Advance and Retreat

XI

Sergeant Rollant looked across the Franklin River. On the north bank, Ned of the Forest’s unicorn-riders trotted up and down on endless patrol. Rollant reached for his crossbow, but arrested the motion before it got very far. What was the point? The Franklin was a lot more than a bowshot wide.

Beside Rollant, Smitty-Corporal Smitty-also eyed the unicorn-riders, who were tiny in the distance. Smitty said, “If we could push some men across, we could smash up all those sons of bitches.”

“I know. I’ve been thinking the same thing.” Rollant let out a small noise full of longing, the sort of noise a cat on the ground might make at seeing a plump thrush high in a treetop. “The other thing I’ve been thinking is, it wouldn’t be very hard.”

“That’s right. That’s just exactly right. It wouldn’t be hard at all.” Smitty practically quivered with eagerness. “We could head straight on up to the Gulf, and how could the traitors stop us, or even slow us down?”

“They couldn’t. Not a chance.” Rollant was as sure of it as he was of his own name. “We’d be heroes.”

“We’re already heroes. I’ve had a bellyful of being a hero,” Smitty said. “What I want to do is win the gods-damned war and go home.”

“Home.” Rollant spoke the word with enormous longing. For the first time since he’d taken King Avram’s silver and put on the kingdom’s gray tunic and pantaloons, the idea that he would be going home before too long began to seem real. “Why doesn’t Doubting George turn us loose on them?”

“Beats me.” Smitty shrugged. “But you know what? I don’t much care one way or the other.” He waved across the river. “I mean, look at those poor sorry sons of bitches. We’ve licked ’em.” His voice held absolute conviction, absolute certainty. In fact, he said it again: “We’ve licked ’em. They aren’t going to come back and give us trouble, the way they did in Peachtree Province. We could all go home tomorrow, and Ramblerton still wouldn’t have a thing to worry about. You going to tell me I’m wrong?” He looked a challenge at Rollant.

“No,” the blond admitted. “No, I don’t suppose you are.”

“Gods-damned right I’m not,” Smitty said. “And since they are licked, what the hells difference does it make whether we go after ’em hard or not?”

What difference did it make? Any at all? Rollant hadn’t looked at things like that. Now he did. Again, he couldn’t say Smitty was wrong. “What do you think we’ll do, then?” he asked. “Wait here by the river till the war ends in the west? Just stay here and make sure Ned of the Forest doesn’t get loose and make trouble?”

Like most blonds, he had a respect and dread for Ned that amounted almost to superstitious awe. A man who was both a serfcatcher and a first-rate-better than first-rate: brilliant-commander of unicorn-riders, and whose men had been known to slaughter blonds fighting for Avram? No wonder he roused such feelings in the soldiers who had the most reason to oppose him.

Smitty, on the other hand, was an ordinary Detinan. If anything impressed him, he wasn’t inclined to admit it, even to himself. He said, “To the hells with Ned of the Forest, too. He tries getting cute, Hard-Riding Jimmy’ll take care of him.” Smitty spoke with the blithe confidence most ordinary Detinans showed, the blithe confidence that baffled Rollant and other blonds. And, as if to say he didn’t think Ned or the rest of the northerners were worth worrying about, he turned his back on the unicorn-riders and the Franklin River and strode off, whistling.

“Licked.” Rollant tasted the word in his mouth. Could it really be true? He’d thought so during the pursuit, but now that seemed over. Was it still true with him standing here in cold blood? “By the gods, maybe it is,” he murmured. Where Smitty had turned his back on the river, Rollant stared avidly across it. “Licked.” What a lovely word!

He was recalled to his side of the Franklin when somebody spoke to him in a tongue he didn’t understand. Several blond laborers, all plainly escaped serfs, stood there gaping at him in open-mouthed admiration. Some wore the undyed wool tunics and pantaloons Avram’s army issued to such men, others the rags in which they’d run away from their liege lords’ estates.

Such things had happened to him before. Blonds in the north had used a swarm of languages before the Detinan conquerors came. Many still survived, if precariously, and a lot of them had added words to the Detinan spoken in the north. But the speech whose fragments Rollant had learned as a child on Baron Ormerod’s estate in Palmetto Province sounded nothing like this one.

“Talk Detinan,” he told them in that language. It was the conquerors’ tongue, but the only one they had in common. “What do you want?”

They looked disappointed he couldn’t follow them. He’d expected that. One of them, visibly plucking up his courage, asked, “You are really a sergeant, sir?”

“Yes, I’m a sergeant,” Rollant answered. “And you don’t call me sir. You call officers sir. They’re the ones with epaulets.” He saw the blond laborers didn’t know what epaulets were, so he tapped his shoulder. “The fancy ornaments they wear here. You men haven’t been with the army long, have you?”

“No, sir,” another of them said. The laborer who’d spoken first poked him with an elbow. He tried again: “Uh, no, Sergeant.”

Yet another blond asked, “How did you get to be a sergeant, sir?” Force of habit died hard in them. The man added, “How did they let you be a sergeant?”

“They made me a corporal when I took the company standard after the standard-bearer got killed,” Rollant replied. “I charged at the northerners and I was lucky-they didn’t shoot me. Then, when the lieutenant who commanded this company got shot at Ramblerton, they made our sergeant a lieutenant, and they made me a sergeant.”

“A sergeant. A blond sergeant.” The laborer who spoke might have been talking about a black unicorn or some other prodigy of nature.

The blond who’d called to Rollant in the language that wasn’t Detinan asked, “And when you give an order, do the Detinans obey?”

All the blonds leaned forward, eagerly hanging on the answer. They all sighed ecstatically when he nodded. He couldn’t blame them. What blond trapped in serfdom in the north didn’t dream of turning the tables on his liege lord? Rollant knew he had, back when he was bound to Baron Ormerod’s estate outside of Karlsburg.

“They do now,” he told them.

“Now?” They all echoed that. A big, burly blond in rags asked, “Why didn’t they before?”

Rollant wished the man hadn’t asked that question. Reluctantly, he gave back the truth: “Because I had to beat up one of them to convince them I deserved to wear my stripes.”

“Ahhh!” They all said that together, too.

“Wait!” Rollant held up a hand. With desperate urgency, he said, “Do you know what’ll happen if you try to beat up Detinans?” The blond laborers shook their heads. “They’ll give you stripes-stripes on your backs,” he told them. “Or they may nail you to crosses. Don’t try. You can’t get away with it.”

They frowned. The burly one asked, “Why could you, then? That’s not right.”

“Why could I?” Now Rollant was the one doing the echoing. “I’ll tell you why. Because I’ve killed northerners. All the men in my company knew I could do that. They’d seen me do it. They’d seen I could fight and didn’t run away. The only question left was whether I was tough enough to lick them, and I showed them I could do that, too, when one of our Detinans wouldn’t obey me. If you haven’t done all the other things, don’t try this, or you’ll be sorrier than you ever imagined you could be, and no one will help you.”

He wondered if they were really listening, or if one of them would try to hit a Detinan overseer he didn’t like right in the eye. He hoped they wouldn’t be so stupid, but you never could tell.

Maybe they would just try to strip off their colorless clothes and get the Detinans to give them gray tunics and pantaloons instead. They might even succeed; King Avram’s armies seemed permanently hungry for men. But if the blonds expected promotion to be easy or quick, they were doomed to disappointment. It was probably easier for them to end up dead than to end up as corporals, let alone sergeants. Rollant shrugged. Still, if they wanted to try, why shouldn’t they?

He looked across the Franklin again. Ned’s unicorn-riders kept right on patrolling the north bank. They probably kept right on being convinced that Geoffrey was the rightful King of Detina, too, and that blonds were serfs by nature. But, as far as the larger scheme of things went, what Ned of the Forest’s troopers were convinced of mattered less and less with each passing day.

“Lollygagging around again, are you?” a deep voice rumbled behind Rollant.

He turned and saluted. “Oh, yes, sir, Lieutenant Joram,” he replied. “You know all blonds are shiftless and lazy, same as you know all blonds are a pack of dirty, yellow cowards.”

Joram opened his mouth to answer that, then closed it again. Before saying anything, the newly commissioned officer rumbled laughter. Only after he’d got it out of his system did he remark, “Gods damn it, Rollant, there are still plenty of Detinans who do know that, or think they do.”

“Yes, sir.” Rollant nodded. “But are you one of them?”

“Well, that depends,” Joram said judiciously. “There’s a difference, you know, between whether you were lollygagging around on account of you’re a shiftless, cowardly blond and whether you were lollygagging around just in a general sort of way.”

“Oh, yes, sir.” Rollant nodded again. “That’s the truth. There is that difference. The Detinans you were talking about, though, they can’t see it.”

“Before you rubbed my nose in it, I would have had trouble seeing it myself,” Joram said. “Some blonds are shiftless cowards.”

“That’s true, too, sir. So are some Detinans.”

Joram grunted. Detinans prided themselves on being a warrior race. After a moment, Joram’s big head bobbed up and down. “And that’s the truth. So, Sergeant… in a general sort of way, were you lollygagging around?”

If Rollant had admitted it while still a common soldier, his reward would have been extra duty of some sort: chopping wood or digging a latrine trench or filling canteens. As a sergeant, he was supposed to be immune to such little oppressions. But he’d been a common soldier longer than he’d been an underofficer. “Sir, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said blandly.

“I’ll bet you don’t!” Joram laughed again, a laugh so big and booming, Rollant wondered if the riders on the far side of the Franklin could hear it. But they just kept on riding. The company commander said, “Blond or not, you’re sure as hells an old soldier, aren’t you?”

Rollant shrugged. “I’ve been doing this a while now,” he said, “but any serf would tell you how much of a fool you have to be before you admit anything that puts you in trouble.”

“You don’t need to be a serf to learn that-though I don’t suppose it hurts,” Joram said.

“Now that you’re an officer, sir, have you heard anything about whether we’ll cross the Franklin and finish the traitors once and for all?” Rollant asked.

That made Joram laugh yet again, but this time without much in the way of amusement in his voice. “Just because they gave me one epaulet doesn’t mean they tell me anything,” he answered. “If I had my way, we’d already be pushing those bastards out of Honey-I hear that’s where they finally went and ran to. But even though I’m a lieutenant, I don’t have my way.”

“For whatever it may be worth to you, I’d do the same,” Rollant said. “Of course, I’m only a sergeant and I’m only a blond, so I really don’t have my way.”

“No, I don’t suppose you do,” Joram agreed. “But tell me this-when the war started, before you joined the army, did you ever think you’d say something like, ‘I’m only a sergeant’?”

“No, sir, can’t say that I did,” Rollant admitted. “What I wonder now is how things will be for my children, and for their children. I don’t want them to have to go through a lot of the things I’ve had to put up with because of the way I look.”

Joram nodded his big, heavy-featured head once more. “Don’t blame you a bit. If I were a blond, I’d say the same gods-damned thing. Since I’m not a blond, I’ll say something else instead: don’t expect miracles. The gods don’t dole ’em out very often. If you figure everything’s going to be perfect on account of we’ve gone and whipped false King Geoffrey, you’ll wind up disappointed.”

Now Rollant laughed. “Sir, I’m a blond. It’s a miracle I believe in miracles, if you know what I mean.”

“I think maybe I do.” Lieutenant Joram smacked him on the back, hard enough to stagger him. “Never mind miracles, then. Believe that we’ve won this war whether we go over the Franklin or not, and that we’ll go on from there.”

Everyone kept saying the same thing. It wasn’t so much that Rollant believed it was wrong, for he didn’t. After the fight in front of Ramblerton, no northern army worthy of the name survived east of the Green Ridge Mountains. But he wanted to be in at the death, to see false King Geoffrey’s realm fail. Hearing that it happened somewhere else later on didn’t have the same feel, the same meaning. Yes, I want victory in my own hands, he thought, and then, How very, very Detinan I’m getting.

John the Lister had done a lot of hard and dangerous things during the War Between the Provinces. He’d got his detachment through the battle of Poor Richard, and wrecked the Army of Franklin in the process. His men had played a major role in the victory in front of Ramblerton, and in the pursuit that followed. And now here he was talking, negotiating terms of surrender for… a postmaster?

The postmaster in question, a wizened, bespectacled little man named Ithran, had taken care of letters and parcels going into and out of the town of Warsaw. He’d done that before the war, and he’d done it under the auspices of false King Geoffrey during the war, and he wanted to go on doing it now that King Avram’s authority had come to northern Franklin. What he didn’t want to do was swear an oath of allegiance to Avram.

“Well, that’s simple enough,” John told him. “If you don’t, your town will have a new postmaster fast as we can find one.”

Ithran writhed like a man who needed to run to the jakes. “It’s not fair,” he whined. “With the war just about over, who else would I be loyal to?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to find out. Neither does his Majesty,” John replied. “No penalty will fall on you if you don’t swear the oath. King Avram is a merciful man-more merciful than he ought to be, I often think. But if you cannot swear loyalty to him by the Thunderer and the Lion God and the rest of the heavenly host on Mount Panamgam beyond the sky, you will not stay postmaster in Warsaw.”

“But-” Ithran threw his hands in the air. He must have seen that John the Lister meant what he said. “All right. All right! I’ll swear. Do I give you my oath?”

“No. You give it to the priests. They’re the proper ones to hold it. Ask in our encampment,” John said. “Someone will tell you where to find them.”

“I’ll do that. Thank you.” Despite the polite words, Ithran sounded anything but grateful. Still fuming, he scuttled out of John’s presence.

John reminded himself to check to make sure Ithran had sworn the oath before letting him open up the post office in Warsaw. Even if he did swear it, John judged he wouldn’t do so with anything even approaching sincerity. He had, after all, already sworn allegiance first to King Buchan and then to false King Geoffrey. After that, how important would he reckon one more oath? But John was not charged with enforcing sincerity, only the law King Avram had ordained.

And, once the oath was sworn, the priests wouldn’t be the only ones holding it. The gods would also keep it in their hands. While that might not matter in this world, it should in the next. Several of the seven hells had particularly… interesting sections reserved for oathbreakers.

That was one reason why John the Lister didn’t fret much about Ithran’s sincerity (though he did wish Major Alva had never told him about the Inward Hypothesis, which made the gods seem weaker than they should). The other was that, as the postmaster himself had said, the war was nearly over, false King Geoffrey nearly beaten. If no one could carry on the fight for Geoffrey, Ithran and all the people like him would have to stay loyal to Avram.

A runner came up to John and stood at attention, waiting-ostentatiously waiting-to be noticed. When John nodded, the young soldier in gray saluted and said, “Sir, you are ordered to report to Lieutenant General George’s pavilion right away.”

“Oh, I am, am I?” John said. “What’s this all about?”

The runner shrugged. “I don’t know, sir. I was just told to deliver the message, and now I’ve done it.”

“I’m on my way, then.” John wondered if the runner could have told him more than he had. Rumor and gossip always swirled through the camp. John shrugged broad shoulders. He’d find out soon enough.

Doubting George stood waiting for him outside the pavilion. The commanding general didn’t look particularly happy, but then George never looked particularly happy. He returned John’s salute in an absentminded way.

“Reporting as ordered, sir,” John said. “What’s going on? Will we cross the Franklin and chase the traitors after all?”

“No.” Doubting George shook his head. “This army will do no such thing. The new orders I have from Georgetown make that perfectly clear.”

“Oh, dear. Too bad,” John said. “We really ought to finish smashing up the Army of Franklin and Lieutenant General Bell, or whoever’s in charge of it if Bell really has resigned.”

“The chowderhead is gone,” George said. “No doubt about that at all. I don’t know who the traitors will appoint in his place. I don’t know how much it matters, either, not with these orders I’ve got.”

John the Lister frowned. “What are your orders, sir?” Whatever they were, they seemed to have sucked all the vitality out of the commanding general. John couldn’t remember ever having seen him so low, not even after the disaster by the River of Death. George had been a tower of strength then; without him, General Guildenstern’s whole army, and the southron war effort east of the mountains, might well have gone to pieces in the aftermath of the defeat.

Now he said, “Your wing, Brigadier, is to be detached from my army and sent to General Hesmucet in the west, to go to Croatoan and join him after he moves south through Palmetto Province toward Marshal Bart at Pierreville.”

“My… entire wing? With me in charge of it?” John the Lister had trouble believing his ears.

But Doubting George’s heavy, pain-filled nod assured him he’d heard correctly. “That is what the order says. I suppose I should congratulate you.” He held out his hand. “You’ll get to be in at the very end, to see everything false King Geoffrey has left fall to bits.”

Automatically, John took the proffered hand. He said, “But why are they leaving you behind, sir? If anybody’s earned the right to be there, you’re the man.”

“Not according to what the orders say. They’re not happy with me over in Georgetown. No, they’re not happy at all.”

“Why the hells not?” John asked in honest amazement. He knew his own career was rising while George’s stumbled, and he rejoiced that he was moving up in the world and in the army, but this left him baffled. “What could they ask you to do that you haven’t done?”

“Well, for one thing, they’re still grumbling because they think I took too long to hit the Army of Franklin in front of Ramblerton. They don’t seem to care that I shattered it when I did hit it, and they’re annoyed with me for not pursuing harder and not destroying it altogether.”

That last touched John the Lister’s honor, too. “By the Thunderer’s prick, sir, don’t they know you’re up here on the Franklin?” he asked angrily. “Don’t they know how many traitors we’ve killed, how many we’ve captured?”

“If they don’t, it’s not because I haven’t told them,” Doubting George replied. “But whether they want to listen is another question, gods damn it. You know how easy it is to be a genius when you’re running a campaign from a few hundred miles away from where the real fighting is, and how simple it is to blame the poor stupid sod who’s actually there for not being perfect.”

“Yes, sir.” Like any officer in the field, John knew that all too well.

“All I can say is, it’s a good thing Geoffrey has the same disease, or worse, or we’d be in a lot more trouble than we are.” George spat in disgust. “But… so it goes. And so you go. And may good fortune go with you. Considering the dribs and drabs that are left of the traitors’ armies, I expect it will.”

John expected that, too, and for the same reason. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “Thank you very much. And what will you be doing?”

“Well, I’m ordered to stay here with the rest of my army for now,” the commanding general replied. “You notice I’m not ordered to pursue Bell, even though they say they’re unhappy that I haven’t. What I figure will happen is, they’ll keep on detaching pieces from my army till I haven’t got much left. Then, maybe they’ll order me after what’s left of the Army of Franklin. And if I have trouble, they’ll blame me for it.” He shrugged. “Like I say, so it goes.”

“Army politics is a nasty business,” John said sympathetically. Doubting George’s glum prediction sounded all too likely to him.

With another shrug, George said, “It won’t change who wins the war, not now it won’t. I console myself with that. Of course, once we have won, they’ll probably ship me out to the steppe to fight the blond savages instead of letting me help hold down the traitors.”

“Urgh!” was all John the Lister said to that. Garrison duty at some dusty castle in the middle of nowhere? Command of a regiment at most, after leading an army tens of thousands strong? He looked down at his wrists. If he got orders like that with the rank among the regulars he now held, he’d think about slashing them. And George was a lieutenant general of regulars, not just a brigadier.

But the other officer surprised him, saying, “If that’s where they send me, I’ll go. Why the hells not? The blonds are honest enemies, not like some of the ones I’ve got in Georgetown.”

“Er-yes.” John thought George was being indiscreet. No, he didn’t just think so. He knew George was being indiscreet. If he let word get back to Georgetown about what the general commanding had said… well, what difference would it make? If George didn’t care whether they sent him to the trackless east, it would make no difference at all.

The power of indifference, John the Lister thought. Indifference was a power he’d never contemplated before, which made it no less real. Trust Doubting George to come up with a weapon like that.

“I have my orders,” George said, “and now you have yours. Go get your wing ready to travel, Brigadier. I know you’ll show Hesmucet he didn’t take all the good soldiers with him when he set out to march across Peachtree.”

“I’ll do that, sir,” John promised. “And I’m sorry things didn’t turn out better for you.”

“I doubt it,” Doubting George said. “What you wish is that Marshal Bart would’ve named you commanding general here instead of trying to ship Baron Logan the Black here from the west. Then you would’ve smashed Bell in front of Ramblerton, and you would’ve been the hero. Eh? Am I right or am I wrong?”

“You’re right,” John mumbled, embarrassed he had to admit it. “Why didn’t you do more to call me on it back then?” George had warned him, but hadn’t made it so plain he knew what was going on in his mind.

With one more massive shrug, the general commanding said, “We had to beat Bell first. Now we’ve done that, so whether we squabble among ourselves doesn’t matter so much.” His smile was strangely wistful. “To the victors go the spoils-and the squabbles over them.”

“Yes, sir.” John the Lister gave Doubting George a salute that had a lot of hail-and-farewell in it. “Believe me, sir, I’ll have the men in tiptop shape when we go west to join up with General Hesmucet.”

Now Doubting George looked and sounded as sharp and cynical as he usually did: “Oh, I do believe you, Brigadier. After all, if the soldiers perform well, you look good because of it.”

Nodding, John saluted again and beat a hasty retreat. He’d served alongside George before serving under him. He wouldn’t be sorry to get away, to serve under General Hesmucet again. Yes, Hesmucet could be difficult. But, from everything John the Lister had seen, any general worth his pantaloons was difficult. Hesmucet, though, had a simple driving energy John liked. Doubting George brooded and fretted before he struck. When he finally hit, he hit hard. That his army stood by the southern bank of the Franklin proved as much. Still, his long wait till all the pieces he wanted were in place had driven everyone around him to distraction.

Hesmucet, now, Hesmucet had blithely set out across Peachtree Province toward Veldt without even worrying about his supply line, let alone anything else. He’d taken a chance-taken it and got away with taking it. John tried to imagine Doubting George doing the like.

And then, just when he was about to dismiss his present but not future general commanding as an old foof, he remembered George had had the idea for tramping across Peachtree weeks before Hesmucet latched on to it and made it real. John scratched his head. What did that say? “To the hells with me if I know,” he muttered. The more you looked at people, the more complicated they got.

John had hardly returned to his own command before a major came running up to him and asked, “Sir, is it really true we’re going to Croatoan?”

“How the hells did you know that?” John stared. “Lieutenant General George just this minute gave me my orders.”

The major didn’t look the least bit abashed. “Oh, it’s all over camp by now, sir,” he said airily. “So it is true, eh?”

“Yes, it’s true.” John’s voice, by contrast, was heavy as granite. “Gods damn me if I know why we bother giving orders at all. Rumor could do the job twice as well in half the time.”

“Wouldn’t be surprised, sir.” Trying to be agreeable, the major accidentally turned insulting instead. He didn’t even notice. Saluting, he went on, “Well, the men will be ready. I promise you that.” He hurried away, intent on turning his promise into reality.

John the Lister gaped, then started to laugh. “Gods help the traitors,” he said to nobody in particular. Then, laughing still, he shook his head. “No, nothing can help them now.”

Officers set above Doubting George had given him plenty of reason to be disgusted all through the War Between the Provinces. There were times, and more than a few of them, when he’d worried more about his own superiors than about the fierce blue-clad warriors who followed false King Geoffrey. But this… this was about the hardest thing George had ever had to deal with.

He’d done everything King Avram and Marshal Bart wanted him to do. He’d kept Bell and the Army of Franklin from reaching the Highlow River. He’d kept them from getting into Cloviston at all. They’d hardly even touched the Cumbersome River, and they’d never come close to breaking into Ramblerton.

Once he’d beaten them in front of the capital of Franklin, he’d chased them north all through the province. He’d broken the Army of Franklin, broken it to bits. Much the biggest part of the force Bell had brought into Franklin was either dead or taken captive. Bell had resigned his command in disgrace. What was left of that command wasn’t even styled the Army of Franklin any more; it wasn’t big enough to be reckoned an army.

And for a reward, Doubting George had got… “A good kick in the ballocks, and that’s it,” the commanding general muttered in disgust, staring across the Franklin at Ned of the Forest’s unicorn-riders. They knew what he’d done to the Army of Franklin. Why the hells didn’t the fancy-pantaloons idiots back in Georgetown?

Beside George, Colonel Andy stirred. “It isn’t right, sir,” he said, looking and sounding for all the world like an indignant chipmunk.

“Tell me about it,” George said. “And while you’re at it, tell me what I can do about it.” Andy was silent. George had known his adjutant would be. He’d known why, too: “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

“Not fair. Not right.” Andy looked and sounded more indignant than ever. “By the Lion God’s mane, sir, if it weren’t for you, King Avram wouldn’t have been able to carry on the fight here in the east.”

That did exaggerate things, as Doubting George knew. Voice dry, he answered, “Oh, Marshal Bart and General Hesmucet might’ve had a little something-just a little something, mind you-to do with it, too. And a good many thousand soldiers, too.”

“I know what the trouble is,” Andy said hotly. “It’s because you’re from Parthenia, sir. That isn’t right, either, not when we’re fighting to hold Detina together.”

“Even if you’re right, I can’t do anything about it now,” George said. “Only thing I ever could have done about it was fight for Grand Duke Geoffrey instead of King Avram, and I do believe I’d’ve sooner coughed up a lung.”

He feared Andy had a point, though. A lot of southrons distrusted him because almost everyone in his province (with the exception of the southeast, which was now East Parthenia, a province of its own) had gone over to Geoffrey. And the Parthenians who followed Geoffrey called him a traitor to their cause. As far as he was concerned, they were traitors to the Detinan cause, but they cared not a fig for his opinion.

He tried not to care about theirs, either. It wasn’t easy; they’d been his neighbors, his friends-his relatives-before the war began. Now, even though some of them still were his relatives, they despised him to a man.

No, not quite. He shook his head. He knew that wasn’t quite true. Duke Edward of Arlington had chosen to fight for his province rather than for a united Detina, but he still respected those who’d gone the other way. Duke Edward, of course, was no man of the ordinary sort.

People said King Avram had offered command of his armies to Duke Edward when the war began. Duke Edward, though, had counted Parthenia above the kingdom as a whole. Doubting George wondered how things would have gone had Edward gone with Detina, as he had himself. He suspected Geoffrey’s forces wouldn’t have lasted long without their great general-and with him leading the other side. But that was all moonshine. George had enough trouble dealing with what really was.

Across the river, the unicorn-riders went back and forth, back and forth, on their endless patrols. Bell hadn’t had the faintest notion what he was doing, or so it often seemed to George. And yet Bell had gone to the military collegium at Annasville. Ned of the Forest, by contrast, had never been anywhere near the military collegium or any other place that had anything to do with soldiering. He’d first joined Geoffrey’s side as a common soldier. Yet he was as dangerous a professional as anybody on either side. George doubted anyone could have run the rear-guard skirmishes during Bell’s retreat any better than Ned had.

If Ned hadn’t done quite so well, the Army of Franklin might have been completely destroyed. That might have sufficed to make Marshal Bart happy. Then again, it might not have. Bart seemed most determined not to be happy with Doubting George. George knew why, too. He’d committed the unforgivable sin for a subordinate: he’d bucked his superior’s orders, and he’d proved himself right in doing it. No wonder Bart was breaking up his army and taking it away from him a piece at a time.

Doubting George was so intent on his gloomy reflections, he didn’t notice someone had come up beside him till a polite cough forced him to. “Sorry to disturb you, sir,” Major Alva said apologetically. “I know how important a reverie can be when you’re trying to work things through.”

“A reverie?” George snorted. “I don’t believe I could come up with a good chain of thought right now. By the Thunderer’s beard, I don’t believe I could even come up with a good link. And you accuse me of reverie? Ha!”

The mage blinked. “Oh. Well, can you answer a question for me?”

“I can always answer questions, Major. Of course, whether the answers make any sense depends on what questions you ask.”

“Uh, of course.” Alva took half a step away from Doubting George, as if realizing he was dealing with a lunatic who might be dangerous. But he did ask his question: “Is it true that I’m ordered to Palmetto Province with John the Lister, the way I went to Summer Mountain and Poor Richard with him?”

Although the general commanding wished he could give an answer that made no sense, he had to nod. “Yes, Major, that is true. You’re specifically mentioned in the orders sending John west. I wish I could tell you otherwise, because I’d like to keep you here. You’ve done splendid work for me. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

“Thank you, sir,” Alva said. “If you want to know what I think, I think it’s a shame you don’t get to do more here.”

“So do I, now that you mention it,” Doubting George said. “But that’s not how things have worked out. All I can do about it is make sure the traitors don’t get loose in spite of everything.”

“I don’t believe you have much to worry about there,” Alva said.

“I don’t believe I do, either, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be careful. It doesn’t mean I won’t be twice as careful, as a matter of fact,” George replied. “The worst things happen when you’re sure you’ve got nothing to worry about. And if you don’t believe me, ask General Guildenstern.” He waved, as if inviting the wizard to do just that. “Go ahead, Major. Ask him.”

“Uh, I can’t ask him, sir,” Alva said nervously. “He isn’t here.” He might have feared the general commanding had forgotten Guildenstern was off in the east fighting blond savages on the steppe.

But Doubting George hadn’t forgotten. He remembered all too well. “No, he isn’t here,” he agreed. “And the reason he isn’t here is, he was sure he had Thraxton the Braggart whipped. He was sure the traitors were trundling up to Marthasville as fast as they could run. He was sure he didn’t have a single, solitary thing to worry about. He was sure-and he was wrong. I don’t intend to make that mistake. With the three men King Avram leaves me, I’ll keep an eye on whatever the traitors still have up in Honey. They may lick me, but they won’t catch me napping.”

Alva pondered that. “You make good sense, sir. I wish they’d given lessons like that when I was studying sorcery. I’d be better off for them.”

“But that isn’t a lesson in sorcery,” George said. “It’s a lesson in life, a lesson in common sense. Are you telling me they don’t teach mages common sense? That shocks me, that does.”

“Well, that’s not just what I meant. I-” Alva broke off and gave Doubting George a dirty look. “You’re making fun again,” he said accusingly.

With one of his broad-shouldered shrugs, George said, “I can either make fun or I can start yelling and cursing and pitching a fit. Which would you rather?”

“Me? I think it would be entertaining if you pitched a fit.” Alva tried to project an air of childlike innocence. He didn’t have too much luck.

“You would,” Doubting George told him. “Now why don’t you disappear, so I can go back into my-what did you call it? — my reverie, that was it.”

“But you said it wasn’t a reverie, sir,” Alva said.

“It might be, if I give it a chance.”

“But if it wasn’t one in the first place, then you can’t very well go back into it, can you?”

“Did you study wizardry, or at a collegium of law?” George rumbled.

To his surprise, Major Alva laughed out loud. “Can you imagine me a barrister, sir, or even a solicitor?” he asked, and Doubting George laughed, too, for he couldn’t. With a half-mocking salute, Alva did leave.

And there stood Doubting George, looking at the rain-swollen waters of the Franklin, looking at Ned’s unicorn-riders, looking at the ignominious conclusion to what should have been glorious instead. It had been glorious, in fact. The only trouble was, they couldn’t see the glory back in Georgetown. Or maybe they could, but they didn’t think it glittered brightly enough. Is this a reverie? George wondered. He doubted it. He just felt as chilly and gloomy as the winter’s day all around him.

Hoofbeats brought him back to himself. He looked around, blinking a couple of times. Maybe it had been a reverie after all. Up came Hard-Riding Jimmy. The brash young commander of unicorn-riders swung down out of the saddle, tied his mount to a low-hanging branch, and came over to Doubting George. He saluted crisply.

Returning the salute, George said, “And what can I do for you?”

“Sir, I’ve just received orders from Georgetown,” Jimmy said.

Excitement thrummed in his voice. George could see it in his stance. “What sort of orders?” the commanding general asked, though Jimmy’s delight gave him a pretty good idea.

And, sure enough, Jimmy answered, “Detached duty, sir. My whole contingent of unicorn-riders. I’m ordered to go down into Dothan, smash up everything in my path, and hound Ned of the Forest to death.” He sounded quiveringly eager to be about it, too.

Doubting George was also quivering-quivering with fury. “Congratulations, Brigadier. I hope you do it, and I think you can.” He wasn’t angry at Jimmy, or not directly. “These orders came straight to you?”

“Uh, yes, sir. They did.” Now Jimmy knew what the trouble was. “Do you mean to say you didn’t get them?”

“That is exactly what I mean to say,” George growled. “By now, the butchers dismembering the carcass of my army must suppose I’m dead, for they don’t even bother letting me know before they hack off another limb. At least they had the courtesy to tell me when they took John the Lister away from me.”

Hard-Riding Jimmy turned red. He stroked one end of his long, drooping mustaches. “I’m sorry, sir. I assumed you would know before I did.”

“Ha!” Doubting George said. “Marshal Bart doesn’t think I deserve to know my own name, let alone anything else.”

“Well…” The commander of unicorn-riders was too excited about what he was going to do to worry much about his superior’s woes. “I can’t wait to come to grips with Ned, not when I’m getting reinforced, all my men will have quick-shooting crossbows, and he can’t afford to send his troopers scattering like quicksilver. He’ll have to defend the towns in my path, because the manufactories in them make crossbows and catapults and such for the traitors. He’ll have to defend them, and I aim to take them away from him and burn them to the ground.”

Southron brigadiers had been talking like that when they went up against Ned of the Forest since the war was young. Most of the brigadiers who talked like that had come to grief in short order. Doubting George doubted whether Hard-Riding Jimmy would, though. He was a good officer, had a swarm of good men armed with fine weapons that had already proved their worth-and the north, now, was visibly coming to the end of its tether.

“May the gods go with you,” George said. “I wish I were going with you, too, but I can’t do a gods-damned thing about that.”

“I wish this had been handled more smoothly,” Jimmy said. “I feel real bad about it.”

“Nothing you can do. Nothing I can do, either,” Doubting George answered. “When you do go to Dothan with your detached command, though, you make sure you do whip those traitor sons of bitches, you hear me?”

“Yes, sir!” Hard-Riding Jimmy saluted once more. “I’ll do it, sir.” He got back onto his unicorn and rode away.

Doubting George stared after him. Then the commanding general turned and kicked a small stone into the Franklin. It splashed a couple of times before sinking without a trace. Might as well be my career, George thought gloomily. Not all the sons of bitches are traitors. Too gods-damned many of ’em are on King Avram’s side.

These days, Ned of the Forest often felt he was the only officer in Honey-indeed, the only officer in Great River Province and Dothan put together-who was behaving as if he felt the north could still win the war. In a sour sort of way, that was funny, for Bell’s disaster in front of Ramblerton had thrown the last log on the pyre of his hopes.

But, as far as he was concerned, the fight had to go on, hope or no hope. King Geoffrey hadn’t surrendered. Geoffrey, in fact, kept loudly insisting that he wouldn’t surrender, that he would sooner turn bushwhacker than surrender. Ned, a master bushwhacker if ever there was one, had his doubts about that, but he kept quiet about them.

His unicorn-riders kept patrolling north of the Franklin. A few of them sneaked across the river and raided southron outposts on the far bank. They behaved as if the war still were the close, hard-fought struggle it had always been.

Not so the footsoldiers who remained in Honey, the remnants of the once-proud Army of Franklin. Every day, a few-or, on a lot of days, more than a few-of them slipped out of their encampments, heading for home.

Lieutenant General Richard the Haberdasher, the general who’d taken over for Bell, summoned Ned to his headquarters in the best hostel in town. Richard, a belted earl, was King Geoffrey’s brother-in-law and had a blood connection to King Zachary the Rough and Ready, now some years dead. Despite his blue blood, he’d proved a capable soldier, and had done some hard fighting in the northeast.

To do any more fighting with what had been the Army of Franklin, Ned was convinced, Earl Richard would have to be more than a capable soldier. He’d have to be able to raise the dead. But all Ned did on walking into Richard’s suite was salute and say, “Reporting as ordered, your Grace.”

Richard the Haberdasher was tall-though not quite so tall as Ned-and handsome. He was in his late thirties, four or five years younger than the commander of unicorn-riders. “I have a favor to ask of you, Lieutenant General,” he said.

“What do you need?” Ned asked.

“I want you to put a cordon around Honey,” Richard said. “These desertions have got to stop. Can you do that?”

“Yes, I can,” Ned of the Forest answered. “And I will.” He was glad to see Richard trying to take matters in hand. About time, he thought. Still, he couldn’t help adding, “You could do it with footsoldiers, too, you know.”

“I could, but I’d rather not,” Earl Richard said. “I’m not sure I can rely on them. Your men, though-your men I can count on. And so, if it’s all right with you, I’d sooner do that.”

“All right. I’ll take care of it.” Ned wished he could disagree with Richard the Haberdasher. That would have meant the remaining fragments of the broken Army of Franklin were in better shape than they really were. The commander of unicorn-riders felt he had to add, “If I set some of my troopers to riding patrols around Honey, that means I can’t use those fellows against the southrons.”

“Yes, I know,” Richard answered. “But it also means I’ll have more pikemen and crossbowmen to send against them when I find the chance.” He seemed to hear what he’d just said, to hear it and think he had to retreat from it. “If I find the chance, I should say.”

Ned of the Forest nodded. Bell’s successor was proving he had a better grasp on reality than the man he’d replaced. Had the one-legged officer kept his command here, he probably would have been planning yet another headlong assault on the southrons. He seemed to have wanted the Army of Franklin as thoroughly maimed as he was himself. But Richard the Haberdasher clearly realized the days of storming to the attack were gone forever for these soldiers.

“We have to do all we can to hold the manufactories in Dothan and the smaller ones here in Great River Province,” Richard said. “With Marthasville and Veldt gone, they’re the most important ones we’ve got left this side of Nonesuch.”

“I understand,” Ned said. “And with Marthasville and Veldt gone, gods only know how anything they make in Nonesuch’ll get out here to the east. That means the ones hereabouts count for even more than they would otherwise.”

“True. Every word of it true.” Earl Richard hesitated, then said, “May I ask you something else? I swear by the Thunderer’s strong right hand that whatever you answer won’t go beyond the walls of this room.”

The walls of that room were covered by a garishly flowered wallpaper that couldn’t have been much uglier if it tried. Ned of the Forest didn’t like to think of anything that hideous listening to him, but he nodded again. “Go right ahead.”

“Thank you.” After another long pause, Richard said, “What do you think of our chances of carrying on the war?”

“Well…” Ned puffed out his cheeks, then sighed loud and long and hard enough to make the flames of the candles on Richard’s desk dance. “Well, I don’t know how things are in the west. I’ve heard this and that and the other thing, but I don’t know, so I shouldn’t talk about that. Here in the east… hereabouts, would you be asking me to ride patrol against our own deserters if things were going the way they were supposed to?”

He waited. Richard the Haberdasher also waited, to see if he had anything else to say. When the nobleman decided no more was coming, he clicked his tongue between his teeth. “All right. That’s a fair answer. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. I wish I could’ve had something different to tell you.” Ned sketched a salute and strode out of the room with the lurid wallpaper. He wondered if Richard would call him back. The other general didn’t.

When Ned ordered patrols out against deserters, he rode out with them. He never sent his men to any duty he wouldn’t take himself. And, before long, the squad with which he rode came across deserters: three men in the ragged ruins of blue uniforms sneaking away from Honey across the muddy fields around the town.

Ned spurred his unicorn toward them. The rest of the squad followed. The three footsoldiers froze in dismay. “What the hells do you think you’re doing?” Ned roared, aiming a crossbow at the leading man’s face.

The footsoldier looked at his pals. They looked back at him, as if to say, He asked you, so you answer him. The scruffy soldier gathered himself. “I reckon we’re going home,” he said, apparently deciding he might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb.

“I reckon you’re gods-damned well not,” Ned of the Forest thundered. “I reckon all three of you sorry sons of bitches are going to turn around and go back to Honey. I reckon I’ll put a crossbow quarrel through your brisket if you don’t, too.”

“You might as well go ahead and shoot us,” the soldier replied. “Won’t make any difference to the war either way.” Defiantly, he added, “Won’t make any difference if we go home, neither.”

He was right. Ned had known the war was lost for weeks. He felt a certain embarrassment at not being able to admit as much to the would-be deserter, and tried to cover that embarrassment with bluster: “By the Lion God’s pointed toenails, where would we be if everybody in King Geoffrey’s army acted the way you gutless bastards are doing?”

“Where?” the footsoldier answered. “About where we’re at now, I reckon. Don’t see how we could be much worse off, and that’s the gods’ truth.”

One of the other unkempt soldiers plucked up enough courage to add, “That’s right.”

And so it was, but Ned didn’t intend to admit it. “You don’t get moving back to Honey right this minute, I’ll show you how you could be worse off. You want to try me? Get the hells out of here, before I decide to crucify you on the spot to give the other cowardly fools in this army a taste of what they can expect if they try running away.”

They blanched and turned around and started back toward the sad, sorry encampment of what had been the Army of Franklin. A couple of years before, when the war still seemed an even affair, Ned really would have crucified deserters. He’d done it a couple of times. A couple of years before, though, soldiers like these would never have thought of abandoning their army. They’d been through everything flesh and blood could bear, they’d seen hope slaughtered on the battlefield, and they’d had enough.

Ned turned back to the other unicorn-riders. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s see how many others who want to run away we can catch.”

“Yes, sir,” said the sergeant commanding the squad. By the way he said it, his heart wasn’t in what they were doing. He proved as much by adding, “When we run into poor miserable bastards like those fellows, though, can’t we just look the other way?”

“That’s not why we’re out here riding around,” Ned said. “We’ve got a job to do, and we’re going to do it.” Earl Richard the Haberdasher had thought his men were especially reliable. Ned had thought so himself. Now, suddenly, he wasn’t so sure. Was their hope failing, too?

Maybe it was. The sergeant said, “Not a whole hells of a lot of point to getting killed now, is there?”

“If you worry about getting killed, maybe you shouldn’t have turned soldier in the first place,” Ned of the Forest said coldly.

The sergeant was a typical swarthy Detinan. Not only that, his thick black beard grew up to just below his eyes. Even so, Ned could see him flush. He said, “I’ve never run away from anything, Lord Ned, and I’m not about to start now. But I’m not a blind man, either. If we were whipping the gods-damned southrons, would we be up here in Great River Province riding circles around stinking Honey to keep our poor, miserable footsoldiers from running away?”

Only one answer to that was possible, and Ned gave it: “No.” But he went on, “Irregardless of whether we’re winning or losing, we’ve got to keep fighting hard. Otherwise, we’re not just losing-we’ve lost.”

That sergeant was also as stubborn as any other freeborn Detinan. He said, “Well, sir, I reckon we can lose even if we do keep fighting hard. We fought like hells in front of Ramblerton, and a whole fat lot of good it did us.”

He wasn’t wrong about that, either. Again, Ned said the only thing he could: “Lieutenant General Bell is gone. We won’t make the mistakes we did on that campaign, not any more we won’t.”

“Of course we won’t, gods damn it.” The sergeant was as plain-spoken as any other freeborn Detinan, too. “We can’t make those mistakes any more. We haven’t got enough men left to make ’em.”

One more painful truth. Ned of the Forest shrugged. “You can either do the best you can as long as you’ve got a unicorn under your butt, or else I’ll muster you out and send you home right this minute. You won’t be a deserter, on account of I’ll give you a discharge.”

He waited. If the sergeant really was fed up and called him on that, he would have to let him go. But the underofficer said, “Oh, I’ll stick. You won’t be rid of me that easy. But I’ll be gods-damned if I like the way things are going.”

“I don’t reckon anybody does-except the southrons, I mean,” Ned said. “But we’re still here, and we’ve still got our crossbows. If we quit, King Avram wins. To hells with me if I want to make things that easy for him. Now come on.”

This time, he didn’t give the sergeant a chance to reply. He urged his own unicorn up to a trot. The squad-including the sergeant-followed him. Ned wasn’t completely comfortable when he stayed in the saddle too long. Old wounds pained him. He didn’t grumble about them. They didn’t keep him from getting about, or from fighting. There, if nowhere else, he sympathized with Lieutenant General Bell. Poor Bell had been a fine officer leading a brigade when he was all in one piece. He’d been a disaster in the larger commands he’d got after he was wounded. How much did the endless swigs of laudanum and the inability to go forward and see for himself have to do with that? More than a little, Ned feared.

A fine mist began drifting down from a lead-gray sky. Even this far north, where winters were relatively mild, this time of year the land seemed dead. Trees and bushes stood bare-branched, skeletal. Grass was yellow and brown, dry stalks bent and broken. Somewhere off in the distance, a raven’s croak sounded like the chuckle of a demon mocking the hopes of man.

Ned’s troopers muttered among themselves. He knew what they were muttering about, too: they were wishing they hadn’t heard the raven. The big black birds had an evil reputation, no doubt because they ate carrion. Ned felt a certain amount of superstitious dread, too, but he suppressed it. He had other things, things of the real world, to worry about, and for him things of the real world always counted for more than ghosts and spirits and haunts.

Would the desertions stop? How much difference would it make if they did? Would Doubting George or Hard-Riding Jimmy try to push past the Franklin River and finish off the remnants of the Army of Franklin here in Honey? If they did, what could Ned’s unicorn-riders do to stop them? Anything at all?

We’ve got to keep trying, Ned thought. If we don’t, then this war will end, and sooner, not later. The serfs’ll be off the land forever, and the southrons’ll go around telling ’em they’re just as good as real Detinans. Ned squared his broad shoulders and shook his fist toward the south in stubborn defiance. Can’t have that, gods damn it.

Marthasville again. Rollant hadn’t expected to see the biggest city in Peachtree Province again, not till John the Lister’s men got the order to move west and rejoin General Hesmucet’s army. Even after boarding the glideway carpet in northern Franklin, Rollant hadn’t expected to stop in Marthasville for very long. But here he was, cooling his heels in the town for a second day now. Too many glideway carpets had come into the city all at once, from east and west and north and south, and the officers in charge of such things were still untangling the snarl.

Before the war-and even during it, as long as false King Geoffrey’s men held the place-Marthasville had had pretensions of being a big city. Those pretensions made Rollant, who lived in New Eborac City, the metropolis of Detina, laugh. More than half the streets here were nothing but red dirt-red mud, at this season of the year. Cobblestones would have done wonders to improve them, but nobody’d bothered with-or been able to afford-cobblestones here. That by itself would have been plenty to take Marthasville out of the big-city class, as far as Rollant was concerned.

And Marthasville now wasn’t what it had been before Hesmucet captured it from the traitors. Hesmucet had burned it before setting out on his march across Peachtree to Veldt, and his siege engines had had their way with it even before it fell into his hands. Blackened ruins lined the muddy streets.

Here and there, people were already rebuilding. Elegant homes and fancy shops might have perished in the flames, but shacks built from salvaged lumber and tents sprouted everywhere. A forest fire burned oaks and maples, but toadstools and poison sumac sprang up where they’d stood. The shabby new structures catered to soldiers: they were saloons and brothels and gambling dens, all designed to separate southrons from silver as swiftly as they could.

Provost marshals patrolled the streets, but they could do only so much, especially now with the glideway snarl. Men in gray tunics and pantaloons wanted what the northerners were selling. If some of them ended up poisoned by bad spirits, or poxed or rolled in the brothels, or fleeced in the gambling dens, they didn’t seem to care. Every bit of it was part of having a good time.

Nobody in Marthasville knew what to make of Rollant. A blond with sergeant’s stripes? Northerners stared. Some of the Detinans from Marthasville glared. Rollant smiled back. Why not? He had the power of King Avram’s army behind him, and King Avram’s army had proved itself mightier than anything in the north.

The blonds who lived and worked in Marthasville stared at Rollant-and at the stripes on his sleeve-too. But they didn’t glare. He always collected a caravan of little blond boys who followed him through the streets. They did their best to imitate his marching stride, a best that was usually pretty funny. Blond men doffed their hats and bowed as if he were a marquis. And the smiles some of the blond women sent his way acutely reminded him of how long ago he’d left Norina.

Not for the first time, Smitty teased him about that: “If you don’t want ’em, by the Sweet One’s sweet place, steer some of ’em my way. That one little sweetie back there…” His hands shaped an hourglass in the air.

Rollant knew exactly which girl Smitty meant. He’d noticed her, too. He hadn’t fooled around on his wife, but he wasn’t blind. He said, “I’m not stopping you from chasing her.” Even that took a certain effort. Detinans in the north had taken advantage of blond women too freely for too long to let him feel easy about encouraging any Detinan man to make advances to a woman of his people.

He knew more than a little relief when Smitty shook his head. “She didn’t even see me,” his comrade said mournfully. “But you… she looked like she wanted to have you for breakfast.”

“Don’t talk that way,” Rollant said. When Smitty did, he felt the urges he was trying to ignore, and all the more acutely, too.

“How shall I talk? Like this?” Smitty put on what he imagined to be a northern accent. Still using it, he went into lascivious detail about what he would have liked to do with the pretty blond girl. Rollant wanted to clout him over the head with a rock. That seemed to be the only way to make him shut up.

“I never thought I’d be glad to get back on the glideway carpet and away from this place,” Rollant said at last.

“It won’t make any difference,” Smitty said. “Wherever we go in the north, blonds look at you like you’re the Thunderer come to earth.” He held up a hand. “I take it back. I expect it’ll make some difference, on account of gods only know when we’ll see another girl that fine.”

“If you need a woman so bad, wait your turn at a brothel,” Rollant said.

Smitty shrugged. “I’ve done it now and again, but a willing girl’s more fun than one you’ve got to pay. That way, she wants it, too. She’s not just… just going through the motions, you might say.”

“All right. I won’t argue with you about that,” Rollant said. “It’s one of the reasons I steer clear of these women. They don’t care much about me. If I weren’t a sergeant, they wouldn’t look twice. They care about the stripes.”

“Well, so do you,” Smitty said.

Rollant grunted. That crossbow quarrel had hit the target, sure enough. He was proud of the sergeant’s stripes not least because they showed what he’d done in a Detinan-dominated world. How could he be surprised if other blonds saw them the same way?

“Yaaa! You stinking blond!” The shout came from an upstairs window. “You don’t know who your father was!”

When Rollant looked up, he saw no one in the window. Whoever had yelled at him lacked the courage of his convictions. “Of course I do,” Rollant shouted back. “He’s the fellow who paid your mother three coppers. She’d remember-it’s twice her going rate.”

That set Smitty giggling. Rollant wondered if an enraged northerner would come boiling out of the false-fronted wooden building, ready to do or die for his mother’s honor, if any. But everything stayed quiet after the initial jeer. Smitty said, “Well, I guess your old man got his money’s worth.”

“Right.” Rollant’s answering smile was tight. For centuries, Detinans had made free with blond women. But if a blond man presumed to look at a Detinan woman, let alone to touch her, dreadful things were liable-no, were sure-to happen to him. Back in Palmetto Province, Baron Ormerod’s wife had been a famous beauty. Whenever Rollant was anywhere near her, he’d kept his eyes to the ground to make sure he didn’t anger her or his liege lord. So had every other male serf with an ounce of brains in his head. Ormerod hadn’t been a particularly nasty overlord. With some things, though, no one dared take chances.

Even in New Eborac City, Rollant treated Detinan women with exaggerated deference. He paid attention to them as customers, not as women. That wasn’t just because he was a married man. He’d found some of them attractive. Some of them, by the looks and gestures they’d given him, found him attractive, too. But he’d never had the nerve to do anything about it, even if it would have helped pay back debts hundreds of years old. If it went wrong, if he guessed wrong, or if a woman just changed her mind or felt vindictive… He would have been lucky to last long enough to be crucified. A mob might have pulled him out of prison and taken care of matters on the spot.

“Let’s go back,” Smitty said suddenly. “I’ve seen more of this miserable place than I ever wanted to.”

“Suits me fine,” Rollant answered. “The traitors were so proud of Marthasville. They thought it was a big thing. Only goes to show they didn’t really know what a big thing is.”

When they got to the glideway depot, Lieutenant Joram collared both of them. “We’re moving west again soon. Get the men out of the dives and onto the carpets, fast as you can.”

In the end, they all went together. One man, or even two, was too likely to be ignored, maybe to get knocked over the head. Anybody who tried to take out Joram, Rollant, and Smitty at once would have a fight on his hands, though.

They hauled blind-drunk soldiers out of taverns and poured them onto the waiting carpets. They hauled soldiers out of brothels, too: some smug and sated, others frustrated because they were taken away before they could worship the Sweet One. One of those tried to slug Joram. Instead of ordering him held for court-martial, the company commander knocked him cold, slung him over his shoulder, and lugged him back to the depot.

Some of the women in the brothels were Detinans, not blonds. That surprised Rollant, who’d assumed every harlot in the north came from his own people. His being there in a uniform with three stripes on his sleeve surprised the whores, too. One of the Detinans, perhaps the best-looking woman in the waiting room in the place he and Smitty went to while Joram was dealing with the coldcocked soldier, called out to him: “You want to try something you never did before, Yellowhair?” She stood up and waggled her hips to show exactly what she meant. The silk shift she wore was so thin, so transparent, Rollant wondered why she’d bothered putting it on. On the other hand, she might have looked even more naked with it than she would have without it.

Staring at her, he almost forgot the question she’d asked. Only when the other women jeered at him did he remember and shake his head. “I’m here to get men from my company out, not to dally myself,” he managed.

That brought more jeers and catcalls. “You’ve got a lot of gods-damned nerve, taking business away from us like that,” a blond harlot said.

“By the Sweet One’s… teeth, haven’t you got enough?” Rollant asked.

“Come upstairs with me,” urged the Detinan woman in the transparent shift. Rollant shook his head again, even if his eyes never left her. She saw that-she couldn’t very well help seeing it. A slow smile spread across her face. Her lips were very red, very inviting. She said, “On the house, Yellowhair. Come on. It’ll be something different for both of us. Is it true what they say about blond men?” She was looking at him, too, but not at his face.

“On the house?” Three other women lounging on the couches in the waiting room said it at the same time, in identical tones of astonishment. By that astonishment, Rollant guessed how big a compliment he’d just got. In a brothel, what could be more perverse than lying with a man for nothing?

Somehow, Rollant shook his head once more. “I’m-I’m a married man,” he said.

That might have been the funniest thing the whores ever heard. They clung to one another, howling with laughter. Smitty spoke up: “If he doesn’t want you, sweetheart, I’ll take you up on that.”

“Corporal!” Rollant said. “We haven’t got time.”

“I won’t take long,” Smitty said blandly.

But the Detinan harlot shook her head. “Not unless you pay me the going rate, soldier. There’s nothing special about you.”

“Hells there’s not,” Smitty said, angry now. “Just let me-” He took a step forward. Rollant grabbed him as two very large, very muscular bouncers sprang into the waiting room.

“Get away!” Rollant told them. He had to wrestle with Smitty, who was furious and not making the slightest effort to hide it. “Calm down, gods damn it!” Rollant said. “We didn’t come in for that anyway.”

“All right. You’re right.” Smitty quit trying to break away from him. “Odds are I’d end up poxed anyway.”

The harlots all screeched furiously. The bouncers advanced on Smitty. They both carried stout bludgeons. Rollant let go of his comrade. Smitty’s shortsword hissed from the scabbard. So did Rollant’s. The bouncers stopped. “Good thinking,” Rollant told them. “We’re all free Detinans here, right? We can all speak our minds, right?”

One of the bouncers jerked his thumb toward the door. “I’m speaking my mind: get the hells out of here.”

“Have we got all our men out of the rooms here?” Rollant asked Smitty.

“Yes, Sergeant, we do. They’re waiting for us in the hall.” By the respect in Smitty’s voice, Rollant might have been Marshal Bart. That must have irked the bouncers, who were doubtless men from Peachtree Province. It didn’t irk them quite enough to make them do anything but glower, though, which was lucky-for them. After the worst false King Geoffrey’s soldiers could do to him, Rollant didn’t fear a couple of whorehouse toughs.

He and Smitty led the unsatisfied customers from the brothel back to the glideway terminal. The men in gray climbed up onto the carpets, some resigned to leaving, others glum. An hour passed, and nothing happened. “Gods damn it, Sergeant, we could’ve had our fun,” one of the frustrated soldiers complained.

“I had my orders,” Rollant said with a shrug. “You’re not happy, take it up with Lieutenant Joram.” The soldier stopped grumbling. Nobody wanted to complain to Joram. He’d been a sergeant too long; the men knew what sort of firepot would burst if they pushed him too far.

Sooner or later, they may start thinking that way about me. Rollant liked the idea. He didn’t think it was all that likely to come true, though. Joram could roar like the Thunderer come down to earth. That had never been Rollant’s way. In the north, blonds who roared at Detinans ended up gruesomely dead, and the lesson had stuck. He seemed to manage just the same.

The glideway carpet started west and south. Rollant settled himself against the motion. Palmetto Province ahead. He’d left a fugitive serf. He was coming back a conqueror. “And a sergeant,” he said softly. Yes, he’d already won a lot of battles. The carpet picked up speed.