Peering west, Leino had no trouble seeing the Bratanu Mountains, the border between Jelgava and Algarve. On the Algarvian side of the border, they were called the Bradano Mountains. But, since the Kaunian ancestors of the Jelgavans had given them their name, the Kuusaman mage preferred the blonds’ version.
Looking ahead to the mountains made him wistful, too. “See?” He pointed to the snow that, at this season of the year, reached halfway down from the peaks. “You can find winter in this kingdom, if you go high enough.”
He spoke classical Kaunian, the only language he had in common with Xavega. The Lagoan sorcerer tossed her head, sending coppery curls flying. “So you can. But we are still down here in the flatlands. And powers above only know when we shall drive the cursed Algarvians back beyond their own frontier.”
“Patience.” Leino stood up on his toes to give her a kiss; she was taller than he. “It was only this past summer that we came ashore on the beaches near Balvi, and here we are at the other side of the kingdom. I do not see how the Algarvians can keep us from crossing the mountains. They do not have the men, the behemoths, or the dragons to do it.”
“Patience.” Xavega spoke the word as if it were an obscenity. “I have no patience. I want this war to be over and done. I want to go back to Setubal and pick up the pieces of my life. I hate the Algarvians as much for what they have done to me as for what they have done to Derlavai.”
“I believe that,” Leino murmured; Xavega was invincibly self-centered. He hadn’t been going to bed with her because he admired her character. He didn’t. He’d been going to bed with her because she was tall and shapely, somewhere between very pretty and outrageously beautiful, and as ferociously talented while horizontal as anyone looking at her vertical could have hoped. With a small sigh, he said, “I want to go back to Kajaani and start over, too.”
“Kajaani.” Xavega sniffed. “What is a Kuusaman provincial town, when set beside Setubal, the greatest city the world has ever known?”
The capital of Lagoas was indeed a marvel. Leino had gone there a couple of times for sorcerers’ convocations, and had always been amazed. So much to see, so much to do … Even Yliharma, Kuusamo’s capital, couldn’t really compare. But Leino had an answer with which even short-tempered Xavega couldn’t quarreclass="underline" “What is Kajaani? Kajaani is home.”
He missed Pekka. He missed Uto, their son. He missed their house, up a hill from the ley-line terminal stop. He missed the practical magecraft he’d been doing at Kajaani City College.
Would he miss Xavega if the chances of war swept them apart? He chuckled under his breath. Some specific part of him would miss her; he could hardly deny that. But the rest? He ruefully shook his head. Xavega didn’t even like Kuusamans, not as a general working rule. That she made an exception for him was almost as embarrassing as it was enjoyable.
And how would he explain her to his wife? If the powers above were kind, he’d never have to. If they weren’t? I’d been away from you for a long, long time, sweetheart, was about as good as he could come up with. Would Pekka stand for that? She might; Kuusamans did recognize that men and women had their flaws and foibles. But she wouldn’t be very happy, and Leino didn’t see how he could blame her.
He almost wished she were carrying on an affair of her own-nothing serious, just enough so that she couldn’t beat him about the head and shoulders with tales of glistening, untrammeled virtue. He didn’t find that likely; he didn’t really think his wife was the sort to do such things. And he didn’t really wish she were that sort. Just. . almost.
Oat of tl)e Darkness
Kuusaman dragons, eggs slung under their bellies, flew by heading east to pound the Algarvian positions in front of the Bratanu Mountains. Aye, Kuusaman and Lagoan dragons ruled the skies over Jelgava. The Algarvians had a lot of heavy sticks on the ground, but those didn’t help them nearly so much as dragons of their own would have done.
Painted sky blue and sea green, the Kuusaman dragons were hard to spot. Kuusamans had never believed in unnecessary display. Kuusamans often didn’t believe even in necessary display, Algarvic peoples, with their love for swagger and opulence, had a different way of looking at things. Algarvian dragons were painted green, red, and white; the colors of Sibiu were red, yellow, and blue; and those of Lagoas red and gold. Algarvian soldiers had gone into the Six Years’ War in gorgeous, gaudy, impractical uniforms. The slaughter in the early days of that fight, though, had forced pragmatism on them in a hurry.
Before long, the muted roar of eggs bursting in the distance came back to Leino’s ears. In an abstract way, he pitied the-Algarvian soldiers who had to take such punishment without being able to give it back. But, as a practical mage, he knew abstraction went only so far. He much preferred dishing out misery to taking it.
When he said that aloud, Xavega nodded. “Against the combined might of Lagoas and Kuusamo, they are all but powerless to resist,” she replied.
The combined might of Lagoas and Kuusamo here in Jelgava was two or three parts Kuusaman to one part Lagoan. The Kuusamans were also fighting, and winning, a considerable war against Gyongyos across the islands of the Both-nian Ocean. Xavega didn’t like to think, didn’t like to admit, that the short, swarthy, slant-eyed folk she looked down on both metaphorically and literally were a good deal more powerful than her own countrymen. Few Lagoans did. And, because Lagoas looked west and north across the Strait of Valmiera toward Derlavai while the Kuusamans concentrated on shipping and trade, they didn’t often have to. Leino smiled. Often was different from always.
But then his smile slipped. “The Algarvians cannot match us in men or beasts, no. But in magecraft. .” By the time he finished, he looked thoroughly grim.
Xavega scowled, too. “Aye, they are murderers. Aye, they are filthy. But that is why we are here, you and I. The magecraft we learned can make their own wickedness come down on their heads, not on those against whom they aim it.”
“Indeed.” Leino had to work to hold irony from his voice. It wasn’t that Xavega hadn’t told the truth. It was just that, as she had a way of doing, she turned things so they looked best to her. The sorcery she was talking about came from Kuusamo, not Lagoas. If fact, unless Leino was entirely wrong, Pekka had had a lot to do with devising it. She hadn’t said so-but then, she hadn’t been able to talk about what she was doing for quite some time. The few hints Leino had picked up all pointed in that direction.
Before his thoughts could glide much further down that ley line, a crystallo-mancer burst out of a nearby tent and came running toward him and Xavega. “Master mages! Master mages!” the fellow cried. “One of our dragonfliers reports that the Algarvians are stirring at their special camp near the mountains.”
“Are they?” Leino breathed. Mezentio’s men called the camps where they kept Kaunians before killing them by an innocuous name, not least, Leino suspected, so they wouldn’t have to think about what they did. Names had power, as any mage knew. And the Algarvians’ enemies had adopted this euphemism, too, not least so they wouldn’t have to think about what the Algarvians were doing, either.
“What is he saying?” demanded Xavega, who’d stubbornly refused to learn any Kuusaman. There were days when Leino found himself surprised she’d ever learned classical Kaunian.
He explained, adding, “You would think they would have learned their lesson.”
“Algarvians are arrogant,” Xavega said. By all the signs she gave, she’d never noticed her own arrogance. She went on, “Besides, their murderous sorcery is the strongest weapon Mezentio’s men have. If they use it when no mages are in position to strike back at them, they can work no small harm. Here, I would say, they judge the risk to be worth it.”