"It will make the war harder to fight from now on," Rathar said. "We'll see no quarter, not anymore." He glanced over to Vatran. Vatran plainly wished he hadn't. But the white-haired general nodded agreement.
Swemmel snapped his fingers. "There is no quarter between us and Algarve now," he said. "There has been none since Mezentio treacherously hurled his armies across our border."
That held some truth. But Rathar wondered if Swemmel remembered he'd also been planning to attack the redheads, back three summers before. Much of Mezentio's treachery lay in striking first. With peasant stubbornness, Rathar tried once more: "Your Majesty…"
Slowly and deliberately, his contempt as vast as it was regal, King Swemmel turned his back. His guards didn't just growl. They snarled. Without looking at Rathar again, the king said what he'd said before: "Our will shall assuredly be done." He strode off, not giving his marshal any chance to reply. Some of the guards looked as if they wanted to blaze Rathar for his presumption.
Once they were out of earshot, General Vatran said, "Well, you tried."
"I know." Rathar kicked at the ground. It was icy; he almost fell when his booted foot slid more than he'd expected. "I wish he would have listened. Sometimes he does."
"But not today," Vatran said.
"No, not today." Rathar kicked again, more carefully this time. "But we're the ones who'll have to pay the price because he didn't."
"Hard to imagine how we could pay a price much bigger than we're paying now," Vatran said, which also held its share of truth and more.
Broadsheets summoned the people of Herborn to the parade route. Unkerlanter soldiers with megaphones also ordered them out of their homes- those who still had homes standing, at any rate. Watching the men and women coming up to line the street, Rathar wondered how many, not so long before, had waved gold-and-green flags and cheered then-King Raniero. More than a few: of that he was certain. The smart ones would already have burnt those, and whatever else gold and green they owned. If Swemmel's inspectors found such things, it would go hard on whoever had them.
Rathar's own place was on the reviewing stand, at his sovereign's side. It stood not far from the ducal palace, on the edge of Herborn's central square. That square was smaller than Cottbus', but large enough and to spare. Grelzers lined the square, too, though guards kept them well away from the reviewing stand.
King Swemmel imperiously raised his arm. "Let us begin!" he cried.
A band began the triumphal parade. Horns and drums blared out the Unkerlanter national hymn. Rathar wondered if the musicians would follow that with the hymn of the Duchy of Grelz, but they didn't. Maybe Swemmel didn't want the folk of Herborn thinking about being Grelzers at all, whether inhabitants of a separate duchy or of a separate kingdom. Maybe he just wanted them to think of themselves as belonging to the kingdom of Unkerlant- and maybe he was shrewd to want them to think of themselves so.
Instead of the hymn for the Duchy of Grelz, the band played a medley of patriotic songs that had grown popular in these parts since the Algarvians overran the region. Somebody, Rathar remembered, had said they were written by a local peasant or irregular or something of the sort. He wondered if that was true. It struck him as being too pat for plausibility, and so likelier a tale that came from Cottbus. Swemmel was shrewd enough to come up with something like that, and paid plenty of writers to come up with such things for him.
After the musicians came a regiment of behemoths, their armor clattering upon them, their heavy strides shaking the ground- the timbers of the reviewing stand vibrated beneath Rathar's feet. Nothing could have been better calculated to overawe folk who still had doubts about whom they wanted to rule over them. What the locals wanted didn't count for much, of course. King Swemmel had returned, and did not intend to be dislodged again.
And after the behemoths came a great shambling mob of Algarvian captives, herded along by spruced-up Unkerlanter soldiers. A herald bellowed scornfully: "Behold the conquering heroes!" Scrawny, unshaven, filthy, some of them bandaged, all of them in shabby, tattered tunics and kilts, they looked like what they were: men who'd fought a war as hard and as long as they could, fought it and lost it.
In high good humor, Swemmel turned to Rathar and said, "Our mines and quarries shall have labor to spare for years to come."
"Aye, your Majesty," the marshal said abstractedly. He was watching the dragons overhead more than the luckless captives. Several of them broke off their spirals and flew east. No Algarvian dragons appeared above Herborn. If any tried to come over the town, the dragons painted rock-gray drove them back.
No Grelzer captives appeared on the streets of Herborn. If Grelzers hadn't been able to sneak out of the fight and find civilian clothes, they'd seldom left it alive.
An elegant troop of unicorn cavalry followed the mass of Algarvian captives. They were beautiful to look upon, even if not much use in the field. And after them strode the high-ranking Algarvian officers Swemmel's soldiers had captured in the Herborn pocket: colonels and brigadiers and generals. They were better dressed and better fed than their countrymen of lower estate, but if anything seemed even glummer.
Last of all, separated from them by more tough-looking Unkerlanter footsoldiers, Raniero- briefly King of Grelz- marched all alone. The band, the behemoths, the ordinary captives, the unicorn cavalry, the high Algarvian officers… all left the square in front of the ducal palace. Raniero and his guards remained. Silence fell.
In the midst of that silence, certain servitors of Swemmel's wheeled a large brass kettle, nearly full of water, into the center of the square. Other servitors piled coal, a great deal of coal, beneath the kettle and lit it. Still others set up a sort of a stand by the kettle; one broad plank projected out over the polished brass vessel. The guards took Raniero up onto the platform, but not yet onto the final plank. Like everyone else, they waited for the water in the kettle to boil.
Raniero had courage. Across the square, he waved to King Swemmel. Rathar murmured, "Your Majesty, I beg you- do not do this thing."
"Be silent," Swemmel said furiously. "Be silent, or join him there." Biting his lip, Rathar was silent.
At length, one of the Unkerlanter soldiers on the platform with Raniero held up his hand. King Swemmel nodded. "Let the usurper perish!" he shouted in a great voice. "Let all who rise against us perish!" He had spoken the identical words when putting his brother Kyot to death at the end of the Twinkings War.
Raniero had courage indeed. Instead of making the guards hurl him into the kettle- as even Kyot had done- he marched out over it, waved to Swemmel again, and with a cry of "Farewell!" leaped into the seething, steaming water.
Courage failed him then, of course. His shrieks ripped through the square, but not for long. Swemmel let out a breathy grunt, as he might have after a woman. "That was fine," he murmured, his eyes shining. "Aye, very fine indeed."
Rathar was glad the breeze blew from him toward the kettle, not the other way round. Even so, he did not think he would eat boiled beef or pork again any time soon.
Sidroc stumbled as he came up to the campfire, so that he kicked a little snow onto Sergeant Werferth. Werferth shook a fist at him. "All right, you son of a whore, now you've done it!" he shouted. "Just for that, I order you boiled alive!"
"Oh, come off it, Sergeant," Sidroc said. "I have to be an Algarvian, and a prince to boot, to rate anything so fancy. Why don't you just blaze me and get it over with?"
"Nah, that's what the Unkerlanters do to Grelzers they catch," Werferth said. "You ought to get something juicier."