“Must be special,” Sidroc said. “He’s never done anything like this before.”
“Do you know what it is?” Ceorl asked the runner, who shook his head. Ceorl cursed the fellow as he went off to spread the word elsewhere.
“Something special,” Werferth repeated in musing tones. “I wonder what it could be. You don’t suppose the war’s over, do you?”
Sidroc and Ceorl both laughed. “Fat chance,” Sidroc said. Werferth looked rueful. After a moment, he laughed, too. Sidroc didn’t think the war would ever end.
Ossiach wasn’t far away. The rough-looking, bearded men of the Brigade filled the market square to the bursting point. If any Unkerlanters remained in the village, they prudently stayed out of sight.
Brigadier Polinesso climbed up onto a crate so the soldiers he commanded could see him. “We have a special new regiment alongside of us on the left, men,” he said. “You need to know this, so you will not take them for the enemy. They will wear the flag of Algarve on their left tunic sleeves. We expect them to fight like tigers-like tigers, do you hear?”
“Aye, Brigadier,” the assembled men of the Brigade chorused.
“Good. Very good. You are dismissed,” Polinesso said.
Sidroc scratched his head all the way back to his squad’s encampment. “What in blazes was he talking about? Who’s coming in next to us? We know about the Algarvians. We know about the Yaninans.”
“I’d like to kill the Yaninans, the way they run,” Ceorl said.
“They had some regiments of Sibians,” Werferth said, “but I think the Sibs went into Sulingen and never came out. Besides, Mezentio’s lost Sibiu, so he won’t get any more regiments there.”
“Black Zuwayzin?” Sidroc suggested.
Ceorl howled laughter. “I’d like to see those naked whoresons down here, especially in the wintertime. They’d freeze their balls off, and that’s no joke.”
“Besides,” Werferth added, “they don’t wear tunics. How can they put flags on the sleeves of tunics they aren’t wearing?”
“All right, not Zuwayzin,” Sidroc said. “But who, then?”
“They’d better not be Yaninans,” Werferth said. “Ceorl’s right about that. I don’t want them on our flank, not with the itchy feet they’ve got. If they bug out, they leave us naked as a Zuwayzi for the Unkerlanters.”
‘‘Polinesso wouldn’t say the Yaninans fight like tigers.” Sidroc scratched his head again. “Powers above, he wouldn’t. The redheads haven’t got any use for Yaninans, either.”
Werferth and Ceorl both grunted, but neither one argued, from which Sidroc concluded they thought he was right. Werferth said, “Maybe they’re Grelzers.”
“Since when are Grelzers special in Grelz?” Sidroc asked, and again got no good answer.
He found the truth two days later, coming in from another blessedly uneventful patrol. He paused to fill his water bottle in a stream not far from where his squad was camped. When he looked up, another soldier was filling a bottle on the other side of the stream. In careful Algarvian, the other fellow said, “You are from Plegmund’s Brigade, is it not so? We were told we would have Plegmund’s Brigade on our right hand.”
“Aye, I’m from Plegmund’s Brigade.” Sidroc gave his own name, and added, “Who in blazes arejyow?”
The other man’s uniform was dark green, almost the color of those the Grelzers who fought on Algarve’s side wore. But this fellow was no Grelzer: he was tall and slim and blond and wore trousers and short tunic with, sure enough, the Algarvian flag sewn to the left sleeve. He’s a Kaunian, Sidroc thought dazedly. He’s got to be a Kaunian. But that’s not what the redheads use Kaunians for…
“I am Brusku,” the stranger said, which both did and did not sound like a Kaunian name-the ending was different from the s Forthwegian Kaunians used. Then he went on, “I am a soldier in the Phalanx of Valmiera.”
“Ahh.” Sidroc slowly nodded. Now things grew clearer. The Algarvians didn’t massacre blonds from Valmiera and Jelgava, maybe for fear of touching off revolts in the east. But they were getting some use from them, anyway. Sidroc nodded again in a more friendly way than he’d thought he would show to any Kaunian. “Welcome to Unkerlant. You can’t go home again either, can you?”
Brusku’s pale stare suddenly sharpened. “No,” he said after a moment. “So it is the same for you, is it? I did what I wanted to do. It is enough.”
Sidroc had done what he wanted to do, too. Was it enough? Whether it was or not, he was stuck with it. He said, “Come back to my camp with me.” He pointed north. “You can meet my pals.”
“All right.” Brusku splashed across the stream, which was no more than ankle deep. As Sidroc led the way, he thought about how strange it was to be fighting alongside a Kaunian. A few years before, though, he would have thought it strange to be fighting alongside Algarvians, too.
“Greetings,” Ceorl called when he walked up to the fire. The ruffian pointed behind him. “Who in blazes is that?”
“His name’s Brusku,” Sidroc answered-in Algarvian, so Brusku could follow. “He’s from the Phalanx of Valmiera-that’s the outfit Brigadier Polinesso said was going in on our left.”
He wondered if Ceorl would make a crack about Kaunians escaping from Algarvian camps. That wouldn’t do anybody any good. Maybe the Valmieran Kaunians didn’t know what happened to their blond brethren from Forthweg. Maybe they knew and tried not to think about it. By the way the ruffian’s lips pursed, he thought about it. But then, visibly, he thought better of it. He said, “Let’s kill some Unkerlanters,” and let it go at that.
“Aye,” Brusku said. “That is what we came for.”
Sergeant Werferth passed the Valmieran his flask. “Here. Try this.”
Brusku drank. He coughed a couple of times. “Unicorn piss and fire,” he said. “Is that what you Forthwegians drink?”
“We drink wine and plum brandy when we’re home,” Werferth answered. “Down here, we drink anything we can get our hands on. I think the Unkerlanters brewed this stuff out of turnips.”
Brusku looked at the flask as if he wanted to throw it away. Instead, he took another pull and handed it back to Werferth. Then he said, “I had better go, or my sergeant will come down on me.” He nodded to Sidroc and headed off in the direction from which he’d come.
Once he was gone, Ceorl spat into the fire. “Fighting side by side with Kaunians? I’ve thought of a lot of strange things, but never any like that.”
“I’ll tell you something, though,” Sidroc said: “I’d rather have them on my left hand than a pack of jumpy Yaninans.” He watched Ceorl weigh that. The ruffian didn’t take long to nod.
Werferth said, “A good thing you boys didn’t talk about what happens to Forthwegian Kaunians. I’m going to tell everybody to keep quiet about that.”
“What happens when the Phalanx of Valmiera-what in blazes is a phalanx, anyway?-finds out about it?” Sidroc asked. “Sooner or later, they will. They’re bound to.”
“Good question,” Werferth said. “We’ll probably see before too long, like you say. And when we do… You know what it’s like when an egg bursts almost close enough for the sorcerous energy to kill you?” He waited. Sidroc nodded. Everybody who’d been in battle for a while knew what that was like. Werferth went on, “When they find out, it’ll be like that, only more so.
Sidroc thought it over. How would he feel if the Algarvians started slaying Forthwegians to make their magic stronger? He could think of some Forthwegians he wouldn’t miss, starting with Ealstan and Hestan. Still… “Aye, you’re likely right.”
Twelve
Istvan proved less unhappy as a captive on Obuda than he’d expected to. He lived in a barracks no worse than the one where he’d lived while a Gyongyosian soldier on that same island. He was a good deal more comfortable than he’d been in the forests of western Unkerlant or in the trenches on the island of Becsehely. The food his Kuusaman captors fed him and his comrades wasn’t especially good, but it wasn’t especially bad, either, and there was plenty of it. He had no work harder than chopping firewood under the watchful eyes of the Kuusaman guards. It could have been far worse.
When he said as much in line for breakfast one morning, Kun nodded and replied, “Aye, I thought they’d send us off to the mines or some such.
This-it’s as if they’ve made Obuda into a crate, and they’ll keep stowing captives here till it fills up.”
“Nothing to do but sit around and get fat,” Istvan agreed. “I’ve been a soldier for a long time. I don’t much mind being an old soldier for a while, if you know what I mean.”
“I’m with you,” Szonyi said from behind him. “Nobody’s trying to blaze me or drop an egg on my head. Anyone who thinks I’m sorry about that is plumb daft.”
“Well, the two of you get no arguments from me,” Kun said. Watery island sunshine glinted off the gold frames of his spectacles. “I’ve never been what you’d call eager to have people trying to kill me. I leave all that up to you fierce country lads.”
If he hadn’t fought bravely every time he had to, he would have condemned himself out of his own mouth there. Even as things were, Istvan spoke a little stiffly: “We are a warrior race.”