Above the twittering flocks, dragons whirled in lazy - no, in lazy looking - circles. Tealdo looked south, toward the sea and toward Sibiu.

More dragons circled over the sea. Tealdo resented the dragonfliers less than he had when he was marching into the Duchy. They kept the Sibs [..ed he ans nian ow, r so aves elded past brief d be ould relian ing..] of lazy Sibiu. [..rs less e...] Sibs from dropping eggs on his head. He heartily approved of that. They also kept the enemy's dragons from peering down on him and his comrades.

He approved of that, too.

A trumpeter on the parade ground in front of the barracks blew a sprightly flourish: the call to assembly. Tealdo dashed for his place.

Behind him, men poured from the barracks as if from a bawdy house the constables were raiding. He took his assigned place in the ranks of the regiment ahead of almost everyone else. That gave him half a minute to brush a few specks of dust from his kilt, to slide his boots along his socks, and to adjust his broad-brimmed hat to the proper jaunty angle before

Sergeant Panfilo started prowling.

Prowl Panfilo did. He favored Tealdo with a glare sergeants surely had to practice in front of a reflecting glass. Tealdo looked back imperturbably. Panfilo reached out and slapped away some dust he'd missed - or perhaps slapped at nothing at all, to keep Tealdo from thinking he had the world by the tail. Sergeants did things like that.

"King Mezentic, doesn't want slobs in his army," Panfilo growled.

"Told you so himself, did he?" Tealdo asked innocently.

But Panfilo got the last word: "That he did, in his regulations, and I'll thank you to remember it." He stalked off to make some other common soldier's life less joyous than it had been.

Colonel Ombruno swaggered out to the front of the regiment. "Well, my pirates, my cutthroats, my old-fashioned robbers and burglars," he called with a grin, "how wags your world today?"

"We are well, sit," Tealdo shouted along with the rest of the men.

"Diddling enough of the pretty girls around these parts?" Ombruno asked.

"Aye!" the men shouted, Tealdo again loud among them. He knew

Ombruno chased - and caught - the Barian women as frequently as he had farther north in Algarve.

"That's good; that's good." The regimental commander rocked back on his heels, then forward once more. "No diddling for now, though, except that we're going to figure out how to diddle our enemies. Go load your packs, grab your sticks, and report back here in ten minutes.

Dismissed!"

This time, Tealdo groaned. He knew what they would be doing for the rest of the day: the same thing they'd been doing most of the days since they'd established themselves by Imola. Unless it involved a pretty girl, he soon got sick of doing the same thing over and over. He realized that, when the time for fighting came, all this practice was liable to help keep him alive. That didn't, that couldn't, make him enjoy it while it was going on.

His pack sat at the foot of his cot, in precisely the prescribed place. His stick leaned against the wall at the left side of the bed, at precisely the pre scribed angle. Panfilo hadn't been able to find a thing to complain about in the way he handled his gear, If Panfilo couldn't find it, it wasn't there.

Tealdo slung the pack over his shoulder, grunting at its weight. When he picked up the stick, his finger accidentally slid into the blazing hole. It didn't matter here, not directly: in training, well away from any fighting front, none of the weapons carried a sorcerous charge. But it was not a good habit to acquire.

He wasn't one of the first men back out to the parade ground. But he wasn't one of the last men out, either, the men at whom his superiors screamed. He enjoyed people screaming at him no more than he enjoyed endless practice. Practice he couldn't escape. He could keep people from screaming at him, could and did.

"Form by companies!" Colonel Ombruno shouted: a useless order, since the regiment always formed by companies. "Form by companies, and report to your designated practice locations."

The company commanders shepherded the men off to their own areas.

Soon, when a new practice field combined all those areas, they would work together. In the meanwhile…

In the meanwhile, the company commanders got to puff out their chests and strut, like so many pigeons trying to impress mates. Captain Larbino's strut and his shouted orders did not impress Tealdo: he was no dimwitted female pigeon. But he had to obey, which a female pigeon did not.

Larbino led his company to a cramped underground chamber that had two stairways leading down into it, one broad, the other narrow. The men entered the chamber by the broad stairway. Only a few lanterns, stinking of fish oil, cast a dim, flickering glow there. "Powers above, it's like failing back through a thousand years of time," Tealdo muttered.

"Take your places!" Larbino's loud voice dinned in the small, crowded chamber. "Five minutes till the exercise begins! Take your places! No mercy on any man who's out of place when the whistle blows." [..is re out re. hen e. It ting ot a t he nors rder, nies, areas. ould chests at had . The terns, e, it's ed. wded es! No..]

The soldiers were already taking their places. They had been doing this for three weeks. They knew, or were convinced they knew, at least as much about their part of the operation as did Larbino. They formed a single serpentine line that led to the bottom of the narrow stairway and kinked at each earthen wall. Seen from above, it would have looked like a long string of gut twisted to fit into the abdominal cavity.

Shrill and deafeningly loud, the brass whistle screeched. "I love running in full kit," Trasone said through the blast, and then, in a lower voice, "In a pig's arse I do." Tealdo chuckled. He felt the same way.

"Out! Out! Out!" Larbino was screaming. "They'll be blazing at you when you do this for real! Don't stand around playing with yourselves."

"I'd rather be playing with myself than doing this," Tealdo said. He didn't think anyone heard him. The line was uncoiling rapidly as soldier after soldier dashed up the narrow stairs. They'd had dreadful tangles the first few times they tried it. They'd got better with practice. Tealdo declined to [..adnu't...] that, even to himself

His feet thudded on the timbers of the narrow stairway. Up he went.

Anyone who tripped here was a cork in the bottle for everyone behind him. Panfilo had a more expressive term for it: as far as he was concerned, anyone who tripped on the narrow stairway was a dead man.

Tealdo emerged into daylight. Before long, they'd be running the exercise at night, which would make it even more delightful. He dashed to a broad plank that spanned a deep trench and raced across it. Two men from his company had fallen into the trench. One managed to escape without being hurt. The other broke his leg.

Cloth flags on stakes marked the narrow way he and his comrades had to take. He rushed along that narrow way till it suddenly widened out.

Where it did, buildings - or rather, false fronts - defined streets through which they had to run. Soldiers with uncharged sticks "fought" from those false fronts, trying to impede the company's progress. Umpires with green ribbons tied to their tunic sleeves signaled theoretical casualties.

Tealdo "blazed" back at the defenders. One after another, the umpires ruled them deceased. But Tealdo's comrades were taken out of action, too. He rather hoped he would be, as had happened during a couple of practice runs. Then he could lie down and grab a breather, and no sergeant would be able to complain.

But, at the umpires' whim, he was allowed to survive. Panting, he raced left, right, and then left again before coming to the gateway for whose capture his company was responsible. More soldiers tried to keep the company from seizing the gate. The umpires ruled those soldiers failed and fell.