One of the Forthwegian women slid down into the warm pool. “It’s not what it used to be, is it?” she said to her friend. “Time was when you got in here it didn’t matter how things were outside-you’d be warm. Nowadays…” A curl of her lips said what she thought of nowadays.
Vanai had known warmer pools, too, but this wasn’t so bad. And Eoforwic, like most of Forthweg, had a mild climate even in winter. She was also sure the soap had been finer once upon a time, though that would come later in the bath. It was always harsh and alkaline these days, and varied between a nasty stink and an almost equally nasty, cloying perfume. Today, it was perfumed- Vanai could smell it across the bathhouse. She tried not to notice. That wasn’t too hard. She had plenty of water here, and didn’t need to worry about dripping all over the kitchen floor.
She ducked down under the surface of the warm pool, running her fingers through her hair. When she stood up straight again, the two Forthwegian women in the pool with her were making shocked noises. For a dreadful moment, she feared she’d botched her magecraft and the charm had worn off much too soon. Then she realized the Forthwegians weren’t staring at her but back toward the vestibule. “The nerve!” one of them said.
“The brazen hussies,” the other agreed.
If the two Algarvian women approaching the pool understood Forthwegian, they didn’t show it. Forthwegians-and Kaunians in Forthweg-took nudity in the baths for granted. These women didn’t. They walked-strutted-as if they were on display. . and both of them had a good deal to display, even if the women in the plunge weren’t the ideal audience for their charms. Vanai wondered why they’d come to Eoforwic. Were they officers’ wives? Officers’ mistresses? Wouldn’t Algarvian officers have found new mistresses here?
Whatever they were, they giggled as they slid down into the water. Giggling still, they rubbed each other. That wasn’t the custom in public baths; the Forthwegian women looked scandalized, and hastily got out of the hot pool. Vanai followed. She didn’t want to seem like an abnormal Forthwegian in any way.
Evidently she didn’t, for one of the Forthwegian women turned back to her and said, “Aren’t they disgraceful?” She kept her voice down, but not well enough; if the Algarvian women did know Forthwegian, they would have had no trouble catching the disparaging comment. Vanai just nodded. That wouldn’t get her into any trouble unless the redheads chanced to look straight at her.
She and the Forthwegian women jumped into the cold plunge together. They all yipped. The warm pool had been only indifferently warm; the plunge was anything but indifferently cold. Some people stayed out of the warm pool altogether, and did all their soaking in the cold plunge. Vanai thought such folk were out of their minds. The two Forthwegians must have agreed with her, for they scrambled out as fast as she did. All over gooseflesh, they hurried toward the soaping area.
Up close, the scent of the soap was even more irksome than it had been at a distance. Vanai had a couple of little scrapes; the suds stung fiercely. She was lathering her legs when a splash and a couple of small shrieks came from the cold plunge. “Maybe they didn’t expect that,” she remarked.
“Hope not,” one of the Forthwegian women said. “Serve ‘em right if they didn’t.”
“You don’t suppose …” The other Forthwegian paused with left leg sudsy and right leg not. “You don’t suppose they’ll put soap on each other, too?”
After her unfortunate experience with the Forthwegian matrons, Vanai had no interest in learning more about such things. She finished soaping herself in a hurry. Then she grabbed a bucket with a perforated bottom, filled it in a great tub of lukewarm water, and hung it on a hook that came down from the ceiling. She stood under it to rinse the soap off her skin and out of her hair.
Rubbing at her hair after that first bucket went dry, she discovered she still had some suds in it. With a small sigh, she took the bucket off the hook, refilled it, and got back under it once more.
She was still under it when the two Algarvian women, soapy all over, came up and got their own buckets. The Forthwegian women had already gone off to swaddle themselves in towels. One of the Algarvians nodded to Vanai and asked, “Do you speak this language?” in pretty good Kaunian.
“No,” Vanai answered, more sharply than she’d intended-were they trying to entrap her? She wouldn’t fall for that.
Both redheads shrugged and went back to getting themselves clean. As they filled buckets and stood under them, they talked back and forth in Algarvian. Thanks to her grandfather, Vanai could read it after a fashion, but she didn’t speak much and didn’t understand much when she heard it spoken. But she did hear the word Kaunians several times, mostly in the mouth of the woman who’d asked her if she spoke the classical tongue.
The other one pointed to Vanai and said something more in Algarvian. Vanai thought she knew what it meant: something like, Why expect her to speak it? They’re all gone. If she let on she had any idea what they were saying, it would only land her in trouble. She knew that, and kept rinsing her hair. What she wanted to do was scream at the Algarvians, or, better, bash out their brains with a bucket.
Had only one of them been there with her, she might have tried that. She didn’t think she could kill two, no matter how enraged she was. Both Algarvian women laughed. Why? Because they thought all the Kaunians in Forthweg were dead and gone? She wouldn’t have been surprised. But they were wrong, curse them, wrong. She wanted to scream that, too, wanted to but didn’t. She only finished rinsing and went off to get a towel of her own.
She dried quickly, threw the towel into a wickerwork hamper, and handed her claim token back to the woman in charge of bathers’ clothes. The women gave back her garments, which she put on as quickly as she could. She didn’t want to be there when the Algarvians came out to dress.
But she was; they’d done a faster job of rinsing than she had. Out they came, outwardly conforming to the Forthwegian custom of nudity but in truth flouting it by flaunting their bodies instead of taking no special notice of them in the baths. Even the attendant noticed, and she was as bovine a woman as Vanai had ever seen. She scowled and snapped at the redheads as she passed them their tunics and kilts. They only laughed, as if to say nothing a mere Forthwegian did could matter to them.
And the worst of it was… in ordinary times, as far as the title could be applied to the war, nothing the Forthwegians did would or could let them rise up in numbers that would make them more than a nuisance to Mezentio’s men and women.
In ordinary times. What if times weren’t ordinary? What if the Unkerlanters ran the redheads out of Sulingen? What if the Algarvians didn’t look so much like winning the war? Would the Forthwegians decide they weren’t going to stay quiet under the Algarvian yoke forever? If they did decide that, how much trouble could they cause the redheads?
Vanai didn’t know. She hoped she would get the chance to find out. Meanwhile, she’d go right on cursing the Algarvians.
“Another winter,” Istvan said. Another self-evident truth, too: what else would this be, with snow filtering down through the trees of the trackless, apparently endless forest of western Unkerlant?
Corporal Kun said, “And where would we be if this weren’t another winter? Up among the stars with the other spirits of the dead, that’s where.”
Taking a sergeant’s privilege, Istvan said, “Oh, shut up.” Kun sent him a wounded look; he didn’t usually take such privileges with a man beside whom he’d fought for years. Istvan refused to let that stare bother him. He knew what he’d meant. Since Kun didn’t, he set it out in large characters: “Another winter here. Another winter away from my home valley, away from my clansfolk. I haven’t even had leave in most of a year.”