* * *
Count Thraxton had never felt so tired in his life. He wasn’t a young man any more, and the struggle against the southrons’ wizards to reach the mind, such as it was, of General Guildenstern had taken more out of him than he’d dreamt it could. But he’d done it, and Guildenstern’s army had streamed back out of Peachtree Province in headlong retreat.
And now, after Thraxton had won the greatest victory of his career, his own junior commanders were nagging him. “Sir, we have to pursue harder,” Baron Dan of Rabbit Hill said the morning after the fight by the River of Death. “The sooner we can throw a line around Rising Rock, the sooner we can drive the southrons out of the city or force them to surrender to us.”
“Baron, I think you are worrying overmuch,” Thraxton answered. “After the beating we gave them, with their army in such disarray, how can they possibly hope to stay in Rising Rock?”
“I don’t know how, sir,” Dan of Rabbit Hill answered. “I do know I don’t want to give them any possible excuse.”
“Any possible excuse to do what?” That was Earl James of Broadpath, whose blocky form kept almost as much light from Thraxton’s farmhouse headquarters when he stood in the doorway as the door itself would have done.
“Any possible excuse for the southrons to stay in Rising Rock,” Dan replied before Count Thraxton could speak.
“Oh.” James of Broadpath nodded. “Well, I should hope not, by the gods. We ought to run those sons of bitches out of there-eh, my lord Count?”
“My opinion,” Thraxton said coldly, “as I was explaining to Baron Dan here, is that Avram’s ragtag and bobtail will abandon Rising Rock of their own accord, and thus there is no reason for us to stage a hard pursuit.”
James frowned. “In the Army of Southern Parthenia, there’s always a reason to stage a hard pursuit. Duke Edward says-”
“I don’t care what the hallowed Duke Edward says,” Thraxton broke in-nothing could have been more surely calculated to infuriate him. “What I know is the present state of this army. Are you aware, your Excellency, that in the fighting of the past two days we have had one man in four killed or wounded? One man in four, your Excellency! How can I pursue after that?”
He thought he’d startled James of Broadpath with his vehemence, for James took a step back: away from the doorway, which made the inside of the farmhouse much less gloomy. But James wasn’t giving way to him, as he thought James should have done-James was stepping aside so someone else could come into the farmhouse.
When Count Thraxton saw Leonidas the Priest, he snapped, “And what in the seven hells do you want?”
In wounded tones, the hierophant replied, “I just came to ask, sir, when to order my troopers forward for the pursuit.”
“Why the demon should that make any difference to you?” Thraxton demanded. “When I told you to order them forward for the battle, you paid me no heed. Will it be different now?”
Leonidas drew himself up to his full height, which was still several inches less than Count Thraxton’s. “Your Grace, I am affronted,” he said.
“Bloody idiot,” Thraxton muttered, not quite far enough under his breath. Leonidas stiffened even further. Thraxton hadn’t thought he could.
“Sir, I didn’t come to Peachtree Province to quarrel with you,” James of Broadpath said, trying-too late-to sound like the voice of sweet reason. “I came here to whip the southrons. We’re off to a good start. Now we’ve got to finish the job.”
“That’s right,” Baron Dan agreed. He’d fought in the Army of Southern Parthenia, too. Of course he and James will take each other’s side, Thraxton thought resentfully.
Aloud, he said, “The job shall be finished. We shall, in due course, advance upon and make a demonstration against Rising Rock, and the southrons will abandon the city to us.” And I shall have my parade through the town. The people will cheer me. The people will love me. They should have all along, but they will now.
Sadly, Earl James of Broadpath shook his head. “Your Grace, you started this campaign to drive General Guildenstern out of Rising Rock, and all you managed to do was drive him back into it. Is that worth losing one man in four from your army-and from my division, too, I might add? And the chirurgeons still don’t know whether Brigadier Bell is going to pull through after they cut the leg off him.”
From under his bushy brows, Count Thraxton glared at James. “Who is in command here, your Excellency?” he asked, his voice as frigid as a southron blizzard. “Whose magics won this victory?”
“You are, sir,” James said. “I’ve never denied it. And your magics won the day. Without them, Guildenstern wouldn’t have torn a hole in his ranks. But I tell you this, sir: a good general can win a victory. It takes a great general to know what to do with it once he’s got it.”
That only made Thraxton more coldly furious. Before he could say anything more, though, a courier came in. “What do you want?” Thraxton snapped, aiming his wrath at the luckless fellow instead of at James of Broadpath.
“Sir, I’ve got a message here from Ned of the Forest for Leonidas the Priest,” the courier answered.
“Let me see that,” Leonidas said, and took it from him. The hierophant of the Lion God perched gold-framed spectacles on his nose before reading the despatch. When he did, he read it aloud: ” `Sir: Have been on the point of Proselytizers’ Rise. Can see Rising Rock and everything around. The enemy’s glideway carpets are leaving, going around the point of Sentry Peak. The prisoners captured report two pontoons thrown across for the purpose of retreating. I think they are evacuating as hard as they can go. They are cutting down timber to obstruct our passing. I think we ought to press forward as rapidly as possible. Respectfully amp;c., Ned of the Forest. Please forward to Count Thraxton.’ ” He looked up from the paper. “There you are, your Grace. You may consider it forwarded.” He chuckled wheezily at what he reckoned his wit.
And Count Thraxton chuckled, too, though he was not a man who often gave way to mirth. He aimed a long, pale finger at James of Broadpath. “Do you see, Earl? Do you see? By Ned of the Forest’s report, the southrons are indeed abandoning Rising Rock of their own accord.”
James said nothing. He merely plucked at his vast beard and looked grave. But Baron Dan of Rabbit Hill spoke up: “Sir, I think you ought to note Ned’s last sentence there. He urges you to press forward as rapidly as possible, and that strikes me as excellent advice.”
“It strikes me as unnecessary advice. It strikes me as meddlesome advice,” Thraxton said. He wasn’t inclined to take Ned of the Forest’s advice on anything. In fact, if Ned of the Forest advised something, he was inclined to take the opposite tack-especially when, as here, Ned’s words also lent support to his doing what he’d already planned on doing.
“Sir,” James said stubbornly, “if you move fast and swing us east of Rising Rock, we can get between the southrons and their supply bases. If we do that, they fall into our hands come what may.” Dan of Rabbit Hill nodded.
But Thraxton shook his head. “It is, I repeat, unnecessary.”
“Perhaps we should pray for guidance,” Leonidas the Priest said, “beseeching the Lion God to show us his will.”
Count Thraxton looked at the hierophant as if he’d taken leave of his sense. So did James and Dan. There, if nowhere else, Thraxton and his fractious generals agreed.
It soon became clear they agreed nowhere else. Earl James and Baron Dan, quite forgetting Thraxton’s higher rank and bluer blood, went right on arguing with him. His own replies grew ever shorter and testier. Around noon, another courier from Ned of the Forest came into the farmhouse. Like the one before, this message was addressed to Leonidas the Priest. Again, the hierophant read it aloud: ” `My force has now come up quite close to Rising Rock. Previous report was in error. The southrons seem to be fortifying, as I can distinctly hear the sound of axes in great numbers. They can be driven from thence, but you will have to drive them.’ ” Spectacles glistening, Leonidas looked up from the pa
per. “The signature and the request to forward are as they were in the previous despatch.”
“You see, your Grace?” James of Broadpath said with what Thraxton reckoned altogether too much pleasure. “Not even Ned of the Forest supports your view that delay will serve here.”
“Whether Ned of the Forest approves of what I do is, I assure you, your Excellency, not of the least importance to me,” Thraxton said. “In my view, the man is ignorant, and does not know anything of cooperation. He is nothing more than a good raider.”
“Sir, whether you fancy Ned or not, he’s quite a bit more than a raider,” Dan of Rabbit Hill said. “You weren’t up on Merkle’s Hill with me, the first day of the fight. His riders were holding back Doubting George’s southrons as well as any footsoldiers could have done. I told him so, in plain Detinan, because I’ve not seen many cavalry outfits that could have done the same.”
Count Thraxton folded thin arms across his narrow chest and fixed Dan with his most forbidding stare. “I have never questioned his courage, your Excellency. I have questioned, and do continue to question, his wisdom and his military judgment. Merely because he believes something is no reason to proclaim that the Thunderer’s lightning bolt has carved his opinion deep into stone.”
Leonidas the Priest cleared his throat. “It would appear to me, your Grace, that you were willing enough to use Ned of the Forest’s opinion as a touchstone when it marched with your own.”
“When I want your opinion, you may rest assured that I shall ask for it,” Thraxton growled. His own opinion was that the hierophant was a dawdling, prayer-mumbling blockhead. He didn’t try very hard to keep Leonidas from seeing that that was his opinion, either.
Earl James said, “How does it harm you, how does it harm the army, to order a proper pursuit?”
“I have ordered a proper pursuit,” Thraxton said. “We shall follow on General Guildenstern’s heels as soon as the army recovers to the point where it may safely do so. And I remain convinced that, when we approach Rising Rock, the southrons shall be compelled to evacuate it and ignominiously retreat.”
“Your Grace, I don’t want those sons of bitches to retreat,” James said. “Even if they do, they’ll just come back and hit us again some other day. I want to kill them or take them prisoner. Then we won’t have to worry about them any more. We need to get between them and Ramblerton and drive them to destruction. That’s my view, and I still hold it.”
“I am pleased to hear your view.” Thraxton’s tone suggested he was about as pleased as he would have been at an outbreak of cholera. “I must remind you, however, that King Geoffrey has entrusted command of this army to me. I needs must lead it as I reckon best.”
“Even when your view is dead against that of every general serving under you?” James of Broadpath persisted.
“Even then. Especially then. I do not command this army for the sake of being loved,” Thraxton said.
“I believe it, by the gods!” Baron Dan muttered.
Thraxton filed that away for future vengeance. Aloud, though, he said only, “What I command for is victory. And I have won a victory.”
“So you have,” Earl James said. “You could win a greater one. You could win a victory that would restore King Geoffrey’s hopes here in the east, a victory that would give us a good chance to take Franklin away from the southrons and might even let us get back down into Cloviston. You could do that, your Grace, or you could fritter away what you’ve already won. The choice is yours.”
“I have already made the choice,” Count Thraxton said. “I have made it, and all of you seem intent on evading it. But you shall obey me, or you shall be dismissed from your commands. It is as simple as that, gentlemen.”
James of Broadpath threw his hands in the air. “Now that I’m here, I begin to see how the armies of the east came to be in the straits in which they find themselves. Have it your own way, Count Thraxton. By all the signs, that matters more to you than anything else.”
Thraxton started to tell James just what he thought of him, but the burly officer from the Army of Southern Parthenia paid no attention. He turned on his heel, all but trampling Leonidas the Priest, and stormed out of the headquarters. Baron Dan of Rabbit Hill followed. Leonidas held his place, but his expression was mournful. He said, “I believe you would be wiser to think again on the choice you have made.”
“And I believe you’re a gods-damned old idiot!” Thraxton shrieked, his voice and his temper breaking at the same time. Leonidas bowed stiffly and followed after James and Dan, his red vestments flapping around his ankles. Thraxton shouted again, this time for runners, and began giving the orders he thought right.
* * *
As Baron Ormerod trudged south, he could tell that the company he commanded was following in the wake of a beaten army. The wreckage and the stinking, bloated bodies of men and beasts by the sides of the road showed that Guildenstern’s men had worried about nothing but escape as they retreated from the River of Death to Rising Rock. Seeing the southrons in disarray should have left him happier than it did.
He wondered why he was so glum. When he spoke aloud of his worries, Lieutenant Gremio said, “I don’t think that’s very hard to figure out, sir.”
“No, eh?” Ormerod raised an eyebrow. “Suppose you enlighten me, then.”
He’d intended it for sarcasm, but Gremio took him seriously. Trust a barrister, Ormerod thought. But then Gremio said, “You’re unhappy for the same reason I’m unhappy. You’re unhappy for the same reason half the army’s unhappy: you think we ought to be sliding in east of Rising Rock, too.”
And Ormerod, in the face of such obvious, manifest truth, could do nothing but nod. “That’s right, by the gods!” he burst out. “If we can all see it, why in the seven hells can’t Count Thraxton?”
“What Thraxton sees are the holes in our ranks,” Gremio said, and Ormerod nodded again. Major Thersites remained in command of the regiment for the wounded Count Florizel, and, after two days of hard fighting on the slopes of Merkle’s Hill, a much-depleted regiment it was, too. Gremio added, “And, by what I’ve heard, Thraxton thinks the southrons will run right out of Rising Rock if we poke them a little.”
“Gods grant he’s right,” Ormerod said. But, after marching on for a couple of paces, he added, “The southrons don’t much like running. Things’d be a lot easier if they did.”
“I am aware of this,” Gremio said. “I am also aware that we did hurt them badly. I hope that will outweigh the other.”
“It had better.” Ormerod tramped on. “After all we did, after all we went through…”
“I don’t know what we can do but hope,” Gremio said. He trudged along for a while without saying anything more. Ormerod thought he had no more to say. But then he did continue: “It shouldn’t have been like this.”
Ormerod just grunted and kept on going. He’d figured that out for himself. They marched through Rossburgh, which the southrons had abandoned not long before. Some of the people in the little town cheered them. Others jeered: “Why aren’t you getting out ahead of the southrons instead of just following along in back of them like a pack of hounds?”
“You see?” Gremio said. “Even the villagers can see what Count Thraxton can’t.” He shrugged a melodramatic shrug. “Who would do better, though? Not Leonidas the Priest, not unless I miss my guess.”
“No. He’s holy, but…” Ormerod said no more than that. He needed to say no more than that. After a few steps and a longing look at a tavern, he added, “Ned of the Forest might be up to the job.”
“He might be up to it, but he’d never get it,” Gremio said. “He has no birth to speak of. How many noble officers would obey a jumped-up serfcatcher?”
“Any noble who tried disobeying Ned would be sorry afterwards,” Ormerod said, which didn’t mean he thought Gremio was wrong. Though only a minor noble himself, he didn’t like the idea of obeying a jumped-up serfcatcher, either. But thinking of serfcatching made him notice Rossburgh
in a way he hadn’t before. He was just about out of the place by then, but that didn’t matter. Turning to Gremio, he asked, “You notice anything funny about this town?”
“Aside from its being the place they made the woodcut of when they wrote the lexicon entry for `the middle of nowhere,’ no,” the barrister answered.
“Not enough blonds,” Ormerod said. “Hardly any blonds at all, in fact. They must have run away with the southrons.”
“Nothing we haven’t seen before,” Gremio said, though that wasn’t strictly true. Thraxton’s men hadn’t often been lucky enough to recapture land from which the southrons forced them. The serfs had shown their opinion of living under King Geoffrey-they’d shown it with their feet. Ormerod didn’t much care to see that opinion expressed.
The regiment encamped a few miles south of Rossburgh as the sun slid below the horizon. Major Thersites prowled from one fire to another. When he came to the one beside which Ormerod and Gremio sat, he said, “Well, even if the general doesn’t know what in the seven hells he’s doing, maybe things will turn out all right. Maybe.” Thersites didn’t sound as if he believed it.
Even though Gremio and Ormerod had been saying very much the same thing, it sounded different in Thersites’ mouth. They’d said it with regret. Thersites spoke with relish, as if he’d expected nothing better from Thraxton and the other nobles set over the army. Ormerod said, “We have to think they’re doing the best job they can.”
“If they are, gods help us all,” Thersites said. “If I wanted a rock garden outside my house, I know whose heads I’d start with. If these are the best we can do, I reckon we deserve to lose the war.”
“Why go to war, then, sir, if you feel like that?” Ormerod asked. He was too weary to want a quarrel with his bad-tempered neighbor.
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