“Heh,” Trasone said, and nodded. “That’s funny, sir.” Even if the officer did go on and on about the Kaunian girl he’d been screwing before he got sent west, he’d done a good job with the battalion.
Now he took off his hat, waved it around to emphasize what he was about to say, and then set it back on his head at a jaunty angle. “You ask me, though, these broads are too ugly to deserve any Algarvian’s sausage.”
That just made Trasone shrug. “Even ugly broads are better than no broads at all,” he said. He’d lined up for a go at a soldiers’ brothel a few times. That wasn’t the best sport in the world--far from it--but it was better than nothing.
Spinello didn’t have to worry about standing in line. Officers’ brothels were a cut above what the regular troopers got. Even so, he rolled his eyes. “Ugly,” he repeated. “Every cursed one of ‘em is ugly. When I was doing garrison duty back in that Forthwegian town, now ...” And he was off on another story about the blond girl back in Oyngestun.
Trasone grinned as he listened. Spinello did spin a pretty good yarn. If half what he said was true, he’d trained that Kaunian bitch the way a hunter trained his hound. Of course, everybody lied about women except women, and they lied about men instead.
A few eggs started landing on the outskirts of Aspang, none of them very close to the market square. “Swemmel’s boys are right on time,” Spinello remarked. Other than that, he didn’t react to the eggs at all. He had nerve.
“Think the Unkerlanters are going to have another try at running us out of here, sir?” Trasone asked.
“They’re welcome to try, as far as I’m concerned,” Spinello answered. “The way we’ve fortified Aspang since we got driven back here, they could send every soldier they have against us, and we’d kill ‘em all before they broke in.”
Maybe that was true. Aspang had held out against everything King Swemmel’s men had thrown at it so far. But an awful lot of Algarvian soldiers had died holding the Unkerlanters out.
“Besides,” Spinello went on, waving an arm, “the snow is starting to melt. For the next few weeks, nobody’s going to move very far very fast--except to sink into the mud, I mean.”
“Aye, something to that,” Trasone agreed. “If Unkerlant doesn’t hold the record for mud, I’m buggered if I know what does. Saw that last fall. Powers above, if it hadn’t been for the mud, we’d have made it into Cottbus without even breathing hard.”
Spinello waggled a finger under Trasone’s nose. Trasone scowled. What did the officer know that would make him contradict? He hadn’t been in Unkerlant then. He’d been back in Forthweg, happily boffing that Kaunian slut. But Spinello turned out to know more than Trasone expected. Lecturing like a professor, the major said, “Consider, my friend. The fall mud comes from the fall rains alone. The spring mud comes not only from the rain but also from the melting of all the snow on the ground. Which do you expect to be worse?”
As ordered, Trasone considered. His lips shaped a soundless whistle. “We’ll be in mud up to our ballocks!” he exclaimed.
“Deeper,” Major Spinello said. “But so will the Unkerlanters. Till that mud dries out, nobody will do much. When it does, we’ll see who moves first, and where. And won’t that be interesting?”
Again, he sounded more like a professor than a soldier. All Trasone said was, “I’m bloody well sick of going backwards. I want to be heading west again.” He cared little for the big picture, much more for his own small piece of it. If he was retreating, Algarve was losing. If he was advancing, his kingdom was winning.
“Head west we shall.” Spinello didn’t lack for confidence. And he had his reasons, too: “If you don’t think our mages are more clever than the Unkerlanters’, you need to think again.”
“Aye.” Trasone nodded, then chuckled. “By the time this fornicating war is done, there won’t be a Kaunian left alive.” And if that included the wench with whom the major had been fornicating, Trasone wouldn’t shed a tear.
“Or an Unkerlanter, either,” Spinello said. “The ones we don’t slay, King Swemmel’s mages will. I, for one, won’t miss them. Nasty people. Homely people, too, when you get right down to it.” He drew himself up very straight. “We deserve to win, for we are better looking.”
Did he mean that, or was it one of the absurd conceits he liked to come out with every now and then? Trasone couldn’t tell. He didn’t much care, either. Spinello had proved he knew what he was doing on the battlefield. So long as that held true, he could be as crazy as he liked away from it.
He thumped Trasone on the back. “Go on. Enjoy your sausages.” Off he strutted across the market square, a cocky little rooster of a man. Trasone stared after him with almost paternal affection.
Then, with a shrug, the veteran headed back toward the theater where his company was quartered these days. The name of the play it had been showing before the Algarvians overran Aspang was still up on the marquee. That was what somebody had told Trasone the words were, anyhow. He couldn’t speak Unkerlanter, and he couldn’t read it, either; the characters were different from the ones Algarvians used.
Sergeant Panfilo had some onions. Even more to the point, he had a frying pan. The company had stolen a little iron stove from a house near the theater. Issued rations had often got erratic during the winter. When the soldiers came on food, they wanted to be able to cook it. Before long, a savory aroma rose from the pan.
One of the other troopers in Trasone’s squad, a skinny fellow named Clovisio, came over and stood by the stove, watching with spaniel eyes as the sausages sizzled. Trasone’s rumbling stomach made him less than polite. “You think you’re going to scrounge scraps off us, you can bloody well think again,” he growled.
Clovisio looked affronted as readily as he’d looked cuddly and endearing a moment before. “My dear fellow, I can pay my way,” he said. He took a flask from his belt and gently shook it. Its suggestive gurgle brought a smile to Trasone’s face--and to Sergeant Panfilo’s.
“Now you’re talking,” the sergeant said. He turned the sausages with his knife, eyed them, and lifted the pan off the stove. “I think we’re in business here.” The three of them ate sausage and onions and shared nips of the fiery Unkerlanter spirits in Clovisio’s flask.
“That’s not so bad,” Trasone said, chasing a couple of strings of fried onion around the pan with his own knife. He slapped his belly. “Blazes the stuffing out of meat hacked off the carcass of a behemoth that froze to death.”
“Or meat hacked off the carcass of a behemoth that didn’t freeze right away, but had time to start going bad first,” Clovisio said. Trasone grimaced and nodded; he knew the sickly sweet taste of spoiled meat as well as any other Algarvian soldier in Unkerlant.
Not to be outdone by his companions, Sergeant Panfilo added, “And it sure blazes the stuffing out of going empty.”
“Aye,” Trasone said. All three soldiers solemnly nodded. Like so many Algarvians in Unkerlant, they’d known emptiness, too. Trasone turned to Clovisio. “Anything left in that flask?”
Clovisio shook it again. It still gurgled. He passed it to Trasone. Trasone sipped, but didn’t empty it. Instead, he handed it to Panfilo. The sergeant took a sergeant’s privilege and tilted it up to get the last few drops.
For a moment, the three men squatted there, looking at the now empty frying pan. Trasone nodded, as if in agreement to something nobody had actually come out and said. “That’s not so bad,” he repeated. “A full belly, a little something to drink--”