“Oh, a pestilence!” the marshal exclaimed in disgust. General Vatran cursed with a good deal more imagination than that. Rathar said, “I wanted to trap that second army, too, and now those whoresons’ll be able to get out through Durrwangen.”
“If you’d pulled off the double pocket, you’d have gone down in history forever,” Vatran said.
“I’m not going to lose any sleep about history,” Rathar said. “If I’d shut both pockets on the redheads, we could have had the war within shouting distance of being won.” King Swemmel had wanted the war won-had insisted on it-a year before. That hadn’t happened; Unkerlant was lucky the war hadn’t been lost this past summer. That Rathar could speak of such possibilities.. meant nothing at all, because his soldiers hadn’t been able to bag the second army as they had the one down in Sulingen.
Vatran said, “We’ve got some more work to do, sure enough. We’ll grind the army in Sulingen to dust, we’ll run the redheads out of Durrwangen, and we’ll see how far we can chase them before the spring thaw stops everything.”
“And we’ll see what sort of surprises Mezentio’s boys pull out from under their hats in the meantime,” Rathar said. “Do you really think we can just chase them and have them go?”
“Too much to hope for, I suppose,” Vatran said. “Next time the Algarvians do just what we want ‘em toll be the first.”
As if to underscore that, a few eggs fell in and around the village. Rathar wondered if the redheads had somehow learned he was headquartered here, or if Mezentio’s dragonfliers had simply spied soldiers and behemoths in the streets and decided to leave their calling cards. If an egg burst on this house, the hows and whys wouldn’t matter.
The marshal refused to dwell on that. He studied the map to see what sort of reinforcements he could send to the Unkerlanter army west of Durrwangen. The only men he saw were the ones involved in the attack on Sulingen. He grimaced. The Algarvians there had done right by not surrendering.
Vatran was making similar calculations. He said, “Even if we pull soldiers out of the south, we’ve got no guarantee that we’ll take Durrwangen. Mezentio’s men’ll hang on to it tooth and toenail, not only for itself but because it’s the key to their road north. Is it worth risking Sulingen for a chance at seizing Durrwangen?”
“I don’t think we’d risk Sulingen.” But Rathar wasn’t happy as he turned back to the map. “Still and all, if the redheads in there found we had nothing but a little screen up against them, they’d be liable to break out and make trouble all over the landscape.”
“And isn’t that the sad and sorry truth?” Vatran said. “You just can’t trust Algarvians to sit there and let themselves get massacred.”
“Heh,” Rathar said, though it wasn’t really funny. Vatran had a point. If the initiative was there to seize, Mezentio’s men would without fail seize it. He wished the Unkerlanters showed as much drive, as much willingness to do things on their own if they saw the chance. He knew of too many times when they’d let the Algarvians outmaneuver them simply because they didn’t think to do any maneuvering of their own.
Of course, the Algarvians weren’t so burdened with inspectors and impressers. They didn’t need so many people like that. More of them lived in towns, and more of them had their letters. Rathar didn’t know how King Swemmel could run his vast, sprawling, ignorant kingdom without hordes of functionaries to make sure his orders were carried out. Having those functionaries over them, though, meant the peasants didn’t-wouldn’t-do much thinking on their own. They waited for orders instead.
“If we take the sure thing,” Rathar said slowly, “we clear the Algarvians from a big chunk of the south.” Vatran nodded. Rathar went on, “As long as we make sure they never get to the Mamming Hills, we go a long way toward winning the war.” Vatran nodded again. Rathar continued, “We can’t take any chances about that. We can’t let them get into a position of driving deep into the south again. We’ll take the sure thing, and then we’ll bang heads with them farther north. I hate that, but I don’t see that we can do anything else.”
“For whatever it’s worth to you, lord Marshal, I think you’re right,” Vatran said. “And after Sulingen goes down, then we can throw everything we’ve got at Durrwangen. And when we do that, I don’t think the Algarvians can hold it.”
“No, not in the wintertime,” Rathar agreed. “They’re better at that game than they were last year, but they’re not good enough.”
“I wonder when we’ll be able to go forward in summer.” Vatran sounded wistful. “Hardly seems fair, the things the Algarvians do to us when the weather’s good.”
“It isn’t fair,” Rathar said. “But we’re getting better, too. They still have more skill than we do, but we’re gaining. And we’re throwing more men into the fight than they can. We’re throwing more of everything into the fight than they can. Sooner or later, that’s bound to pay off.”
“Sooner or later,” Vatran echoed gloomily. But then he brightened. “I think you’re right. Their big hope was to knock us out of the fight that first summer. When they didn’t do it, they found themselves with a problem on their hands.” He pointed at Rathar. “How does it feel to be a problem, lord Marshal?”
“A lot better than not being a problem would.” Rathar eyed the map once more. Now that he’d made up his mind, he wasted no time on half measures. In that, he was much like his sovereign. “If we’re going to take out Sulingen, let’s throw everything we have at it. The sooner the redheads yield-”
“Or the sooner they die,” Vatran broke in.
“Aye. Or the sooner they die. The sooner they stop fighting down there, anyhow, the sooner we can shift men to the north again.” Rathar drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “And they know it, too, curse them. Otherwise, they would have surrendered. They won’t get terms that good again.”
“They don’t deserve ‘em,” Vatran said. “And I’m amazed the king didn’t pitch a fit when you offered them.”
“Truth to tell, I didn’t ask him,” Rathar said, which made Vatran’s bushy white eyebrows fly upward. “But if they had surrendered, he’d have gone along. That would have gone a long way toward winning the war, too, and winning the war is what he wants.”
“One of the things he wants,” Vatran said. “The other thing is, he wants to grind Mezentio’s pointy nose in the dirt. You’d better not try to take that away from him.”
“I wasn’t,” Rathar said, but he did wonder if Swemmel would see things the same way.
Nineteen
These days, Bembo had a hard time swaggering through the streets of Gromheort. Even Oraste, as stolid and unflinching as any Algarvian ever born-he might almost have been an Unkerlanter, as far as temper went-had trouble swaggering through the streets of the occupied Forthwegian town. Too many walls had a single word scrawled on them: SULINGEN.
“It’s still ours,” Bembo said stubbornly. “As long as it’s still ours, these stinking Forthwegians have no business mocking us, and they ought to know it.” He kicked at the slates of the sidewalk. He didn’t even convince himself, let alone Oraste, let alone the Forthwegians.
Oraste said, “We’re going to lose it. We couldn’t push soldiers down there, and the ones who were down there couldn’t get out.” He spat. “It’s not an easy war.”
That was a sizable understatement. Bembo said, “I wonder what they’ll do when they run out of Kaunians here in Forthweg.”
“Good question.” Oraste shrugged. “Probably start hauling ‘em out of Jelgava and Valmiera. Plenty of the blond buggers in those places.” His chuckle was nasty. “And they can’t get away with magicking their looks or dyeing their hair black there, either. Nothing but blonds in the far east.”
“Well, that’s so.” Bembo tried swinging his truncheon, but even that couldn’t give him the panache he wanted. “But who’ll get ‘em on the caravan cars and send ‘em west? Do we have enough men in the east to do the job?”