The men of Plegmund’s Brigade fought the Unkerlanters as hard as they could. They slew a good many of the men aboard the behemoths, and even a couple of the massive animals themselves. But they had no hope of holding the bridge or driving the foe back over the Presseck. Along with his comrades, Sidroc battled on till hope, and a good many of the men, died. And at the last, he and the rest of the troopers still alive did what they had to do: they fled.
Cornelu patted his leviathan: not a command, a gesture of affection. “Do you see how lucky we are?” he said to the beast. “We get to go north for the winter.”
Back in the lost and distant days of peacetime, many people from Lagoas and Kuusamo-aye, and from Sibiu, too-had gone on winter holiday to the subtropic beaches of northern Jelgava, to lie on the sand burdened by a minimum of clothing if by any at all and to drink the citrus-flavored wines for which the kingdom was famous. Love affairs in Jelgava had filled the pages of trashy romances. But if anyone went on holiday there these days, it was Algarvian soldiers recuperating from the dreadful cold of Unkerlant.
As far as the leviathan was concerned, cold wasn’t dreadful. It preferred the waters of the Narrow Sea to those off the coast of Jelgava. Why not? Plenty of blubber kept it warm. And the Narrow Sea swarmed with fish and squid. Pickings were thinner in these parts.
But the leviathan didn’t go hungry here. When a fat tunny swam past, it gave chase and ran the fish down. It was a big tunny; the leviathan had to make two bites of it. The water turned red. That might draw sharks, but they would be sorry if they came.
At Cornelu’s signal, the leviathan stood on its tail so he could see farther. Two mountains were visible to his right, one to his left. One of the mountains to his right had a notch in its slope. He nodded and signaled that the leviathan might relax back into the water.
“We are where we’re supposed to be,” he said, urging his mount closer to the shore. Before long, he could hear waves slapping the beach.
He halted the leviathan at that point, not wanting to get so close as to risk stranding it. He hadn’t come all the way to the far north; with luck, the beach would be deserted-except for the man he was supposed to pick up.
After inflating a small rubber raft, he told the leviathan, “Stay,” and used the taps on the animal’s smooth, slick hide that turned the order into something it could grasp. Such a command wouldn’t hold it there indefinitely, but he didn’t intend to be gone long. Then he struck out for the shore.
At first, he thought the beach altogether empty. That wasn’t the way things were supposed to be. He wondered if something had gone wrong. If the Algarvians had nabbed the man he was supposed to get, they were liable to be lying in wait for him, too. He wished his line of work had no risks attached, but things didn’t work that way. He kept on pushing the raft toward the beach.
Some of the waves were bigger than they’d looked from out to sea. Riding them on the raft gave him some hint of what a leviathan felt like when gliding effortlessly through the water. Certain savages on the islands of the Great Northern Sea, he’d read, rode the waves upright, standing on boards. He’d thought that barbaric foolishness when he saw it in print. Now he realized it might be fun.
Then a wave curled over him and plunged him into the water, knocking away the raft. Had he not been fortified with a leviathan-rider’s spells, he might have drowned. He clawed his way to the surface and recaptured the raft. Maybe those wave-riding savages weren’t so smart after all.
Water dripping from his rubber suit, he splashed up onto the beach. Overhead, a gull mewed. Sandpipers scurried by the ocean’s edge, now and then pecking at something or other in the wet sand. As far as he could tell, he had the beach to himself but for the birds.
“Hallo!” he called, ready to fight or to dive back into the sea and try to escape if Algarvians answered him. On that wide, empty strand, his cry seemed as small and lost as the gull’s.
And then, a moment later, an answering “Hallo!” floated to his ears. Almost a quarter of a mile to the north, a small figure came up over the top of a sand dune and waved in his direction. Waving back, he walked toward the other man. He waddled awkwardly because of the rubber paddles on his feet.
“Call me Belo,” he said, the Lagoan phrase he’d been given back in Setubal.
“Call me Bento,” the other man replied, also in Lagoan. Cornelu didn’t think the other fellow was a Lagoan, though. Small and slight and swarthy, with black hair and slanted eyes, he looked like a full-blooded Kuusaman. Whatever he was, he was no fool. Recognizing the five-crown emblem on the left breast of Cornelu’s rubber suit, he said, “Sib, eh? How much Lagoan do you speak?”
“Not much.” Cornelu switched languages: “Classical Kaunian will do.”
“Aye, it generally serves,” the man who called himself Bento said in the same tongue. “Leaving will also do, and do nicely. I don’t think they are on my track, but I don’t care to wait around and find out I am wrong, either.”
“I can see how you would not.” Cornelu pointed back toward the raft. “We can go. You are sorcerously warded against travel in the sea?”
“I came here by leviathan,” Bento said. “I have not been here long enough for the protections to have staled.” Wasting no more time on conversation, he stripped off his tunic and trousers and started toward the raft.
Pushing it out through the booming waves proved harder than riding it to the beach had been, but Cornelu and Bento managed. After they’d reached the calmer sea farther from shore, Cornelu helped the smaller man into the raft, then swam toward the waiting leviathan, pushing Bento ahead of him. As he swam, he asked, “Why did they send a Kuusaman down into Jelgava?”
“Because I knew what needed doing,” Bento answered placidly. That might even have been his real name; it sounded almost as Kuusaman as Lagoan.
“Could they not have found someone of Kaunian blood who knew the same things, whatever they are?” Cornelu said. He knew better than to ask spies about their missions. Still. . “You are not the least conspicuous man in Jelgava, looking as you do.”
Bento laughed. “In Jelgava, I did not look this way. To eyes there, I was as pale and yellow-haired as any Kaunian. I abandoned the sorcerous disguise when I needed it no longer.”
“Ah,” Cornelu said. So Bento was a mage, then. That came as no real surprise. “I hope you put sand in the Algarvians’ salt.”
A Lagoan might have bragged. Even a Sibian might have. Bento only shrugged and answered, “I sowed some seeds, perhaps. When they will come to ripeness, or if they will grow tall, is anyone’s guess.”
“Ah,” Cornelu said again, this time acknowledging that he recognized he wouldn’t get much out of Bento. He looked around for the leviathan, which obligingly surfaced just then, not more than fifty yards away.
“A fine animal,” Bento said in tones that implied he knew leviathans. “But Lagoan, not Sibian-or am I mistaken?”
“No, that is so,” Cornelu said. “How did you know?” How strong a mage are you? was the unspoken question behind the one he asked.
But Bento only chuckled. “I could tell you all manner of fantastic lies. But the truth is, the animal wears Lagoan harness. I have seen what Sibiu uses, and it attaches round the flippers rather differently.”
“Oh.” Well, Cornelu had already seen that Bento didn’t miss much: the fellow tabbed him for a Sibian right away. “You notice things quickly.”
“They are there to be noticed,” Bento replied. Cornelu grunted in response to that. The Kuusaman laughed at him. “And now you are thinking I am some sort of sage, subsisting on melted snow and-” He spoke a couple of words of classical Kaunian Cornelu couldn’t catch.