“Never can tell,” Bembo said--he’d heard of plenty of rich Algarvians with peculiar tastes, so why not a Forthwegian, too? Turning to the woman, he asked, “What do you say he wanted from you?”
“My mouth,” she answered at once. “I know him--he’s too lazy to screw.”
Ignoring the Forthwegian’s bellow of fury, Bembo glanced at the knees of the Kaunian woman’s trousers. They had fresh mud on them. He hefted the bludgeon. “Pay up,” he told the Forthwegian.
The man cursed and fumed, but reached into his belt pouch and slapped silver into the Kaunian woman’s hand. He stomped off, still muttering under his breath. The Kaunian woman eyed Bembo. “Now I suppose you’ll take half of this--or maybe all of it,” she said.
“No,” he answered, and then wondered why. A small offering to make up for all the blonds he’d herded into caravan cars? He didn’t know. Then he had a new thought. “There’s something else you might do....”
“I wondered if you’d say that,” she answered with weary cynicism. “Well, come here.” When he walked out of the alley a few minutes later, he was whistling. This had all the makings of a fine morning.
Retreat again, retreat through heavy snow even this far north. Leudast shivered and cursed and tugged at the hem of his white smock as he stumbled along what might have been the road running back toward Cottbus. Algarvian dragons thought it was the road; eggs kept falling out of the sky along with the snow. Every so often, Unkerlanter soldiers would shriek as one of the eggs burst close enough to wound.
“Sir,” Leudast called out Captain Hawart when the regimental commander came close enough to recognize, “sir, are we going to be able to hold them out of the capital?”
“They won’t take Cottbus till every last man defending it is dead,” Hawart said.
For a moment, that reassured Leudast. Then he realized that all those deaths might not be enough. He trudged past a small field littered with corpses: Unkerlanter peasants slain by Unkerlanter mages in a desperate effort to blunt the power of the murderous sorcery the redheads aimed at their kingdom.
What sort of funeral pyre would King Swemmel light to hold the Algarvians out of Cottbus? Thinking about it made Leudast’s blood run colder than the miserable winter weather around him. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. If it didn’t, he and his battered comrades would have to be the ones who kept it from happening.
Some great shapes came lumbering across a field toward him. He started to bring up his stick, an automatic--and mostly futile--reaction whenever he saw behemoths. From behind him, Sergeant Magnulf called, “Don’t blaze at those buggers. They’re ours.”
The behemoths were indeed moving east, to oppose the advancing Algarvians. “We do keep sending ‘em into the fight,” Leudast allowed. “Now if only they’d last a little longer, we’d be better off.”
He didn’t realize a village lay ahead till he was marching through its outskirts.
“Peel off!” Hawart shouted to his men. “Peel off! We’re going to make a stand here. We’re going to make a stand at every village we come to from now on. We’re going to keep making stands till none of us is left standing.”
Leudast went into a peasant hut much like the one in which he’d lived till King Swemmel’s impressers dragged him into the army. Being out of the wind made him feel warmer. He peered through a window, then nodded. He had a good view to the east, though with the snow he didn’t know how soon he’d see the Algarvians. But they would see him no sooner.
He’d hardly found a spot he liked before the Algarvians started tossing eggs at the village. The flimsy walls of the hut shook around Leudast; he wondered if the roof beams were going to come down on his head. “Efficiency,” he said, with no small bitterness. King Swemmel preached it. The Algarvians seemed to know what it really meant. All through the war, their egg-tossers had kept up with the fighting better than Unkerlant’s. One more reason we’ve got our backs to Cottbus, Leudast thought.
He knew what was coming next. After they’d softened up the position with eggs, the Algarvians would probe it and try to outflank it. He didn’t know what sort of defenses lay to either side. He did know the redheads would get a bloody nose if they tried pounding straight through.
“Here they come!” somebody shouted.
Leudast peered through the window. Sure enough, little dark shapes were moving toward him through the snow. The Algarvians hadn’t thought to use white smocks and hoods of their own to make themselves less conspicuous against an equally white background. Knowing Mezentio’s men could overlook something like that made Leudast feel oddly better.
He rested his stick on the bottom of the window frame and waited. Keeping it there would steady his aim. Before the Algarvians got close enough for him to start blazing, Captain Hawart’s rear guard east of the village sent beams their way. A few redheads fell. The rest had to slow down and develop the Unkerlanter position, to see what sort of opposition they faced.
Eggs started falling again, this time in front of the village. Leudast cursed. The Algarvians also had far more crystals than did his countrymen, had them and used them. Leudast wished the Unkerlanter egg-tossers were so flexibly directed--far from the first time he’d made that wish.
And then, as if to prove even an Unkerlanter corporal could get lucky once in a while, a great torrent of eggs rained down on the advancing Algarvians. Snow and dirt flew. So did bodies. Leudast whooped. He yelled himself hoarse. Someone, for once, had done the right thing at the right time. “See how you like that, you stinking whoresons!” he shouted in delight. “You don’t buy anything cheap today.”
He wondered if the Algarvians would have to murder another few dozen or few hundred Kaunian captives to get the magical boost they needed to push forward. He wondered if his own kingdom’s mages would have to murder more Unkerlanter peasants to withstand that magic and even to hurl it back on its creators. He wondered if anything would be left of Unkerlant by the time the two armies and the two sets of mages were done with the kingdom.
Instead of magic, the Algarvians chose behemoths. Half a dozen of the big beasts lumbered toward the village. An egg had to burst almost on top of one of them to do it much harm. Twice Leudast shouted when a behemoth was knocked off its feet. Each time, he moaned a moment later when the animal staggered up and came on once more. The behemoths’ advance was all the more frightening for being so slow and deliberate; enough snow lay on the ground to hamper their movements.
Hawart’s rear guard had no real chance to do anything against the behemoths. They were so heavily armored, the only way a footsoldier with an ordinary stick could hope to bring one down was with a blaze through the eye. That was possible. It was very far from likely.
As they usually did, the Algarvian behemoths paused well outside the village. Four of them carried egg-tossers, which they used to pound the place some more. The other two bore heavy sticks. When they blazed, the beams they sent forth were like swords of light. They quickly set a couple of houses afire. Had one of those beams pierced Leudast, he would have died without knowing what struck him. There were worse ways to go in war. He was convinced of that; he’d seen too many, seen them and listened to them, too.
But before a heavy stick could swing his way, the behemoths and their crews were distracted by something off to their left. Leudast couldn’t tell what it was without sticking his head out the window, which struck him as a good way to get a hole blazed through it. He stayed where he was and waited. With peasant patience, he understood he’d find out sooner or later what was going on.
And he did. Several Unkerlanter behemoths advanced against their Algarvian counterparts. They started tossing eggs at the behemoths on which King Mezentio’s men rode. The Algarvian crews knew they were a greater danger than whatever footsoldiers might be defending the village.