He commandeered a fresh horse from among those tied near the dowser’s hut and rode back toward Cottbus. A single bodyguard rode with him. He would have done without even the one retainer, but the idea scandalized every other general--and Rathar’s adjutant. At least he’d made sure he had a solid veteran at his side, not a relative he was holding away from the fighting or some pretty boy.
Heading to Cottbus, he passed a troop of behemoths trotting east, toward the battle lines. They kicked up a great cloud of dust. Because they were still far from the fighting, they did not wear their heavy mail, but carried it in carts they pulled behind them. Whatever color their long, shaggy hair had been before, it was dust-brown now. A couple of the soldiers mounted on them waved to Rathar. Coughing, he waved back. His tunic was scarcely fancier than theirs; they more likely thought him just another soldier than the highest-ranking officer in the Unkerlanter army.
He rode past a dead Algarvian dragon. An old man--too old to go to the front--was stripping the harness from it. Rathar nodded. Anything his kingdom could steal from the redheads was one thing fewer its artisans would have to make.
Few people, and most of them women, were on the streets of Cottbus. As he trotted through a market square, he saw a long queue to buy pears and plums, and an even longer one in front of a stern-faced woman with a basket of eggs. There looked to be plenty of fruit; the eggs were going fast, and the people at the end of that line would have to do without.
When Rathar strode into his office, his adjutant hurried up to him with a worried look on his face. “Lord Marshal, his Majesty urgently requires your presence,” Major Merovec told him.
“Of course the king shall have what he requires,” Rathar replied. “Do you know why he requires me?” Merovec shook his head. Rathar let out a silent sigh. He wouldn’t know whether King Swemmel intended merely to confer with him or to sack him or to take his head till he got to the audience chamber. “I shall go see him at once then.”
Swemmel’s guardsmen in the antechamber were as meticulous as ever, but did not seem hostile to Rathar. The marshal took that as a good sign. No more guards awaited him in the audience chamber. He took that as a better sign.
“Arise, arise,” King Swemmel said after Rathar completed the ritual prostrations and acclamations before his sovereign. Swemmel sounded impatient and angry, but not angry at the marshal. “Do you know what that swaggering popinjay of a Mezentio has done?” he demanded.
King Mezentio had done any number of things to Unkerlant’s detriment. Evidently, he’d just done one more. Rathar answered with simple truth: “No, your Majesty.”
“Curse him, he has raised up a false King of Grelz down in Herborn,” Swemmel snarled.
Ice ran through Rathar. That was one of the nastier things Mezentio might have done. A good many people in the Duchy of Grelz still resented the Union of Crowns that had bound them to Unkerlant even though it was almost three hundred years old. If Algarve restored the old Kingdom of Grelz under a pliant local noble, the Grelzers might well acquiesce in Algarvian control. “Which of the counts or dukes did the redheads pick as their pretender?” Rathar asked.
“Duke Raniero, who has the dishonor to be Mezentio’s first cousin,” King Swemmel answered.
Rathar stared. “King Mezentio named an Algarvian noble to be King of Grelz?”
“Aye, he did,” Swemmel said. “None of the local lickspittles seemed to suit him.”
“Powers above be praised,” Rathar said softly. “He could have struck a harder blow against us with a Grelzer than with a man the folk down there will see as ... a foreign usurper.” He’d almost said another foreign usurper. Swemmel would not have been grateful for that, not even a little.
“You may be right.” Swemmel sounded almost indifferent to what was in Rathar’s eyes a blunder big as the world. A moment later, the king explained why: “But the insult is no less here. If anything, the insult is greater, for Mezentio to presume to set an Algarvian as king on Unkerlanter soil.”
“He did the same thing in Jelgava, when he made his brother Mainardo king there,” Rathar said. “The Algarvians have always been an arrogant lot.”
“Aye,” King Swemmel agreed. “If the Jelgavans are spineless enough to take Mezentio’s worthless brother as their sovereign, they deserve him. Unkerlanters will never accept an Algarvian for a king.” He looked sly; Rathar knew from long experience that he was never more dangerous--to his foes or sometimes to himself--than when he wore that expression. “We shall make certain that Unkerlanters do not accept an Algarvian for a king.”
“May it be so, your Majesty.” Rathar thought the course of the fighting itself more urgent than any political machinations. He pointed to a large map in the audience chamber. “We had better make sure Mezentio has no chance to proclaim a redheaded King of Unkerlant in Cottbus.”
“Even if he does, we will fight on from the west,” Swemmel said.
Would anyone follow orders from a king who’d fled to a provincial town one jump ahead of the Algarvians? Rathar had no idea. He didn’t want to have to learn by experiment either. He looked toward the map himself. The bites Gyongyos was taking in the far west were annoyances. In the north, Zuwayza hadn’t gone far beyond the borders she’d had before her first clash with Unkerlant. But the Algarvians aimed to tear the heart from the kingdom and keep it for themselves.
“We also have to hold Cottbus because of all the ley lines that converge here,” Rathar said. “If the capital falls, we’ll have a cursed hard time moving caravans from north to south.”
“Aye,” Swemmel said. “Aye.” His nod was impatient, absent-minded; ley-line caravans weren’t the topmost thing in his thoughts, or anywhere close to it. He walked over to the map. “We still have a corridor open to Glogau. The Lagoans have sent us some prime bull behemoths to improve our herds, and they came through.”
“So they did.” Rathar had heard that. It still left him faintly bemused. “The Zuwayzin could have pressed their attack on the port’s defenses harder than they have.”
“They love Mezentio little better than they love us,” Swemmel said, which evidently seemed clear to him but did not to his marshal. The king went on, “Were the black men but a little wiser, they would love Mezentio less than they love us.
“Had we treated them a little better, that might also be true,” Rathar remarked.
“We did not give them a tenth part of what they deserve,” Swemmel said. “Nor have we yet given the Algarvians a tenth, nor even a hundredth, part of what they deserve. But we shall. Aye, we shall.” Whatever else one said of Swemmel, he had no yielding in him. Maybe Unkerlant, or what remained of Unkerlant, would go right on obeying him even if the Algarvians ran him out of Cottbus. Marshal Rathar still hoped with all his heart he wouldn’t have to find out.
Dressed in holiday finery--ordinary trousers worn under embroidered tunics--Skarnu, Merkela, and Raunu came into the village of Pavilosta to witness the installation of Simanu, the late Enkuru’s son, as count over the local countryside. Neither Skarnu nor Raunu had a tunic that fit as well as it might; both theirs had formerly belonged to Gedominu. Merkela had altered them, but they remained tight.
“Waste of our time to come here,” Raunu grumbled, as a true farmer might have. “Too much work to do to care who’s over us. Whoever it is, he’ll take too cursed much of what we make.”
“Aye, that’s so,” Merkela agreed. “And Simanu’s been squeezing as hard as Enkuru ever did. He sucks up to the Algarvians as hard as his father did, too. That’s the only reason they finally decided to let him take over as count instead of putting in one of their own men.”