“He couldn’t get along with Thraxton the Braggart, is what you mean,” Bell said. “Of course, nobody gets along with Thraxton.”
You didn’t think that when he put you in command here, William thought-which didn’t mean Bell was wrong. With a sigh, the departing officer said, “I wish things here would have turned out better.”
“So do I,” Bell replied. “If anyone is mad enough to believe I wanted to leave Marthasville to the tender mercies of the southrons… Do you know, Lieutenant General, when they paraded through the city, they had the gods-damned gall to use a blond as one of their standard-bearers-and not just a blond, mind you, but a blond underofficer, of all the impossible things!”
“Blonds in King Avram’s army have fought better than Detinans ever imagined they could,” Roast-Beef William said. “It’s no wonder some officers in this kingdom-in this army-have begun to wonder if we shouldn’t put crossbows in their hands and see what they can do for us.”
Bell sneered. “I heard about Brigadier Patrick the Cleaver’s memorial to King Geoffrey. I couldn’t very well keep from hearing about it, when I was flat on my back after I lost my leg. Look what happened to Patrick: he was ordered not to talk about it, and he’s been passed over for promotion every time a new command came open. No, thanks, Lieutenant General-I want no part of arming blonds.”
“If we can get enough Detinan soldiers, well and good, sir,” William said. “If not, and if blonds can fight-shouldn’t we get some use out of them, seeing that our enemies do?”
“Arming blonds destroys everything being a Detinan means,” Bell said.
“Yes, sir,” Roast-Beef William agreed. He had no great love for blonds-except, perhaps, for some of their prettier women. But he couldn’t help adding, “Losing the war destroys everything being a Detinan means, too. If arming blonds would keep that from happening now, we could worry about everything else later.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea. King Geoffrey doesn’t think it’s a good idea, either,” Bell said. “You may not care about my views, Lieutenant General, but those of the king will prevail.”
He was right, of course. He was right about Geoffrey’s suppression of Patrick the Cleaver’s memorial. He was right about Patrick’s failure to get promoted. Of course, Patrick the Cleaver probably didn’t altogether understand what being a Detinan meant. He wasn’t a northerner born, but had crossed the Western Ocean from the Sapphire Isle himself as a young man. To him, blonds might seem like people, not like natural-born serfs.
If a few brigades of well-armed blond crossbowmen and pikemen were waiting for me at Veldt, I’d be a lot happier going there-I could do something against Hesmucet in that case, William thought. But then he frowned. Or could I? Could I trust them not to shoot me in the back and go over to the southrons?
“If we did use them, we’d have to promise to treat them like Detinans once they left the army,” he mused.
“Cows will fly before we arm blonds,” Bell said. “Don’t waste your time thinking about it.”
And he was bound to be right about that, too. Roast-Beef William saluted. “If you will excuse me, sir? I have a lot to think about before I take over my new command.”
“Of course. You’re dismissed, Lieutenant General,” Bell said. “And I wish you the best of fortune in the west.”
“Thank you, sir,” William said. “The best fortune I can think of would be for the southrons not to come west at me. If tearing up the glideway line will keep that from happening, I’m all for it.”
“I think it will,” Bell said. “After all, the Grand Marshal’s army was nothing but a starving band of fugitives on the retreat from Pahzbull fifty years ago. They got in, but most of them didn’t come out again. I don’t see any reason why the same thing can’t happen to General Hesmucet and his men.”
“Yes, sir,” Roast-Beef William said. What went through his mind while he got out the polite words was, Oh, if I weren’t leaving, I’d tell him to his face what an idiot he is. The Sorbian army didn’t ruin the Grand Marshal and his host when he marched west. The Sorbian winter did. TheKingdom ofSorb has the worst winters in the world.PeachtreeProvince has some of the mildest winters in the world. Where are the blizzards to wreck Hesmucet’s army? If you have one up your sleeve, you’d better pull it out pretty gods-damned soon.
“Again, good luck to you, and I hope the southrons stay far away,” Bell said.
“Thank you, sir,” William replied. “So do I. May I ask you something?” He waited for the general commanding to nod, then put his question: “Now that I’m leaving, are you going to name Patrick the Cleaver wing commander in my place?”
Bell didn’t hesitate for a moment. “No. He’s a good fighting soldier, and brave as they come, but I don’t think he makes a suitable wing commander. Besides, even if I thought he did, even if I proposed it, King Geoffrey would never approve the appointment. We’ve already talked about the Cleaver’s memorial. The king doesn’t forget something like that.”
He was bound to be right. He didn’t have much of a sense for politics in the broader meaning of the word, but a shrewd understanding of the way the king’s mind worked went a long way toward making up for the lack. Roast-Beef William also noticed one other irony: Bell’s description of Patrick the Cleaver might have been a description of himself. Of course, Bell had been given command of not just a wing but an army. And, having got high command, he’d proceeded to prove he wasn’t suitable for it.
Well, that’s King Geoffrey’s worry now, William thought. He wantedBell in command, and he got him, and everything that went with him. I wonder when he’ll take Joseph the Gamecock off the shelf again and see if he can repair the damage.
William left the farmhouse. He swung up into the saddle of his unicorn to ride away from the Army of Franklin. As he booted the beast into motion, he felt as if he were escaping a sinking ship. But he shook his head a moment later. The only way to escape the sinking ship, he feared, would be to flee King Geoffrey’s kingdom altogether. The clouds gathering over the north looked very black indeed.
I can’t run away, Roast-Beef William thought. I’m a soldier. My duty is to fight for my king and my kingdom, to fight as long as I can and as hard as I can. I may lose-I likely will lose-but I have to try. He rode off to the west to do what he could to hold back the building storm.
* * *
Captain Gremio sipped from a tin cup of what the cooks called tea. He made a horrible face. Even with plenty of honey slopped into it, it was bitter enough to pucker his mouth. “Gods, that’s vile,” he said.
Sergeant Thisbe, sitting cross-legged on the ground beside him, took a cautious sip of his own. He nodded. “Couldn’t be much worse. Whatever roots they’re using, they’d better use some different ones the next time… Why are you drinking more of it, sir?”
The company commander put his free hand on the left side of his chest. “Why? Because no matter how foul it tastes, it’s making my heart beat faster and my eyes open up, that’s why. Maybe the cooks know something after all.”
Thisbe took another, more experimental, sip, then nodded again. “I suppose you’re right. It’s still nasty, though.”
“If it wakes me up and gets me going, I don’t much care how nasty it is.” Gremio drained the cup. “I suppose the blonds drank tea from roots like these all the time back in the old days.”
“I’m sorry for them if they did,” Thisbe said. “The gods really must have hated them.”
“Ha!” Gremio said. “If only you were joking. After all, what did the gods bring them? The gods brought them us, that’s what. And, since the gods love us, they must have hated the blonds. Stands to reason, eh?”
“Makes sense to me, sir.” Thisbe finished his own cup of tea and then made as if to retch. Gremio laughed, though that really wasn’t funny, either. Thisbe asked, “What do we do today?”
“March along aimlessly. Forage as much as we can. Skirmish with the southrons if we happen to bump into them,” Gremio ans
wered. “I can’t imagine anything more exciting. Can you?”
Thisbe gave back an uncertain smile. “If you don’t like what we are doing, what do you think we should be up to?”
“Defending Marthasville,” Gremio said at once. “If we’d kept on trying to defend the place instead of attacking an army twice our size, we might still hold it.”
“Well… yes, sir,” the sergeant said. “But it’s a little too late to worry about that now, isn’t it?”
“No, indeed,” Gremio answered. Thisbe looked puzzled. The company commander explained: “It’s much too late to worry about that now.”
“Er, yes.” Thisbe’s grin was uncertain, too. Somewhere not far away, a sergeant from another company started shouting at his men, getting them up and ready for another day’s march, no matter how aimless. Thisbe also climbed to his feet. “Form up, you lugs!” he shouted. “If you think you’re going to be lazy all day, you can gods-damned well think again.”
Gremio’s bones creaked when he rose. When he walked off behind a bush, his left foot felt cold. Examination showed the sole of his left shoe was staring to separate from the upper. He muttered something nasty under his breath as he buttoned his fly. He couldn’t even complain about something like that, not out loud, not when a fair number of the men he led had no shoes at all.
Geese mournfully honked overhead as the Army of Franklin got on the road again. Pointing to them, Gremio said, “I wish I could fly north for the winter, too. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about a lot of things.”
Thisbe gave him a quizzical look. A couple of soldiers started honking. As such things had a way of doing, the raucous noise spread through the whole company. “What in the damnation is wrong with your men, Captain?” Colonel Florizel demanded.
“Why, nothing, sir,” Gremio replied. “They aren’t down at all, and they still have plenty of pluck.”
“Oh. Good. Glad to hear it,” Florizel said vaguely. Thisbe sent Gremio a horrible look. He tipped his hat to the sergeant. Thisbe snorted. That tea must be rotting my brains, Gremio thought.
He tramped along the back roads of southern Peachtree Province. When he went through a muddy stretch, he had no doubt that his shoe was starting to come apart. Again, he kept his curses quiet and private.
“Where exactly are we going, sir?” Sergeant Thisbe asked as Gremio squelched along with mud between his toes.
“Good question, Sergeant. Excellent question, in fact,” Gremio replied. “At the moment, though, I don’t even know where approximately we’re going, let alone exactly. This isn’t the first time you’ve exposed my ignorance, either. Shall we consult with Colonel Florizel, or shall we try to retain our touching, simple faith that the general commanding has some idea of what we’re doing?”
“Er-whatever you like, sir,” Thisbe said.
“In my dreams, Sergeant, but nowhere else,” Gremio said. “So”-he bowed-“what is your pleasure?”
“Well… never mind, sir,” the sergeant answered. “I suppose we’ll both find out.”
“I suppose we will.” Gremio bowed again, as if impersonating a very punctilious nobleman. “Now I do hope you won’t ask any awkward questions about what we’re going to do when we get there.”
Thisbe gave him an odd look. “I wouldn’t think of it, sir. Are you feeling all right?”
“But for one sloppy foot and that touching, simple faith I was telling you about, I’m fine, Sergeant, though I do thank you for asking.” Gremio bowed yet again.
The look Sergeant Thisbe sent him this time was a good deal more than odd. But, before the sergeant could say anything, horns blared from off to one side. Colonel Florizel bellowed, “Shift from column into line of battle! Move, move, move!”
“Hello!” Gremio exclaimed. “I still don’t know where we’re going, but now, at least, I’ve got some idea of what we’re doing: we’re going to fight.” He raised his voice to a shout: “My company, shift from column into line! Move!”
They performed their evolutions with the automatic speed and precision endless hours on the practice field had drilled into them. As they moved, Thisbe asked, “What are we going to fight, sir? General Hesmucet’s whole army?”
“To the hells with me if I know,” Gremio answered. “One more thing we’ll find out, I’m sure.” If they were going up against Hesmucet’s whole army, not many of them would come back from the encounter. He knew as much, as Thisbe was bound to. Neither of them dwelt on it.
Horns blared again. Colonel Florizel shouted, “Forward!” Did he know what he was advancing against? Gremio was inclined to doubt it. The regimental commander ordered the men forward nonetheless.
When Gremio tramped past a stand of trees that had obscured his view, he discovered the Army of Franklin wasn’t the only one that made mistakes. A couple of regiments of soldiers in gray had also formed line of battle, and were trying to scrape up breastworks and dig holes in the ground for themselves. “They must have been coming up from the south to reinforce Caesar,” Gremio said.
“Why don’t they surrender?” Thisbe said. “They haven’t got a chance, not against so many men.”
“I don’t know,” Gremio answered. Then, as he came closer to the embattled foe, he understood: “Oh. They’re full of blonds.”
“They’re going to be full of dead blonds if they don’t give up,” Thisbe said.
“I don’t think they think they can surrender,” Gremio said. “They may be right, too. I haven’t got much stomach for a massacre, but…” Plenty of soldiers in the Army of Franklin would-he was sure of that.
“King Avram!” the men in gray shouted. “King Avram and freedom!” No, they showed no sign of wanting to surrender. Some of them started singing “The Battle Psalm of the Kingdom.”
How much fighting had they seen? How many men would they kill, could they kill, before they went down to death themselves? They seemed big and strong and ready to fight. Gremio knew perfectly well that the Army of Franklin couldn’t afford the losses it would take subduing them. He also knew perfectly well his comrades couldn’t walk away from the blonds. He sighed. He hated quandaries like that.
“Be careful,” he called to his company. “Those bastards up ahead have nothing to lose. Don’t throw yourselves away if you can help it. King Geoffrey needs every single one of us.”
They weren’t going to listen to him. He could tell at once, by the way they leaned forward, how eager they were to get into this skirmish. Some of them were liege lords themselves. Others aspired to estates with serfs. Blonds who bore arms against Detinans contradicted everything they held dear and conjured up pictures of peasant revolts. Now the northerners had a chance to make the blonds pay, and they were going to take it.
As usual, soldiers from both sides started shooting too soon. Coming into crossbow range of each other, though, didn’t take long. Gremio hated the sound of quarrels humming past his ear. He hated even more the flat, unemphatic smack they made when they slapped into flesh. And the sounds that came from a man who’d been shot… He hated those most of all.
Blonds ahead began falling. Gremio wondered how many of them came from the southron provinces and how many were runaway serfs. He couldn’t very well pause and ask. All he could do was run toward them waving an officer’s sword that wouldn’t do him a bit of good till he got close enough for them to have a fine chance of killing him, too. The more he thought about it, the stupider a way to pass his time this seemed.
However much he wanted to, though, he couldn’t go back. Even if his superiors didn’t crucify him for cowardice, he’d never again be able to hold up his head among men. That mattered to him more than the possibility of getting shot. Not for the first time, he wondered why it should.
Beside him, Thisbe said, “It’s a good thing they’re all crossbowmen. We couldn’t charge them like this if they had pikemen with them.”
“Oh, yes, a very good thing-a bloody wonderful thing,” Gremio said in tones of something less than complete enthusiasm.
Sergeant Thisbe’s laugh abruptly turned into a yelp of pain. Instead of running, the underofficer took a couple of staggering steps and crashed to the ground, clutching at his left leg.
Gremio skidded to a stop just beyond him. “Go on, sir,” Thisbe said. “Go on. I’ll be all right.” He tried to get to his feet, tried and failed. The left leg of his pantaloons started to turn red. He began crawling away from the fight ahead.
“Here, I’ll help you.” Gremio knelt beside him. “Give me your arm. I’ll heave you upright, and you can use your good leg for a little ways. We’ve got to get you back to the healers, get that wound seen to.”
Thisbe waved him away, repeating, “Go on, sir. I’ll be all right.”
“Sergeant, give me your arm,” Gremio said in a voice harsher than he’d ever used with Thisbe. “That is an order.”
Thisbe looked as if he wanted to argue further, but then the wound must have twinged again, for he winced and nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“That’s better.” Gremio put the underofficer’s arm over his shoulder. “Let me have some help from your good leg if you can, Sergeant.” He straightened. Thisbe wasn’t a big man. Gremio had less trouble getting him up than he’d expected. “Come on,” he said.
“Sir, I don’t want to go to the healers,” Thisbe said.
“What you want doesn’t matter very much right now, Sergeant,” Gremio said. “What you need matters, and what you need is healing. I’ll get you there, never fear.”
“Sir, could you bandage me yourself?” Thisbe asked desperately. “By all the gods, sir, I’ll give you anything you like, anything at all, if only you don’t take me to the healers.”
“Why are you so afraid of them?” Gremio asked. “Is it for the same reason you never wanted to be promoted, no matter how much you deserve it?”
He was talking only to distract Thisbe from his pain, but the underofficer seized on his words and gave him a quick, urgent nod. “Yes, for just the same reason, sir! Don’t take me there, I beg you!”
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