Garivald nodded. "Fine. You show me how charging down on a bunch of Grelzers- or even redheads- will save the kingdom, and we'll do it. Till you show us that, we'll hit the foe and run away, the way we've been doing for almost two years now. That's what efficiency is all about, isn't it?"
Tantris gave him a dirty look. "You're not cooperating. His Majesty will hear of this."
"I'm doing my best," Garivald said. "Tell me what you want. Let's see if we can't do it without magecraft."
"A company of Grelzers will march past these woods day after tomorrow," Tantris said. "You ought to attack them."
He didn't say how he knew. That was supposed to make him seem knowledgeable and impressive. But Garivald had a good idea of all the ways he might know. Magic was one. Getting the news from a Grelzer soldier was another, a Grelzer clerk a third. Gossip would work about as well as patriotism (or treason, from a Grelzer point of view). Or, of course, it could have been a trap.
But none of that mattered. A certain amount of common sense did. Garivald waved. "Look at us. It's been a hard winter. I don't care if you disguise us as behemoths or butterflies- how likely are we to take out a company of soldiers?"
"Say, that ferocious company of Grelzers, though- Algarve wouldn't have a chance of winning the war without them," Obilot said.
Her sarcasm finally got under Tantris' hide. He snapped, "Be silent, woman," as if he were her husband back in a peasant village.
She was carrying her stick, of course. She was hardly ever without it. As if by magic, the business end suddenly pointed at Tantris' belly. "If you want to come here and make me, come right ahead," she said pleasantly.
Gandiluz started to move to flank her. "Not you," Garivald told him, also pleasantly. Talking back to the regulars got easier the more he did it. He aimed his stick at Gandiluz's midriff. Gandiluz stopped moving. He didn't stop weighing his chances, though. Neither did Tantris. King Swemmel might have sent out petty tyrants, but he hadn't chosen cowards.
In the confrontation, everyone had forgotten about Sadoc. The peasant who'd struggled so hard to become a mage was dark with fury. "There is a power point in these woods, and I'm going to use it," he growled, his hands moving in swift passes that certainly looked confident and competent. "Garivald, you'll pay for mocking me."
Garivald knew a certain amount of alarm- but less than he had going into combat against the Grelzers. They'd made it plain they knew what they were doing when they tried to kill him; Sadoc hadn't proved any such thing. "Don't be a bigger jackass than you can help," Garivald suggested.
"And you'll pay for that, too," Sadoc said. "I can call down lightnings out of a clear blue sky- I can, and I will!" He raised his hands to the heavens and cried out words of power- or they might have been nonsense syllables, for all Garivald knew.
But power gathered in the air. Garivald could feel it. He'd felt it before when Sadoc tried to do this, that, or the other thing. The would-be wizard could prepare for a spell. What came after the preparations, though…
"Sadoc, stop it this instant!" Now Obilot's voice came sharp as a whipcrack. Garivald wasn't the only one who felt that building power, then.
As a matter of fact, Gandiluz felt it, too. "You see?" he said to Garivald. "He can be what we need against Algarve."
"My arse," Garivald said succinctly.
"No, my arse," Sadoc said. "You can kiss it, Garivald!" He brought down his hands in a gesture filled with hate- and lightning followed.
Garivald fell to the ground, stunned and blinded by the blue-white stroke. Thunder roared around him. For a couple of heartbeats, he thought he really was dead. But then, like the rest of the irregulars, he staggered to his feet. Sadoc was still upright, looking in astonishment at what he'd done. Like everybody else's, Garivald's gaze followed his.
"Oh, you idiot," Garivald said, astonished at how few shakes his voice held. He blinked, but it would be a while before he stopped seeing the world through green and purple snakes. "You big, clumsy, futtering idiot."
There stood Tantris. He was shaking, shaking like a leaf. And there beside him lay the charred, smoking ruins of Gandiluz- one Unkerlanter regular who would never report back to King Swemmel again. Sadoc had called down the lightning, all right, but not on the target he'd had in mind.
"I-I'm sorry," he stammered. "I really am. I aimed to hit you with that, Garivald. I probably shouldn't have done that either, should I?"
"No, you bloody clot," Garivald snapped. He rounded on Tantris again. "Well?" he demanded. "Are you going to tell me some more about how Sadoc is the unicorn you're going to ride to victory, and he'll gore everything that gets in front of you out of the way?"
Tantris was still gaping at the remains of his comrade. The stench of burnt meat filled the clearing. Garivald had to repeat himself to get his attention. When he did, Tantris shuddered. He leaned over and was noisily sick. Garivald nodded to the irregular closest to him. The man gave Tantris a canteen. After he'd rinsed his mouth and spat, he violently shook his head. "I'm not going to tell anybody anything, not for a while," he answered.
"That's the first sensible thing you've said since you got here," Garivald told him.
But Tantris shook his head. "No. We really do need to do everything we can to keep the redheads from moving supplies through Grelz. However we do it."
"However we do it- aye," Garivald said. "Suppose you let us find our way instead of telling us yours." Tantris looked at Gandiluz's corpse again. He gulped. He said not another word.
Eleven
No one could have come near the fighting line through the great woods of western Unkerlant without knowing two armies grappled there. The ignorant traveler's nose would have told him if nothing else did. Istvan was no ignorant traveler, but he smelled the reek of unwashed bodies, the fouler stench of imperfectly covered latrines, and the sharp tang of woodsmoke, too.
And yet, at this season of the year, those stinks were almost afterthoughts in the air. Everything was green and growing. Broad-leafed trees, bare through the winter, had cloaked themselves anew. So had the bushes and ferns that grew under them. Pines and firs and balsams stayed in leaf the year around, but the sap rising in them put out spicy notes Istvan's nostrils appreciated.
He also appreciated the lull in the fighting. "We're on the defensive," he told Captain Frigyes when the new company commander came forward to inspect the redoubt, "and they're on the defensive, too. Put it all together and it means there's not a whole lot of action."
"Sometimes the stars shine on us," Frigyes said. He was a big man, burly even by Gyongyosian standards, with a scar on his right cheek. "We have troubles out in the islands, the Unkerlanters have troubles off in the east. Put it all together and they don't want to be fighting here and neither do we."
Captain Tivadar might have said the same thing. Istvan missed his long-time superior, but Frigyes looked to be a solid officer- and he knew nothing of why Istvan and several of his squadmates bore scars on their left hands. Istvan looked around. All of his troopers were busy with other things. He could bring out a question perhaps improper for a man of a warrior race: "Why don't we go ahead and make peace, then?"
"Because we would betray our Algarvian allies if we did, and they've struck some heavy blows at the accursed Kuusamans," Frigyes answered. "Also, because King Swemmel hasn't shown any interest in making peace, may the stars withhold their light from him."
Anyone would reckon Swemmel the warrior, Istvan thought uncomfortably. But he's just a madman. Everybody knows that. Even his own soldiers know it. But why do they fight so hard for a madman?
"Enjoy this while it lasts," Frigyes told him. "It won't last forever. Sooner or later, the Algarvians will strike their blow, as they do every spring. Then, odds are, they'll drive the Unkerlanters back again, and then the Unkerlanters will hit us again here."
"I'm sorry, sir." Istvan frowned. "I don't follow that."
"How likely is Swemmel to get summer victories against Algarve?" Frigyes asked. "Not very, not if you look at what's happened the past two years. So if the Unkerlanters want wins to keep their own people happy, they'll try to get them against us."
"Oh." That made an unpleasant amount of sense. It was also an insult of sorts. "We're easier than the Algarvians, are we? We shouldn't be easier than anyone."
"We're easier than the Algarvians, aye." Frigyes didn't seem insulted. "They can bring their whole apparatus of war with them. We can't. All we've got here in these woods are some of the best footsoldiers in the world." He slapped Istvan on the back, climbed out of the redoubt, and went on his way."
Istvan turned to his squad. "The captain says Gyongyos has some of the best footsoldiers in the world. He hasn't seen you lazy buggers in action yet, that's what I think."
"There hasn't been any action for a while," Szonyi said, which was also true.
"Do you really want much?" Kun asked. Even if he did wear spectacles, he could ask a question like that: he'd seen as much desperate fighting as any man in the woods, Istvan possibly excepted.
Had one of the newer men put the question, Szonyi would have felt compelled to puff out his chest and act manly. As things were, he shrugged and answered, "It'll probably come whether I want it or not, so what's the point of worrying?"
A red squirrel was rash enough to show its head around the trunk of a birch. Istvan's stick, ready for Unkerlanters, was ready for a squirrel, too. It fell into the bushes under the trees. "Nice blazing, Sergeant," Lajos said. "Something good for the pot."
Kun sighed. "By the time you skin it and gut it, there's hardly enough meat on a squirrel to be worth bothering about."
"That's not why you're complaining," Istvan said as he left the redoubt to collect the squirrel. "I know why you're complaining. You're a born city man, and you never had to worry about eating things like squirrels before they sucked you into the army." In the bushes, the squirrel was still feebly thrashing. Istvan found a rock and smashed its head a couple of times. Then he carried it back by the tail, pausing once or twice to brush away fleas. He hoped he got them all. If he didn't, he'd do some extra scratching.
"Doesn't seem natural, eating something like that," Kun said as Istvan's knife slit the squirrel's belly.
"What's not natural is going hungry when there's good food around," Istvan said. His squadmates spoke up in loud agreement. They came off farms or out of little villages. Gyongyos was a kingdom of smallholdings. Towns were market centers, administrative points. They weren't the heart of the land, as he'd heard they were elsewhere on Derlavai. And stewed squirrel, no matter what Kun thought of it, was tasty.