Skarmi stood against a tree to ease himself. Since the tree was a few miles inside Algarve, the young Vahmieran marquis consoled himself by thinking he was pissing on the enemies of his kingdom. He would have felt more consolation, though, had the invasion pushed farther and done more.

After buttoning his fly, he rejoined his company. His noble birth made him an officer. Till he was mobilized, he'd thought his noble birth also prepared him for command. He was certainly used to giving orders, even if he didn't enjoy it quite so much as his sister Krasta did. But he'd soon discovered the difference between giving orders in a mansion and giving them to soldiers: the former sort merely required obedience from the servants, while the latter also needed to make sense.

"Where now, Captain?" asked Raimu, the company's senior sergeant.

He was senior enough to have a lot of silver threads in the gold of his hair, senior enough to have fought as a youth in the Six Years' War. But his father sold sausages for a living, so he was unlikely ever to rise above senior sergeant. If he resented that, he hid it very well.

After scratching his head, Skarmi pointed west and answered,

"Forward to the edge of open country. If there are any more Algarvians lurking here in the woods, we need to flush them out." He scratched again. He itched all the time. He wondered if he was lousy. The idea made his flesh crawl, but he knew it could happen to soldiers in wartime.

Raunu considered, then nodded. "Aye, about the best thing we can do, I reckon." He turned Skarmi's notion into precise, cautious reality, ordering scouts ahead and to either side and sending the rest of the company forward by sections along three different game tracks.

In fact, as Skarmi had quickly realized, Raunu ran the company. He knew how to do the job, whereas Skarmi's presence, while ornamental, was anything but necessary. That had mortified the marquis, seeming an offense against both propriety and honor.

"Don't fret yourself about it, lord," Raunu had said when he broached the issue. "There's three kinds of noble officers. Some don't know anything and stay out of their sergeants' way. They're harmless. Some don't know anything and give forth with all sorts of orders anyhow." He'd shuddered. "They're dangerous. And some don't know anything and try and learn. Give 'em time, and they're apt to make pretty fair soldiers."

Skarmi had never before heard such a blunt appraisal of his class. None of the servants back at his mansion would have dared speak to him thus.

But he was not Raunu's master and employer; King Gainibu was. That made the sergeant's relationship with a noble also serving the king differ ent from that of a cook or butler. Skarmi was doing his best to fall into the third class of officer. He hoped he was succeeding, but hadn't had the nerve to ask.

Now, stick at the ready, he paced along the gloomy track. The Algarvians hadn't offered much resistance at the border, falling back before the advancing Valmierans toward the line of forts they'd built about twenty miles inside their territory. The Duke of Klaipeda, who commanded the Valmierans, was exultant; he'd published an order of the day reading, "The enemy, beset by many foes, ingloriously flees before our triumphant advance. Soon he must either give battle on our terms or yield his land to our victorious arms."

That sounded splendid to Skarmi till he thought about it for a little while. If the Algarvians were ingloriously fleeing, why didn't the illustrious Duke of Klaipeda put more pressure on them? Skarmi knew himself to be imperfectly trained in the military arts. He hoped the same did not hold true for the illustrious duke.

A beam from a stick struck the trunk of an elm a couple of feet above his head. Steam spurted from the tree, smelling of hot sap. Though imperfectly trained in the military arts, Skarmi knew what to do when people started blazing at him: he threw himself flat and crawled on his belly toward some bushes by the side of the track. If the Algarvian couldn't see him, he couldn't shoot.

Another Valmieran went down, too, this one with a harsh cry of pain.

From cover, Skarmi shouted, "Hunt the enemy down!" He got up into a crouch and then dashed forward, diving down on to his belly behind a stout pine.

Another beam slammed into the tree. Its resinous sap had a tangy odor very different from that of the elm. Skarmi was glad the woods were moist; the fight would have fired drier country. He peered up over the top of a gnarled root. Spying a bit of tan among green bushes, he stuck his finger into the stick's recess and blazed away at it.

The leaves the beam touched went sere and brown in an instant, as if winter had come all at once to that corner of the world. An Algarvian soldier had been hiding in those bushes, too. He let out a horrible cry in his ugly, trifling native tongue. Another Valmieran blazed at him from off to one side of Skarmi. That cry abruptly cut off

"Come on, men!" Skarmi shouted. "Forward! King Gainibu and victory!"

"Gainibu!" his men shouted. They did not rush straight at the Algarvians lurking among the trees. Such headlong dash was all very well in an entertainment. In real war, it brought nothing but gruesome casualties. The Valmierans darted from tree to tree, from bush to rock, one group blazing to make the enemy keep his head down while another advanced.

A couple of soldiers went staggering back with wounds, one with an arm over the shoulder of a healthy comrade. One or two men went down and would not get up again. The rest, though, drove the Algarvians, who did not seem present in any great numbers, before them. Once, by the shouts - no, the screams - the fighting came to such close quarters that it went on with knives and reversed sticks rather than with beams, but that did not last long. Valmieran voices soon rang out in triumph.

Pushing forward as he did, paying more heed to what the enemy soldiers in tan kilts were trying to do than to exactly where he was, Skarmi was surprised when he burst out of the woods. He stood a moment, blinking in the bright afternoon sun that beat into his face. Ahead lay fields of barley and oats going from green to gold, and beyond them an Algarvian farming village. The sturdy buildings would have looked more picturesque had he not been able to make out Algarvian troops moving among them.

Algarvian troops rather closer by could make him out. One of them blazed at him from the cover of the growing grain. The beam went wide.

Cursing, Skarmi ducked back among the trees. He went some little distance along the edge of the forest before peering out again. This time, he was careful to keep a screen of leaves and branches in front of his face.

As if by sorcery, Sergeant Raunu silently materialized beside him.

"Wouldn't want to try crossing that without a lot of friends along," Raunu remarked in matter-of-fact tones. "Truth is, I wouldn't want to cross that even with a lot of friends along, but some of us might get to the other side if we did it like that."

Skarmi's voice was dry: "I hadn't planned on ordering us to cross those fields and seize that village."

"Powers above and powers below' be praised," Raunu muttered.

Not knowing whether he was supposed to have heard him, Skarmi pretended he hadn't. He pulled a map out of a tunic pocket. "That should be the village of Bonorva," he said. "It's past those woods on the other wide that the Algarvians are supposed to have their main belt of fortifications."

Raunu nodded. "Aye, that makes sense, lord. The forts are too far back for us to fling eggs at 'em from our side of the border."

Skarmi whistled thoughtfully. That hadn't occurred to him. Raunu might be a sausage-seller's son, but he was no fool. Many Valmieran nobles assumed all those below them to be fools: Skarmi chuckled, thinking of his sister. He had less of that attitude in him, but he wasn't free of it, either.