John the Lister looked over his shoulder from
unicornback. He knew more than a little pride in the
gray-clad army he led north from Ramblerton, the army that, from this hilltop, resembled nothing so much as a long, muscular snake. Turning to his adjutant, he said, "By the gods, I hope Lieutenant General Bell is coming south. I'll be very happy to meet him. We'll have a lot to talk about, don't you think?"
"Yes, sir," Major Strabo said. "And a sharp conversation it will be." Strabo was a walleyed man with a taste for bad puns, but a good officer despite that.
"Er—yes." John's eyes pointed as they were supposed to. He had, however, gone bald as a young man, and wore a hat at any excuse or none. He had a good excuse now: the rain that dripped from a sky the color of a dirty sheep's belly.
"Can we flagellate them all by ourselves, do you think?" Strabo asked. He never used a simple word if he could find a long, obscure one that meant the same thing, either.
After a brief pause to figure out what the other officer was talking about, the southron commander nodded. "I expect we can manage that," he said. "Unless he's managed to scrape together more men than I think he has, we'll be all right. And even if he has, well, we can still hurt him."
"Here's hoping we get the chance," Major Strabo said.
"Well, my choice'd be to have the traitors throw in the sponge and surrender, but they're as much a bunch of stubborn Detinans as we are, so I don't expect that'll happen tomorrow, or even the day after," John the Lister replied. "We're just going to have to lick 'em. If we do have to lick 'em, I'd sooner do it up in northern Franklin than down around Ramblerton."
"There'd be a great gnashing of teeth if they got so far," his adjutant agreed.
The rain kept right on falling. It soaked the roads. It soaked the soldiers. It soaked the woods that covered so much of Franklin. Woods that had been gorgeous with the gold and crimson and maroon leaves of autumn only days before went brown and bare. The leaves lay underfoot, losing their color and smelling musty and turning dreadfully slimy and slippery in the rain.
When evening came—as it did earlier every day—the army made camp. Tents sprouted like toadstools in the rain. Considering the number of toadstools also sprouting, John found himself in an excellent position to make the comparison. More of his men carried tent halves than held true among the traitors. More supply wagons accompanied his army, too. He might not be able to move quite so fast as Lieutenant General Bell's lean, hungry troopers, but he thought his men could hit harder when they got where they were going.
And there's not a thing wrong with taking whatever comforts you can into the field, he told himself. The traitors boasted of how scrawny they were, and did their best to turn their quartermasters' weakness and sometimes incompetence into a virtue. John preferred having his men go into a fight well fed and as well rested as they could be. Thanks to the manufactories and glideways of the south, he got his wish.
Hat still jammed down low on his head, he prowled through the camp, making sure everything ran to his satisfaction. Not everyone recognized him as the commanding general; like Marshal Bart, who led all of King Avram's armies, he wore a common soldier's blouse with stars of rank on the shoulders. But here and there, a man would call out, "How's it going, Ducky?"
Whenever that happened, John would wave back. He'd had the nickname a long time. When he was a younger man, he'd combed his hair so that it stuck up at the nape of his neck, putting people in mind of the southern end of a northbound duck. A lot of young men had worn their hair in that style twenty years before. He wasn't the only one who'd ended up getting called Ducky or the Duck on account of it, either.
He took out a mess tin and stood in line with ordinary soldiers to see what their cooks were dishing out. Once, a cook had been so surprised, he'd dumped a ladleful of stew on his own shoes. John had got the helping after that, and it had been pretty good. What he got this time was hard bread and cheese and sausage—nothing very exciting, but decent enough of its kind. He ate with real enjoyment.
"Halt! Who goes there?" sentries called as he approached his own pavilion. They were alert, but not alert enough to have noticed he wasn't in there to begin with.
"I'm John the Lister," he said dryly.
The sentries muttered among themselves. At last, one of them said, "Advance and be recognized, sir."
Advance John did. Recognize him the sentries did. They came to attention so stiff, they might almost have come to rigor mortis. "Am I who I say I am?" the general asked.
"Yes, sir!" the sentries chorused. One of them held the tent flap wide for him.
"You don't need to bother with such foolishness," John said as he stooped and went into the pavilion. "Just make sure you keep any traitors from sneaking in after me, all right?"
"Yes, sir!" the sentries chorused once more. They would do what he told them—unless they did something else, in which case the force he commanded would have a new leader shortly thereafter. John suspected it would do about as well under a fair number of other officers. He contrived to keep this suspicion well hidden. As far as his superiors knew, he was convinced he was indispensable.
His superiors . . . John the Lister let his broad-shouldered bulk sag into a folding chair, which creaked under his weight. Depending on how you looked at things, he had either a mere handful of superiors or a whole great list of them. In King Avram's volunteers, he was a brigadier. As long as the war against false King Geoffrey lasted, he could command a wing or even a small independent army, as he was doing now.
That was true as long as the war lasted. The minute it ended, he was a brigadier no more. In King Avram's regular army, the army that persisted in peacetime, John was only a captain, with a captain's pay and a captain's prospects. The best he could hope for as a captain would be to end up at a fortress on the eastern steppes, commanding a company against the blond nomads who preyed on the great herds of aurochs there—and on Detinan settlers.
Doubting George was a lieutenant general of volunteers. But Doubting George was also a brigadier among the regulars. If the war ended tomorrow, he would still be a person to reckon with. John knew only one thing could get him the permanent rank he so craved: a smashing victory over the southrons. Knowing what he needed was all very well. Knowing how to get it was something else again.
John gave Doubting George reluctant credit. George could have commanded this move up from Ramblerton himself. He could have, but he hadn't. He already owned as much permanent rank as he needed. John didn't. He had the chance to earn more here, if he could.
And if Lieutenant General Bell was really coming. John the Lister still found that hard to believe. If he'd commanded the force Bell had, he wouldn't have tried doing anything too risky with it. He would have held back, waited to see what the southrons opposing him had in mind, and hoped they'd make a mistake.
Waiting and seeing, of course, had never been one of Bell's strong points. If the situation called for him to charge, he would. If the situation called for him to wait and see, odds were he would charge anyway.
Besides, who could say if he was really so foolish? The way things looked, the north needed something not far from a miracle to beat King Avram's armies. Hanging back and waiting wouldn't yield one. Striking for the enemy's throat might.
John had a flask on his belt. He liberated it, yanked out the stopper, and took a swig. Sweet fire ran down his throat: brandy made from the most famous product of Peachtree Province. After that one swig, John corked the flask and put it back on his belt. One nip was fine. More? More and he would have been like General Guildenstern, who, reports said, had been the worse for wear during the battle by the River of Death. Maybe Guildenstern would have lost sober, too. No one would ever know now.
After pulling off his boots, John the Lister lay down on his iron-framed cot. He had a brigadier's privileges; a captain would have slept wrapped in a blanket or on bare ground, like a common soldier. The cot wasn't very comfortable, either, but it was better than bare ground.
As usual, John woke before dawn. He got out of bed and put his boots back on. That done, he scratched. Back in Ramblerton, he'd been able to bathe as often as he wanted to—even a couple of times a week if he was so inclined. He usually wasn't that fussy, though some of the more fastidious officers were. Out in the field, though, and especially when the weather wasn't warm . . . He shook his head. Some things were more trouble than they were worth.
When he came out of the pavilion, a couple of blond servants carried its light furnishings to a wagon, then took down the big tent itself and packed it on top of the cot and chair and folding table. "Thanks, boys," John said. They both nodded. John had to remind himself they weren't serfs. They worked for wages, just as a proper Detinan might find himself doing.
They probably think they are proper Detinans. John the Lister muttered under his breath. He didn't necessarily share that opinion. But he was sure Grand Duke Geoffrey had no business tearing the kingdom to pieces. That put him on King Avram's side, no matter what he thought about blonds and whether or not they were as good as Detinans whose ancestors had crossed the Western Ocean.
John watched the encampment come to life around him. Here and there, blonds cooked for soldiers and helped them knock down their tents. Most of those men and women were runaway serfs. They got wages these days, too. That they had fled their liege lords said they wanted to be free, even if they didn't always quite know how.
As John went over to get in line for breakfast, he plucked thoughtfully at his long, square-cut beard. Wanting to be free was what marked Detinans. Maybe some of those blonds had what it took after all.
"Here's Ducky!" Again, the nickname ran ahead of the general commanding. John pretended he didn't hear. He took his place in a line, got a bowl of mush with bits of salt beef chopped into it, and had a blond cook's assistant pour boiling water into the tin mug he held out. Like a lot of soldiers, he doubted he was a human being till he'd had his first mug of tea, or sometimes his second.
When he came back from breakfast, Major Strabo saluted, saying, "Greetings and salutations, sir."
"Hello." John politely returned the salute. Unlike his adjutant—perhaps in reaction to his adjutant—he kept his own speech simple.
Walleyed Strabo looked past him to the left and right. "Now we fare forth to find and flummox the fearsome foe."
"You should have been born a bard, Major," John said. "There are times when you sound like the singers who told the tale of our ancestors and how they conquered the blonds' kingdoms they found in this new land."
"You do me honor by the comparison, sir." Again, Strabo looked around John rather than at him.
Mounts gleaming whitely, unicorn-riders went north ahead of John's main force. General Guildenstern's disaster had taught southron officers one lesson, anyhow: to make sure they didn't get taken by surprise the way he had. John the Lister didn't expect trouble from Lieutenant General Bell. He didn't expect it, but he wanted to be ready for it if it happened. Better to take precautions without need than to need them without taking them.
These days, General Guildenstern fought blond savages out on the steppe. His ignominious departure from the scene of the important action was no doubt intended as a warning to others who made mistakes in battle against the traitors. John the Lister's shiver had nothing to do with the chilly weather. He knew any man could make mistakes—even the gods made mistakes.
On the other hand, things might have gone worse for Guildenstern. John considered the fate of Brinton the Bold, who'd led King Avram's army in the west for most of the first two years of the war. Brinton was handsome and brave, and had won a couple of small victories not long after the fighting started. But he moved with the speed of a tortoise, and his nickname soon seemed an ironic joke. Avram had asked, not altogether in jest, if he could borrow the army himself, since Brinton didn't seem to be using it. These days, Brinton was a soldier no more. He went around the south making speeches that fell just short of treasonous, declaring that he would do a better job with a crown on his head than Avram could. If Detina hadn't had a long tradition of letting any freeman say whatever he pleased as long as he didn't harm anybody, Brinton's body probably would have hung from a cross near the Black Palace as a warning to others.
As things were, the former general was merely an embarrassment to the army he'd left and to most of the people who listened to him. He had a hard core of supporters, but John doubted they'd ever come to much.
In any case, a soldier who remained a soldier had no business worrying about politics. John listened to the tramp of thousands of booted feet. That sound filled up the background of his days in the saddle. It got mixed in with the sound of his own blood flowing through his veins, so that it almost seemed a part of him. When the men fell out for a rest break, as they did every so often, he missed it.
At sunset, he chose a low swell of ground to make camp. "What's the name of this place?" he asked Major Strabo.
"This, sir, is Summer Mountain," his adjutant said after checking a map.
John the Lister snorted. "Mountain?" he said. "This isn't even a pimple next to the Stonies, out past the steppes to the east. Even here, it's hardly a hill."
"It's anything but insurmountable," Strabo agreed. "But Summer Mountain the map calls it, and Summer Mountain it shall be forevermore."
"Miserable excuse for a mountain," John grumbled. "It's not summer any more, either."
The unicorn-rider came galloping back toward Ned of the Forest. "Lord Ned!" he shouted. "Lord Ned!"
Ned was no lord, but he didn't mind being called one. No, he didn't mind at all. "What did you see, Ben?" he asked. "You must've seen something, to be yelling like that."
"Sure did, Lord Ned," the rider named Ben said. "The stinking southrons are camped on Summer Mountain, only a couple of hours' ride from where we're at."
"Are they?" A sudden feral glow kindled in Ned's eyes. "How many of 'em? Doubting George's whole army?"
"No, sir," Ben answered. "I don't even reckon they've got as many men as we do."
"Is that a fact?" Ned murmured. The unicorn-rider nodded. "Well, well," Ned said. "In that case, something ought to happen to 'em. You're sure about what you saw, now?"
"Sure as I'm on my unicorn's back," Ben said. "I'd take oath by the Lion God's mane."
"They aren't trying to set up an ambush, or anything like that?"
"No, sir. Nothing like that at all," Ben said. "They were just making camp, like they'd gone as far as they figured on going today and they were setting up for the night."
"Something really ought to happen to them, then," Ned said. "You come along with me, Ben. We're going to have us a little talk with Lieutenant General Bell."
"You reckon he'll pay attention to the likes of me?" the unicorn-rider asked.
"He'll pay attention, by the gods," Ned said softly. "If he doesn't pay attention to you, he'll have to pay attention to me." He smiled a thoroughly grim smile. He'd met few men who cared to stand up under the full storm of his anger.
He and Ben rode back toward Bell, who traveled with the pikemen and crossbowmen of the Army of Franklin. When he saw Bell on a unicorn, he sighed. The commanding general hadn't had an easy time of it. Ned had often wondered about Bell's common sense. No one could doubt the leonine officer's courage. Bell's adjutant had had to tie him into the saddle. The stump of his left leg was too short to give him a proper grip on the unicorn's barrel.
Ned looked down at himself. He'd been wounded several times, and still had the tip of a crossbow quarrel lodged somewhere near his spine. It had broken off; the surgeon had dug out most of the bolt, but not all. Men often died from a wound like his. He'd confounded the healers—he'd got well instead. He still had the use of all his parts, even if some of them had been punctured. Nothing on earth would have made him trade places with Lieutenant General Bell.
What was it like, to be a wreck of your former self? What was it like, to know you were the wreck of your former self? Bell knew those answers. Ned was glad he didn't.
Respecting Bell's bravery, he saluted the other officer. The commanding general cautiously returned the salute. With only one good hand, he had to be cautious about taking it off the reins. "What can I do for you, Lieutenant General?" Bell asked. As it often did, laudanum dulled his voice. His sagging, pain-racked features told the story of his suffering.
At Ned's prompting, Ben repeated his news for Lieutenant General Bell. Ned added, "Sounds to me like if we move smart, we can hit the southrons a devils of a lick."
"I don't want to go straight at them," Bell said. "We just use up our army that way, and we haven't got enough men to be able to afford it. But if we can flank the southrons out of their position, if we can get around behind them and make them retreat past us . . . If we can do that, we'll really make them pay."
"Yes, sir. I like that." Ned of the Forest liked hitting the enemy—he was one of the hardest hitters the north had. Hitting the enemy head-on was a different story. He saw that plainly, and wondered why more of King Geoffrey's generals didn't. Nodding with pleasure, he asked, "What do you want me to do?"
"Hold the gods-damned southrons in place with your men," Bell answered. "Don't let them come any farther north, and don't let them get wind of how many men we have or what we're doing with them."
"I'll try my best, General," Ned said. "Can't promise to hold off a whole army with just my unicorn-riders, though."
"Yes, I understand that," Bell said. "You can slow it down, though, and screen away the enemy's riders, eh?"
"I expect I can manage that much, yes, sir," Ned allowed. "Wouldn't be much point to having unicorn-riders if we couldn't do that sort of thing, would there?"
"I wouldn't think so," the commanding general said. "Well, go on down and take care of it, then. The men on foot will follow and outflank the southrons while you keep them in play. And when they realize we've got behind them and they have to retreat, they're ours. I wish I could ride with you."
"So do I, sir," Ned said, more or less truthfully. Bell was no unicorn-rider by trade, but everyone said he'd been a fierce fighter before he started leaving pieces of himself on the battlefield.
Bell paused now to swig from the bottle of laudanum he always carried with him. "Ahh!" he said, and quivered with an ecstasy that almost matched a priest's when he had a vision of his chosen god. For a moment, Bell's eyes lost their focus. Whatever he was looking at, it wasn't the muddy road and the trees shedding the last of their leaves. But then, quite visibly, he came back to himself. "You there, trooper!" He nodded at Ben.
"Yes, sir?" the unicorn-rider asked.
"You're a corporal now," Bell said. "You took chances to get your news, and you deserve to be rewarded. Lieutenant General Ned, see that the promotion goes into your records, so his pay at the new rank starts from today."
"I'll do that, sir," Ned promised. "I was going to promote him myself, matter of fact, but better he gets it from the general commanding the whole army."
Ben—now Corporal Ben—looked from Ned to Bell in delight. "Thank you kindly, both of you!" he exclaimed.
"Don't you worry about that. You'll earn those stripes on your shirt, never fear," Ned said. "Now come on. We've got work to do."
He urged his unicorn forward with knees and reins and voice. Ben followed. Ned felt Lieutenant General Bell's eyes boring into his back. Bell could ride well enough to stay in the saddle, but he'd never storm forward in a unicorn charge.
Of course, Ned didn't plan on storming forward in a unicorn charge, either. More often than not, he used his riders as mounted crossbowmen, not as cavaliers slashing away with swords. Unicorns let them get where they needed to go far faster than they could have afoot. Getting there first with the most men was essential. And if you got there first with a few, most of the time you wouldn't need any more.
Back in the west, Duke Edward's commander of unicorn-riders, Jeb the Steward, had played at war as if it were a game. His men had fought as much for sport and glory as to do the southrons harm. They'd done quite a lot; not even Ned could deny it. But Jeb the Steward had died the summer before. He'd died a hard, nasty death, with a southron crossbow bolt in his belly. The war in the west had got grimmer since he fell.
Here in the east, the war had been grim from the start. With the southrons holding down Franklin and Cloviston but a lot of men in the two provinces still loyal to the north, brother sometimes faced brother sword in hand. No fight could be more savage than one of that sort. Some of Ned's own unicorn-riders had kin on the other side.
Ben pointed ahead. "There's our riders, sir."
"I see 'em," Ned answered. He raised his voice to a great bellow: "Blow advance!" The trumpeters obeyed. The men cheered the martial music. Ned went right on roaring, too. "We've got the gods-damned southrons ahead of us," he told the unicorn-riders. "We've got 'em ahead of us, and we need to hold their vanguard where it's at. Reckon we can do that, boys?"
"Hells, yes!" the troopers shouted. If Ned of the Forest wanted them to do something, they would do it, or die trying.
But even reaching the southrons proved harder than Ned had expected. He booted his unicorn up to a trot so he could lead the riders from the front, as he always did. One reason they followed him so well was that they knew he wouldn't order them to go anywhere he wasn't going himself.
He knew where Summer Mountain lay and how to get there. He knew the whole province of Franklin. I'd better, he thought. By now, I've fought over just about every gods-damned inch of it. He guided the troopers forward with confidence.
Despite that confidence, though, after about an hour Colonel Biffle rode up to him and asked, "Excuse me, Lord Ned, but should we be heading west?"
"West?" Ned stared at him. "What the hells are you talking about, Biff? I'm riding north, and that's as plain as the horn on a unicorn's face." But even as he spoke, he looked around. As he did, he started to swear. He wasn't usually a blasphemous man; only the prospect of battle brought foul language out in him—battle, and being tricked before battle. For, when he did look around, he saw that he had been riding west, and hadn't known it. Face hot with fury, he demanded, "Where in the damnation is Major Marmaduke?"
"I'm here, sir." His chief mage came up on donkeyback; few wizards could be trusted to ride unicorns without killing themselves. Marmaduke was a fussy little man who kept his blue sorcerer's robe spotlessly clean no matter what. "What do you need?"
"I need a wizard who's really here, not one who just thinks he is," Ned snarled. "Why the demon didn't you notice we've been riding west, not north?"
Major Marmaduke looked astonished. "But we're not riding—" he began, and then broke off. After a moment, he looked even more astonished, to say nothing of horrified. "By the gods, we've been diddled," he said.
"We sure have. I thought we were supposed to be the ones with the good wizards, and the southrons were stuck with the odds and sods." Ned scornfully tossed his head. "Seems like it's the other way round."
"Lord Ned, I am—mortified," Marmaduke stammered. "To think that I should be taken in—that I should let us all be taken in—by a spell of misdirection . . . I will say, though, that it was very cunningly laid. I did not think the accursed southrons had such subtlety in them."
"Well, they gods-damned well do," Ned growled. "And now we're going to have to backtrack and hope by the Thunderer's prong that they haven't gone and stolen a march on us. If they have, you'll pay for it, and you'd best believe that."
Marmaduke licked his lips. "Y-y-yes, sir."
With icy sarcasm, Ned went on, "You reckon you can see if they try any more magic on us while we're heading back? You up to that much, anyways?"
"I—I hope so, sir," the mage replied miserably.
"So do I. And you'd better be." Scowling, Ned shouted to his men, "They've tricked us. When we catch 'em, we'll make 'em pay. Meanwhile, though, we've got to ride like hells to get back to where we were at so we can catch 'em. Come on! We'll do it right this time!"
They rode hard. Anybody who wanted to fight under Ned of the Forest had to ride hard. As his unicorn trotted back toward the place where they'd gone wrong—Ned hoped it was back toward the place where they'd gone wrong—he kept muttering morosely about Major Marmaduke. The wizard still seemed bewildered at what had happened. Ned wasn't bewildered. He was furious. As far as he was concerned, the southrons had no business outdoing northern men when it came to sorcery.
Riding up ahead of his troopers, he was one of the first to reach the crossroads from which his force had gone astray. He couldn't imagine how it had happened. He knew which fork he should have taken. He thought he had taken it. But the southrons' magic had led him astray, and had kept him from noticing anything was wrong. He muttered again. It had certainly kept Major Marmaduke from noticing. If Colonel Biffle hadn't finally spotted the trouble . . . Ned didn't care to think about what might have happened then.
And, riding up ahead of his troopers, he was one of the first to spy the southrons riding toward the crossroads. He threw back his head and laughed. "All right, you sons of bitches!" he shouted. "You reckoned you could lead us astray and get here first. Now I'm going to show you you aren't as smart as you figured." He looked around. As usual, a trumpeter rode within easy range of his voice. He waved to draw the man's attention, then called, "Blow charge!"
As the martial notes rang out, his sword leaped free from the scabbard. The blade gleamed in the watery autumn sunshine. He spurred his unicorn forward. The well-trained beast lowered its head, aimed its ironclad horn at the enemy, and sprang toward the southrons. "King Geoffrey!" Ned shouted. Sometimes dragoon work wouldn't do. Sometimes you had to get right in there and fight unicorn to unicorn.
Some of his men yelled Geoffrey's name, too. More, though, shouted, "Lord Ned!" They fought for him personally at least as much as for the north. Their swords also flashed free. Some of them fit arrows to the strings of the light crossbows they carried. That would do for one volley, anyhow; reloading on unicornback wasn't for the faint of heart.
"Let's get 'em!" Ned roared. "This is our road, by the gods, and they've got no business trying to take it away from us."
As soon as the southrons spied his men and him, they deployed from line to column. Their own gray-clad officers briefly harangued them. Then they too were charging. "King Avram!" they cried. "King Avram and freedom!"
"To the hells with King Avram, the serf-stealing bastard!" Ned yelled. His unicorn tore a bleeding line in the flank of the first enemy beast it met. He'd trained it always to gore to the right, to protect him on that side. A rider came up to him on the left. The other fellow would have had most men at a disadvantage. Not lefthanded Ned. He chopped the southron out of the saddle. How many men had he killed in the war? A couple of dozen, surely. Well, he'd killed before the war, too. A serfcatcher didn't have an easy life.
He had more men with him than the southron commander, who'd led a mere reconnaissance in force. Ned's men were fiercer, too, at least that day. They sent the southrons, those who lived, fleeing back in the direction from which they'd come as fast as they could gallop. Ned pushed them hard. He always did.
"They know we're here now," Colonel Biffle said as the pursuit at last wound down.
Ned nodded and spoke one word: "Good."
Rollant had served in King Avram's army for a couple of years now. He'd seen things go well, and he'd seen things go wrong. He knew the signs for both.
Unicorn-riders galloping back toward the crossbowmen and pikemen were not a good sign. He knew that only too well. Turning to Lieutenant Griff, he said, "Something's gone to the hells up ahead."
"It does look that way, doesn't it?" Griff's voice broke as he answered. He kicked at the muddy ground under his shoes. He was very young, and hated showing how young he was.
Plenty of crossbowmen in the company drew the same conclusion as its standard-bearer and commander. "Who ever saw a dead unicorn-rider?" they jeered as the men on the beautiful beasts pounded past.
Some of the riders pretended not to hear. Some cursed the footsoldiers who mocked them. And one fellow yelled, "Wait till you run up against Ned of the Forest's troopers! We'll see plenty of you bastards dead, and you'd better believe it."
After that, Corporal Rollant gripped the staff of the company banner so tight, his knuckles whitened. He tramped on in silence, grim determination on his face. Lieutenant Griff needed a while to notice; he wasn't the most perceptive man ever born. But at last he asked, "Is something wrong, Corporal?"
"Ned of the Forest," Rollant said tightly. "Sir."
"Yes, his riders really fight, no doubt about it," Griff said. "I wish we had more men as good, I truly do, but—"
"Fort Cushion," Rollant broke in. "Sir."
"Oh," Griff said. For a wonder, he had the sense not to say anything more. Fort Cushion, along the Great River down in Cloviston, had been garrisoned by blonds loyal to King Avram till Ned's men overran it. Stories of what happened next varied. Ned's men claimed the blonds had started fighting again after surrendering. They'd killed almost the whole garrison as a result.
"Yes, sir." Rollant's voice was bleak. "Whatever happens, I don't intend to let those bastards get their hands on me while I'm breathing."
"I . . . see," Griff said. "Well, Corporal, taking everything together, I can't say that I blame you."
As the southron army tramped north, Rollant waited for the order to deploy from marching column into line of battle. Where Ned's riders were, the bigger army of traitors couldn't be far behind, not if rumor came anywhere close to telling the truth. Rollant wanted to fight. Part of that sprang from knowing that a blond had to do better than an ordinary Detinan to be reckoned half as good. And part of it sprang from his own desire to pay back Ned's men for what they'd down done in the southeast.
But the horn call he waited for never came. Instead, after a little while, the trumpeters blared out retreat.
"What the hells are we retreating for?" Rollant burst out.
"I don't know." Lieutenant Griff sounded almost as perplexed as Rollant, if not quite so furious. "But we have to obey the order. We can't go on and attack the traitors all by ourselves."
Rollant, just then, was ready to do exactly that. Regretfully, he realized Griff was right. Even more regretfully, he turned back toward Summer Mountain.
"It is a good defensive position." Was Griff trying to convince Rollant or himself? Rollant couldn't tell. Maybe the company commander couldn't tell, either. He went on, "If they have more men than we do . . ."
"How could our unicorn riders tell one way or the other, if they only ran into—ran from—Ned's riders?" Rollant asked.
"That's a good question, Corporal," Griff said. "I haven't got a good answer for you. I wish I did."
"We've been fighting this war for a long time now," Rollant grumbled. "Why don't we have generals who know what the hells they're doing yet?"
"I think John the Lister has a pretty good idea of what he's doing," Griff said. "If that is the traitors' whole army north of us, we've got to slow it down as much as we can. We haven't got the men to crush it all by ourselves."
"By the Lion God's claws, I'd like to try," Rollant declared.
Lieutenant Griff started to answer, then stopped and gave him a curious look. It wasn't quite the ordinary curious look he would have given had he been arguing strategy with another ordinary Detinan. It also held a certain amount—perhaps more than a certain amount—of surprise. Rollant had no trouble reading Griff's thoughts. Here's a blond who's more interested in fighting the traitors than the commanding general is. Aren't his kind supposed to be cowards and weaklings?
Wearily, Rollant hefted the company standard. Even more wearily, he said, "Sir, you didn't let me keep this because I was afraid to fight the northerners. You didn't promote me to corporal because I was afraid, either. The more of those bastards we kill, the sooner this gods-damned war'll be over."
"My," Griff said after a long, long silence. "You have got fire in your belly, haven't you?"
"Who better to have fire in his belly than somebody who grew up bound to a liege lord's lands and ran away?" Rollant replied. "I really know what we're trying to knock down. Sir."
That produced another silence, even longer than the first. Rollant wondered if he'd said too much, if Griff would take him for no more than an uppity blond from now on. At last, the company commander said, "If all blonds had your spirit, Corporal, we Detinans would have had a much harder time casting down the blond kingdoms in the north after we crossed the Western Ocean."
He means well. He's trying to pay me a compliment, Rollant reminded himself. He chose his words with care: "When we fight the traitors, sir, we've got crossbows and iron-headed pikes and unicorns and siege engines and all the rest, and so do they. What we fight with is even on both sides. If the blonds back in those days had had all that stuff instead of bronze maces and asses hauling chariots, and if they'd known more wizardry, the Detinans would have had a lot tougher time."
"So you think it was the quality of the equipment and magic, not the quality of the men?" Griff said.
"Of course, sir. Don't you?"
Again, Rollant wondered if he'd said too much. Griff startled him by laughing. "That isn't the lesson Detinans learn in school, you know," he remarked.
"Yes, I know it isn't. But don't you think it's true anyhow?"
Lieutenant Griff didn't answer right away. Rollant gave him credit for that; a lot of Detinans would have. At last, his voice troubled, Griff said, "There may be some truth in what you say, Corporal. But wouldn't you agree that the first Detinan conquerors were also heroes for overcoming so many with so few?"
Now it was Rollant's turn to think before he spoke. He'd never tried to put himself in the place of those first Detinans to cross the Western Ocean. His sympathies lay with the blonds. Only reluctantly did he take the conquerors' side in his mind. No more than a couple of hundred of them had come on that first expedition to what was now Palmetto Province. They'd pushed inland till they found the blond kingdom closest to the Western Ocean—and they'd shattered it. They might have been villains. They hadn't been weaklings.
His voice as troubled as Griff's, Rollant answered, "There may be some truth in what you say, Lieutenant."
"Thank you," Griff said, which surprised him. The company commander explained, "I've heard blonds—educated men, men who'd lived all their lives in the south and were never serfs—say the first heroes were nothing but bandits and robbers, and should have been crucified for what they did. That goes too far, I think."
"Maybe," Rollant said. "But then, I've heard Detinans—educated men who'd lived all their lives in the south and were never liege lords—say blonds were nothing but cowards and dogs, and should have got even worse than what the first conquerors gave them. That also goes too far, I think."
"That's different," Griff said.
"How?" Rollant asked. "Uh, how, sir?"
"Why . . ." Griff stopped. Undoubtedly, he'd been about to answer, Why, because that has to do with blonds, or some such thing. Unlike a lot of ordinary Detinans, he saw that wouldn't do here. He gave Rollant a lopsided grin. "Have anyone ever told you you can be difficult, Corporal?"
"Me, sir?" Rollant shook his head. "I don't know what you're talking about. All I want to do is get to the bottom of things."
"And if that doesn't prove my point, I don't know what would." The lieutenant waved to the low swell of ground ahead. "There's Summer Mountain." Not even to Rollant's eye, trained by the low country of Palmetto Province, did it look anything like a mountain. Griff went on, "As I said before, it's a good defensive position."
"Yes, sir," Rollant agreed dolefully. "I thought the idea was to get out there and fight the enemy, though. I wonder why we're not."
"Difficult," Griff repeated, but he had a smile in his voice.
When they did return to Summer Mountain, Colonel Nahath promptly set the whole regiment to digging trenches and heaping the earth up in front of them for breastworks. Rollant didn't mind digging. On the contrary—the long campaign up in Peachtree Province the previous spring and summer had taught him, along with the rest of General Hesmucet's army, the value of trenches.
"Isn't this fun?" Smitty said, flinging up dirt.
"It's a lot more fun than getting shot," Rollant answered. "To the hells with me if I want to stand out there in the open for the traitors to shoot at."
"Well, there is that," Smitty admitted. "But it's a lot of work, too."
"I don't mind work," Rollant said. "This is the kind of work I chose for myself when I volunteered to be a soldier."
Smitty gave him a quizzical look. "You sure you're one of those shiftless, no-account, lazy blonds everybody's always talking about?"
Only a few men in the regiment could ask him a question like that without making him angry. Smitty, fortunately, was one of those few. Rollant paused in his own digging, thought for a moment, and then said, "You've got a farm outside of New Eborac City, so you work for yourself, right?"
"For myself, and ahead of that for my old man, yes," Smitty answered.
"You work hard, then, right?"
"I'd better." Smitty wiped his sweaty face on his sleeve. "Who'll do the job if I don't?"
"Now imagine your boss doesn't care about you—he just wants to get work out of you," Rollant said.
"I didn't know you'd met my father," Smitty said.
That threw Rollant off his glideway path of thought. He needed some effort to return to it: "Suppose he doesn't care about you, like I said. Suppose he can do anything he wants to you. Suppose you have to do what he says, no matter what it is. And suppose, no matter what you do, you don't get to keep a copper's worth of money from the crop you bring in."
"Doesn't sound very good," Smitty said. "Got any more supposes?"
"No, that's the lot of them," Rollant said. "Suppose they're all true. How hard would you work then?"
"I'd do the least I could get away with, I expect." Smitty paused, taking the point. "So you're saying blonds aren't lazy on account of the gods made 'em lazy. You're saying they're lazy on account of the liege lords give 'em the shitty end of the stick."
"Either that or they give 'em the whole stick right across the back." Rollant turned away so Smitty wouldn't see his enormous grin. He'd actually made an ordinary Detinan understand some small fraction of what serfdom was like.
"Here, I've got a question for you," Smitty said.
"Go ahead," Rollant answered.
"You know that book that lady wrote—Aunt Clarissa's Serf Hut? How true to life is that?"
Ten years before the War Between the Provinces broke out, Aunt Clarissa's Serf Hut had scandalized the south and north, though in different ways. It had outraged the south while infuriating northern nobles. They called it a pack of lies, wrote denunciations and rebuttals by the score—and banned it in their provinces to keep serfs from getting their hands on it.
"Well, I've read it," Rollant said. "Read it a while after it came out, because I needed to learn my letters first after I ran away from Baron Ormerod. I thought it was pretty good. The liege lord in the book was a lot nastier than Ormerod, but there are some like him. I never knew a blond who was made out of sugar and honey paste, the way some of the ones in the story are, but it tells about what a hard, nasty life serfs have, and that's all pretty much true. What did you think of it?"
"Made me want to grab the first northern nobleman I saw and give him a good kick in the teeth," Smitty said.
"Suppose you just get back to work instead," Sergeant Joram rumbled from behind him.
"Yes, Sergeant," Smitty said meekly, and dug in with the shovel. But working didn't keep him from talking: "Some of the people we've got set over us, they might as well be liege lords themselves."
He had a point. In a lot of ways, underofficers had more power over common soldiers than nobles did over serfs. Rollant hadn't thought of it like that before, but it was so. Does that make me like Baron Ormerod? he wondered. In spite of the warm work, he shivered. That was a chilling thought if ever there was one.
From unicornback, Colonel Florizel called, "Come on, men! Keep moving. If we get around behind the stinking southrons, we can bag the whole rotten lot of them."
"The colonel's right," Captain Gremio agreed. "If we move fast now, it pays off later. We can give King Avram's men just what they deserve."
Sergeant Thisbe was blunter about the whole business, as sergeants have a way of being: "Keep moving, you worthless slobs! We've got somewhere to get to, and we're going to get there, gods damn it!"
And the men paid more attention to Thisbe than they did to Gremio and Florizel put together. That didn't particularly surprise Gremio. He could order them into fights where they might get killed, but Thisbe had the power to make their everyday life hells on earth.
On they tramped, making the best time they could down muddy roads. They never saw a southron unicorn-rider. Captain Gremio assumed that was Ned of the Forest's doing. Ned was no gentleman, as far as he was concerned. Gentleman or not, Ned knew what he was doing with unicorn-riders.
At last, with evening twilight fading from the sky, they had to stop for the night. Thisbe sent the spriest men out to gather wood and fill water jugs. Other soldiers simply flopped down, exhausted. As fires began to burn, the weary men gathered around them to toast hard bread and meat and simply to get warm. All through the first part of the night, more and more stragglers joined them: men who'd marched as hard as they could, but hadn't been able to stand the pace.
Gremio held a chunk of hard bread over the flames on a forked stick. He didn't watch while he did it; he was one of those who preferred not to think about the weevils that were abandoning his supper. Sometimes, of course, he had to eat bread without toasting it first. He preferred not to think about everything that crunched between his teeth then, too.
Sergeant Thisbe sat at the same fire, looking as worn as Gremio felt. One by one, soldiers lay down where they were and started to snore. Thisbe yawned, but stayed awake. So did Gremio. After a while, with more and more snores rising around them, Gremio quietly asked, "Can we talk?"
"I don't really think we've got a whole lot to say to each other, sir," Thisbe answered. "Not about that, anyway."
"I know what I know," Gremio said. "I have the evidence." Yes, he was a barrister through and through.
"You'll do what you want to do, sir." Thisbe's voice was toneless.
"But—" Gremio couldn't shout. He couldn't even swear, not without . . . He shook his head. "I don't want to tell anybody about—"
"I'm glad," the sergeant said.
"I just want to—"
Sergeant Thisbe interrupted again: "To what, sir?" Normally, a sergeant who kept interrupting an officer would find himself in trouble in short order. Things weren't normal here, as Gremio knew too well. Thisbe went on, "There's nothing you can do, sir. There's nothing anybody can do till the war's over."
"But then—" Gremio said.
"But then, who knows?" Thisbe broke in once more. And, once more, Gremio let the sergeant do it without a hint, without so much as a thought, of reprimand. "I think you're the best company commander the regiment's ever had. To the hells with me if I know whether that means anything else." A shrug. "We'll find out then. Not now."
"You know what I think of you—some of it, anyhow," Gremio said. "You know I wanted to get you promoted to lieutenant."
"I didn't want that. You know I didn't want that." The harsh, flickering shadows from the fading fire exaggerated Thisbe's rueful expression. "Now I suppose you think you know why I didn't want it, too, gods damn it."
"Maybe I do," Gremio said, quite sure he did. He took a deep breath, then continued, "Well, here's something you may not know, Thisbe d— Sergeant. Once upon a time—"
"Before I got wounded?" Thisbe asked.
"Oh, yes, a long time before you got wounded," Gremio answered. "Once upon a time, a long time before you got wounded, I told myself that if I ever met a girl who could do the things you can, I'd marry her on the spot."
"Did you?" Sergeant Thisbe's voice held no expression whatever. When Gremio tried to read the underofficer's face, he found he couldn't. The brim of Thisbe's hat cast black shadow all across it, for the sergeant stared down at the muddy ground.
Gremio nodded. "That was what I said to myself, and I meant it, too. You can take it for whatever you think it's worth, Sergeant."
"It would be worth a lot, I figure, to a girl like that," Thisbe said. "But I'm not so much of a much. I expect you could find half a dozen girls who knew more than a dumb soldier like me ever dreamed of, just by snapping your fingers." The sergeant's light, true tenor was uncommonly earnest.
"You don't give yourself enough credit." Gremio had to fight to keep anger out of his voice. "For as long as I've known you, you've never given yourself enough credit, and I can't figure out why."
Thisbe still didn't look up. The sergeant's laugh seemed anything but mirthful. "You know me. You know where I am. Can't you figure it out for yourself?"
"Well . . . maybe I can," Gremio said.
"All right, then. And if you don't mind my saying so, sir, that's about enough of that for right now. That's too much of that for right now, if you want to know what I really think." Thisbe's yawn was theatrical, but probably no less real on account of that. "I'm going to wrap myself in my blanket and go to sleep. You ought to do the same thing."
"Yes, so I should." Seeing Thisbe yawning made Gremio want to yawn, too—not that he wasn't already weary after a long day's march. "Good night, Sergeant."
"Good night, sir." Thisbe's blanket was worn, almost threadbare. Gremio had a thicker, finer one. Were things different, he would gladly have given his to the underofficer, or at least invited Thisbe to crawl under it with him. He remembered doing exactly that, back in the days before Thisbe was wounded. He could no more imagine doing it now than he could imagine chasing all the southrons back to their own part of Detina singlehanded.
His hat made a tolerable pillow. He'd long since stopped worrying about having anything fancier. He fell asleep almost at once, as he always did when the Army of Franklin was on the move. Tramping along all day would knock a man out even if he wanted to stay awake, and Gremio didn't.
Horn calls pulled him out from under his blanket in the morning. He creaked to his feet, feeling elderly. Thisbe was already awake and sipping tea from a tin cup. The northerners called it tea, anyhow. Gremio didn't want to know from what all leaves and stems it was really made. The southrons' blockade kept much of the real stuff from getting into King Geoffrey's harried realm.
Gremio fixed himself a cup of his own. Even with honey added, the brew was bitter and nasty. But it was warm, and some of those leaves helped pry his eyelids apart, the way real tea did. He said, "That's better," and drained the cup.
"Couldn't hardly get by without something hot in the morning," Thisbe agreed.
Colonel Florizel limped up. "We'll be getting on the road soon," the regimental commander said. "So far, it doesn't look like the gods-damned southrons are stirring away from Summer Mountain. If we can get around behind 'em, we'll bugger 'em right and proper." He laughed loudly.
"Er, yes, sir," Gremio said. Florizel stumped off, looking miffed that the barrister hadn't laughed with him.
Gremio probably would have, if Thisbe hadn't been standing there beside him. The sergeant sent him a reproachful look. "I thought it was pretty funny, sir. I hope we do bugger the southrons."
Had the sergeant not been there, Gremio would have laughed. He knew that. He also knew he had to say something, and did: "I didn't think it was all that much of a joke. Besides, he shouldn't have said it—"
"When I was around?" Thisbe asked. When Gremio nodded, the sergeant looked even more reproachful than before. "What's that got to do with anything? I'm just one of the boys, and everybody knows it."
"Right," Gremio said tightly. "Shall we get the men ready to move, Sergeant?"
"Yes, sir." If anything bothered Thisbe, no sign of it appeared in the sergeant's face or bearing.
And the men did move. They might have moved faster if more of them had had shoes, but northern men were too stubborn to give in on account of something that trivial. As usual, no one begrudged Colonel Florizel his place on a unicorn. His wound wouldn't have let him keep up on foot.
Ned of the Forest's men were on unicorns, too, and seemed to be doing their job. Again, Gremio spotted not a single gray-clad southron rider. His guess was that the enemy really didn't know where the Army of Franklin was. He knew a certain amount of hope on account of that. The last time the southrons had been so fooled was before the battle by the River of Death, more than a year ago now. If they could be tricked again . . . Well, who could say what might happen?
We'd better not mess things up, the way we did then, Gremio thought. The Army of Franklin could have surrounded Guildenstern at Rising Rock and forced him to surrender. They could have, but they hadn't. And, in due course, they'd paid for the omission. General Bell was trying to make amends for that now. Maybe he would. Even a hardened cynic of a barrister like Gremio couldn't help hoping.
"Form column of fours!" he yelled. The men obeyed. Before joining King Geoffrey's army, Gremio hadn't dreamt how important marching drill was. Soldiers moved in column, fought in line. If they couldn't shift from one to the other in a hurry, they were in trouble. Getting caught in column was every commander's blackest nightmare.
Up at the head of the brigade, horns ordered the advance. A moment later, Colonel Florizel's trumpeters echoed the command for the regiment. The company had a trumpeter, too. The only trouble was, he wasn't much of a trumpeter. His notes assailed Gremio's ears.
"Let's go!" Sergeant Thisbe shouted. Away the Army of Franklin went, heading south. General Bell dreamt of reaching the Highlow River. If he could do it, he would give King Avram an enormous black eye. He might remind the provinces of Franklin and Cloviston of their allegiance to King Geoffrey—and, more to the point, bring their men and supplies into the war on Geoffrey's side, not Avram's. That would make the fight in the east a whole different struggle.
Captain Gremio's dreams were smaller. He would have been satisfied—no, by the gods, he would have been delighted—if the northerners could get around behind Summer Mountain and cut off the retreat of the southrons there. One bite at a time, he told himself. If we can do one thing right, more will follow from that.
Birds filled the sky overhead. They were flying north for the winter, flying north to escape the coming cold and snow and ice. Pointing to them, Thisbe said, "They're smarter than we are—they're going the right way for this time of year."
"I was just thinking the same thing," Gremio said, and beamed at the sergeant. Thisbe didn't beam back.
Every so often, a soldier would take a shot at the stream of birds. Every once in a while, a crossbow bolt would strike home and a bird tumble out of the sky. The lucky soldier would run over and grab it and put it on his belt to cook when the army stopped that night—if some other man didn't get it first. After Gremio broke up a couple of quarrels that were on the edge of turning into brawls, he ordered the men of his company to stop shooting at the birds.
"That's not fair, Captain," a soldier said. "We're hungry, gods damn it. Anything we can get is all to the good."
"It's not all to the good if you start stealing from one another and brawling," Gremio replied. "We'll do better hungry than we will if we can't trust each other."
"The captain's right," Thisbe declared. "Most of these birds aren't any more than a couple of mouthfuls anyway. They're not worth the trouble they're stirring up."
No one could say Gremio or Thisbe ate better than the common soldiers in the company. They didn't. The soldiers might have grumbled, but they followed orders. The only trouble was, not all commanders gave those orders, so quarrels over birds elsewhere slowed the company—and a crossbow quarrel shot at a bird came down, point first, at Gremio's feet. Had it come down on his head . . . One more thing he preferred not to contemplate. He stooped, yanked it out of the ground, and held it high. "Here's another reason not to shoot things up in the air," he said.
A voice rose from the ranks: "That's right, by the gods. If we're gong to shoot our officers, we should aim straight at 'em." The marching men bayed laughter. Gremio managed a smile he hoped wasn't too sickly.
Along came a mage in a blue robe riding on the back of an ass. He was muttering to himself, his fingers writhing in quick passes as he incanted. "An ass on an ass!" another uniformed wit called. The wizard affected not to notice—or maybe, preoccupied with the spell he was casting, he really didn't. Whatever sort of magic it was, Gremio hoped it worked.
It must have, for the company, the regiment—the whole army—halted earlier than he'd expected. Colonel Florizel rode up with a great big grin on his face. "We've got 'em!" he said. "We've got 'em good, by the gods! This is the only way they can retreat, and they have to come right by us when they do. We'll land on their flank, and then—!" He slashed a finger across his throat. The soldiers raised a cheer, Gremio's voice loud among theirs.
"General John! General John, sir!" The mage shouting John the Lister's name sounded on, or maybe just over, the ragged edge of hysteria.
"What is it?" John asked. When people started shouting in that tone of voice, it wasn't going to be anything good.
And it wasn't. The mage burst into John's pavilion. Horror was etched on his face. "They've used a masking spell on us, sir!" he cried.
No need to ask who they were. "And what is this masking spell supposed to do?" John inquired. "Whatever it's supposed to do, has it done it?"
"Yes, sir!" The mage sounded like a tragedian playing in an amphitheater in front of images of the gods at a high festival. "I'm afraid they've got round behind the army, sir. We didn't notice till too late!"
What John the Lister felt like doing was kicking the mage in the teeth. Botched wizardry had cost King Avram's armies dear again and again. Now it looked as if it was going to cost John. Instead of doing what he felt like, he asked, "Didn't notice what?"
"Didn't notice General Bell's army on the move, sir," the mage answered miserably. "The wizards masked it from us till just now."
"So did Ned of the Forest's unicorn-riders." John the Lister's voice was unhappy and enlightened at the same time. He'd wondered why Ned's men had been so active, pushing back his own pickets and generally doing their best to impersonate Bell's whole army. He hadn't worried much about it, not till now. Ned was always busy and active; he wouldn't have made such a pest of himself if he weren't.
"What will we do, sir?" the gray-robed mage howled. "What can we do?"
"Well, it seems to me that getting out of this mess would be a pretty good idea," John replied. "Don't you agree?"
"Y-yes, sir. But . . . how?"
"I don't know yet," John the Lister said. "I expect I'll figure something out, though. Once I know where the enemy is, that'll tell me a lot about what I can do."
"Sir, he's—he's behind us. Between us and Poor Richard. Between us and Ramblerton." White showed all around the irises of the wizard's eyes, as if he were a spooked unicorn.
"That's not so good," John said, which would do for an understatement till a bigger one came along. He tried for a bigger one in his very next sentence: "If there's one thing you don't want, it's the traitors sitting on your supply line, especially when the harvest is done and the foraging's bad."
"How can we hope to escape?" Despite John's calm, the wizard was the next thing to frantic. "If we stay here, we'll starve. If we try to retreat past the enemy, he'll hit us in the flank. He'll probably block the road, too, so we'll have no hope of getting by."
"This isn't the best position to try to defend," John said. "Too open, too exposed. Bell's men could make a clean sweep of us, and they wouldn't have to work very hard to do it, either. If we're on the move, though—"
"If we're on the move, they'll strike us in the flanks," the mage repeated.
"Maybe they will," John the Lister agreed politely. "But maybe they won't, too. Funny things can happen when you're on the move—look at how they just diddled us, for instance. They fooled us, so maybe we can fool them, too. How's your masking spell these days, Lieutenant?"
"Not good enough, sir, or they wouldn't have been able to do this to us." The wizard still seemed ready to cry.
John the Lister slapped him on the back, hard enough to send him staggering halfway across the pavilion. "Well, you and your friends should work on it, because I think we're going to need it soon. You're dismissed."
Muttering under his breath, the mage left. Once he was gone, John the Lister spent a minute or two cursing his luck and the incompetence of the wizards with whom he'd been saddled. A lot of southron generals had sent those curses up toward Mount Panamgam, the gods' home beyond the sky. The gods, unfortunately, showed no sign of heeding them.
If nothing else, cursing made John feel better. General Guildenstern would have got drunk, which would have made him feel better but wouldn't have done his army any good. Doubting George would have loosed a volley of sardonic remarks that made him feel better and left his targets in despair. John tried to relieve his own feelings without carving chunks from anyone else. He didn't always succeed, but he did try.
Once he'd got the bile out of his system, he ordered a runner to find his adjutant and bring him back to the pavilion. Major Strabo came in a few minutes later. "What's the trouble, sir?" he asked. The commanding general explained. His walleyed subordinate seemed to stare every which way at once. "Well, that's a cute kettle of cod," Strabo said when John finished. "And what in the name of the cods' sort of coddity let the traitors hook us like that?"
"They outmagicked us," John replied. "They've done it before. They'll probably do it again. Now we have to figure out how to keep this from ending up a net loss."
For one brief, horrified moment, both of Strabo's eyes pointed straight at him. "You should be ashamed of yourself," the major said. "Sir."
"Probably," John the Lister agreed. "But I have more important things to worry about right now. So does this whole army."
"Your statement holds some veracity, yes." Major Strabo's eyes went their separate ways again. "What do you propose to do, sir?"
That was about as straightforward a question as was likely to come from John's adjutant. The commanding general answered, "I propose to get this army out in one piece if I can. If Bell forces a fight, then we give him a fight, that's all."
"Will you let him come to you, or do you aim to go to him?"
Two straightforward questions in a row—John the Lister wondered if Strabo was feeling well. He replied, "We're going back toward Poor Richard. If we can get there, it's a good defensive position. And if we stay here, Bell can starve us out without fighting. To the hells with me if I aim to let him do that. Draft orders for our withdrawal down the road to Poor Richard, warning it may be a fighting retreat."
"Yes, sir," Strabo said, and then, after some hesitation, "Uh, sir, you do know it may be a great deal worse than that?"
"Oh, yes, I know it." John nodded heavily. "I know it, and you know it. But if the men don't know it, they're likely to fight better if they have to. Or do you think I'm wrong, Major?"
"No, sir," Major Strabo answered. "I am of the opinion that your accuracy is unchallengeable. Not only that, but I think you're right."
"I'm so glad," John murmured. "Well, prepare those orders for my signature. I'll want to get moving this afternoon, so don't waste any time."
"I wouldn't dream of it," said Strabo, who was as diligent as he was difficult. "Will you want all your unicorn-riders in the van?"
Reluctantly, John the Lister shook his head. "No, we'd better leave half of them in the rear to keep Ned of the Forest off us. Hard-Riding Jimmy looks like he's still wet behind the ears, but he knows what he's doing for us, and those quick-shooting crossbows his riders have make a small force go a long way. Half the men at the van will do. And we need the rest back at the rear. We couldn't move very gods-damned fast if Ned's men kept chewing at the hind end of our column. Write 'em that way. With Ned back there, Bell won't have many unicorn-riders at the front of his army, either."
"That makes sense," Major Strabo said. "It may not be right, mind you, but it does make sense."
"I'm glad I have you to relieve my mind," John told him. Strabo smiled and inclined his head, as if he thought that a genuine compliment. Maybe he did; he was more than a little hard to fathom. John went on, "Draft those orders, now. The sooner you do, the sooner we see if we can't set this mess to rights."
"Yes, sir. You may rely on me. As soon as I pluck a quill from a goose's wing . . ." Strabo made as if to grab a goose from the sky. John made as if to strangle his adjutant. They both laughed, each a little nervously.
However difficult Strabo might have been, the marching orders he prepared were a small masterpiece of concision. Along with a detachment of unicorn-riders, he also posted most of the southron wizards in the van. John nodded approval of that. He wasn't sure how much good the wizards would do, but he wanted them in position to do as much as they could.
The army hadn't even left Summer Mountain before John realized how much trouble it was in. Sure enough, Bell's army was posted close to the road down which his own force had to withdraw. All the northerners had to do was reach out their hands, and his army was theirs. That was how it looked at first glance, anyhow. He hoped it wouldn't seem so bad as he got closer to the foe.
It didn't. Instead, it seemed worse. The northern army was drawn up in battle array perhaps half a mile west of the road leading south to Poor Richard. John felt like deploying into battle line facing them and sidling down the road crab-fashion. He couldn't—he knew he couldn't—but he felt like it.
Skirmishers rushed forward and started shooting bolts at his men. His repeating crossbows hosed them with death. Here and there, men on both sides fell. But it was only skirmishing, no worse, and didn't force him to halt his march and try to drive back the traitors.
A few northern catapults came forward, too, and flung stones and firepots at his long column. Most of the missiles missed. Every once in a while, though, one of them would take a bite out of the long file of men in gray tunics and pantaloons. The dead lay where they fell—no time to gather them up, let alone to build pyres and burn them. Soldiers with crushed limbs or with burns from a bursting firepot would go into the wagons, for healers and surgeons to do what they could.
Major Strabo said, "If their main force attacks, we are dead meat."
"Think so, do you?" John the Lister said.
"Gods-damned right I do," his adjutant answered. "Don't you?"
"Well, now that you mention it, yes," John said. "We've already got farther than I thought we would."
"What's wrong with them?" Strabo seemed almost indignant at not being annihilated. "Is our masking spell working that well?" He sounded as if he didn't believe it.
John the Lister didn't believe it, either. He had good, solid reasons not to believe it, too. "Can't be, Major," he said. "If it were, their skirmishers wouldn't know we're here."
Major Strabo's eyes slewed wildly as he watched the brisk little fight—and it was only a little fight—over on the army's right flank. "What's wrong with General Bell? Is he cracked? He's at liberty to attack us whenever he pleases, and what's he doing?"
"Nothing much." John answered the rhetorical question. Then he asked one of his own: "Are you sorry?"
"No, sir. Or I don't think so, sir. The only trouble is, if Bell isn't attacking us here, I'd like to know why he isn't. What's he got waiting for us down the road?"
That was a good question, and anything but rhetorical. "I don't know," John admitted. He waved to the men in blue, most of whom still watched his army tramp past their positions. "What I do know is, he can't have too much, because that over there has to be most of the Army of Franklin. Or will you tell me I'm wrong?"
"No, sir. Can't do it, sir," Strabo replied. "Hells, I didn't think Bell had even that many men. But where's the plug on the road? That has to be it. As soon as they force us to stop, then they'll all swarm forward." Again, he almost sounded as if he looked forward to it.
"I don't know where it is. We haven't bumped into it yet." But even as John the Lister spoke, a unicorn-rider came galloping back toward the army. Ice raced up John's spine. For a moment there, he'd almost known hope. Now the bad news would come, all the crueler for being late. "Well?" he barked as the rider drew near.
"The road's clear, sir, all the way south," the unicorn-rider said. "The traitors aren't trying to block it, not anywhere we can find."
"You're joking." John said it automatically, for no better reason than that he couldn't believe his ears.
"No, sir." The rider shook his head. "By the Thunderer's lightning bolt, the way south is as empty of men as Thraxton the Braggart's head is of sense."
"Than which, indeed, nothing could be more empty—or should I say less full?" Major Strabo shook his head, too, and answered his own question: "No, I think not, for Thraxton the Braggart unquestionably is full of—"
"He certainly is," John the Lister said hastily. "But that doesn't really matter, especially since Thraxton's not in charge of the traitors any more. What matters is, they had us all boxed in" —he waved toward the men in blue still drawn up in plain sight, the men in blue who still weren't advancing against his own force— "they had us, and they didn't finish the job. I don't know how they didn't, I don't know why they didn't, but they didn't." Most of the time, John was a serious man. Now he felt giddy, almost drunk, with relief.
"Now General Bell's let us get away, and very soon, I think, he'll rue the day," Strabo declaimed.
"Has anyone ever called you a poet, Major?" John asked.
"Why, no, sir." Major Strabo looked as modest as a walleyed man could.
"Well, I understand why," John said. His adjutant sent him an injured look. The commanding general didn't care. Something had gone wrong for the traitors. John didn't know what, but he knew the only thing that mattered: he would gladly take advantage of it.