General Hesmucet eyed the pass leading through the
hills northwest to Whole Mackerel. The pass would
have been a nasty place to try to force a crossing even if the traitors and their serfs hadn't had weeks to fortify it. As things were . . . As things were, Hesmucet shook his head and spoke two words to his wing commanders: "No, thanks."
"Can't say I'm sorry, sir," Doubting George said. "Tackling that position would be as bad as going head-on at the Vulture's Nest and the Dog's Path. We could use up a lot of soldiers without getting much."
"Another flanking maneuver?" James the Bird's Eye asked eagerly. Of course the young brigadier was eager: if Hesmucet did try a flanking maneuver, he hoped his men would again be the ones to make it.
Fighting Joseph coughed a significant cough. "My warriors," he observed, "have not yet won their fair share of glory on this campaign."
"Haven't done their fair share of dying, do you mean?" George muttered. Hesmucet heard the gibe; he didn't think Fighting Joseph did.
He said, "Yes, I intend to flank the northerners out of this position. But I intend to use the whole army to do it." James the Bird's Eye's face fell. Hesmucet pretended not to notice. He went on, "Twenty years ago, when I was a subaltern, I rode from Karlsburg in Palmetto Province to Hiltonia here in Peachtree, and then on to Bellfoundry in the province of Dothan. As a young soldier is supposed to do, I noted the lay of the land hereabouts, and I think I still recollect it tolerably well. There is a place to the north of Whole Mackerel called Fort Worthless—"
"Cheerful name," Brigadier James said with a grin.
"Believe me, the place deserves it," Hesmucet answered. "They say the mosquitoes there spring from dragons on their mothers' side, and that they're big enough to carry off a man. I don't know about the second, but, having been bitten by more than a few of them, I would say the first is surely true. Now, if we can take this place, we interpose ourselves between Joseph the Gamecock and Marthasville. That is what I'm going to try to do."
"That's what you've been trying to do all along," Doubting George said.
"My own view is, we ought to just hammer the traitors," Fighting Joseph said.
"Nothing would please me better," Hesmucet said, "but Joseph the Gamecock declines to send his men out of their earthworks to be hammered. As long as he keeps his army intact and holds us away from Marthasville, he accomplishes his purpose. I don't aim to let him."
"How do we get to this Fort Worthless place, sir?" James the Bird's Eye asked. "How do we do it without going through Whole Mackerel, I mean?"
Hesmucet pointed not northwest but northeast. "Over there is a road junction called Konigsburg. I intend to move the army there first, and then shift west over Calabash Creek toward Fort Worthless. I have maps, which I can show you at your leisure, if you're so inclined."
"Thank you, sir," James replied. He was eager. In a war where so many had grown weary, that alone made him stand out. "I'd be pleased to see them."
"Next question is, how do we keep Joseph the Gamecock from realizing what we're up to?" Doubting George said.
His questions were always to the point, and all the more so when most pointed. But Hesmucet said, "I have some ideas about that, too." He set them forth.
"What's my part in all this?" Fighting Joseph asked when he was through—a question altogether in keeping with his temperament.
Lieutenant General George said, "None of that matters. The plan matters. I think it's a good one."
James the Bird's Eye said, "I've started sending men down some of these roads. I don't think the roads know where they're going themselves."
Hesmucet nodded. "That's how I remember them. Even the locals get lost half the time, seems like. But we've got enough serfs coming in to us to keep us from getting too badly confused. And most of the traitors won't have any better notion of where the roads go than we do. Let's get moving."
"You still haven't answered my question . . . sir," Fighting Joseph said. "What is my role in all this?"
"Whatever I order it to be," Hesmucet snapped, by now out of temper. "Get your men moving along with everybody else's." Handsome face dark with anger, Fighting Joseph stormed away. Hesmucet nodded to James and George. Saluting, they left, too.
As they did so, Major Alva came up to Hesmucet. He too saluted, sloppily—he was a soldier because he needed to be in the chain of command, not through any innate longing for the military life. In fact, Hesmucet doubted he'd ever seen a less military man in all his life. "Can we go on with it, sir?" Alva asked anxiously. "Can we? Please?"
He sounded as eager as a child with a new toy. In truth, that was about what he was. One thing King Avram's army did for him: it let him play with bigger, fancier toys than he would ever have got his hands on in civilian life.
"Yes, we're going to try it," Hesmucet answered. "Remember, the object is to make the traitors think we're slamming our way through at Whole Mackerel."
"Of course I remember, sir." Alva sounded affronted that Hesmucet could think he would forget anything. And I probably am naive to think any such thing, went through Hesmucet's mind. Whatever else this puppy is, forgetful he isn't—especially when he does get to use his toys. Alva went on, "Funny how, at Caesar, you wanted me to mask a real attack from the enemy, where now I'm going to be doing just the opposite."
"It's not funny—it's necessary," Hesmucet said. "If we do the same thing over and over, pretty soon it won't fool the northerners any more."
"Oh. Right. Isn't that interesting?" Alva blinked. He was a very clever young man. He's certainly more clever than I am, at whatever he wants to turn his mind to, Hesmucet thought. But when he hasn't turned his mind to something, it just isn't there for him. He can see the magic, something I could never do in a thousand years, but he's never thought about whys and wherefores.
He set his hand on Alva's shoulder, feeling downright grandfatherly even though he wasn't far past forty himself. "You tend to your business, son, and I'll tend to mine, and between us, with a little luck, we'll make Geoffrey's men mighty unhappy."
"I like that, sir," Alva said. "You know, people really shouldn't bind other people to the land. Who knows how many mages and artisans and such have sweated their lives away raising indigo and rice and sugar just because they happened to be born with blond hair?"
Hesmucet grunted. His own view of blonds was much less sanguine than Alva's. "Keeping Detina one kingdom counts for a good deal, too," he said dryly.
"Oh, yes, that, too, of course," Alva agreed, though to him it was plainly of secondary importance. "Tomorrow morning?"
"Tomorrow morning," Hesmucet agreed. "That will give the men a good start toward Konigsburg."
"All right, sir." Alva grinned a small-boy grin altogether unsuited to a major. "This should be fun!"
That evening, Hesmucet posted pickets well forward of his main line. He didn't want the northerners to have another chance to give him a nasty surprise, as they'd almost done at Fat Mama. If Lieutenant General Bell hadn't pulled back for no reason Hesmucet could see, he might have done a good deal of damage.
Here at Whole Mackerel, though, Joseph the Gamecock kept his men quiet inside their entrenchments. All things considered, Hesmucet didn't blame him. He was ensconced in a solid position, as solid as the one outside Borders. Head-on assault probably wouldn't take the place. If Hesmucet couldn't flank the traitors out of Whole Mackerel, they'd be there a long time.
Joseph, he knew, would pay him about as much money as false King Geoffrey had in his treasury to attack head-on. He lay down on his iron-framed cot with a smile on his face. Sometimes the best way to confound a man was to give him exactly what he thought he wanted.
When morning came, Hesmucet put most of his soldiers on the miserable roads north that led to Konigsburg. Colonel Phineas and almost all the rest of the army's mages had the job of masking that move from the northerners. Phineas wasn't much of a mage himself, but did have a knack for getting other mages to work together.
Major Alva, by contrast, had very little ability to work with anybody else. But he was a hells of a mage. Hesmucet had less ability to work with other officers than a lot of southrons, and was uneasily aware of the fact. But he was a good general himself, which made up for a multitude of flaws.
"Are you ready?" he asked Alva. A predawn mist still lingered over the field, a bit of luck he hadn't dared hope for.
"I sure am," Alva replied gaily. His eyes sparkled. He was indeed as ready as small boys were for a lark.
"Begin, then," Hesmucet said, "and let me know when I can play my part in this little show."
"Just as you say, sir," Alva replied, and he began to chant. He hadn't gone far before Hesmucet could feel power start to accrete around him, as layers of nacre accumulated around grit to make a pearl. That same sort of power had gathered around Thraxton the Braggart at Proselytizers' Rise, even if he'd botched his incantation in the end. Hesmucet had never seen any southron mage even try to control such forces.
Almost absently, Alva pointed to Hesmucet. If the commanding general hadn't been waiting for the signal, he might have missed it. Even as things were, he needed a moment to realize the gesture wasn't part of one of the passes Alva had been flinging around with what looked like reckless abandon.
Hesmucet turned to his trumpeters and made a peremptory gesture of his own. They blared out Advance! The handful of southron soldiers Hesmucet had kept behind outside of Whole Mackerel stormed toward the traitors' works, as if expecting to overrun them with ease.
Major Alva made one last pass, cried out, "Let it be accomplished!" and pointed toward the northerners' field fortifications. And suddenly, coming through that convenient mist toward the enemy were not a few soldiers but what seemed for all the world like General Hesmucet's entire army.
To Hesmucet, the sorcerous additions to the force looked ghostly, insubstantial. Alva had assured him that, from the front, they would be indistinguishable from real soldiers except for one unfortunate detail: they weren't actually there and couldn't actually fight. But they certainly could cause consternation, and that suited the commanding general just fine.
If we get very, very lucky, they might even make the traitors panic, and then the real soldiers whose numbers Alva is magnifying will drive the enemy out of his trenches, Hesmucet thought. He didn't really expect that to happen, but a general was entitled to hopes no less than any other man.
For a few heady moments, he thought those hopes would be realized. The northerners were filled with consternation when they saw what looked and sounded like an enormous army bearing down on them. The real soldiers and real catapults and repeating crossbows among the simulacra sent enough missiles toward the traitors' works to make the whole assault seem convincing, especially to startled soldiers not expecting any such thing.
Inside the northerners' fieldworks, horns blared and officers and sergeants shouted in alarm. A few men did flee; Hesmucet could see them scrambling out of the entrenchments and running back toward Whole Mackerel. More, though, sent an enormous storm of crossbow bolts and stones and firepots down on the heads of the advancing southron host.
The soldiers who weren't really there proved their worth against that vicious barrage. Since they didn't exist, they weren't likely to be killed by any merely material missiles. They kept right on advancing in the face of everything the traitors could do.
That apparent immortality might have brought even more fear to the foe. Instead, it ended up giving away the game. The northerners realized no mere human beings could possibly have gone through such a pounding without losing a man. And their mages were not to be despised; indeed, till Hesmucet came across Major Alva, northern mages had dominated the field.
"Counterspell!" Alva gasped. "Strong one!" He muttered charms and made desperate passes, but the northerners, once alerted to his magecraft, savagely tore at it. The advancing army of simulacra began to fade, to become one with the mist out of which they were advancing, and at last to disappear.
As soon as Hesmucet saw that begin to happen, he pulled back his real soldiers, lest the traitors swarm forth and overwhelm them. He set a hand—again, he felt grandfatherly—on Alva's shoulder. "Don't worry about it," he told the young mage. "You bought us a big chunk of the morning. That's as much as I was hoping for, and more than I expected."
"Gods damn it, I wanted everything to be perfect," Alva said.
Most southron mages would have been satisfied with coming close to what their commanders wanted. Hesmucet realized he had something very special in the line of sorcerer here. He patted Alva on the shoulder again. "Don't worry, son," he said. "Don't you worry at all. You did just fine."
"Come on, men," Captain Gremio called as his company of northerners tramped almost single file along a narrow winding track somewhere north of Whole Mackerel.
"Another position abandoned," Colonel Florizel grumbled. The regimental commander rode his unicorn. The rest of the regiment, captains included, went on foot.
Gremio didn't contradict the colonel, not out loud. But he understood Joseph the Gamecock's reasons for pulling out of Whole Mackerel. Again, Hesmucet was playing the outflanking game.
This country was overgrown, almost jungly. It was full of bugs, all of which, in Gremio's biased opinion, seemed to be trying to bite him at once. He slapped and scratched and swore. His men were slapping and scratching and swearing, too, so maybe a few of the bugs did have extra time on their hands.
The soldiers splashed through a swampy stream. "Check for leeches," Sergeant Thisbe said—parasites of a sort Gremio hadn't thought of.
Coming up onto drier land, men did as the sergeant said. Some of them cursed and made disgusted noises when they found leeches clinging to their legs, too. "No, don't just tear them off," Gremio told a blue-clad trooper who was about to do just that. "The mouth stays behind when you do, and the wound will go bad."
"That's right, Catling," Thisbe agreed. "Touch a smoldering twig to the head end of the leech. Then it will really let go."
"It'll burn me, too," the soldier said.
"If you want to take a chance on going around with crutches like Lieutenant General Bell, do it your way," Gremio said. "If you want to do it right, do what Thisbe and I tell you to do."
"I'm a free Detinan, and my ideas are just as good as anybody else's, gods damn it." Catling yanked the leech off his leg. He poked at the wound. Sure enough, the leech's mouth remained locked to his flesh. He looked much less happy after that.
"Try a burning twig now," Sergeant Thisbe said. "Sometimes the mouth will still let go even after you've ripped away the rest of the leech."
"He doesn't deserve to have the mouth come loose," Gremio said in considerable anger. "There are some people in this kingdom who think the greatest privilege the gods granted a free Detinan is the privilege of making a gods-damned fool of himself whenever it strikes his fancy. They do this—sometimes they do it over and over—and then, oftentimes, they expect the lawcourts to free them from their folly. To the seven hells with that, as far as I'm concerned. If you insist on being a fool, you bloody well ought to pay for your folly every now and again."
"Catling's a brave soldier," Thisbe said. "I'd rather have him hale so he can shoot at the southrons than laid up with a bad leg."
"You're too kind and gentle for your own good," Gremio said. Thisbe's clean-shaven cheeks made his flush easy to see. Gremio kicked at the mucky ground. Calling a sergeant gentle was bound to embarrass him before the men he was supposed to lead.
"Where in the seven hells are we?" somebody asked. Considering the weather and the landscape, the question seemed more than usually apt.
Precise as always, Gremio answered, "We're somewhere between Fort Worthless and Konigsburg. Fort Worthless is one of those places that live up to their names ninety-nine years and eleven months a century, but this is its month to shine. We've got to keep the stinking southrons from getting there till the army finishes pulling out of Whole Mackerel."
"When the southrons find themselves a real wizard, you know the war isn't what we expected when we started fighting it," Thisbe said.
"That's so," Gremio agreed, "but a real wizard isn't always just what you want. We had Thraxton the Braggart, for instance, but I'm just as well pleased he's gone off to Nonesuch. He cost us the battle of Proselytizers' Rise."
"He cost us that battle a couple of different ways," Thisbe said. "It wasn't just that he botched the spell, though that was bad enough. But he sent James of Broadpath off to the southwest to attack Wesleyton while the southrons in Rising Rock were building up their strength. What sort of fool would do such a thing?"
"A sour one," Gremio answered. "He'd quarreled with James—he'd quarreled with everybody, I think—and so he sent him away. Thraxton's bad temper is why we haven't got Ned of the Forest leading our unicorn-riders, too. We'll end up paying a price for that along with everything else, I'd bet."
They splashed across another stream. Turtles and frogs sitting on rocks dove into the water and frantically swam away. One luckless frog jumped almost right into a water snake's mouth. The snake swam over and gulped. Gremio wondered uneasily if crocodiles lurked in the water, too. He hoped he and his men wouldn't find out the hard way.
"How far is it up to Calabash Creek, sir?" Thisbe asked.
"To the seven hells with me if I know, Sergeant," Gremio said. "I don't know how far we've come—I don't see how anybody could know how far we've come, considering how these roads all seem to bend back on themselves. And I don't know how far this creek is from where we encamped. For all I do know, that miserable little rill we just crossed was it, and we're heading straight for the southrons at Konigsburg."
"We'd better not be," Thisbe said.
"I don't know why not," Gremio said. "One thing I am sure of is that the southrons have to be as confused about all this as we are. If they're supposed to be at Konigsburg, they're probably somewhere else."
"But we're ordered to take our stand on the west bank of Calabash Creek and not let them advance on Fort Worthless." Sergeant Thisbe sounded worried. He took orders very seriously, which made him unusual among free Detinan men. You can't tell me what to do was one of the most common phrases in any Detinan's mouth.
"Don't worry about it," Gremio said. "Sooner or later, we'll find them, or they'll find us, and then we'll see what happens next."
What he expected would happen next was for both sides to entrench as best they could in this muddy ground and then shoot crossbow quarrels at each other. The landscape didn't offer room enough for big, sweeping charges. Not only that, both sides were less eager to make them than they had been earlier in the war. Big, sweeping charges left bodies strewn all over a battlefield, but rarely shifted the enemy if he'd already had time to dig in.
Colonel Florizel's regiment found the foe before finding Calabash Creek. Startled shouts rang out ahead of Gremio's company: "Southrons!" "Traitors!" Each side seemed equally appalled at stumbling on the other.
A crossbow bolt hissed past Gremio's head. He had no idea whether his own men or the southrons had shot it. "Forward!" he shouted. "We have to help our friends!" He was an officer, and bore a sword instead of a crossbow. When he drew it, he knew a certain feeling of unreality. As a barrister back in Karlsburg, he hadn't used a blade. Baron Ormerod, who'd led the company before him, had been a good man with his hands—which hadn't kept him from stopping a bolt with his chest trying to stem the northern rout behind Proselytizers' Rise.
"Forward!" Sergeant Thisbe's clear voice echoed his. Forward the soldiers went. They'd never been shy about fighting—only the southrons' numbers had kept them in their entrenchments through most of this campaign. Now they had, or might have, a good chance to meet the enemy on even terms. They rushed to take it.
The fight was even more confused than the woodland skirmishes before the battle by the River of Death. The overgrowth was thicker and lusher than it had been farther south; as soon as men took a few steps off the track, they had to navigate as much by ear as by eye. "Geoffrey!" the northerners cried. The southerners yelled, "Avram!" And both sides shouted, "Freedom!"—a good way to land anyone coming to what might be the rescue in trouble.
Gremio almost ran right into a southron. The man in gray shouted something a lot less complimentary than, "Avram!" and let fly with his crossbow. He couldn't have stood more than five feet from Gremio, but missed anyhow. Gremio had no time even to thank the gods for his good luck. He charged at the southron, expecting the man to flee.
Instead, the enemy soldier threw down the crossbow, drew his shortsword, and slashed at Gremio. With his own, longer, officer's weapon, Gremio had no trouble holding off the southron, but he couldn't finish him. Then a crossbow quarrel caught the southron in the thigh. As he howled and crumpled and clutched at himself, Gremio lunged forward and stabbed him. The southron's howl became a bubbling shriek. Gremio wasn't particularly proud of the victory, but a victory it was.
"Forward!" he yelled again. The southrons were storming forward themselves. On this overgrown battlefield, who had the most men close by was anyone's guess. Over in Parthenia, there'd been a fight in what people called the Jungle. Gremio had his doubts about what kind of place that really was, and whether it deserved its name. Here, though, here was jungle and no mistake.
Suddenly, without warning, gray-clad pikemen slammed into Colonel Florizel's regiment. In this overgrowth, where crossbow bolts were much less effective than in open country, the southrons with their long spears were a deadly menace.
"Avram!" one of them shouted, bearing down on Gremio. "Avram and freedom!"
"Geoffrey!" Gremio yelled in return. He chopped at the enemy's spearshaft just below the head, hoping to cut it off and leave the southron with nothing more than a pole. But a clever southron armorer had nailed a strip of iron to the spearshaft to keep a sword from doing any such thing. Gremio beat the spearshaft aside and kept himself from getting spitted, but that was all he could do.
Then, recklessly brave, Sergeant Thisbe grabbed the spearshaft. Gremio rushed at the southron. Unexpectedly deprived of the use of this weapon, he let go of it and ran away. "Are you all right?" Gremio asked Thisbe.
"Sure am," Thisbe answered. The sergeant reversed the spear, then shook his head. "I wasn't trained on one of these boarstickers. If I tried to use it, I'd get myself killed quick. You know what to do with it, Captain?"
Gremio shook his head. "Not me. Back before the war, if I wanted to kill a man, I'd use a writ, not a spear."
"That's funny." Thisbe grinned, then threw the pike on the ground. "Are we winning or losing?"
"Probably," Gremio answered, which jerked another grin from the sergeant. The company commander went on, "I wonder how many nasty little fights like this one are happening all over this part of Peachtree."
"Lots, I expect," Thisbe said. "The southrons and us, we're like a couple of blindfolded men groping for each other in a locked room."
Gremio nodded, appreciating the figure of speech, but he said, "Oh, it's even worse than that. Our left leg has bumped the other fellow, but our right arm doesn't know it yet."
He would have gone one with his own figure, but another pikeman burst out of the woods just in front of him. At close quarters, a pike was a demonically nasty weapon; just as Gremio's blade had more reach than a crossbowman's shortsword, so the pikeman could thrust at him without being vulnerable in return. As he had with the first attacker, Gremio managed to beat aside the spearhead, but he could do no more.
Then Thisbe picked up the dropped pike and rushed at the southron. When he turned to defend himself against this new assault, Gremio got inside his guard and slashed his arm to the bone. Howling and dripping blood, the soldier in gray tunic and pantaloons fled.
"Thank you kindly," Gremio said, tipping his forage cap to Thisbe. "Seems you know what to do with a spear after all, Sergeant. That took ballocks."
"Oh, I wouldn't say that," Thisbe answered.
"I would," Gremio said. "I'll repeat myself, in fact. Ballocks is what that took."
Sergeant Thisbe laughed. "All right, sir. If that's how you want to put it, I don't suppose I'd better argue with my superior officer." Gremio shook his head to show that Thisbe emphatically ought not to argue with him. The sergeant looked around, then said, "I don't see any more southrons, not on their feet, anyhow. Maybe we've driven them off."
"By the gods, I hope so." Gremio didn't see any more southrons, either. He plunged his sword into the soft red dirt several times to scour blood from the blade. "I hope so, but I don't really think so. They're pushing west again, and all we can do is try to hold them off." As if to prove his point, a racket of battle broke out somewhere not too far away. Gremio and Thisbe twisted their heads this way and that, trying to decide from which direction it was coming. Gremio scowled. "No way to tell whether we're going forward or falling back, even, not in this undergrowth."
"If the southrons turn up behind us, we've probably lost somewhere," Thisbe said.
"Yes, probably, but not necessarily." Gremio could still split hairs like a barrister, and still enjoyed doing it, too. "It could just mean they'd found a track through the bushes that we didn't happen to be guarding."
"You're right," Thisbe said after a brief pause for thought. "That wouldn't have occurred to me, I don't believe. But you, sir, seems like you think of everything." Admiration filled his light tenor.
Gremio's cheeks heated. "Thanks again, Sergeant. Praise from the praiseworthy is praise indeed. So people say, and I see it's true." More southrons broke from the woods just then, and the soldiers stayed too busy to talk for quite a while.
Rollant's hand strayed to the leg of his pantaloons as he sprawled on the ground during a break. Smitty saw the motion and shook his head. "Don't scratch," he said. "You'll be sorry if you scratch."
"I'm sorry now," Rollant said from between clenched teeth. "These gods-damned chiggers are itching me to death."
"I've got 'em, too," his comrade said mournfully. "They're worse after you scratch. I found out the hard way."
"I know it," the escaped serf said. "They have them in Palmetto Province, too. I didn't miss 'em a bit after I came up to New Eborac, I'll tell you that. But I itch so much now, I don't hardly care what happens later."
"You will," Smitty said. He was right, too; Rollant knew as much. In his head, he knew as much. But his leg still itched and his hands still wanted to scratch, and none of that seemed to have very much to do with his head.
Sergeant Joram came up. If chiggers dared afflict the exalted personage of an underofficer, he gave no sign of it. "Get moving, you lugs," he said. "We have to keep heading toward the Thunderer's shrine over there to the west." He pointed.
Smitty snickered loud enough for Rollant to hear, but not loud enough for his mirth to reach Joram's ears. He said, "That's south, Sergeant."
"It is not," Joram growled. But then he looked at the shadows tree branches were casting. He coughed a couple of times. "Well, it might be a little southwest."
Smitty didn't say anything. Neither did Rollant. For a couple of common soldiers, silence seemed the better course. The two men heaved themselves to their feet. Harder to scratch if I'm marching, Rollant thought. What he wanted to do was scratch and scratch till blood ran down his leg. Maybe then he would feel better.
Crows and vultures rose in flapping clouds from bodies already bloating under the hot northern son. Rollant couldn't see whether the corpses wore Avram's uniform or Geoffrey's. They were just as dead either way.
"Just what's so important about this New Bolt Shrine?" Smitty grumbled as the men tramped along. "Why aren't the traitors welcome to the miserable place?"
"Crossroads, I suppose." Rollant wrinkled his nose, trying without much luck to clear the stench of death from his nostrils.
Sergeant Joram shook his head. "No, that's not what it is," he said. "Fort Worthless, now, Fort Worthless is a crossroads. We get our hands on that place, the northerners will have to go around three sides of a big square to get to any place they need to be. But New Bolt Shrine is different—I hear some runaway serfs told our officers about the place."
"Different how, Sergeant?" Smitty asked. Rollant was glad his companion had put the question to Joram. The sergeant wasn't out-and-out unjust to him very often because he was a blond, but Joram did talk to an ordinary Detinan more readily than he did to an ex-serf.
"It's supposed to be one of those places where the blonds worked their magic back in the old days," Joram said. "It's an even stronger place for sorcery now that it's been reconsecrated to the Thunderer, of course."
"And our magecraft can use all the help it can get. Uh-huh." Smitty nodded. "All right, fair enough. That makes pretty good sense."
Sergeant Joram gave him a mocking bow. "Thank you so much, Marshal Smitty. I'm sure General Hesmucet'll be so glad you approve."
Rollant would have fumed under a taunt like that. Rollant, in fact, had fumed under a good many taunts like that. Smitty only bowed back. "Thank you so much, Sergeant. I do want the general to be aware of what's going on." Joram snorted and went off to bother a couple of other men in the squad.
"Nicely done," Rollant said.
"Thank you very much, Marshal Rollant," Smitty replied grandly. He wouldn't be serious, not when he had any other choice.
Heading toward a place of old magic made Rollant serious. He had no idea what the blonds in this part of Detina had done in the way of sorcery before the Detinans came conquering across the Western Ocean. The lands around Karlsburg, where he'd grown up, had been part of one little kingdom, this place here another. For all he knew, his ancestors and the local blonds had fought all the time.
He was sure Joram was right about one thing: since New Bolt Shrine had been reconsecrated to the Thunderer, the sorcerous focus there would be stronger now than it had been before. Iron weapons, unicorns, and more powerful wizardry—those were the keys to the Detinans' conquest of the blonds they'd tied to the land.
"I wonder if the traitors know what kind of a place this is," he said.
"It'd be nice if they didn't," Smitty answered. "Then we could just march right in and take the place away from 'em. I'm always in favor of getting what I want without having to fight for it, especially if the other bastards are likely to fight back."
"Right," Rollant said—half agreement, half irony.
But Geoffrey's men—Joseph the Gamecock's men—did know what they were defending. Rollant got a glimpse of the New Bolt Shrine, the Thunderer's lightning bolt done up in gold over the roof, but a glimpse was all he got. Strong northern forces lay between the southrons and the shrine, and they were not inclined to let themselves be dislodged.
General Hesmucet hurled his men at them again and again. The southrons ground forward, but paid a dreadful price for every yard they advanced. Rollant hoped the traitors paid even more, but knew he couldn't rely on that.
"How can we tell when we've won one of these fights?" Smitty asked. "We don't shift the bastards more than a couple of furlongs even when we do drive 'em out of their trenches. And when we do push 'em that far, they just find some other little knoll or overgrown patch and dig some more trenches, and then they're ready for us again."
"Half the time, they don't even need to dig," Rollant said. "Like as not, their officers have already got serfs digging trenches they can just move into. It's only when the traitors go someplace where there are no trenches that they have to do any digging of their own."
Not far away from them, their comrades were busy entrenching. And Sergeant Joram called out, "Come on, you lazy lugs. You know what to do with a pick and shovel as well as anybody else. Get busy and do it."
He had, at least, included Smitty in that lazy tag. A lot of Detinans reckoned all blonds lazy—an irony, considering how the nobles in the north piled work on their serfs. Rollant took his short-handled shovel out of his pack and made the dirt fly. Smitty did, too, but he was slower about it. Which of them was the lazy one, then? Rollant had his own opinion, but who cared what a blond thought?
Two days later, Colonel Nahath's regiment fought its way up to the very outskirts of the sacred precinct of which New Bolt Shrine formed the heart. In the face of stubborn northern resistance, their attack stalled there. In short order, the very reason for the attack became meaningless, for stones and firepots from southron siege engines reduced the shrine to smoking rubble.
That, of course, did not keep the southrons from attacking the place. They'd got their orders before New Bolt Shrine went up in flames, and the mere fact that it went up in flames didn't seem to register with the men who composed and gave those orders. They sent the regiment forward again and again.
Joseph the Gamecock's men defended wreckage just as stoutheartedly as they'd tried to hold the intact New Bolt Shrine, too. At last, though, a fierce assault cleared them from the precinct. Rollant strode over tumbled stones and burnt timbers. "This had better be worth something," he said, "on account of we sure paid a hells of a price for it."
"Maybe our wizards could make a gods-damned big magic and give us back some of the poor sons of bitches who died taking it," Smitty said.
"If they had that kind of magic, they could have found another battlefield to use it on," Rollant said.
Smitty gave him an impatient look. "I know that, you chowderhead. What I meant was, nothing they do here could be worth it, no matter what. There. Do I have to draw you a picture?"
Sergeant Joram spoke up: "Smitty, why don't I draw a picture of you going down and finding a creek and coming back with full canteens for everybody?"
"Have a heart, Sergeant!" Smitty moaned. Joram folded massive arms across a wide chest. Not only did he have rank on his side, he could have torn Smitty in two. Rollant held out his water bottle to Smitty. Cursing, the farmer's son took it.
A young fellow with a major's epaulets and a mage's badge prominently pinned to his tunic came up and prowled among the ruins as avidly as a hound looking for a buried bone. After a bit, his eye fell on Rollant. "You, there!" he said.
"Yes, sir?" Rollant came to attention.
"As you were, as you were." The mage gestured. "Can't stand that nonsense. Bunch of foolishness—and go ahead, call me a heretic. Where was I?"
"I don't know, sir," Rollant said truthfully.
"I know what it was," the young mage said. He looked frightfully clever, like a child too smart for its own good. "You'd be from around these parts, wouldn't you?"
"No, sir," Rollant answered.
"No?" Now he'd surprised the wizard. "Why not?"
Patiently, Rollant said, "Sir, I was born near Karlsburg, and I spent the last ten years before the war in New Eborac City. This is the first time I've ever been anywhere near this place. Not all blonds are the same, you know, any more than a Detinan from New Eborac is the same as one from Palmetto Province."
"Oh," the sorcerous major said. But then he nodded. "Yes, of course. That does make good sense, now that I think on it. I was going to ask you if you knew whether these ruins had any particular sorcerous focus."
"You're the wizard, sir, so you'd know better than I would," Rollant replied. "People have said there's one somewhere about, though. Otherwise, why would we have fought so hard over it?"
"Because, as often as not, people are a pack of gods-damned fools," the major answered. Rollant's jaw fell. The youngster laughed. "Never underestimate that as a possible reason. People are a pack of gods-damned fools a lot of the time. If the northerners weren't gods-damned fools, for instance, would they have tried to leave Detina in the first place?" Before Rollant could even try to find an answer for that, the mage went on, "I don't feel any power here to speak of, either from the old days or from the Thunderer. It's all just so much moonshine, if you want to know what I think."
Rollant hadn't much wanted to know what he thought. But a major didn't have to worry about a common soldier's opinion, especially if the common soldier was a blond. Off the mage went, leaving Rollant behind scratching his head. "What was all that about?" Smitty asked. He was festooned with water bottles now.
"Fellow says this New Bolt Shrine wasn't really any place worth fighting about," Rollant answered.
"Oh, he does, does he?" Smitty rolled his eyes. "Why am I not surprised, and how many lives have we thrown away going after it?"
"Do you know who that was?" Sergeant Joram asked. Both Rollant and Smitty shook their heads. Joram said, "That was Major Alva, that's who. He's supposed to be as hot as any traitor mage ever hatched—he's the fellow who gave us such good sorcerous cover when we went into Caesar."
"Then he ought to know what he's talking about," Smitty said.
That did make sense. It also made Rollant uncomfortable. Alva said there was no power lingering where the blonds had had a holy place, even after the Thunderer also had a shrine made on the same spot. Shouldn't the gods of either blonds or Detinans have left more of an impress on the world than that? And if they hadn't, what did it mean? Rollant wondered if he wanted to know.
Off to the north, smoke was rising from another battlefield where southrons and traitors clashed. Rollant wondered if that fight was as meaningless as the one in which he'd just taken part. How many men were dying for nothing over there?
"It's not exactly nothing," Smitty said when he complained aloud. "Whether we can make special sorcery here or not, we still needed to take this place if we're going to clear the traitors out of Fort Worthless."
Rollant grunted. "That's true, I suppose. But still—"
"Keep quiet," Sergeant Joram said. "If somebody tells us to go forwards, we go forwards, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Isn't that right?"
"Yes, Sergeant," Rollant said resignedly. Up on a northern plantation, Joram would have made a terrific serf-driver. If Rollant told him that, though, he might take it for a compliment.
"Well, then," Joram said, as if he'd proved something. Maybe he had—he'd proved he could tell Rollant what to do. But Rollant already knew that. Sometimes, though, a sergeant just needed to thump his chest and bellow, as if he were a bull pawing the ground in a field. Rollant couldn't see the sense there, but he'd seen it was true.
"If this New Bolt shrine isn't worth anything, what do we do now?" Smitty asked—but quietly, so Rollant could hear and Joram couldn't.
"We go forward," Rollant answered. "We keep going forward till the traitors can't stop us any more." So far, he sounded like a sergeant himself. But then he added, "And we hope some of us are still alive when that finally happens." Smitty walked off toward the creek for a couple of paces. Then, reluctantly, he nodded.
General Hesmucet had trouble deciding whether or not he ought to be a happy man. His soldiers had forced their way across Calabash Creek. They'd made Joseph the Gamecock pull out of Whole Mackerel. They'd cleared his men from New Bolt Shrine and Fort Worthless. They'd done a lot of hard fighting in some of the most miserable terrain anywhere in Detina. They'd been victorious almost everywhere—and what did they have to show for it?
Less than I'd like, gods damn it, Hesmucet thought. No matter how harried Joseph the Gamecock's forces had been, his army remained in being, and remained between Hesmucet and Marthasville. Joseph was doing his job. Hesmucet peered west from the swampy wilderness he'd just spent a few weeks overrunning. Joseph the Gamecock, as usual, had more entrenchments waiting for him, some on a little knob called Cedar Hill, others farther west on a heavily wooded slope identified on his map as Commissioner Mountain. It didn't look like much of a mountain to him, but the traitors had some perfectly good artificers who would have studied out the ground and turned it into much more than a molehill.
Rain started falling. It had been raining for most of the month. Hesmucet was sick of it. Rain worked for Joseph the Gamecock and against him. It slowed down his advance. Yes, it slowed the defenders, too, but they didn't care. They weren't trying to go anywhere themselves, only to keep him from getting anywhere. They had a good chance of doing it, too.
"Major Alva!" he called. "Where in the damnation has Major Alva gone and got himself off to?"
"Here I am, sir." In a mage's best style, Alva seemed to appear out of nowhere.
Hesmucet was less impressed than he might have been. In the rain, he couldn't see very far anyway. He came straight to the point: "Can you make the sun come out again and dry up some of this mud?"
"Sorry, sir, but I don't think so," Major Alva replied.
"Why not?" Hesmucet said irritably. "Last fall, you were able to keep things foggy and misty down around Rising Rock, and that served us well."
"Yes, sir, but it would have been pretty foggy and misty regardless of what I did," the bright young mage said. "Here, I would be changing things, and changing them a lot, because it's usually pretty rainy here this time of year. It's a lot easier to ride the unicorn in the direction he's already going, if you know what I mean."
Hesmucet snarled—wetly. He did see what Major Alva meant, but seeing it wasn't the same as liking it. "All right, then," he said. "What can we do to make the traitors' lives miserable?"
"Everyone's life has been miserable lately, seems to me," Alva observed.
That held more truth than Hesmucet cared to admit. "The idea is to make the enemy's lives miserable," he said. "That and to keep him from doing it to us."
"Yes, sir," Major Alva agreed. "I have to tell you, though, sir, fooling with the weather will not get you what you want. This time of year in this part of the kingdom, it is going to rain, and any wizard who tells you anything different is either lying on purpose or else a gods-damned fool."
"All right," Hesmucet said. One reason he was glad to have Alva around was that the mage wasn't shy about telling him what was on his mind. Eventually, he supposed, Alva would learn tact, but it wouldn't happen soon. "If you can't dry things out, see if you can come up with some other way to make Joseph the Gamecock sorry we're in the neighborhood."
"Yes, sir." Alva saluted and went away.
Hesmucet started to duck back into his tent. Before he could, a scryer called his name. He turned. "What is it?"
"There's a report from Luxor, sir, on the Great River," the scryer replied. "Sam the Sturgeon has met Ned of the Forest in a battle."
"I'll come," Hesmucet said at once, and hurried to the scryers' tent.
The face looking out of the crystal ball at him belonged to Brigadier Andrew the Smith, not to Brigadier Sam (who'd got his nickname from a pair of protruding eyes and a long, long nose). If Sam the Sturgeon wasn't there to tell the tale in person, Hesmucet judged the news unlikely to be good. And, sure enough, the commander of the garrison at Luxor said, "Things didn't work out as you hoped they would, sir."
"You'd better tell me," Hesmucet said.
"Yes, sir." Andrew the Smith was a solid officer. "Brigadier Sam set out moving west through the southern part of Great River Province, sir, and he let his unicorn-riders get out in front of his footsoldiers. Ned of the Forest hit him near a little place called Three Dee Crossroads and defeated him in detail—smashed his army to hells and gone, if you want to know the truth."
"Gods damn it!" Hesmucet burst out. "Sam the Sturgeon must have had three times as many men as Ned."
"Yes, sir," Brigadier Andrew said again. "But he didn't get 'em into the fight, and Ned did. What's left of Sam's army—and it's only bits and pieces—just came stumbling back into Luxor this morning. He was afraid Ned was hot on his heels, too."
"To the hells with what he was afraid of," Hesmucet growled. "I sent him out to keep Ned too busy to strike our supply line. Fat lot of good Sam does, holed up in Luxor. Ned can collect men at his leisure and strike the glideway path whenever he pleases."
"I'm afraid you're right, sir," Andrew said mournfully.
"That man Ned is a demon," Hesmucet said. "There can't be peace by the Great River till Ned of the Forest is dead."
"As may be, sir," the commandant at Luxor replied. "But the son of a bitch is still here now, and in a position to make a lot of trouble."
"We have to keep him too busy to hit the supply line," Hesmucet said. "If Sam the Sturgeon couldn't do the job, someone else will have to. Right this minute, Brigadier, looks like that someone else is you."
"Yes, sir," Andrew the Smith said—he didn't shrink from the idea, which made Hesmucet happy. "I'll do my best, sir. Ned will probably think he could take on anybody this side of the gods right about now, and that may make him careless. But whether it does or whether it doesn't, you're right—we have to keep him away from your glideway line."
"Good man," Hesmucet told him. "If we had more like you, we'd be in better shape."
"Thank you kindly, sir," Brigadier Andrew replied. "What we could really use is a couple of officers like Ned of the Forest."
Few southrons would have said that. It was true—Hesmucet felt down in his belly how true it was—but few would have had the nerve to say it. "When the gods made Ned, they shattered the mold afterwards," Hesmucet said, which unfortunately also seemed to be true. "I'm glad we have you on our side, Brigadier. I know you'll give the son of a bitch all he wants, and then some more besides."
"I told you once, I'll do my best. I meant it," Andrew said.
"Good." Hesmucet turned and nodded to his scryer. The man broke the mystical attunement between the two crystal balls. The one in front of Hesmucet became no more than an inert sphere of glass; Andrew the Smith's image vanished from it. Hesmucet gave himself the luxury of cursing for a minute or so, but then got up to leave the scryers' tent.
"What will you do now, sir?" the scryer asked him.
It wasn't really any of the man's business. Still, Hesmucet judged him unlikely to go over to the traitors with the answer. He probably wouldn't even gossip; by the nature of their work, scryers had to be discreet. And the truth wasn't all that complicated, anyhow. "I'm going to keep right on hammering away at Joseph the Gamecock, that's what," Hesmucet said. "As long as Andrew or somebody keeps Ned of the Forest busy, Joseph hasn't got enough unicorn-riders attached to his own army to harm the glideway coming up here from Rising Rock, especially when I keep squeezing and prodding his army. So that's what I'm going to do. You hit something long enough and hard enough and sooner or later it'll break."
"All right, sir. That sounds like it makes sense." The scryer was a lieutenant by courtesy, as most mages were officers by courtesy. Having officer's rank let him order common soldiers around, which was often convenient. What he knew about sound strategy, however, would likely have fit inside a thimble without straining things. But he was a freeborn Detinan, and reckoned his opinion as good as anyone else's, including that of the general commanding.
"I'm so glad you approve." Hesmucet intended it for sarcasm. The scryer took it as a compliment. He beamed at Hesmucet as the commanding general left the tent.
Once back in his own pavilion, Hesmucet summoned Doubting George, Fighting Joseph, and James the Bird's Eye. He told his wing commanders what had happened to the luckless Sam the Sturgeon. "He had Ned outnumbered three to one, and he lost the fornicating battle?" Fighting Joseph burst out, his always ruddy face darkening further with anger. "That's disgraceful, nothing else but."
"It certainly is, and who would know better?" Doubting George murmured.
A considerable silence followed. At Viziersville, in the west, Fighting Joseph's men had outnumbered those of Duke Edward of Arlington somewhere close to three to one, but Duke Edward's Army of Southern Parthenia had won a resounding victory over the southrons nonetheless. Fighting Joseph turned red all over again, this time perhaps from embarrassment—although, from all Hesmucet had seen, he seemed nearly immune to that emotion.
At last, James the Bird's Eye broke the silence with a sensible question: "What do we do now, sir?"
Hesmucet gave him the same sort of answer he'd given the scryer: "We'll try to keep Ned busy over by the Great River, and we'll keep Joseph's unicorn-riders close to home so they can't go after the glideway."
James gravely considered that. In due course, he nodded. "Makes sense to me, sir," he said. "We've come a long way doing what we've been doing. If we keep doing it and hit hard, we ought to end up in Marthasville before too long."
"We'd better," Lieutenant General George said. "There are grumblings down south about how long this fight is taking and how many men we're spending to make it. I have friends who send me the news bulletins. I'm sure the rest of you have friends like that, too. What I'm not so sure of is whether they're really friends."
"Bloodsucking ghouls is what they are," Fighting Joseph said. "They haven't the ballocks to fight themselves, and so they pass their time by making the men who do fight doubt themselves."
"It's more complicated than that, I fear," Doubting George said.
Fighting Joseph, by his expression, plainly didn't believe it for a moment. Hesmucet did. He knew how weary the south was of the war against false King Geoffrey, and of its cost in both silver and blood. Victory would make that cost seem worthwhile. As long as the north held Marthasville, as long as Joseph the Gamecock's army remained intact and in the field, the south saw no victory. If the farmers and burghers got sick of sending their sons and husbands and brothers off to die for what they saw as no good purpose, King Avram would have to recognize his rebellious cousin as his fellow sovereign. Hesmucet aimed to do everything he could to keep that from happening.
"Let's take a crack at Cedar Hill, then," he said. "Once we drive the traitors away from it, we'll be in position to move against Commissioner Mountain."
"Good enough," James the Bird's Eye said. Now Fighting Joseph agreed without hesitation. Whatever else you could say about the man, he wasn't shy about going into a fight.
The only one showing any doubts was George. "It had better be good enough," he said. "We'll just have to do our best to make it good enough."
When morning came, Hesmucet assembled his force and moved it west. He expected Joseph the Gamecock's men to have solid entrenchments on the forward slopes of Cedar Hill, and so they did. In spite of a pounding from his siege engines, their lines held firm. Both sides got less use not only from engines but also from crossbows than they would have in better weather; an awful lot of bowstrings were wet. Hesmucet's men slogged on, cleaning out one trench after another.
Toward midday, Hesmucet glanced up to one of the higher crags of Cedar Hill. There looking down at him—there looking down at his whole host—stood half a dozen northern officers in blue. They observed the men moving against them with the detachment of so many instructors at the military collegium at Annasville.
Rage ripped through Hesmucet. Unlike those cool, detached traitors, he took war personally. He spotted Brigadier Brannan, Doubting George's commander of siege engines, who'd just wrestled some of his catapults forward. "Brannan!" he called, and pointed up toward the knot of northerners. "Can you smash a couple of those bastards for me?"
Brigadier Brannan studied the enemy officers. "A long shot, especially uphill," he said, "but I've got a chance. Want me to try?"
"Yes, by the Thunderer's balls!" Hesmucet exclaimed.
"All right." Brannan called orders to his crew. They tightened the skeins and set a thirty-pound stone in the trough. Brannan himself squeezed the trigger. The catapult bucked and jerked and clacked. Away flew the round stone, almost faster than the eye could follow it.
"Look out!" Joseph the Gamecock shouted as the southrons' catapult sent a stone flying toward the knot of officers he headed. Spry for a man of his years, he wasted not a heartbeat taking his own advice: he dove behind a boulder. Someone else dove on top of him. Other northerners scattered in all directions.
Joseph listened for the thud of the stone slamming into muddy dirt. Even skipping along the ground, it could be deadly dangerous. He'd heard of a foolish sergeant who'd tried to stop a rolling catapult ball with his foot—and lost the foot as a result.
The stone smacked down, alarmingly close to Joseph the Gamecock. But the sound it made wasn't the heavy thud of rock hitting mud. It was a wetter noise, a solid smack that made the general commanding the Army of Franklin wince and curse. The southrons had aimed that stone too well. Someone in his retinue had gone down under it.
"Let me up, gods damn it," Joseph growled to whoever had landed on him. When the officer didn't move fast enough to suit him, Joseph lashed out with an elbow. That did the trick.
Scrambling to his feet, Joseph looked around. There stood Roast-Beef William, and there were a couple of junior officers, also upright and unscathed. But Leonidas the Priest sprawled on the ground, and plainly would never get up again. He still twitched, but that was only because his body hadn't yet realized he was dead. When a thirty-pound flying stone hit a man square in the chest, he was unlikely to get up again. Blood soaked into the red dirt, reddening it further. Leonidas' blood was even redder than the crimson vestments he wore.
His twitching stopped. Joseph peered down toward the southrons and their engine, wondering if they were going to send another stone his way. But they seemed satisfied to have scattered his companions and him. He wondered if they knew they'd hit anyone.
"By the gods," Roast-Beef William said, staring at the smashed corpse of his fellow wing commander.
"Yes, by the gods," Joseph the Gamecock agreed. "The Lion God will have himself a new servant, up there on the mountain beyond the sky." And may Leonidas serve his favorite god better than he ever served King Geoffrey and me.
Another officer said, "I think, sir, we can withdraw from this spot without fear of dishonor."
Joseph hadn't thought about that. But he recognized truth when he heard it. "Yes, we'd better," he agreed, "or else they may decide to send us another present. Somebody grab poor Leonidas' legs and haul him off. He deserves to go on a proper pyre."
They retreated farther up Cedar Hill. The southrons down below seemed satisfied with the results of their one shot. Leonidas the Priest's body left a trail of blood as junior officers dragged him along. Joseph the Gamecock never stopped being amazed at how much blood a man's body held.
"What do we do now, sir?" Roast-Beef William asked.
"We do what we have to do, Lieutenant General," Joseph answered. "We appoint a new wing commander and we go on. Leonidas was a brave and pious man, but we have to go on without him." Leonidas had also been an idiot who didn't like taking orders, but Joseph the Gamecock didn't dwell on that, not aloud. When a man died, you looked for the good he'd had in him. If, with the hierophant of the Lion God, you had to look a bit harder than you might with someone else . . . Stop that, Joseph the Gamecock told himself.
The southrons kept pounding away at Cedar Hill. Roast-Beef William said, "I'm afraid we're going to have to fall back to Commissioner Mountain, sir."
"I'm afraid you're right," Joseph said. "If General Hesmucet cares to launch a frontal attack against us there, he's welcome to try it for all of me."
"You don't want to make things too easy for him, though," Roast-Beef William protested.
"Oh, no," Joseph agreed. "I don't intend to do anything of the sort. But this position can be turned. I'd like to see Hesmucet try to turn our lines along Commissioner Mountain and Snouts Stream." Even as he spoke, rain began to fall. He smiled; to him right now, rain was a friend. "I'd especially like to see Hesmucet try one of his outflanking moves in this muck."
His surviving wing commander nodded. "If he did, we'd be on his flank like a tiger on an ox."
William had missed a point: the rain hindered Joseph's movements no less than those of the southrons. But even Joseph the Gamecock, who picked nits as naturally as he breathed, didn't correct him. He didn't need to attack. He needed nothing more than to hold on, and to hold Hesmucet out of Marthasville. As long as he succeeded in doing that, he was living up to the responsibility with which King Geoffrey had entrusted him.
Not that Geoffrey will thank me for it, he thought. Geoffrey never thanks me for anything. No—that's not true. He'd thank me if I dried up and blew away. But he was desperate enough to put me here, and now he has to make the best of it.
He knew Geoffrey wasn't happy that he'd had to yield so much of southern Peachtree Province. On the other hand, Duke Edward of Arlington and the Army of Southern Parthenia had yielded just about all of southern Parthenia to Marshal Bart. Bart was a lot closer to Nonesuch—and to King Geoffrey—than Hesmucet was to Marthasville.
"To whom will you give command of Leonidas' wing?" Roast-Beef William asked.
There was a question to make even a moody man like Joseph the Gamecock stop brooding. But for piety and courage, Leonidas the Priest had been singularly, even plurally, lacking in the military virtues. If his wing acquired a commanding officer who knew what he was doing . . . Joseph didn't smile. That would have been disrespectful to the dead, especially with Leonidas still unburned and with his spirit, therefore, still free and vengeful. Whether he smiled or not, though, he was far from brokenhearted.
"I think I shall appoint Brigadier Alexander—not James of Broadpath's engines chief, who's back in Parthenia now, but the man they call the Steward," he said. "He's a solid fellow."
"Old Straight? I should say so!" William nodded vigorous approval. "Solid as the day is long. Brave, industrious, knows what he's doing."
"It will make a pleasant change, won't it?" Joseph said. That was unkind to the memory of the hierophant of the Lion God, but not too much so.
William added, "I'm sure Lieutenant General Bell will also think well of the choice."
"It's not his to make. It's not his to approve of," Joseph said testily. Day by day, he grew less happy with Bell. The man carped and complained about everything, yet was reluctant to strike when ordered to do so. It must be the pain, Joseph thought. He's only a shell of the man he used to be. Too bad, because I could use that man. The one I have . . .
As the officers came back up Cedar Hill, Joseph told off some ordinary soldiers he saw to take charge of Leonidas' body. Then he and his comrades went off to his headquarters. He sent a runner to summon Alexander the Steward, and another to give Bell word of Leonidas the Priest's untimely demise. With a little luck, the new wing commander would prove less recalcitrant than Leonidas had been. He could hardly prove more recalcitrant, Joseph thought.
The runner he'd sent to Bell returned. "The lieutenant general's compliments, sir," the fellow said, "and he asks if having a new wing commander means we're more likely to advance against the enemy."
"We would be more likely to advance against the enemy," Joseph the Gamecock said icily, "if Lieutenant General Bell were in the habit of following orders."
"Uh, shall I take that message back to him, sir?" the runner asked.
"No, never mind," Joseph said. "He either knows it already or is unlikely to believe it from my lips."
Before long, another man approached him: not a soldier this time, but a fellow in maroon velvet tunic and pantaloons of civilian cut who wore on his head a hat that put Joseph the Gamecock in mind of an inverted chamber pot. Bowing, the newcomer said, "Your Grace, I have the honor to represent Duke Brown, who is of course King Geoffrey's satrap for Peachtree Province."
"Of course," Joseph replied. His opinion of the provincial satrap was indeed brown; he gave the duke far higher marks for mouth than for brains. Wondering what had caused Brown to send out this chap, he inquired, "And what does his Grace think I can do for him?"
His tone suggested that, whatever it might be, Duke Brown was undoubtedly laboring under a delusion. The man with the maroon pantaloons and ugly hat gave no sign of noticing that tone. He said, "The satrap sent me here to remonstrate with you."
"To remonstrate with me? Why?" Joseph asked. "What have I done to him?" What have I done to set off the gods-damned fool now?
"Sir, he feels he must protest your excessive utilization of the province's glideway carpets," Duke Brown's man replied. "Your constant traffic in this part of the province is having a most deleterious effect on civilian travel in Peachtree Province."
"You are joking," Joseph the Gamecock said.
"By no means, your Grace," the study in maroon said. "The satrap has received numerous complaints from nobles and commoners alike as to the adverse impact on their travel requirements the continued requisitioning of carpets for your forces has caused, and feels he must respond to the citizenry."
"I see," Joseph said.
The civilian beamed. "I knew you would be reasonable, sir. Ah . . . what is that you are writing?"
"A pass to take you through my lines, so you can bring Duke Brown's complaints directly to General Hesmucet. Since he is the true cause of my excessive use of the glideways, he is the one who should hear about the satrap's concerns. He has the name of a reasonable man. I am sure, when he hears he is bothering civilians, he will turn around and march back down to the south."
"You mock me, sir," Duke Brown's man said indignantly. "You mock my principal as well. This shall not go unnoticed."
"And I shall not lose a moment's sleep over it," Joseph the Gamecock said. "I have some small hope of coping with the enemy. But when the idiots alleged to be on my own side commence to move against me, I find myself helpless to resist them."
"How dare you use such a word, sir?" the civilian said. "How dare you?"
"I dare because I am a soldier, and it is my duty to dare," Joseph replied. "That is more than the satrap can say."
"You will go too far, if you have not already," the man in maroon said, biting the words off between his teeth. "And, speaking of soldiers, I will have you know that Count Thraxton has come to Marthasville, and is examining your conduct of this campaign very closely—very closely indeed."
"By all the gods, I'm delighted to hear that—just delighted," Joseph said. "Thraxton the Braggart's the reason the Army of Franklin was in the fix I found it in—and now King Geoffrey sends him up here to sit in judgment on me? Not a chance he'll be prejudiced, is there? Not half."
"Your Grace, I don't know what you want me to say." The man in maroon sounded worried—not out of any concern for me, Joseph judged, but because he fears he'll end up in trouble with the satrap. Well, too fornicating bad for him.
"Go tell Duke Brown that I am going to use the glideways as much as I need to, so I can defend his province for him whether he wants me to or not," Joseph the Gamecock snapped. "And if by any chance you should happen to see the ever so illustrious Count Thraxton, thank him for me for the lovely predicament he left me in. And now he looks over my campaign? Gods protect me from my friends!"
Had the fellow in maroon velvet lingered another moment, Joseph would have sped him on his way with a good, solid kick in the fundament. He might have realized that, for he withdrew precipitately even without the added impetus of the commanding general's boot. Joseph's stomach twinged. Hearing Thraxton the Braggart is around makes me as dyspeptic as he is.
Thraxton had brains. He also had a complete inability to get along with anyone else (a trait Joseph shared) or to make anyone follow his lead (which was not one of Joseph's difficulties). The only exception to the general rule was that Thraxton had somehow formed an intimate friendship with King Geoffrey, a friendship that endured through thick and thin—and, given Thraxton's other talents, or lack of same, there'd been much more thin than thick.
He has Geoffrey's ear. He will drip poison into it. Joseph was as sure of that as he was of tomorrow's sunrise. He shrugged. He couldn't do anything about it. All he could do was hold the line of Commissioner Mountain and Snouts Stream as long as possible. The more southrons who died trying to pry him out of his position, the better the chance that the south would sicken of the war and make King Avram quit it or face upheaval at home.
Lieutenant General Bell would attack, the general commanding the Army of Franklin thought. He tossed his head like a man bothered by gnats. Duke Edward of Arlington, when angry, would twist so he seemed to be trying to bite his own ear. Joseph's gesture wasn't far removed from that. Bell would do any number of stupid things if only he had the chance. My job, not least, is to make sure he doesn't get it.
Count Joseph sighed. But how am I supposed to manage that? He saw no clear answer. He'd seen few clear answers since the days when the northern provinces first broke away from Detina. He kept fighting nonetheless.