Harry Turtledove - Rulers of the Darkness

With a sigh, the physician said, "Why a man should be so eager to rush headlong into danger has always been beyond me."

"You said it yourself: Algarve needs me," Spinello replied. "Now tell me at once: is it true the last of our brave lads have had to yield themselves in Sulingen?"

"It's true," the physician said grimly. "The crystallomancers can't reach anyone there, and the Unkerlanters are shouting themselves hoarse at the victory. Not a word about the price we made them pay."

Spinello cursed. The Algarvians had fought their way into Sulingen the summer before- fought their way into it and never fought their way out again. South beyond the Wolter River lay the Mamming Hills, full of the cinnabar that made dragonfire burn so hot and fierce. Take Sulingen, storm over the Wolter, seize the mines in the hills- it had all seemed so straightforward.

It would have been, too, had the Unkerlanters not fought like demons for every street, for every manufactory, for every floor of every block of flats. And now, even though Swemmel's men had, as the physician said, surely paid a great price, an Algarvian army was gone, gone as if it had never been.

"I hope they send me west again in a tearing hurry," Spinello said, and the physician rolled his eyes. Spinello pointed to the closet at the far end of the room. "I'm sick of these cursed hospital whites. Is my uniform in there?"

"If you mean the one in which you came here, Major, no," the physician replied. "That one, as I hope you will understand, is somewhat the worse for wear. But a major's uniform does await you, aye. One moment." He went over to the closet, set a hand on the latch, and murmured softly. "There. Now it will open to your touch. We couldn't very well have had you escaping before you were even close to healed."

"I suppose not," Spinello admitted. They'd known him, all right. He walked over to the closet and tried the latch. It did open. It hadn't before; he'd tried a good many times. With a squeak of dry hinges, the door opened, too. There on hooks hung a tunic and kilt of severe military cut. The tunic, he saw to his pride, had on it a wound ribbon. He was entitled to that ribbon, and he would wear it. He got out of the baggy infirmary clothes and put on the uniform. It was baggy, too, baggy enough to make him angry. "Couldn't they have found a tailor who wasn't drunk?" he snapped.

"It is cut to your measure, Major," the physician answered. "Your former measure, I should say. You've lost a good deal of flesh since you were wounded."

"This much?" Spinello didn't want to believe it. But he couldn't very well call the physician a liar, either.

Also hanging in the closet was a broad-brimmed hat with a bright feather from some bird from tropical Siaulia sticking up from the leather hatband. Spinello clapped it on. His head hadn't shrunk, anyhow. That was a relief.

The physician said, "I have a mirror in my belt pouch, if you'd like to see yourself. We don't keep many in infirmaries. They might dismay patients like you, and they might do worse than dismay others, the ones unlucky enough to receive head wounds."

"Ah." Contemplating that was enough to make Spinello decide he hadn't come out so bad after all. In unwontedly quiet tones, he said, "Aye, sir, if you'd be so kind."

"Of course, Major." The physician took it out and held it up.

Spinello whistled softly. He had lost flesh; his cheekbones were promontories just under the skin, and the line of his jaw sharper than it had been since he left his teens- an era more than a dozen years behind him now. But his green eyes still gleamed, and the attendants who'd trimmed his coppery mustache and little chin beard and side whiskers had done a respectable job. He tilted the hat to a jauntier angle and said, "How ever will the girls keep their legs closed when they see me walking down the street?"

With a snort, the doctor put the mirror away. "You're well enough, all right," he said. "Go back to the west and terrorize the Unkerlanter women."

"Oh, my dear fellow!" Spinello rolled his eyes. "A homelier lot you'd never want to see. Built like bricks, almost all of them. I had better luck when I was on occupation duty in Forthweg. This little blond Kaunian, couldn't have been above seventeen" -his hands shaped an hourglass in the air- "and she'd do anything I wanted, and I do mean anything."

"How many times have you told me about her since you've been in my care?" the physician asked. "Her name was Vanai, and she lived in Oyngestun, and-"

"And every word of it true, too," Spinello said indignantly. He took a cloak from the closet and threw it on, then dealt with shoes and stockings. He was panting by the time he finished dressing; he'd spent too long flat on his back. But he refused to admit how worn he was, even to himself. "Now, then- what formalities must I go through to escape your lair here?"

He presented the certificate of discharge to the floor nurse. After she signed it, he presented it to the nursing station downstairs. After someone there signed it, Spinello presented it to the soldier at the doorway. The man had won the soft post with a right tunic sleeve pinned up short. He pointed along the street and said, "The reassignment depot is three blocks that way, sir. Can you walk it?"

"Why? Is this a test?" Spinello asked. Rather to his surprise, the one-armed soldier nodded. He realized it made a certain amount of sense: you might browbeat a doctor into giving you a certificate, but no one who couldn't walk three blocks had any business going off to the front. The soldier signed the certificate quite legibly. Spinello asked him, "Were you lefthanded… before?"

"No, sir," the fellow answered. "I got this in Forthweg, early on. I've had two and a half years to learn how to do things over again."

With a nod, Spinello left the infirmary for the first time since being brought there and headed in the direction the disabled soldier had given him. Before the war, Trapani had been a gay, lively city, as befit the capital of a great kingdom. The gray gloom on the streets now had only a little to do with the overcast sky and the nasty, cold mist in the air: it was a thing of the spirit, not of the weather.

People hurried along about their business without the strut and swagger that were as much a part of Algarvian life as wine. Women mostly looked mousy, which wasn't easy for Spinello's redheaded compatriots. The only men in the streets who weren't in uniform were old enough to be veterans of the Six Years' War a generation before or else creaking ancients even older than that.

And everyone, men and women alike, looked grim. The news sheets the vendors sold were bordered in black. Sulingen had fallen, all right. It had been plain for a long time that the town would fall to the Unkerlanters, but no one here seemed to have wanted to believe it no matter how plain it was. That made the blow even harder now that it struck home.

Big signs outside the entrance named the reassignment depot. Spinello bounded up the marble steps, threw the doors wide, and shouted, "I'm fit for duty again! The war is won!"

Some of the soldiers in there laughed. Some of them snorted. Some just rolled their eyes. "No matter who you are, sir, and no matter how great you are, you still have to queue up," a sergeant said. Spinello did, though he hated lines.

When he presented the multiply signed certificate of discharge to another sergeant, that worthy shuffled through files. At last, he said, "I have a regiment for you, Major, if you care to take it."

That was a formality. Spinello drew himself up to stiff attention. "Aye!" he exclaimed. The catch in his breath was partly from his healing, partly excitement.

The sergeant handed him his orders, as well as a list of ley-line caravans that would take him to the men who held the line somewhere in northern Unkerlant. They were waiting for him with bated breath. They just didn't know it yet. "If you hurry, sir, there's a caravan leaving from the main depot for Eoforwic in half an hour," the sergeant said helpfully. "That'll get you halfway there."