“Good. If they were winning in the island war, they would have more energy to put into the fight against us,” Rathar said. “And the Kuusamans and Lagoans are really running the Algarvians out of Jelgava.”
“Of course they are-the cursed Algarvians are fighting us a lot harder than they’re fighting the islanders,” Gurmun said.
“We owe them more than the Kuusamans and Lagoans do,” Rathar said. “They know it, too, and they don’t want to pay off. Look at it from their eyes, and their strategy makes pretty good sense.”
Gurmun screwed up his face. “I don’t want to look at anything from Algarvian eyes. Powers below eat all the redheads.”
“Powers below eat ‘em, aye,” Rathar said. “But sometimes you have to try to see things through their eyes. If you don’t, you won’t understand what they’re trying to do, and you’ll have a harder time beating them.” That made Gurmun look thoughtful. He did want to beat the Algarvians. Rathar could fault him for a few things, but never for lack of desire.
“The next interesting question-” Gurmun began.
Before he could say what he thought the next interesting question would be, a crystallomancer came running into the headquarters calling, “MarshalRathar! MarshalRathar!”
“I’m here,” Rathar said. “What in blazes has gone wrong now?” By the young mage’s tone, something had.
Sure enough, the fellow said, “Sir, we’ve just lost two of the bridges into the bridgehead south of Eoforwic. We almost lost the third one, too.”
“What?” Rathar and Gurmun said together, in identical tones of angry disbelief. Rathar went on, “How the demon did the redheads get so fornicating lucky?”
“Sir, it wasn’t luck,” the crystallomancer said. “They’ve got some new sorcery that’s letting them really aim some of the eggs they drop from dragons. The people down at the bridgehead don’t know just how they’re doing it, but they’ve watched eggs swerve in midair and land on the bridges or right by them in the river.”
MarshalRatharspent the next little while cursing Algarvian ingenuity. Then he turned toGeneralGurmun and said, “We have to let Addanz know about this. If the redheads can figure out a way to steer dropping eggs, our mages can figure out a way to stop them.”
“They’d better be able to, anyhow,” Gurmun said. “If they can’t, KingSwemmel will find himself a new archmage in one demon of a hurry, and Addanz will likely find himself down in the cinnabar mines in the Mamming Hills: the king’ll squeezesome use out of him, anyhow.”
Rathar reckoned the commander of behemoths almost surely right. Swemmel had a low tolerance for failure. Swemmel, come to that, had a low tolerance for almost everything. Rathar and Gurmun followed the crystallomancer down the street to the house where he and his comrades worked. With Rathar in overall command of all of Unkerlant’s fighting fronts, the crystallomancers didn’t fit into the house where he worked and slept.
When Addanz’s image appeared in a crystal, Rathar explained what had happened. The Archmage of Unkerlant nodded. “I have heard somewhat of this from the Kuusamans,” he said. “Apparently, even Mezentio’s men have trouble doing what they do. Only a handful of their mages are capable of such rapid kinetic sorcery. It may prove a nuisance, but no worse.”
“If they knock down our last route into that bridgehead, it’ll be a lot worse than a nuisance,” Rathar growled. “And if you know what Mezentio’s mages are up to, why aren’t you trying to stop it?”
“We have already begun work on countermeasures,”ArchmageAddanz said. “But these things do take a certain amount of time, and-” He blinked. “Powers above, what was that?”
Rathar didn’t answer him. That had been an egg bursting close by, close enough to startle him into biting his tongue. He tasted blood. He andGeneralGurmun dashed out of the crystallomancers’ headquarters, leaving it to the mages to break the etheric connection. Rathar needed only an instant to see what had happened: an egg had burst squarely on the building where he’d been living.
“Was that one of their steered eggs?” Gurmun asked.
“How should I know?” Rathar trotted toward his headquarters. “Let’s see if anyone’s left alive in there.
“They don’t wantyou left alive,” Gurmun said.
“That’s all right,” Rathar told him. “I don’t want them left alive, either- and I’m going to get my wish.”
Seventeen
Summer was fading fast in the Naantali district. Fernao had watched that happen before. Setubal, the capital of Lagoas and his home town, didn’t have the best weather in the world. Not even the most ardent Lagoan patriot could have claimed otherwise-not when, in peacetime, COME TO BALMY BALVl! broadsheets sprouted like mushrooms on walls and fences every autumn. But even Setubal looked subtropical when measured against the wastelands of southeastern Kuusamo.
Even before nights turned longer than days, the grass started going from green to yellow. Birds began flying north, first by ones and twos and then in enormous flocks. More and more clouds boiled up from the south, so that even when it was daylight, gloom held sway more often than not.
The worsening weather perfectly fit Fernao’s mood. The rattle and scrape and bang of hammers and saws and chisels and other tools as Kuusaman construction crews raced to repair the hostel after the Algarvians dropped their steerable egg on it did little to improve his spirits, either.
“Don’t worry about a thing,” Ilmarinen told him at supper one evening. “If they aren’t ready before the snow starts falling, I’m sure all of us Kuusaman mages know the ancient art of building snow houses. We’d be happy to teach it to you, so you can stay as warm and cheerful as we do.”
“Thank you so much.” Fernao cast about for a word in Kuusaman, didn’t find it, and switched to classical Kaunian: “Can you quantify exactly how warm and cheerful you will be?”
“Oh, of course,” Ilmarinen said. “Can you provide me with an appropriation to investigate it with all the latest sorcerous techniques?”
Fernao took a tiny copper bit from his belt pouch. “Here you are.”
“Excellent!” Ilmarinen scooped up the coin. “You may expect your answer in about ten thousand years.”
He laughed uproariously. Fernao laughed, too. Glum or not, he couldn’t help it. Ilmarinen worked hard at being outrageous, and was good at what he did.
“What’s funny?” Pekka asked as she sat down at the table with them. Fernao explained. Pekka gave Ilmarinen a severe look. “Snow houses, indeed,” she said. “When was the last time you made a snow house or herded reindeer like our ancestors?”
“Day before yesterday,” he answered, as seriously as if it were true.
Noise from down the hall covered Fernao’s snort and Pekka’s cough. She said, “I’ll tell you what worries me: all those carpenters. I’m sure the Algarvians will have tried to put spies among them.”
“Hard for an Algarvian to look like a Kuusaman,” Fernao said. That gave him an excuse to look at her and to admire the way she looked. When the steerable egg burst by the hostel, all he’d worried about was whether she was all right. The sorcery they were working on hadn’t mattered a bit.
But Pekka and Ilmarinen both shook their heads. “Plenty of masking sorceries,” Pekka said.
“A good many of them used against the Algarvians here and there,” Ilmarinen added, speaking with considerable authority. He had knowledge and sources for knowledge at which Fernao couldn’t begin to guess. “Wouldn’t be too surprising if they tried to get some of their own back.”
“There are ways to look behind such masks, I’m sure,” Fernao said.
“Oh, aye.” Ilmarinen spoke with authority again. “Anything one mage can figure out how to make, another mage can figure out how to break.”
Pekka gave her order to a serving girl even as she nodded. “That’s right. It leaves me with two worries on my mind: that Mezentio’s mages haven’t done something particularly clever that we don’t notice, and that we do our checks on all the workmen and don’t let any slip past unexamined.”