"They don't hide those things by ones and twos," he said. "They put'em down by the score, by the hundred." All the ground on which he was not standing at the moment suddenly seemed dangerous. Had he jus trotted past an egg? If he took one step back or to either side, would he suddenly go up in a sheet of fire?

He didn't want to find out. He didn't want to stay where he either. If he kept standing here, the redheads in the pear orchard woul blaze him sooner or later. He threw himself down on the ground-, an didn't touch off an egg doing it. Slowly and carefully, he crawled for ward, examining every stretch of ground before he trusted his weight t it. If it looked disturbed in any way, he crawled around it.

Colonel Adomu didn't take long to notice his flanking maneuver had slowed. Colonel Dzirnavu, had he bothered making a flanking maneuver - in itself unlikely - wouldn't have kept such close ley of it once it got going. But the energetic Adomu not only saw the slowing but realized what had caused it. He sent an egg-dowser forward to find a clear way through the stretch of ground filled with hidden peril.

Talsu watched the dowser - a tall, skinny man who managed to look disheveled despite uniform tunic and trousers - with the fascination any man gives to someone who can do something he cannot. The fellow held his forked rod out before him as if it were a pike. Dowsing was an ever more specialized business these days. Talsu's ancestors had found water with it in the days of the Kauman Empire. Now people all over Derlavai dowsed for water with it in the days of the Kaunian Empire. Now people all over Derlavai dowsed for water, for metals, for coal, for rock oil (not that the latter had much use), for things missing, and everywhere and always for things desired.

And soldiers dowsed for dragons in the air and for eggs hidden under the ground. "How did you learn to find buried eggs?" Talsu called to the dowser.

"Carefully." The fellow's lips skinned back from his teeth in a humor less grin. "Now don't jog my elbow any more, or I'm liable not to be careful enough. I wouldn't like that: in my line of work, your first mis take is usually your last one." His rod dipped sharply downward. With a grunt of satisfaction, he took from his belt a sharp stake with a bright streamer of cloth at the unpointed end. He plunged it into the ground to show where the egg lay. The soldiers in the company followed him in as near single file as made no difference as he marked out a path of safety.

Snudsu said, "I wonder what happens when the Algarvians come up with a new kind of egg, or with a new way to mask the eggs they have already." He kept his voice down so the dowser wouldn't hear him.

Also quietly, Talsu answered, "That's when they start teaching a new dowser how to do the job." His friend nodded.

Had the Algarvians; been present in large numbers, sergeants would have needed to start teaching a lot of new Jelgavan soldiers how to do the job. But the redheads could not take advantage of the way they had stalled their opponents. Before long, the dowser stopped finding eggs to mark. The company started moving faster again. The dowser went along in case the men ran into - literally and metaphorically - another trouble some belt of land.

But they didn't, and soon began blazing into the pear orchard from t side. The Algarvians had been protecting themselves behind trees against an attack from the front. And, as soon as Colonel Adomu realized flanking force finally was doing what he'd intended it to do, in went the attack from the front.

That made the Algarvians stop paying so much attention to Talsu at his friends. Vartu let out a whoop, then howled, "Now we've got 'em."

Talsu hoped Colonel Dzirnavu's former servant was right. If he wrong, a lot of Jelgavans would end up dead, Talsu all too probably among them. He howled, too, as much to hold fear at bay as for any other reason.

Then he and the rest of the Jelgavans got in among the pear tree themselves, flushing out the Algarvians like so many partridges. Some the redheads, their positions overrun, threw down their sticks and threw up their hands in token of surrender. They were no more anxious to do than their Jelgavan counterparts.

Smilsu cursed. "My beam's run dry!" he shouted angrily. A moment later, nothing happened when Talsu thrust his finger into the touch-ho of his own stick. Like Smilsu, he'd used up all the power in it whith reaching the pear orchard. Now, when he needed it most, he did n have it.

"Where's that cursed dowser?" he called. "He can give us a hand. haven't sent all the captives to the rear yet, have we?"

"No," Vartu said from behind him. "We've still got a few of them le with us." He raised his voice to a furious bellow, a good imitation of th of the late, unlamented (at least by Talsu) Colonel Dzirnavu: "Stake'em out! Tie'em down! Let's get some good out of'em, anyway, the filthy redheads."

Some of the Algarvian captives understood Jelgavan, either because they came from near the border or because they'd studied classic Kaunian in school and could get the drift of the daughter language. They howled fearful protests. The Jelgavans ignored those, flinging a couple redheaded soldiers down on to their backs and tying their arms and legs to stakes and tree trunks.

"You'd do the same to us if your sticks were running low," a Jelgavan soldier said, not without some sympathy. "You know it cursed too."

"Where's that dowser?" Talsu called again. The fellow shambled up just then, still looking very much like an unmade bed. Seeing the spread eagled Algarvians, he nodded. He was no first-rank mage, but he didn't need to be, not for the sorcery the Jelgavan soldiers had in mind.

"Set your dead sticks on them," he said, and Talsu and the others who could not blaze obeyed. The dowser drew a knife from his belt and stooped beside the nearer Algarvian captive. He yanked up the Algarvian's chin by the coppery whiskers that grew there, then cut his throat as if butchering a hog. Blood fount [..i d forth Th d..] chanted in classical Kaunian. When he was through - and when the Algarvian soldier he'd sacrificed had quit [.wrii.] thing - some of the Jelgavans snatched up their sticks from the dead man's chest.

Talsu's stick lay on the second Algarvian. The dowser sacrificed him, too. Such rough magic in the field wasted a good deal of the captives' life energy. Talsu cared not at all. What mattered to him was that enough of the energy had flowed into his stick to recharge it full As soon as the dowser nodded, he grabbed the stick and humied forward to do more fighting. It blazed just as it should have.

Before long, the two-pronged Jelgavan attack drove the Algarvians from the pear orchard. But, just as victory became assured, a cry rose from the men who'd made the assault on the front of the orchard: "The colonel's down! The stinking redheads blazed Colonel Adomu!"

"Powers above!" Talsu groaned. "What sort of overbred fool will they foist on us now?" He didn't know, He couldn't know, not yet. He was afraid of finding out.

Brivibas gave Vanai a severe look, as he'd been doing for the last couple of weeks. "My granddaughter, I must tell you yet again that you were too forward, much too forward, with that barbarian boy you met in the woods."

Vanai rolled her eyes. Brivibas had trained her to dutiful obedience, but his carping was wearing thin. No: by now, his carping had worn thin.

"AD we did was swap a few mushrooms, my grandfather. We were polite while we did it aye. You have taught me to be polite to everyone have you not?"

"And would he have stayed polite to you, had I not happened to come up when I did?" Brivibas demanded.

"I think so," Vanai answered with a toss of her head. "He seemed perfectly well behaved - better than some of the Kaunian boys here in Oyngestun."