"Couldst try to recover that golden gown they gave me?"
Thorolf shrugged. "I'll do what I can; I have filed a claim for the money we gave Orlandus to change you back to a woman. But others have also filed claims, and they speak of auctioning off abandoned property in the castle. So count no unhatched fowls."
She sighed. "A pity; in it I truly looked my rank. But what of you?"
"Not altogether well. Berthar failed of election to his Board; so my academic career seems as far off as ever."
"Why did Berthar fail?"
"For a fribbling reason. A member of the Board, Banker Gallus, sent his old horse to the park with a request that it be given a home for its final years. Berthar, who's a stickler for rules, told the fellow he'd do so if Gallus would furnish a stipend to cover the animal's food and care. The Board member refused, Berthar sent back the horse, and Gallus blackballed Berthar at the next meeting. This despite that she-dragon I captured for them! It confirms Doctor Vipsanio's philosophy of Chaoticism."
"Poor Berthar! Such a pleasant man, too. What of Duke Gondomar?"
"The Supreme Council got him to agree to a ten-thousand-mark reparation and a new commercial treaty. Some lawyers sniffed 'twas unconstitutional to let him go without trial, but the government overbore them. They're holding him till the money arrives. How much to heart his popeyed Grace will take the treaty, since it was extorted by duress, remains to be seen."
"How did he track us to the trollish village?"
Thorolf grinned. "I wondered, too. So I bought a keg of our best Rhaetian ale and had it borne to the cell where he waits. As cells go, it's comfortable. When I proposed that he and I have a beer guzzle, he huffed and puffed a bit, blowing his mustache out like a window curtain and popping his eyes at me like one of Berthar's snails. But at last he came round. I pointed out that, whereas we were foes in the last affray, we might be allies in the next.
"When he'd drunk enough to float a skiff, he told me. He was lurking in a secret camp when one of that trio who robbed Berthar straggled in and reported. Thereupon Gondomar set out with his company to seek our trail. They got lost or they'd have found us sooner. The uproar the trolls made when the Sophonomists approached revealed the direction they sought. At the end, he and I were singing drunken songs together, and he offered me a post in his forces."
"What wilt? Take up's offer?"
Thorolf shook his head. "I thought about it; I could do worse. But I'll apply for a permanent sergeancy here, unless I decide to go to Tyrrhenia as a mercenary."
"Why do that?"
"The Duke of Aemilia is raising a force for war with the Republic of Brandesco. He offers over twice what I'm now paid, and more than I should get from Gondomar. With care, a year with the Aemilians should save me enough to see me through my doctorate." Thorolf paused. "Yvette, I love you. If you'll wed me, I will stay and make do on my present pay."
She turned to him. "Dear Thorolf! Forsooth, I love you, too, after a sort. But I will marry none not of noble blood, nor one so prosaically practical as a Rhaetian." Watching Thorolf s face fall, she continued: "I confess I owe you for all you've done, and honor demands repayment. You are a true hero in your stolid way."
"Just luck, my dear, as when Orlandus obligingly fell out the window, or Regin warned me of the Sophonomists' plot, or you pinked Gondomar in the leg. But—ah ..."
"If you mean money, all the funds I can raise are bespoken for recovery of my country."
Thorolf snorted. "I would not take money! Really, Yvette, I may be a Rhaetian, but I'm not so crassly commercial as all that!"
"Well, then, I could give you the pleasure of my body for the night—or even several nights, until I depart for Grintz."
Thorolf shook his head. "Your offer mightily tempts me, but that's not what I seek. I'm thirty, and it is time I were properly matched. We call it 'settling down.' "
She flared up. "You have the insolence to reject me!"
"My apologies, your Highness."
"Eunuch! Androgyne! Capon!" She calmed herself. "I'm sorry; I suppose you have some priggish Rhaetian reason. What were the harm?"
"None whatever, save that I should then become your slave, unable to leave your side to pursue my academic career. I am not cut out for a lady's fancy man."
"So, it's well and good for me to become your slave, which is all a Rhaetian housewife is? You know I'm abler than most men!"
Thorolf shrugged. "So we have an impasse, like one of those paradoxes professors tell of, with no true, just, and sensible answer. Hence I'm off to Tyrrhenia. Belike I shall meet one of that gang who slew my friend Bardi and use him as he deserves."
"If only you had a drop of noble blood and weren't so damnably Rhaetian!"
Thorolf rose, saying:
"That's my problem!" she snapped.
"Good night, my dear!" He rose, picked up his cloak, threw it around him, and strode for the door. Did he or did he not hear behind him a faint whisper of: "Oh, Thorolf!"? Whether it was real or only imagined, he kept resolutely on out the door and into the snow.
XI – A Sufficiency Of Slaughter
The Plain of Formi, a checkerboard of green and brown fields, stretched away to the range of hills that rose against the blue spring sky. The brown was that of lately plowed earth; the green that of newly sprouted crops. Across the plain the army of Ganeozzi, Duke of Aemilia, advanced in three phalanges of a battalion each.
Each phalanx was a hollow square of pikemen, twenty men on a side and, when up to full strength, three hundred soldiers plus officers. The officers marched inside the square along with drummers, buglers, and adjutants. At each corner of the square marched a formation of crossbowmen. From a safe distance, peasants shouted curses at the damage to their crops.
Each phalanx tramped beneath a forest of pikes, held vertically with little flags on some of the pikes for the subordinate units. The sergeants of each of the four companies in the battalion marched outside the square with halberds over their shoulders. As sergeant of Alpha Company, Thorolf Zigramson tramped in steel cuirass and burganet on the extreme right of the formation, growling:
"Close up there!'" 'Pick up your feet!'" 'You're getting out of line!" "Watch the stones lest you trip!" "Sigman, your pike wobbles! Straighten up!"
A quarter-league ahead, the Brandescan Army lay on the rising ground of the saddle between two hills. At that distance it was merely a dark, formless mass, variegated by the banners rising at intervals and sending out little gleams of sun on armor. As the Aemilians neared, Thorolf could begin to make out the forms of individuals. Shouts of command and cheers came faintly across the diminishing distance, mingled with drum beats and bugle calls.
"Battalion, halt!" roared the major from the middle of the square. The underofficers and noncommissioned officers repeated: "Battalion, halt!" Bugle calls and drum beats reinforced the command.
The phalanx stumbled to a halt, with lurching and shoving. Pikes rattled as they struck one another with a clatter like that of storks' bills.