Читать «Rulers of the Darkness (хвв-4)» онлайн - страница 87

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.

In another way, though, Swemmel's complete indifference to what happened to his kingdom as long as he held the throne chilled the marshal to the marrow. If Rathar failed, he might end up in a camp with his throat slit to fuel the magic backing the attack some other marshal would make.

Before he could go on with that gloomy thought, a dowser rushed into the headquarters and cried, "Dragons! Dragons heading this way out of the north!"

"How many?" Rathar rapped out. "How soon?"

"I don't know, lord Marshal," the man answered. "They're throwing out those cursed strips of paper again." Dowsers had a sorcerous gift- sometimes the only sorcerous gift they had- for sensing motion: water through ground, ships on water, dragons through the air. But Algarvian dragonfliers had taken to throwing out bits of paper as they flew. The motion of those scraps helped mask the motion of the dragons themselves.

"Won't be long," Vatran predicted gloomily. Rathar could only nod, because he thought the general was right. Vatran went on, "Well, what'll it be when they do get here? Will they go after the ley lines again, or will they try and drop those eggs on our heads? Place your bets, folks."