When an egg burst close enough to rattle the shutters over the windows, someone in a ward down the hall started screaming. His shrill cries went on and on, then stopped very abruptly. Bembo didn’t care to think about what had probably just gone on in that other ward.
Eggs kept falling through most of the night. Bembo got a little fitful sleep, but not much. The same, no doubt, would be true for everybody in Tricarico. Even people who weren’t hurt wouldn’t be worth much in the morning. Could metalworkers make proper shells for eggs when they had to pry their eyelids open? Could mages cast the proper spells to contain the sorcerous energy in those eggs? You didn’t have to be Swemmel of Unkerlant to see how efficiency would go down.
“One more night,” Tibiano said when the sun crawled up over the mountains to the east.
“Aye, one more night,” Bembo agreed in tones as hollow as his wardmate’s. He yawned till his jaw creaked. A serving woman brought a cart full of trays into the room. The yawn turned into a groan. “Now we have to live through one more breakfast.”
After breakfast, a healer who looked even more exhausted than Bembo felt came thought the ward. He poked at Bembo’s leg, muttered a quick charm or two, and nodded. “You’ll do,” he said, before racing on to Tibiano’s cot. How many men’s recoveries was he overseeing? Could he do any of them justice?
Bembo was dozing-if he couldn’t sleep at night, he’d do it in the daytime- when a nurse said, “You’ve got a visitor.”
He opened his eyes. He hadn’t had many visitors since getting hurt, and this one.. “Saffa!” he exclaimed.
“Hello, Bembo,” the sketch artist said. “I thought I’d come by and see how you were.” She didn’t look good herself-not the way Bembo remembered her. She was pale and sallow and seemed weary unto death.
“I heard you had a baby,” Bembo said. Only after he’d spoken did he stop and think that might be part of why she looked so tired.
“Aye, a little boy,” she answered. “My sister is taking care of him right now.”
“Wouldn’t give me a tumble,” he complained. Self-pity and self-aggrandizement were never far from the surface with him. “Who is the papa, anyway?”
“He was fighting down in the Duchy of Grelz last I heard from him,” Saffa said. “A couple of months ago, letters stopped coming.”
“That doesn’t sound so good,” Bembo said, and then, belatedly remembering himself, “I’m sorry.”
“So am I. He was sweet.” For a moment, Saffa managed the nasty grin that had always provoked Bembo-one way or another. She added, “Unlike some people I could name.”
“Thank you, sweetheart. I love you, too,” Bembo said. “If I could get up, I’d give you a swat on that round fanny of yours. Did you come see me just so you could try and drive me crazy?”
She shook her head. Coppery curls flew back and forth. “I came to see you because this stinking war has taken a bite out of both of us.”
If the baby’s father were still around, I wouldn‘t want anything to do with you. Bembo translated that without effort. But it didn’t mean she was wrong. “This stinking war has taken a bite out of the whole stinking world.” He hesitated. “When I’m back on my feet, I’ll call on you, all right?”
“All right,” Saffa said. “I’ll tell you right now, though, I still may decide I’d sooner slap your face. Just so we understand each other.”
Bembo snorted. “Some understanding.” But he was nodding. Saffa without vinegar wasn’t Saffa. “Take care of yourself. Stay safe.”
“You, too,” she said, and then she was gone, leaving Bembo half wondering if he’d dreamt her whole visit.
An egg flew in from the east and hit a house in the village Garivald’s company had just taken away from the Algarvians. Chunks of the house flew out in all directions. A spinning board knocked down an Unkerlanter soldier standing only a couple of feet from Garivald. He started to get up, then clapped a hand to the small of his back and let out a yip of pain. The house fell in on itself and started to burn.
A Forthwegian couple in the middle of the street started howling. Garivald presumed it was their house. He couldn’t make out much of what they were saying. To a Grelzer like him, this east-Forthwegian dialect made even less sense than the variety of the language people around Eoforwic spoke. Not only were the sounds a little different, a lot of the words sounded nothing at all like their Unkerlanter equivalents. He wondered if they were borrowed from Algarvian.
Another egg flew in. This one burst farther away. The crash that followed said somebody’s home would never be the same. Shrieks rose immediately thereafter. Somebody’s life would never be the same.
My life will never be the same, either, Garivald thought. Powers below eat the Algarvians. It’s their fault, curse them. I’d sooner be back in Zossen, drinking my way through the winter and waiting for spring. Neither Zossen nor the family he’d had there existed any more. He turned to Lieutenant Andelot. “Sir, we ought to get rid of that miserable egg-tosser.”
“I know, Sergeant Fariulf,” Andelot answered. “But we’ve come so far so fast, we can’t sweep up everything as neatly as we want to. On the scale of the war as a whole, that tosser doesn’t mean much.”
“No, sir,” Garivald agreed. “But it’s liable to take some nasty bites out of us.” He thought for a moment. “I could probably sneak my squad through the redheads’ lines and take it out. Things are all topsy-turvy-they won’t have had the time to get proper trenches dug or anything like that.”
What am I saying? he wondered. Go after an egg-tosser behind the enemy’s line? Have I lost all of my mind, or do I really want to kill myself?
Andelot also studied him with a certain curiosity. “We don’t see volunteers as often as we’d like,” he remarked. “Aye, go on, Sergeant. Choose the men you’d like to have with you. I think you can do it, too.” He pointed southeastward. “Most of the redheads in these parts are falling back on that town called Gromheort. They’ll stand siege there, unless I miss my guess, and getting them out won’t come easy or cheap.” With a shrug, he went on, “Nothing but Algarve beyond, though. As I say, pick your men, Sergeant. Let’s get on with it.”
The men Garivald did pick looked imperfectly enamored of him. He understood that; he was giving them the chance to get killed. But he had an argument they couldn’t top: “I’m going along with you. If I can do it, you can cursed well do it with me.”
Behind his back, somebody said, “You’re too ugly for me to want to do it with you, Sergeant.” Garivald laughed along with the rest of the soldiers who heard. He couldn’t help himself. But he didn’t stop picking men.
Before they set out from the village, though, a couple of squadrons of dragons painted rock-gray flew over the place out of the west. “Hold up, Fariulf,” Andelot said. “Maybe they’ll do our job for us.”
“They should have done it already,” Garivald said. Even so, he wasn’t sorry to raise his hand. None of the men he’d chosen tried to talk him out of waiting. He would have been astonished if anyone had.
That one Algarvian tosser hadn’t had many eggs to fling. The distant thunder of the eggs the Unkerlanter dragons dropped brought smiles to all the men in rock-gray who heard it. “Don’t know whether they’ll flatten that egg-tosser or not,” a soldier said. “Any which way, though, the redheads are catching it.”
Only silence followed the edge of the thunder. No more eggs came down on the Forthwegian village. Andelot beamed. “That’s pretty efficient,” he said. “Maybe we’ll be able to get a decent night’s sleep here.”
Not everybody would get a decent night’s sleep. Andelot made sure he had plenty of sentries facing east. Had Garivald been the Algarvian commander, he wouldn’t have tried a night attack. But the redheads were still dedicated counter-punchers. He’d seen that. Given even the slightest opening, they would hit back, and hit back hard.