Her's [..] in the meantime by talking about rank. "The waiter bowed again and had departed. [..f..] silk Krasta clapped her hands together. "That is well said!" she cried.
"Truly you are a man of great nobility indeed." clerk "I do my best," Valnu said. "More than that, I cannot do. More than that, no man can do."
"So many of the superior class do not even try to come up to such use of standards," Krasta said. "And so many of the lower order these days are eject so grasping and vulgar and rude, they require lessons in the art of dealing with their better." She explained how she had dealt with the clerk in the Krasta's clothier's establishment. aValnu's delighted gnin displayed very white, even teeth and made him almost look more like a skull than ever, save only for the glow of admiration in e fire his bright blue eyes. "That is excellent," he said. "Excellent! You could [..]"
"Will hardly have done better without running her through, and, had you done that, she would not have long appreciated what you'd taught her." [..course steered r hand. o good ... I t seen rother irclight es, they ce. His wn, he ture of ows so esperate rice...] Valnu [..].
"I suppose not," Krasta agreed regretfully, "though that might have left a stronger impression on the rest of the vulgar herd."
Valnu clicked his tongue between his teeth several times, shaking his head all the while. "People would talk, my dear. People would talk. And now" - he sipped his porter - "shall we talk?"
Talk he and Krasta did: who was sleeping with whom, who was feuding with whom (two topics often intimately related), whose family was older than whose, who had been caught out while trying to make his family seem older than it was. That was meat and drink to Krasta. She leaned across the small table toward Valnu, so intent and interested that she hardly noticed the waiter bringing them their luncheons.
Valnu did not at once attack his sausage and sour cabbage, either. In a sorrowful voice, he said, "And, I hear, Duke Kestu lost his only son and heir in Algarve the other day. When I think of how the Six Years' War cut down so many noble stems, when I think of how likely this war is to do the same… I fear for the future of our kind, milady."
"There will always be a nobility." Krasta spoke with automatic confidence, as if she had said, There will always be a sunrise in the morning. But her farrudy's male line depended on her brother. And Skarmi was fighting in Algarve, and he had no heir. She did not care to think about that. To keep from thinking about it, she took a long pull from her flagon of ale and began to eat the trout and nice on the plate before her.
"I hope everything goes as well as it can for you and yours, milady," Valnu said quietly. Krasta wished he had not said anything at all. If he had to say something, that was more kindly and less worrisome than most of the other things she could think of.
He dug into the pungent cabbage and sausage - peasant fare indeed and made them disappear at an astonishing rate. However emaciated he appeared, it was not due to any failure of appetite.
Nor, very plainly, was anything wrong with any of his other appetites, either. As Krasta ate, she was startled - but, given some of the things she'd heard about Valnu, not surprised - when, under the table, his hand came down on her leg, well above the knee. She brushed it away as she might have brushed away a crawling insect. "My lord viscount, as you yourself said, people would talk."
His answering simile was hard and bright and predatory. "Of course they would, my dear. They always do." The hand returned. "Shall we, then, give them something interesting to talk about?"
She considered, letting his hand linger and even stray upwards while she did. He was well-born, and was attractive in a bony way. While he would certainly be unfaithful, he would never pretend to be anything else. In the end, though, she shook her head and took his hand away again. "Not this afternoon. Too many shops I haven't yet visited."
"Thrown over for shops! For shops!" Valnu clapped both hands over his heart, as if pierced by a beam from a stick. Then, in an instant, he went from melodrama to pragmatism: "Well, better that than being thrown over for another lover."
Krasta laughed. She almost changed her mind. But she still had gold in her handbag, and plenty of shops along the Avenue of Equestrians she hadn't seen. She paid for her luncheon and left the Bronze Woodcock.
Valnu blew her a kiss.
Skarmi stared in grim dismay at the line of fortresses ahead. Having seen them, the VaIrmieran captain no longer wondered why his superiors hesitated before hurling their army at those works. The Algarvians had lavished both ingenuity and gold on them. Whoever tried to smash them down, whoever tried to break through them, would pay dearly.
"Come away, Captain," Sergeant Raunu urged. "Like as not, the stinking Algarvians'll put a hole through anybody who takes too long a look."
"Like as not, you're night," Skarmi said, and ducked back down into the barley that helped shield him from unfriendly eyes - and, east of where he crouched, there were no eyes of any other sort. East of where he crouched, too, were very few places to hide. Whatever else might happen to it, the Algarvians' defensive line would not fall to surprise attack.
"In the last war, we'd throw eggs at forts and then just charge right at e" P id. "Maybe they've learned something since."
"If they'd learned anything since, we wouldn't be in a war now, Skarmi answered. The veteran sergeant blinked, then slowly nodded.
Off to the north, Valmieran egg-tossers started lobbing destruction at the line of forts. The burst resounded like distant thunder. Skarmi wondered how much damage they were doing. Not so much as he would have liked: he was certain of that. The Algarvians had used stone and earth and cement and iron and bronze to fashion a line of death that ran for many miles north and south and was most of a mile deep.
How long would soldiers batter their heads against that line, as Raunu had said, in search of a breakthrough that might not be there at all?
Forever?
Probably not. Even so, Skarmi sighed as he said, "They built that to dare us to try to go through it, to dare us to spend the men we'd need to get to the other side. They don't think we have the nerve to do it."
"I wouldn't be sorry if they were night, either," Raunu said.
"Would you rather fight inside Valmiera, the way we did for most of the Six Years' War?" Skarmi returned.
"Sir, it's like you said: if you ask me what I'd rather, I'd rather not fight at all," the sergeant said.
Skarmi clicked his tongue between his teeth. Sergeant Raunu had indeed used his own words to reply to him, which meant he could hardly take exception to what the veteran said. But he'd seen that a good many of the common soldiers had little stomach for the fight against Algarve in general, and even less for the assault on the forts. He said, "We should have pushed harder, so we would have been through this line before,the Forthwegians collapsed."
"Aye, I see what you're saying, sir, but I don't know how much difference that would have made." Raunu pointed ahead. "Doesn't look like the cursed redheads have put any new men in their lines, even if they don't have to worry about their western front any more."
"They don't have to worry about Forthweg any more," Skarmi corrected. "Now they're face to face with Unkerlant. If they're not worried about that, they're fools."
"Of course they're fools. They're Algarvians." Raunu spoke with an automatic scorn Skarmi's sister Krasta might have envied. But then, as Krasta would never have done, he changed course slightly: "They're fools most ways, I mean. They make good soldiers, whatever else you say about'em."
"I wish I could tell you were wrong," Skarmi said. "Our lives would be easier." The Algarvians had resisted the Valmieran advance to the fortified line with only light forces, but they'd fought stubbornly.
They'd also fought skillfully, perhaps more skillfully than the men he commanded. Had there been more of them, he wondered if his men would have been able to advance at all. Along with most of his other worries, he kept that one to himself.
A runner came up to him. "My lord marquis?" the fellow asked.
"Aye?" Skarmi said in some small surprise. Far more often these days, he was addressed by his military rank, not title. After a moment, a possible reason for this exception came to mind.
And, sure enough, the runner said, "My lord, his Grace the Duke of Klaipeda bids you sup with him and with some of the other leading officers of our triumphant army at his headquarters this evening. The sup per shall begin an hour past sunset."
"Please tell his Grace I am honored, and of course I shall attend him," Skarmi answered. The runner bowed and hurried away.
Raunu eyed Skarmi. He'd understood Skarmi was a noble, of course.
That was one thing. An invitation extended to a captain to sup with the commander of an army of tens of thousands was something else again.
Almost defensively, Skarmi said, "I went to school with his Grace's son.
"Did you, sir?" the sergeant said. "Well, you'll get a good meal out of [..the or ed say men..] other days, [..pos e of ading e sup him, ourse ith the again...] races out of it, and that's the truth. I will say, though, sir, the men think well of you for eating out of the same pot they use."
"It's the best way I could think of to make sure they got decent food," Skarmi said. "Nobody cares when a common soldier fusses and com plains. When a captain grumbles, though, people start to notice."
"Aye, sir," Raunu said, "especially when he's a captain who went to school with the Duke of Klaipeda's son." More than half to himself, he added, "It's a wonder you're just a captain and not a colonel."
Skarmi wished he hadn't had to mention his connection with the duke, whose son, while not the depraved little monster so beloved of romancers without much imagination, had been one of the most boring youths he'd ever met. He also wished the duke were paying more atten tion to the commanders who would lead great parts of the Valmieran army into battle and less to his son's social connections.
But, regardless of the duke's shortcorruings, Skarmi spruced himself up and made his way back toward the village of Bonorva. The village was a good deal more battered than it had been when he'd first seen it from the woods that now lay on the far side from the front. The duke had taken up residence in one of the larger houses there. It still looked scarred and abused: no point cleaning it up and offering the Algarvians a target. Skarmi chuckled as he drew near. After he wrote to Krasta, she'd be sick with jealousy at the exalted company he was keeping.
When he went inside the unprepossessing building, Skarmi might have been transported to another world, the world in which the
Valmieran nobility had idled away its time in Priekule and on estates out in the provinces. Lights blazed; dark cloth over the windows and behind the door kept it from leaking out and drawing the notice of Algarvian dragons overhead or the cunning snoops who kept trying to spy targets for the enemy's egg-tossers.