That blaze got home. Just for a moment, Talsu saw fury in the constable's eyes, fury and- fear? Whatever it was didn't stay there long. The interrogator nodded to the guards. "You may as well go ahead, boys. It seems I've kept you waiting too long already."

The guards did go ahead, and with a will. They had to manhandle Talsu back to his cell: by the time they'd finished, he couldn't put one foot in front of the other. When they let go of him, he lay on the floor while the door slammed shut behind him. Only later did he find the strength to crawl to his cot.

A cockroach scuttled over him, and then another. He lacked the energy to try to mash them or to catch them. Maybe I should have made up some names, he thought. They hadn't beat him up so badly the time before.

But then they'd own you, the way they own Kugu. That was doubtless true. The way he hurt now, he had a hard time caring.

Durrwangen was less battered than Sulingen had been. That was about as much as Marshal Rathar would say for the city. Down in Sulingen, the Algarvians had fought till they couldn't fight anymore. Here, they'd pulled out just before his armies surrounded them. That meant some buildings remained intact.

He made his headquarters in one of those. It had been a bank. By the time he took possession of it, though, the vaults were empty. Someone, Algarvian or Unkerlanter, was richer than he had been… if he'd lived to enjoy his wealth.

Along with General Vatran, Rathar studied a map tacked to the wall. Vatran was in high spirits, as high as Rathar had ever seen him show. "We've got the whoresons," Vatran boomed. "By the powers above, they're on the run now. I never thought I'd see the day, but I believe I do."

"It could be," Rathar said. "Aye, it could be." That was as large a display of high spirits as he would allow himself. No, not quite: when he reached out and touched the map, he might have been caressing the soft, warm flesh of his beloved.

And he had reason to caress that map. Three Unkerlanter columns pushed out from Durrwangen, one to the east, one to the northeast toward the border of the Duchy of Grelz, and one due north. The Algarvians weren't managing much more than a rear-guard fight against any of them.

"Did I hear right?" Vatran asked. "Did the redheads cashier the general who pulled their soldiers out of here without orders?"

"That's what captives say," Rather answered. "I'd be amazed if they were wrong."

Vatran's chuckle was wheezy. "Oh, aye, lord Marshal, so would I." His bushy white eyebrows flew upwards. "If one of our generals had done such a thing… If one of our generals had done such a thing, he'd count himself lucky to get cashiered. He'd count himself lucky just to lose his head, he would. Sure as sure, King Swemmel'd be pouring the water into a great big pot and stoking the fire underneath it."

Rathar nodded. A good many officers who'd failed to meet King Swemmel's exacting requirements were no longer among those present. Rathar had come close to seeing the inside of a stew pot a couple of times himself.

But when he looked at the map, he made a discontented noise. "That was a stupid order: the one to hold Durrwangen at all costs, I mean. The redhead may have paid with his job, but he saved an army the Algarvians will be able to use against us somewhere else."

"Would you have disobeyed?" Vatran's voice was sly.

"Don't ask me things like that," Rathar said irritably. "I'm not an Algarvian, and I'm cursed glad I'm not, too."

But he kept worrying at the question, as he might have at a bit of gristle stuck between two back teeth. Mezentio gave his officers more freedom to use their judgment than did Swemmel, who trusted no one's judgment but his own. Not even the Algarvians, though, tolerated direct disobedience: the man who'd retreat from Durrwangen had got the sack. And yet… Rathar studied the map one more time, trying to remember how things had been a few weeks before. He couldn't make himself believe that redhead had been wrong.

A commotion in the street outside the plundered bank distracted him- or rather, he let it distract him, not something he usually did. Vatran, now, Vatran liked excitement. "Let's see what's going on," he said, and Rathar followed him out.

Men and women pointed and hooted at three men led up the street by soldiers carrying sticks. "You're going to get it!" somebody shouted at the glum-looking men. Somebody else added, "Aye, and you'll deserve it, too!"

"Oh. Is this all?" Vatran looked and sounded disappointed.

"Aye. Collaborators." The word left a sour, nasty taste in Rathar's mouth. He'd seen and heard of too many men and women willing- even eager- to go along with the Algarvian invaders. Things weren't so bad here as they were over in Grelz, but they were bad enough. But when the Unkerlanters retook a town, people sometimes settled scores with enemies by calling them collaborators. He'd seen and heard of too much of that, too.

None of these men was crying out that he'd been wrongly accused. Even the guilty often did that. The silence here said these fellows had no hope of being believed, which meant they must have been in bed with the redheads.

Vatran must have been thinking along similar lines, for he said, "Good riddance to bad rubbish. We might as well get back to work."

"Fair enough." No one ever had to urge Rathar back to work twice.

When they returned, Vatran pointed to the map and said, "The more I look at it, the worse the trouble Mezentio's men are in."

"Here's hoping you're right." Rathar tapped the pins that showed how far the columns advancing out of Durrwangen had got. "What we have to do is, we have to make sure we push the Algarvians back as far as we can before the spring thaw gets this far south. Then we'll be properly set up for the battles this summer."

For two summers in a row, King Swemmel had wanted to hit the Algarvians before they hit him. The first year, he'd flat-out failed; King Mezentio beat him to the punch. The second year, Vatran had launched an attack against the redheads south of Aspang- right into the teeth of their own building force. Attack all too soon became retreat.

This coming summer… Rathar dared look ahead to the battles of this coming summer with something approaching optimism.

And then Vatran said, "The other thing I wonder is what new sorceries the Algarvian mages will come up with."

That sank Rathar's optimism as if it were an egg bursting on a fishing boat. With an angry grunt, the marshal answered, "Those whoresons'll fight the war to the very last Kaunian. There will be a reckoning for that. By the powers above, there will be."

Vatran grunted, too. "Oh, there's a reckoning, all right. Every time they slaughter their Kaunian captives to power magecraft against us, we have to reckon how many of our own peasants we've got to kill to block their sorcery and to make matching magics of our own."

"Aye." A lot of kingdoms, Rathar suspected, would have folded up and yielded when the Algarvians started aiming murder-powered magecraft at them. He'd been horrified himself; no one had fought wars like that for centuries. The Twinkings War had been as savage a struggle as any in the world, but neither Swemmel nor Kyot had started massacring people for the sake of potent sorcery.

But Swemmel hadn't hesitated here, not for a heartbeat. As soon as he'd learned what the Algarvians were doing, he'd ordered his own archmage to match Mezentio's men murder for murder. He'd come right out and said that he didn't care if he ended up with only one subject… so long as no Algarvians were left by then.

In a way, Marshal Rathar had to admire such ruthless determination. Without it, the Algarvians probably would have taken Cottbus, and who could guess whether Unkerlant would have been able to continue the fight without its capital? Cottbus had held, Sulingen had held, and now Rathar's men were moving forward.