Rual gave him another sympathetic look, though the last thing Garivald wanted was his sympathy. “I understand what you’re saying-powers above know I do,” Rual assured him. “But weren’t you sick of inspectors stealing your crops and impressers liable to drag you off into the army if you looked at ‘em sideways or even if you didn’t?”
“Well, who wasn’t?” Garivald said, making it sound like an admission Rual had dragged out of him. Again, he wasn’t lying. Again, it didn’t matter, which Rual didn’t seem to understand. The Algarvians had done worse in Zossen- and, no doubt, elsewhere in Unkerlant-than Swemmel’s inspectors and impressers. Garivald decided to make his own comment before Rual could ask another question: “This looks like a pretty happy place now, I’ll tell you that.”
“Oh, it is,” Rual assured him. “Raniero makes a fine king. So long as we don’t trouble anything, he leaves us alone. You could never say that about Swemmel, now could you?”
“No, indeed.” Garivald laughed a particular kind of laugh, one that suggested a lot of things you could say about King Swemmel. He would have enjoyed saying them, too-to his wife, or to his friend Dagulf back in Zossen. Saying them to Rual would have been blackest treason.
“Well, there you are,” Rual said, as if certain Garivald agreed with him in every particular.
“Aye, here I am-at the bottom of my mug of ale.” Garivald set coins- old coins, coins of Unkerlant, not Grelz-on the table and waved to the Unkerlanter with the preposterous mustache and strip of beard behind the counter. When he caught the fellow’s eye, he pointed to his mug and Rual’s. The tapman brought them refills.
“My thanks,” Rual said. “You’re a man of your word. Too many drifters coming through Pirmasens these days want to grab what they can and then slide out again. This is a nice, quiet place. We want to keep it that way.”
“Don’t blame you,” Garivald said. “Almost tempts a fellow into wanting to settle down here for good.” He drank some more ale, to get rid of the taste of the lies he was telling.
“You could do worse, Liaz,” Rual said, and the curse of the war Unkerlant and Algarve were fighting was that he was probably right. “Aye, it’s right peaceful here.” He didn’t mention-maybe he even didn’t consciously notice-the Algarvian soldiers drinking at a table not ten feet away from him. If they’d been back in Algarve where they belonged, he would have come closer to telling the truth.
Garivald finished his ale. Now came the tricky part: sliding out of Pirmasens under the noses of those Algarvian soldiers, and under Rual’s, too. He got to his feet. “Good to find a friendly face,” he said. “Aren’t many of ‘em left these days.”
“Where are you heading?” Rual asked.
“Somewhere that got hurt worse than you seem to,” Garivald answered. “Maybe somewhere I can find a farm nobody’s working and get things going again. That’d keep me too busy to worry about anything else for a while, I expect.”
“And I expect you’re right,” Rual said. “Good luck to you.”
“Thanks.” Garivald took a couple of steps toward the doorway. One of the redheads sitting in the tavern spoke to him in Algarvian. He froze in alarm entirely unfeigned. Turning to Rual, he asked, “What did that mean? I don’t know any of their language.”
“He told you to count yourself lucky you’re still breathing,” Rual said.
“Oh, I do,” Garivald answered, feeling the sweat start out under his arms once more. “Every day, I do.” He stood there for a moment, wondering whether the Algarvians were going to try to wring him dry. But the fellow who’d spoken just nodded and waved him away. Trying not to let out a sigh of relief, he went out into the hot sunshine.
He didn’t just turn around and go back the way he’d come. That would have roused suspicions. Instead, he kept walking east, toward Herborn. Eventually, when he judged it safe, he’d make a wide circle around Pirmasens and double back toward the forests where Munderic, not false King Raniero, was lord and master. For now, he felt like a traveling mountebank who’d stuck his head into a dragon’s mouth and pulled it back unscathed.
Dragons were stupid beasts, though. Every once in a while, no matter how you trained them, they would bite down.
Dragons flew south overhead: hundreds of them, maybe even thousands, some high, some low. All were painted in one variant or another of Algarve’s green, red, and white. To Sergeant Leudast’s horrified gaze, they seemed to cover the whole sky.
“And not a single one of ours to try to flame them down,” he said bitterly.
“They’ll have a fight on their hands sooner or later,” Captain Hawart said. “They’d better, anyhow, or the game is as good as over.”
Leudast wondered if the game was as good as over. He’d wondered that before, back last summer when the Algarvians smashed and encircled Unkerlanter armies again and again, then toward the end of fall when Mezentio’s mages first unleashed their slaughter-filled sorceries. When winter came, Unkerlant fought back hard. But now it was summer again, and. . “Cursed redheads have got more lives than a cat,” he grumbled.
“They’re nasty buggers, no two ways about it,” Hawart agreed. Like every man in his regiment, he looked worn and battered.
Still another wave of Algarvian dragons passed overhead. “At least they’re not dropping their eggs on us,” Leudast said. “Where do you suppose the whoresons are headed?” Coming out of a peasant village in northern Unkerlant, he knew little about the geography of the south-and, till the fighting started, had cared less.
“Sulingen.” Captain Hawart spoke with great authority. “Has to be Sulingen on the Wolter. That’s the last city in front of the Mamming Hills, the last city in front of the cinnabar mines, the last place where we can keep them from breaking through.”
“Sulingen.” Leudast nodded. “Aye, I’ve heard the name. But after a pounding like that, there won’t be one stone in the town left standing on another.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” the regimental commander said, sticking a long stalk of grass in the corner of his mouth so he looked like a peasant from a village in the back of beyond rather than the educated man he was. “Sulingen’s a good-size place, and towns take a deal of knocking down before there’s nothing left of them. Powers above know we’ve seen that.”
“Well, I won’t say you’re wrong, sir,” Leudast admitted. “Rubble’s as good to fight from as buildings are, too, maybe even better. But still…” He didn’t go on. He and Hawart had been through a lot together, but not so much that he cared to tag himself with the label of defeatist.
Hawart understood where his ley line of thought was going. “But still,” he echoed. “You don’t want them to drive you back to your last ditch, because you don’t have anywhere to go if they push you out of it.” The stalk of grass bobbed up and down as he spoke. He tried to sound reassuring: “They haven’t even driven us back into it yet.”
“No, sir.” Leudast wasn’t about to argue, but he still wanted to say what was in his mind: “You can see it from here, though.”
Off to the east, Leudast could also see columns of smoke marking the latest Algarvian thrust into Unkerlant. He turned his head and looked west. No new smoke there. Leudast let out a small sigh of relief. The regiment wasn’t about to be cut off and surrounded any time soon, anyhow.
A starling hopped through the grass, chirping metallically. It pecked at a worm or a grub, then flew away when Leudast shook his fist at it. “Those things are cursed nuisances,” he said. “They’ll eat the fruit right off a tree and the grain right out of the fields.”
“They might as well be Algarvians,” Hawart said. Leudast laughed, though it was at best a bitter joke.
A runner trotted up, shouting for an officer. When Hawart admitted he was one, the other Unkerlanter said, “Sir, you’re ordered east with as many men as you command, to try and hold back the Algarvians.”