“I’m sick of earthworks,” Florizel grumbled. “I’m sick to death of them, as a matter of fact.”
“But, your Excellency, it’s a lot easier to catch your death outside of earthworks,” Gremio said.
In the Karlsburg circles he’d frequented before the war, such wordplay would have got the groan it deserved, whereupon everyone would have gone about his business. But Florizel gave Gremio a look straight out of a Five Lakes blizzard and then limped on down the trench. Gremio wondered what he’d done wrong. Figuring that out, unfortunately, took but a moment. You just contradicted the regimental commander.
He sighed. Back in Karlsburg, he wouldn’t have been so foolish as to call a presiding judge a fool, even if he was one. He would have been especially careful not to do such a thing, in fact, if the presiding judge was a fool. But he was a free Detinan, and free Detinans had the privilege of saying what was on their minds. Now he saw that having such a privilege and using it weren’t necessarily one and the same.
From behind him, someone said, “I thought you were funny, sir-and you told the truth.”
He turned. “Thank you, Sergeant Thisbe,” he replied. “Sometimes, though, the truth is the worst thing you can possibly tell.”
Thisbe’s eyebrows rose. “You say that, sir? You, a barrister? If there’s no truth in the lawcourts, where can we hope to find it?”
“Lawcourts are for finding truth, sure enough,” Gremio said. “That doesn’t mean it’s there to begin with. And there are ways to tell the truth and still not tell all of it, and to tell it in a way that makes you look good and the fellow you’re at law against the greatest villain still unburned.”
“That’s… not the way it should be, sir.” Thisbe was an earnest young man, much given to thought about the way things should be.
Gremio shrugged. “It’s the way things are in a lawcourt. And remember, the other fellow has a barrister trying to play all the same tricks you are.” He waved toward the south. “King Geoffrey wouldn’t need a big army if that abandoned fool of an Avram didn’t have one, too.”
Thisbe thought that over before finally nodding. “I suppose that’s true, sir. Things have to balance out, don’t they? But there aren’t any judges in this fight, the way there are in a court.”
“Of course there’s a judge,” Gremio said. Thisbe gave him a quizzical look. He explained: “The lawcourt of history will say who won. It’s got to be either King Geoffrey or King Avram.”
“Do you think we can still win this war?” Sergeant Thisbe asked.
“As long as we hold on to Marthasville, as long as we hurt the southrons every day, we can win,” Gremio answered, and then, precise as a barrister, corrected himself: “We can make King Avram quit. We’re not going to give up the fight, come what may. The only way the southrons can beat us is to knock us flat. But if they get sick of funeral pyres and of soldiers never coming home, then Geoffrey will be king in the north for a long time.”
“Ah.” Thisbe nodded again and rubbed his smooth chin. “That explains why Joseph the Gamecock is making the kind of fight he is. He’s trying to get the southrons to sicken of the war.”
“Yes, I think so,” Gremio replied. “As long as we can stay in the field, as long as Marthasville stays in our hands, we’ve got a decent chance.”
Before Thisbe could answer, a sentry sang out from the south: “The dust is stirring. I think the southron soldiers are coming.”
Gremio muttered something under his breath. He hadn’t expected General Hesmucet’s men to get to Fat Mama quite so soon. The brigade down at Dareton should have held them up for quite a while. He wondered what had gone wrong. Something surely had, for the sentry was right: that rising cloud of dust could only come from the feet of thousands of marching men, the hooves of thousands of unicorns and asses, the wheels of thousands of supply wagons and engine-hauling carts. Even as he watched, the reddish cloud on the southern horizon grew taller and thicker.
Before too long, he started making out little flashes of light within the dust cloud. “Unicorns’ iron-shod horns,” he murmured.
He didn’t realize he’d spoken aloud till Thisbe nodded once more and said, “Yes, and the heads on the spears the pikemen carry.”
Watching the army General Hesmucet led come forward and deploy on the flat farmland east of the hills warding Fat Mama was awe-inspiring. Regiment after regiment of gray-clad unicorn-riders, pikemen, and crossbowmen seemed to fill every available inch of space.
“How can we hope to hold them back, let alone beat them?” Now Thisbe seemed to be talking to himself. “See how many men they have!”
“They’re drawing themselves up like that on purpose, to try to intimidate us.” Gremio would not admit, even to himself, that he was intimidated. “Their numbers are why the gods made field fortifications-and, even more to the point, why our serfs made them.”
Thisbe said, “That’s true. It’s really amazing what a difference earthworks make in how many men get killed or wounded.”
Gremio didn’t want to think about getting killed or wounded. He knew such things were possible, but why dwell on them? He pointed toward the southern host, which had just about finished its evolutions. “When they’re done trying to frighten us, then we’ll see what they really have in mind.”
“Nothing good,” Sergeant Thisbe predicted.
“No doubt you’re right,” Gremio agreed. “If they had our good will in mind, they would leave us alone and let us run our affairs as we choose. That’s the point of the war, after all. But it’s not quite what I meant.”
“What did you mean, sir?”
“Where they’ll put their encampments and where they’ll concentrate their men,” Gremio replied. “That will tell us a good deal about how they plan to attack us or outflank us.”
“Oh. Yes. Of course,” Thisbe said, which left the company commander somewhat deflated. He’d seen army commanders fail to pay enough attention to what the enemy was up to, but his sergeant took the notion for granted. Did that mean Sergeant Thisbe ought to be leading an army? Gremio had his doubts. But what did it say about the wits of some of the men who actually were in charge of armies and wings? Nothing good, he feared.
Tents sprang up like fairy rings of outsized toadstools. The southrons went about the business of setting up camp with the same matter-of-fact competence the men of the Army of Franklin displayed. Most of them were veterans. They’d encamped a great many times before. They knew how to do the job.
Thisbe said, “They must have a great plenty of men and money down in the south of Detina.”
“They do,” Gremio agreed. “More men and more money than we have, by far.”
“How are we ever going to beat them, then?” the sergeant asked.
“We do have a couple of things going for us,” Gremio answered. “For one, they’re invaders here. This is our kingdom, and we know it, and we’re fighting for it.”
“That’s so.” Thisbe nodded yet again. “What else?”
“Why, the other thing we have going for us is that we’re right, of course,” Gremio replied.
Sergeant Thisbe smiled. “That’s bound to gain us credit with the gods, sir. How much good will it do down here on earth?”
“Good question,” Gremio said. “When I have a good answer, I’ll let you know.” He peered out toward the east. “No chance of hitting them tonight-that seems pretty plain. They’ve got everything well covered. They know as well as we do that we would hit them if they gave us half a chance.” Gremio rubbed his chin. “Or I think we would. Ever since this campaign started, we’ve been letting them come to us. We haven’t been looking for chances to go at them. That doesn’t seem to be Joseph the Gamecock’s style.”
Thisbe pointed out toward the southron host with a grimy-nailed, callused hand. “Look at what we’re facing. How can we possibly charge out against them? They’d chew us up and spit us out if we did, as many men as they have there.”
“I think you’re right,” Grem
io said. Most of the men he led, most of the officers over him, would have thought the sergeant was wrong. Most of them reckoned Lieutenant General Bell the perfect northern patriot, and admired him for the wounds he’d taken going straight at the foe. Of course, most of the officers over Captain Gremio were noblemen. He hoped he had a more practical way of looking at the world.
“Time to get our men bedded down for the night,” Thisbe observed.
“See to it, Sergeant,” Gremio said. Thisbe nodded. Gremio knew Thisbe would make sure everything was as it needed to be. He did give one additional order: “Put plenty of pickets well forward. After that spell the southrons used at Caesar, no telling what sort of sneaky things they might try. We haven’t seen many night attacks, but I don’t want to be taken by surprise.”
“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Thisbe said. “I’ll see to it, sir.” Off he went, brisk as if he’d just drunk four cups of tea.
Gremio wished he had that kind of energy himself. He yawned wide enough to split his head in two. Here and there in the trenches, men were getting cookfires going. The stews the cooks would serve weren’t that good, but they did keep belly and backbone from gaining too intimate an acquaintance.
After patrolling the front his company had to cover, Captain Gremio lay down on his blanket and tried to go to sleep. The night was as muggy and almost as hot as the day had been, so he certainly needed no covers to hold the cold at bay. But mosquitoes buzzed in invisible but hungry clouds. They looked on Gremio the same way he looked on the cooks’ stewpots. He ended up wrapping himself in the blanket just to keep himself from being devoured.
He slept through the night undisturbed. Because of the good luck the southrons had had with their sorcerously aided attack on Caesar, he’d wondered if they might try something similar here by Fat Mama. The confusion of night would, or could, have aided them, too. But everything stayed quiet.
When he woke, dawn was painting the eastern sky behind the southrons pink. Clouds floated through the air, looking thicker and darker off to the west. He wondered if it would rain. With all the moisture in the air, it seemed likely. The idea of staying in the trenches as they turned to mud didn’t much appeal to him, but the idea of fighting outside them against that vast host of southrons seemed even less delightful. He’d heard Lieutenant General Bell was angry that Joseph the Gamecock wouldn’t storm out to assail the enemy, but he couldn’t see why. Joseph’s plan made perfectly good sense to him.
Besides, he thought, if it does rain, everyone’s bowstring will be wet, and that will put a better damper on the fighting than anything this side of a peace treaty. He snorted. As if Avram would grant terms the north could stand, or as if King Geoffrey could accept any the south was likely to offer. No, this fight would have to be settled on the field.
That thought had hardly crossed his mind before Sergeant Thisbe came over to him and said, “Sir, it looks like the southrons are doing something funny in their encampment.”
“Funny how?” Gremio asked, his hand sliding of itself toward the hilt of his sword. “Are they deploying for an attack?” If they were, if Thisbe could see they were, then they weren’t using the masking spell they’d tried in Caesar.
The sergeant shook his head. “I don’t think so, sir. What it looks like is that some of them are going away.”
“What?” Gremio said. “I’d better come have a look for myself.”
But when he got to a good vantage point, he discovered that, as usual, Sergeant Thisbe had it right. A good many southrons did look to be breaking camp and heading north.
Excitement flowed through him. “They’re trying to pull the same stunt they did down at Borders and Caesar,” he breathed. “They’ll leave some of their men behind to keep us busy here, while they use the rest to try to outflank us.”
“I wonder if we can attack them, now that they’ve cut down the size of the host right in front of us,” Thisbe said.
Attacking the whole southron army, Gremio was convinced, was madness. Attacking part of it… “So do I,” he said. “It just might work.”
* * *
Lieutenant General Bell liked very little about Fat Mama. He’d made his headquarters in a fancy manor house not far outside the town, and that proved a mistake. The baron who’d built the place had not only put in marble floors but also kept them polished to a brilliant gloss. They were so very slick, Bell’s crutches didn’t want to keep their grip. They kept trying to fly out from under him, in which case he would have gone flying, too.
If I break my neck along with wrecking an army and losing a leg, I won’t be of much use to the kingdom or to myself, he thought after one such narrow escape. A man does need a few working parts.
The wing he commanded at Fat Mama was stationed farther north than any of the other soldiers in the Army of Franklin. Bell wondered whether Joseph the Gamecock had posted them there just to make him ride-and suffer-for an extra mile or two. He had no intention of asking Joseph, for the army commander was liable to tell him yes. They had enough trouble getting along without that.
Someone pounded on the door to the manor house. One of Major Zibeon’s assistants went to see who it was. He came back to Bell and reported: “A messenger from Count Joseph, sir.”
“I shall receive him, of course,” Bell said, wondering what Joseph the Gamecock wanted to bother him about now.
When the messenger came in, he almost tripped on the smooth, smooth marble floor, and had to flail his arms wildly for balance. Oddly, that made Bell feel better. If a whole man could come close to breaking his neck here, he had no reason to know shame for having trouble getting around.
“What can I do for you?” he asked, more warmth than usual in his voice.
“Count Joseph’s compliments, sir, and he requests the boon of your company just as fast as you can get to him,” the runner replied.
That meant travel, and travel meant more torment. Bell sipped from his little bottle of laudanum. “Why?” he asked, and warmth was only a memory.
“Sir, he says he is contemplating an attack, and desires your views along with those of his other wing commanders,” the messenger told him.
“Contemplating… an attack?” Bell said, as if the young man before him had suddenly started speaking a foreign language. “Joseph the Gamecock is contemplating an attack? My ears must be tricking me.” He dug a finger into one, as if to clear out whatever was blocking them.
All the runner said was, “Yes, sir. He is, sir. Truly.”
“I can hardly believe it,” Bell said. Curiosity was enough to outweigh pain, at least for the moment. “You may go back and tell him I shall attend him directly.” The runner saluted and left.
Bell went to the commanding general’s headquarters in a buggy, not on unicornback. It took him a little longer, but gave him time to think. He kept stroking his long, curly beard as the carriage bounced toward the home where Joseph the Gamecock had set up shop. What sort of ulterior motive did Joseph have for ordering an attack now, of all times? Is he trying to discredit me? Bell wondered. Has someone let him know about my letters to King Geoffrey? That could be sticky.
He had trouble getting very excited about it. Without the laudanum, he knew he would have been all in a swivet. Of course, without the laudanum, he would also have been in agony. As things were, he was merely in pain-and the drug laid a soft, muffling cloud over whatever else he might have felt.
When he got to Joseph’s headquarters, he discovered Leonidas the Priest and Roast-Beef William there ahead of him. They both towered over Joseph the Gamecock, who was gesturing animatedly as they talked outside. Bell descended from the buggy and hitched his way over to the other generals.
“Good day,” Joseph the Gamecock said with a courtly bow.
“Good day, sir,” Bell answered. “What is this I hear of attack? Do we still recall the word?”
“We do indeed,” Joseph said. “I have always said I would smite the stinking southrons if I saw the chance. Now I do believe they are giving it to
us, and I intend to use it.”
“You had better tell me more, sir,” Bell said, blinking. “This is extremely surprising.” This is nothing like what I’ve told King Geoffrey in my letters, he thought. What will he do if he hears of the Army ofFranklin attacking? What will he do if he hears of it attacking successfully? Whatever it is, it will be nothing that works to my advantage.
“I shall be delighted, Lieutenant General,” Joseph the Gamecock said. “It appears that General Hesmucet is detaching some large part of his force for another move north around our flank. If we wait till that part has made its move, I think we can strike what’s left with some hope of victory.”
“Looks that way to me, too,” Roast-Beef William said.
“I am dubious about the whole proposition,” Leonidas the Priest declared. “I think it may be nothing but a trap, designed to lure us from our entrenchments so that the enemy may fall upon us.”
Bell could have kissed the older man. Now he wouldn’t be the only one speaking up against the whole idea. “I think Leonidas may have a point,” he said. “I’ve had no reports of the southrons’ moving north again come to my ears.”
“You can ride out to the front line and see for yourself,” Joseph the Gamecock said in some-more than some-exasperation. “Bell, you have been agitating for an attack ever since I took command of the Army of Franklin. How is it that, now that I propose one, you have not the stomach for it?”
“I want to attack with some hope of victory, sir,” Bell replied. I want to attack when it’s my idea, not yours. But he couldn’t say that to the general commanding.
The general commanding, by his sniff, had no trouble figuring it out regardless of whether Bell actually said it. “You have a certain amount of trouble with subordination, don’t you, Lieutenant General?”
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