The mage cast his spell. After what seemed a very long time, someone’s face appeared in the crystal. Whose? Too dark to tell. “Report your situation,” Rathar said, wondering if he was taking with an Algarvian who’d overrun the Unkerlanter defenders.
“We’re still here, sir.” The fellow sounded like an Unkerlanter, anyhow.
“Where’s Major Melot?” Rathar rapped out.
“Dead,” the Unkerlanter soldier answered. “There’s maybe fifty of us left-but Mezentio’s men have settled down for the night. We gave ‘em all they wanted and then some. Plenty of those whoresons down for good, too, you bet.”
Maybe he didn’t know to whom he was speaking. Maybe he was too worn to care. Rathar remembered fights like that, back in the Twinkings War. If he had to, he’d grab a stick and go into battle himself once more-that was how vital he reckoned holding Sulingen to be. “Good enough, soldier,” he said gruffly, and nodded to the crystallomancer, who dissolved the link. Rathar turned to Vatran. “What do you think?”
“If we don’t send those brigades across, lord Marshal, we may as well pack it in,” Vatran answered. “Even if the redheads have a trap waiting to close on ‘em, we’ve got to try it. Without ‘em, the Algarvians have it all their own way in Sulingen. You’ll do what you’ll do-you’re the marshal. But that’s how it looks to me.”
“And to me,” Rathar said. He tapped the crystallomancer on the shoulder. “Get me Major General Canel, on the southern bank of the Wolter.” A couple of minutes later, Canel’s image appeared in the crystal. The Unkerlanter officer had a bloody bandage wrapped loosely around his head. “Redheads come calling?” Rathar asked.
“It’s only a scratch,” Canel answered. “They didn’t hit more than a couple of boats, either, lord Marshal. I can move if you want me to.”
“Stout fellow,” Rathar said. “I want you to, all right. First thing you do is, you throw the Algarvians back from the pier. Then reinforce the ironworks and the granary, and then the hill east of the ironworks.”
Canel nodded, which made the bandage flop down over his left eye. “Never a dull moment in these parts, is there? Cursed Algarvians.”
“If you wanted a nice, easy job, you should have chosen something quiet and safe-tiger-taming, maybe,” Rathar said. Canel grinned at him. Lantern light shone from the major general’s teeth. Rathar went on, “Hit ‘em hard.” He didn’t think Canel’s brigades would turn the tide by themselves. He expected them to get chewed up, in fact. Too many of Mezentio’s men were in Sulingen for anything else to be likely. But Canel led good troops. They’d do some chewing of their own, too.
Rathar could tell just when the Unkerlanters crossed from the southern bank of the Wolter into Sulingen. The din of battle, which had quieted after sunset, picked up again. Vatran chuckled. “We’ll shake the Algarvians out of their feather beds, by the powers above.”
“Well, maybe we will. Here’s hoping, anyhow.” Rathar yawned. “I’m going back to my own feather bed now.” Vatran laughed at that. Like everyone else in the gullyside headquarters, Rathar slept on a cot in a tiny chamber scraped from the dirt and shored up with boards to keep the earthen roof from falling in if an Algarvian egg burst right overhead. A curtain over the entrance was the only sign of his exalted rank; not even Vatran had one. As he headed off to the chamber, Rathar looked back over his shoulder and added, “Wake me the instant you need me. Don’t be shy.”
He said that whenever he went to bed. As always, Vatran nodded. “Aye, lord Marshal.” About a third of the time, Rathar got to sleep as long as he wanted; he was lucky in not needing a lot of sleep. A marshal who had to have eight hours every night would have been useless in wartime.
Sure enough, someone shook him in the middle of the night. He came awake at once, as he always did, and tried to gauge the hour by the noise outside the curtain. It was pretty quiet out there. “What’s toward?” he asked.
Usually, that would get him a crisp explanation from Vatran or from one of the junior officers in the cave. Tonight, he was answered by-a giggle? Whoever was there sat down on the cot beside him. “You threw them back, lord Marshal,” a low, throaty voice said. “Now we celebrate.”
“Ysolt?” Rathar asked. He got another giggle by way of reply. He reached out-and touched smooth, bare flesh. His ears heated. “Powers above, Ysolt, I’m a married man!”
“If your wife was here, she’d take care of this,” the cook answered. “But she’s not, so I’ll do it for her.”
Before he could say another word-and whatever he said couldn’t be very loud, for he didn’t want anyone outside to find out what was going on in here-Ysolt pushed him over onto his back. She hiked up his tunic, yanked down his drawers, and took hold of him. His ears weren’t what heated then.
Ysolt chuckled. “You see, lord Marshal? You’re as ready as the army was tonight.” She straddled him and impaled herself. Almost of their own accord, his arms came up and folded around her back. In the darkness, her mouth found his.
And then the only thing he wondered was whether the cot would collapse under the strain of two good-sized people energetically making love. But it proved sturdier than he’d expected, and held. Ysolt gasped and quivered. A moment later, Rathar groaned.
She kissed him on the cheek, then slid off him. A brief rustle was her putting on the tunic she’d shed before waking him. “Conqueror,” she whispered, and slipped out of the tiny chamber. Feeling more conquered than anything else, Rathar set his clothes to rights. Had they not been disarranged, he might have thought he’d been dreaming. A moment later, he was asleep again.
“Do you think we got rid of those cursed Forthwegians by ourselves?” Garivald asked Munderic. He didn’t think so himself, not for a minute. Those bearded demons had given Munderic’s band of irregulars everything they wanted and then some.
Munderic said, “I can’t tell you one way or the other. All I can tell you is, nobody’s seen the buggers anywhere around for the past week or so. They’re like a squall, is what they are. They blew in, they tore things up, and now they’ve blown out again.” He spat. “I’m cursed if I’m going to tell you I miss ‘em, either.”
“They were trouble,” Garivald agreed. “Now that they’re gone, what do we do?”
“Have to remind folks we’re still around,” Munderic said, and Garivald nodded. The band had spent most of its time deep in the woods since the Forthwegians outdid them at the game of ambush.
“We ought to hit a Grelzer patrol,” Garivald said. “If we can send Raniero’s pups home with a jug tied to their tails, we’ll have things to ourselves for a while here.”
“That’s so,” Munderic agreed. “The other thing we have to do is, we have to keep hitting the ley lines that run south and west. The harder the time the Algarvians have moving men forward, the better our armies will do.”
Ley lines hardly seemed real to Garivald. Zossen had been a long way away from any of them; for all practical purposes, his home village lived as it had two centuries before, when all traffic moved on wheels or on the backs of beasts or men in summer and what traffic there was in winter went by sled. Even so, he nodded and said, “Aye, makes sense to me.”
Munderic’s face was rarely cheerful. Now it went savage indeed. “And I’ll find out who sold us to the Forthwegians. When I do, he’ll die, but he’ll spend a long time wishing he was dead first.”
Garivald nodded again. “Have to get rid of traitors,” he said. He wasn’t surprised there were some, though. He knew the irregulars had spies among the Grelzers who followed King Raniero: only natural the backers of the puppet king should try to return the favor.
“Maybe Sadoc’ll be able to sniff out the son of a whore,” Munderic said.
“Sadoc couldn’t sniff out a week-dead horse if you put him ten feet downwind of it,” Garivald said. “He’s a good fighter, Munderic. I’ll never say anything about his nerve. But he’s no mage, and you’ll get hurt if you count on him to be one.”