“No matter what it seems like, it isn’t,” Ned said, even more bluntly than before. “I’m going to ask you again, sir, and this time I expect a straight answer: what do you aim to do next?”
Something seemed to leach out of Bell. He tried to gather himself, to hold on to the force of will that Ned had seen failing him, and succeeded… to a degree. “Lieutenant General, I am going to make the southrons come out of their works if they intend to fight us. If they come out, things can go wrong for them. I don’t intend to storm the entrenchments around Ramblerton. I can see we would be unlikely to carry them, the men feeling as they do about attacking forts.”
Ned of the Forest considered. If he were a footsoldier, he wouldn’t have cared to try to storm Ramblerton’s fortifications, either. Who in his right mind wanted to get killed to no purpose? But Bell’s plan, if that was what it was, struck him as being about as good as anyone could want for in the Army of Franklin’s present battered state.
“All right, sir,” he said. “Don’t reckon we’ve got much hope trying anything else. But I want to warn you about something.”
“And what’s that?” Bell rumbled. “How do you have any business warning your commanding officer?”
“Somebody’d better,” Ned said. “You have to listen, too. Don’t go splitting things up. We haven’t got the men for it. We haven’t got room to make any mistakes. Not any at all. You understand what I’m saying?”
“I have led us south for two hundred miles now,” Bell replied. “I have had plenty of underlings make mistakes-and no, I am not speaking of you, so you need not take offense. I do not believe I have made any substantial blunders in this campaign.”
“You took half my men away from me when I was trying to outflank the southrons,” Ned exclaimed. “If I’d had those men, I might’ve broken through and made John the Lister fall back without any need for a fight at Poor Richard.”
“I needed those men no less than you did,” Bell said. “The battle was long and hard enough even with their aid. Without it, our arms might not have triumphed.”
“What makes you reckon they did?” Ned asked.
Bell looked at him as if he’d started speaking the language of one of the blond tribes instead of plain and simple Detinan. “We held the field when the fight was done,” the commanding general said; Ned might have been an idiot child to doubt him. “We advanced afterwards. We took charge of the wounded men the southrons abandoned in their retreat. If that is not victory, what would you call it?”
By all the rules they taught in the officers’ collegium at Annasville, Bell was right. Ned of the Forest knew about those rules, and all other formalities of the military art, only by hearsay. But he knew what he saw with his own eyes. He had no doubt at all there. “If this here is a victory… sir… then we’d better not see another one. And that’s all I’ve got to say about that.”
He saluted with as much precision as he could muster, then turned on his heel and strode away from Lieutenant General Bell. “Here, now!” the general commanding called after him. “You come back at once-at once, I say-and explain yourself. Do you say we failed to win a victory at Poor Richard? Do you? How dare you?”
Ned pretended not to hear. Bell couldn’t very well run after him, after all. As he neared his unicorn, Bell’s complaints grew fainter. He mounted and rode off. Once in the saddle, he didn’t have to listen any more.
But the army’s still stuck with Bell, he thought unhappily. Then, even more unhappily, he shrugged. If you were in charge of things now, what would you do different? he asked himself. He found no answer. Too late to worry about that. The damage had long since been done.
“Well?” Colonel Biffle asked when Ned got back among his unicorn-riders.
“Well, Biff, the good news is, we don’t have to try and take Ramblerton all by our lonesome,” Ned replied. “The bad news is-or maybe it’s good news, too; to the hells with me if I know-we wait here outside of Ramblerton till the southrons decide they’re good and ready to hit us.”
“What do we do then?” Biffle asked dubiously.
“Hope we can lick ’em,” Ned said.
“Think we can?” the regimental commander inquired, even more dubiously.
“Don’t know,” Ned of the Forest answered. “What I think is, we’d better. Are you going to tell me I’m wrong? If we’re in our trenches and they’re trying to come at us… well, we’ve maybe got some kind of chance, anyways.”
“Maybe.” Biffle didn’t sound as if he believed it. Then he shrugged. “Odds are better than us going up against those forts, I expect. Odds of anything’d be better than that.”
“Don’t I know it!” Ned said. “It could work, I suppose. If John the Lister and Doubting George figure we’ve got no fight left in us, it could work. But by the Lion God’s claws, I hate laying my hopes on the off chance that the sons of bitches I’m up against don’t know what they’re doing.”
“Why?” Colonel Biffle said. “Been plain for a goodish while now that we don’t. Why should they be any different?”
Ned laughed. Biffle’s words held altogether too much truth. “Long odds, Biff,” he said. “Long odds indeed.”
“Well, we’ve had long odds before, and licked the southrons anyways,” Biffle said. “This past summer, down in Great River Province…”
“I know. I know. And maybe we can do it again,” Ned said. “Somehow or other, we’ve got to do it again. You reckon we can?”
He waited. For a long time, Colonel Biffle stood there without saying a word. Ned of the Forest coughed, telling him he would have an answer. Reluctantly, the regimental commander replied, “You had it right, Lord Ned. We’ve got to lick ’em. Anything we’ve got to do, we will.”
“How?” Ned neither minced nor wasted words.
All he got by way of a reply this time was a shrug. He coughed again, louder. Even more reluctantly, Colonel Biffle said, “Gods damn me if I know. Maybe the southrons really will make a mistake.”
“They’d better.” Ned of the Forest sounded as if he held his regimental commander responsible for it. Both men looked toward the works in front of Ramblerton. Even at this distance, Ned could see southrons in gray moving back and forth in those works. Even at this distance, he seemed to see a whole great swarm of southrons moving back and forth. “How many of those bastards are there?” he grumbled.
“Too many,” Biffle replied, which startled another laugh out of Ned. The colonel continued, “You put any southrons-any southrons, mind you-in a province that’s sworn loyalty to good King Geoffrey and that’s too fornicating many.”
“True enough,” Ned said. “It’ll take a good deal of pounding to be rid of ’em, though.”
Now his gaze went to Captain Watson, who was attacking a broken-down dart-thrower with a hammer and a set of wrenches. The young officer in charge of Ned’s engines was as much a mechanic as a leader of fighting men, as much a mechanic as any southron. That made him all the more valuable to the northern cause. Had Geoffrey had more men like Watson loyal to him, the north would have been in better shape. Ned saw that. After a little while, though, he also saw the north would not have been the land he knew were that so. How to win, though? Try as he would, Ned could not see that.
* * *
Once again, Rollant looked out at the northern army from the security of strong fortifications. Up at Poor Richard, Bell’s men had done everything they could to overwhelm the southrons’ works. Here… Rollant turned to Smitty. “Do you suppose Bell’d be dumb enough to try and attack us again?”
“I hope so,” Smitty answered at once. “If he does, we’ll kill every last one of the bastards he’s got left. We won’t get hurt doing it, either.”
“That’s how it looks to me, too,” the blond said. “I was wondering if maybe I was wrong.”
“Not this time,” Smitty said with a grin.
Rollant glared. “Funny. You and your smart mouth. I ought to set you chopping extra firewood for that.” Even as he spo
ke, he knew he wouldn’t.
By Smitty’s impudent grin, he must have known the same thing. “Have mercy, your Corporalship!” he exclaimed. “I’ll be good! I really will. I won’t give you any more trouble, not ever!”
Rollant laughed. “Do you know what you remind me of?”
“No, your illustrious Corporalship, but I expect you’re going to tell me, so that’s all right.”
With a snort, Rollant said, “You remind me of a fast-talking serf trying to flimflam his way out of trouble with his liege lord. I always used to wish I could talk that way when I got in trouble on Baron Ormerod’s estate. It never used to work for me, though.”
From behind them, Sergeant Joram growled, “It shouldn’t work for this fast-talking son of a bitch, either.” Rollant and Smitty both jumped; they hadn’t heard Joram come up. The sergeant went on, “Smitty, go chop firewood. Go chop lots of it. I want to see your hands bleeding when you bring it back. Go on, get out of here.”
Smitty disappeared as if made to vanish by magecraft. He knew there were times when he could argue with Sergeant Joram and times when he couldn’t. He also knew which was which, and that this was plainly one of the latter.
Joram folded massive arms across his broad chest. He eyed Rollant. “Flimflam, is it?” he said.
“Sergeant?” Rollant asked.
“You’ve made a good underofficer,” Joram said. “Truth to tell, you’ve made a better one than anybody figured you would. But you can’t be soft on somebody just because you like him and he’s a funny fellow.”
“I haven’t meant to be soft on anybody, Sergeant,” Rollant said. By his own standards, that was true. By Joram’s, it probably wasn’t. Joram was fair. He treated everybody under him the same way-miserably.
“Maybe not,” he said now, “but I think you go too easy on Smitty, and I know the two of you were pals before you made corporal.”
“Pals?” Not for the first time, Rollant wondered about that. Could a blond and an ordinary Detinan be pals? Didn’t too much history stand in the way? Rollant still thought so. That he wasn’t quite sure any more said something about Smitty-and something about how long he’d lived in the south.
“Ask you something, Sergeant?” he said.
“Go ahead,” Joram growled.
“When are we going to get out there and smash the traitors?”
“To the hells with me if I know. Whenever Doubting George gives the order.” The sergeant leered. “When he does, I promise you’ll hear about it.”
“Yes, Sergeant. I know that. But… even when we just had the little army John the Lister led, we put the fear of the gods in Bell’s men. Now we’ve got a lot more soldiers.” Rollant waved back toward Ramblerton. “We’ve got all these extra men, but Bell doesn’t even have what he hit us with before, because we chewed him up. So now maybe we ought to do some hitting of our own.”
“It’s not up to me,” Joram said. “It’s up to Doubting George. When he tells us to march, we march. When he tells us to stay where we are, we stay. When he tells you you can complain, go ahead and complain. Until he tells you you can complain-shut up, gods damn it.”
“What do free Detinans ever do but complain?” Rollant returned. “And if I’m not a free Detinan, what am I?”
That, of course, was the question of the War Between the Provinces. If a blond wasn’t a free Detinan, what was he? Northerners insisted he was a serf, and could never be anything else. King Avram disagreed with that, and had the southrons on his side. But even Avram didn’t seem convinced blonds would become ordinary Detinans the instant the north gave up the fight.
Joram’s heavy-featured face-the gods might have made him on purpose to be a sergeant-clouded up. But he had an answer that applied to Rollant, even if it didn’t to blonds in general: “What are you? By the Thunderer’s balls, you’re a corporal-and I’m a sergeant. If I tell you to swallow your bellyaching, you’d better swallow it, on account of I’ve got the right to tell you to. Have you got that?”
“Yes, Sergeant,” Rollant said-the only answer he could give. Joram recognized his right to be a corporal. As soon as that right was recognized, as soon as a blond’s right to pick up a crossbow or a pike and go fight the northerners was recognized, everything else would follow. And if Grand Duke Geoffrey wanted to deny it and call himself king in the north… too bad for him. He had left only the Army of Southern Parthenia and the Army of Franklin. Marshal Bart had one by the throat, while the other waited here for whatever Doubting George would do to it.
“When we do whip Lieutenant General Bell, what will Geoffrey have left here in the east?” Rollant wondered aloud. “Nothing I can see.”
“That’s the idea,” Joram said. “The son of a bitch is a traitor. When he’s done losing, he ought to go up on a cross. The buzzards can peck out his eyes, for all I care. We’re going to smash those bastards, smash ’em good. Don’t you worry about that, not even a little bit. It’ll happen. Nobody knows when yet, but it will.” He thumped Rollant on the back, hard enough to stagger him, then trudged on down the trench line.
“Boy,” Smitty said, “if I gave him half that hard a time, he’d have my guts for garters.”
“And you’d deserve it, too,” Rollant said. “I thought you went off to cut firewood.”
“So did Joram,” Smitty answered. “I just went into the little jog in the trench where we ease ourselves. That’s one good thing about cold weather, anyhow-the little jog doesn’t stink the way it would in summer. Hardly any flies, either.”
“Button yours,” Rollant said.
Smitty looked down. Rollant snickered. That was the sort of joke schoolboys played on each other-not that he’d ever been a schoolboy. “Think you’re pretty gods-damned funny, don’t you?” Smitty said indignantly.
“What I think is, you’d better go cut that wood before Joram sees you’re still around,” Rollant said. “He’s right-I let you get away with all kinds of things. But he won’t, and you know it.”
Nodding gloomily, Smitty went off to do his work. Rollant looked out at the northerners’ lines again. They weren’t within crossbow range, or even within range of the stone- and dart-throwers that could outshoot any hand-held weapon. They had their own fortified positions on the hills in front of Ramblerton, a couple of miles north of Doubting George’s outworks.
All right. They’re there. Now what the hells do they do? Rollant wondered. What would I do, if I were Bell? One answer to that question immediately came to mind: I’d go somewhere high and jump off. Could Bell jump with only one leg? One more thing Rollant didn’t know. But he wouldn’t have wanted to go around leaving pieces of himself on different battlefields, as the northern general commanding had done.
Tiny as ants in the distance, blue-clad traitors went about their business. As soldiers, they weren’t much different from their southron counterparts. As men… as men, they were welcome to the hottest firepits in the seven hells, as far as Rollant was concerned. He knew they wished him the same, and would do their best to send him there. If he’d cared about what northern Detinans thought, he never would have run away from Baron Ormerod’s plantation.
Night fell early this time of year. Before long, all Rollant could see of the enemy was the light from his campfires. Over there, common soldiers were also grumbling because their underofficers made them chop firewood. One thing was different over there, though. None of the northerners’ underofficers was a blond.
Lieutenant Griff came up the line. “Everything all right, Corporal?” he asked. He spoke thickly; up at Poor Richard, a shortsword had laid one cheek open. The black stitches the healers had put in to close the wound made him look like an outlaw or a pirate instead of the mild-mannered fellow he’d seemed before. Even when they came out, he’d be scarred for the rest of his days.
“Everything’s fine, sir,” Rollant answered. “How are you?” He hadn’t expected to sound so anxious. Griff had made a better company commander than most of his men thought he would after Captain C
ephas got killed. His voice still broke now and again, but he had plenty of nerve, and he looked out for his soldiers the way a good officer would.
Now he managed a mostly one-sided grin. “I’ll do,” he said. “No sign of fever in the wound-it’s healing, not festering. That was my biggest worry. I’m not what you’d call fond of soaking a rag in spirits and pressing it on the cut-”
“Ow!” Rollant said sympathetically. “Does that really do any good? Seems like a lot of hurt for not much help.”
“Some of them say it does, so I’m doing it,” Griff replied. “I asked one of them if he’d do it himself, and he showed me a clean scar and said he had done it. Not much I could say to that.”
Rollant thought of raw spirits on raw flesh. “I don’t know, sir. I think I’d almost rather have the fever.”
Lieutenant Griff shook his head. “No. That can kill. This just hurts. I’ll get through it.” Unlike a lot of Detinans, he didn’t brag or bluster about his bravery. He just displayed it. Pointing to the fires north of Ramblerton, he said, “I wish Lieutenant General George would turn us loose against the traitors.”
“I’ve been saying the same thing. Why won’t he, do you think?” Rollant asked.
Griff shrugged. “How can I say? I’m not Doubting George. I’m not going to go back into Ramblerton and ask him. Not even Colonel Nahath could get away with that. George would throw him out on his ear. Maybe he’s waiting for more men-I hear another wing may be coming from the far side of the Great River.”
“Why does he need them?” Rollant asked. “We stopped the Army of Franklin all by ourselves, and George has a lot of soldiers here who didn’t go north with John the Lister. We ought to be able to ride roughshod over the traitors.”
Smiling-again, lopsidedly-Griff said, “Well, Rollant, no one who listened to you would ever get the idea that blonds are shy about mixing it up.”
He means that for praise, Rollant reminded himself. And he’s my company commander. If I bop him over the head with something, it will only land me in trouble.
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