Spinello missed Brivibas- he missed him a good deal. Brivibas was a key to getting Vanai to do what he wanted. Sooner than watch her dusty old granddad kill himself as a roadbuilder, she'd peeled off her clothes and opened her legs. Spinello sighed. "So you don't think anybody could find Vanai in a hurry?"
"Not a chance." The constable- Bembo- paused again, frowning. "In fact, come to think of it, she never got hauled into Gromheort at all. If I remember right, she ran off before we cleaned all the Kaunians out of Oyngestun."
"Powers above!" Spinello glared at him. "Why didn't you say that sooner? Who'd she run off with? Some boy?" Maybe that fellow from Plegmund's Brigade had known what he was talking about after all.
"I don't know all the ins and outs of it." Bembo laughed loudly at his own wit. "If it weren't for her mouthy old grandfather, I might not remember her at all. It's not like I ever laid her or anything."
"All right. All right." Spinello, who had, knew when to give up. He turned, cursing under his breath at a good idea wasted, and went back to the depot.
Before long, the ley-line caravan was gliding west across Forthweg again. It stopped in Eoforwic to pick up more reinforcements, then slid on toward the fighting front. Towns and villages in western Forthweg and in Unkerlant had taken even more damage, and more recent damage, than those farther east. Swemmel's men might not have fought skillfully, but they'd fought hard from the very beginning.
And they- or their brethren who practiced the nasty art of the guerrilla- kept right on making themselves difficult. The caravan had to halt twice before it got to the front, for Unkerlanter irregulars had burst eggs on the ley line and overloaded its energy-carrying capacity. Algarvian mages had to put the damage right, and there weren't enough of them to go around.
At last, a day and a half later than he should have, Spinello got down from the caravan car in the wreckage of a town named Pewsum. A sergeant was standing on the platform at the depot, holding up a leaf of paper with his name printed on it in big letters. "I'm Spinello," he said, cane in one hand, carpetbag in the other.
The sergeant saluted. "Pleased to meet you, sir. Welcome to the brigade. Here, let me get that for you." He relieved Spinello of the carpetbag. "Now if you'll just come with me, I've got a wagon waiting."
"Efficiency," Spinello remarked, and the sergeant grinned at him. Algarvians did their best to practice what King Swemmel preached. But the locally built wagon testified to genuine Unkerlanter efficiency- it was high-wheeled and curve-bottomed, and could go through mud that bogged down anyAlgarvian vehicle. As the sergeant flicked the reins and the horses got moving, Spinello said, "We can't have too many of these wagons, no matter how we get 'em. Nothing like 'em in the fall or the spring."
"That's the truth, sir. Powers above be praised that you see it," the driver said. "Sometimes we can get them from units that think something has to come from Trapani to be any good. If our neighbors want to be fools, it's no skin off our noses."
"No, indeed," Spinello said, but then he checked himself. "The way things are nowadays, nobody Algarvian can afford to be a fool. We have to leave that for the Unkerlanters." After a few seconds of very visible thought, the sergeant nodded.
Brigade headquarters lay in a little village called Ubach, a couple of miles northwest of Pewsum. Getting there took more than an hour; though Unkerlanter wagons could get through the mud, nothing could get through it very fast. The sergeant pointed to the firstman's house. "That'll be yours, sir. I'll let the regimental commanders know you're here, so you can meet them."
"Thanks." Spinello looked around Ubach with something less than overwhelming curiosity. He'd already seen more Unkerlanter villages than he'd ever wanted. A few peasants tramped along the streets, doing their best to keep their long tunics out of the mud. Some nodded to him as the wagon sloshed by. Rather more pretended he didn't exist. He'd seen all that before, too. And then he did a double take. Seeing a pretty young Kaunian girl in Ubach was the last thing he'd expected. She reminded him achingly of Vanai, though she was even younger and, he thought, even prettier. Pointing her way, he asked, "What's she doing here?"
"Oh, Yadwigai?" The sergeant blew her a kiss. He raised his voice: "Hello, sweetheart!"
The blond girl- Yadwigai- waved back. "Hello, Sergeant," she called in good Algarvian. "Is that the new colonel there?"
"Aye, it is," the sergeant answered, and blew her another kiss.
"Is she yours?" Spinello poked the sergeant in the ribs. "You lucky dog."
"Oh, no, sir!" The soldier driving him sounded shocked.
"Ah." Spinello nodded wisely. "A pet for one of the officers, then." He sighed, wishing again that he'd been lucky enough to get his hands on Vanai during the layover at Gromheort.
But the sergeant shook his head once more. "No, sir," he repeated. "Yadwigai isn't anybody's- not any one man's, I mean. She belongs to the brigade."
"Really?" Spinello knew he sounded astonished. He'd seen more camp followers than he'd ever wanted to, too. Yadwigai had none of their hard, bitter look. If anything, she put him in mind of a prosperous merchant's daughter: happy and right on the edge of being spoiled.
"Aye, sir," the sergeant replied, and then, realizing what Spinello had to mean, "No, sir- not like that! She's not our whore. We'd kill anybody who tried doing anything like that with her. She's our… our luck, I guess you might say."
Spinello scratched his head. "You'd better tell me more," he said at last. The sergeant had to know what happened to most of the Kaunians the Algarvians brought into Unkerlant. Spinello wondered if Yadwigai did.
"Well, it's like this, sir," the sergeant said, halting the wagon in front of the firstman's house. "We picked her up in a village in western Forthweg when we first started fighting Swemmel's buggers, and we've brought her along ever since. We've had good fortune ever since, too, and I don't think there's a man among us who wouldn't die to help keep her safe. She's… sweet, sir. You know what I'm saying?"
"All right, Sergeant. I won't mess with your good-luck charm." Spinello could see that any other answer would land him in trouble with his new brigade before he met anyone in it but this fellow driving him.
He got down from the wagon and went into the firstman's hut. Along with the benches against the walls that marked Unkerlanter peasant houses, the main room held an Algarvian-issue cot, folding table, and chairs. A map was tacked down on the table. Spinello studied it while the sergeant brought in his carpetbag, set it down beside the cot, and went out again.
Officers started coming in to greet their new commander a few minutes later. The brigade was made up of five regiments. Majors led four of them, a captain the fifth. Spinello nodded to himself. He'd led a regiment as a major, too.
"Very pleased to make your acquaintance, gentlemen," he said, bowing. "By what I saw on the map, we have a good deal of work ahead of us to make sure King Swemmel's whoresons stay where they belong, but I think we can bring it off. I tell you frankly, I'd be a lot more worried if we didn't have Yadwigai here to make sure everything turned out all right."
The officers stared. Then they broke into broad smiles. A couple of them even clapped their hands. Spinello smiled, too, at least as much at himself as at his subordinates. Sure as sure, he'd got his new command off on the right foot.
"With your kind permission, milady," Colonel Lurcanio said, bowing, "I should like to invite Count Amatu to supper again tomorrow night."
Krasta drummed her fingers on the frame of the doorway in which she was standing. "Must you?" she said. "I don't like hearing my brother cursed in the house that is- was- his home."