to think of Algarvians free to torment Kauni-ans for the next hundred years. She also shuddered to think of Spinello free to come back here tomorrow or the next day or a week from now to make her do whatever he wanted.
She could do nothing about Spinello. She could do nothing about the war. As the Algarvian major had boasted that his kingdom’s armies were overwhelming the Unkerlanters, so the war had overwhelmed her.
Spinello chucked her under the chin—one more liberty she had to let him take. “Until I see you again,” he said with a bow, as if he imagined she might want to see him again. “And do give my best regards to your ever so learned grandfather.” Out he went laughing and whistling.
He was happy. Why not? He’d satisfied himself, and Algarve’s armies stood everywhere triumphant. Vanai, despised by the large Forthwegian majority in her own kingdom, despised even more by its conquerors, went off to get a rag and a pitcher and to do her best to scrub the memory of his touch from her body. She despised herself most of all.
Marshal Rathar had come down into the south to see with his own eyes how the Algarvians were making such headway against the Unkerlanter armies there. He had gone to the north, to the border with Zuwayza, to take charge of the fight in the desert when it was going badly. That had been an embarrassment for Unkerlant. If this fight went badly, it would be a catastrophe.
His first lesson was very nearly his last. He had just got out of his ley-line caravan car in the medium-sized town of Wirdum, a good twenty miles behind the battle line, when flight after flight of Algarvian dragons appeared overhead. By the time they got done dropping eggs, the local depot was burning. So were the baron’s castle and much of the center of town.
He didn’t realize he was bleeding till someone offered him a sticking plaster for the cut on his cheek. He declined with a shrug: “I thank you, but no. I don’t want the soldiers to think I hurt myself shaving.” The joke would have been better if he hadn’t had to say it three times, each louder than the one before, till the fellow with the plaster finally got it. The rain of eggs from the sky had stunned everyone’s ears.
Strong, hook-nosed face set in a frown, he rode forward toward General Ortwin’s headquarters. That was no easy trip, either. The Algarvians had already given the roads hereabouts the same sort of pasting Wirdum had just taken. Rathar s horse had to pick its way through the fields to get around the craters in the roadway. Soldiers and horses and unicorns and a few behemoths lay sprawled in death; the stink of rotting meat that rose from them was very strong. Flies rose from them, too, in great humming, buzzing clouds. Rathar’s horse flicked its tail this way and that; the marshal swatted and fumed.
Turning to the soldier guiding him to General Ortwin, he demanded, “Where are our own dragons? We need to pay the enemy in his own coin.”
“We didn’t have as many to start with as the cursed redheads did,” the man answered. “The ones we did have are mostly dead by now.”
Closer to the line of battle, egg-tossers concealed from the air with nets hurled destruction back at King Mezentio’s men. Rathar grunted in some satisfaction when he saw that. “The Algarvians aren’t having it all their own way then,” he said.
“Oh, no, my lord Marshal,” his escort replied. “They pay a price for every mile they move forward.”
“They’ve already moved too many miles forward,” Rathar said, “and the price they’ve paid hasn’t been nearly high enough.” The soldier riding with him grimaced and then, with obvious reluctance, nodded.
After what seemed far too long, the marshal reached the tent from which General Ortwin was conducting his defense. Ortwin, who was very bald on top but, as if to compensate, had tufts of white hair sprouting from his ears and nostrils, shouted into a crystal: “Bring that regiment