Rulers of the Darkness

"Then I obey," Ilmarinen said. "I even apologize, which is not something you will hear from me every day." In token of obedience, he slipped out of his seat and went to one knee before Pekka, as if she were truly one of the Seven Princes… and he were a woman.

She snorted. "You overact," she said, now in quick Kuusaman, rather hoping Fernao couldn't follow. "And you know what that posture means."

"Of course I do," he answered in the same tongue as he sat in the chair again. "But so what? It's fun no matter who's doing it to whom."

Now Pekka knew she was blushing. Very much to her relief, she saw Fernao hadn't caught all of the byplay. She returned to classical Kaunian: "Enough of that, too. More than enough, Master Ilmarinen. I ask you again: why do you say we are wasting our time here? I expect an answer."

"You know why. Both of you know why." Ilmarinen pointed to her and to Fernao in turn. "Our experiment brought fresh green grass here in dead of winter. If we can do that, we can go the other way as well."

"We are not grass," Pekka said. "And we have no notion from which summer the grass came hither."

Ilmarinen waved his hand. "That is a detail. One reason we don't know is because we haven't tried to find out. That's why I say we're wasting time."

Fernao spoke up: "You were the one who showed similarity and contagion have an inverse relationship, not a direct one. If the relationship is not direct, what works in one direction will fail in the other. Calculations to that effect are very plain, would you not agree?"

"Without experiment, I agree to nothing," Ilmarinen said. "Calculation springs from experiment, not the other way round. Without the experiment of Mistress Pekka here, the landscape would have a good many fewer holes in it, Master Siuntio would still be alive, and you would be back in Lagoas where you belong."

"That will be quite enough of that," Pekka snapped. To her surprise, Ilmarinen inclined his head in- another apology? She had trouble believing that, but she didn't know what else it could be. Then Fernao started to say something. He and Pekka got on very well- sometimes, she feared, almost too well- most of the time, but now she pointed her index finger at him as if it were a stick, since she was sure he was about to aim a barb at Ilmarinen. "Do not even start," she said sternly. "We have had too much quarreling among ourselves as is. Do you understand me?"

"Aye." After a moment's hesitation, Fernao added, "Mistress Pekka." He looked as apologetic as Ilmarinen had.

For a heartbeat or two, Pekka simply accepted that and was glad of it. Then she stared down at her own hands in something very much like wonder. By the powers above, she thought, a little- more than a little- dazed. I'm leading them. I really am.

***

Grelz boiled and bubbled like a pot of cabbage soup too long on the fire. Grelzer soldiers trudged west, to try to help Algarve and keep the land a kingdom. Unkerlanter soldiers battled their way east, to try to make it into a duchy once more. And the peasants who made up the bulk of the population were caught in the middle, as peasants all too often were during wartime.

Some of them, those who would soon have lived under puppet King Raniero than fierce King Swemmel, fled east ahead of the oncoming Unkerlanter army and the retreating Algarvians and Grelzers. In the mud time, the roads would have been bad without them. With them clogging those roads, the redheads and their Grelzer hounds had an even harder time getting men and beasts and supplies to the front.

With so many strangers on the move, Garivald's band of irregulars could operate far more freely than they had before. Most of the time, a stranger's appearance in a peasant village brought gossip and speculation. Having lived his whole life up till the war in Zossen, a village much like any other, Garivald understood that in his bones. But things were different now. With strangers everywhere, what difference did one more make?

"Our army's still moving," Garivald told Tantris as reports from the outside world trickled into the woods where the irregulars denned. "Not easy to press forward in the mud time. I ought to know."

"Marshal Rathar's no ordinary soldier," the Unkerlanter regular replied. "He can make men do things they couldn't manage most of the time."

"The ground's starting to freeze every now and then," Garivald said. "That'll make things easier- at least till the first big blizzard."

"Easier for both sides," Tantris said. "When it's mud, we've got the edge on the redheads."

"Oh, aye, no doubt," Garivald agreed. "We can move a little, and the stinking Algarvians can hardly move at all."

He'd intended that for sarcasm, but Tantris took him literally and nodded. "If you can get any kind of advantage, no matter how small, you grab it with both hands," he said. "That's how you win."