“I do know what I am doing, gentlemen,” Count Thraxton said. “Did I not prove as much in the fighting by the River of Death? Without my magic, we should never have won our victory there.”
We should have won more than we did. Neither Duke Cabell nor Roast-Beef William said it out loud. But they both thought it very loudly; Thraxton could tell.
“We shall send them reeling back in dismay,” Thraxton said. “We shall send them reeling back in defeat. We shall retake Rising Rock. From Rising Rock, we shall go on to retake all of Franklin.”
“May it be so.” This time, Cabell and Roast-Beef William spoke together. Neither one bothered keeping his voice down.
“May it be so, indeed,” Thraxton said. “I intend to make it so.”
“How, your Grace?” Duke Cabell asked.
“Never you mind,” Thraxton answered. “My magecraft will find a way.”
“Such claims have been made before, sir,” Cabell said. Thraxton scowled at him. The quarrel seemed on the point of heating up again. Then Cabell went on, “And, if we know what your sorcery will be, what it will do, we can give our men orders that will let them take best advantage of it.”
“That is an important point, your Grace,” Roast-Beef William said.
“Perhaps,” Thraxton said. But Cabell of Broken Ridge was right. Even if Thraxton couldn’t stand the man, he knew as much. Grudgingly, he went on, “All right, then. What I intend to do is wait until the southrons are well involved in what will plainly be some important attack, then fill their spirits-which the gods must hate anyhow-with such fear that they can only flee.”
“That will be very good,” Roast-Beef William said.
“If you can do it,” Duke Cabell added.
He got another glare from Thraxton, who spoke in icy tones: “I can do it, and I shall do it. Draft your orders, both of you, so that your men may exploit the southrons’ terror and disarray.”
“Yes, sir,” William said dutifully. Cabell just gave a curt nod.
You still don’t believe me, Thraxton thought. I’ll show you. I’ll show everyone. Everyone who ever doubted me for any reason will know my might by the time this fight is done. Aloud, he said, “Gentlemen, I dismiss you. I am sure that, when the morning comes, your men will continue to fight as gallantly as they already have. Now you must leave me to my sorcerous preparations.”
Roast-Beef William left his headquarters in a hurry, as if he didn’t want anything to do with magecraft. By the way Cabell of Broken Ridge departed, he didn’t want anything to do with Count Thraxton. Thraxton could tell the difference. Treat me as if I were a blond, will you? You’ll be sneering out of the other side of your overbred mouth by this time tomorrow.
He went to his sorcerous tomes with a grim intensity that would have alarmed friends as well as foes-had he had any friends nearer than King Geoffrey in Nonesuch. And he found the spells he wanted. The men who’d prepared them hadn’t imagined that they could be aimed at a whole army rather than at a man or two, but that was their failure of imagination, not Count Thraxton’s.
He forgot about sleep. He forgot about everything except the wizardry he was shaping. He didn’t even notice it was growing light outside. He didn’t notice anything except the pages in front of him till one of the sentries in front of his farmhouse headquarters exclaimed, “Lion God’s claws, looks like every gods-damned southron in the world’s lined up down there!”
That penetrated Thraxton’s fog of concentration. His joints creaked as he rose from his chair. When he looked down on the enemy, he laughed. “So they think they can storm Proselytizers’ Rise, do they? They might as well try to storm the gods’ mystic mountain as ours. Let them come!” He laughed again.
Tiny and perfect in the distance, looking like so many toy soldiers, the southrons advanced toward the trench line at the base of Proselytizers’ Rise. They’d come that far in the previous day’s fighting, though they’d had to fall back. If they tried to come farther now… If they tried to come farther and then fear smote them…
Imagining thousands, tens of thousands, of panic-stricken men trying to tumble down the front slope of Proselytizers’ Rise, Thraxton laughed yet again. That would be sweet, sweet enough to make up for all the embarrassment and bickering he’d had to put up with since the fight by the River of Death. “Let them come,” he whispered. “Aye, let them come.”
Come they did. The southrons might be-as far as Thraxton was concerned, they were-savages, ruffians, uncivilized brigands doing their best to pull down their betters. But they weren’t cowards. If only they’d run from Merkle’s Hill instead of standing fast… But they had a good northern man-no, a bad northern man, for he chose the wrong side-leading them, Count Thraxton thought. He wasted a moment sending a curse Doubting George’s way.
Into the trenches at the base of Proselytizers’ Rise swarmed the southrons. Before long, they had overrun them. And then, to Thraxton’s delight, they did start storming up the side of Proselytizers’ Rise, toward his men who were shooting down at them from above. Who could have given such a mad order? Whoever he was, Thraxton wanted to clasp his hand and thank him for aiding King Geoffrey’s cause.
Thraxton peered down at the southrons scrambling toward him. General Bart’s whole army seemed to be trying to pull itself up the steep slope of the Rise. Thraxton waited a few minutes more, then began his spell. Confidence flowed through his narrow chest as he incanted. No, nothing would go wrong this time. Nothing could go wrong this time. He’d been wrong before, perhaps, but not now. He laughed. Surely not now…
XII
“Forward!” Captain Cephas shouted, waving his sword. His command was almost lost in the roar that came from the throats of hundreds of officers and the throats of hundreds of horns. And forward the men of Doubting George’s army went.
“King Avram!” Rollant yelled. “King Avram and freedom!” He wasn’t thrilled about moving once more against the base of Proselytizers’ Rise, but nobody cared whether he was thrilled or not.
“We can do it!” Cephas said. Rollant didn’t know whether they could do it or not. He wasn’t going to worry about it very much, either. He would go forward as long and as hard as he could. If his comrades started going back instead of forward, he would go back, too-a little more slowly than most, so as not to let ordinary Detinans get any nasty ideas about blonds.
Beside him, Smitty said, “I hope the traitors up there at the top of the Rise are pissing in their pantaloons, watching us come at ’em.”
“And the bastards in the trenches down below, too,” Rollant added. “That’d be good.”
“It sure would,” Smitty agreed. Then he stared up toward the forbidding crest line of Proselytizers’ Rise and grimaced. “Likelier, though, they’re just sitting up there getting drunk and laughing their arses off at us.”
Rollant thought that was pretty likely, too. All through the campaign, nobody in Rising Rock had said anything about driving the traitors from Proselytizers’ Rise. The closer Rollant came to the base of the Rise, the more sense that made to him. It looked to him as if men who held the top could stay there forever.
The men in the trenches at the bottom of the Rise started shooting at the advancing southrons. They had a few engines with them, too, which hurled stones and firepots at Rollant and his comrades. A stone smashed two men to shrieking ruin only a few feet to his left. Something hot and wet splashed his wrist-somebody’s drop of blood. With a soft, disgusted curse, he wiped the back of his hand on his pantaloons.
Then the southrons broke through the ditches and downed trees in front of the trench line. As it had been the day before, the fighting was fierce, but it didn’t last long. The southrons had more men here today, and overwhelmed their foes. A few of the traitors got away, but only a few.
Having gained the trenches, what did the southrons have? Rollant had wondered that the day before, and still wondered now. The northerners on top of Proselytizers’ Rise were free to shoot down at them to their hearts’ co
ntent. And they galled the southrons, too, with their bolts and with the stones and firepots the engines up there hurled down.
“What do we do about this?” Rollant shouted to anyone who would listen. He hoped Smitty would have an answer, or Sergeant Joram, or Captain Cephas. If they didn’t, he hoped the generals who’d sent the army forward-and who mostly hadn’t come themselves-would. But no one said a word. A plunging crossbow bolt struck a soldier not far from him between the neck and the left shoulder and sank down through his flesh to pierce his heart. A surprised look on his face, the man fell dead. “What do we do?” Rollant repeated.
Afterwards, he would have taken oath that he heard someone with a great voice shouting, “Forward!” A few other men said the same thing, so he didn’t think he’d imagined it. But he was never quite sure, for neither Smitty nor Joram nor a good many others recalled hearing anything of the sort.
What was plain was, the army couldn’t stay there. It couldn’t go back, not when it was only being stung, not unless it wanted to humiliate itself forevermore before General Bart and Doubting George-and humiliate George in the process. That left only one thing to do.
Rollant wasn’t among the very first who started scrambling up the steep, rocky slope of Proselytizers’ Rise toward the traitors at the crest line. He wasn’t among the very first, but he wasn’t far behind them, either. Anything seemed better than getting shot at when his crossbow lacked the range to shoot back.
“We’re out of our minds,” Smitty said as the two of them scrabbled for hand- and footholds. “They’ll fornicating massacre us.”
“Maybe they will,” Rollant answered. “Maybe they won’t, gods damn ’em. But we’ll get close enough to hurt ’em before they do.” A quarrel struck sparks from a stone a couple of feet in front of his face and harmlessly bounded away. Maybe we’ll get close enough to hurt the traitors, he thought. Maybe.
More and more southrons were on the slope now. When Rollant looked back over his shoulder, the whole surface of the Rise below him was gray with soldiers taking the one way they could to come to grips with the foe. Even as he watched, a couple of them were hit and went rolling back down toward the trenches.
The spectacle of the southrons scrambling up the front face of Proselytizers’ Rise was awe-inspiring enough from where he saw it. What did it look like from the crest, where the northerners watched a whole army heaving itself up the mountainside straight at them? Rollant didn’t, couldn’t, know. He just hoped he would make it to the top.
When he got about halfway up, he paused to shoot at the traitors peering down at him, and to reload once he had shot. He didn’t know whether he hit anyone, but he’d come far enough to try. Another bolt spanged off a rock in front of him. Lucky twice now, went through his mind. How much longer can I stay lucky?
“They can’t hit anybody,” Smitty said, as obvious a lie as Rollant had ever heard.
Before he could answer, the sun seemed to dim for a moment, though no cloud was near. A breath of cold air went straight down the back of his neck. Under his cap, all his butter-yellow hair tried to stand on end. He’d had those feelings before, back in his serf hut on Baron Ormerod’s estate. “Magecraft,” he whispered, putting all a serf’s dread into the word. “That’s strong magecraft.”
Other voices, not all of them belonging to blonds, said the same thing or things that meant the same. The spell hovered over Proselytizers’ Rise like a great bird of prey. Rollant shuddered, shivered, shook. I must have been crazy to join King Avram’s army, to go up against what the traitor lords can throw. Crazy? Worse than that. I must have been stupid.
And the spell, after hovering for a few unbearable heartbeats, struck home. And the traitors atop the Rise howled like beaten dogs and fled, throwing away their weapons to run the faster.
Rollant stared up at the crest in delighted disbelief. That wasn’t, that couldn’t be, a bluff. That was real panic, and he knew exactly what had caused it. “Either our mages got a spell just right, or theirs botched one,” he said as he scrambled forward.
“Bet on theirs botching one,” Smitty said beside him. “Thraxton the Braggart’s done it before.”
“I know he has,” Rollant answered. “It only goes to show that, every now and again, the gods do make sure there’s some justice down here below.”
“Maybe,” Smitty said. “And maybe it just goes to show old Thraxton can’t count past ten without taking off his shoes.”
“Believe what you want to believe,” Rollant said. “I’ll put my faith in the gods. And I’ll put my faith in getting to the top of the Rise before you do.”
“That’s what you think.” Smitty made for the crestline as if propelled from a catapult. Rollant did his best to keep up, but found himself outdistanced. Smitty waited, grinning, at the crest of the Rise. He gave Rollant a hand and pulled him upright. Somehow, it wasn’t a race Rollant minded losing, especially when Smitty pointed west. “Will you look at those sons of bitches run? If they keep going like that, they won’t stop till they get to the ocean.”
“Good.” Rollant brought up his crossbow to his shoulder and sent a bolt after the fleeing traitors.
More and more southrons, all of them whooping with the joy of men who unexpectedly find victory in place of disaster, came up onto the top of Proselytizers’ Rise. And more and more of their officers, seeing Thraxton’s men abandoning what had been the strongest of positions and running for their lives, shouted things like, “After them! Don’t let them get away!”
Though still panting from the climb up the side of the Rise, Rollant was willing-Rollant, in fact, was eager-to go after the men who wanted to keep blonds bound to their land. And plenty of Detinans in the southrons’ army went with him. Maybe they didn’t care so much about serfdom, but they knew a won battle when they saw one, and they wanted to get as much as they could from this one.
“River of Death!” some of them shouted. “This pays you bastards back for the River of Death!”
The traitors who’d been on the crest of Proselytizers’ Rise kept right on retreating in spite of the jeers from the southrons. Maybe, as Smitty said, they really would run till they came to the Western Ocean. When Thraxton’s spells went wrong, they went spectacularly wrong. Rollant was glad this one hadn’t gone right, or he would have been running back toward Rising Rock. But some northern soldiers finally formed lines to oppose the southrons. They were, Rollant realized, the men whom Fighting Joseph had forced away from Sentry Peak the day before.
“See how thin they are, boys?” Captain Cephas called. “A couple of good volleys and they’ll melt like ice in the springtime.”
Rollant hadn’t seen much in the way of ice before fleeing down to New Eborac; snow rarely fell near Karlsburg. But he was all for making the traitors melt away. That big, burly son of a bitch waving a sword, for instance. Gods damn me if that doesn’t look like Baron Ormerod, he thought as he took aim with his crossbow. Looks just the way Ormerod did when he almost put a hole in me. Thinking thus, he aimed with extra care. He squeezed the trigger. The crossbow kicked his shoulder.
And the traitor dropped his sword, clutched his chest with both hands, and sagged to the ground. Rollant yowled in triumph. Whether it was Ormerod or not, he’d killed his man.
And Cephas had the right of it. There weren’t enough northerners to stand up to the men facing them. After a couple of volleys, the company commander and other officers yelled, “Charge!” Charge the southrons did-and the traitors broke before them.
As Rollant loped past the man he’d slain, he looked down at him and whooped. “By all the gods, it is Ormerod!” he shouted, and kicked at the corpse. He missed, but he didn’t care. “Tell me blonds can’t fight, gods damn you.” He hoped devils were doing horrible things to the baron’s spirit down in one of those seven hells the Detinans talked about.
“Your liege lord?” Smitty said. “Did you shoot him?”
“I sure did,” Rollant answered. “I just wish I could’ve done it ten yea
rs ago.” He paused. “No. All his Detinan friends would’ve caught me and burned me alive. Not now, though.”
“No, not now,” Smitty agreed. “Now we’ve just got to keep chasing all these traitor sons of bitches as far as we can.”
More northerners kept coming forward to try to stem the retreat. They couldn’t do it, but their rear-guard action finally did let the bulk of Thraxton’s army break free of its pursuers and make its escape: the same role Doubting George’s wing had played in the fight by the River of Death. By the time the sun set, most of the traitors were several miles ahead of General Bart’s army, moving in the only direction open to them-up toward Peachtree Province.
Rollant and Smitty sprawled by a fire. Some of the soldiers ran up a tent for Captain Cephas, who’d kept up well but looked even more worn than most of his men. As Rollant was too tired even to get up and see what Hagen the blond had thrown into the stewpot, Cephas had to be truly weary. But when Rollant remarked on that, Smitty shook his head. “He wasn’t too worn out to keep Corliss from sneaking in there,” he said.
“What?” Rollant sat up, though every joint ached. “I didn’t see that.”
“Things happen whether you see them or not,” Smitty said with a superior sniff.
“I know,” Rollant answered. “Bad things are liable to happen on account of this.” He glanced over at Hagen. As long as the escaped serf was busy dishing out supper, he might not have time to worry about where his wife had gone. For everyone’s sake, Rollant hoped he wouldn’t.
When Captain Cephas didn’t emerge from the tent, Lieutenant Griff ordered sentries out. “We have to stay alert,” he said. “The traitors might counterattack.” Rollant didn’t believe it-the northerners were beaten men tonight-but he recognized the possibility. He also let out a long sigh of relief when Sergeant Joram didn’t call his name. Making the most of the opportunity, he wrapped himself in his blanket and fell asleep.
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