“They’re a pack of fools, in that case,” Spinello burst out.

“As may be,” Tampaste said dryly. “But they’re a pack of fools with fancier rank badges than yours, Colonel, and fancier badges than mine, too. Any other comments?” After his depressing remarks, nobody said a thing. He nodded as if he didn’t seem surprised. “Very well, gentlemen. Dismissed.”

Spinello headed back toward his brigade, east of Pewsum, thinking dark thoughts. His mood did not improve when an Unkerlanter dragon dove at his wagon. He and the driver both leaped off into the mud. Had the enemy dragonflier timed his beast’s burst of flame as well as he might have, that would have done them no good. As things were, the Unkerlanter waited too long, and the flame kicked up steam east of the wagon. He didn’t come back for a second attack, but flew on, looking for another target.

Dripping and cold and filthy, Spinello scrambled back up into the wagon. “He didn’t think we were important enough to bother finishing off,” he said. “He went off to find something bigger and juicier.”

His driver was every bit as wet and cold and dirty as he was. “Are you complaining, sir?” the fellow asked.

“Not complaining, exactly,” Spinello admitted. “But my self-importance is tweaked. I want the Unkerlanters to think I’m worth killing, if you know what I mean.”

“Aye, sir.” The driver nodded. An Algarvian who didn’t think himself the center of the world was hardly an Algarvian at all.

By the time Spinello got back to the tumbledown hut in the village of Gleina that he was using for his own headquarters, he was shivering and his teeth were chattering. The soldiers in the village made sympathetic noises. So did Jadwigai, the brigade’s pretty little Kaunian mascot. “What can we do to make you feel better, Colonel?” she asked.

Come to bed with me. That’d do a proper job of warming me up. He thought it-he thought it very loudly-but he didn’t say it. What I do-or don’t do--for my men. The really annoying thing was, he didn’t think he would have to force her to slip between the sheets with him. If he broached the idea, he thought she’d lie down beside him gladly enough. Vanai would never have opened her legs for him if he hadn’t set her grandfather to building roads, but Jadwigai genuinely seemed to like him.

But the brigade came first. If finding out he’d bedded their pet would upset the men, he couldn’t do it. Powers below eat the brigade, he thought, not for the first time. What came out through his clicking teeth, though, was, “Tell them to heat up the steam room for me, would you, sweetheart?”

“Of course.” Jadwigai hurried away. She came back in a few minutes and took Spinello by the arm. “You get a fresh uniform and come along with me, Colonel. You’ll be better for it.”

“I’d follow you anywhere, darling,” he said, but he made sure he kept his tone light. Jadwigai laughed. So did Spinello, though it wasn’t easy.

Just as well for him that he did: his driver waited outside the steam room, too. They scurried in together, and shut the door behind them. “Ahh!” Spinello said, stripping off sodden tunic and kilt. The driver did the same.

Few Unkerlanters had their own bathing tubs. They didn’t go in for public bathhouses, either, the way their Forthwegian cousins did. Instead, they sat around roaring fires and sweated themselves clean. A circle of benches surrounded the central fire in the hut that did duty for a steam room in Gleina. Spinello and his driver sat down side by side and baked.

“Ahh!” This time, the driver said it, though Spinello would have. Warmth flowed into him, banishing the chilly damp. Then he began dripping again, this time with sweat. That felt better still. He picked up a bucket and poured water onto the hot stones around the fire. A great cloud of steam rose. He sweated more than ever.

During the wintertime, the Unkerlanters would go out and roll in the snow after baking long enough. In warmer weather, they made do with a bucket of cold water. Spinello had always considered either of those more nearly death-defying than anything else. When he got warm, he wanted to stay warm. Here, though, he couldn’t, or at least not indefinitely. He had to put on his uniform and hurry back to his own hut once he couldn’t bear the steam heat any more. Running through the rain wasn’t all that much different from getting splashed with a bucket of water. Spinello failed to see how it improved things.

But when Jadwigai asked him, “Isn’t that better, Colonel?” he found himself nodding.

“So it is, my dear,” he replied. “Of course, anything would be an improvement on the drowned puppy I was when I got back here.”

She nodded. She herself was a puppy saved from drowning. Unlike a puppy, she had to know it. She gave no sign, though. Maybe she didn’t want to think about it, for which Spinello could hardly blame her. Or maybe she never mentioned it for fear of giving ideas to the Algarvians who’d made a pet of her instead of flinging her into the river. Spinello could hardly blame her for that, either.

“What did Brigadier Tampaste say?” she asked, as if she were one of Spinello’s regimental commanders.

He answered her as if she were one of his regimental commanders, too: “He said that, whatever the bloody Unkerlanters are up to, we’ve got to stop them with what we’ve got-no hope for reinforcements.”

“Oh.” Jadwigai considered that very much as an officer would have. “Can we?”

No. Spinello didn’t care to admit that to her, or even to himself, so he leered and struck a pose. “My sweet, when an Algarvian sets himself between a beautiful girl and war’s desolation, he can do anything,” he said grandly.

Jadwigai blushed bright pink. Well, well, Spinello thought. Isn’t that interesting?

When Talsu’s mother came downstairs into the tailor’s shop where he worked with his father, she caught him not working: he was eating almonds dusted with sugar crystals and washing them down with citrus-flavored wine. Since Traku was doing the same thing, Talsu hardly felt guilty.

Laitsina wagged her forefinger at both of them. Sadly, she said, “My husband and my son-just a couple of lazy bums.”

“I am not.” Talsu would have sounded more indignant if he hadn’t tried talking with his mouth full.

“No?” his mother said. “Well, I’ll give you the chance to prove it. I was going to walk over to the grocer’s shop for some olive oil and some capers, but you can go if you’re not too lazy to get there.”

Talsu hopped down off his stool. “Sure,” he said, and started for the door at something close to a run.

Traku chuckled. “I just know his heart’s breaking, when you gave him an excuse to go see his wife before she gets back from work. He looks heartbroken, doesn’t he?”

“Like in a stage melodrama,” Laitsina answered. Talsu was already out on the street when she called after him: “Have you got any money?”

“Oh.” He stopped, feeling foolish, and went through his pockets. Then, feeling more foolish still, he went back inside and took some silver from the cash box. He went on his way again, jingling the coins to prove he had them.

Spring was in the air in Skrunda. Jelgava was a northerly kingdom, and not cursed with harsh winters; but the bright sun, the brilliant blue sky, and the dry heat all looked ahead toward summer, not back at the rain and clouds that did duty hereabouts for blizzards. Birds trilled in the bushes and from rooftops. New leaves were on the trees.

And new graffiti were on the walls, donalitu lives! cried the hastily painted scrawls, the true king will return!

King Donalitu had lived in Lagoan exile the past three and a half years. Back in the days when he’d ruled Jelgava, Talsu had taken him as much for granted as the weather, and feared his storms a good deal more. The Algarvians hadn’t needed to introduce dungeons to Jelgava after he fled; they’d just taken over the very respectable ones he already had running.