Darkness: Through The Darkness Part 57

But die they did. Leudast stirred a corpse with his foot. The Algarvian, his coppery whiskers all awry, had the look of a scrawny red fox that had been torn by a wolf. "Tough wh.o.r.esons," Leudast remarked. The admiration in his voice was grudging, but it was real.

"Aye, they are." Young Lieutenant Recared spoke with more wonder than admiration. "When we trained, they said the Algarvians weren't so much." He shook his head. "I can't imagine why they told us that."

Probably didn't want to make you afraid too soon, Leudast thought. But he didn't say it out loud. Recared had learned fast, and made a pretty good officer now. If he hadn't learned fast, he would have been dead by now. Even if he had learned fast, he might well have died. The war didn't always respect such learning. Leudast had seen that too many times.

He pointed ahead, toward the ruins of what had been a ley-line caravan depot. "A good many of the b.u.g.g.e.rs holed up there," he remarked. "If we can drive aem out of that strongpoint, they'll have to pull back to right and left, too."

Recared nodded. "Making their perimeter shrink is a good thing. But by the powers above, Sergeant--the price we'll pay!" He wasn't hardened yet; his face still showed a good deal of what he thought. "The poor men!"

Leudast nodded. The regiment had taken a beating cutting off the Algarvians in Sulingen, and another one fighting its way into the city. "We've got to make them pay, sir. That's the idea, you know."

"Oh, aye." Recared nodded, but reluctantly. He, too, pointed ahead: carefully, so as not to expose himself to snipers. "Not much cover up ahead there, though. The boys would take a horrible pounding before they could close with the redheads."

"Can we get aem to toss eggs at the ruins while we move forward?" Leudast asked. "That would make the Algarvians keep their heads down, anyhow."

"Let me go back and ask our brigadier," Recared said. "You're right, Sergeant--it would be splendid if we could." He hurried off through the maze of holes and trenches that led to brigade headquarters.

When he returned, he was grinning from ear to ear. "You got the egg-t.o.s.s.e.rs, sir?" Leudast asked eagerly.

"No, but I got something about as good," Recared answered. "A penal battalion just came to the front, and they'll throw it in right here."

"Ah," Leudast said. "Good enough. Better than good enough, in fact. Those poor b.u.g.g.e.rs aren't going to be around at the end of the war any which way. Might as well get something out of them while they're being used up. Then we go in after they've taken the edge off the Algarvians?"

"That's how I see it," Recared said. "They'll start the job, and we'll finish it."

The men from the penal battalion started coming up to the front line a little before sunset. Almost all of them were leaner than the poor starveling Algarvian corpse Leudast had kicked. Some wore rags. Some wore the fine cloaks and greatcoats that went only to high-ranking officers, though none showed rank badges. Some wore what had been fine cloaks and greatcoats now reduced to rags. All of them stared ahead in glum, grim silence. An invisible wall seemed to separate them from the ordinary Algarvian soldiers.

And that invisible wall wasn't the only thing separating them from their countrymen. Coming up to the front with them were a couple of sections of well-fed, well-clothed guards. If the men of the penal battalion tried to go back instead of forward when ordered into action, the guards were there to take care of what the enemy would not.

In a low voice, Recared asked, "Does anybody ever come out of a penal battalion?"

"I think so," Leudast said. "Fight well enough long enough and you might even get your old rank back. That's what they say, anyhow. Of course, if you're the kind of officer who runs away or does something else to get yourself stuck in a penal battalion, how likely are you to fight that well?" He was only a sergeant. If he ran away, they wouldn't bother putting him in one of those battalions. They'd just blaze him and get on with the war.

It started to snow again during the night. Dawn was a dark gray, uncertain thing. The men of the penal battalion pa.s.sed flasks back and forth. Leudast had drunk some courage before going into action a good many times himself. Over in the ruins of the caravan depot, what did the Algarvians have to drink?

Whistles shrilled. The broken officers who made up the penal battalion sprang to their feet and grabbed their sticks. Without a word, without a sound but those of their felt boots dully thudding on snow, they swarmed toward the Algarvian strongpoint. No cries of "Urra!"--no cries of "Swemmel!" either. It was the eeriest attack Leudast had ever seen.

Perhaps because it went in so silently, it surprised the redheads more than an ordinary a.s.sault might have. The men of the penal battalion got a long way toward the caravan depot before they started to fall. Peering out ever so cautiously from behind what had been an ornamental limestone carving, Leudast watched the Unkerlanters who didn't fall get in among the Algarvians in the wreckage of the depot. Glancing over toward Recared, he asked, "Now, sir?"

"Not quite yet," Recared answered. "We'll let them develop the enemy a little more first, I think."

Tactically, that made good sense. It was hard on the penal battalion, though. Leudast considered, then shrugged. The battalion was there to be expended. It existed for no other real reason; officers restored to their posts were lucky accidents, nothing more.

They waited. The Algarvians in the ruins of the caravan depot put up a ferocious fight. Leudast had expected nothing less. The Algarvians always fought hard. Here they had even less choice than usual. Those ruins were a linchpin for their line in the northern part of Sulingen. If Mezentio's men lost them, they would have to pull back on a broad front, and they couldn't afford that.

Leudast pointed. "Do you see, sir? There, by the wreckage of the tower. That's one of their strongpoints. The attack's bogged down in front of it."

"You're right, Sergeant," Recared agreed. "If it weren't for the penal battalion, we would have found that out the hard way."

The penal battalion was finding out the hard way. But Leudast understood what Recared meant. Someone always got it in the neck. If you were an Unkerlanter, you knew that. Better somebody else than you. One of these days, your turn would come, no matter what you did.

"Now that we know where they're strongest, we ought to take another blaze at getting some egg-t.o.s.s.e.rs to give aem what for," Leudast said.

"That's what the penal battalion's supposed to do," Recared said, but then he relented. "You've got a point. I'll send a runner back. We'll see what we can manage."

Before long, eggs did start falling on that Algarvian concentration. Unkerlant had plenty of egg-t.o.s.s.e.rs around Sulingen. King Swemmel's men still didn't maneuver them as smartly as the redheads, but this wasn't a war of quick movement, not here it wasn't. All they had to do was pound at the Algarvians, and pound they did.

After a while, Recared said, "I think we're about ready now." There was a little doubt in his mind, as if he was asking Leudast's opinion. Leudast nodded. He thought they were ready, too. Recared get to his feet and blew a long, ear-splitting blast on his whistle. "Forward, lads!" he shouted, though he was more nearly a lad than most of his soldiers. "Forward for King Swemmel! Urra!" He was brave. Leudast had already seen that. He charged toward the caravan depot at the head of his regiment.

"Urra!" Leudast yelled as he too broke from cover. "King Swemmel! Urra!"

A few eggs burst among the Unkerlanters as they surged forward, but only a few. The Algarvians didn't have many t.o.s.s.e.rs left, and didn't have many eggs left to fling from them, either. They'd also buried eggs in front of their position. The penal battalion had discovered that, the hard way. So did a couple of luckless men from Recared's regiment. Dowsers could have found paths past the buried eggs, but dowsers, like trained men of all sort, were in short supply in Unkerlant. King Swemmel had plenty of footsoldiers, though.

Leudast dashed past dead men from the penal battalion, then flung himself down behind a pile of bricks. Up ahead, the Algarvians were still shouting Mezentio's name: they had s.p.u.n.k and to spare. But there weren't enough of them, and they didn't have enough of anything but s.p.u.n.k. One by one, their battle cries fell silent. A beam struck snow off to Leudast's left, raising a puff of steam. He scrambled to the right and then, bent low at the waist, forward again.

A man from the penal battalion and an Algarvian thrashed on the ground in a death struggle: two fierce, skinny, miserable creatures, both intent on living, neither with much of anything left to live for. Which one had suffered worse in this war? Leudast wouldn't have wanted to guess. He knew which one was on his side, though. As soon as he got the chance, he blazed the Algarvian.

"Thank you, friend," the Unkerlanter from the penal battalion said in educated accents that belied his pinched, half-starved face and his fiercely glittering eyes. He cut the dead redhead's belt pouch open with his knife, exclaimed in triumph, and stuffed the little chunk of sausage he found there into his mouth. Only after he'd gulped it down did he seem to remember Leudast again. "You have no idea how good that is."

Leudast started to say he'd been hungry, but something in the other man's expression warned he'd get only scornful laughter if he did. He contented himself with, "Let's go get some more of those b.u.g.g.e.rs, then." A moment later, he did something smarter: he gave the soldier from the penal battalion some of the black bread he had in his own belt pouch. He felt ashamed that he hadn't thought of it right away.

The other Unkerlanter made it disappear faster than a man should have been able to. Then he warned, "Don't let an inspector see you do anything like that. You could end up in my outfit, easy as you please."

Shouts--Unkerlanter shouts--rose in triumph. "We've broken them!" Leudast exclaimed.

"Aye, so we have." The man from the penal battalion sounded pleased, but far from overjoyed. "It only means they'll kill me somewhere else." With a nod to Leudast, he ran forward, looking for the place.

Cornelu lay asleep in the Sibian exiles' barracks next to the harbor in Setubal. The woman he was dreaming about was the most exciting he'd ever imagined; he was sure of it. One moment, she had Costache's face; the next, Janira's. He was about to do what he most wanted to do when Algarvian eggs began bursting not far away.

He tried to incorporate those roars into his dream, but had no luck. His eyes came open. He sat up on his cot. The rest of the men from the Sibian navy who'd escaped when the Algarvians overran their island kingdom were likewise sitting up and cursing. "What good does this do them?" somebody said. "They can't send over enough dragons to make it likely they'll do Lagoas any real harm."

"It ruins our sleep," Cornelu said. As far as he was concerned, that was crime enough at the moment.

"It gives them something to print in their news sheets, too," somebody else added. "Something besides Sulingen, I mean."

"My guess is, they stopped printing much about Sulingen a while ago," Cornelu said. "They don't like to let bad news out."

"Poor dears," the other Sibian said. "Powers above grant them blank news sheets for years to come, then."

Several Sibians laughed, Cornelu among them. Before Cornelu could say anything more--he would cheerfully go on casting scorn on the Algarvians as long as his body held breath--an egg burst all too close to the barracks. Windows blew in, shards of gla.s.s hissing through the air like hundreds of flying knives of all sizes. One sliced the left sleeve of Cornelu's tunic--and, he realized a moment later, sliced his arm as well. He cursed.

His comrades were cursing, too. Some, those hurt worse than he, were shrieking. He opened and closed his left fist. When he discovered he could do that, he tore a strip from his blanket and bound up his bleeding arm. Then he set about helping his more badly wounded countrymen.

Another egg burst almost on top of the spot where the first one had landed. Hardly any more gla.s.s flew; the first egg had taken out most of what was in the windows. But the barracks building itself groaned and shuddered like an old tree in a strong wind. "We'd better get out!" Cornelu shouted. "I don't know if it's going to stay up."

No one argued with him. More than one man shouted, "Aye!" in various tones of agreement and alarm. Cornelu and another officer grabbed a bleeding comrade and half dragged, half carried him out of the barracks. The other officer set to work bandaging the bleeding man. Cornelu ran back into the building to get someone else out.

He had some light by which to see; the Algarvian eggs raining down on Setubal had started fires here and there. He grabbed a man who lay groaning by his cot and dragged him toward the door.

Beams from heavy sticks shot up into the night, seeking the enemy dragons overhead. Cornelu cursed again, this time at how little good they were doing. Mezentio hadn't sent so many dragons south across the Strait of Valmiera for a long time. Eggs kept falling, some farther away, some closer. Cornelu looked up into the night sky and shook his fist at the foes he could not see. As if in answer, an egg landed on the barracks he'd left only a minute or so before.

The burst of sorcerous energy knocked him off his feet--knocked him head over heels, in fact. A brick shattered on the cobbles inches from his face, spraying chips into his eyes. He rubbed at them till his vision cleared. But he hardly needed to see to know he would never sleep in that barracks hall again. He could feel the heat of flames on his back. The building was burning, burning. As the fire grew, he dragged the wounded man farther from the wreckage.

Lagoans ran this way and that, intent on their own concerns: the barracks was far from the only building afire along the waterfront. Some of Cornelu's comrades who'd learned more Lagoan in exile than he called out to the locals. After a while, the Lagoans deigned to notice them. Parties of stretcher bearers came and took the men with the worst hurts off to the surgeons and mages who might help them. That done, though, the Lagoans left the exiles alone once more.

"If the barracks weren't burning down, we'd be freezing, and would they care?" a Sibian demanded indignantly. "Not even a little, they wouldn't. They toss us at the Algarvians like so many eggs, and it doesn't matter to them if we burst."

"Oh, it matters a little," Cornelu said. "It would even matter to King Swemmel. After all, it's more efficient when we die while we're killing Algarvians and after we've killed some than here, uselessly, in Setubal."

Then another Lagoan shouted something incomprehensible at them in his own language. "What's that you say?" somebody shouted back in Sibian.

The fellow took it for Algarvian; Lagoans had a demon of a time telling the two languages apart. But when he answered, also in Algarvian, the Sibian exiles managed to understand him: "Bucket brigade!"

From then till dawn, Cornelu pa.s.sed buckets back and forth. He stood between one of his countrymen and a Lagoan with whom he had trouble speaking. The work needed no words at all, though. He just sent full buckets one way and empties the other.

Thick clouds spoiled the sunrise. Only very gradually did Cornelu realize he was seeing by more than the light of the flames the bucket brigade battled. Not long after he did so, a hard, cold rain began to fall. The weary men raised a weary cheer: the rain would do more to stifle the fires than anything they could achieve on their own. Before long, a Lagoan officer blew his whistle and shouted a word even Cornelu understood: "Dismissed!"

He didn't realize how truly worn he was till he stopped working. He turned his face up to the rain and let it wash sweat and soot from his forehead and cheeks. That felt good--powers above, it felt wonderful--for a little while. Then he realized he was s.h.i.+vering. And no wonder: all he had on were the light tunic and kilt he'd worn to bed, and the rain--which was starting to have pea-sized hail mixed in with it--had already got them good and soaked.

The Lagoan who'd labored beside him for so long put a hand on his shoulder and said, "You--come with me. Food." He rubbed his belly. "Tea." He mimed bringing a mug up to his face. "Hot. Good. Come."

Cornelu understood all that. Every single word of it sounded wonderful. "Aye," he said, in the best Lagoan he had.

His new friend led him to a mess hall. Most of the men in there were dripping, and more than a few of them wore only nightclothes. Roaring fires heated the hall past what would have been comfortable most of the time, but it felt splendid now. Cornelu queued up for big, salty fried herrings; for b.u.t.tery oatmeal nearly as thick and sticky as wet cement; and for steaming tea so full of honey, the spoon almost stood up without touching the side of the mug.

He ate as intently as he ever had while in the woodcutting gang back on his home island of Tirgoviste. Herring wasn't reckoned a breakfast food in Sibiu, but he wouldn't have complained under any circ.u.mstances, not as hungry as he was--and he'd been doing so much hard work for so long, the meal scarcely seemed like breakfast anyhow. He went back for seconds.

So did the Lagoan who'd brought him here. The fellow wore a petty officer's uniform and had the breezy efficiency--the real sort, not the artificial kind Swemmel tried to instill into the Unkerlanters--of a good underofficer in any navy. He spent a lot of time cursing the Algarvians: not so much for being the enemy in general or even for what they'd just done to Setubal as for costing him half a night's sleep. After rubbing his belly again, this time in real satisfaction, he glanced across the table at Cornelu and remarked, "Your clothes-fftt!"

That last wasn't a word in any language Cornelu knew, but he understood it. He liked the sound of it, too. "Aye," he said. "Clothes fftt."

The Lagoan got to his feet. "Come with me," he said again, in the tones of a man giving an order. He couldn't have known Cornelu was a commander--- clothes went a long way toward making a man, or, in the case of sodden night-clothes, toward unmaking him. On the other hand, he might not have cared had he known; some petty officers got so used to bullying sailors around that they bullied their superiors, too.

Inside of another half hour, he had Cornelu outfitted in a Lagoan sailor's uniform, complete with a heavy coat and a broad-brimmed hat to shed the rain. "I thank you," Cornelu said in Sibian; the phrased remained similar in all the Algarvic languages.

"It's nothing," the petty officer answered, catching his drift. Then he said something Cornelu couldn't precisely follow, but it included Mezentio's name and several obscenities and vulgarities. Having taken care of Cornelu, the Lagoan went on his way.

Cornelu walked back to the crumpled Sibian barracks. The sour smell of wet smoke still hung in the air despite the rain. But Cornelu's uniform, all his effects, the whole building, were indeed fftt. A Sibian lieutenant still wearing nothing but soaked nightclothes gave him a look full of lacerating jealousy and said, "You seem to have landed on your feet better than anyone, sir. As far as I can see, we're on our own till the Lagoans get around to providing for us."

"All right." That was what Cornelu had hoped to hear. "I'm going into town, then. I want to make sure some friends are all right." Janira mattered to him. Balio, her father, mattered to him because he mattered to her.

After only a few strides toward the closest ley-line caravan stop, Cornelu paused and cursed himself for a fool. How could he get aboard without money? But when he jammed his hands into the pockets of his new navy coat, he found coins in one of them--plenty of silver, he discovered, for the fare and for a good meal afterwards. Who'd put it there? The petty officer? The quarter-master who'd given him the coat? He had no way of knowing. He did know he'd have a harder time looking down his nose at Lagoans from now on.

He got out of the caravan car at the stop near the Grand Hall of the Lagoan Guild of Mages. He'd pa.s.sed several new stretches of wreckage on the way there; the Algarvians had hit Setubal hard. But Cornelu knew it could have been worse--Mezentio's men could have ma.s.sacred Kaunians instead of coming over and risking themselves.

People were standing around in the street near Balio's cafe. Cornelu didn't think that a good sign. He pushed his way through the crowd. A couple of men sent him resentful looks, but gave way when they saw him in Lagoan naval uniform. He grimaced when he got to see the cafe. It was a burnt-out ruin. An egg had burst a few doors down, burst and started a fire.

And there stood Balio, staring at the ruins of his business. "I'm glad to see you well," Cornelu told him, and then asked the really important question: "Is Janira all right?"

"Aye." Balio nodded vaguely. "She's around somewhere. Powers above only know how we'll make a living now, though." He cursed the Algarvians in Lagoan and Sibian both. Cornelu joined him. He'd been cursing the Algarvians for years. He expected to go on doing it for years more. And now he had a brand new reason.

News sheets in Eoforwic had stopped talking about the battle for Sulingen. From that, Vanai concluded it was going badly for the Algarvians. The quieter they got, she a.s.sumed, the more they had to hide. And the more they had to hide, the better she liked it. "May they all fall," she said savagely at breakfast one morning.

"Aye, and take all their puppets down with them," Ealstan agreed. "Powers below eat King Mezentio, powers below eat all his soldiers, and powers below eat Plegmund's Brigade, starting with my accursed cousin."

"If the Algarvians are ruined, everyone who follows them will be ruined, too," Vanai said. She understood why Ealstan hated Plegmund's Brigade as he did. But one thing her grandfather had taught her that still seemed good was to search for root causes first. The Algarvians had caused Forthweg's misery. Plegmund's Brigade was only a symptom of it.

Ealstan thought about arguing with her: she could see it on his face. Instead, he took a last bite of bread and gulped down the rough red wine in his mug. Pausing only to give her a kiss that landed half on her mouth, half on her cheek, he headed for the door, saying, "It's not worth the quarrel, and I haven't got time for one anyhow. I'm off to see if I can help some men pay the redheads a little less."

"That's worth doing," Vanai said. Her husband nodded and left.

My husband, Vanai thought. It still bemused her. It would have horrified Brivibas: not just because Ealstan was a Forthwegian, though that alone would have been plenty, but because of the mean little ceremony with which they'd been formally joined. And what her grandfather would have thought about the two woman-loving matrons who'd checked the hair on her secret place . . . She laughed, imagining the look on his face if she ever told him about that.

She knew exactly what had let her get through it without smacking them. It was simple: the Algarvians had already shown her worse. What Ealstan wished on his cousin, she wished on Major Spinello.

For a long time after she'd had to start giving herself to him, she'd doubted she would ever feel clean again. Falling in love with Ealstan had gone a long way toward curing her there. But, after the two of them came to Eoforwic, she'd had trouble feeling clean in the literal sense of the word. Was.h.i.+ng with a pitcher and basin here in the flat wasn't a patch even on Oyngestun's public bath. And Oyngestun was only a village. Eoforwic had the finest baths in all of Forthweg.

Up till very recently, of course, they'd done her no good at all. She hadn't been able to show her face in public, let alone her body. Now, though, she looked like a Fortliwegian to everyone around her as long as her magic held. When she looked in a mirror, she saw her familiar Kaunian features framed by much less familiar dark hair. What she saw didn't matter, so long as no one else could see it.

She went through the spell again, to make sure it wouldn't wear off while she was out and about in Eoforwic. Then she put some coppers in her belt pouch and left the flat. Now that she could head for the public baths, she did, usually every other day. She had trouble thinking of anything she enjoyed more about the freedom she'd sorcerously found.

With a sneer, she walked past the bathhouse closest to her block of flats. Oyngestun's was better; whoever'd built this one seemed to have thought, Well, it's plenty good enough for poor people. Here, unlike in Oyngestun, she had other choices.

The bathhouse not far from the farmers' market was a great deal finer. She strode up the stairs that led to the women's side, paid her little fee to the bored-looking attendant who sat there with a coin box, and went inside. She stripped off her tunic and gave it and her belt pouch and her shoes to another attendant, who put them on a shelf and handed her a numbered token with which she could claim them when she finished bathing.

A couple of Forthwegian women stripped off as casually as she had. They didn't give her a second glance, for which she was grateful, but went off chatting with each other. She followed, a little more slowly. In her own eyes, she remained too thin and far too pale to make a proper Forthwegian, and her black bush seemed even more unnatural than the hair on her head. But n.o.body else could see her fair skin and her pink nipples. Were that untrue, she would have long since been caught.

One of the Forthwegian women slid down into the warm pool. "It's not what it used to be, is it?" she said to her friend. "Time was when you got in here it didn't matter how things were outside--you'd be warm. Nowadays..." A curl of her lips said what she thought of nowadays.

Vanai had known warmer pools, too, but this wasn't so bad. And Eoforwic, like most of Forthweg, had a mild climate even in winter. She was also sure the soap had been finer once upon a time, though that would come later in the bath. It was always harsh and alkaline these days, and varied between a nasty stink and an almost equally nasty, cloying perfume. Today, it was perfumed-- Vanai could smell it across the bathhouse. She tried not to notice. That wasn't too hard. She had plenty of water here, and didn't need to worry about dripping all over the kitchen floor.

She ducked down under the surface of the warm pool, running her fingers through her hair. When she stood up straight again, the two Forthwegian women in the pool with her were making shocked noises. For a dreadful moment, she feared she'd botched her magecraft and the charm had worn off much too soon. Then she realized the Forthwegians weren't staring at her but back toward the vestibule. "The nerve!" one of them said.

"The brazen hussies," the other agreed.

If the two Algarvian women approaching the pool understood Forthwegian, they didn't show it. Forthwegians--and Kaunians in Forthweg--took nudity in the baths for granted. These women didn't. They walked--strutted--as if they were on display . . . and both of them had a good deal to display, even if the women in the plunge weren't the ideal audience for their charms. Vanai wondered why they'd come to Eoforwic. Were they officers' wives? Officers' mistresses? Wouldn't Algarvian officers have found new mistresses here?

Whatever they were, they giggled as they slid down into the water. Giggling still, they rubbed each other. That wasn't the custom in public baths; the Forthwegian women looked scandalized, and hastily got out of the hot pool. Vanai followed. She didn't want to seem like an abnormal Forthwegian in any way.

Evidently she didn't, for one of the Forthwegian women turned back to her and said, "Aren't they disgraceful?" She kept her voice down, but not well enough; if the Algarvian women did know Forthwegian, they would have had no trouble catching the disparaging comment. Vanai just nodded. That wouldn't get her into any trouble unless the redheads chanced to look straight at her.

She and the Forthwegian women jumped into the cold plunge together. They all yipped. The warm pool had been only indifferently warm; the plunge was anything but indifferently cold. Some people stayed out of the warm pool altogether, and did all their soaking in the cold plunge. Vanai thought such folk were out of their minds. The two Forthwegians must have agreed with her, for they scrambled out as fast as she did. All over gooseflesh, they hurried toward the soaping area.

Up close, the scent of the soap was even more irksome than it had been at a distance. Vanai had a couple of little sc.r.a.pes; the suds stung fiercely. She was lathering her legs when a splash and a couple of small shrieks came from the cold plunge. "Maybe they didn't expect that," she remarked.

"Hope not," one of the Forthwegian women said. "Serve aem right if they didn't."

"You don't suppose ..." The other Forthwegian paused with left leg sudsy and right leg not. "You don't suppose they'll put soap on each other, too?"