“To sing a song of victory." Words bubbled inside Garivald like stew bubbling in a pot over a hot fire. "The day they thought they'd never see." He paused, waiting for the next couplet to form. "They thought they'd hit us hard in summer. But now we know their days are numbered." He shook his head. That wouldn't do, not even with music to make the bad rhyme and scansion less obvious.
He cast about for a better line. Before he could find one, the Unkerlanter regular named Tantris came up to him. Whatever line might have taken shape flew away instead. He gave Tantris a dirty look.
The regular ignored it. He said, "We need to strike the followers of Raniero the pretender, to show them they aren't safe even though his Majesty's troops haven't yet started taking Grelz back from the invaders. Can we do it?"
"You're asking me now?" Garivald said, intrigued. Tantris nodded. Garivald persisted: "You're not giving orders? You're not saying you know everything and I don't know anything, the way you did before?"
"I never said that," Tantris protested.
"No?" Garivald glowered at him. "Where's Gandiluz, then? Dead, that's where. Dead because you wouldn't listen to me when I told you Sadoc could no more work magic than a bullfrog can fly. You had it all planned, the two of you. But you weren't quite as efficient as you thought, were you?"
Tantris gave him a long, expressionless look. "You do want to have some care in how you speak to me."
Garivald wanted nothing of the sort. Tantris put him in mind of all the inspectors and impressers he'd had to obey his whole life long. But he didn't have to obey this whoreson. The band of irregulars in the woods west of Herborn was his, not Tantris'. One word from him and the regular soldier would meet with an unfortunate accident. Garivald smiled. Power was heady stuff.
Tantris nodded as if Garivald had spoken his thoughts aloud. "Everything gets remembered, you know," Tantris said. "Everything. With his Majesty's armies moving forward again, debts will be paid, every single one of them. Before very long, Grelz will find out exactly what that means."
Birds chirped. Leaves were green. The sun shone brightly. But, just for a moment, winter lived in Garivald. He held the whip hand right now. But behind him stood only his irregulars. Behind Tantris stood the whole great apparatus of Unkerlanter intimidation, reaching all the way back to the throne room in Cottbus and to King Swemmel himself. Which carried more weight in the end? Garivald knew too mournfully well. With a sigh, he said, "We hate the redheads and the traitors worse than we hate each other. We'd better, anyhow."
"Aye. We'd better." Tantris' smile was crooked. "And we'd better show the traitors that we're still in business around these parts. Their hearts will be down in their boots anyhow, with the Algarvians falling back toward the borders of Grelz. A lot of them will be looking for ways out of the fight. Their hearts won't be in it anymore."
"Maybe," Garivald said. "Some of them follow King Raniero-"
"False King Raniero," Tantris broke in.
"False King Raniero," Garivald agreed dutifully. "Some of them follow him for the sake of a full belly or a place to sleep at night. But some of them…" He paused, wondering how to say what needed saying without putting his own head in the noose. "Some of them, you know, really mean it."
Tantris nodded. "Those are the ones who really need killing. We can't let people think they can side with the redheads and against our kingdom and get away with it. This isn't a game we're playing here. They'd get rid of every one of us if they could, and we have to treat them the same way."
Garivald nodded. Every word of that was true, however much he wished it weren't. "What have you got in mind?" he asked. "If it's something we can do, we'll do it." He couldn't resist a last jab: "If it's more of Sadoc's magic, maybe you'd better think again."
Tantris winced. The lightning Sadoc had called down could have seared him instead of Gandiluz. It could have seared Garivald, too. Garivald knew what had saved him, though: Sadoc had aimed the lightning his way. And Sadoc had proved he couldn't hit what he was aiming at.
"No more magic," Tantris said with another shudder. "What I have in mind is hitting one of the villages around the woods that the Grelzers garrison. If we kill a few Algarvians in the fighting, all the better."
"All right," Garivald said. "As long as you don't want to make us stand and fight if they turn out to be stronger than we expect going in." King Swemmel was liable to reckon it efficient to get rid of men bold enough to be irregulars at the same time as he was fighting the Grelzers.
If that had occurred to Tantris, he didn't show it. He said, "Whatever you think best, as long as we strike the blow."
Garivald scratched his chin. Whiskers rasped under his fingers; he still shaved every now and then, but only every now and then, and he had the fair- or rather, the dark- beginnings of a beard. After some thought, he said, "Lohr. That'll be the place we'll have the easiest time hitting. It's not very far from the woods, and the garrison there isn't very big. Aye, Lohr."
"Suits me well enough," Tantris said.
"I was blooded in this band between Lohr and Pirmasens," Garivald said. "We ambushed a squad of Algarvian footsoldiers marching from one to the other. I don't think there are any redheads down there these days- they've mostly gone west, and they leave it to the traitors to hold down the countryside."
"Our job is to show 'em that won't work," Tantris said.
Two nights later, the irregulars left the shelter of the woods and marched on Lohr. Actually, it was more of a straggle than a march. They ambled along in a column, tramping down the dirt road toward the village. Garivald posted a couple of men who'd grown up by Lohr in the vanguard, and another at the rear. They were the best local guides in the darkness- and if something went wrong.
Somewhere between the van and the rear, he would find himself walking beside Obilot. She said, "Fighting Grelzers isn't the same as fighting Algarvians. It's like drinking spirits cut with too much water."
"We hurt the Algarvians when we hit the Grelzers, too," Garivald said.
"I know," she answered. "It's still not the same. I don't want to hurt Algarvians by hurting Grelzer traitors. I want to hurt Algarvians by hurting Algarvians." She kicked at the ground as if it were one of Mezentio's soldiers.
Not for the first time, Garivald wanted to ask what the redheads had done to her. Not for the first time, he found he lacked the nerve. He kept marching.
When they started to near Lohr, Tantris came over to him and said, "We ought to get off the road now, and go by way of the fields. If the traitors have sentries, they'll be less likely to spot us so."
He still wasn't giving orders. He'd lost some of his arrogance, sure enough. And his advice made sense. Garivald nodded and said, "Aye, we'll do it." He gave the orders.
No sentries challenged them. Garivald's confidence began to rise. No one had betrayed the attack to the men who followed King Raniero. He and his irregulars often knew what the Grelzers would do as soon as Raniero's men did, but that coin had two sides. Who in my band is a traitor? was a question that always ate at him.
Dawn had just begun to turn the eastern sky gray when they came up to Lohr. A man from the vanguard pointed out three or four houses. "Those are the ones the Grelzers use," he whispered to Garivald. He spoke with great confidence. Garivald assumed someone in the village had told him. Sure enough, this business of civil war was as much a matter of listening and hearing as it was of fighting.
"Forward!" Garivald called softly, and the irregulars loped into the sleeping village. Dogs began to bark. A little white one ran yapping at Garivald and made as if to bite his ankle. He blazed it. It let out a low wail of pain, then fell silent. He kicked its body aside and ran on.
A couple of villagers and a couple of Grelzer soldiers came out to see what the fuss was about. In the dim light, none of the irregulars tried to figure out who was who. They just started blazing. It wasn't a battle. It wasn't anything like a battle. In a very few minutes, Lohr was theirs.
The survivors they captured from the squad of Grelzers made Garivald sad. They could as easily have fought on his side as for the Algarvian puppet king of Grelz. But they'd made the other choice- the wrong choice, as it turned out- and they would have to pay for it. Tantris was looking at him, as if wondering whether he had the stomach to give the order.
He did, saying, "Blaze the traitors." A moment later, he added, "Blaze the firstman, too. He's been in bed with the Algarvians ever since they got here." None of that took long, either. Before the sun had risen, the irregulars were on their way back to their forest fastness.
Tantris came up to him, saying, "Very neat. You see what you can do."
Garivald nodded. "I also see you weren't joggling my elbow, the way you did when you tried to use Sadoc for more than he could give."
"Do I have to tell you again that everything you say will be remembered?" Tantris asked.
"Do you care to remember that I told you the truth?" Garivald answered. He stepped up his pace. Tantris didn't try to stay with him.
He caught up with Obilot just as the sun came red over the horizon. Her eyes, he thought, shone brighter than it did. "We did well there, even if they were only Grelzers," she said.
"Aye." Garivald nodded. Her words weren't much different from what Tantris had given him, but warmed him far more. He could have done without the regular's approval; at times, he would gladly have done without the regular altogether. But what Obilot thought mattered to him. All at once, hardly thinking what he was doing, he reached out and took her hand.
She blinked. Garivald waited to see what would happen next. If she decided she didn't like that, she was liable to do something much more emphatic than just telling him so. But she let his hand stay in hers. All she said was, "Took you long enough."
"I wanted to be sure," he answered, though he'd been anything but. Then he took his hand away, not wanting to push too hard.
The band got back under the trees without having lost a man- or a woman, either. Garivald left sentries behind to warn of a Grelzer counterattack if one came. The rest of the irregulars returned to the clearing for as much of a celebration as they could manage, though a lot of them wanted nothing but sleep.
Garivald caught Obilot's eye again. He wandered into the woods. If she followed, she did. If she didn't… He shrugged. Pushing Obilot when she didn't care to be pushed was a good way to end up dead.
But she did follow. When they found a tiny clearing far enough from the main one, they paused and looked at each other. "Are you sure?" Garivald asked. He'd been away from his wife and family for more than a year. Obilot nodded. He thought she had no family left alive, though he wasn't sure. He took her in his arms. None of what they said to each other after that had anything to do with words.
Flying over the plains of southern Unkerlant, Count Sabrino felt a strong sense of having done all this before. By the way things looked, the war against Unkerlant, the war the Algarvians had thought they would win in the first campaigning season, would go on forever.