The other soldier's captive (you lucky bastard, Talsu thought) was a good looking - a very good-looking - woman of about twenty-five. Coppery hair flowed halfway down her back. Her knees were not knobby, nor her calves hairy. Talsu examined them carefully to make sure of those facts.

Her curses even drew from his tent Colonel Dzirnavu, who had been in there alone except, perhaps, for a bottle of what his servant called restorative. By the lurch in his stride, he was quite thoroughly restored.

His eyes needed a moment before they lit on the captive. "Well, well," he said when they finally did. "What have we here?"

"That's what they call a woman," a soldier near Talsu muttered.

"Haven't you ever seen one before?" Talsu coughed to keep from laugh ing out loud.

Dzirnavu advanced on her at a ponderous waddle. He looked her up and down, plainly imagining everything the tunic and kilt concealed. She looked him up and down, too. Her face also showed what she was thinking. Talsu would not have wanted anyone, let alone a good-looking woman, thinking such things about him.

"Where did you find her?" Dzirnavu asked the soldier who had brought her back to camp. "Spying on us, unless I miss my guess."

"Lord, she was going into a little cottage up ahead." The tro6per pointed. "My thought is, she was trying to take away a few last things,, before she fled for good."

The Algarvian woman pointed at Dzirnavu. Where did you find him?" she asked the soldier who had captured her. Her Jelgavan was accented but fluent. "I would say under a flat rock, but where would you find a flat rock big enough to hide him?"

Like most Jelgavans, Dzirnavu was quite fair. That let Talsu watch the flush mount from his beefy neck to his hairline. "She is a spy," he snapped. "She must be a spy. Take her to my tent." A murky light kindled in his bloodshot gray eyes. "I shall attend to her interrogation personally."

Talsu could think of only one thing that might mean. He knew a moment's pity for the Algarvian woman, even if he wouldn't have minded having her himself Dzirnavu's "Interrogation," though, was liable to crush her to death - and he wouldn't learn anything while he was doing it.

After a while, the soldier who'd captured the woman came out of the tent. His face bore a curious mixture of excitement and disgust. "He had me cover her while he tied her to the bed," he reported, and then, "He made her lie on her belly."

Along with his comrades, Talsu sadly shook his head. "Waste of a woman, especially one so pretty," he said. "If that's what he's got in mind, he could do it with a boy instead."

"Officers have all the fun," the other soldier said, "and they get to pick what kind of fun they have."

Since Talsu couldn't argue with that, he started back toward the front line. He hadn't gone far before the Algarvian woman screamed. It sounded more like outrage than anguish. Whatever it was, it was none of his business. He kept walking.

When he returned to the encampment at suppertime, no one had been into or out of the regimental commander's tent since he'd left. "You should have heard what he called me when I asked him if he needed anything an hour ago," Vartu said.

"Is the redhead still screaming in there?" Talsu asked. Dzirnavu's servant shook his head. Talsu sighed. Maybe she'd seen screaming did her no good. Maybe, too, she was in no shape to scream any more. From what he knew of Dzirnavu, he found that more likely. He stood in line for supper. If Dzirnavu was skipping a meal for the sake of his pleasure, it wouldn't hurt him a bit. No sound at all came from the tent. Eventually,

Talsu rolled himself in his blanket and went to sleep.

Dzirnavu's tent was still quiet when Talsu woke up the next morning.

When Vartu cautiously asked whether the count wanted breakfast, no one answered. Even more cautiously, the servant stuck his head in through the flap. He recoiled, clapping a hand to his mouth. He choked out one word: "Blood!"

Talsu dashed toward the tent. So did everyone else who'd heard Vartu

There lay the naked and unlovely Count Dzirnavu, half on the bed, half off, his throat cut from ear to ear. Blood soaked the sheets and the groun4 below. There was no sign of the Algarvian woman, no sign she'd ever been there but for the length of rope tied to each bedpost.

"An assassin!" Vartu gasped. "She was an assassin!"

No one argued with him, not out loud, but expressions were eloquent. Talsu's guess was that Dzirnavu had fallen asleep because of h exertions, the woman had managed to work a hand free, and then had found a tool to take her revenge. He did wonder how she'd managed t escape afterwards. Maybe she'd been able to sneak past the sentries. C maybe, in exchange for silence, she'd given out some of what Dzirnav had taken by force. Any which way, she was gone.

Smilsu had the last word. He saved it till he and Talsu were heading up to the front: "Powers above, the Algarvians wouldn't want to murder Dzirnavu. They must have hoped he'd live forever. Now we're liable I get a regimental commander who knows what he's doing." Talsu considered that, then solemnly nodded.

Garivald's worn leather boots squelched through mud. The fall rain in southern Unkerlant turned everything into a swamp. Spring, when winter's worth of snow melted, was even worse - though the peasant d not think of it that way. The weather did what it did every year. For Garivald, it was simply part of life.

As a matter of fact, he was on the whole pleased with the way they had gone. King Swemmel's inspectors had gone away and not come back, and no impressers had arrived in their wake. The villagers of Zos amp; had got in the harvest before the rains came. Waddo the obnoxious fir, man had fallen off the roof while he was rethatching it, and had brok his ankle. He was still hobbling around on two sticks. No, not such a b year after all.

The pigs approved of the year, too, or at least of the rain. The whole village might have been a wallow for them now. They approved Garivald, too, when he threw them turnip tops from a wicker basket [..ns or..].

The only trouble was, each seemed to think its neighbors had got a better selection of greens, which made for snortings and snappings and loud grunts and squeals.

Garivald had grain for the chickens, too. The chickens did not like rain, as their draggled feathers attested. A lot of them had taken shelter inside one peasant's house or another. Some of them were making a racket and a mess inside his house. If they annoyed his wife enough, Annore would avenge herself with hatchet and chopping block.

When the blizzards came, all the animals would crowd into the houses.

If they didn't, they'd freeze to death. The warmth they gave off helped keep the villagers alive, too. After a while, the nose stopped noticing the stink. Garivald chuckled. Had those hoity-toity inspectors come in winter, they would have stuck their noses into any old house, taken one whiff, and fled back to Cottbus with their tails between their legs.

Syrivald was playing in the mud when Garivald got back to his family's house. "Does your mother know you're out here?" he demanded.

Syrivald nodded. "She sent me out. She said she was sick of the way I was driving the chickens crazy."

"Did she?" Garivald let out a grunt of laughter. "Well, I believe it.

You drive your mother and me crazy sometimes, too." Syrivald grinned, mistaking that for a compliment.

Rolling his eyes, Garivald ducked inside. Even with Syrivald out getting filthy, the chickens remained in an uproar. Leuba was crawling around on the floor, doing her best to catch them and pull out their tall feathers. Gaiivald's little daughter thought that great sport; the chickens had a different opinion.

"You're going to get pecked," Annore warned Leuba.