“Aye.” Tealdo and Trasone spoke together.Trasone went on, “Say whatever you want about these cursed Unkerlanters, butgoing up against them isn’t like fighting the Jelgavans or the Valmierans. We’lllick ‘em, aye, but they don’t know they’re licked yet, if you know what I mean.”

“That’s the truth.” Tealdo turned around,still nervous lest some Unkerlanters come at him from behind. “Uh-oh.” Hecaught a glimpse of light brown kilt behind a bush. By the way the Algarviansoldier lay, Tealdo knew the fellow had to be dead. He looked around, but allhis companions--all the men who’d rallied to Sergeant Panfilo--were stillstanding. He took a few steps forward, then stopped in his tracks.

Panfilo and Trasone followed him. Trasonegulped. “Powers above,” Panfilo said softly.

The Algarvians, half a dozen of them,looked to have been dead for a couple of days. Maybe they’d been caught in theearlier Unkerlanter counterattack in the woods. The guard on the path had hadthe right of it. They hadn’t been blazed. They hadn’t had their throats cut.They’d been gruesomely and systematically mutilated. Most of them had theirkilts hiked up. What the Unkerlanters had done down there ...

In a sick voice, Trasone said, “We haven’tfought a war like this for a long time.”

“Well, we are now,” Tealdo said grimly. “Idon’t think I want to be taken alive, doesn’t look like. If I can’t find someway to kill myself, I’d sooner have a friend do it than go through . . . that.”One by one, the other Algarvians nodded.

Waddo strode out into the middle of Zossen’svillage square. Garivald, watching from the edge of the square, found thestocky village firstman’s walk curious: half the limping swagger he usuallyused, half a nervous, almost slinking step, as if “Waddo also feared the pridehe so often displayed.