"May it be so," Fernao repeated.
"And Siuntio saved us," Pekka said. "He and Ilmarinen- had they not resisted as best they could, we would all have died in the blockhouse." Fernao could only nod at that. Pekka rose and picked up the tray. "I will not disturb you anymore. I hope you feel better soon."
"And you," he called as she left the room. No, he couldn't very well tell her she'd made one small mistake. When the Algarvians assailed the blockhouse out in the wilderness, he'd been several strides closer to Siuntio than to her. But he'd turned one way, done one thing, and not the other… and now he and everyone else, everyone save poor Siuntio, would have to live with the consequences of that.
Before he'd got blazed, Major Spinello had served in southern Unkerlant. Now he'd been sent to the north of King Swemmel's realm. He found he loathed this part of the kingdom at least as much as he'd despised the other.
Blizzards seemed less common here, but cold, driving rain went a long way toward making up for them. Most of his regiment was holed up in a little town called Wriezen, with the rest on a picket line west of the place. Nothing would be coming at them quickly, not today- and not tomorrow or the next day, either. Here in the north, the muddy season lasted most of the winter.
Naturally, Spinello had commandeered the finest house in Wriezen as his own. It had probably belonged to the firstman of the place, but he'd long since fled. Spinello turned to his seniormost company commander, a dour captain named Turpino, and said, "How do we give the Unkerlanters a good boot in the balls?"
"We wait till the ground dries out, and then we outmaneuver them," Turpino answered. "Sir."
Spinello hopped in the air in annoyance. "No, no, no!" he exclaimed. "That isn't what I meant. How do we boot 'em in the balls now?"
Turpino, who was several inches taller than he, looked down his nose at him. "We don't," he said. "Sir."
Spinello carefully didn't notice how slow Turpino was with the title of respect. "Do Swemmel's men think we can't do anything in this mess, too?" he demanded.
"Of course they do," Turpino answered. "They're no fools." By his tone, he wasn't sure the same applied to his superior officer.
"If they think it can't be done, that's the best argument in the world for doing it," Spinello said. "Now we have to consider ways and means."
"Excellent." Turpino gave him a stiff bow. "If you transform our soldiers into worms, they can crawl through the mud and take the Unkerlanters by surprise coming at them from behind."
If I transform my troopers into worms, you'll be a bloodsucking leech, Spinello thought resentfully. "With the south in chaos, we ought to keep moving forward here in the north."
"If the moves serve some strategic purpose, certainly," Turpino said.
Spinello snapped his fingers to show what he thought of strategic purpose. Part of him knew the gloomy captain had a point of sorts. The rest, the bigger part, craved action, especially after so long flat on his back. He said, "Anything that throws the foe into confusion and either forces him back or forces him to shift troops here serves a strategic purpose, would you not agree?"
Captain Turpino's face was a closed book. "I would rather answer a specific question than a hypothetical one."
It was as polite a way of saying, You won't ask me a specific question, because you haven't got a real plan, as any Spinello had heard. If Turpino hadn't irked him, he might have admired the other officer. Instead, snapping his fingers again, he said, "What are the dominant features of the terrain at the present time, Captain?"
"Rain," Turpino answered at once. "Mud."
"Very good." Spinello bowed and made as if to applaud. "And how do we get around in the mud, pray?"
"Mostly we don't." Turpino's responses were getting shorter and shorter.
With another bow- sooner or later, Turpino would have to lose his temper- Spinello said, "Let me try a different question. How do the Unkerlanters get around in the rain?" He held up a forefinger. "You needn't answer- I already know. They have those high-wheeled wagons with the round bottoms that might almost be boats. If anything moves, those wagons do."
"Miserable little things." Turpino's lip curled. "They don't hold much."
"But what they do hold moves," Spinello said. "If we can get our hands on a hundred of them, Captain, we can move, too. And the Unkerlanters will never expect us to use those miserable little things." He didn't quite mimic Turpino's tone, but he came close. "What do you think?"
Turpino grunted. "Aye, we might move," he said at last. "If we could lay hold of a hundred of them. Sir."
By the way he sounded, he didn't think the regiment could do it. Spinello grinned at him. "You will provide the wagons for the regiment, Captain. You have four days. Gather them here, and we shall go west. Otherwise, we hold in place."
This time, Turpino didn't say anything. Of course he didn't. Spinello had given him an order he disliked. If he failed to carry it out, nothing much would happen to the regiment or to him.
Spinello's grin got wider. "If that attack goes in, my dear fellow, I intend to lead it in person. If I fall, the regiment is yours, at least for the time being. I can't promise you a pretty blond Kaunian popsy like the one I enjoyed back in Forthweg, but isn't that the next best thing?"
Turpino still didn't smile. He was far more staid than most of his countrymen. All he said was, "I'll see what I can do."
Four days later, 131 wagons clogged the muddy streets of Wriezen. "Commendable initiative, Captain," Spinello remarked.
"Incentive," Turpino replied. "Sir."
"Now, lads" -Spinello raised his voice to be heard through the rain- "Swemmel's men don't expect us to do a thing in this weather. And when we do things the Unkerlanters don't expect, they break. You've seen it, I've seen it, we've all seen it. So let's go give them a surprise, shall we?" He blew his whistle. "Forward!"
Where anything else would have bogged down in the thick mud, the wagons did go forward. Along with commandeering them from the countryside, Captain Turpino had also made sure the regiment had plenty of horses and mules to draw them. He wanted the attack to go in after all. If it failed, and maybe even if it succeeded, the regiment would be his.
The rain hadn't eased. That cut Spinello's visibility down to yards, but he didn't mind. If anything, it cheered him. He knew where the Unkerlanters were. This way, they wouldn't be able to see his men and him coming.
A few eggs, not many, burst out in front of the wagons. Here in the north, not enough egg-tossers were stretched too thin along too many miles of battle line. Spinello hadn't even tried to get Turpino to gather them as he'd gathered the wagons. No one cared about funny-looking Unkerlanter wagons, but every Algarvian officer jealously clutched to his bosom all the egg-tossers he had.
One slow step after another, the horse pulled Spinello's wagon forward. The rest of the wagons churned their way west along the road and through the fields to either side. With their tall wheels, they found bottom where any Algarvian vehicle this side of a ley-line caravan would have bogged down. Mucky wakes streamed out behind those wheels and sometimes behind the wagons, too, as if they were on a river rather than what was supposed to be dry land.
Somebody up ahead shouted something at Spinello in a language he didn't understand. If it wasn't Unkerlanter, he would have been mightily surprised. He shouted back, not in Algarvian but in classical Kaunian, in which he was quite fluent. The odd sounds confused the fellow who'd challenged him. The stranger shouted again, this time with a questioning note in his voice.
By then, Spinello's wagon had got close enough to let him see the other man: an Unkerlanter, sure enough. It had also got close enough to let him blaze the fellow in spite of the way the driving rain degraded his beam's performance. His stick went to his shoulder; his finger found the touch-hole. The Unkerlanter had been about to blaze at him, too. Instead, he crumpled back into his hole in the ground.