astonishment.
Giurgiu eyed Cornelu. “So you know what you’re doing, eh? All right. We’ll see who’s left standing at the end.” Now he advanced with grim concentration.
In the unpleasant minutes that followed, Cornelu hurt his opponent several times. He blacked one of Giurgiu’s eyes and landed a couple of solid kicks in the ribs. But the head woodsman gave more than he got. Blood poured from Cornelu’s nose, though he didn’t think it was broken. His own ribs gave eloquent testimony of how Giurgiu’s had to feel. Somewhere in the middle of the brawl, he spat out a small chunk of tooth, and counted himself lucky not to lose most of a mouthful.
At the last, Giurgiu got round behind him, seized his arm, and bent it back. “You won’t be able to work if I break something in there,” he remarked. “Had enough, or shall I go ahead and do it?” He bent the arm a little farther. Cornelu’s shoulder screamed.
“Enough,” Cornelu mumbled through swollen lips and even more swollen self-disgust.
Giurgiu let go of him, got up, and hauled him to the feet. Then he slapped him on the back and almost knocked him down. “Well, you do have stones,” he said, and the other woodcutters nodded. “You made me sweat for it.” The men nodded again. Giurgiu went on, “Now wash your face and get to it. You’re not taking a wagon down to the city today and that’s flat.”
“Aye,” Cornelu said. Someone brought him a bucket. Before splashing away the blood, he looked at his reflection. He was not a pretty sight. Maybe it was just as well Costache wouldn’t get the chance to look at him.
“Your Majesty . . .” Marshal Rathar licked his lips, then said what he had to say: “They have broken through in the north. They have broken through in the south, too, though not so badly. The weather hampers them worse there.”
King Swemmel’s dark eyes burned in a face as pale as that of a Kaunian kept out of the sun his whole life long. “And how did this happen?” he asked in a deadly voice.
“It was magecraft, your Majesty,” Rathar answered. “I am only a soldier; I can tell you no more than that. If you would have the details, you must have them from Archmage Addanz here.”
Swemmel’s burning gaze swung toward the chief sorcerer of Unkerlant. “Aye, we will have the details, Addanz,” he said, even more harshly than he had spoken to Rathar. “Tell us how you and yours failed Unkerlant in her hour of need.”
Addanz bowed his head. Like Rathar, he was in the flower of his middle years. Most of the old men who might have served Swemmel were dead. Some, the lucky ones, had died of natural causes. Others had chosen the wrong side in the Twinkings War or displeased Swemmel afterwards. Their ends, commonly, were harder.
“Your Majesty,” Addanz said, still not looking up, “I did not expect the Algarvians to do as they did. None of us expected the cursed Algarvians to do as they did.” He freighted the adjective with more than its usual mild weight of meaning. “When they did as they did, the world shuddered, for those with the wit and training to sense such things. By the powers above, your Majesty, the first time they did as they did, I almost fell over dead.”
“Better if you had,” Swemmel snarled. “Then we could appoint someone of some wit in your place.” He turned back toward Rathar. “And yours.”
“Mine?” Rathar said--yelped, rather. He’d hoped that, with the king’s wrath turned on the archmage, he might escape unscathed. No such luck, he saw. He let out a muted protest, the only kind safe around King Swemmeclass="underline" “What did I do?”
“Nothing--which is why you are in part to blame,” the king answered. “You should have known the stinking redheads would try some such ploy when straightforward war began to fail ‘em.”
“Your Majesty, none of us dreamt they would do--this,” Addanz said. Rathar nodded to him in grateful surprise. For the archmage to defend him took more courage than he’d known the other man to possess. Addanz went on, “You surely know, your Majesty, how life energy is a very potent source of power for magecraft--how soldiers whose sticks run low on blazes may recharge them with the death of a captive or of a brave comrade.”
“Aye, we know this,” Swemmel said. “How could we not know it? The soldiers in the far west, particularly, have used the life energy of some few of their number to help the rest hold back the louse-ridden, fuzzy-bearded Gongs.”
Addanz nodded. “Even so. Of some few of their number, your Majesty, is the critical phrase. For life energy is the most potent, most concentrated form of sorcerous energy. And the Algarvians, you might say, went suddenly from the retail to the wholesale use of such energy. They gathered together a couple of thousand Kaunians in one place--in each of several places, actually--and slew them all together, all at once, and their mages turned the energy from those slaughters against our armies.”
“That is the way of it,” Rathar agreed. “The mages who aid our soldiers against the foe did everything they could to hold back the great storm of sorcery raised against ‘em”--as Addanz had defended him, he returned the favor--”but they were overwhelmed.”
“It is a great wickedness, the greatest of 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.