John the Lister told him. The sentry nodded. “Oh, yes, I’ve seen that son of a bitch. I don’t know that he’s ever seen me, but I’ve seen him. He’s got the very same kind of spyglass as mine.”
“Well, of course,” John said. “We all have the same kind of stuff. The traitors took whatever was in their provinces when they declared for false King Geoffrey, and they’ve been using it ever since.”
Yet even though he’d said of course to the sentry, it wasn’t something about which he’d thought much before. It was worth remembering. The two branches of the Detinan trunk had spent the past three and a half years showing each other how different they were. Yet they were without question branches from the same trunk. Even if the northerners wanted to hold on to their serfs and their great estates while manufactories and glideways spread across the south, both sides still spoke the same language, worshiped the same gods-and even used the same tactical manual for training their soldiers. Roast-Beef William, who’d written it, fought for Geoffrey these days, and had the unlucky assignment of trying to stop General Hesmucet’s march across Peachtree Province toward the Western Ocean. If he could have scraped up even a quarter as many men as Hesmucet commanded, he might have had a chance. As things were…
“As things are, he’s in just as much trouble as Bell and the gods-damned Army of Franklin,” John the Lister said.
“Who is, sir?” the sentry asked.
“Never you mind.” John descended from the observation tower as abruptly as he’d climbed to the top of it. Looking over the traitors’ position had only gone further to convince him that they were ready for the taking now. Maybe if he dragged Doubting George up here and made him look with his own eyes…
And if that doesn’t work, John thought, to the seven hells with me if I wouldn’t be tempted to take that spyglass and shove it up his… A subordinate wasn’t supposed to have such ideas about his superior. Whether John was supposed to or not, he did.
He was just coming back to the outskirts of Ramblerton when a young officer on unicornback waved to him. “Brigadier John!” the other man called. “Congratulations on your promotion in the ranks of the regulars.”
“Thank you kindly, Jimmy,” John the Lister said, and then, “Do you mind if I ask you a question?”
“Ask away,” Hard-Riding Jimmy answered. “After what we went through around Poor Richard, we’d better be able to talk to each other, eh?”
“Do you think we can whip the traitors with the men we’ve got here already?”
“Me, sir? Hells, yes! I’m within shouting distance of being able to do it all by myself,” Jimmy said. “I’ve picked up a ton of reinforcements, and they’ve all got quick-shooting crossbows. Send me around their flank and into their rear and I’ll rip ’em to shreds.”
“Would you tell that to Doubting George?” John asked eagerly.
“I already have,” the commander of unicorn-riders answered.
“And?” John said.
Hard-Riding Jimmy shrugged. “And he wants to wait a bit.”
“Why?” John the Lister asked in something not far from desperation. “Why does George want to wait, in the name of the Thunderer’s great right fist? Why does he need to wait?”
“He’s the general commanding.” Jimmy shrugged again. “Officers who’re in charge do whatever they please, no matter how silly it is.” He tipped his hat to John. “Meaning no disrespect, of course.”
“Of course.” John’s voice was sour. What had he done that Hard-Riding Jimmy thought silly? He decided not to ask. The younger man was too likely to tell him. Instead, he said, “You do agree George is making a mistake by not attacking the Army of Franklin?”
“I don’t know if it’s a mistake or not,” Jimmy said. “He says he can whip Bell whenever he pleases. Maybe he’s right; maybe he’s wrong. If he’s wrong, waiting is a mistake. If he’s right, what the hells difference does it make? I will say this much, though: if I were in charge here, I’d’ve hit the traitors a couple-three days ago. I already told you that.”
“Yes. You did. I’m glad to hear it again, though. Now, the next question is, what can we do either to get George moving or to get a commanding general who will move?”
Hard-Riding Jimmy studied him. John the Lister didn’t care for that sober scrutiny. The commander of unicorn-riders likely suspected him of wanting that command for himself. He’d told George he wouldn’t intrigue for it, and here he was, intriguing. I wouldn’t, if only George would move, he thought. At last, Hard-Riding Jimmy said, “We can’t do anything, sir. But Marshal Bart can.”
VII
Papers in Ramblerton could not print everything they chose. Most of them, had they had a choice, would have backed the cause of false King Geoffrey. As a southron army had held Ramblerton for more than two and a half years, they didn’t have that choice. Doubting George had several officers deciding what the papers could and couldn’t say. Editors screamed of tyranny. But they printed what George wanted them to print-or else, as had happened, they abruptly stopped doing business.
The Ramblerton Record was not conspicuously better or worse than any of the other surviving dailies. Because the army kept an eye on them (and, when necessary, a thumb as well), they all tended to sound alike. Doubting George preferred the Record because its type was a little larger than those of its rivals. He could read it without bothering to put on spectacles.
As its chief story this morning, it carried a speech King Avram had made to his council of ministers a few days before. Would it have done that without… encouragement from those southron officers? “I doubt it,” George murmured, and peered at the paper.
Avram said, The most remarkable feature in the military operations of the year is General Hesmucet’s attempted march of three hundred miles, directly through the insurgent region. It tends to show a great increase of our relative strength that our Marshal should feel able to confront and hold in check every active force of the enemy, and yet to detach a well-appointed large army to move on such an expedition.
Doubting George made a sour face. The King of Detina thought-or said he thought-the traitors were stopped all over the map. Why didn’t Marshal Bart think the same way? George feared he knew-Bart was trying to drive him out of his mind. The marshal was doing a pretty good job of it, too.
And am I trying to drive Marshal Bart out of his mind? George shook his big head. He wasn’t trying to do anything of the sort. He was trying to get rid of the Army of Franklin, and to make sure he didn’t get rid of his own army instead. If Bart couldn’t see that… then, gods damn him, he’d give the army to someone else.
Muttering-he’d distracted himself-Doubting George returned to the Ramblerton Record. King Avram continued, On careful consideration of all the evidence accessible it seems to me that no attempt at negotiation with the insurgent leader could result in any good. He would accept nothing short of severance of the Kingdom-precisely what we will not and cannot give. He does not attempt to deceive us. He affords us no excuse to deceive ourselves. He cannot voluntarily reaccept the unity of Detina; we cannot voluntarily yield it. It is an issue which can only be tried by war, and decided by victory. If we yield, we are beaten; if the northern people fail him, he is beaten.
The more George studied Avram’s speeches, the more he became convinced the rightful King of Detina was a very clever man. He hadn’t thought so when Avram took the throne. The new king’s uncompromising attitude on serfdom had prejudiced him. He saw that now.
He had to open the Record to an inside page to find out the rest of what Avram had told his ministers. What is true, however, of him who heads the insurgent cause, is not necessarily true of those who follow. Although he cannot accept the united Kingdom of Detina, they can. Some of them, we know, already desire peace and reunion. They can, at any moment, have peace simply by laying down their arms and submitting to the royal authority. A year ago general pardon and amnesty, upon specified terms, were offered to all, except certain designated classes; and,
it was, at the same time, made known that the excepted classes were still within contemplation of special clemency. During the year many availed themselves of the general provision. During the same time also special pardons have been granted to individuals of the excepted classes, and no voluntary application has been denied.
Doubting George had to read that twice. He hadn’t realized King Avram was so reasonable, so merciful. Was the king softening on serfdom, too?
He got his answer right away, for Avram finished, In presenting the abandonment of armed resistance to the royal authority on the part of the insurgents, as the only indispensable condition to ending the war on the part of the Kingdom, I retract nothing heretofore said as to serfdom. In stating a single condition of peace, I mean simply to say that the war will cease on the part of the Kingdom, whenever it shall have ceased on the part of those who began it.
No, Avram hadn’t softened. As well as more wit, there was also more iron in the King of Detina than anyone would have suspected when the Thunderer’s chief hierophant first set the crown on his head. A few days afterwards, another hierophant of the Thunderer had put a different crown, hastily made for the occasion, on Grand Duke Geoffrey’s head up in the north. Not much later, Avram and Geoffrey had stopped talking and started fighting. They’d been fighting ever since.
“Matter of fact, Avram makes a pretty fair King of Detina,” Doubting George murmured. He’d sided with Avram when he hadn’t believed that at all, out of loyalty to the notion of a united Detina rather than from any particular loyalty to or admiration of the sovereign. A lot of people, in the north and even in the south, had expected Avram to make a dreadful hash of things. But he hadn’t, and it didn’t look as if he would.
Colonel Andy knocked on George’s door, which was open. When George waved for him to come in, he said, “Sir, there’s a scryer here who wants to talk with you. Do you want to talk with him?”
Scryers, lately, had brought little but bad news. Even so, George shrugged and nodded. “I’d better, don’t you think?”
“Who knows?” Andy turned away and spoke to a man in the antechamber: “Go ahead, but don’t you waste the general’s time.”
“I won’t, sir.” The scryer, a captain, wore a gray mage’s robe, his epaulets of rank, a sorcerer’s badge, and a gold-in fact, probably polished brass-crystal ball to show his specialization. He shut the door on Andy after he came inside. Doubting George’s adjutant let out a squawk, but the scryer ignored him. To George, he said, “This is for your ears alone.”
The commanding general reached up and tugged at one of the organs in question. “Seems to be in tolerable working order,” he observed. “Say your say, Captain-?”
“I’m called Bartram, sir. Bartram the Traveler.” Bartram was somewhere in his thirties, with a long, lean, mournful face and sad, clever, hound-dog eyes. He gave off a feeling of reliability. Some people did. Some of those people also let you down, as George was painfully well aware. The scryer coughed a couple of times, then said, “My hobby, sir, is looking for ways to read crystal balls that ought to be out of range.”
“Some people grow roses. Some people raise snakes. You never can tell,” George said.
“Er-well-yes,” Captain Bartram said. “But I wouldn’t be here now if I did those things.”
“I suppose not. You’d probably be happier if you weren’t, too,” Doubting George said, though he wondered whether Bartram could be happy anywhere. His face denied the possibility. The commanding general went on, “Since you are here, suppose you go ahead and tell me why.”
“Yes, sir. I’m here because of some of the things I heard when I was fooling around with my crystal ball late last night. They stretch farther then. I don’t know why, but they do.”
“And what you heard was-?” George tried to project an air of expectant waiting.
“Sir, what I heard was orders for Baron Logan the Black to hop on a glideway carpet and head east to take command of this army. And what I heard was Marshal Bart saying he’d come east, too, to take charge of Logan.”
“Did you, now?” George said slowly, as if he came from the Sapphire Isle. Now he tried not to show the anger he felt. Logan the Black wasn’t a regular at all. Hesmucet had declined to let him keep command of a wing when he took it over after James the Bird’s Eye was killed outside Marthasville. And now Marshal Bart wanted to hand him command of a whole army? Of this whole army? If that wasn’t an insult, Doubting George had never run into one.
“What will you do, sir?” Bartram the Traveler asked. “I thought you ought to know.”
“I will do just what I am doing,” George replied. “I don’t see what else I can do. If Bart wants to show me the door for doing what I think is right, then that’s what he will do. I don’t intend to lose any sleep over it.”
That sounded very pretty. George wished it were true. When he saw Captain Bartram’s expression, he wished it were convincing; he would have traded truth for that. Of course, in war, sometimes we can turn what’s convincing into what’s true, as long as the bastards on the other side don’t see behind it.
Since he obviously wasn’t being convincing here, though, that didn’t apply. Bartram said, “Sir, maybe you really ought to attack now.”
“Even you, Bartram?” George said. Then he surprised even himself by starting to laugh.
“What the hells is funny, sir?” the scryer blurted. He started to apologize.
Doubting George held up a hand. “Don’t worry about that, Captain. It’s one of the most honest things I’ve heard lately. And I’ll even give you the answer. John the Lister is another one who’s been nagging me to do what I don’t care to do just yet. He has to have wondered if he’d take over this army once Marshal Bart gave me the boot. Now we know-he wouldn’t. He can’t like the idea of serving under Logan the Black. So I suspect he’ll stay loyal as loyal can be for as long as I keep command.”
“You’ve still got two or three days, sir,” Bartram the Traveler said. “Maybe even four. Baron Logan will come east to Cloviston, then north from there to here. Marshal Bart will have to sail from Pierreville down to Georgetown, and then he’ll hop on the glideway, too. He’s a few days behind Logan.”
“I see. Thank you for putting everything so precisely,” George said. “One more thing I need to ask you: how reliable is all this? When you’re playing with your crystal ball there, you’re not just imagining you’re hearing what you’re hearing, are you?”
“No, sir,” Bartram replied. “I’m doing the same sorts of things we do when we try to read the northerners’ crystal balls, except I’m doing them to our own side. And I have some tricks not every scryer knows. Quite a few tricks not every scryer knows, if I do say so myself.” He drew himself up with pride.
Doubting George wondered whether to congratulate him or clap him in the brig. Finding out what you wanted to know regardless of whether you were supposed to know it was a very Detinan thing to do. If the individual was altogether free and untrammeled, the kingdom would surely be free, too, wouldn’t it? I don’t know. Would it? As usual, George had his doubts. The kingdom might go down the drain instead.
He said, “Since no one has bothered telling me Logan the Black is on the way to steal my command, do me the courtesy of keeping this under your hat till it is official, if you’d be so kind.”
“Yes, sir.” Bartram touched the brim of that hat with a forefinger in what wasn’t quite a salute. “You can count on me.”
“Thank you, Captain.” George nodded. The scryer left. George sighed. If he’d been Guildenstern, he would have reached for a bottle of brandy. Being who he was, he just sighed again. Before long, the news would get out: if not from Bartram the Traveler, then rushing ahead of Baron Logan. Gods damn his thieving soul, Doubting George thought. That wasn’t fair. He didn’t care. Bart wasn’t being fair to him, either.
He wanted to rush to the scryers’ room and find out exactly how far away those two brigades of footsoldiers from the east were. He wanted
to, but he didn’t. If he showed worry, people would start wondering why. If they started wondering, they would find out before long. And a lot of his authority would fly right out the window if they found out.
He went outside, shaking off Colonel Andy’s questions. Maybe I ought to attack the Army of Franklin without those two brigades. George shook his head. He still felt-he strongly felt-he would do better to wait. What happened to his career was one thing. What happened to his men was something else again, something much more important.
If Baron Logan the Black took over this army, of course, he would attack regardless of whether those brigades had come. Doubting George understood that. Logan would be taking over for the purpose of immediate attack. As long as he got a victory out of it, would he care what happened to the army? George shook his head. “Not fornicating likely,” he muttered.
“Hey, General!” a soldier called. George’s head came up. The man went on, “Do you doubt we can lick those stinking traitors? Turn us loose! We’ll do it!” Without waiting for an answer, he tipped his cap and went on his way.
Doubting George laughed in something not far from despair. How many times in the War Between the Provinces had generals from both sides sent their men out to do things flesh and blood simply could not do? More times than anyone could hope to count; George doubted that not at all. But how many times had generals held back from an attack their soldiers actually wanted to make? If this wasn’t the first, he would have been astonished.
Does that mean I’m wrong? he wondered. When he shook his head, it was at first with the air of a man bedeviled by bees, or at least by doubts. But then his resolve stiffened. He earned his pay because he allegedly knew more about what he was doing than the men he commanded.
“Allegedly,” he said. Much of the soldier’s art was obvious. Advancing crossbowmen and pikemen usually had a pretty good notion of whether they would prevail even before bolts started flying. Maybe I am wrong here, George thought. Maybe I am-but I still doubt it.
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