"Well," he answered grandly, breathing wine fumes into her face, "well, sweetheart, I think we're back in business. Back in business, aye." He savored the phrase. "And what a business it is, too."
The summer before, the fight in the forests of western Unkerlant had been as grand as the attacking Gyongyosians could make it. They'd driven the goat-eating Unkerlanters before them, almost breaking through into the open country beyond the woods. Now… Now Istvan counted himself lucky that the Unkerlanters weren't driving his own countrymen west in disorder. King Swemmel's men seemed content to harass the Gyongyosians without doing much more.
"I'll tell you what I think it is," Corporal Kun said one evening.
"Of course you will," Istvan said. "You've always got answers, you do, whether you know the question or not."
"Here, the question's simple," Kun said.
Szonyi boomed laughter. "Then it's just right for you, by the stars." He hugged himself with glee, proud of his own wit.
Kun ignored him and went on talking to Istvan: "Remember how people were saying the Unkerlanters would hit us hard if they got into trouble with Algarve?" He waited for his sergeant to nod before going on, "Since they haven't hit us, doesn't it follow that they didn't get into trouble against the Algarvians?"
Istvan plucked at his beard. "That sounds like it ought to make sense. But our allies have hammered Unkerlant two summers in a row. Why shouldn't they be able to do it again?"
"If you hit a man but you don't knock him down and kick him till he quits, pretty soon he's going to start hitting you, too," Kun said. "That's what the Algarvians did. Now we're going to see how well they stand getting hit. That's my guess, anyhow."
Before Istvan could reply, a sentry called a challenge: "Halt! Who comes?" Everybody in the redoubt grabbed for his stick.
"I, Captain Frigyes," came the answer, and the Gyongyosian soldiers relaxed.
"Advance and be recognized," the sentry said, and then, a moment later, "Come ahead, sir."
Frigyes scrambled down into the redoubt. Nodding to Istvan, he asked, "All quiet in front of you, Sergeant?"
"Aye, sir," Istvan answered. "Swemmel's whoresons are sitting tight. And so are we. But you know about that. I guess everything worth having is heading for the islands, to fight the stinking Kuusamans."
The company commander nodded. His every motion was sharp, abrupt. So was the way he thought. He was a good soldier, but Istvan often missed the more easygoing Captain Tivadar- and he didn't want to think what would have happened had Frigyes been the officer who discovered he'd inadvertently eaten goat.
"Everything worth having is heading for the islands," Frigyes agreed. "That includes us. We pull out of line here tomorrow, after sundown, the whole regiment. No, the whole brigade."
For a moment, none of the soldiers in the redoubt spoke. Several of them stood there with their mouths hanging open. Istvan didn't realize he was one of those till he had to shut his before he could start talking: "Where will we go, sir? And who'll take our places here?"
Frigyes' broad shoulders moved up and down in a shrug. "We'll go where they send us. And I don't know who's coming in to deal with Swemmel's goat-eaters. I don't care. They're not my worry anymore. Somebody else will kill them; that's all I need to know. Anybody here ever fight against the Kuusamans?"
Istvan stuck up his hand. So did Kun and Szonyi. "Aye, sir," they chorused. "On Obuda," Istvan added.
"I'll pick your brains as we head west, then," Frigyes said. "I know the Unkerlanters, but those scrawny little slanteyes who follow the Seven Princes are a closed book to me." He turned and went up the sandbag steps and out of the redoubt. Over his shoulder, he added, "Have to let the rest of the squads know." Then he was gone.
His footsteps were still receding when all the soldiers in Istvan's squad started talking at once. He let them babble for a little while, but only for a little while. Then he made a sharp chopping motion with his right hand. "Enough!" he said. "The captain told us to be ready to move out tomorrow after sunset, and that's what we're going to do. Anybody who can't get ready by then" -he smiled his nastiest smile, all teeth and flashing eyes- "we'll leave behind for the Unkerlanters to eat."
"They're pulling the whole brigade out of the line," Kun said in wondering tones. "They can't be putting another brigade in. There'd be no point to that- if they had another brigade to put in, they'd have sent that one to the islands instead of us."
"The Unkerlanters are quiet," Szonyi said. "We've been talking about how quiet they are."
"But how long will they stay quiet once we're gone?" the youngster named Lajos asked, undoubtedly beating Kun to the punch.
"Like the captain said, that's not our worry anymore," Istvan said. "One way or another, the generals will deal with it. We've got to start thinking about the Kuusamans." He didn't care for that notion. They'd come unpleasantly close to killing him a couple of times on Obuda. Now they'd get more chances.
When Istvan thought of the Kuusamans, he thought of going into action against them as soon as he left the redoubt. Reality proved more complex, as reality had a way of doing. Along with the rest of the brigade, Istvan's regiment pulled out of the line when ordered. He didn't see any inexperienced young men trudging forward wide-eyed and eager, as befitted a warrior race, to take their places. It was nighttime, of course. Maybe that made a difference. Maybe. He tried to make himself believe it.
Having left their positions at night- presumably to keep the Unkerlanters from realizing they were going- they got no sleep. They got no sleep the next day, either, but kept tramping west through woods that seemed to go on forever. By the time Istvan finally was allowed to stop and rest, he was readier to fight his own officers than he ever had been to fight the Kuusamans.
The brigade had to march through the woods for most of a week before they got to a ley line. There might have been others closer, but they hadn't been charted. This whole stretch of the world was far, far off the beaten track. And then the weary men had to wait till enough caravan cars accumulated to carry them all west.
"It could be worse," Kun said as the squad did at last climb aboard one. "They could have decided to make us march the whole way, across the Ilszung Mountains and all. Why not? We fought our way across 'em coming east."
"Shut up, curse you," Istvan said. "Don't let any officers hear you saying something like that, or they're liable to take you up on it."
He didn't see the ley-line caravan leave the forest; by then he was asleep, his chin on his chest. When he woke again, the mountains were near. And then the caravan traveled over mountains and through mountain valleys for the next couple of days. Much of the terrain reminded Istvan achingly of his own home valley; many of the villages, with their walls and their fortresslike, steep-roofed houses of gray stone, could have been Kunhegyes, where he'd grown up. But Kunhegyes lay far from any ley line.
Some of the men from the mountains of eastern Gyongyos had never seen the plains that led down to the Bothnian Ocean. The only flat ground they'd ever known was that of the great woods of western Unkerlant, and they exclaimed in wonder to see farmland stretching from one horizon to the other.
Kun looked at Istvan over the tops of his spectacles. "I thought you'd be oohing and ahhing with the rest of the back-country lads," he remarked.
"Then you're not as smart as you like to think you are," Istvan retorted. "Didn't I come this way before, when they threw me onto a ship and sent me to Obuda?"