"Aye." After a moment's hesitation, Fernao added, "Mistress Pekka." He looked as apologetic as Ilmarinen had.
For a heartbeat or two, Pekka simply accepted that and was glad of it. Then she stared down at her own hands in something very much like wonder. By the powers above, she thought, a little- more than a little- dazed. I'm leading them. I really am.
Grelz boiled and bubbled like a pot of cabbage soup too long on the fire. Grelzer soldiers trudged west, to try to help Algarve and keep the land a kingdom. Unkerlanter soldiers battled their way east, to try to make it into a duchy once more. And the peasants who made up the bulk of the population were caught in the middle, as peasants all too often were during wartime.
Some of them, those who would soon have lived under puppet King Raniero than fierce King Swemmel, fled east ahead of the oncoming Unkerlanter army and the retreating Algarvians and Grelzers. In the mud time, the roads would have been bad without them. With them clogging those roads, the redheads and their Grelzer hounds had an even harder time getting men and beasts and supplies to the front.
With so many strangers on the move, Garivald's band of irregulars could operate far more freely than they had before. Most of the time, a stranger's appearance in a peasant village brought gossip and speculation. Having lived his whole life up till the war in Zossen, a village much like any other, Garivald understood that in his bones. But things were different now. With strangers everywhere, what difference did one more make?
"Our army's still moving," Garivald told Tantris as reports from the outside world trickled into the woods where the irregulars denned. "Not easy to press forward in the mud time. I ought to know."
"Marshal Rathar's no ordinary soldier," the Unkerlanter regular replied. "He can make men do things they couldn't manage most of the time."
"The ground's starting to freeze every now and then," Garivald said. "That'll make things easier- at least till the first big blizzard."
"Easier for both sides," Tantris said. "When it's mud, we've got the edge on the redheads."
"Oh, aye, no doubt," Garivald agreed. "We can move a little, and the stinking Algarvians can hardly move at all."
He'd intended that for sarcasm, but Tantris took him literally and nodded. "If you can get any kind of advantage, no matter how small, you grab it with both hands," he said. "That's how you win."
For once, Obilot agreed with him. "We have the best chance to hurt the Algarvians now," she told Garivald inside the tent the two of them had started sharing. "The real army is getting close. Mezentio's whoresons will be careless of us. They'll have bigger things, worse things, on their minds."
"Aye." Garivald knew he sounded abstracted. He couldn't help it. If the army wasn't so far away from here, it was even closer to Zossen… Zossen, where his wife and son and daughter lived. One of these days, he would have to go back, which meant that one of these days there would be no place for Obilot in his life.
He reached for her. She came to him, a smile on her face. They made love under a couple of blankets; it was cold in the tent, and getting colder. At the moment when she stiffened and shuddered and her arms tightened around him, she whispered his name with a kind of wonder in her voice he'd never heard from anyone else. He missed his wife and children, but he would miss her, too, if this ever had to end.
Afterwards, he asked her, "Do you think about what life will be like once the army takes back all of Grelz?"
"When there's no more need for irregulars, you mean?" she asked, and he nodded. She shrugged. "No, not very much. What's the point? I haven't got anything to go back to. Everything I had once upon a time, the redheads smashed."
Garivald still didn't know what she'd had. He supposed she'd been a wife, as Annore was his wife back in Zossen. Maybe she'd been a mother, too. And maybe it wasn't just her family that didn't exist anymore. Maybe it was her whole village. The Algarvians had never been shy about giving out lessons like that.
"Curse them," he muttered.
"We'll do worse than curse them," Obilot answered, "or maybe better. We'll hurt them instead." She spoke of that with a savage relish at least as passionate as anything she'd said while she lay in his arms.
And she left the woods the next morning to go spy out the roads and the nearby villages. Both the Algarvians and the Grelzers paid less attention to women than they did to men. In a way, that made sense, for more women were less dangerous than most men. But Obilot was different from most women.
When she came back the next day, excitement glowed on her face. "We can hurt them," she said. "We can hurt them badly. They're mustering at Pirmasens for a strike against the head of the column of regulars moving east."
That made Tantris' eyes glow. "Aye, that's what we'll do," he said. "That's what we're for."
"How many of them are mustering at Pirmasens?" Garivald asked.
"I don't know exactly," Obilot replied. "A couple of regiments, anyhow. Algarvians and Grelzers both."
He stared. "Powers above!" he exclaimed. "What can we do against a couple of regiments of real soldiers? They'd squash us like bugs."
But Obilot shook her head. "We can't fight them, no. But there are only two bridges over the streams south of Pirmasens. If we can knock those into the water, the redheads and the traitors can't get where they're going."
"That's right." Sadoc nodded. The peasant who made such a disastrous mage went on, "I'm from those parts. They'd have to spend a while building bridges if we take out the ones that are standing."
Tantris nodded, too. Tantris, in fact, all but licked his chops. "If this isn't the sort of thing a band of irregulars can do, what is?" he asked Garivald. He still didn't try giving orders, though. Maybe he'd really learned.
"We can try it, aye," Garivald said. "A good thing you managed to get us a few eggs- they'll help." Tantris actually had been worth something there. Back in the days when Munderic led the band, he'd had connections among disaffected Grelzer soldiers that got eggs for the irregulars. Garivald hadn't been able to match that. But Tantris, being a regular, had sources of supply farther west, and they'd come through.
Sadoc said, "I want to get out there and fight. I want to make the Algarvians and the traitors pay. That's all I've ever wanted."
It wasn't any such thing. Once upon a time- not very long before- he'd wanted to slay Garivald with sorcery. All he'd managed to do was kill Tantris' comrade instead. He was far more dangerous to the foe with a stick in his hand than with a spell. Maybe he'd really learned, too.
Garivald scratched his chin. "If we're going to wreck the bridges, we'll have to move by night. We can't let anybody catch us hauling eggs by daylight. Anyone sees us doing that, we're dead men."
Tantris stirred but didn't speak. Garivald could guess what he was thinking: that wrecking the bridges counted for more than losing a few irregulars. That was probably how real soldiers had to think. If not thinking that way meant Garivald wasn't a real soldier, he wouldn't lose any sleep over it. And he saw the rest of the band nodding their heads in agreement with him. They wanted to make the Algarvians and their puppets suffer. They didn't want to do any dying themselves.
Some of them would, no matter what they wanted. Garivald was pretty sure of that, even as he got the irregulars moving a little past midnight. He hoped they weren't dwelling on it. But if they wrecked those bridges south of Pirmasens, the enemy would have a good idea of where they were- and would stand between them and the shelter of the woods. Getting back wouldn't be so easy.