“Bugger that with an axe handle,” Giurgiu said. “If they loved us so bloody much, they shouldn’t have invaded us. That’s how I see things, anyway. But there’s liable to be some as see ‘em different.”
“Traitors,” Cornelu said bitterly.
Giurgiu didn’t argue with him. All he said was, “They’re there. You try and pretend they aren’t, it’ll cost you.” He got to his feet, towering over Cornelu. “Try to stay warm tonight. I’ve got a feeling the weather’s going to turn nasty by sunup.”
Cornelu had the same feeling. He wouldn’t have expected it in a man who spent all his life on land. The weather was often bad at this season of the year; Tirgoviste lay far to the south, and they were well up in the hills. Even on rare clear days, the sun hardly seemed to have risen before it set again in the northwest. When clouds covered the sky, murk and night were hardly distinguishable.
Like everyone else, Cornelu had plenty of thick wool blankets. He swaddled himself in them, curling up close to the cookfire. On nights like this, it burned till daybreak, even if that meant throwing on timber the woodcutters might otherwise have sold.
Snow started falling a couple of hours after he fell asleep, borne on the wings of a wind doubtless whipping whitecaps on the seas surrounding Sibiu. Cornelu woke, pulled a length of blanket over his head, and went back to sleep.
When morning came, the world was white. Down in Tirgoviste town, Cornelu knew, it probably wouldn’t be snow. It would be sleet or freezing rain: to his mind, even nastier. He wished he were down there, back in his own house, making love with Costache in front of a crackling fire--a fire made from wood he hadn’t cut himself. As an afterthought, he remembered Brindza. Fitting her into all that, he wished her asleep in a cradle, or wherever toddlers of that size slept.
Did the cook give him an odd look while dishing out the morning oatmeal? He couldn’t be sure, and didn’t dwell on it. He did dwell on shoveling down the oatmeal as fast as he could so it would put a little extra warmth in his belly. He gulped two mugs of herb tea, too, for the same reason, even though the stuff tasted nasty.
“Get moving, dears,” Giurgiu called to his men, voice full of false solicitude. “Down by the sea, they’ll be wanting what we’ve got to sell, that they will. I know you don’t care to get your fingers cold, but it can’t be helped. Remember what brave fellows you are, that’s all.”
Instead of going back to work on the rounds of lumber he’d been chopping up the day before, Cornelu got called over to help bring down a big fir. Before long, he was sweating in spite of the snow and the wind that was blowing it. He let out a grunt of intense satisfaction when the tree crashed down, throwing up a brief, blinding cloud of snow when it did. Woodcutting had its points; he could actually see what he was accomplishing through the strength of his arms.
He walked along the trunk, methodically lopping off the big branches one after another. Work felt good in weather like this. If he hadn’t been working, he would have been freezing. He swung the axe again and again, breathing in great gulps of resin-and sap-scented air, breathing out great clouds of steam and fog. Losing himself in the labor, he might have been mechanism, not man.
Losing himself in the labor, he forgot about what Vlaicu, the other man who’d felled the tree, might be doing. He was reminded when he heard a boot crunch in the snow in back of him. That was almost too late. He’d just raised his arms for another axe stroke . . . and the other woodcutter tackled him from behind.
Vlaicu had probably hoped to get Cornelu down and get him hogtied before he could do anything about it. He’d lost his fight with Giurgiu, after all. But Giurgiu knew all the tricks of the trade, and was bigger and stronger besides. Vlaicu didn’t, and he wasn’t far from Cornelu’s size.
Cornelu went down on his knees, but not to his belly. Hanging on to his axe with his right hand, he used his left to break the other woodcutter’s grip on him, then drove an elbow into Vlaicu’s midsection. It wasn’t perfectly placed, but it forced a grunt of pain from his foe. Cornelu threw another elbow, twisted, and scrambled to his feet.
Vlaicu leaped back, almost stumbling in his haste to recover his own axe. He could have killed Cornelu instead of jumping him, but the Algarvians had seemed to want him alive, and so he’d tried to make him a captive instead. But since that hadn’t worked, a head might do as well. Cornelu made an awkward leap away from a stroke that would have cut him in two.
Then he surged forward again, chopping at his foe. Dimly, he heard more woodcutters shouting as they came up. So did Vlaicu, who bored in, swinging wildly. He must have realized most of the others wouldn’t favor him. Cornelu ducked, straightened, and slammed the side of his axehead against Vlaicu’s temple. The other woodcutter tottered, then fell like the fir, Blood stained the snow.
Giurgiu bent beside him, but only briefly. “Dead. You caved in his skull,” he told Cornelu.
“He jumped me. He was going to give me to the Algarvians,” Cornelu answered.
But Vlaicu had friends on the crew, too. “Liar!” they cried. “Murderer!” Other woodcutters shouted at them. More axes were raised.
“Hold!” Giurgiu roared. Such was his might that they did hold, instead of leaping at one another. “I think Cornelu’s telling the truth. Why else get in a fight now?” But Vlaicu’s friends kept on shouting, and he had quite a few of them--more than the dismayed Cornelu had thought. Giurgiu jerked a thumb at the trail that led out of the hills and down to Tirgoviste. “You’ve always been wanting to go into town. You know what’s good for you, you’d better get out of here now,” he told Cornelu. “I’ll make sure you have a start.”
Looking at those furious faces, Cornelu knew he wouldn’t last a day--or, more to the point, a night--if he stayed. “Aye,” he said bitterly. After an ironic salute, he shouldered his axe as if it were a stick and trudged north, toward the seashore.
Snow poured down on Thalfang. Fire and smoke rose up from the burning Unkerlanter town. Tealdo crouched in a doorway, ready to blaze anything that moved. His whole company had been thrown into the meat grinder here. He didn’t know how many men were still alive, but he did know the company would never be the same again after it came out the other side of the town--if it ever did.
From the next doorway over, Trasone called, “Maybe we’ll make it to Cottbus after all if we can take this stinking place first.”
“How much do we have left to take it with?” Tealdo answered. “Not a whole lot of reinforcements behind us, that’s for cursed sure. And where are our behemoths? I’ve hardly seen any the past few days.”
“We came past some that were frozen to death, remember?” Trasone said.
Tealdo did remember, and wished he didn’t. He also wished his comrade wouldn’t be quite so sardonic. He said, “I was hoping I’d see some that would do us some good.”
“With this much snow on the ground, the powers below might as well be pulling at the beasts’ feet,” Trasone commented. “How are they supposed to go forward in weather like this? How are we, for that matter?” He risked a quick look around the corner to make sure no Unkerlanters were sneaking up, then turned back to Tealdo. “And I wouldn’t mind a few more dead blonds helping the mages push us forward, either.” He scowled at Tealdo, as if defying him to disagree.
With a shrug, Tealdo answered, “Hard getting ‘em up here these days, what with the weather and with the Unkerlanters playing games with the ley lines. Besides, Swemmel keeps on killing his own, too.”
He didn’t know what Trasone would say to that. Before Trasone could say anything, the Unkerlanters started lobbing eggs at the forwardmost Algarvians. Tealdo huddled in his doorway, making himself as small as he could. King Swemmel’s men had a great swarm of egg-tossers north of Thalfang.