And Marthasville now wasn’t what it had been before Hesmucet captured it from the traitors. Hesmucet had burned it before setting out on his march across Peachtree to Veldt, and his siege engines had had their way with it even before it fell into his hands. Blackened ruins lined the muddy streets.
Here and there, people were already rebuilding. Elegant homes and fancy shops might have perished in the flames, but shacks built from salvaged lumber and tents sprouted everywhere. A forest fire burned oaks and maples, but toadstools and poison sumac sprang up where they’d stood. The shabby new structures catered to soldiers: they were saloons and brothels and gambling dens, all designed to separate southrons from silver as swiftly as they could.
Provost marshals patrolled the streets, but they could do only so much, especially now with the glideway snarl. Men in gray tunics and pantaloons wanted what the northerners were selling. If some of them ended up poisoned by bad spirits, or poxed or rolled in the brothels, or fleeced in the gambling dens, they didn’t seem to care. Every bit of it was part of having a good time.
Nobody in Marthasville knew what to make of Rollant. A blond with sergeant’s stripes? Northerners stared. Some of the Detinans from Marthasville glared. Rollant smiled back. Why not? He had the power of King Avram’s army behind him, and King Avram’s army had proved itself mightier than anything in the north.
The blonds who lived and worked in Marthasville stared at Rollant-and at the stripes on his sleeve-too. But they didn’t glare. He always collected a caravan of little blond boys who followed him through the streets. They did their best to imitate his marching stride, a best that was usually pretty funny. Blond men doffed their hats and bowed as if he were a marquis. And the smiles some of the blond women sent his way acutely reminded him of how long ago he’d left Norina.
Not for the first time, Smitty teased him about that: “If you don’t want ’em, by the Sweet One’s sweet place, steer some of ’em my way. That one little sweetie back there…” His hands shaped an hourglass in the air.
Rollant knew exactly which girl Smitty meant. He’d noticed her, too. He hadn’t fooled around on his wife, but he wasn’t blind. He said, “I’m not stopping you from chasing her.” Even that took a certain effort. Detinans in the north had taken advantage of blond women too freely for too long to let him feel easy about encouraging any Detinan man to make advances to a woman of his people.
He knew more than a little relief when Smitty shook his head. “She didn’t even see me,” his comrade said mournfully. “But you… she looked like she wanted to have you for breakfast.”
“Don’t talk that way,” Rollant said. When Smitty did, he felt the urges he was trying to ignore, and all the more acutely, too.
“How shall I talk? Like this?” Smitty put on what he imagined to be a northern accent. Still using it, he went into lascivious detail about what he would have liked to do with the pretty blond girl. Rollant wanted to clout him over the head with a rock. That seemed to be the only way to make him shut up.
“I never thought I’d be glad to get back on the glideway carpet and away from this place,” Rollant said at last.
“It won’t make any difference,” Smitty said. “Wherever we go in the north, blonds look at you like you’re the Thunderer come to earth.” He held up a hand. “I take it back. I expect it’ll make some difference, on account of gods only know when we’ll see another girl that fine.”
“If you need a woman so bad, wait your turn at a brothel,” Rollant said.
Smitty shrugged. “I’ve done it now and again, but a willing girl’s more fun than one you’ve got to pay. That way, she wants it, too. She’s not just… just going through the motions, you might say.”
“All right. I won’t argue with you about that,” Rollant said. “It’s one of the reasons I steer clear of these women. They don’t care much about me. If I weren’t a sergeant, they wouldn’t look twice. They care about the stripes.”
“Well, so do you,” Smitty said.
Rollant grunted. That crossbow quarrel had hit the target, sure enough. He was proud of the sergeant’s stripes not least because they showed what he’d done in a Detinan-dominated world. How could he be surprised if other blonds saw them the same way?
“Yaaa! You stinking blond!” The shout came from an upstairs window. “You don’t know who your father was!”
When Rollant looked up, he saw no one in the window. Whoever had yelled at him lacked the courage of his convictions. “Of course I do,” Rollant shouted back. “He’s the fellow who paid your mother three coppers. She’d remember-it’s twice her going rate.”
That set Smitty giggling. Rollant wondered if an enraged northerner would come boiling out of the false-fronted wooden building, ready to do or die for his mother’s honor, if any. But everything stayed quiet after the initial jeer. Smitty said, “Well, I guess your old man got his money’s worth.”
“Right.” Rollant’s answering smile was tight. For centuries, Detinans had made free with blond women. But if a blond man presumed to look at a Detinan woman, let alone to touch her, dreadful things were liable-no, were sure-to happen to him. Back in Palmetto Province, Baron Ormerod’s wife had been a famous beauty. Whenever Rollant was anywhere near her, he’d kept his eyes to the ground to make sure he didn’t anger her or his liege lord. So had every other male serf with an ounce of brains in his head. Ormerod hadn’t been a particularly nasty overlord. With some things, though, no one dared take chances.
Even in New Eborac City, Rollant treated Detinan women with exaggerated deference. He paid attention to them as customers, not as women. That wasn’t just because he was a married man. He’d found some of them attractive. Some of them, by the looks and gestures they’d given him, found him attractive, too. But he’d never had the nerve to do anything about it, even if it would have helped pay back debts hundreds of years old. If it went wrong, if he guessed wrong, or if a woman just changed her mind or felt vindictive… He would have been lucky to last long enough to be crucified. A mob might have pulled him out of prison and taken care of matters on the spot.
“Let’s go back,” Smitty said suddenly. “I’ve seen more of this miserable place than I ever wanted to.”
“Suits me fine,” Rollant answered. “The traitors were so proud of Marthasville. They thought it was a big thing. Only goes to show they didn’t really know what a big thing is.”
When they got to the glideway depot, Lieutenant Joram collared both of them. “We’re moving west again soon. Get the men out of the dives and onto the carpets, fast as you can.”
In the end, they all went together. One man, or even two, was too likely to be ignored, maybe to get knocked over the head. Anybody who tried to take out Joram, Rollant, and Smitty at once would have a fight on his hands, though.
They hauled blind-drunk soldiers out of taverns and poured them onto the waiting carpets. They hauled soldiers out of brothels, too: some smug and sated, others frustrated because they were taken away before they could worship the Sweet One. One of those tried to slug Joram. Instead of ordering him held for court-martial, the company commander knocked him cold, slung him over his shoulder, and lugged him back to the depot.
Some of the women in the brothels were Detinans, not blonds. That surprised Rollant, who’d assumed every harlot in the north came from his own people. His being there in a uniform with three stripes on his sleeve surprised the whores, too. One of the Detinans, perhaps the best-looking woman in the waiting room in the place he and Smitty went to while Joram was dealing with the coldcocked soldier, called out to him: “You want to try something you never did before, Yellowhair?” She stood up and waggled her hips to show exactly what she meant. The silk shift she wore was so thin, so transparent, Rollant wondered why she’d bothered putting it on. On the other hand, she might have looked even more naked with it than she would have without it.
Staring at her, he almost forgot the question she’d asked. Only when the other women jeered at him did he remember
and shake his head. “I’m here to get men from my company out, not to dally myself,” he managed.
That brought more jeers and catcalls. “You’ve got a lot of gods-damned nerve, taking business away from us like that,” a blond harlot said.
“By the Sweet One’s… teeth, haven’t you got enough?” Rollant asked.
“Come upstairs with me,” urged the Detinan woman in the transparent shift. Rollant shook his head again, even if his eyes never left her. She saw that-she couldn’t very well help seeing it. A slow smile spread across her face. Her lips were very red, very inviting. She said, “On the house, Yellowhair. Come on. It’ll be something different for both of us. Is it true what they say about blond men?” She was looking at him, too, but not at his face.
“On the house?” Three other women lounging on the couches in the waiting room said it at the same time, in identical tones of astonishment. By that astonishment, Rollant guessed how big a compliment he’d just got. In a brothel, what could be more perverse than lying with a man for nothing?
Somehow, Rollant shook his head once more. “I’m-I’m a married man,” he said.
That might have been the funniest thing the whores ever heard. They clung to one another, howling with laughter. Smitty spoke up: “If he doesn’t want you, sweetheart, I’ll take you up on that.”
“Corporal!” Rollant said. “We haven’t got time.”
“I won’t take long,” Smitty said blandly.
But the Detinan harlot shook her head. “Not unless you pay me the going rate, soldier. There’s nothing special about you.”
“Hells there’s not,” Smitty said, angry now. “Just let me-” He took a step forward. Rollant grabbed him as two very large, very muscular bouncers sprang into the waiting room.
“Get away!” Rollant told them. He had to wrestle with Smitty, who was furious and not making the slightest effort to hide it. “Calm down, gods damn it!” Rollant said. “We didn’t come in for that anyway.”
“All right. You’re right.” Smitty quit trying to break away from him. “Odds are I’d end up poxed anyway.”
The harlots all screeched furiously. The bouncers advanced on Smitty. They both carried stout bludgeons. Rollant let go of his comrade. Smitty’s shortsword hissed from the scabbard. So did Rollant’s. The bouncers stopped. “Good thinking,” Rollant told them. “We’re all free Detinans here, right? We can all speak our minds, right?”
One of the bouncers jerked his thumb toward the door. “I’m speaking my mind: get the hells out of here.”
“Have we got all our men out of the rooms here?” Rollant asked Smitty.
“Yes, Sergeant, we do. They’re waiting for us in the hall.” By the respect in Smitty’s voice, Rollant might have been Marshal Bart. That must have irked the bouncers, who were doubtless men from Peachtree Province. It didn’t irk them quite enough to make them do anything but glower, though, which was lucky-for them. After the worst false King Geoffrey’s soldiers could do to him, Rollant didn’t fear a couple of whorehouse toughs.
He and Smitty led the unsatisfied customers from the brothel back to the glideway terminal. The men in gray climbed up onto the carpets, some resigned to leaving, others glum. An hour passed, and nothing happened. “Gods damn it, Sergeant, we could’ve had our fun,” one of the frustrated soldiers complained.
“I had my orders,” Rollant said with a shrug. “You’re not happy, take it up with Lieutenant Joram.” The soldier stopped grumbling. Nobody wanted to complain to Joram. He’d been a sergeant too long; the men knew what sort of firepot would burst if they pushed him too far.
Sooner or later, they may start thinking that way about me. Rollant liked the idea. He didn’t think it was all that likely to come true, though. Joram could roar like the Thunderer come down to earth. That had never been Rollant’s way. In the north, blonds who roared at Detinans ended up gruesomely dead, and the lesson had stuck. He seemed to manage just the same.
The glideway carpet started west and south. Rollant settled himself against the motion. Palmetto Province ahead. He’d left a fugitive serf. He was coming back a conqueror. “And a sergeant,” he said softly. Yes, he’d already won a lot of battles. The carpet picked up speed.
XII
“Tell it to me again,” Ned of the Forest said. “I want to make sure I’ve got it straight.”
“All right, Lord Ned.” The man who’d come north from southern Dothan nodded. He looked weary. He had the right to look that way, too: he’d traveled hard, and dodged the southrons’ patrols till he finally reached country King Geoffrey’s men ruled. “I seen them southron sons of bitches ride out. They ain’t that far in back of me, neither. If they wasn’t looping around to hit you some funny way or other, reckon they would’ve got here ahead of me.”
“Hard-Riding Jimmy’s men, you’re talking about,” Ned said, to nail it down tight. “All of Hard-Riding Jimmy’s men.”
“That’s about the size of it.” The fellow who’d brought the news nodded again. “Hells of a lot of bastards in gray uniforms, every gods-damned one of ’em riding a white unicorn.” He didn’t even seem to notice his accidental near-rhyme.
Ned of the Forest wasn’t inclined to play literary critic, either. “That’s not good news,” he said-an understatement if ever there was one. Hard-Riding Jimmy’s force of unicorn-riders badly outnumbered his own. To make things worse, every southron carried one of those quick-shooting crossbows that made him much more deadly than anyone with an ordinary weapon. Ned plucked at his chin beard, then asked, “They have any footsoldiers with ’em?”
“I don’t know for certain,” the man from Dothan replied. “Only thing I can tell you is, I didn’t see none. Just riders-lots and lots of riders.”
“Lots and lots of riders,” Ned echoed unhappily. “They were heading for the Franklin River? Aiming to cross it and get farther up into Dothan?”
“Can’t tell you for certain,” the other man said. “All I know for certain is, them buggers is on the move. If you don’t stop ’em, Lord Ned, who the hells is going to?”
“Nobody,” Ned answered with a mournful sigh. “Nobody at all.” He nodded to the informant. “I do thank you for bringing me the news.” He wished the news hadn’t happened, so the other man wouldn’t have needed to bring it. Such wishes, though, were written in water. Ned took a certain not quite modest pride in realizing as much. Hard-Riding Jimmy’s move was real. Now Ned had to find some way to stop it.
He knew where Jimmy would be heading: toward the manufactories in Hayek and the other nearby towns. If the southrons could seize them or wreck them, where would King Geoffrey’s men in this part of the realm get the crossbows and quarrels and engines and firepots they needed to carry on the fight against the southrons? We won’t get ’em anywhere, in that case, Ned thought. And if we don’t, then it’s really all over.
By noon the next day, his own force of unicorn-riders was hurrying west out of Great River Province. Richard the Haberdasher had promised to send footsoldiers after them. Ned had thanked him without believing a word of it. For one thing, Ned doubted the crossbowmen and pikemen who’d survived the advance to Ramblerton and the retreat from it were in any sort of fighting shape even now. For another, they were bound to get to Dothan too late to do much good.
Ned wondered if he would get to Dothan too late to do much good. In winter, roads turned into quagmires. That worked a hardship on both sides, for it also slowed Hard-Riding Jimmy. But streaming away from Hayek and the other towns full of manufactories was a great flood of refugees who clogged the roads even worse than the mud did. The people of Dothan knew Jimmy was coming, and didn’t want to get in his way.
“Bastard’s burning everything in his path, same as that other bugger done did over in Peachtree,” one man said. Others fleeing the southrons nodded, adding their own tales of horror.
Being who and what he was, Ned of the Forest needed longer than he might have to notice one thing about the flood of refugees: they were almost all De
tinans, with hardly any blonds. This part of Dothan, though, held about as many blonds as it did ordinary Detinans. Ned wondered what that meant, but not for long. It meant the serfs were either staying put and waiting on the land for Jimmy to sever their ties to their liege lords, or else they were fleeing toward Jimmy and not toward Ned.
Attached to his command, he had a wagon train staffed by several dozen serfs. They’d been with him since the earliest days of the war. Some of the blonds were men Ned had caught, but who’d appealed to him because of the way they’d escaped or the way they handled themselves. Others had sought him out: men who wanted an overlord, perhaps, but not the one they’d got by custom.
They’d done a lot of things for Ned: carried supplies, doctored, foraged, and even occasionally picked up a crossbow and taken a few potshots at the southrons. He’d promised to cut their bonds to the land and to him when the war ended. “Well, boys,” he said now, “we’ve been through a lot together these past four years, haven’t we?”
“Sure have, Lord Ned,” Darry rumbled. Ned of the Forest was a big man. Darry stood half a head taller, and was broader through the shoulders. The blond had not an ounce of fat on him anywhere; he was hard as a boulder. Several other men nodded.
“You know I promised you I’d set you up as yeoman farmers when the war was done if you stuck with me till then,” Ned went on. Before the war, blond yeomen had been exceedingly rare in the north, but there had been a few.
His crew of blonds nodded again, this time more or less in unison. They weren’t his serfs, not in any formal sense of the word. He had no noble blood; he owned no estates to which serfs were tied. But for all practical purposes, he was their liege lord, and they gave him more loyalty than most real nobles ever got. They could have fled or betrayed him to the southrons countless times. They could have, but they hadn’t.
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