He swung down from the unicorn with surprising grace and began the inspection. The Grelzer soldiers gave him a curious little half bow by way of a salute. He was half a head taller than most of them. Sidroc wondered what they thought of having a foreign sovereign. If they had any doubts, they would be wise to keep quiet about them.
When Raniero came to Plegmund’s Brigade, he startled Sidroc by speaking good Forthwegian: “I thank you all for joining my Algarvian allies in helping to assure my kingdom’s safety.”
“Huzzah!” the Brigade’s Algarvian officers shouted. “Huzzah!” the Forthwegian troopers echoed a moment later. The redheads swept off their hats and gave Raniero extravagant bows. Sidroc was cursed if he’d do any such thing. Like the rest of the ordinary soldiers, he stayed at stiff attention.
“I know how brave you men are,” Raniero went on. “During the Six Years’ War, I commanded a regiment of Forthwegians, and they fought like lions.” Sidroc hadn’t done well in school, but he knew Algarve and Unkerlant had divided Forthweg between them like a couple of hungry men cutting up a slab of roast beef. Any Forthwegians Raniero commanded would have been fighting for Algarve-as Werferth had done-not for their own kingdom.
And now that was so again. Sidroc shrugged. Nothing he could do about it. And he didn’t like Unkerlanters, not even a little. If fighting for Algarve was how he got to fight against King Swemmel, then it was, that was all.
Raniero said, “Bandits and brigands still trouble my land. I know you will help put them down. For that, you will have not only my thanks but also the thanks of all the great and ancient Kingdom of Grelz.”
Beside Sidroc, Sergeant Werferth snickered, just loud enough to let him hear. He understood what that snicker meant, more from dining-room talk between his father and Uncle Hestan than from anything he’d learned in school. Grelz hadn’t been a kingdom for three hundred years. The Algarvians had revived it not for the sake of the Grelzers but to complicate life for Swemmel of Unkerlant.
How many Grelzers really thought of Raniero as their king? If the Algarvians had named one of their own King of Forthweg after King Penda fled, Sidroc wouldn’t have thought of him as his king. He’d always said pretty much what he thought, but saying that struck him as a bad idea.
Raniero strolled through the ranks of Plegmund’s Brigade. He smelled of sandalwood, which almost made Sidroc crack a smile. But he’d learned that wasn’t a good idea, either. Then Raniero went over to the Algarvian companies. He had no compunction about joking with the redheads, nor they with him. Guffaws floated up to the sky. Sidroc tried to remember his Algarvian so he could find out what was funny, but couldn’t make out enough to tell.
And then the ceremony was done. Raniero got back onto his unicorn and rode away. So did his Algarvian commanders and his Grelzer bodyguards. The regiment of Grelzers marched back toward Herborn, as did the Algarvian companies. That left Plegmund’s Brigade alone on the vast plain of southern Unkerlant.
They set up camp as if in the middle of hostile company-which in fact they were, or why else would Raniero have wanted them? Sentry posts surrounded the encampment on all sides. Seeing them, Sidroc said, “Well, at least we’ll be able to rest easy tonight.”
Sergeant Werferth snickered again, this time at him. “Oh, aye, if you want to wake up with your throat cut. You got to figure the Unkerlanters for sneaky whoresons. What happens if they slide past the sentries? They’re liable to, you know. How well can you see in the dark?”
“I don’t know,” Sidroc answered. “I guess I’ll just have to be ready to get up and fight in a hurry if I have to.”
That made Werferth nod and thump him on the back. “Aye, so you will. There-you see? You’re not as dumb as you look.”
Worries about sleep turned out to be largely academic. As soon as the sun went down, mosquitoes came out by armies, swarms, hordes. The tents the Brigade had brought from Forthweg lacked the netting they needed to hold the mosquitoes at bay; Forthweg was a drier, hotter land, with fewer bugs.
When Sidroc got up the next morning, he was yawning and irascible and covered with bites. So was Werferth, who looked no happier than he did. “And we aren’t the worst of it,” the sergeant added. “Cursed mosquitoes flew off with two men from another company. They raise ‘em the size of dragons around here.” Sleepy and grouchy, Sidroc believed him for a moment. Then he snorted and went off to stand in line for breakfast.
The Brigade broke up into regiments and then into companies, and began prowling across the countryside looking for Unkerlanter irregulars. What they found were farmers doing their best to get a crop out of their land. Few of the farmers seemed very friendly, but few seemed actively hostile, either.
Werferth hated all of them, for no better reason Sidroc could see than that they were there. “Some of ‘em are irregulars, sure as I stand here farting,” the veteran sergeant said. “And a lot of the ones who haven’t got the ballocks for that will tell the irregulars where we’ve been and where we’re going. Bugger the bunch of’em, is what I’ve got to say.”
After a couple of days of marching, Sidroc’s company went into a forest that astonished him. Forthweg didn’t have woods like these, dark and brooding and wild, with the air chill and damp even in summertime under pines and beeches and firs and birches and larches and spruce. Sidroc kept looking around not for Unkerlanter irregulars but for bears or possibly trolls. He knew there were no such things as trolls, but that didn’t keep him from worrying about them, not in a place like this.
Without warning, the trooper tramping along three men in front of him went down as if all his bones had turned to jelly. Sidroc hurried up to him. He had a neat hole in his left temple; the beam that killed him had blown off much of the right side of his skull. Blood soaked into the pine needles on the path.
“By squads!” an Algarvian officer shouted. “Into the woods on either side. We won’t let the buggers get away with this.”
Into the woods Sidroc went. He hoped somebody in his squad could find the way back to the path, because he soon lost track of it. He could hear himself and his comrades blundering along. He couldn’t hear anyone else-but at least one Unkerlanter irregular had been there somewhere, and probably more. They knew the woods, the whoresons. If he heard them at all, it would be because they were laughing their heads off.
“Back!” The command came in Algarvian. It also told Sidroc where the path lay. Back he went. He didn’t care that he’d caught no irregulars. He just wanted to escape the woods alive.
He did. A little village lay beyond the forest. Farmers and their wives looked up curiously at the bearded men in strange uniforms. Without a word, the men of Plegmund’s Brigade started blazing. They killed as many as they could catch, and left the village a smoking ruin behind them. Sidroc laughed. “Welcome to Grelz!” he said. “As long as we’re here, we may as well make ourselves at home.”
“Another pack of murdering goons to worry about,” Munderic said, leaning against the trunk of a spruce. “That’s all Algarve’s brought to Grelz-foreign murdering goons.”
“Aye,” Garivald said: one voice in a general rumble of agreement from the irregulars.
Another fighter said, “These Forthwegian buggers are even nastier than the redheads, powers below eat ‘em.”
“That’s bad, but it’s not so bad,” Garivald said. People turned to look at him, puzzlement on a good many faces. He tried to put it into words: “The more people who hate these buggers, the more who’ll come over to our side.”