She couldn’t ask Lurcanio that question. That she couldn’t ask it of him was probably the most important reason she hadn’t got up and gone around the breakfast table to him. She was, in an odd way and with certain gaps, truly fond of him. But he was an Algarvian, and she had yellow hair. Walls would always stand between them, whether he fully realized it or not.
He rose and bowed to her. “And now I needs must go do what needs doing, to hold the evil time at bay as best I can. If you will excuse me”-one of his eyebrows twitched-”or even if you will not…” He bowed again and left.
He sits at a desk, but he fights for Algarve, just as much as if he had a stick in his hand. Krasta had known that for four years, but knowing it and having it hit home were two different things. He’s worth even more than an ordinary soldier, because he can do things no ordinary soldier can do.
And you… may have his baby inside you. No matter what Lurcanio would do to her if she bore a blond, Krasta hoped with all her heart the child was Valnu’s.
After the impressers hauled Garivald into King Swemmel’s army, he hadn’t got much in the way of training. He hadn’t got any training, as a matter of fact. They’d given him a uniform and a stick and told him to obey the officers and underofficers set over him if he knew what was good for him. Then they’d taken him to the front in northern Unkerlant, stuck him in a squad there, and thrown him at the Algarvians. He still had trouble recalling that his name was supposed to be Fariulf.
And now, less than a month after he’d followed a behemoth over and through the Algarvian trenches when the assault began, he found himself a corporal, and a corporal in a foreign kingdom at that, for his regiment had pushed into Forthweg a couple of days earlier. Forthwegian peasant villages didn’t look much different from their Unkerlanter equivalents, except that the locals painted their houses in brighter colors and that the men wore beards.
No, another difference: therewere a lot of men in the villages. That took some getting used to. “When the redheads came through, these Forthwegians knuckled under,” one of Garivald’s squadmates said. “They didn’t fight back, not like we did.”
And so more of them are left alive, Garivald thought. He kept that notion buried down deep; getting a name for the subversive kind of grousing might have proved fatally inefficient. What he did say was, “The redheads put up a tougher fight down in the south than they’re doing up here.”
“That’s ‘cause half the Grelzers are traitors,” another trooper said, which wasn’t quite true but came too close to truth for comfort. The fellow went on, “Besides, what do you know about it, Corporal? Even if you did get promoted, you’re a new fish.”
Garivald started to answer that. He’d seen plenty of fighting down in Grelz, even if not formally as one of King Swemmel’s soldiers. His irregulars-Munderic’s, till he took over the band-had harassed the Algar-vians and their Grelzer puppets… and even a few Forthwegians, the ruffians in the outfit called Plegmund’s Brigade.
But, in the end, Garivald kept his mouth shut and let the question go with just a shrug. He didn’t want people knowing Corporal Fariulf was really Garivald, the fellow who’d led irregulars and written songs and done other things to draw the unfriendly notice of people in Cottbus. King Swemmel and those who followed him trust no one who’d fought the redheads on his own. After all, such people might turn and fight him one day, too.
Dragons streaked by overhead, flying east. They were all painted the rock-gray of Garivald’s tunic. “Haven’t seen many Algarvian dragons lately,” he remarked. That seemed a safe enough way to change the subject.
“Don’t miss those bastards, either, not even slightly.” Two soldiers said it at the same time, in almost identical words. Garivald hadn’t had to worry about Algarvian dragons down in Grelz. Mezentio’s men hadn’t had so many that they bothered using them against irregulars. Almost every beast they put in the air flew against King Swemmel’s main army.
But now Garivald was part of that main army. If the Algarvians put dragons in the air here in the north, they would be flying them at his comrades and him. But if the Algarvians put dragons in the air here in the north, swarms of Unkerlanter dragons would try to knock them down. Garivald had never seen so many dragons in his whole life. He’d never imagined that so many dragons could be gathered together and fed and flown over one stretch of the front.
“Halt! Who comes?” a sentry called as someone approached their camp-fire. The answer came back in Forthwegian. Some Unkerlanters, especially those from the northeast, could make sense of the related language, but it was just tantalizing noise to a Grelzer like Garivald. The sentry was a northern man. When he said, “Come ahead, then,” in his dialect of Unkerlanter, the Forthwegian must have been able to follow him, for he approached the fire.
Except, as he got close, he provednot to be a Forthwegian. Oh, he had dark hair and a dark beard, as Forthwegian men did, but he was tall and slim and had blue eyes and a short, straight nose, nothing like the beaks belonging to Forthwegians and their Unkerlanter cousins. And, instead of a sensible knee-length tunic, he wore a short tunic and trousers, garments Garivald had heard of but, till now, had never seen.
“Corporal?” he asked Garivald: that was a word nearly identical in Forthwegian and Unkerlanter. When Garivald nodded, the local bowed low before him, as if he were at least a colonel rather than a junior underofficer. He said something that might have beenThank you or might as easily not have been. Then he jabbed a thumb at his own chest and said, “I-Kaunian.”
“Kaunian?” Garivald said. “I thought Kaunians were blond.” He didn’t think a whole lot of Kaunians were left alive in Forthweg, either, but saying that didn’t strike him as the best way to make this fellow his friend. As things turned out, it wouldn’t have mattered, for the local plainly didn’t understand his dialect. In some exasperation, Garivald called out to the sentry: “Come back here and translate for me, Rivalin.”
“Aye, Corporal,” Rivalin said. “I’ll do my best.”
“That’s all you can do,” Garivald agreed. “Ask him why his hair isn’t yellow if he’s one of these Kaunian buggers.”
Rivalin spoke in his own dialect, exaggerating some of the sounds and slurring others till Garivald could scarcely make out what he was saying. The Kaunians seemed to get it, though, and answered quickly. Too quickly: He and Rivalin had to go back and forth a couple of times before the sentry turned to Garivald again. “Corporal, he says he is a blond, only he dyed his hair for some kind of a magical disguise he had that made him look like a Forthwegian so the redheads wouldn’t grab him.”
“Oh.” Garivald started to nod, then checked himself. “Wait a minute. If he had this magical disguise, why did he need to dye his hair? Wouldn’t the magic take care of that for him?”
More back-and-forth between Rivalin and the Kaunian. At last, Rivalin returned to a brand of Unkerlanter Garivald could readily understand: “Corporal, Ithink he’s saying he did it on account of his hair would turn yellow again if it got cut while he had the spell on, but I’m not quite sure.”
“Oh,” Garivald repeated. “All right, now ask him why he decided to quit his disguise and start wearing those silly clothes.”
When Rivalin translated that, the Kaunian spoke with considerable heat-so much heat that the Unkerlanter sentry had to ask him to slow down several times. When the torrent of words finally ebbed, Rivalin answered, “I don’t think he’s got a whole lot of use for Forthwegians.”
“Powers above,” one of the troopers behind Garivald said, “I haven’t got a whole lot of use for Forthwegians, either.” Garivald shrugged. Except for the men of Plegmund’s Brigade, these were the first Forthwegians he’d ever seen.
The Kaunian spoke again. “He says he wears those clothes on account of those clothes are what Kaunians wear,” Rivalin reported. Garivald shrugged again. Forthweg was a lot warmer than the Duchy of Grelz. Why anybody would want to wear trousers up here… Even the Algarvians weren’t so foolish. And then, through Rivalin, the Kaunian said, “He wants to know how to join up with us, Corporal. He wants to start killing Algarvians. Says it’s his turn now.”