Maybe some of the Algarvians there were the ones who’d seized him when he went with Kugu the silversmith for what he’d thought would be his introduction to the underground but turned into his introduction to the dungeon. Talsu knew that was wildly unlikely, but hoped it was true just the same. Do you really need that kind of help to want vengeance? he wondered. A moment later, he shook his head. No, I don’t need it, but it would be nice.

Somewhere on a hilltop not far away, the irregulars had an egg-tosser or two. Talsu didn’t see the first egg fly through the air, but he did watch it burst just in front of the Algarvian column. The next egg, better aimed, landed among the redheads. The burst of sorcerous energy flung men and pieces of men high into the air.

“Let’s see how they like that, by the powers above!” the Jelgavan next to Talsu said with a fierce whoop of glee.

The Algarvians, of course, liked it not at all. Talsu had been away from real war for close to four years. He’d forgotten how quickly trained men could react-and he wondered if soldiers from the Jelgavan army could ever have reacted so quickly. Mezentio’s men spread out even before the third egg hit. Then they swarmed up the hills on either side of the road, blazing as they came.

Talsu stuck his head out from behind his side of the boulder for a quick blaze at the enemy. A beam zipped past his own head, close enough for him to feel the heat and smell the lightning in the air. He ducked back into cover in a hurry.

Over on the other side of the boulder, the dyer was cursing. “Some of the bastards blaze while the rest run,” he complained. “How are we supposed to blaze at them?”

“You weren’t in the army during the war, were you?” Talsu said with a dry chuckle, which startled a nod from the other Jelgavan. “That’s just one of the chances you take in this business.”

Another quick blaze from Talsu. The Algarvian at whom he aimed went down, but he didn’t know whether he’d hit the man: like the redhead, he dove for the dirt, too, whenever somebody started blazing at him. He turned to his comrade, intending to tell him something on the order of, That’s how it’s done.

Whatever he’d been about to say, he didn’t. The other irregular sprawled bonelessly in the dust, blazed through the head. Blood pooled beneath his body. He was still twitching a little, but Talsu had seen enough men killed to know another one.

He snapped off another blaze. But the Algarvians were coming hard and fast. Before long, they’d be on his flank if he didn’t fall back. Keeping the boulder between himself and most of them, he scurried back over the crest of the hill. He wasn’t the only one in full retreat, either. He didn’t think the irregulars’ leaders had expected Mezentio’s men to hit back so fiercely. He wasn’t particularly surprised himself. The Algarvians had always been aggressive, even back in the days of the Kaunian Empire.

Talsu threw himself down behind a bush and watched the crestline. Aye, I still remember a trick or two, he thought with somber pride. Now if one of those cursed redheads forgets…

And one of Mezentio’s men did. He charged over the top of the hill. He couldn’t have done a better job of exposing himself if he’d tried for a week. Not a smart thing to do, Talsu thought, and blazed him. The redhead wore a look of absurd surprise as he crumpled.

But not all of Mezentio’s men were fools. The Algarvians couldn’t have done nearly so much harm if they had been fools. Many more of them came over the rise with proper care. Talsu fell back again, and then again. He saw more of his comrades who weren’t so lucky.

He got away into the deeper hills where the irregulars had been sheltering for a long time. The Algarvians didn’t pursue so hard as they might have. Some of the raiders were jubilant about that. “They know better than to stick their noses in here too far,” one of them said. “If they tried it, they’d be sorry.”

Although Talsu didn’t argue with those bold spirits, he didn’t think they were right, either. The redheads had been on their way east to fight the Kuusamans and Lagoans. Once they’d broken up this harassing attack, wouldn’t they get back to their chief business as fast as they could? If they had any sense, they would. And anyone who looked at things with an ounce of sense would see the same thing.

Maybe the irregulars didn’t have a whole lot of sense. Maybe they’d been so starved for victories for so long, anything looked bigger than it really was. Maybe… Maybe all sorts of things, Talsu thought, laughing at himself. Whatever the truth was, he couldn’t do anything about it.

Later that evening, the Algarvians did something about it, or tried to.

They sent a few dragons over the hills. A few eggs came hissing down out of the sky. A couple of them burst near the irregulars’ camps. None of them did any harm. That raised the Jelgavans’ spirits, too.

“Hardly even worth being afraid of the stinking Algarvians anymore,” somebody said. Somebody else nodded. Several men clapped their hands. Maybe they’re right, Talsu thought hopefully.

A couple of nights later, the Algarvians showed they still deserved fear.

The night was very black, one of those late-summer nights when the air was so warm, so clear, so still, the stars in the sky hardly twinkled. On sentry-go, Talsu kept staring up at them.

Somewhere between midnight and dawn, not long before a replacement was supposed to come and he was supposed to go back to camp, he felt something wrong. For the first moment or two, he didn’t know what it was. Earthquake? he wondered. Jelgava got them from time to time, though Skrunda’s neighborhood hadn’t been hit hard in his lifetime.

When the ground quivered beneath his feet, he thought at first he was right. But the shaking didn’t build, as an earthquake did; it just went on for a while. Looking back in the direction of the camp, he saw purple flashes, as if lightning were striking close by. But where would lightning come from, out of as clear a sky as he’d ever seen?

Fear ran through him in the wake of that thought. Replacement or no replacement, he hurried off toward the camp. By the time he got there, everything was over. If it were an earthquake, it had struck the irregulars alone. Their fires were thrown higgledy-piggledy; a couple of small shrubs burned close by.

There were rents in the ground from which smoke still rose. At first, when Talsu smelled burnt meat, he thought the odor was left over from cooking earlier in the evening. Then he realized what it was really coming from, and his stomach did a slow lurch. That was burnt meat, all right, but some of the burnt meat still shrieked and begged to die.

That could have been me, he thought numbly. If I hadn‘t been out, standing sentry, that could have been me.

“Powers below eat the Algarvians!” someone not far away shouted. “Powers above curse their sorcery!”

Talsu’s stomach lurched again. He knew what kind of sorcery Mezentio’s men used. People had been whispering about it for a couple of years, maybe longer. But… “How are they getting Kaunians from Forthweg into Jelgava?” he said, as much to himself as to anyone else. “They have trouble moving their own soldiers around this kingdom.”

Bitter laughter answered him. “Who says it has to be Kaunians from Forthweg? If they need bodies bad enough, they can start pulling people out of Skrunda or any other town and bloody well killing them.”

That hadn’t occurred to Talsu. Take people out of his home town, line them up, and kill them to tap their life energy? Take, say, his wife, his father, his mother, his sister?

“No,” he said, again largely to himself.

“Why not?” the other surviving irregular said. “They’re Algarvians. They hate all Kaunic peoples as much as we hate them. If they can’t get Kaunians from Forthweg here, you think they won’t grab Jelgavans?”