“I don’t care,” Rollant answered. “I have fun trying.”
“Nobody who listens to you has any fun,” Smitty assured him.
“Don’t listen, then,” Rollant said. “Sing.”
Sing he did himself, loudly, enthusiastically, and probably not very well. He lived in New Eborac, with his wife and little boy. He made a good enough living as a carpenter, or had in peacetime. Thus far, he seemed a typical enough Detinan himself.
Thus far-and no further. He wore gray tunic and pantaloons like Smitty, like everyone else around him. There their resemblance ended. Rollant was fair-skinned and blue-eyed, with hair and beard yellow as butter. He’d grown up on a feudal estate in Palmetto Province, not far outside Karlsburg-and had fled the land to which he was legally bound, fled south to New Eborac, where serfdom had long been extinct, about ten years before. His wife was born in the south, and had never known a liege lord’s exactions. Thanks to Norina, Rollant had his letters.
Smitty said, “Suppose I tell you to shut the hells up or I’ll pop you one.”
“Talk is cheap,” Rollant answered. “You want to try and do something about it after march today, you come right ahead and see what kind of welcome you get.”
Smitty was his friend, or as close to a friend as a blond could have among Detinans. They’d fought shoulder to shoulder. They’d saved each other a couple of times. But Rollant didn’t dare take a challenge like that lightly, and he wasn’t sure whether or how much Smitty was joking.
I have to be twice as good, twice as tough, as an ordinary Detinan to get myself reckoned half as good, half as tough. Rollant had had that thought so many times, it hardly sparked resentment in him any more. It was part of what being a blond in a black-haired land meant.
A lot of Detinans thought blonds couldn’t, wouldn’t, fight for beans. The Detinans’ ancestors had crossed the Western Ocean centuries before, and promptly subjected the kingdoms full of blonds they found in the north of this new land-and the more scattered hunters and farmers who lived farther south. The campaigns were monotonously one-sided, from which the Detinans inferred that blonds were and always would be a pack of spineless cowards.
They had iron weapons. We had bronze. They rode unicorns. We’d never seen them before-we had ass-drawn chariots. They knew how to make fancy siege engines. We didn’t. Their mages were stronger than ours. Their gods were stronger than ours. No wonder we went down like barley under the scythe.
Like almost all blonds in the Kingdom of Detina these days, Rollant reverenced the Thunderer and the Lion God and the rest of the Detinan pantheon. He knew the names of the gods his own ancestors had worshipped-or of some of them, anyhow. He still believed in those gods. He believed in them, but he didn’t reverence them. What point to that? The blonds’ gods had been as thoroughly beaten as their former votaries.
“Never mind,” Smitty said, and started blatting out the royal hymn himself.
Rollant howled like a wolf. “You’re worse than I am-to the seven hells with me if you’re not.”
“To the seven hells with you anyway,” Smitty said cheerfully. He kept on singing.
Sergeant Joram winced. “Lion God’s hairy ears, Smitty, stuff a sock in it. You couldn’t carry a tune in a knapsack.”
“Sergeant!” Smitty said reproachfully, but he did quiet down.
“I told you you couldn’t sing, too,” Rollant said. “Would you listen to me?”
“I wouldn’t listen to Joram if he weren’t my sergeant,” Smitty answered. “That’s what being a free Detinan is all about: the only person you have to listen to is yourself, most of the time.”
“By the gods, I know that,” Rollant said. “Why do you think I ran away from my liege lord’s estate? I got sick of having somebody else tell me what to do all the time. Wouldn’t you?”
Before Smitty could answer, Joram went on, “And you, Rollant, you sound like a cat just after its tail got stepped on.”
“Thank you, Sergeant,” Rollant said sweetly. Under his breath, he said something else, something less polite. Smitty guffawed. Sergeant Joram sent them both suspicious looks, then went off to harass somebody else.
Smitty said, “I’ll tell you something. Back before the war, I didn’t have any idea what being a serf was like. We haven’t had anybody tied to the land since before my pa was born, not in New Eborac we haven’t. But this whole business of soldiering, of having somebody telling you what to do just on account of he’s got himself a higher rank than yours-it sticks in the craw, it surely does.”
Rollant didn’t particularly like taking orders, either, not when he’d run away from Baron Ormerod to escape them. By the mad fortune of war, Ormerod had almost killed him in the skirmishing before the battle by the River of Death, and he had killed his former liege lord not long after gaining the top of Proselytizers’ Rise. He couldn’t think of many things of which he was more proud.
Still, Smitty needed an answer. Rollant did his best to give him one: “It’s not the same. There are rules here. Liege lords, the only rules they have are the ones they make up. If you lose a trowel and your liege lord decides to flay the hide off your back with a whip for it, who’s to say he can’t? Nobody. If you give him a sour look afterwards and he whips you again, who’ll stop him? Nobody. He’ll say he reckoned you were plotting an uprising, and he doesn’t have to say anything past that. Or if he thinks your sister is pretty, or your wife…”
“They really do that?” Smitty said.
“Of course they really do that,” Rollant said. “Baron Ormerod, he was a regular tomcat amongst the serf huts. Why not? If your mother was a serf, you’re a serf, too, even if you do look like your liege lord.”
“That’s a pretty filthy business, all right,” Smitty said.
With a shrug, Rollant answered, “Whoever’s on top is going to give it to whoever’s on the bottom.” He used a gesture that showed exactly what he meant by give it to. Smitty clucked in delicious horror. Rollant went on, “If we’d licked you Detinans a long time ago, you’d’ve ended up slaving for us. But that’s not what the gods had in mind, and so it didn’t happen.”
Smitty grunted. He plainly didn’t like thinking about might-have-beens. But then he wagged a finger at Rollant. “You’ve got no business talking about `you Detinans.’ If you’re not one yourself, then what’s King Avram been fussing and fuming about all this time? If you’re not one yourself, what are you?”
“What am I?” Rollant echoed. It was a good question. He spoke Detinan. He followed Detinan gods. Avram did want to free his people from their ties to the land and make the law look at them the same way it looked at every other Detinan. And yet, the question had a dreadfully obvious answer. “What am I? Just a gods-damned blond, that’s all. And there’s plenty of southrons who’d say it along with the traitors in the north.”
He wondered if Smitty had ever said such a thing. Probably. By everything he’d seen and heard, there weren’t a whole lot of Detinans-ordinary, gods-fearing Detinans, they would surely call themselves-who didn’t say such things in places where they didn’t think blonds could hear. But Smitty didn’t mock blonds when Rollant could hear him, which put him up on a lot of his countrymen.
What Smitty said now was, “You aren’t the only blond in King Avram’s army, Rollant. When we get done licking the northerners with them helping, folks’ll have a lot harder time saying blonds can’t fight. And if a man can do a proper job of fighting, he’s on his way to being a real Detinan.”
If a man can stand up to a Detinan was part of what he meant. The Detinans had spent centuries forcing blonds down, and then wondered that they didn’t leap to their feet at once when no longer held down by laws. Rollant said, “Well, there’s Hagen, or there was.”
“Gods damn Hagen, and I daresay they’re doing it,” Smitty said. “On account of Hagen, we’ve got Lieutenant Griff in charge of this company instead of Captain Cephas, and Griff isn’t half the man the captain was.”
“Captain Cephas t
urned out to be too much of a man for his own good,” Rollant said. “If he hadn’t messed around with Hagen’s wife-”
“Corliss didn’t need much messing with,” Smitty said.
Rollant couldn’t argue that. It hadn’t been a rape, or anything of the sort. He felt a certain amount of responsibility for what had happened, because he’d found the two blonds and their children near Rising Rock after they’d fled their liege lord. Hagen had cooked and cut wood and fetched and carried for the company, getting paid for his labor for the first time in his life. Corliss had got paid for doing laundry, too. She hadn’t got paid for warming Cephas’ cot, not so far as Rollant knew. She’d just wanted the company commander, as he’d wanted her. And, right after the battle of Proselytizers’ Rise, she’d gone into his tent-and Hagen had followed her with a butcher knife. Now all three of them were dead; Cephas had managed to use his sword before falling.
“You can’t say Hagen didn’t act the way any outraged Detinan husband would have,” Rollant remarked.
“Well, no. So you can’t,” Smitty admitted. “But I wish to the gods he hadn’t done it. Griff squeaks when he talks, gods damn it.” His voice went into falsetto for a moment to imitate the young lieutenant.
They tramped on. They’d come this way before, on the way to what turned out to be the fight by the River of Death. They had a bigger army now, and it was all together, not scattered into several detachments. They also had General Hesmucet leading them now, not hard-drinking General Guildenstern-surely a gain. Even so, Rollant made sure his crossbow and quiver of bolts were where he could grab them in a hurry.
A cheer started somewhere behind him. He looked back over his shoulder, trying to see what was going on, and almost tripped over the feet of the man in front of him. That put his mind back on what really needed doing. But he’d seen enough, and started cheering, too.
“What’s going on?” Smitty asked.
“Doubting George is coming up,” Rollant answered in his normal voice. Then he shouted some more: “Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah for the Rock in the River of Death!” Smitty cheered, too, and waved his hat.
Lieutenant General George rode up alongside the marching men on a fine unicorn. He smiled at them and called, “Hello, boys! When we finally get our hands on those stinking northerners, are we going to whip ’em right out of their boots?”
“Hells, yes!” “You bet we will, Lieutenant General!” “Nobody can stop us, long as you’re along for the ride!” The men yelled lots of things like that. Rollant wasn’t behindhand in shouting George’s praises, either. Nobody who’d been through the fight by the River of Death, who’d watched Doubting George’s defense of Merkle’s Hill after the rest of the army was routed, would ever greet him with anything less than heartfelt praise.
George tipped his hat to the soldiers. “We’ll win because we’ve got the best fighters in the world,” he said, and rode on, more cheers echoing behind him.
“You know what the funny thing is?” Smitty said.
“You mean, besides you?” Rollant returned.
Smitty made a face at him, but refused to be distracted: “What’s funny is, Doubting George talks like a stinking northerner himself.” He did his best to put on a northern twang as he spoke. His best was none too good.
Rollant considered. “He just talks,” he said at last; George’s Parthenian accent wasn’t that much different from the one he had himself. “You think I sound like a stinking northerner?”
“Sometimes,” Smitty said. “But anybody can see why you got the devils out of there. George, he’s a nobleman. He had estates with serfs on ’em himself. But he didn’t turn traitor along with Geoffrey and the rest.”
“He’s loyal to Detina.” Rollant raised an eyebrow. “Why should that be so hard for a Detinan to understand?”
Smitty gave him a dirty look. “You like to try and twist everything I say, don’t you?”
“Of course,” Rollant said gravely. “If I didn’t, what would you have to complain about?”
“Huh,” Smitty said. “You ought to be a sergeant, the way you think.”
“Me?” Rollant’s voice squeaked in surprise. There were a few blond corporals and sergeants in King Avram’s army, but only a few. Detinans-ordinary Detinans-didn’t take kindly to the idea of obeying orders from blonds.
But Smitty answered, “Stranger things have happened.”
“Maybe.” Rollant didn’t sound convinced. But he did like the idea, now that he thought about it. “Maybe,” he repeated, in an altogether different tone of voice.
II
Doubting George had seen a good many strong positions in his day. The one Joseph the Gamecock held here in southeastern Peachtree Province looked as formidable as any, and more so than most. “We’ll have a demon of a time breaking in,” he told General Hesmucet. “That ridge line shelters the enemy almost as well as Proselytizers’ Rise did, and I know Joseph. He’ll have fortified the gaps till a flea couldn’t get through them, let alone an army.”
“I know Joseph, too,” Hesmucet replied, “and I’ve got no doubt that you’re right. If we put our head into one of those gaps, we’ll be asking the terrible jaws of death to close on it.”
“You have a gift for the picturesque phrase, sir,” George replied, wondering if Hesmucet also had a gift for hard fighting. Marshal Bart must have thought so, or he wouldn’t have left Hesmucet in command here in the east when he was summoned to Georgetown to oppose Duke Edward of Arlington and the Army of Southern Parthenia. No, he would have left me, George thought-not with a great deal of bitterness, but some seemed inescapable.
General Hesmucet didn’t look unduly worried. “Joseph the Gamecock is strong here, but I think we can shift him,” he said.
“I hope you’re right, sir.” Lieutenant General George looked at the forbidding terrain ahead. “I have to say, though, I have my doubts. If we try to go straight at them, they’ll give us lumps.”
“Who said anything about going straight at them?” Hesmucet replied. “Joseph the Gamecock is strong here-what better reason not to hit him here?”
“Ah.” Doubting George heard the enthusiasm return to his voice. “What have you got in mind, then, sir?”
“Up about twenty miles northeast of here is a valley called Viper River Gap,” the general commanding answered. “If we can push a force through there, we’ll march right into Caesar, square in Joseph’s rear. He’ll have to retreat, we’ll smash him up, this part of the war will be won, and we’ll all be heroes.”
“As simple as that,” George said dryly.
“As simple as that,” Hesmucet agreed. “As simple as that, provided the Gamecock doesn’t make it more complicated. He may. I’d be a liar if I said anything else. But it’s the best chance I can see of getting Joseph out of the position he’s taken.”
“Not a bad notion at all, sir,” George said. He’d proposed something not too different back in the middle of winter. Nothing had come of that-he wasn’t the general commanding. But he still thought the plan good, no matter who ended up with the credit for it. “Only one thing: how do we fix Joseph here while we shift part of our army toward the gap and Caesar?”
Hesmucet looked faintly embarrassed, an unusual expression for him. “Some large part of our army will have to stay here by Borders while the rest slides north.”
“Some large part of our army, eh?” George said. “Why do I think I have a pretty fair notion of which large part of the army you have in mind?”
“You’ve proved you know how to make a convincing demonstration against strong enemy positions,” Hesmucet said.
“Is that what I’ve proved?” Doubting George wondered. “I thought it was just a knack for banging my head against a stone wall.” And also a knack for being ordered to bang my head against a stone wall, he added to himself.
“Your men were the ones who broke through at Proselytizers’ Rise,” Hesmucet said. “Who knows? Maybe they’ll do it again, and steal the glory from Brigadier James.”
“You’ll send James the Bird’s Eye on the flanking move?” George said.
“I will indeed.” General Hesmucet grinned. “Who better to see the opportunity if it be there?” James had got his nickname at the military collegium at Annasville because of his extraordinarily keen eyesight.
“He’s an able officer,” George allowed. “Why not use him to make the demonstration here and send the larger force up onto Joseph’s flank?”
“I thought about that,” Hesmucet replied. “It seems to me that, were I to do so, Joseph would realize what I had done and shift footsoldiers north to block the move before it could have any hope of success.”
Doubting George considered. He wasn’t sure General Hesmucet was right about that, but he wasn’t sure Hesmucet was wrong, either. “Very well, sir,” he said. “I shall, of course, do whatever you require of me.”
“I knew you would,” Hesmucet said, in tones suggesting he’d known no such thing. “I intend to get James the Bird’s Eye moving this afternoon. Your men will, I hope, keep Joseph the Gamecock too busy to use his own eyes.”
“We’ll do our best, sir,” George said, that being the only thing he could say. No, almost the only thing, for he couldn’t help adding, “I do wish my men would sometimes get the command to do themselves rather than to help their comrades do somewhere else.”
“That day is coming, Lieutenant General,” Hesmucet said. “You may rely on it: that day is coming. It’s a hundred miles, more or less, from here to Marthasville. Only the gods know how many battles we’ll fight before we get there. I’m no god. I’m just a man. But I can tell you we’ll fight a lot of them, and I can tell you your men will have their chance to do great things. They can hardly help it, wouldn’t you agree?”
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