Count Joseph, called the Gamecock, was not a
happy man. Joseph was seldom a happy man; he
would have been of more service to King Geoffrey had he been. But then, he most cordially loathed his sovereign, a feeling that was mutual. Still and all, when Avram, the new King of Detina, had made it plain he intended to free the blond serfs in the northern provinces, Joseph couldn't stomach that, either. Sooner than accepting it, he and the rest of the north had followed Avram's cousin, Grand Duke—now King—Geoffrey, into rebellion.
A sour expression on his face, Joseph—a dapper, erect little man with neat graying chin whiskers on his long, thin, clever face—left his pavilion and stared south toward the province of Franklin, from which the foe would come . . . probably before too long. The air of southern Peachtree Province was warm and moist with spring. It would have been sweet with spring, too, but for the presence of Joseph's army and its encampment by the little town of Borders. Not even the sweetest spring air could outdo thousands of slit trenches and tens of thousands of unwashed soldiers.
One of Joseph's wing commanders came up to him. Some said Roast-Beef William had got his nickname from his red, red face, others from his favorite dish. Saluting, he said, "Good morning, your Grace."
"Is it?" Joseph the Gamecock asked sardonically.
"Well, yes, sir, I think it is," William replied. Unlike a lot of officers who followed King Geoffrey, he was not a man of breeding. He was a skilled tactician, and had written the tactical manual both Geoffrey's soldiers and the southrons used. Also unlike a lot of Geoffrey's officers, Joseph emphatically included, he was not a prickly man, always sensitive of his honor. He'd even got on pretty well—as well as anyone could—with Joseph's luckless predecessor in command of the Army of Franklin, Count Thraxton the Braggart.
"By the Lion God's mane, what makes you think so?" Joseph inquired with real if dyspeptic curiosity. He pointed south. "Every southron in the world—well, every southron east of the Green Ridge Mountains—who can carry a crossbow or a pike is gathering there with nothing on his mind but stomping us into the mud. Gods damn me to the seven hells if I'm sure we can stop them, either."
"Things could be worse, sir," Roast-Beef William said stolidly. "Things bloody well were worse when the southrons chased us up here last fall after they drove us off Sentry Peak and Proselytizers' Rise. I was afraid this whole army would just up and fall to pieces then, Thunderer smite me if I wasn't."
"I know precisely how bad things were then, Lieutenant General," Joseph the Gamecock said. "Precisely." He pronounced the word with acerbic gusto.
"How could you, sir?" William inquired, confusion on his face. "You weren't here then."
"How could I? I'll tell you how. Things were so bad, King Geoffrey felt compelled to lift me from the shelf where he stowed me, dust me off, and put me back in the service of his kingdom. Things had to be pretty desperate, wouldn't you say, for his bad-tempered Majesty to chew his cud of pride and judge a soldier only by his soldierly virtues and not by whose hindquarters he kisses?"
Earnest and honest, Roast-Beef William coughed and looked embarrassed. "Sir, I wouldn't know anything about that."
"Lucky you." Joseph's scorn was withering as drought in high summer. "Three years of war now, and I've been on the king's shelf for half that time, near enough."
"You were wounded, sir," William reminded him.
"Well, what if I was? I shed my blood for this kingdom in Parthenia Province, protecting Geoffrey in Nonesuch, and what thanks did I get? I was shoved aside, given an impossible assignment by the Great River, blamed when it turned out I couldn't do the impossible, and put out to pasture till Thraxton so totally buggered up this campaign, even Geoffrey couldn't help but notice."
"Er, yes, sir." Roast-Beef William nervously coughed a couple of times, then asked, "Sir, when the southrons move on Marthasville, can we hold them out of it?"
"We have to," Joseph said. "It's the biggest glideway junction we have left. If we lose it, how do we move men and goods between Parthenia and the east? So we have to make the best fight we can, Lieutenant General. That's all there is to it. We have to hold the foe away from Marthasville." He brightened as much as a man of his temperament could. "And here comes a man who will help us do it. Good day to you, Lieutenant General Bell!" He bowed to the approaching wing commander.
"Good day, sir." Bell's voice was deep and slow. His approach was even slower. He stayed upright only with the aid of two crutches and endless determination. He'd lost a leg leading soldiers forward in the fight by the River of Death, and he'd had his left arm crippled in the northern invasion of the south only a couple of months before that. Using the crutches was torment, but staying flat on his back was worse for him.
"How are you feeling today, Lieutenant General?" Joseph asked solicitously.
"It hurts," Bell replied. "Everything hurts."
Joseph the Gamecock nodded. He recalled Bell from the days before he'd got hurt, when the dashing young officer had made girls sigh all through the north. Some called Bell the Lion God come to earth. With his long, full, dark beard and his fiercely handsome features, he'd lived up to the name. He'd also lived up to it with his style of fighting. He'd thrown himself and his men at the southrons and broken them time and again.
Now he'd broken himself doing it. His features still showed traces of their old good looks, but ravaged by pain and blurred by the heroic doses of laudanum he guzzled to try to dull it. "Does the medicine do you any good?" Joseph inquired.
Bell shrugged with his right shoulder only; his left arm would not answer. "Some," he said. "Without it, I should be quite mad. As things are, I think I am only . . . somewhat mad." His chuckle was wintry. "I have to take ever more of it to win some small relief. But my mind is clear."
"I am glad to hear it," Joseph said. He didn't fully believe it. Laudanum blurred thought as well as pain. But it did so more in some men than in others. Though he carried scars of his own, he didn't like to think about what Lieutenant General Bell had become. To hide his own unease, he went on, "Roast-Beef William and I were just talking about our chances of holding the southrons away from Marthasville this campaigning season."
"We had better do it," Bell said in his dragging tones. Laudanum was probably to blame for that, too, but he'd reached the right answer here. Joseph was in no doubt of it whatsoever. His wing commander continued, "The southrons humiliated us at Sentry Ridge and Proselytizers' Rise. We have to keep them out of Marthasville or we become a laughingstock."
That wasn't the reason Joseph the Gamecock wanted to keep General Hesmucet's army out of Marthasville, or Roast-Beef William, either, but Bell wasn't necessarily wrong. Joseph said, "By what I hear, we humiliated ourselves at Proselytizers' Rise."
"I wouldn't know, sir, not firsthand," Bell replied. "I was, ah, trying to get used to being lopsided, you might say." Joseph nodded, trying not to stare at the pinned-up leg of Bell's blue pantaloons.
"I believe you're correct, sir," Roast-Beef William said. "Count Thraxton's spell did not work as he'd hoped it might."
"No, eh?" Joseph the Gamecock's voice dripped sarcasm. "I never would have noticed. Why, I thought we'd be moving from Rising Rock on to Ramblerton next week. That is our plan, isn't it?"
"Sir?" Lieutenant General Bell said, face blank from more than laudanum. He wouldn't have recognized irony had it pierced him like iron.
"All right, sir," Roast-Beef William said—he, at least, got the point Joseph was making. "Count Thraxton's magic flat-out failed. It beat us. Without it, why would our men have run from the top of Proselytizers' Rise when they could have held off every southron in the world if only they'd stood their ground?"
"Still no excuse for that skedaddle," Bell said. "No excuse at all. You go forward and you fight like a man. That's what the gods love."
You go forward and you fight like a man. Bell had lived by that, and he'd nearly died by it, too. Now I'm in command here, and we'll try things my way, Joseph thought. If we can make the southrons pay and pay and pay for every foot of ground they take, maybe all their mechanics and artisans and farmers will get sick of fighting us and let us have our own kingdom. It's the best hope we have, anyhow—we're not going to drive them away by force of arms.
"I intend to make the enemy come forward and fight like men," he said. "I intend to make them die like men, too, in the largest numbers I can arrange. Let's see if they go on backing Avram's plan to crush us into the dust and free all our blonds from the land after they've spent a while bleeding."
"Not chivalrous," Bell said.
"I don't care," Joseph the Gamecock replied. That brought shock to Lieutenant General Bell's face despite the laudanum he poured down. Joseph repeated it: "I don't care—and by all the gods, my friends, that is the truth. I am here to keep the southrons from snuffing out this kingdom. Whether I do that or not matters. How I do it . . . Who cares?"
"Don't you want the bards singing songs about you hundreds of years after you're dead?" Bell asked. "Don't you want them treating you the same way they treated the heroes of the first conquest, the men who crossed the Western Ocean and threw down the blonds' kingdoms?"
"I couldn't care less," Joseph said, and shocked Bell all over again. "King Geoffrey gave me this job to do. He thought I was the right man for it, and I aim to show him he was right." I aim to show him he was a perfect jackass for not giving me more to do a long time ago.
Roast-Beef William said, "A defensive campaign on our part will be the most expensive for the southrons and the least expensive for us. Since General Hesmucet has far more men than we do, we need every advantage we can find."
"Where is the valor in letting the enemy dictate the terms of the campaign?" Bell asked.
"Where is the sense in attacking the enemy when you are weaker than he?" Joseph the Gamecock returned.
"We attacked the southrons at the River of Death and prevailed," Bell said.
"Yes, and you outnumbered them when you did it, too," Joseph pointed out. "King Geoffrey detached James of Broadpath's force—and you with it, Lieutenant General—from Duke Edward of Arlington's Army of Southern Parthenia and sent it here by glideway to add its weight to the fight. Without it, Count Thraxton would have been badly outnumbered, and wouldn't have attacked."
Slowly, Bell shook his head. "You make war most coldbloodedly, your Grace."
"King Geoffrey says the same thing," Joseph replied. "As you may have gathered, the king and I have a good many differing opinions. My opinion is that one makes war for the purpose of defeating the enemy by whatever means are available. If that involves wearing him out to the point where he chooses not to fight any more, so be it. I see no better hope. Do you?" He looked from Bell to Roast-Beef William.
"No, your Grace, though I wish I did," William said.
"My own view is that the purpose of war is to fight, to smash the foe," Lieutenant General Bell said.
"If we could do that, nothing would make me happier," Joseph the Gamecock said. "Do you see us doing it against General Hesmucet and the host he has assembled by Rising Rock?"
Had Bell nodded to that, Joseph would have lost his temper. But the cripple who still wanted to be a soldier shook his big, leonine head. "It is as my comrade says," he answered. "I wish I did, but I do not."
"All right, then," Joseph told him. "We are in accord." He had his doubts about that, but, for once, did not state them. He made more allowances for Bell than for most men—certainly more than he made for King Geoffrey. "That being so, I intend to make my fight in the way I mentioned. I have sent orders to the north and west to have estate-holders get their serfs out to start building fieldworks for us."
"Already, sir? So soon?" Roast-Beef William asked in surprise.
"Already. So soon," Joseph the Gamecock said grimly. "You're our master tactician, Lieutenant General, so think tactically here. If we are going to make this kind of fight, shouldn't we get ready for it ahead of time? Otherwise, our soldiers would have to do the digging themselves, as the southrons do."
"Here I agree with you completely," Bell said. "Not fitting for Detinans to do such labor when we can call on the subjected blonds."
"Just so," Joseph said; he was, for once, as well pleased to have escaped argument. "Unless this campaign very much surprises me, we shall need those works."
"If Hesmucet thinks he and the southrons can storm straight through us, he had better think again," Bell said. "I have to be strapped onto a unicorn to stay aboard, but I expect I may have one last charge left in me."
Joseph the Gamecock was an irascible man, yes, but also a courtly one. He did not care to think about twice-mangled Lieutenant General Bell going at the foe like that, but bowed from respect for his courage. Bell would do it; he didn't doubt that in the least. Bell would, in fact, surely do it with a song on his lips. That didn't mean Joseph didn't reckon him somewhere close to mad for even thinking of such a thing.
But Joseph didn't say that, either. What he did say was, "Let us hope, gentlemen, that we never have the need for such desperate measures." For a wonder, neither Roast-Beef William nor Lieutenant General Bell disagreed with him.
From his unicorn, General Hesmucet looked west to Proselytizers' Rise, then north to Sentry Peak, the stony knob that towered above the town of Rising Rock. The autumn before, blue-clad men who called Grand Duke Geoffrey the rightful King of Detina had held both strongpoints. The traitors' flag, red dragon on gold, had flown above them. Even Hesmucet, as grimly aggressive a warrior as any who followed King Avram against the traitors, marveled that the northerners had been driven from those heights, but now Avram's banner, the proper royal banner, gold dragon on red, waved over the high ground.
Hesmucet scratched at his chin. He wore a close-cropped, almost stubbly black beard, just beginning to be streaked with gray as he edged into his forties. He was not very tall and not very thick through the shoulders, but had a lithe sort of wrestler's strength that made him much more dangerous in a mêlée than he looked. He also had a driving energy that was, at the moment, aimed northwest.
Beside him, mounted on a unicorn finer than his own, sat Lieutenant General George, his second-in-command. Turning to him, Hesmucet said, "We're going to smash right through the traitors, by all the gods."
"May it be so, sir," George replied, "but I have my doubts."
"Of course you do," Hesmucet answered. "Why else would they call you Doubting George?" They also called George the Rock in the River of Death; if it hadn't been for the stand his soldiers had made the autumn before, Thraxton the Braggart's men wouldn't just have beaten southron General Guildenstern's army—they would have annihilated it. George had earned all the credit he'd got for himself that day.
Hesmucet contemplated General Guildenstern's fate. These days, that worthy was chasing blond savages on the trackless steppes of the east. He was lucky to have been allowed to remain in King Avram's service: if going off to the steppes to harry savages counted as luck, at any rate.
That could happen to me if I bungle this campaign, General Hesmucet thought. Unusually for a Detinan, he was named after a blond himself: the chieftain who'd given the kingdom so much trouble in the War of 1218. That did nothing to improve his opinion of blonds, and especially of unsubdued blonds. As far as he was concerned, the only good one was a dead one.
He brought himself back to the business at hand. "I had a message by scryer this morning from Marshal Bart in the west," he told Doubting George.
"Did you indeed?" George said, as if that were a great surprise to him. "And what did the marshal say?"
"That he is moving north today against Duke Edward of Arlington and the Army of Southern Parthenia," Hesmucet answered.
"Thunderer and Lion God bring him all success," George said. Hesmucet wondered exactly what the lieutenant general was thinking. Like Duke Edward, Doubting George was a Parthenian. Also like Edward, he was a serfholding noble. Unlike Edward, though, he'd stayed loyal to Avram and the idea of a united Detina rather than going into revolt and treason with his province and false King Geoffrey.
Did George ever stop to count the cost? He'd paid one: Geoffrey had confiscated his lands (as Avram had confiscated Duke Edward's estate, which lay just across the river from the royal capital at Georgetown). Had George chosen to shout, "Provincial prerogative forever!" he could have kept his holdings—and the north would have gained a dangerous fighting man.
George looked north and west, too. "If Marshal Bart is setting off to tangle with Duke Edward and the Army of Southern Parthenia, don't you suppose it's time we paid a social call on Joseph the Gamecock and the Army of Franklin?"
"Ah," Hesmucet said. "That must be what this little assemblage here is all about."
Again, Doubting George spoke as if in surprise: "Well, who would ever have thought of such a thing?"
This time, Hesmucet looked back over his shoulder. The entire might of his force was mustered there: unicorn-riders aboard mounts whose horns were shod with polished iron; pikemen whose spearheads gleamed in the bright spring sun; endless regiments of crossbowmen with shortswords on their hips to give them something with which to fight in case they shot their bolts and missed; mages riding asses. The soldiers' tunics and pantaloons and the mages' robes were all of one shade of gray or another. Hundreds of color-bearers carried the red dragon on gold. Great columns of ass-drawn supply wagons and siege engines on wheeled carriages completed the immense warlike host.
"Are we ready?" Hesmucet asked George.
"You're the general commanding, sir," Doubting George replied. Hesmucet cocked his head to one side, studying the reply. George wished Marshal Bart had named him, not Hesmucet, commander over all of King Avram's armies east of the Green Ridge Mountains. He made no bones about that. But was he so jealous and resentful as to be unable to serve as Hesmucet's chief subordinate?
He'd better not be, Hesmucet thought. If he is, I'll find somebody else, and I won't waste a heartbeat before I do. For now, he gave George the benefit of the doubt. "That's right," he said. "I am. Let's go, then."
He waved to the mounted trumpeters just behind him. Their polished bugles gleamed like gold under the strong spring sun as they raised them to their lips. The first thrilling notes of the Detinan royal hymn blared forth. A moment later, a great cheer from the long column of gray-clad soldiers drowned out the hymn.
"Forward!" Hesmucet shouted, trying to make himself heard above the din. "Forward against the traitors!" Those of his men who did hear him cheered louder than ever.
In the manner of a northern noble, Doubting George made his unicorn rear and paw the air with its forelegs. That, too, wrung a cheer from the soldiers. Hesmucet, who was only an ordinary rider himself, found the stunt showy and artificial. Again, he wondered whether George was trying to show him up. Again, he gave his second-in-command the benefit of the doubt.
I wonder if Joseph the Gamecock has these worries, he thought as he began to ride north. I know Thraxton the Braggart did. But then, Thraxton worried about every officer under his command. He did everything he could to make every officer under his command hate him, too. Just as well for the rightful king's cause that Thraxton never came close to realizing it.
Thraxton, these days, was back in Nonesuch, giving King Geoffrey advice. The two of them got on well, however much trouble both of them had getting along with anybody else. They deserve each other, Hesmucet thought.
"You're not dividing up the force," Lieutenant General George remarked.
"No, I'm not," Hesmucet agreed. "I don't know where in the seven hells we'll end up having to fight. Wherever it is, I want to strike as hard a blow as I can with my men."
"Good," Doubting George said. "When Guildenstern marched north from Rising Rock last fall, he split his army into three parts. We're lucky Count Thraxton didn't destroy us in detail. Losing the battle by the River of Death was bad, but that would have been even worse."
"I've got a whole swarm of scouts out ahead of us," Hesmucet said. "If Joseph wants to try to ambush me, I wish him joy of it."
"He won't have an easy time of it," George agreed. "But he has his own scouts, too, you know."
Hesmucet nodded sourly. "Every single gods-damned northerner who sees us is a scout for Joseph the gods-damned Gamecock," he said, and waved in the direction of a woman planting crops in a field. "Her husband's probably fighting for Geoffrey, and she probably has ways of getting news to his commanders."
"Too true," George said. "The other thing you'll notice in country where we've been around for a while is that you'll see almost no blonds in the fields. They will all have abandoned their lands and their liege lords and run off to us."
"I know," Hesmucet replied. "And gods damn me to the hells if I know whether that's a good thing or not, Lieutenant General. I have no great use for blonds. I never have, and I probably never will. I don't know what the devils we're going to do with all these northern blonds if they aren't going to be serfs any more. And if anybody, including King Avram himself, has any clearer notion, it would come as a great surprise to me."
Doubting George chuckled. "You sound more like a northern aristocrat than many a northern aristocrat I've heard. If you feel that way, why didn't you side with Grand Duke Geoffrey against King Avram? Some few southrons did."
"And they're all traitors, too, and they all deserve to be crucified for treason right along with Geoffrey," Hesmucet ground out. "It's very simple, as far as I'm concerned. There is only one Kingdom of Detina. One, mind you, not two or three or twelve or twenty-seven. And there's no doubt whatsoever that Avram is the rightful King of Detina. As far as I can see, that settles that. I'm a simple man. I don't much believe in or care about complicated arguments."
"Any man who calls himself simple opens himself to suspicion, in my view," George said. "If someone else calls him simple, simple he may be. If he calls himself simple, simple he is not, for if he were, he would not see that there was any other possibility."
"Hmm." After thinking about it for a little while, Hesmucet took off his gray felt hat and scratched his head. "That's a little too . . . unsimple for me."
"Is it? You'll forgive me, sir, but I have my doubts about that," Doubting George said. He hadn't got his nickname by accident; from everything Hesmucet could see, he had his doubts about everything. After a moment, he went on, "And things generally aren't quite so clear as you make them out to be, if you'll be kind enough to forgive me that as well."
"No, eh?" Now Hesmucet bristled. He didn't care to be told he was, or even might be, mistaken about anything. "How not?"
"Well, sir, if you reckon blonds worthless for anything but serfdom, how is it that you have some thousands of them serving in the various regiments of your army?"
"They aren't all good soldiers, by any means." Having taken a position, Hesmucet was not a man to retreat from it even in the face of long odds.
"No doubt you're right, sir." For a moment, Lieutenant General George sounded like the northern noble he was: most dangerous when most polite. "But then, would you say all the ordinary Detinans fighting for King Avram are good soldiers?"
"Only a fool would say all of them are, and I hope I'm not that particular kind of fool," Hesmucet replied. "I will say, though, that more Detinans make good soldiers than is true for the blonds. We're warriors in the blood, and they're not." He stuck out his chin and defied Doubting George to disagree with him.
And Doubting George didn't—not, at least, in so many words. He did murmur, "Surely the chieftain for whom you're named would have some remarks on that subject." Hesmucet's ears grew hot; Hesmucet the blond had been as fierce a warrior as any ever born, whether of his kind or among the swarthy Detinans. George added, "These northern blonds, you must recall, have been raised as serfs. If you untie a man who's been tightly bound, do you not expect to see the marks of the rope on his flesh for a time?"
"Well, well," Hesmucet said. "I didn't think you were a blond-lover, sir."
He wondered if he'd gone too far. In a different tone of voice, that could have been a deadly insult. As things were, George only shrugged and remarked, "Some of them, I assure you, are quite lovable." He took his hands from the reins for a moment to shape an hourglass in the air.
Hesmucet laughed. "Well, maybe so. I have heard stories along those lines. I suspect you would know better than I, though." How had Doubting George amused himself on his estate in Parthenia? Did he use the labor of any young serfs who looked like him?
George didn't answer any of that. Instead, he counterattacked: "You had your chances, too, sir, didn't you? Don't I remember that you were teaching in a military collegium near Old Capet when Grand Duke Geoffrey took the northern provinces out of Detina?"
"I was indeed," Hesmucet replied. "But what you also need to remember is that I had my wife along with me while I was there."
"I see," George said. "Yes, that could matter. It would make more difference to some than to others, I suppose."
Which sort are you? lingered behind his words. "I'm not General Guildenstern, if that's what you're wondering," Hesmucet said.
"Few men are," Doubting George replied. "I know of at least one pretty little blond girl in Rising Rock whom Marshal Bart—he was only General Bart then, of course—turned down flat. Not that she was so flat herself, you understand, and not that Guildenstern had turned her down before, either."
"I'm not surprised Bart turned her down," Hesmucet said. "He really is enamored of his wife."
"She—the blond girl—was quite miffed," George said. "Marshal Bart's wife would have been, had things gone otherwise. `Turned me down flat,' the maid kept saying."
"Let's see if we can turn the traitors down flat," Hesmucet said, and his second-in-command nodded agreement. Hesmucet wondered if George had tried to soothe the blond girl's wounded feelings. Bold as he was, he lacked the nerve to ask.
Captain Gremio was still getting used to wearing epaulets on both shoulders. He'd spent the first two and a half years of the war as Captain Ormerod's lieutenant in this company of crossbowmen recruited from in and around Karlsburg, the capital and chief town of Palmetto Province. But Ormerod had stopped a crossbow quarrel trying to stem the northerners' rout at Proselytizers' Rise, and so the company had been in Gremio's hands ever since. He'd finally even got the rank that went with company command.
Not all the other officers in Colonel Florizel's regiment approved of Gremio's promotion. His lip curled. He had a long, thin, intelligent face—and a gift for making his lip curl and assuming other expressions at need: he was a reasonably successful barrister in Karlsburg.
His success in his chosen field kept his brother officers from making their sneers too open. But it also guaranteed that the sneers would be there. Almost all those putative brothers were noblemen, liege lords, owners of broad estates and overlords of serfs sometimes by the dozen, sometimes by the thousand. They looked down their noses at him because he made his living by his own wits and not from the sweat of blond brows.
He looked down his nose at them because they were, for the most part, blockheads of the purest ray serene. He also envied them because, in the society of the north, acquiring an estate full of hard-working serfs was the be-all and end-all. He was a hard-working curiosity. The nobles, in their opinion and his as well, were the salt of the earth.
"Good morning, Colonel Florizel," he called, tipping his hat as the regimental commander limped by.
"And a good day to you as well, Captain." Florizel, though a belted earl, did treat Gremio as if he were of noble blood himself. Gremio couldn't find fault with the regimental commander over that, and Gremio was a man who, before the war began, had made his living by finding fault.
"How's your leg, your Excellency?" he asked now.
"Well, it'll never be what it was," Earl Florizel replied. He'd been wounded in the battle by the River of Death the autumn before, and hadn't been able to get about for some time afterwards. Even now, he looked as if he would be more comfortable leaning on a stick. But he went on, "If Lieutenant General Bell can lead a wing without a leg, I suppose I can try to lead a regiment with a sore one."
"Bell's courage is an example to us all," Gremio agreed. He had a lower opinion of Lieutenant General Bell's brains, but kept that to himself. It didn't change the point Colonel Florizel was trying to make.
Florizel snapped his fingers. "Speaking of wing commanders, that reminds me. You'll be pleased to hear that Leonidas the Priest has returned to command a wing of the Army of Franklin."
"I will?" Captain Gremio said in real surprise. "Why?"
Colonel Florizel had big bushy eyebrows. They fluttered now, like moths trying to escape from his forehead. "Why? I'll tell you why, Captain. Because having a hierophant of the Lion God leading our soldiers will surely lead the god to support us with claws and fangs."
"Surely," Gremio said. Being a barrister, he had practice disguising his tone, and Florizel would think he had agreement, not sarcasm, in mind. "Indeed, sir, Leonidas the Priest is a very holy and pious man."
"He certainly is," Florizel said. "And any man dismissed from his command by Thraxton the Braggart has to have more going for him than meets the eye."
"Hmm. I hadn't thought of that. You've got a point, your Excellency, no doubt about it," Gremio said. That he meant. But it remained one of the all too few points in Leonidas' favor, as far as he was concerned. The hierophant of the Lion God was a holy and pious man. As far as Gremio could see, though, neither holiness nor piety was an essential soldierly virtue. Of those virtues, Leonidas had displayed very few.
"Thraxton was a disaster for this army—a disaster, I tell you," Florizel said. "I do hope Count Joseph will be able to pick up the pieces and shape us into a decent fighting force once more."
"So do I," Gremio said. "He'd better. If he doesn't, this whole eastern land is lost to King Geoffrey, and I don't see how he can hope to hold off King Avram without it."
"Avram is a tyrant. The gods hate him," Florizel growled. Gremio nodded; he certainly agreed with that, and knew hardly anyone from Palmetto Province who didn't. His home province had been the first to renounce allegiance to Avram and fall in behind Geoffrey's banner. After a ruminative pause, Colonel Florizel continued, "But, as you say, Captain, Geoffrey does need land of which to be the king. We shall have to do everything in our power to hold back General Hesmucet, then."
"He'll have more men than we do," Gremio said gloomily. "The southrons always have more men than we do—except at the River of Death, and Count Thraxton frittered away what we won there."
"They may have more men, but we have better mages," Florizel said. "We have to have strong sorcery at our disposal, for we need it to keep the serfs subdued. The southrons are a land of shopkeepers and peddlers. What need have they for the true practice of magecraft?"
"The true practice of magecraft is a very fine and important thing," Gremio said. "What we've had . . . Everyone denies it, but everyone knows we lost at Proselytizers' Rise because Thraxton bungled his spells. One of them was supposed to come down on the southrons' heads but landed on our poor men instead, and sent them running off to be shot down like partridges."
"I have heard that," Florizel said. "I was not close by at the time of the battle, so I can't testify as to its truth."
Gremio smiled. "Spoken like a barrister, sir."
"From you, Captain, I will take that for a compliment," the regimental commander replied with a smile of his own. "There are other men, you will understand, who would use it intending something else."
"Yes, sir," Gremio said resignedly. He knew people sneered at men who practiced law. He never had quite understood why. Without barristers and solicitors, how would men who disagreed solve their problems? By going to war with one another, that's how, he thought. Some wars were necessary—this one, for example, since King Avram insisted on trampling down long-established law and custom in the northern provinces. But most arguments were, or could be, settled more readily than that.
Colonel Florizel tipped his hat and took his leave, still favoring that leg. In an odd sort of way, the wound he'd taken by the River of Death might have saved his life. Major Thersites, who'd taken over the regiment while Florizel couldn't fight, had died on the forward slopes of Sentry Peak, vainly trying to hold back Fighting Joseph's southrons. Florizel was a brave man. He might easily have perished there himself.
Gremio missed Thersites even less than he missed Captain Ormerod. The major had been a swamp-country baron. He'd claimed he was a baron, at any rate, and he was a good enough man of his hands that no one ever challenged him on it. But all he'd done, besides aping and envying his betters, was criticize and carp at them. A little of that was bracing. A lot of it was like drinking vinegar all the time. Gremio wondered in which of the seven hells the unlamented Thersites' soul currently resided.
"Leonidas the Priest in charge of a wing again!" Gremio said—even easier and more enjoyable to resent a live man than a dead one, for a live man might yet offend afresh, where a dead man's affronts were fixed, immutable.
After a moment, though, Gremio shrugged. The Army of Franklin hadn't performed noticeably better without Leonidas than it had with him. Presumably, that meant his return wouldn't hurt the army much.
Someone coughed behind Gremio, as if tired of waiting to be noticed. Gremio turned. "Oh. Sergeant Thisbe," he said. "What is it?"
The company's first sergeant was a lean young man who, unusually for a Detinan, kept his cheeks and chin shaved smooth. Gremio approved of him; he did his job competently and without any fuss. "I was just wondering, sir," he said now, "if the colonel had any word on when we'd be moving out of winter quarters. The sooner I can prepare the men, the better."
"Quite right, quite right," Gremio said approvingly. "But no, Joseph the Gamecock has yet to issue any orders along those lines."
"All right, sir," Thisbe said. "I expect we'll know when General Hesmucet starts moving north against us."
"I should hope so," Gremio exclaimed. "This is our country, after all. When the enemy moves through it, the people always let us hear what he's up to."
"Yes, sir," the sergeant said. "Same as the blonds do for the foe with us."
"Er—yes," Gremio said. It wasn't so much that Thisbe was wrong. The sergeant, in fact, made a real and important point. "Good of you to think of that." Here in the north, Detinans were so used to thinking of their serfs as hewers of wood and drawers of water, they too readily forgot blonds were men like any others, with eyes to see, wits to think, and tongues to speak.
"I hear we've got serfs digging trenches and making earthworks for us from here all the way up to Marthasville," Sergeant Thisbe said. "Do you really suppose, sir, that some of them won't tell the southrons as much of what we're up to as they can figure out?"
"No, I don't suppose anything of the sort." Even had Gremio supposed anything of the sort, he wouldn't have admitted it. A barrister never admitted anything he didn't have to. He went on, "We do try to keep as many blonds from escaping as we can, you know. I'm sure the general commanding is doing his best to make sure no really important information gets to Hesmucet."
"I hope so." Thisbe's light tenor could be remarkably expressive. Here, the sergeant packed a world of doubt into three words. Gremio wouldn't have wanted to go to court against a barrister with such dangerous skills.
Before he could say so—he would have meant it as nothing but praise—horns blared, summoning the regiment to assembly. No, not just the regiment: the whole brigade, maybe even the whole army. Those horns were blaring all over the encampment in and around Borders.
"We can talk about this more another time, Sergeant," Gremio said. "For now, we've got to round up the men." He spoke of them as if they were so many sheep. He sometimes thought of them that way, too, though he was careful not to let them know it. He had to keep their respect, after all.
"Yes, sir." Thisbe saluted. The sergeant went about the job with quiet but unhurried competence. Gremio wondered what he'd done in or around Karlsburg before taking service with King Geoffrey's army. He didn't know; unlike most of his men, Thisbe didn't talk much about what he'd done or what he hoped to do. He just did whatever needed doing, and did it well.
Thanks in no small part to him, Gremio's company was among the first in Colonel Florizel's regiment to assemble. Small farmers, tradesmen, shopkeepers—by now, after three years of war, telling at a glance what a soldier had been was a hopeless, unwinnable game. Despite individual differences, all the men looked very much alike: lean, sun-browned, poorly groomed, dirty, wearing blue uniforms in no better shape than they were. Some of those blue tunics and pantaloons had started life as gray tunics and pantaloons, and been taken from southrons who didn't need them any more and then dyed. Some few gray pantaloons hadn't been dyed at all. That went against orders, but happened nonetheless.
A nasty, frowzy crew, would have been the first thought of anyone seeing Gremio's company—or, very likely, any company in the Army of Franklin. But a second thought would have followed hard on its heels: these men can fight.
Florizel limped out in front of the regiment. He carried a folded sheet of paper, and ostentatiously unfolded it to draw the men's attention. A nice bit of business, Gremio thought, resolving to use it in the courtroom one day.
"Men of Palmetto Province!" Florizel boomed. "We were first in our rejection of that gods-damned maniac who calls himself King Avram and sits in the Black Palace in Georgetown like a hovering vulture, waiting for the north to die so he may feast on our dead flesh and crack our bones. Now once more his wicked armies advance on us, and we must be among the first to throw them back."
They raised a cheer. Gremio found himself cheering, too. He wondered why. They'd all had countless chances to be maimed or killed. Now Florizel was telling them they were about to get more. And, instead of cursing him, they cheered. If they weren't utterly mad, Gremio had never heard of anyone who was.
"Men of Detina! Brave men! Patriots!" Florizel went on. "There are two gaps through which the cursed southrons might attack us. We shall beat them back from both. We shall not let them ravage Peachtree Province. We shall not let them steal from us the great city of Marthasville. The gods love King Geoffrey. Our cause is just. Provincial prerogative forever!"
"Provincial prerogative forever!" the men shouted. Gremio's voice was loud among them. The Army of Franklin was in good spirits, if nothing else. However much that would help in the fight against Hesmucet, Joseph the Gamecock had it working in his favor.
Lieutenant General Bell reached for his crutches. Getting out of a chair was a struggle for a man with one leg and one good arm, but he managed. The trick was to lunge forward and upward, gain momentary balance, get one crutch under his good arm for a second point of support, and then get the other crutch under his bad arm, under the worthless piece of flesh and bone that hung from his shoulder but would never be good for anything again.
Oh, it's good for something, he thought as he swung himself forward and ducked his way out of his pavilion. It's good for causing me pain. The shattered shoulder still felt as if it had melted led poured into the joint. It hurt even worse than the stump of his leg, and the festering in his thigh had almost taken his life, there after the fight by the River of Death. He remembered the stink of the pus after they'd drained it. The chirurgeons assured him that was all over now.
They assured him of that, yes. But why did he still hurt, then?
Why, in the end, didn't matter so much. That he still hurt . . . that mattered. He paused, steadied himself on his crutches, and used his good hand to extract the bottle of laudanum he always carried with him. Bringing the bottle up to his mouth, he extracted the cork with his teeth. He swigged. Laudanum wasn't made to be swigged; it was made to be taken by the drop. Bell didn't care. Drops didn't come close to making his torment retreat.
Spirits and distilled poppy juice: fire and night going down his throat together. After a little while, he grunted softly and said, "Ahhh!" The pain didn't disappear; it never disappeared. But it receded, or, more accurately, he floated away from it. The laudanum didn't make him sleepy, as it did with many men. If anything, it left him more awake than ever. But it did make him slow, so that he often had to grope for a word or an idea.
All around him, the Army of Franklin's encampment bubbled like a pot left unwatched on a cookfire. A squadron of unicorns trotted off toward the south. A column of men tramped away, heading southeast. Joseph the Gamecock was doing everything he could to hold back General Hesmucet's bigger army.
Everything he could to hold it back, yes. Lieutenant General Bell muttered something his bushy beard and mustaches fortunately swallowed. He'd never been one for hanging back. He wanted to go at the enemy, not try to keep him away from a city. What kind of war was that?
Joseph's kind of war: he answered his own question. He muttered again, rather louder. A sentry gave him an odd look. He glowered back. The man dropped his eyes.
His aide-de-camp, a dour major named Zibeon, came up to him and asked, "What do you need, sir?"
Now there was a question with a multitude of possible answers. A new leg was the first that sprang to Bell's mind. An arm that works followed almost at once. Not far behind ran a way to banish pain without slowing my wits to a crawl. And, outdistanced by those three but still galloping hard, came a command due my station.
But Zibeon couldn't give him any of those things. The first two would have taken a miracle from the gods, and the gods doled out miracles in niggardly wise these days. The third would have taken a miracle among the healers—more likely, but not much. As for the fourth, that lay in King Geoffrey's hands. Lieutenant General Bell found himself not altogether without hope there.
"Fetch me my unicorn," Bell said. That Major Zibeon could do.
That Major Zibeon plainly did not want to do. "Sir, wouldn't you be more comfortable in a buggy?" he asked.
"No," Bell snapped. So far as it went, that was true. Bell would not be comfortable in a buggy. He wouldn't be comfortable anywhere, probably not till they laid him on his funeral pyre. He might perhaps be less uncomfortable in a buggy, but he had no intention of admitting that to his aide-de-camp. "My unicorn is what I asked for, Major, and my unicorn is what I require."
Zibeon's long, sad face got longer and sadder. "Sir, if you were to fall off the beast, the result would be unfortunate for you. It would also be unfortunate for the kingdom, if I may take the liberty of saying so."
"Fall off?" Bell echoed in tones of disbelief. "Fall off? How in the seven hells can I fall off the gods-damned beast?" He gestured toward his pinned-up pantaloon leg. "You've got to tie me aboard the miserable animal to get me to stay on at all. Does a lashed-on sack of beans fall off an ass' back? My name isn't George, Major, but I doubt it."
The laudanum took the edge off his temper, as it took the edge off his torment. It would have left most men as insensitive as they were insensible. Bell, now, Bell reached for his swordhilt, although, considering his mobility, he would have had a better chance trying to brain any foe with a crutch.
With a sigh, Major Zibeon yielded. "Let it be exactly as you say, Lieutenant General." He raised his voice, shouting for a serf.
The blond groom fetched the unicorn in short order. Bell clambered aboard the splendid white beast, disdaining help from either the blond or his aide-de-camp. He wasn't weak, even now. Certain parts were missing, sure enough, or didn't work as the gods intended, but what remained in working order still worked well. He tolerated the straps that did indeed make him feel like a sack of beans. Without them, he could not sit the unicorn.
Another general who'd served in the Army of Southern Parthenia was known as Peg-Leg Dick these days. But he'd lost his leg below the knee, and had enough left to grip a unicorn's barrel as he rode, even if the peg stuck out at an odd angle and made him instantly recognizable. Bell's leg was off only a few inches below the hip. He would never have a peg. He would never be able to stay on a unicorn without help, either.
But, once helped, he could ride. He set spurs—well, spur—to the beast. It bounded away, leaving Zibeon and the serf groom behind. For a moment, Bell felt almost like the man he'd been before the fights at Essoville and the River of Death. For a moment, he felt free and strong and able. Maybe the laudanum let him forget his wounds a little longer than he would have without it.
When he reached the house where Count Joseph made his headquarters, he had to untie himself from the saddle, hand his crutches down to a waiting soldier, and then descend from the unicorn and reclaim the crutches. The process was slow, laborious, and painful. Almost everything Lieutenant General Bell did since his maiming—no, since his maimings—involved long, slow, painful processes.
Joseph the Gamecock came out of the house while Bell dismounted. Courteous as a cat, the general commanding the Army of Franklin waited for his wing commander to gather himself before bowing. "Good day, Lieutenant General," Joseph said. "What can I do for you this lovely afternoon?"
"Is it?" Bell hadn't noticed. He attacked conversations as directly as he attacked enemies: "The southrons are moving."
"Indeed they are," Joseph agreed. "Both hereabouts and in Parthenia, I am given to understand."
Bell ignored that, too. Parthenia was, at the moment, outside his purview. "Where do we strike them?" he demanded.
"We don't." Joseph the Gamecock was every bit as blunt. "We have been over this ground before, you know."
"Yes, I do know, and the more I think about it, the more it pains me," Bell replied. "Some pains, sir, laudanum does not touch."
With a sigh, Joseph the Gamecock condescended to explain: "Consider, Lieutenant General. We have to the south of us the rough country of Rockface Rise. There are only two gaps in the rise, two places where the southrons can come at us. By all the gods, I hope they try smashing through the Vulture's Nest or the Dog's Path. If they do, we'll still be killing them there this fall. I intend to send your wing to hold the Vulture's Nest. That will give you enough bloodshed, I vow, to satisfy the most sanguinary man ever born."
"Killing southrons is all very well," Bell said stiffly. "Indeed, it is better than very well."
"I should hope so—it's what we're here for," Joseph the Gamecock said. "And when your wing takes its position, you will find that the serfs I've set to work have fortified the gap so that not even a mouse could sneak through without paying with its life—not even a mouse, I tell you."
"That is good, in its way," Bell said, "but only in its way. I do not care to fight in the open field as if I were besieged in a castle."
"Our whole kingdom is besieged," Joseph said, "and we needs must keep the enemy from entering into it."
"We can drive them back," Lieutenant General Bell insisted. "We can beat them in the open field."
"You may perhaps be right," Joseph said. "If the Army of Franklin were yours to command, you might venture the experiment. But, since King Geoffrey has seen fit to entrust it to me, I have to do what I believe to be in its best interest, and in the best interest of the kingdom. Do you understand me? Have I made myself clear enough, or shall I scratch pictures in the dirt for you with the point of my sword?"
Bell glared at him. "Is that an insult, sir?"
"Only if you choose to take it as one," Joseph the Gamecock retorted. His temper was, if anything, even shorter than Bell's, and he had not the excuse of pain from his wounds, for he'd been hurt almost two years before and was fully healed. His own eyes snapping, he went on, "I reckon it an insult that you challenge the orders of your commanding officer in this unseemly fashion."
"You are welcome to challenge me, sir," Bell said. "Unfortunately, as my rank is lower than yours, I am forbidden by King Geoffrey's regulations from challenging you. But I assure you, sir, I will endeavor to give satisfaction."
"I don't want to challenge you, you young idiot," Joseph said testily. "I want to use you. I want to use you to kill the southrons in great whacking lots as they come north. In my view, that remains our best hope of winning this war: to make the enemy too sick of the fight to go on. If every other household in New Eborac and Loveton and Horatii is in mourning, the people will make King Avram give up the fight and let the north go our own way."
"Gods grant it be so," Lieutenant General Bell replied. "A surer way, I think, is to defeat the invader on the battlefield in open combat."
"That would be easier if we had twice the men he did rather than the other way round," Joseph the Gamecock said. "I ask you straight out: will you defend the Vulture's Nest for me, or shall I give the job to Roast-Beef William or to Leonidas the Priest?"
"I will defend it," Bell said. "I fail in no obedience, sir. But I am a free Detinan no less than you. I do intend to state my mind."
"Really?" One of Joseph's expressive eyebrows quirked. "I never would have noticed. Very well, Lieutenant General. You are dismissed, and I shall rely upon your formidable skills. I know you serve the kingdom with a whole heart, regardless of how you chance to feel about me."
"Yes, sir. That is true," Bell agreed. Because of his crutches, he didn't have to salute the commanding general. He hitched away, struggled aboard his unicorn after stowing his crutches, waited for the attendant to tie him on, and rode back to his own headquarters.
Once there, he sat down inside his pavilion, inked a pen, and began a letter to a man with whom he'd been corresponding ever since becoming one of Joseph the Gamecock's wing commanders. Your Majesty, he wrote, I have just come from yet another conversation with the general commanding, this one no more satisfactory than any of those I have previously held with him. As I have said in my earlier letters, my opinion continues to be that the Army of Franklin is in better condition and more capable of offensive operations than Count Joseph believes. How can any man doubt the fire inherent in the hearts of our brave northern soldiers, and their innate superiority to the southron foe? We could, and we should, go forth against the enemy instead of waiting for him to come to us.
He inked the pen again, paused for thought, and then continued, As proof of the straits to which the southrons are reduced, I need do no more than note that, in the army now moving against us, General Hesmucet has, mixed promiscuously through its ranks, several brigades' worth of blonds. If the fighting spirit of the southrons were not all but extinct, would they resort to such a desperate expedient? Surely not, your Majesty; surely not. In the hope that the gods grant you the good fortune and victory you deserve, I have the honor to remain your most humble and obedient servant. . . .
After signing the letter, he sealed it with his personal signet, addressed it, and called for a runner. "See that this gets into the post to Nonesuch without delay," he told the man. "Its existence is, of course, completely confidential."
"Of course, sir," the courier replied.
Rollant was glad to be marching north, marching against the Detinan noblemen, the Detinan liege lords, who would have left the kingdom when Avram proposed freeing their serfs from the land they tilled. He sang the Detinan royal hymn with particular fervor as he tramped along. It meant, he thought, more to him than to many of his comrades.
"You can't sing worth a lick," Smitty told him. The two crossbowmen had fought side by side ever since the regiment formed a year or so before. Smitty came off a farm outside the great city of New Eborac. He was a typical enough Detinan: on the stocky side, swarthy, with black hair and eyes and a shaggy black beard.
"I don't care," Rollant answered. "I have fun trying."
"Nobody who listens to you has any fun," Smitty assured him.
"Don't listen, then," Rollant said. "Sing."
Sing he did himself, loudly, enthusiastically, and probably not very well. He lived in New Eborac, with his wife and little boy. He made a good enough living as a carpenter, or had in peacetime. Thus far, he seemed a typical enough Detinan himself.
Thus far—and no further. He wore gray tunic and pantaloons like Smitty, like everyone else around him. There their resemblance ended. Rollant was fair-skinned and blue-eyed, with hair and beard yellow as butter. He'd grown up on a feudal estate in Palmetto Province, not far outside Karlsburg—and had fled the land to which he was legally bound, fled south to New Eborac, where serfdom had long been extinct, about ten years before. His wife was born in the south, and had never known a liege lord's exactions. Thanks to Norina, Rollant had his letters.
Smitty said, "Suppose I tell you to shut the hells up or I'll pop you one."
"Talk is cheap," Rollant answered. "You want to try and do something about it after march today, you come right ahead and see what kind of welcome you get."
Smitty was his friend, or as close to a friend as a blond could have among Detinans. They'd fought shoulder to shoulder. They'd saved each other a couple of times. But Rollant didn't dare take a challenge like that lightly, and he wasn't sure whether or how much Smitty was joking.
I have to be twice as good, twice as tough, as an ordinary Detinan to get myself reckoned half as good, half as tough. Rollant had had that thought so many times, it hardly sparked resentment in him any more. It was part of what being a blond in a black-haired land meant.
A lot of Detinans thought blonds couldn't, wouldn't, fight for beans. The Detinans' ancestors had crossed the Western Ocean centuries before, and promptly subjected the kingdoms full of blonds they found in the north of this new land—and the more scattered hunters and farmers who lived farther south. The campaigns were monotonously one-sided, from which the Detinans inferred that blonds were and always would be a pack of spineless cowards.
They had iron weapons. We had bronze. They rode unicorns. We'd never seen them before—we had ass-drawn chariots. They knew how to make fancy siege engines. We didn't. Their mages were stronger than ours. Their gods were stronger than ours. No wonder we went down like barley under the scythe.
Like almost all blonds in the Kingdom of Detina these days, Rollant reverenced the Thunderer and the Lion God and the rest of the Detinan pantheon. He knew the names of the gods his own ancestors had worshipped—or of some of them, anyhow. He still believed in those gods. He believed in them, but he didn't reverence them. What point to that? The blonds' gods had been as thoroughly beaten as their former votaries.
"Never mind," Smitty said, and started blatting out the royal hymn himself.
Rollant howled like a wolf. "You're worse than I am—to the seven hells with me if you're not."
"To the seven hells with you anyway," Smitty said cheerfully. He kept on singing.
Sergeant Joram winced. "Lion God's hairy ears, Smitty, stuff a sock in it. You couldn't carry a tune in a knapsack."
"Sergeant!" Smitty said reproachfully, but he did quiet down.
"I told you you couldn't sing, too," Rollant said. "Would you listen to me?"
"I wouldn't listen to Joram if he weren't my sergeant," Smitty answered. "That's what being a free Detinan is all about: the only person you have to listen to is yourself, most of the time."
"By the gods, I know that," Rollant said. "Why do you think I ran away from my liege lord's estate? I got sick of having somebody else tell me what to do all the time. Wouldn't you?"
Before Smitty could answer, Joram went on, "And you, Rollant, you sound like a cat just after its tail got stepped on."
"Thank you, Sergeant," Rollant said sweetly. Under his breath, he said something else, something less polite. Smitty guffawed. Sergeant Joram sent them both suspicious looks, then went off to harass somebody else.
Smitty said, "I'll tell you something. Back before the war, I didn't have any idea what being a serf was like. We haven't had anybody tied to the land since before my pa was born, not in New Eborac we haven't. But this whole business of soldiering, of having somebody telling you what to do just on account of he's got himself a higher rank than yours—it sticks in the craw, it surely does."
Rollant didn't particularly like taking orders, either, not when he'd run away from Baron Ormerod to escape them. By the mad fortune of war, Ormerod had almost killed him in the skirmishing before the battle by the River of Death, and he had killed his former liege lord not long after gaining the top of Proselytizers' Rise. He couldn't think of many things of which he was more proud.
Still, Smitty needed an answer. Rollant did his best to give him one: "It's not the same. There are rules here. Liege lords, the only rules they have are the ones they make up. If you lose a trowel and your liege lord decides to flay the hide off your back with a whip for it, who's to say he can't? Nobody. If you give him a sour look afterwards and he whips you again, who'll stop him? Nobody. He'll say he reckoned you were plotting an uprising, and he doesn't have to say anything past that. Or if he thinks your sister is pretty, or your wife . . ."
"They really do that?" Smitty said.
"Of course they really do that," Rollant said. "Baron Ormerod, he was a regular tomcat amongst the serf huts. Why not? If your mother was a serf, you're a serf, too, even if you do look like your liege lord."
"That's a pretty filthy business, all right," Smitty said.
With a shrug, Rollant answered, "Whoever's on top is going to give it to whoever's on the bottom." He used a gesture that showed exactly what he meant by give it to. Smitty clucked in delicious horror. Rollant went on, "If we'd licked you Detinans a long time ago, you'd've ended up slaving for us. But that's not what the gods had in mind, and so it didn't happen."
Smitty grunted. He plainly didn't like thinking about might-have-beens. But then he wagged a finger at Rollant. "You've got no business talking about `you Detinans.' If you're not one yourself, then what's King Avram been fussing and fuming about all this time? If you're not one yourself, what are you?"
"What am I?" Rollant echoed. It was a good question. He spoke Detinan. He followed Detinan gods. Avram did want to free his people from their ties to the land and make the law look at them the same way it looked at every other Detinan. And yet, the question had a dreadfully obvious answer. "What am I? Just a gods-damned blond, that's all. And there's plenty of southrons who'd say it along with the traitors in the north."
He wondered if Smitty had ever said such a thing. Probably. By everything he'd seen and heard, there weren't a whole lot of Detinans—ordinary, gods-fearing Detinans, they would surely call themselves—who didn't say such things in places where they didn't think blonds could hear. But Smitty didn't mock blonds when Rollant could hear him, which put him up on a lot of his countrymen.
What Smitty said now was, "You aren't the only blond in King Avram's army, Rollant. When we get done licking the northerners with them helping, folks'll have a lot harder time saying blonds can't fight. And if a man can do a proper job of fighting, he's on his way to being a real Detinan."
If a man can stand up to a Detinan was part of what he meant. The Detinans had spent centuries forcing blonds down, and then wondered that they didn't leap to their feet at once when no longer held down by laws. Rollant said, "Well, there's Hagen, or there was."
"Gods damn Hagen, and I daresay they're doing it," Smitty said. "On account of Hagen, we've got Lieutenant Griff in charge of this company instead of Captain Cephas, and Griff isn't half the man the captain was."
"Captain Cephas turned out to be too much of a man for his own good," Rollant said. "If he hadn't messed around with Hagen's wife—"
"Corliss didn't need much messing with," Smitty said.
Rollant couldn't argue that. It hadn't been a rape, or anything of the sort. He felt a certain amount of responsibility for what had happened, because he'd found the two blonds and their children near Rising Rock after they'd fled their liege lord. Hagen had cooked and cut wood and fetched and carried for the company, getting paid for his labor for the first time in his life. Corliss had got paid for doing laundry, too. She hadn't got paid for warming Cephas' cot, not so far as Rollant knew. She'd just wanted the company commander, as he'd wanted her. And, right after the battle of Proselytizers' Rise, she'd gone into his tent—and Hagen had followed her with a butcher knife. Now all three of them were dead; Cephas had managed to use his sword before falling.
"You can't say Hagen didn't act the way any outraged Detinan husband would have," Rollant remarked.
"Well, no. So you can't," Smitty admitted. "But I wish to the gods he hadn't done it. Griff squeaks when he talks, gods damn it." His voice went into falsetto for a moment to imitate the young lieutenant.
They tramped on. They'd come this way before, on the way to what turned out to be the fight by the River of Death. They had a bigger army now, and it was all together, not scattered into several detachments. They also had General Hesmucet leading them now, not hard-drinking General Guildenstern—surely a gain. Even so, Rollant made sure his crossbow and quiver of bolts were where he could grab them in a hurry.
A cheer started somewhere behind him. He looked back over his shoulder, trying to see what was going on, and almost tripped over the feet of the man in front of him. That put his mind back on what really needed doing. But he'd seen enough, and started cheering, too.
"What's going on?" Smitty asked.
"Doubting George is coming up," Rollant answered in his normal voice. Then he shouted some more: "Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah for the Rock in the River of Death!" Smitty cheered, too, and waved his hat.
Lieutenant General George rode up alongside the marching men on a fine unicorn. He smiled at them and called, "Hello, boys! When we finally get our hands on those stinking northerners, are we going to whip 'em right out of their boots?"
"Hells, yes!" "You bet we will, Lieutenant General!" "Nobody can stop us, long as you're along for the ride!" The men yelled lots of things like that. Rollant wasn't behindhand in shouting George's praises, either. Nobody who'd been through the fight by the River of Death, who'd watched Doubting George's defense of Merkle's Hill after the rest of the army was routed, would ever greet him with anything less than heartfelt praise.
George tipped his hat to the soldiers. "We'll win because we've got the best fighters in the world," he said, and rode on, more cheers echoing behind him.
"You know what the funny thing is?" Smitty said.
"You mean, besides you?" Rollant returned.
Smitty made a face at him, but refused to be distracted: "What's funny is, Doubting George talks like a stinking northerner himself." He did his best to put on a northern twang as he spoke. His best was none too good.
Rollant considered. "He just talks," he said at last; George's Parthenian accent wasn't that much different from the one he had himself. "You think I sound like a stinking northerner?"
"Sometimes," Smitty said. "But anybody can see why you got the devils out of there. George, he's a nobleman. He had estates with serfs on 'em himself. But he didn't turn traitor along with Geoffrey and the rest."
"He's loyal to Detina." Rollant raised an eyebrow. "Why should that be so hard for a Detinan to understand?"
Smitty gave him a dirty look. "You like to try and twist everything I say, don't you?"
"Of course," Rollant said gravely. "If I didn't, what would you have to complain about?"
"Huh," Smitty said. "You ought to be a sergeant, the way you think."
"Me?" Rollant's voice squeaked in surprise. There were a few blond corporals and sergeants in King Avram's army, but only a few. Detinans—ordinary Detinans—didn't take kindly to the idea of obeying orders from blonds.
But Smitty answered, "Stranger things have happened."
"Maybe." Rollant didn't sound convinced. But he did like the idea, now that he thought about it. "Maybe," he repeated, in an altogether different tone of voice.