They weren’t the only team with such a responsibility. Keeping theHabakkuk afloat took a lot of magecraft. Leino shook his head as that thought occurred to him. It wasn’t strictly true. Ice floated. But keeping theHabakkuk afloat as something more than a slowly melting lump of ice took a lot of magecraft.

At last, Leino and his comrades looked at one another. Have we done all that wanted doing? they asked one another without words. Have we shored up the ship for another day? Again without words, they agreed they had. Will anything go wrong because of something we have failed to do? That was a clear negative.

Xavega was the first to speak aloud, with unmistakable relief: “We are finished. We have finished.” She pushed back her chair and strode out of the chamber. Almost of their will rather than his, Leino’s eyes followed her. Like other Algarvic peoples, Lagoans wore kilts. Xavega’s showed off quite a lot of elegantly turned leg.

With another sigh, Leino got up, too… and poured himself a fresh cup of tea. It wasn’t what he wanted-well, it wasn’t all of what he wanted-but it would have to do.

Four hundred years before, KingPlegmund of Forthweg had been the mightiest monarch in eastern Derlavai. His armies went from triumph to triumph in Algarve to the east and in Unkerlant to the west. Even nowadays, his name was one to conjure with in Forthweg.

And the Algarvians had conjured with it, recruiting Plegmund’s Brigade from Forthwegians who still wanted to go to war despite their kingdom’s defeat. Sidroc wondered what he would be doing if the redheads hadn’t organized the Brigade. Something boring with his father Hengist back in Gromheort, he supposed.

Whatever else he was down here in the Duchy of Grelz in southern Unkerlant, he wasn’t bored. One of the Algarvian officers who led Plegmund’s Brigade blew a piercing blast on his whistle and shouted, “Forward!”-in Algarvian, of course.