Rollant sprawled down by a campfire with a groan. “I’m sick of marching,” he said. “I don’t like it even when we’re going where we’re supposed to. When it turns out we spent the first half of the day going in the wrong gods-damned direction… I don’t fancy that a bit.”
Smitty was every bit as worn as he was, but managed a weary grin. “You go tell that to General Hesmucet, Rollant,” he said. “He’s bound to listen to you, right? After all, you’re not just anybody. You’re a corporal.”
“And you’re an idiot,” Rollant said. Smitty gave an extravagant wave of the hand, as if accepting praise far beyond his deserts.
Sergeant Joram tramped past. “Get water, Rollant,” he said.
Before Rollant had been promoted, that would have meant his going down to the closest creek with the squad’s water bottles. But, now that he was an underofficer, he got to tell other soldiers to go instead. But picked a couple who hadn’t had the duty for a little while: “Gleb, you and Josh take care of it.”
Josh groaned as he got to his feet, but didn’t argue. Gleb said, “I don’t want to do it. You had me do it a few days ago.”
“Yes, and it’s your turn again,” Rollant said. “We’ve been through everybody else in the squad since then. Go on. Get moving.”
Gleb shook his head. “Hells of a note when a blond thinks he can tell a real Detinan what to do.”
Ice and fire ran through Rollant. He hadn’t had much of that trouble-less than he’d expected-till now. Maybe he could head it off here. Tapping the stripes on his sleeve, he said, “It isn’t a blond telling you what to do, Gleb. It’s a corporal telling you. Now go fill our water bottles.”
“No,” Gleb said.
“He can put you on report, Gleb,” one of the other soldiers said. “Go on.”
“He can kiss my arse, that’s what he can do, gods-damned yellow-haired son of a bitch,” Gleb said, and stayed where he was.
Rollant did think about reporting him. But there was authority, and then there was authority. He sighed. He might have known this day was coming. Lieutenant Griff and Colonel Nahath had expected it sooner. Well, it was here now. He put down his crossbow, unbuckled his sword belt, and laid the shortsword by the bow. “Get up, Gleb,” he said.
“My, my,” the Detinan said as he got to his feet. He also undid his sword belt. “Think you’re hot stuff, don’t you, on account of you got yourself promoted? Well, I’ll tell you something, blond boy-that doesn’t mean a thing to me.”
“You talk too much.” Rollant’s heart thudded in his chest. He didn’t know if he could take Gleb. If he couldn’t, he doubted he’d ever be able to give another order again. But he surely wouldn’t be able to if he let the Detinan get away with disobeying.
He’d hoped Gleb would surge forward without any thought at all. No such luck-the soldier advanced cautiously, eyes wary, arms outstretched. Rollant threw a looping left. Gleb ducked under it and laughed scornfully. He dug a fist into Rollant’s ribs. “Oof!” Rollant said, and took a couple of stumbling steps backward.
Gleb laughed. “You’re not so fornicating tough, are you? I’m going to like stomping the shit out of you, you bet.”
The right Rollant threw was even wilder than the left had been. And it served its purpose: to persuade Gleb Rollant had no real stomach for a standup fight. With a nasty chuckle, Gleb closed on him.
Rollant slid a foot behind the Detinan and pushed, hard. Gleb let out a startled squawk. But, as he was falling, he grabbed Rollant and pulled him down, too. Everything till then had gone just as Rollant planned it. After that, the fight stopped having a plan. It was punch and gouge and kick and knee and elbow. Gleb’s teeth snapped shut an inch away from Rollant’s ear. He didn’t know whether that was because the Detinan was trying to bite him or because he’d just landed a good one to the pit of Gleb’s stomach. He couldn’t stop and ask, either.
Gleb hit him in the side of the head. He saw stars. But the Detinan howled and clutched at his own right hand. Rollant landed a blizzard of punches and brought his knee up between Gleb’s legs. Gleb let out a bubbling shriek. Rollant scrambled to his feet and kicked the Detinan several times. “Had enough?” he got out through bruised lips.
Gleb nodded. Rollant kicked him again, maybe hard enough to break a rib or two, maybe not. He didn’t want Gleb thinking he’d almost won and trying for another installment.
Something like that was on Gleb’s mind. “Wasn’t for your gods-damned hard head-” he mumbled.
That got him another kick. Once more, Rollant didn’t know if he’d broken the other man’s ribs, but he didn’t think he’d missed by much if he hadn’t. He stood over Gleb, breathing hard. “Get up,” he growled. Gleb stared at him out of one eye; the other was swollen shut. “Get up, you son of a bitch,” Rollant repeated. “You’re gods-damned well going to get your arse down to the creek and fill our water bottles.”
He waited. If Gleb said he couldn’t, he’d be even sorrier than he was already. Slowly, the Detinan struggled to his feet and started collecting water bottles. “Yes, Corporal,” he said mushily as he headed for the stream with Josh, who’d waited to see what happened. When he spat, he spat red.
So did Rollant. He ran his tongue over his teeth. He didn’t think he’d broken any. That was something. He looked at the other soldiers in his squad. Nobody said anything. He gestured. “Go on. Get back to setting up camp. It’s finished.” They all but fell over one another as they scrambled to obey.
Later that evening, Sergeant Joram came by, looked at Rollant, did a double take, and looked again. “By the gods, what happened to you?”
“Nothing,” Rollant answered, as a toddler might after breaking a vase.
Joram snorted. “Nothing, eh? I see that. Was it the kind of nothing I’d guess first time out?” Rollant only shrugged, which hurt. The sergeant tried another question: “What happened to the other fellow?”
“Nothing,” Rollant said again, but he couldn’t help adding, “Maybe a little more nothing than happened to me.”
“That a fact?” Joram said. Rollant nodded. That also hurt. Joram grunted. “Well, too bad for him and good for you. He decide he didn’t like the color of your hair?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sergeant,” Rollant said.
Joram made as if to clap him on the shoulder, then thought better of it. “All right,” he said. “Sounds like you took care of it, and that’s what counts.”
When Rollant called for men to put more wood on the fire or for any of the other small chores that needed doing, they kept on springing to obey. Maybe I should have fights more often. Then he shook his head, which also hurt. He’d come too close to losing this one. Now, if the gods were kind, he wouldn’t have to have any more. I’d sooner fight the traitors anyhow.
Once, not long before he lay down and went to sleep, he caught Gleb looking at him. The Detinan’s gaze flinched away when Rollant’s met it. Gleb, Rollant was happy to see, looked a good deal worse for wear than he did himself. And, by the way Gleb kept nursing that finger, he might really have broken it against Rollant’s head. Rollant felt not the least bit sorry for him.
Lieutenant Griff didn’t notice either Rollant or Gleb till morning. As Joram had the night before, he gaped at Rollant’s battered features. “With whom did you fight, Corporal?” he asked.
“Me, sir? I walked into a tree,” Rollant said woodenly.
“You look like you walked into a grinding mill,” Griff said, and then shouted, “Company-form up!”
The men obeyed. Griff stalked among them till he came to Gleb. “And what’s your excuse, soldier?” he demanded, his high, thin voice getting higher with suspicion.
“I fell down, sir,” Gleb answered, which was true, though he’d had help from Rollant.
Griff studied him. Now that his bruises had had time to appear, he looked ghastly. I suppose I do, too, Rollant thought. Griff said, “If you fall down again, you’ll be very sorry. Do you understand me?”
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“I’m already sorry, sir,” Gleb mumbled.
“You’ll be even sorrier. So will anyone else who tries falling down that particular way.” Lieutenant Griff was growing up. He made the threat sound much more convincing than he could have when he first took over the company.
Rollant paid his ritual respects to the company standard and took the flagpole from the ground. Leaning the pole against his shoulder meant leaning it against a bruise. Gods damn you, Gleb, he thought as the regiment started after the Army of Franklin.
“What do you think of this whole business, Corporal?” Griff asked him.
“Me, sir?” Rollant said. “I think it’d be a good thing if we took the real path the traitors are using, instead of letting their mages trick us again.”
“I think so, too, but that isn’t what I was talking about,” the company commander said. “Don’t toy with me. I won’t stand for it.”
“Sorry, sir,” said Rollant, who was anything but sorry. Reluctantly, he went on, “I wish it hadn’t happened, that’s all. I hope it won’t happen again.”
“Not likely, not the way Gleb looks,” Griff said.
Rollant was moderately-more than moderately-grateful that Lieutenant Griff said nothing about the way he looked himself. He said, “Sir, the only way I would’ve lost that fight was if he killed me. I couldn’t afford to.”
Griff nodded. “I understand how you might feel that way.”
Did he? Rollant had as many doubts as Doubting George. Griff was a Detinan. How could he knew how desperate a blond might get in a kingdom where everything was stacked against him? Simple-he couldn’t. If he thought he could, he was imagining things.
“Still and all, though, Corporal, if you have cases of insubordination, you should bring them before me, just as I would bring them before Colonel Nahath,” Griff said.
“Yes, sir,” Rollant said resignedly. No, the lieutenant didn’t understand. Gleb hadn’t been insubordinate because he didn’t want to obey a corporal. He’d been insubordinate because he didn’t want to obey a blond, which wasn’t the same thing at all. The man inside the uniform had been more important than the stripes on the tunic’s sleeve. A corporal could appeal to the army’s disciplinary mechanism without losing face. A blond… Rollant shook his head. He’d had to fight that battle by himself. Now that he’d fought and won it, maybe he wouldn’t have to do it again. He’d proved his point, or so he hoped.
Shouts rose from up ahead. Rollant peered through the dust the men in front of him had kicked up, but he could not see much. “What’s going on?” Griff called, along with a good many other officers back in the middle of the army.
The answer took a while to reach Griff. At last, somebody said, “Our unicorn-riders are skirmishing with the traitors up at the front of the force. It’s nothing, really.”
It couldn’t have been anything much, or they would have got orders to deploy from column into line of battle. Rollant was as well pleased to keep marching, even if it was through land where he’d fought earlier in the summer. “Sir,” he asked, “what happens if the northerners do wreck our glideway line?”
“Not much,” Griff answered. “For one thing, this country is a forager’s dream. And, for another, we’ve got awfully good at repairing whatever damage they can do, and almost as fast as they can do it. So don’t worry your head about that.”
“All right, sir-I won’t,” Rollant said. Maybe Griff was patronizing him, saying that, as a blond, he was too ignorant-or perhaps just too stupid-to understand grand strategy. At another time, a time when his bruises didn’t hurt so much, he might have been offended. Now he just shrugged. Offended or not, quarreling with his company commander didn’t pay.
Before long, horn calls did summon the army to form line of battle. Rollant waved the company standard overhead so his comrades could go into line behind him. One more chance for the traitors to shoot me, he thought. But he wore a corporal’s stripes and drew a corporal’s pay precisely because he gave them that chance whenever his regiment went into action.
Then the horns rang out again, returning the force to column for marching. “That’s good,” Smitty said. “That’s very good. Somebody up there’s really clever.”
“Could you do better?” Rollant asked.
Brash as any Detinan, Smitty answered, “I couldn’t do a hells of a lot worse, could I?” Detinans always thought they could handle anything. Sometimes they were right, sometimes-more often, from everything Rollant had seen-wrong. But they never lacked for confidence.
“I wonder what happened up ahead,” Rollant said.
“What do you want to bet they ran away from us?” Smitty said.
“I wouldn’t touch that,” Rollant said. “I’ve got better things to do with my silver than giving it to you.”
“Since when?” Smitty said. “Name two. It’s not even like you sit around throwing dice all night long or spend it on loose women.”
“I’ve got a wife,” Rollant said stiffly, as he had to Griff in Marthasville.
“Hasn’t stopped a lot of people I know of, from General Guildenstern on down.” Smitty chuckled fondly. “He’d screw anything that moved, he would.”
“All I want to do is go home again and be with the woman I belong with,” Rollant said. In fact, that wasn’t quite true. What he wanted to do… But I haven’t done it, he thought, and then, Gods, I hope this war ends soon.
* * *
Roast-Beef William saluted Lieutenant General Bell. “Reporting as ordered, sir,” he said.
Bell returned the salute. His right arm still worked. It was one of the few pieces of him that did. Including his brain, William thought sourly. But King Geoffrey had named Bell to command the Army of Franklin, and so William-who prided himself on being known as Old Reliable-was duty-bound to obey him. No matter how much I want to do something-anything-else. Bell said. “I am going to use your wing as our rear guard, to hold off the gods-damned southrons as we move south.”
“Yes, sir,” Roast-Beef William said resignedly. “I hope you bear in mind the pounding we took at Jonestown.”
“I do,” Bell said. “All parts of the army suffered heavily around Marthasville, as I’m sure you know.”
And whose fault is that? William wondered. He thought of Joseph the Gamecock, who’d gone into retirement up in Dicon. What was Joseph saying about Geoffrey and Bell and about the way the army had been handled since his own departure? Nothing good-William was sure of that. Of course, considering everything that had happened since, nothing good deserved to be said.
“You will, I presume, perform the duties required of you?” Bell asked, an edge to his voice.
“Yes, sir,” William said. “Of course I will, sir. I hope we don’t need to do a whole lot of fighting, though.”
Bell sneered. “Haven’t got the stomach for it?”
“Haven’t got the men for it,” Roast-Beef William said. “Sir.” He turned on his heel and strode out of the farmhouse Bell was using for his headquarters. By the gods, he thought, for a couple of coppers I’d… He shook his head. Such thoughts about a superior officer would only land him in trouble. I’ve got to get away from this army. Enough is enough. Too much, in fact.
He shook his head again, trying to clear it. As if I’m not in trouble already. As if the whole army isn’t in trouble already. To the hells with me if I know whatBell’s doing. Rear guard? Where are we going? What will we do when we get there? He had no real answers. He didn’t think Bell had real answers, either, except letting Hesmucet chase after him for as long as the southron commander would.
The sun was setting, but enough light remained to let Roast-Beef William take a long look to the north. No sign of Hesmucet’s force at the moment. Maybe the Army of Franklin could keep on outrunning the southrons, but how much good would that do overall? Not a great deal, as far as William could see.
“Halt!” an alert sentry called. “Advance and be recognized.”
“I’m Lieutenant General William,”
William said, moving slowly to keep from alarming the man and perhaps ending up with a crossbow quarrel between the ribs. “Do you recognize me?”
“Uh, yes, sir,” the sentry said. “Sorry, sir.”
“Don’t be,” Roast-Beef William said. “You should stay alert.”
“Well, yes, sir,” the man said. “But I shouldn’t come close to putting a hole in one of our generals, either. That wouldn’t be so good.”
“If you think I’m going to quarrel with you, soldier, you’d better think again,” William said, and the sentry laughed. William wasn’t so sure it was funny. For one thing, both sides had lost officers because their own men had shot them. For another, he couldn’t escape the nagging feeling that the Army of Franklin might be improved if a couple of its officers suffered such accidents. Thoughts like that bordered on mutiny. They were not the sort of ideas that should have been going through the mind of a man known as Old Reliable.
Roast-Beef William couldn’t drive them out of his head even so. If that wasn’t a telling measure of the state to which the Army of Franklin had fallen, he couldn’t imagine what would be. Maybe I should start writing letters. Anywhere would be better than here.
“Where will we be going now, sir?” the sentry asked.
“South, for the army as a whole,” William answered. “My wing will serve as rear guard.”
“Can the southrons catch up to us?” The sentry sounded interested and curious, not anxious and afraid.
That only shows he doesn’t understand the state we’re in, Roast-Beef William thought. As wing commander, he himself understood it altogether too well. If only King Geoffrey had put me in Joseph the Gamecock’s place once he decided he couldn’t stand leaving Joseph in command. By all the gods and goddesses, I couldn’t have done worse thanBell did.
But Bell looked like the Lion God and fought like a tiger, always hitting the enemy with everything he had. In Geoffrey’s eyes, those attributes counted for more than reliability. And so I kept right on being a wing commander, and so we lost a third of the army, and we lost Marthasville, and we took a couple of long steps toward losing the war.
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