Forward Leofsig stumbled. Around him, men raised a cheer. After a moment, he J oined it. Turning to Beocca, he said, "Once we close with the Algarvians, we'll crush them."
"Aye, belike," Beocca answered, "if there are any of us left to do the closing."
As if to underscore that, more eggs started falling among the advancing Forthwegians. Not all of them - not even most of them - came from the dragons overhead. The army had come into range of the egg-tossers outside Gozzo. Dragons carried larger eggs than the tossers flung, but could not carry nearly so many; Leofsig, head down and hunched forward as if walking into a windstorm, trudged past a broken-backed unicorn, one side of its body all over burns, that dragged itself along on its forelegs and screamed like a woman.
Forthwegian egg-tossers answered the rain of fire as best they could.
But they'd had trouble keeping up with the rest of the army: horse-drawn wheeled tossers clogged roads and moved slowly going crosscountry, while the retreating Algarvians had sabotaged ley lines as they fell back.
Forthwegian mages had reenergized some, but far from all. And, to make matters worse, the diving dragons paid special attention to the egg-tossers that were on the field.
Up ahead, Forthwegian cavalry was skirmishing with Algarvian troop ers on horses and unicorns. Leofsig cheered when a Forthwegian officer's white unicorn gored an enemy horseman out of the saddle. He squatted down behind a bush and blazed at the Algarvian cavalry. The range was long, and he could not be sure his was the beam that did the job, but he thought he knocked a couple of redheads out of the saddle.
And then, when he blazed, no beam shot from the business end of the stick. He looked around for a supply cart, spied none, and then looked around for a casualty. On this field, casualties were all too easy to find.
Leofsig scurried over to a Forthwegian who would never need his stick again. He snatched up the stick and dashed back to cover. An Algarvian beam drew a brown line in the grass ahead of him, but did not sear his flesh.
As more Forthwegian footsoldiers came forward to add their numbers to those of the cavalry, the Algarvian horsemen and unicorn riders began to fall back. Leofsig grunted in somber satisfaction as he advanced toward a large grove of orange trees. This skirmish, though bigger than most, fit the pattern of the fights that had followed Forthweg's invasion of вщцтдщфвAlgarve. The Algarvians might have won the battle in the air, but they kept on yielding ground even so.
Under the shiny, dark green leaves of the orange trees, something stirred. Leofsig was too far away to blaze at the motion, too far away even to identify what caused it till a great force of behemoths came lumbering out of the grove. Their armor glittered* in the sun. Each great beast bore several riders. Some behemoths had sticks larger and heavier and stronger than a man could carry strapped on to their backs. Others carried egg tossers instead.
Forthweg used behemoths to help break into positions infantry could not take unaided, parceling the animals out along the whole broad fighting line. Leofsig had never seen so many all gathered together before. He did not like the look of them. He liked that look even less when they lowered their heads, pointing their great horns toward the Forthwegian force, and lumbered for-ward. They moved slowly at first, but soon built up speed.
They smashed through the Forthwegian cavalry as if it hadn't been there, trampling down horses and unicorns. As they charged, the crews of soldiers on their backs blazed and flung eggs, spreading havoc far and wide. The behemoths were hard to bring down. Their armor warded them against most blazes, and, while they were moving, the men on their backs - who, Leofsig saw, were also armored - were next to impossible to pick off.
The cavalry, or as much of it as could, fled before them, as the Forthwegian dragons had fled before those of Algarve. The Algarvian dragons now redoubled their attacks against the Forthwegians on the ground as the behemoths broke in among them. Leofsig blazed at the warriors aboard the closest one - blazed and missed. An egg burst close by him, knocking him off his feet and scraping his face against the dirt.
He scrambled up again. Algarvian footsoldiers were advancing now, rushing toward the great hole the behemoths had torn in the Forthwegian line. He saw an officer close by - not a man he knew, but an officer. "What do we do, sit?"
"What do we do?" the captain echoed. He looked and sounded stunned, bewildered. "We fall back - what else can we do? They've beaten us here, the bastards. We have to be able to try to fight them again, though how we're supposed to fight this-" Shaking his head, he stumbled off toward the west, toward Forthweg. Numbly, Leofsig followed.
Without false modesty, Marshal Rathar knew he was the second most powerful personage in Unkerlant. None of the dukes and barons and counts could come close to matching the authority of the man who headed King Swemmel's arrmies. None of the courtiers at Cottbus was his equal, either, and none of them had made the king believe Rathar a traitor, though many had tried.
Aye, below Swemmel he was supreme. Envy filled men's eyes as he marched through the fortresslike palace on the high ground at the heart of the capital. The green sash stretching diagonally across his rock-gray tunic proclaimed his rank to any who did not recognize his hard, stem features. Women the world called beautiful called those features handsome-lic could have had many of them, including some whose courtier husbancls sought to [..lbringWlm t0,)U» -,~iytv ctT tainty..] which of them wanted him for himself, as opposed to for his rank, he might have enjoyed himself more.
Or he might not have. Enjoyment, as most men understood it, he di not find particularly enjoyable. And he knew a secret no one else did [..ay rn d ier er k..], though some of his own chief underlings and some of King Swemmel's other ministers might have suspected. He could have told the secret without danger. But he knew no one would believe him, and so kept silent.
Silence suited his nature anyhow.
Before he went in to confer with his sovereign, he unbuckled his sword and set it in a rack in the anteroom outside the audience chamber.
King Swemmel's guards then searched him, as thoroughly and intimately as if he'd been taken captive. Had he been a woman, matrons would have done the same.
He felt no humiliation. The guards were doing their duty. He would have been angry - and King Swemmel angrier - had they let him go through unchallenged. "Pass on, sir," one of them said at length.
Rathar spent another moment adjusting his tunic, then strode into the audience chamber. In the presence of the king of Unkerlant, his stern reserve crumbled. "Your Majesty!" he cried. "I rejoice to be allowed to come into your presence!" He cast himself down on his hands and knees, knocking his forehead against the strip of green carpet that led to the throne on which King Swemmel sat.
Any chair on which Swemmel sat was by definition a throne, since it contained the king's fundament. This one, while gilded, was far less spectacular than the bejeweled magnificence of the one of the Grand Hall of Kings (Rathar reckoned that one insufferably gaudy, another secret he held close).
"Rise, Marshal," Swemmel said. His voice was rather high and thin.
Rathar got to his feet and honored the king yet again, this time with a low bow. Swemmel was in his late forties, a few years younger than his marshal. For an Unkerlanter's, his features were long and lean and angular; his hairline, which retreated toward the crown of his head, accentuated that impression.
What hair he had left was dark - these days, probably dyed to stay so.
But for that, he looked more like an Algarvian than a typical Unkerlanter.
The first kings in Unkerlant, down in what was now the Duchy of Grelz, had been of Algarvic blood. Algarvic bandits, most likely, the marshal thought. But those dynasties were long extinct, often at one another's hands. And Swemmel was an Unkerlanter through and through - he just did didn't look like one. Rathar shook his head, clearing away irrelevancies. He couldn't afford them, not dealing with his sovereign. "How may I serve you, your Majesty?" he asked.
Swemmel folded his arms across his chest. His robe was gorgeous with cloth-of-gold. Pearls and emeralds and rubles caught the light and winked at Rathar one after another as the king moved. "You know we have con_ cluded a truce with Arpad of Gyongyos," Swemmel. said. The we was purely royal - the king had done it on his own.
"Aye, your Majesty, I know that," Rathar said. Swemmel had fought a savage little war with the Gongs over territory that, in the marshal's view, wasn't worth having in the first place. He'd fought it with great determination, as if the rocks and ice in the far west, land only a mountain ape could love, were stuffed to bursting with rich farms and quicksilver mines. And then, after all the lives and treasure spent, he'd thrown over the war with no gains to speak of Swemmel was a law unto himself
He said, "We have found another employment for our soldiers, one that suits us better."
"And that is, your Majesty?" Rathar asked cautiously. It might have been anything from starting another war to helping with the harvest to gathering seashells by the shore. With Swemmel, there was no way to ten beforehand.
"Gyongyos is far from the only realm that wronged us during our recent difficulties," Swemmel said, adding with a scowl, "Had the nurse maids been efficient, Kyot would have known from birth we were the one destined for greatness. His destiny would have been the headsman's axe either way, but he would have spared the kingdom much turmoil had he recognized it sooner."
"Aye, your Majesty," Rathar said. He had no way of knowing whether Swemmel or Kyot was the elder of the twins born to their mother. He'd Joined the one army rather than the other because
Swemmel's impressers passed through his village before Kyot's could get to it. He'd been an officer within months, and a colonel by the time the
Twinkings War ended.
What would he be now, had Kyot dragged him into the fight instead?
Dead, most likely, in one unpleasant way or another.
Again, he cleared might-have-beens from his mind. Dealing with what was gave him trouble aplenty. "Is it now your will, your Majesty, to turn our might against Zuwayza? The provocations along the border they have offered" - he knew perfectly well that Unkerlant had offered them, but saying so was not done - "give us every reason for punishing them, and-" Swemmel made a sharp, chopping gesture. Rathar fell silent and bowed his head. He had misread the king, always dangerous to do.
Swemmel said, "We can punish the Zuwayzin whenever we like, as we can resume the war with Gyongyos whenever we like. More efficient to strike where the opportunity will not come round again so soon. We aim to lay Forthweg low."
"Ahh," Rathar said, and nodded. No one could tell what Swemmel would come up with next. A lot of people had guessed wrong over the years. Not many of them were still breathing. Most of those who did survive were refugees. Anywhere within Unkerlant, Swemmel could - and did - reach.
Not all the king's notions were good. That was Rathar's private opinion. He remained safe because it remained private. But when Swemmel's notions were good, they could be very good indeed.
Rathar's smile had a predatory edge to it, as it often did. "What pre text shall we offer for stabbing the Forthwegians in the back?"
"Do you really think we need one? We hadn't intended to bother,"
Swemmel said indifferently. "Forthweg, or most of Forthweg, is our domain by right, and stolen away by rebels and traitors."
Rathar said nothing. He raised an eyebrow and waited. Even such small disagreement with the king might mean his ruin. No one could tell what Swemmel would come up with - in anything.
In a testy voice, Swemmel said, "Oh, very well - if you like. You can dress up a couple of our men in Forthwegian frontier guards' uniforms and have them blaze a couple of soldiers or inspectors in a border town.