“Quite right, quite right,” Gremio said approvingly. “But no, Joseph the Gamecock has yet to issue any orders along those lines.”
“All right, sir,” Thisbe said. “I expect we’ll know when General Hesmucet starts moving north against us.”
“I should hope so,” Gremio exclaimed. “This is our country, after all. When the enemy moves through it, the people always let us hear what he’s up to.”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said. “Same as the blonds do for the foe with us.”
“Er-yes,” Gremio said. It wasn’t so much that Thisbe was wrong. The sergeant, in fact, made a real and important point. “Good of you to think of that.” Here in the north, Detinans were so used to thinking of their serfs as hewers of wood and drawers of water, they too readily forgot blonds were men like any others, with eyes to see, wits to think, and tongues to speak.
“I hear we’ve got serfs digging trenches and making earthworks for us from here all the way up to Marthasville,” Sergeant Thisbe said. “Do you really suppose, sir, that some of them won’t tell the southrons as much of what we’re up to as they can figure out?”
“No, I don’t suppose anything of the sort.” Even had Gremio supposed anything of the sort, he wouldn’t have admitted it. A barrister never admitted anything he didn’t have to. He went on, “We do try to keep as many blonds from escaping as we can, you know. I’m sure the general commanding is doing his best to make sure no really important information gets to Hesmucet.”
“I hope so.” Thisbe’s light tenor could be remarkably expressive. Here, the sergeant packed a world of doubt into three words. Gremio wouldn’t have wanted to go to court against a barrister with such dangerous skills.
Before he could say so-he would have meant it as nothing but praise-horns blared, summoning the regiment to assembly. No, not just the regiment: the whole brigade, maybe even the whole army. Those horns were blaring all over the encampment in and around Borders.
“We can talk about this more another time, Sergeant,” Gremio said. “For now, we’ve got to round up the men.” He spoke of them as if they were so many sheep. He sometimes thought of them that way, too, though he was careful not to let them know it. He had to keep their respect, after all.
“Yes, sir.” Thisbe saluted. The sergeant went about the job with quiet but unhurried competence. Gremio wondered what he’d done in or around Karlsburg before taking service with King Geoffrey’s army. He didn’t know; unlike most of his men, Thisbe didn’t talk much about what he’d done or what he hoped to do. He just did whatever needed doing, and did it well.
Thanks in no small part to him, Gremio’s company was among the first in Colonel Florizel’s regiment to assemble. Small farmers, tradesmen, shopkeepers-by now, after three years of war, telling at a glance what a soldier had been was a hopeless, unwinnable game. Despite individual differences, all the men looked very much alike: lean, sun-browned, poorly groomed, dirty, wearing blue uniforms in no better shape than they were. Some of those blue tunics and pantaloons had started life as gray tunics and pantaloons, and been taken from southrons who didn’t need them any more and then dyed. Some few gray pantaloons hadn’t been dyed at all. That went against orders, but happened nonetheless.
A nasty, frowzy crew, would have been the first thought of anyone seeing Gremio’s company-or, very likely, any company in the Army of Franklin. But a second thought would have followed hard on its heels: these men can fight.
Florizel limped out in front of the regiment. He carried a folded sheet of paper, and ostentatiously unfolded it to draw the men’s attention. A nice bit of business, Gremio thought, resolving to use it in the courtroom one day.
“Men of Palmetto Province!” Florizel boomed. “We were first in our rejection of that gods-damned maniac who calls himself King Avram and sits in the Black Palace in Georgetown like a hovering vulture, waiting for the north to die so he may feast on our dead flesh and crack our bones. Now once more his wicked armies advance on us, and we must be among the first to throw them back.”
They raised a cheer. Gremio found himself cheering, too. He wondered why. They’d all had countless chances to be maimed or killed. Now Florizel was telling them they were about to get more. And, instead of cursing him, they cheered. If they weren’t utterly mad, Gremio had never heard of anyone who was.
“Men of Detina! Brave men! Patriots!” Florizel went on. “There are two gaps through which the cursed southrons might attack us. We shall beat them back from both. We shall not let them ravage Peachtree Province. We shall not let them steal from us the great city of Marthasville. The gods love King Geoffrey. Our cause is just. Provincial prerogative forever!”
“Provincial prerogative forever!” the men shouted. Gremio’s voice was loud among them. The Army of Franklin was in good spirits, if nothing else. However much that would help in the fight against Hesmucet, Joseph the Gamecock had it working in his favor.
Lieutenant General Bell reached for his crutches. Getting out of a chair was a struggle for a man with one leg and one good arm, but he managed. The trick was to lunge forward and upward, gain momentary balance, get one crutch under his good arm for a second point of support, and then get the other crutch under his bad arm, under the worthless piece of flesh and bone that hung from his shoulder but would never be good for anything again.
Oh, it’s good for something, he thought as he swung himself forward and ducked his way out of his pavilion. It’s good for causing me pain. The shattered shoulder still felt as if it had melted led poured into the joint. It hurt even worse than the stump of his leg, and the festering in his thigh had almost taken his life, there after the fight by the River of Death. He remembered the stink of the pus after they’d drained it. The chirurgeons assured him that was all over now.
They assured him of that, yes. But why did he still hurt, then?
Why, in the end, didn’t matter so much. That he still hurt… that mattered. He paused, steadied himself on his crutches, and used his good hand to extract the bottle of laudanum he always carried with him. Bringing the bottle up to his mouth, he extracted the cork with his teeth. He swigged. Laudanum wasn’t made to be swigged; it was made to be taken by the drop. Bell didn’t care. Drops didn’t come close to making his torment retreat.
Spirits and distilled poppy juice: fire and night going down his throat together. After a little while, he grunted softly and said, “Ahhh!” The pain didn’t disappear; it never disappeared. But it receded, or, more accurately, he floated away from it. The laudanum didn’t make him sleepy, as it did with many men. If anything, it left him more awake than ever. But it did make him slow, so that he often had to grope for a word or an idea.
All around him, the Army of Franklin’s encampment bubbled like a pot left unwatched on a cookfire. A squadron of unicorns trotted off toward the south. A column of men tramped away, heading southeast. Joseph the Gamecock was doing everything he could to hold back General Hesmucet’s bigger army.
Everything he could to hold it back, yes. Lieutenant General Bell muttered something his bushy beard and mustaches fortunately swallowed. He’d never been one for hanging back. He wanted to go at the enemy, not try to keep him away from a city. What kind of war was that?
Joseph’s kind of war: he answered his own question. He muttered again, rather louder. A sentry gave him an odd look. He glowered back. The man dropped his eyes.
His aide-de-camp, a dour major named Zibeon, came up to him and asked, “What do you need, sir?”
Now there was a question with a multitude of possible answers. A new leg was the first that sprang to Bell’s mind. An arm that works followed almost at once. Not far behind ran a way to banish pain without slowing my wits to a crawl. And, outdistanced by those three but still galloping hard, came a command due my station.
But Zibeon couldn’t give him any of those things. The first two would have taken a miracle from the gods, and the gods doled out miracles in niggardly wise these days. The third would have taken a mir
acle among the healers-more likely, but not much. As for the fourth, that lay in King Geoffrey’s hands. Lieutenant General Bell found himself not altogether without hope there.
“Fetch me my unicorn,” Bell said. That Major Zibeon could do.
That Major Zibeon plainly did not want to do. “Sir, wouldn’t you be more comfortable in a buggy?” he asked.
“No,” Bell snapped. So far as it went, that was true. Bell would not be comfortable in a buggy. He wouldn’t be comfortable anywhere, probably not till they laid him on his funeral pyre. He might perhaps be less uncomfortable in a buggy, but he had no intention of admitting that to his aide-de-camp. “My unicorn is what I asked for, Major, and my unicorn is what I require.”
Zibeon’s long, sad face got longer and sadder. “Sir, if you were to fall off the beast, the result would be unfortunate for you. It would also be unfortunate for the kingdom, if I may take the liberty of saying so.”
“Fall off?” Bell echoed in tones of disbelief. “Fall off? How in the seven hells can I fall off the gods-damned beast?” He gestured toward his pinned-up pantaloon leg. “You’ve got to tie me aboard the miserable animal to get me to stay on at all. Does a lashed-on sack of beans fall off an ass’ back? My name isn’t George, Major, but I doubt it.”
The laudanum took the edge off his temper, as it took the edge off his torment. It would have left most men as insensitive as they were insensible. Bell, now, Bell reached for his swordhilt, although, considering his mobility, he would have had a better chance trying to brain any foe with a crutch.
With a sigh, Major Zibeon yielded. “Let it be exactly as you say, Lieutenant General.” He raised his voice, shouting for a serf.
The blond groom fetched the unicorn in short order. Bell clambered aboard the splendid white beast, disdaining help from either the blond or his aide-de-camp. He wasn’t weak, even now. Certain parts were missing, sure enough, or didn’t work as the gods intended, but what remained in working order still worked well. He tolerated the straps that did indeed make him feel like a sack of beans. Without them, he could not sit the unicorn.
Another general who’d served in the Army of Southern Parthenia was known as Peg-Leg Dick these days. But he’d lost his leg below the knee, and had enough left to grip a unicorn’s barrel as he rode, even if the peg stuck out at an odd angle and made him instantly recognizable. Bell’s leg was off only a few inches below the hip. He would never have a peg. He would never be able to stay on a unicorn without help, either.
But, once helped, he could ride. He set spurs-well, spur-to the beast. It bounded away, leaving Zibeon and the serf groom behind. For a moment, Bell felt almost like the man he’d been before the fights at Essoville and the River of Death. For a moment, he felt free and strong and able. Maybe the laudanum let him forget his wounds a little longer than he would have without it.
When he reached the house where Count Joseph made his headquarters, he had to untie himself from the saddle, hand his crutches down to a waiting soldier, and then descend from the unicorn and reclaim the crutches. The process was slow, laborious, and painful. Almost everything Lieutenant General Bell did since his maiming-no, since his maimings-involved long, slow, painful processes.
Joseph the Gamecock came out of the house while Bell dismounted. Courteous as a cat, the general commanding the Army of Franklin waited for his wing commander to gather himself before bowing. “Good day, Lieutenant General,” Joseph said. “What can I do for you this lovely afternoon?”
“Is it?” Bell hadn’t noticed. He attacked conversations as directly as he attacked enemies: “The southrons are moving.”
“Indeed they are,” Joseph agreed. “Both hereabouts and in Parthenia, I am given to understand.”
Bell ignored that, too. Parthenia was, at the moment, outside his purview. “Where do we strike them?” he demanded.
“We don’t.” Joseph the Gamecock was every bit as blunt. “We have been over this ground before, you know.”
“Yes, I do know, and the more I think about it, the more it pains me,” Bell replied. “Some pains, sir, laudanum does not touch.”
With a sigh, Joseph the Gamecock condescended to explain: “Consider, Lieutenant General. We have to the south of us the rough country of Rockface Rise. There are only two gaps in the rise, two places where the southrons can come at us. By all the gods, I hope they try smashing through the Vulture’s Nest or the Dog’s Path. If they do, we’ll still be killing them there this fall. I intend to send your wing to hold the Vulture’s Nest. That will give you enough bloodshed, I vow, to satisfy the most sanguinary man ever born.”
“Killing southrons is all very well,” Bell said stiffly. “Indeed, it is better than very well.”
“I should hope so-it’s what we’re here for,” Joseph the Gamecock said. “And when your wing takes its position, you will find that the serfs I’ve set to work have fortified the gap so that not even a mouse could sneak through without paying with its life-not even a mouse, I tell you.”
“That is good, in its way,” Bell said, “but only in its way. I do not care to fight in the open field as if I were besieged in a castle.”
“Our whole kingdom is besieged,” Joseph said, “and we needs must keep the enemy from entering into it.”
“We can drive them back,” Lieutenant General Bell insisted. “We can beat them in the open field.”
“You may perhaps be right,” Joseph said. “If the Army of Franklin were yours to command, you might venture the experiment. But, since King Geoffrey has seen fit to entrust it to me, I have to do what I believe to be in its best interest, and in the best interest of the kingdom. Do you understand me? Have I made myself clear enough, or shall I scratch pictures in the dirt for you with the point of my sword?”
Bell glared at him. “Is that an insult, sir?”
“Only if you choose to take it as one,” Joseph the Gamecock retorted. His temper was, if anything, even shorter than Bell’s, and he had not the excuse of pain from his wounds, for he’d been hurt almost two years before and was fully healed. His own eyes snapping, he went on, “I reckon it an insult that you challenge the orders of your commanding officer in this unseemly fashion.”
“You are welcome to challenge me, sir,” Bell said. “Unfortunately, as my rank is lower than yours, I am forbidden by King Geoffrey’s regulations from challenging you. But I assure you, sir, I will endeavor to give satisfaction.”
“I don’t want to challenge you, you young idiot,” Joseph said testily. “I want to use you. I want to use you to kill the southrons in great whacking lots as they come north. In my view, that remains our best hope of winning this war: to make the enemy too sick of the fight to go on. If every other household in New Eborac and Loveton and Horatii is in mourning, the people will make King Avram give up the fight and let the north go our own way.”
“Gods grant it be so,” Lieutenant General Bell replied. “A surer way, I think, is to defeat the invader on the battlefield in open combat.”
“That would be easier if we had twice the men he did rather than the other way round,” Joseph the Gamecock said. “I ask you straight out: will you defend the Vulture’s Nest for me, or shall I give the job to Roast-Beef William or to Leonidas the Priest?”
“I will defend it,” Bell said. “I fail in no obedience, sir. But I am a free Detinan no less than you. I do intend to state my mind.”
“Really?” One of Joseph’s expressive eyebrows quirked. “I never would have noticed. Very well, Lieutenant General. You are dismissed, and I shall rely upon your formidable skills. I know you serve the kingdom with a whole heart, regardless of how you chance to feel about me.”
“Yes, sir. That is true,” Bell agreed. Because of his crutches, he didn’t have to salute the commanding general. He hitched away, struggled aboard his unicorn after stowing his crutches, waited for the attendant to tie him on, and rode back to his own headquarters.
Once there, he sat down inside his pavilion, inked a pen, and began a le
tter to a man with whom he’d been corresponding ever since becoming one of Joseph the Gamecock’s wing commanders. Your Majesty, he wrote, I have just come from yet another conversation with the general commanding, this one no more satisfactory than any of those I have previously held with him. As I have said in my earlier letters, my opinion continues to be that the Army ofFranklin is in better condition and more capable of offensive operations than Count Joseph believes. How can any man doubt the fire inherent in the hearts of our brave northern soldiers, and their innate superiority to the southron foe? We could, and we should, go forth against the enemy instead of waiting for him to come to us.
He inked the pen again, paused for thought, and then continued, As proof of the straits to which the southrons are reduced, I need do no more than note that, in the army now moving against us, General Hesmucet has, mixed promiscuously through its ranks, several brigades’ worth of blonds. If the fighting spirit of the southrons were not all but extinct, would they resort to such a desperate expedient? Surely not, your Majesty; surely not. In the hope that the gods grant you the good fortune and victory you deserve, I have the honor to remain your most humble and obedient servant…
After signing the letter, he sealed it with his personal signet, addressed it, and called for a runner. “See that this gets into the post to Nonesuch without delay,” he told the man. “Its existence is, of course, completely confidential.”
“Of course, sir,” the courier replied.
* * *
Rollant was glad to be marching north, marching against the Detinan noblemen, the Detinan liege lords, who would have left the kingdom when Avram proposed freeing their serfs from the land they tilled. He sang the Detinan royal hymn with particular fervor as he tramped along. It meant, he thought, more to him than to many of his comrades.
“You can’t sing worth a lick,” Smitty told him. The two crossbowmen had fought side by side ever since the regiment formed a year or so before. Smitty came off a farm outside the great city of New Eborac. He was a typical enough Detinan: on the stocky side, swarthy, with black hair and eyes and a shaggy black beard.
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