"Will hardly have done better without running her through, and, had you done that, she would not have long appreciated what you'd taught her." [..course steered r hand. o good ... I t seen rother irclight es, they ce. His wn, he ture of ows so esperate rice...] Valnu [..].

"I suppose not," Krasta agreed regretfully, "though that might have left a stronger impression on the rest of the vulgar herd."

Valnu clicked his tongue between his teeth several times, shaking his head all the while. "People would talk, my dear. People would talk. And now" - he sipped his porter - "shall we talk?"

Talk he and Krasta did: who was sleeping with whom, who was feuding with whom (two topics often intimately related), whose family was older than whose, who had been caught out while trying to make his family seem older than it was. That was meat and drink to Krasta. She leaned across the small table toward Valnu, so intent and interested that she hardly noticed the waiter bringing them their luncheons.

Valnu did not at once attack his sausage and sour cabbage, either. In a sorrowful voice, he said, "And, I hear, Duke Kestu lost his only son and heir in Algarve the other day. When I think of how the Six Years' War cut down so many noble stems, when I think of how likely this war is to do the same… I fear for the future of our kind, milady."

"There will always be a nobility." Krasta spoke with automatic confidence, as if she had said, There will always be a sunrise in the morning. But her farrudy's male line depended on her brother. And Skarmi was fighting in Algarve, and he had no heir. She did not care to think about that. To keep from thinking about it, she took a long pull from her flagon of ale and began to eat the trout and nice on the plate before her.

"I hope everything goes as well as it can for you and yours, milady," Valnu said quietly. Krasta wished he had not said anything at all. If he had to say something, that was more kindly and less worrisome than most of the other things she could think of.

He dug into the pungent cabbage and sausage - peasant fare indeed and made them disappear at an astonishing rate. However emaciated he appeared, it was not due to any failure of appetite.

Nor, very plainly, was anything wrong with any of his other appetites, either. As Krasta ate, she was startled - but, given some of the things she'd heard about Valnu, not surprised - when, under the table, his hand came down on her leg, well above the knee. She brushed it away as she might have brushed away a crawling insect. "My lord viscount, as you yourself said, people would talk."

His answering simile was hard and bright and predatory. "Of course they would, my dear. They always do." The hand returned. "Shall we, then, give them something interesting to talk about?"

She considered, letting his hand linger and even stray upwards while she did. He was well-born, and was attractive in a bony way. While he would certainly be unfaithful, he would never pretend to be anything else. In the end, though, she shook her head and took his hand away again. "Not this afternoon. Too many shops I haven't yet visited."

"Thrown over for shops! For shops!" Valnu clapped both hands over his heart, as if pierced by a beam from a stick. Then, in an instant, he went from melodrama to pragmatism: "Well, better that than being thrown over for another lover."

Krasta laughed. She almost changed her mind. But she still had gold in her handbag, and plenty of shops along the Avenue of Equestrians she hadn't seen. She paid for her luncheon and left the Bronze Woodcock.

Valnu blew her a kiss.

Skarmi stared in grim dismay at the line of fortresses ahead. Having seen them, the VaIrmieran captain no longer wondered why his superiors hesitated before hurling their army at those works. The Algarvians had lavished both ingenuity and gold on them. Whoever tried to smash them down, whoever tried to break through them, would pay dearly.

"Come away, Captain," Sergeant Raunu urged. "Like as not, the stinking Algarvians'll put a hole through anybody who takes too long a look."

"Like as not, you're night," Skarmi said, and ducked back down into the barley that helped shield him from unfriendly eyes - and, east of where he crouched, there were no eyes of any other sort. East of where he crouched, too, were very few places to hide. Whatever else might happen to it, the Algarvians' defensive line would not fall to surprise attack.

"In the last war, we'd throw eggs at forts and then just charge right at e" P id. "Maybe they've learned something since."

"If they'd learned anything since, we wouldn't be in a war now, Skarmi answered. The veteran sergeant blinked, then slowly nodded.

Off to the north, Valmieran egg-tossers started lobbing destruction at the line of forts. The burst resounded like distant thunder. Skarmi wondered how much damage they were doing. Not so much as he would have liked: he was certain of that. The Algarvians had used stone and earth and cement and iron and bronze to fashion a line of death that ran for many miles north and south and was most of a mile deep.

How long would soldiers batter their heads against that line, as Raunu had said, in search of a breakthrough that might not be there at all?

Forever?

Probably not. Even so, Skarmi sighed as he said, "They built that to dare us to try to go through it, to dare us to spend the men we'd need to get to the other side. They don't think we have the nerve to do it."

"I wouldn't be sorry if they were night, either," Raunu said.

"Would you rather fight inside Valmiera, the way we did for most of the Six Years' War?" Skarmi returned.

"Sir, it's like you said: if you ask me what I'd rather, I'd rather not fight at all," the sergeant said.

Skarmi clicked his tongue between his teeth. Sergeant Raunu had indeed used his own words to reply to him, which meant he could hardly take exception to what the veteran said. But he'd seen that a good many of the common soldiers had little stomach for the fight against Algarve in general, and even less for the assault on the forts. He said, "We should have pushed harder, so we would have been through this line before,the Forthwegians collapsed."

"Aye, I see what you're saying, sir, but I don't know how much difference that would have made." Raunu pointed ahead. "Doesn't look like the cursed redheads have put any new men in their lines, even if they don't have to worry about their western front any more."

"They don't have to worry about Forthweg any more," Skarmi corrected. "Now they're face to face with Unkerlant. If they're not worried about that, they're fools."

"Of course they're fools. They're Algarvians." Raunu spoke with an automatic scorn Skarmi's sister Krasta might have envied. But then, as Krasta would never have done, he changed course slightly: "They're fools most ways, I mean. They make good soldiers, whatever else you say about'em."

"I wish I could tell you were wrong," Skarmi said. "Our lives would be easier." The Algarvians had resisted the Valmieran advance to the fortified line with only light forces, but they'd fought stubbornly.

They'd also fought skillfully, perhaps more skillfully than the men he commanded. Had there been more of them, he wondered if his men would have been able to advance at all. Along with most of his other worries, he kept that one to himself.

A runner came up to him. "My lord marquis?" the fellow asked.

"Aye?" Skarmi said in some small surprise. Far more often these days, he was addressed by his military rank, not title. After a moment, a possible reason for this exception came to mind.

And, sure enough, the runner said, "My lord, his Grace the Duke of Klaipeda bids you sup with him and with some of the other leading officers of our triumphant army at his headquarters this evening. The sup per shall begin an hour past sunset."