“We gave them a good fight when they attacked us almost five years ago,” Hajjaj said. That was true. Also true was that the Unkerlanters had prevailed in the end.
And Ikhshid said, “What worries me most, your Excellency, is that they’re a lot better than they were back then. We haven’t changed all that much, but they’ve had three years of lessons from the Algarvians. You don’t get any better schoolmasters than Mezentio’s men.”
That didn’t sound good. No, it doesn’t sound good at all, Hajjaj thought gloomily. He asked, “Have you told King Shazli yet?”
“I don’t mind so much waking you up,” Ikhshid said. “I thought I’d let his Majesty sleep till morning-if the Unkerlanter eggs will.”
“Wake him. He is the sovereign, and he needs to know,” Hajjaj said. “Don’t tell him you’ve told me first. Tell him you’re about to let me know, and that he doesn’t have to. I’m going to head down into the city right now.”
“All right. I’ll do it just as you say.” Ikhshid nodded to someone Hajjaj couldn’t see-presumably his crystallomancer, for the crystal flared with light and then went inert as the etheric connection was broken.
Hajjaj went out into the hall. He wasn’t surprised to find Tewfik waiting. “I’m going to need a driver right away, I’m afraid,” he said.
The majordomo nodded. “I’ve already got him out of bed. He’s harnessing up the carriage.”
“Thank you, Tewfik,” Hajjaj said. “You are a wonder.” The ancient retainer nodded, accepting the praise as no less than his due.
By the time Hajjaj got down into Bishah, the Unkerlanter dragons had flown off to the south. A bit of smoke hung in the air. The moon was down, or Hajjaj judged he would have seen dark columns rising into the sky. Eggs had fallen close to the royal palace, but not on it. A few minutes after Hajjaj got to the foreign ministry, Qutuz came in.
“Did General Ikhshid have a crystallomancer get hold of you, too?” Hajjaj asked his secretary.
Qutuz shook his head. “No, your Excellency. The attack seemed bigger than usual, so I thought I should be here in case something was going on. I gather it is?”
“You might say so,” Hajjaj answered. “The Unkerlanters have struck the lines down by our southern border, and they’ve struck hard.”
“Are we holding?” Qutuz asked anxiously.
“We were when I spoke to Ikhshid,” Hajjaj said. “I hope we still are.”
General Ikhshid himself strode into Hajjaj’s offices a little past sunrise. As he had on the crystal, he wasted no time: “They’ve broken through in several places. I’ve ordered our men back to the next line of positions farther north. I hope we can hold them there.”
“You hope so?” Hajjaj said, and Ikhshid nodded. Like a man picking at a sore, Hajjaj elaborated: “You may hope so, but you don’t think so, do you?”
“No,” Ikhshid said bluntly. “We may slow ‘em up there, but I don’t see how we can stop ‘em. The next line north of that is on our old frontier. That’s a lot deeper, because we spent years building it up between the Six Years’ War and the last time Swemmel’s buggers hit us.”
“Can we stop the Unkerlanters there, then?” Hajjaj asked.
“I hope so,” Ikhshid answered, in much the same tones he’d used the last time he said that.
Hajjaj ground his teeth. That wasn’t what he’d wanted to hear, nor anything close to it. He hadn’t thought he would ever wish Ikhshid weren’t quite so honest. “What should the kingdom do if the soldiers can’t hold along that line?” he asked.
“Make peace as fast as we can, and get the best terms King Swemmel will give us.” Again, General Ikhshid spoke without the least hesitation. “If the Unkerlanters break through at the old frontier, powers below eat me if I know how we can stop them-or even slow them down very much-this side of Bishah.”
“It’s summer,” Hajjaj said, looking for hope wherever he might find it. “Won’t the desert work for us?”
“Some,” Ikhshid said. “Some-maybe. What you have to understand, though, and what I don’t think you do, is that the Unkerlanters are a lot better at what they’re doing than they were the last time they struck us a blow. We’re some better ourselves: Thanks to the Algarvians, we’ve got more behemoths and dragons than we did then. But curse me if I know whether it’ll be enough.”
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a young captain hurried past Qutuz and saluted. “Sir,” the junior officer said to Ikhshid, “I’m sorry to have to report an enemy breakthrough at Sab Abar.”
Ikhshid cursed wearily. Odds were he hadn’t slept all night. He said, “That’s not good. Sab Abar is in the second defensive line, not the first. If they’ve got through there already… That’s not good at all.”
“How could they have reached the second line so fast?” Hajjaj asked. “How could they have broken through it so fast?”
“They probably got there about as fast as we did,” Ikhshid said unhappily. “It’s not a neat, pretty fight when both sides are moving fast, especially if the whoresons on the other side have got their peckers up. And the stinking Unkerlanters do, powers below eat ‘em. They think they can lick anybody right now, and when you think like that, you’re halfway to being right.”
Qutuz asked the next question before Hajjaj could: “If they’ve broken through at this Sab Abar place, can we hold the second line, even for a little while?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to see.” General Ikhshid sounded harried. “We’ll do everything we can, but who knows how much that will be?” He bowed to Hajjaj. “If you’ll excuse me, Your Excellency, I’d better head back. In fact, unless I miss my guess, I’ll be going down south before too long. As I say, we have to do what we can.” With another bow, he tramped away, the young captain in his wake.
“What are we going to do, your Excellency?” Qutuz asked.
“The best we can,” Hajjaj answered. “I have nothing better to tell you, any more than Ikhshid had anything better to tell me. What I have to do now, I think, is let King Shazli know we have… difficulties.”
He didn’t know what Shazli could do. He didn’t know what anyone could do. It was up to Zuwayza’s soldiers now. If they did what he hoped, the Unkerlanters still had their work cut out for them. If they didn’t… If they didn’t, Zuwayza might not need a foreign minister much longer, only an Unkerlanter governor ruling from Bishah, as one had back before the Six Years’ War.
One of the nice things about serving as an Algarvian constable, even an Algarvian constable in occupied Forthweg, was that Bembo hadn’t had to go to war. It was always other poor sods who’d had to travel west and fight the Unkerlanters. They’d hated him for his immunity, too. He’d known they hated him, and he’d laughed at them on account of it.
Now that laughter came home to roost. The war had come home, too, or at least come to Eoforwic, which he had to call home these days. For one thing, the Forthwegians in the city kept on fighting as if they were soldiers. And, for another, Swemmel’s men sat right across the Twegen from Eoforwic. If they ever swarmed across the river…
Bembo clutched his stick a little tighter. These days, he always carried an army-issue weapon, not the shorter one he’d used as a constable. For all practical purposes, he wasn’t a constable any more. All the Algarvians still in Eoforwic came under military command nowadays.
Ever so cautiously, he peered out from behind a battered building. He ducked back again in a hurry. “Seems all right,” he said. “No Forthwegian fighters in sight, anyhow.”
Oraste grunted. “It’s the buggers who aren’t in sight you’ve got to watch out for,” Bembo’s old partner said. He and Bembo and half a dozen real soldiers had been thrown together as a squad. “You never see the one who blazes you.”
“Or if you do, he’s the last thing you see,” a trooper added cheerfully.
“Heh,” Bembo said. If that was a joke, he didn’t find it funny. If it wasn’t a joke, he didn’t want to think about it.
Running feet behind him made him whirl, the business end of his stick swinging toward what might be a target. The Algarvians held-and held down-this section of Eoforwic, but their Forthwegian foes kept sneaking fighters into it and making trouble. Bembo had no desire to find himself included in some casualty report no one would ever read.
But the fellow heading his way was a tall redhead in short tunic and kilt: an Algarvian constable like himself. Relaxing a little-relaxing too much was also liable to land you in one of those reports-he asked, “What’s up?”
“Nothing good,” the newcomer answered. “You know how a bunch of our important officers have come down with a sudden case of loss of life?” He waited for Bembo and the men with him to nod, then went on, “Well, the brass-the ones who’re still left alive, I mean-think they’ve figured out what’s gone wrong.”
“Tell, tell!” That wasn’t just Bembo. Several of his comrades spoke up, too. Disliking the men in command was one thing. Wanting to see all of them dead was something else again-at least, Bembo supposed it was.
With the self-importance of a man who knows he has important news, the other constable said, “Well, what happened is-or the big blazes think what happened is-the fornicating Forthwegians have worked out a spell that makes them look like us. What could be better for assassins?”
“Like the cursed Kaunians looking like Forthwegians, by the powers above!” Bembo exclaimed.
“Aye, it sounds wonderful,” Oraste said. “Now all we need is a spell that makes us look like Kaunians, so we can go off and cut our own throats and save the Forthwegians and the Unkerlanters the trouble.”
“That isn’t much of a joke,” one of the soldiers said, echoing Bembo’s thought.
“Who says I was joking?” Oraste’s face and voice were cold as winter in the south of Unkerlant.