More artisans were bringing up the timbers for another bridge. Leudast waved to them as he headed west past their wagons. He neared Leiferde early the next morning, after sleeping rolled in his cloak by the side of the road. Before going into the village, he went to the supply dump in search of the possibly mythical field kitchen.
To his amazement, he found a sergeant who knew what he was talking about. “Aye, Lieutenant, your regimental commander’s been bending everybody’s ear about the cursed thing,” the fellow said. “We’re bloody short of draft animals, is the trouble. You can haul it away with your horse there right now, if you want to.”
“I’ve got some other business on this side of the Fluss I need to take care of first,” Leudast said. “I’ll be back for it tomorrow morning.”
“Suits me,” the supply sergeant said. “It’ll be ready and waiting.”
It suited Leudast, too. He mounted the horse and rode into Leiferde. Most of the peasants ignored him: what was one more soldier, after so many?
He found Alize weeding the vegetable plot by her father’s house. She let out a squeal of delight and sprang to her feet. “What are you doing here?” she asked.
He grinned. “I was in the neighborhood, so I just thought I’d drop by.”
Nine
Some people had always turned their backs on Talsu when he walked through the streets of Skrunda. They were the folk who thought no one could come back from a dungeon without giving himself to the Algarvians. Now that he’d come out of the constabulary building without visible damage, more people turned their backs on him. They thought no one could do that without telling the redheads what they wanted to hear.
Most of the time, Talsu was able to ignore such snubs. But when they came from young men who had been his friends before he was seized, they tore at him, no matter how much he tried not to show it. He sometimes wanted to scream at them. Mezentio’s men grabbed me because I was trying to fight back! echoed through his mind. What have you done since the Algarvians occupied Jelgava? Not a cursed thing, that’s what.
Holding in his fury led to a bad temper and a sour stomach. “It’ll all get sorted out when King Donalitu comes back,” Gailisa said one evening, trying to soothe him after he’d snarled at everyone in his family.
“Will it?” Talsu asked bitterly.
“Of course it will,” she answered in the quiet of the cramped little bedchamber they shared. “That’s why he’ll come back-to sort things out, I mean.”
She had a touching faith in the king. Once upon a time, Talsu might have had a similar faith in Donalitu. He tried to remember when he’d lost it. Before he went into the army: he was sure of that. “If he does come back, he’ll probably throw me in the dungeon for being too friendly with the redheads.”
That exercise in cynicism got him an appalled look from his wife. “He wouldn’t do such a thing!” she exclaimed. “He’d never do such a thing! The only reason you ever got in trouble was because you wanted to do something to the Algarvians.”
“Well, let’s hope you’re right about that.” Talsu didn’t think she was, but he didn’t feel like arguing with her, either. He had other things on his mind. The other things ended up making him happy and then sleepy. The bed wasn’t really big enough for the two of them, but they were young enough not to mind sometimes waking up all tangled together.
They were tangled together when they woke up that night. It was still dark: that was the first thing Talsu noticed. It was, in fact, pitch black. For a moment, Talsu couldn’t imagine why he’d awakened. Then he heard the bells clanging out an alarm.
“Fire somewhere?” Gailisa asked.
Talsu listened, then shook his head. “I don’t think so-they’re ringing all over town. That means dragonfliers overhead.”
“Aye, you’re probably right.” Gailisa untangled her legs from his and got out of bed. “We’d better go downstairs.”
They’d huddled behind the counter in the tailor’s shop during other visits from Kuusaman and Lagoan dragons. As Talsu got up, too, he said, “I wish we had a cellar here, the way your father does.”
“Do you want to try to get over there?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Getting caught in the open when eggs start falling is the last thing you want to do. I saw what happens then in the army-and the first time the dragons came over Skrunda, during the promenade in the square.” He swatted Gailisa lightly on the backside. “Come on. Let’s get moving.”
“I was,” she said. Talsu chuckled. He hadn’t had to swat her. He’d just liked doing it.
He would have pounded on his mother and father’s door, and on his sister’s, to get them moving, but they all met in the hallway-Traku had been coming down the hall to make sure he and Gailisa were awake. After some confusion, they hurried downstairs. They huddled between the counter and the wall just as the first eggs started bursting all over Skrunda.
“Here’s hoping they come down on the Algarvians’ heads,” Talsu said.
“Powers above, make it so!” his mother said. But Laitsina added, “Here’s hoping not too many come down on ordinary people like us.”
“They do aim as well as they can,” Talsu said. That was true. But dragonfliers, high in the air and aboard bad-tempered beasts that tried to do what they wanted, not what the fliers wanted, couldn’t aim any too well. That was also true, but Talsu didn’t mention it. It was one more thing he didn’t care to think about.
An egg burst down the street, close enough to make the floor shake under Talsu. The front window in the tailor’s shop rattled in its frame, but didn’t break.
“They’re coming over more often than they used to,” Talsu’s sister said.
“Ausra’s right,” Laitsina said as another egg burst, this one a little farther away. “They’re sending more dragons each time, too.”
“It’s these Habakkuk things, unless I miss my guess,” Talsu said. “They can carry a lot of dragons.”
“The Algarvians don’t like ‘em, that’s for sure,” Traku agreed. “They spend a lot of space in the news sheets screaming about ‘em.”
“Anything the Algarvians scream about can’t be all bad.” Talsu spoke with great conviction. No one in his family disagreed. Not many Jelgavans in Skrunda would have disagreed-only those few who’d ended up in bed with the redheads.
“I hope they have a couple of squads of soldiers right where the arch from the Kaunian Empire used to be,” Traku said. “And I hope an egg comes down right on those buggers.”
“That would be good,” Talsu agreed. “That would be very good.” He’d watched when the Algarvian mages toppled that arch. The redheads hadn’t cared for what it said about their ancestors. They probably didn’t care for what a lot of modern Jelgavans had to say about the descendants of their ancestors, either.
“At least we get a little warning when the Lagoans and Kuusamans come over now,” Gailisa said, as the shop shook again.
“They’ve got dowsers here now, I suppose,” Talsu said. “They aren’t doing it for us, though. They’re doing it for themselves.”
Before she could answer, several eggs landed close together, and all of them close to the tailor’s shop. The window blew in. Fragments of glass clattered off the front of the counter. More fragments clattered off the wall behind it. “Who’s going to pay for that?” Traku growled. “I am, that’s who. Curse ‘em all.”
All things considered, Talsu thought they were fairly lucky. Had those eggs burst a little closer, the shards of glass might have sliced right through the counter-and through the people behind it, too. He didn’t say that. His father hadn’t seen real war face-to-face, and didn’t know everything it could do. As far as Talsu was concerned, Traku didn’t know how lucky he was.
And then an egg did burst close by, close enough to slam the counter back against the people huddling behind it. Everyone shrieked. It didn’t quite go over onto them, and it didn’t quite crush them against the wall, but it came much too close to doing both. Talsu felt not the least shame in yelling along with the rest of his family. For a dreadful moment, he thought that yell would be the last cry that ever passed his lips.
When he realized he would live a little longer, he said, “We’re going to have to remodel the shop.”
“Right this minute, son, that’s the least of my worries,” Traku said.
Gailisa pointed to the wall above the counter. “What’s that funny light?”
Talsu looked up, too. It should have been dark; Skrunda left lights out at night to make it harder for Lagoan and Kuusaman dragons to find the town. Not hard enough, Talsu thought. But that orange, flickering glow was easy enough to recognize once you got over not expecting to see it there. “Fire!” he said.
It got brighter fearfully fast, too. “It’s close,” Gailisa said, and then, “We can’t stay here.”
“You’re right.” Talsu scrambled to his feet. Eggs were still falling, but that didn’t matter. The eggs might miss. If he and his family stayed where they were, they would burn. He hauled Gailisa up, too, then reached for his sister. “We’ve got to get out while we still can.”
“But-” his mother wailed.
“He’s right, Laitsina,” Traku said. “Come on. As long as we get out in one piece, we can worry about everything else later.” He got up, and after a moment his wife did, too.