Only then did he think of the peasants--he supposed they were peasants--who must have perished in the Unkerlanter countermagic. He didn’t suppose they thought Addanz’s sorcerous comrades had done them a good turn.
“Here come the redheads,” Magnulf said. Algarvian behemoths lumbered toward the battered Unkerlanter line. Footsoldiers trotted along to help protect them and to take advantage of the holes they tore. Horse and unicorn cavalry, swift but vulnerable, trailed after them. If the holes were big enough, the cavalry would tear through, too, and spread chaos in the Unkerlanter rear.
“Do you know, I think we may just give them a nasty surprise,” Captain Hawart said. “This time, maybe they think they’ve kicked us harder than they really have.”
Leudast wasn’t thinking about that. He was scurrying toward the nearest hole he could find. Over his shoulder, he called, “Get the archmage out of here. This isn’t his kind of fight.”
It was Leudast s kind of fight. He started blazing at the advancing Algarvians. He wasn’t the only one, either--far from it. The redheads started dropping. Even without their magic’s working as well as they would have liked, they kept coming, though. Leudast had fought them for too long to think they were cowards. He wished they had been. Unkerlant would have suffered far less.
“Fall back!” Captain Hawart shouted, as he’d had to shout so many times. Unwillingly, Leudast obeyed lest the Algarvians get behind him. As clashes went these days, the Unkerlanters had done well. By the time nightfall brought fighting to an end, Leudast and his comrades had lost only about a mile of ground.
Every once in a while, a handful of Unkerlanter dragons would appear over Bishah, drop a few eggs, and then flee back toward the south. They did little damage. Hajjaj judged they didn’t come intending to do much damage, but rather to remind the Zuwayzin that King Swemmel hadn’t forgotten about them even if he was involved in bigger fights elsewhere.
After the third or fourth visit, the Zuwayzi foreign minister noticed something else: most of the eggs the Unkerlanters dropped fell near the Algarvian ministry. He remarked on that to Balastro when King Mezentio’s minister to Zuwayza held a reception: “I think you are trying to gather all the diplomats in the city here together to be wiped out at one stroke. Are you sure you’re not in King Swemmel’s pay rather than that of your own sovereign?”
Marquis Balastro threw back his head and laughed uproariously. “Ah, your Excellency, you do both me and the Unkerlanter dragonfliers’ aim too much credit,” he said. Lamplight glittered off his badges of nobility and rank, and also off the silver threads that ran through his tunic. Far from being naked, as he’d come to Hajjaj s hillside estate, tonight he displayed full Algarvian plumage. That was literally true: in his hatband glowed three bright feathers from some bird or another out of tropical Siaulia.
Hajjaj minded clothes tonight less than usual. With the sun almost as low in the north as it ever went, the weather was cool by Zuwayzi standards, mild by those of Algarve. He didn’t feel as if his own tunic and kilt--not nearly so splendid as Balastro’s--were trying to smother him.
“Some date wine, your Excellency?” Balastro asked. “We have what the dealer assured me was an excellent vintage--if that’s the word one uses for date wines--though I hope you will forgive me for admitting I have not sampled it myself.”
“I may forgive you eventually, but not soon.” Hajjaj smiled, and the Algarvian minister to Zuwayza laughed again. Balastro was a charming fellow: good-natured, clever, cultured. Hajjaj eyed him, wondering how he could be all he was and yet. .. But that would wait. It would have to wait.
For now, the Zuwayzi foreign minister ambled over to the bar. The Algarvian servitor behind it bowed and asked, “What may I get you, sir?” in fairly good Zuwayzi. That made him likelier to be a spy than a tapman by trade, but these days Hajjaj assumed everyone a spy till proved otherwise. Painful experience with his secretary had taught him that was safest.
Balastro was eyeing him, to see what he’d choose. As much to humor the redhead as to please his own palate, he did ask for date wine. When the servitor poured it from the jar, Hajjaj’s eyes widened. “Pressed from the golden dates of Shamiyah!” he exclaimed, and the Algarvian nodded. Hajjaj bowed partly to him, partly to the wine. “You do me great honor indeed, and great harm to King Mezentio’s purse.”
He sipped the lovely, tawny stuff. Almost, he went over to grab Balastro by the scruff of the neck and force him to taste the wine himself. In the end, he refrained. Balastro would say all the right things, but he would not mean them. No man who came to dates after grapes could appreciate them as they deserved to be appreciated. Hajjaj could, and did.
Sipping, he eyed the gathering. It was not what it would have been in times of peace. Ansovald, the Unkerlanter minister, had been sent south over the border once more when war between his kingdom and Zuwayza resumed. The ministries of Forthweg and Sibiu and Valmiera and Jelgava stood empty, untenanted. Zuwayza was not formally at war with either Lagoas or Kuusamo, but Algarve was, and Balastro could hardly have been expected to invite his king’s foes.
That left delegations from Algarve, from Yanina, from Gyongyos, from small, neutral Ortah (which no doubt thanked the powers above for the mountains and swamps that let her stay neutral), and, of course, from Zuwayza: Hajjaj was far from the only dark-skinned person making the best of clothes tonight.
The Yaninan minister to Zuwayza was a plump, bald little man named Iskakis. He had the hairiest ears of any man Hajjaj had ever seen. On his arm was his wife, who couldn’t have had more than half his years, and whose elegant, sculpted features bore an expression of permanent discontent. Hajjaj knew--he wasn’t sure whether she did, too--Iskakis had a taste for boys. For a man with that taste to be married to such a woman seemed a sad waste, but Hajjaj could do nothing about it.
Iskakis was telling a Gyongyosian almost twice his size about the triumphs Yaninan soldiers were running up in Unkerlant. Neither he nor the big, yellow-bearded man spoke Algarvian perfectly. Being from the other side of broad Derlavai, the Gyongyosian might not know most of the triumphs Iskakis was describing were as imaginary as the Yaninan’s command of the perfect tense. The Yaninan minister did not brag of his kingdom’s might to Algarvians.
Horthy, the Gyongyosian minister to Zuwayza, made his way over to Hajjaj. He was a big man, too, his beard streaked with gray. “You do not seem joyful, your Excellency,” he said in classical Kaunian, the only tongue he and Hajjaj had in common.
Hearing Kaunian spoke inside the Algarvian ministry and using it himself made Hajjaj s mouth twist. Again, he put that aside, answering, “I have been to too many of these gatherings to let one more overwhelm me. The wine is very good.”
“Ah. Is it so? I understand that. I have not seen so many as you, sir--I honor your years--but I too have seen enough.” Horthy pointed to the goblet. “And you say you esteem that wine?”
“I do.” Hajjaj’s smile held an edge of self-mockery. “But it is made from a fruit of my country”--to his annoyance, he couldn’t come up with the classical Kaunian word for dates--”rather than grapes, and is not to everyone’s taste.”
“I shall try it,” the Gyongyosian minister declared, as if Hajjaj had questioned his manhood. He marched over to the bar and returned with a goblet of Shamiyah wine. Raising it to his lips, he said, “May the stars grant you health and many more years.” He sipped, paused thoughtfully, and sipped again. After another pause, he delivered his verdict: “I would not care to drink it and nothing else, but it goes well enough as a change from the usual.”