The other Unkerlanter made it disappear faster than a man should have been able to. Then he warned, “Don’t let an inspector see you do anything like that. You could end up in my outfit, easy as you please.”
Shouts-Unkerlanter shouts-rose in triumph. “We’ve broken them!” Leudast exclaimed.
“Aye, so we have.” The man from the penal battalion sounded pleased, but far from overjoyed. “It only means they’ll kill me somewhere else.” With a nod to Leudast, he ran forward, looking for the place.
Cornelu lay asleep in the Sibian exiles’ barracks next to the harbor in Setubal. The woman he was dreaming about was the most exciting he’d ever imagined; he was sure of it. One moment, she had Costache’s face; the next, Janira’s. He was about to do what he most wanted to do when Algarvian eggs began bursting not far away.
He tried to incorporate those roars into his dream, but had no luck. His eyes came open. He sat up on his cot. The rest of the men from the Sibian navy who’d escaped when the Algarvians overran their island kingdom were likewise sitting up and cursing. “What good does this do them?” somebody said. “They can’t send over enough dragons to make it likely they’ll do Lagoas any real harm.”
“It ruins our sleep,” Cornelu said. As far as he was concerned, that was crime enough at the moment.
“It gives them something to print in their news sheets, too,” somebody else added. “Something besides Sulingen, I mean.”
“My guess is, they stopped printing much about Sulingen a while ago,” Cornelu said. “They don’t like to let bad news out.”
“Poor dears,” the other Sibian said. “Powers above grant them blank news sheets for years to come, then.”
Several Sibians laughed, Cornelu among them. Before Cornelu could say anything more-he would cheerfully go on casting scorn on the Algarvians as long as his body held breath-an egg burst all too close to the barracks. Windows blew in, shards of glass hissing through the air like hundreds of flying knives of all sizes. One sliced the left sleeve of Cornelu’s tunic-and, he realized a moment later, sliced his arm as well. He cursed.
His comrades were cursing, too. Some, those hurt worse than he, were shrieking. He opened and closed his left fist. When he discovered he could do that, he tore a strip from his blanket and bound up his bleeding arm. Then he set about helping his more badly wounded countrymen.
Another egg burst almost on top of the spot where the first one had landed. Hardly any more glass flew; the first egg had taken out most of what was in the windows. But the barracks building itself groaned and shuddered like an old tree in a strong wind. “We’d better get out!” Cornelu shouted. “I don’t know if it’s going to stay up.”
No one argued with him. More than one man shouted, “Aye!” in various tones of agreement and alarm. Cornelu and another officer grabbed a bleeding comrade and half dragged, half carried him out of the barracks. The other officer set to work bandaging the bleeding man. Cornelu ran back into the building to get someone else out.
He had some light by which to see; the Algarvian eggs raining down on Setubal had started fires here and there. He grabbed a man who lay groaning by his cot and dragged him toward the door.
Beams from heavy sticks shot up into the night, seeking the enemy dragons overhead. Cornelu cursed again, this time at how little good they were doing. Mezentio hadn’t sent so many dragons south across the Strait of Valmiera for a long time. Eggs kept falling, some farther away, some closer. Cornelu looked up into the night sky and shook his fist at the foes he could not see. As if in answer, an egg landed on the barracks he’d left only a minute or so before.
The burst of sorcerous energy knocked him off his feet-knocked him head over heels, in fact. A brick shattered on the cobbles inches from his face, spraying chips into his eyes. He rubbed at them till his vision cleared. But he hardly needed to see to know he would never sleep in that barracks hall again. He could feel the heat of flames on his back. The building was burning, burning. As the fire grew, he dragged the wounded man farther from the wreckage.
Lagoans ran this way and that, intent on their own concerns: the barracks was far from the only building afire along the waterfront. Some of Cornelu’s comrades who’d learned more Lagoan in exile than he called out to the locals. After a while, the Lagoans deigned to notice them. Parties of stretcher bearers came and took the men with the worst hurts off to the surgeons and mages who might help them. That done, though, the Lagoans left the exiles alone once more.
“If the barracks weren’t burning down, we’d be freezing, and would they care?” a Sibian demanded indignantly. “Not even a little, they wouldn’t. They toss us at the Algarvians like so many eggs, and it doesn’t matter to them if we burst.”
“Oh, it matters a little,” Cornelu said. “It would even matter to King Swemmel. After all, it’s more efficient when we die while we’re killing Algarvians and after we’ve killed some than here, uselessly, in Setubal.”
Then another Lagoan shouted something incomprehensible at them in his own language. “What’s that you say?” somebody shouted back in Sibian.
The fellow took it for Algarvian; Lagoans had a demon of a time telling the two languages apart. But when he answered, also in Algarvian, the Sibian exiles managed to understand him: “Bucket brigade!”
From then till dawn, Cornelu passed buckets back and forth. He stood between one of his countrymen and a Lagoan with whom he had trouble speaking. The work needed no words at all, though. He just sent full buckets one way and empties the other.
Thick clouds spoiled the sunrise. Only very gradually did Cornelu realize he was seeing by more than the light of the flames the bucket brigade battled. Not long after he did so, a hard, cold rain began to fall. The weary men raised a weary cheer: the rain would do more to stifle the fires than anything they could achieve on their own. Before long, a Lagoan officer blew his whistle and shouted a word even Cornelu understood: “Dismissed!”
He didn’t realize how truly worn he was till he stopped working. He turned his face up to the rain and let it wash sweat and soot from his forehead and cheeks. That felt good-powers above, it felt wonderful-for a little while. Then he realized he was shivering. And no wonder: all he had on were the light tunic and kilt he’d worn to bed, and the rain-which was starting to have pea-sized hail mixed in with it-had already got them good and soaked.
The Lagoan who’d labored beside him for so long put a hand on his shoulder and said, “You-come with me. Food.” He rubbed his belly. “Tea.” He mimed bringing a mug up to his face. “Hot. Good. Come.”
Cornelu understood all that. Every single word of it sounded wonderful. “Aye,” he said, in the best Lagoan he had.
His new friend led him to a mess hall. Most of the men in there were dripping, and more than a few of them wore only nightclothes. Roaring fires heated the hall past what would have been comfortable most of the time, but it felt splendid now. Cornelu queued up for big, salty fried herrings; for buttery oatmeal nearly as thick and sticky as wet cement; and for steaming tea so full of honey, the spoon almost stood up without touching the side of the mug.
He ate as intently as he ever had while in the woodcutting gang back on his home island of Tirgoviste. Herring wasn’t reckoned a breakfast food in Sibiu, but he wouldn’t have complained under any circumstances, not as hungry as he was-and he’d been doing so much hard work for so long, the meal scarcely seemed like breakfast anyhow. He went back for seconds.
So did the Lagoan who’d brought him here. The fellow wore a petty officer’s uniform and had the breezy efficiency-the real sort, not the artificial kind Swemmel tried to instill into the Unkerlanters-of a good underofficer in any navy. He spent a lot of time cursing the Algarvians: not so much for being the enemy in general or even for what they’d just done to Setubal as for costing him half a night’s sleep. After rubbing his belly again, this time in real satisfaction, he glanced across the table at Cornelu and remarked, “Your clothes-fftt!”