Fighting alongside Mezentio's soldiers were men who looked like Leudast and his comrades, but who wore dark green tunics rather than rock-gray under their snow smocks. Few Grelzers tried to surrender. Few of those who did try succeeded. The men who'd chosen Raniero over Swemmel had discovered the Unkerlanters weren't much interested in taking them alive.
"Keep your eyes and ears open," Leudast warned the soldiers in his company. "You see somebody you don't know, watch him, especially if he talks with a Grelzer accent. The traitors will strip our dead for their tunics so they get the chance to sneak out of the fight."
He knew he wasn't the only Unkerlanter passing along that warning. He also knew a few perfectly loyal Unkerlanter soldiers who chanced to spring from Grelz would get blazed because their countrymen went for sticks without bothering to ask questions first. His broad shoulders moved up and down in a shrug. As long as the Grelzers got rooted out, he didn't much care what else happened.
Captain Recared hadn't been the sole commander to order a counterattack. Shouting "Urra!" and King Swemmel's name, Unkerlanter soldiers stormed forward all along the line. Instead of trying to break out of the cauldron around Herborn in which they were trapped, the Algarvians and Grelzers had to try to hold back a foe who outnumbered them in men, in egg-tossers, in horses and unicorns, in behemoths, and in dragons.
They tried. They tried bravely. But they could not hold. Here and there, they would form a line and battle the Unkerlanters in front of them to a standstill- for a while. But then Swemmel's soldiers would find a way around one flank or the other, and the Algarvians and Grelzers would have to give ground again: either that or be slaughtered where they stood.
The progress Leudast's countrymen made left him slightly dazed. That evening, he sat down to barley cakes and garlicky sausage filched from an Algarvian sergeant he'd captured. Toasting a length of sausage over a fire on a stick, he said, "Curse me if they're not starting to fall apart."
Captain Recared had some sausage, too. He pulled it away from the flames, examined it, and then thrust it back to cook some more. "Aye, they are," he agreed while the sausage sizzled and dripped grease into the fire. "By this time tomorrow, they'll have figured out that they can't pound their way through our ring. They'll start trying to sneak through in small bands. We have to smash as many of them as we can. Every soldier we kill or capture now is one more we won't have to worry about later on."
"I understand, sir," Leudast said. "And when they're hungry and scared and their sticks are low on charges, they're a lot easier to deal with than when they've got their peckers up."
"That's right. That's just right." Recared nodded. He took his sausage off the fire and looked at it again. With another nod, he began to eat.
He proved a good prophet, for over the next couple of days the spirit did leak out of the Algarvians, like water leaking from a cracked jar. They stopped standing up to the Unkerlanters and started trying to escape whenever and however they could. When they couldn't run and couldn't hide, they surrendered in a hurry, glad to do it before something worse happened to them.
After a couple of days of that, Leudast was as rich as he'd ever been in all his born days. He didn't suppose it would last; when he came to a place where he could spend the money he was taking from captured Algarvian officers, he probably would. But a heavy belt pouch wasn't the worst thing in the world, either.
One of his men asked, "Sergeant, what do we do with the coins we take that have false King Raniero on 'em?"
"Well, Kiun, if I were you, I'd lose the Grelzer copper," Leudast answered. "It'll never be worth anything on its own, if you know what I mean. But silver's silver, even if it is stamped with Raniero's pointy-nosed face. Somebody'll melt it down for you and give you what it's worth in metal, even if not in coin."
"Ah." The soldier nodded. "Thanks. That makes good sense."
The next morning, Leudast's company came on the tracks of a squad of men trying to make their way east. With snow on the ground, following the trail was child's play. Before long, his troopers caught up with the fleeing Algarvians. A couple of men started blazing at the redheads. As soon as steam puffed up from the smoke around them, the Algarvians raised their hands in surrender.
"Aye, you have us," one of them said in pretty good Unkerlanter as Leudast and his men came up: a bald fellow in his late middle years who wore a colonel's uniform. "We can run no more."
"You'd best believe it, pal." Leudast cocked his head to one side. "You talk funny." The officer's accent wasn't a typical Algarvian trill, but something else, something familiar.
"I was, in the last war, colonel of a regiment of Forthwegians in Algarvian service," the redhead answered.
"That's it, sure enough." Leudast nodded. His own home village, up in the north, wasn't so far from the Forthwegian border. No wonder he thought he'd heard that accent before- he had.
"Sergeant-" Kiun, the fellow who'd asked him about Grelzer money, plucked at his sleeve. "Sergeant, powers below eat me if that's not Raniero his own self."
"What?" Leudast shook himself free. "You're out of your fornicating…" But his voice trailed away. He shuffled a couple of paces sideways so he could look at the Algarvian in profile. His lips pursed in a soundless whistle. The captive in the colonel's uniform certainly had the right beaky nose. "Are you Raniero?"
A couple of the captive's comrades exclaimed in Algarvian. But he shook his head and drew himself up very straight. "I have that honor, aye." He bowed. "And to whom do I present myself?"
Numbly, Leudast gave his own name. He gestured with his stick. "You come along with me." What would they give the man who'd just captured the King of Grelz? He didn't know- he had no idea- but he looked forward to finding out. He also waved to a couple of his own men, who were all staring wide-eyed at Raniero. "You boys come along, too." He didn't want his prisoner stolen out from under him. He made sure he included Kiun- the trooper also deserved a reward.
A lieutenant well back of the line glared at him. "Why didn't you just send your captive to the rear, Sergeant?" he growled, meaning, Why do you think you deserve to get out of the fight for a while?
"Sir, this isn't just any captive," Leudast answered. "This is Raniero, who calls himself King of Grelz." The lieutenant's glare turned to a gape. He didn't have the presence of mind to ask to accompany Leudast.
Raniero's name was the password that got Leudast taken from division headquarters to army headquarters to a battered firstman's house in a village that looked to have changed hands a good many times. The soldier who came out of the house had iron-gray hair and big stars on the collar tabs of his tunic. Marshal Rathar eyed the captive, nodded, and told Leudast, "That's Raniero, all right."
Leudast saluted. "Aye, sir," he said.
Rathar seemed to forget about him then. He spoke to Raniero in Algarvian, and King Mezentio's cousin answered in the same language. But Rathar wasn't one to forget his own men for long. After giving Raniero what looked like a sympathetic pat on the back, he turned to Leudast and asked, "And what do you expect for bringing this fellow in, eh, Sergeant?"
"Sir, whatever seems right to you," Leudast answered. "I've figured you were fair-minded ever since we fought side by side for a little while up in the Zuwayzi desert." He didn't expect the marshal to remember him, but he wanted Rathar to know they'd met before. And he added, "Kiun here was the one who first recognized him."
"A pound of gold and sergeant's rank for him. And, Lieutenant Leudast, how does five pounds of gold on top of a promotion sound for you?" Rathar asked.
Leudast had expected gold, though he'd thought one pound likelier than five for himself. The promotion was a delightful surprise. "Me?" he squeaked. "An officer?" Officer's rank wasn't quite so much the preserve of bluebloods in Unkerlant's army as in Algarve's- King Swemmel had killed too many nobles to make that practical- but it wasn't something to which a peasant could normally aspire, either. "An officer," Leudast repeated. If I live through the war, I've got it made, he thought dizzily. If.