Marching Through Peachtree

VI

Captain Gremio was no general. Gremio hadn’t been a soldier at all before the war, or a domain-holding noble-the closest peacetime equivalent-either. But, like so many others, he’d had plenty of experience since the fighting began in Karlsburg harbor more than three years before.

He said, “These are splendid works, and I hope Hesmucet tries to storm them. He’d bloody his southron nose, the way he did at Commissioner Mountain.”

“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Thisbe said. “But even though he lost on the mountain, he got that little bridgehead over Snouts Stream, and look at how much trouble he caused with it.”

Had Hesmucet not got that bridgehead, the Army of Franklin might well have still been defending the line of the mountain and the stream. Gremio gave Thisbe a half mocking bow. “Very neat, Sergeant,” he said. “You agree with me in your first two words, then proceed to show I’m wrong. Very neat indeed.”

Thisbe turned red. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to do that.”

“Don’t apologize,” Gremio told him. “You got me fair and square. I wish I could do so well in front of the judges a lot of the time.”

“Now you’re joking with me, sir,” Thisbe said. “I don’t much care for that.” He was, as so often, almost painfully serious.

“No such thing. I meant every word of it.” Gremio raised his hand above his head, pointing to the mountain beyond the sky, as he would have in a lawcourt. “By the Thunderer, I swear it.”

“All right.” Thisbe looked back over his shoulder. “Are we supposed to make a stand with our backs to a river? If the southrons do beat us here, it would go hard for us.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Gremio said. “But do you really think Hesmucet can storm us out of this position?”

The sergeant considered. “You’re probably right, sir. You usually are, from everything I’ve seen.”

Now Gremio felt himself blushing. “That’s kind of you, Sergeant-kinder than I deserve, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“No, sir,” Thisbe said. “If ever there’s somebody who knows what’s what, you’re the one.”

“If I knew what was what, would I be here?” Gremio asked with a wry laugh.

That made Thisbe laugh, too, but, as usual, his answer was thoughtful: “I suppose it depends on how important you think this is for the kingdom.”

If we don’t win here, or at least keep the southrons from winning, Geoffrey won’t have a kingdom, Gremio thought. Since he didn’t feel like voicing words of ill omen aloud, he replied, “When we were coming down out of the hill country towards the Hoocheecoochee, I could see Marthasville.” He craned his neck. “Can’t quite do it now, but I know the place is there. Maybe that makes this pretty important business after all.”

“I think so, too, sir,” Thisbe agreed.

“What sort of spirits are the men in?” Gremio asked. “You’ve got stripes on your sleeves, not epaulets on your shoulders. That puts you closer to an ordinary man than I could ever… Are you all right, Sergeant?”

Thisbe had suffered a coughing fit, and went even redder in the face than he had before. “I’m sorry, sir,” he wheezed when he could speak at all. “I swallowed wrong then, and almost choked. Most ways, I’d say, you’re closer to an ordinary man than I could ever be.” Before Gremio could argue with that, Thisbe went on, “I think your ordinary soldier dislikes a sergeant more than an officer, in the same sort of way that a serf is liable to dislike an overseer more than a liege lord. The sergeant is the one who makes sure he does what he’s told, after all.”

“Mm, I shouldn’t wonder if there was something to that,” Gremio allowed. “All right, Sergeant, you’ve made your point.” He put on a severe look. “As I’ve said, I do wish you’d let me offer your name for promotion.”

“No, thank you, sir.” As usual on this subject, Thisbe’s voice held not an ounce of doubt. “I’d sooner just be what I am. I’d much sooner just be what I am.”

“I bow to your wishes.” Gremio suited action to word. The sergeant smiled and began a motion in return, but arrested it before it was well begun-not quite an answering bow, but something on that order. Gremio said, “It’s plain that, once upon a time, you were a fine gentleman.”

“I was not!” Thisbe said hotly. “Never once! The very idea!”

He sounded so irate, Gremio didn’t ask any of the questions he might have otherwise. King Geoffrey’s army held more than a few nobles fighting as common soldiers, either from sheer love of adventure or because they’d disgraced themselves and couldn’t claim the rank that should have gone with their station. It had occurred to Gremio that his sergeant might be such a man. If he was, though, he didn’t intend to admit it.

And now he went off in what Gremio couldn’t help but recognized as a huff. The company commander kicked at the brick-red mud in the bottom of the trench. Even though he had the right to make such comments to Thisbe, he wished he hadn’t done it. He didn’t want the sergeant angry at him. The company won’t run smoothly if he is, Gremio told himself. But there was more to it than that. He didn’t want Thisbe angry at him because he liked and respected him, and wanted him to be as much of a friend as their different ranks would permit.

“By the gods, if I ever found a woman who suited me as well as Thisbe does, I’d marry her on the spot,” he muttered.

Getting married, though, didn’t stay on his mind for long. For one thing, he knew of no women-except perhaps a few loose ones-within miles. For another, a troop of southron unicorn-riders trotted past the Army of Franklin’s entrenchments right on the edge of catapult range. A few engineers let fly at them. Most of the stones and firepots went wide, but one smashed a rider and his unicorn like a boot descending on a cockroach.

After that, the southrons did a better job of keeping their distance. But they had accomplished their purpose. Gremio saw that clearly. By reminding the northern commanders they were there, they kept Joseph the Gamecock and Brigadier Spinner from loosing the northern riders to harry the enemy supply line. It was long, stretching all the way back to Rising Rock, and it was tenuous, but none of that mattered if the northerners couldn’t mount a serious attack on it. And, by all the signs, they couldn’t.

Gremio sighed. More and more these days, the war was coming down to demonstrations of what the north couldn’t do. That was no way to win it. We’re right, though, he thought. A moment later, he laughed at himself. A man in the lawcourts might be right, too. How much good did that do him if the judges ruled he was wrong? None whatsoever, as Gremio knew too well. Like any barrister, he always thought he was right. Everyone once in a while, some idiot panel of judges had a different-and no doubt erroneous-opinion.

Brigadier Alexander, the new wing commander, came marching through the trenches. Gremio approved of that. Leonidas the Priest had been a brave and pious man, but hadn’t much concerned himself with his soldiers’ mundane, day-to-day needs and concerns-or perhaps he simply hadn’t cared to get his fancy vestments dirty. Alexander strode up to Gremio, who stiffened to attention and saluted.

“As you were, Captain,” the senior officer said. Gremio saw how he’d come to be called Old Straight-he was tall and lean and very erect. And, when he spoke, his words were straightforward, too: “How, in your view, can we best beat back the stinking southrons? What can we do that we aren’t doing now?”

“Having twice as many men in the trenches wouldn’t hurt, sir,” Gremio replied.

“So it wouldn’t,” Brigadier Alexander agreed. “Ask for the moon, as long as you’re making wishes. What can we do that we can do, if you take my meaning?”

He meant the question seriously. Gremio could see as much. He gave back a serious answer: “Sir, holding them out of Marthasville is about as big a victory as we can hope for, wouldn’t you say?”

He waited, wondering if he’d misjudged Alexander. Some officers would have taken that-would have taken anything less than a call for an immediate counterattack on General Hesmucet and a march south toward the Franklin line-as defeatism. But Old Straight nodded and said, “You see things clearly, don’t you?”

Relieved, Gremio said, “I do my best, sir.”

“If we all do our best, Captain, we have some hope of coming out of this campaign with whole skins,” Brigadier Alexander said. “If we don’t, well, things won’t look so good. This is Colonel Florizel’s regiment, is it not?”

Gremio nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“You men have put up a good record,” Alexander said. “If all the company-grade officers here are up to your level, Captain, I can see why. And I’ll tell the same to your colonel. Your name is…?”

“Gremio, sir.”

“Very well. Carry on, Captain Gremio.” The wing commander swept on down the line, now and then pausing to pull his boots out of mud thicker than usual. Gremio doubted he would have that problem himself, not for a while. He would be walking on air for the rest of the day.

And he’d won respect from his men that he hadn’t had before. If Brigadier Alexander approved of him and would say so out loud, who were common soldiers to disagree? They obeyed him more promptly than he’d ever seen them do before. He’d enjoy it while it lasted, for he didn’t think it would last long.

It did suffice to bring Colonel Florizel over to him. The regimental commander asked, “How did you get Brigadier Alexander to say such fine things about you?” Florizel sounded half suspicious, half jealous. Alexander, evidently, hadn’t said any fine things about him.

Deadpan, Gremio answered, “I told him I’d learned everything I know about fighting from you, sir.”

That actually did hold some truth. Florizel would never become a brigadier himself. He was no great tactician, nor, to be just, did he claim to be one. But he was brave, and he knew how to make his men like him and fight bravely for him. There were plenty of worse regimental commanders in the Army of Franklin, and some worse men in charge of brigades, too.

And, like a lot of men, he was no more immune to flattery than flies were to honey. He coughed and scuffed his boots in the mud and murmured, “Well, Captain, that was a mighty kind thing to say. Mighty kind indeed.”

Oh, dear, Gremio thought. He took that literally, didn’t he? The best thing he could find to do was change the subject, and so he did: “The new wing commander worries that we won’t be able to drive the southrons back.”

Brigadier Alexander had done more than worry. He’d been at least as gloomy about the campaign as Gremio was himself. But Florizel was and always had been an optimist. Saying something that didn’t suggest total victory lay right around the corner took nerve.

“He’ll fight hard,” Florizel said now, and with that Gremio could not disagree. The colonel went on, “As long as we’re still on this side of the Hoocheecoochee, things aren’t too bad. We’ve still got us and the river between the southrons and Marthasville, and we’ve got to keep them out of there.”

“Er-yes.” Gremio did his best to keep from showing how astonished he was. If the ever-hopeful Florizel couldn’t paint any brighter picture than that, the Army of Franklin was in less than the best of shape.

Florizel set a hand on his shoulder. “The gods may yet decide to smile on us, even if the loss of Leonidas was a heavy blow. We should all try to deserve well of them, to show them we deserve to be the ones they choose in this fierce and remorseless struggle. I think we can do that. I pray we can.”

“May it be so.” Gremio hoped the gods would favor the north, too. In his glummer moments, he feared nothing short of that would suffice to save Geoffrey’s kingdom from Avram’s onslaught. The southrons might have been a python, squeezing the life out of the north an inch at a time.

“These are very strong works,” Florizel said. “The enemy will have a hells of a time trying to go through us.”

“Yes, sir,” Gremio agreed. “What worries me, though, is whether he can go around us instead. That would be just as bad.”

“I suppose it might, but I don’t think it will happen,” Florizel said. “Brigadier Spinner’s patrols ride up and down the Hoocheecoochee.”

“I wish we had Ned of the Forest here,” Gremio said, not for the first time.

“He’s a ruffian, a man of no breeding,” Earl Florizel said.

A man of no breeding himself, Gremio replied, “He’s also the best commander of unicorn-riders King Geoffrey has who’s still breathing. Which carries the greater weight?”

Florizel seriously thought that over. At last, reluctantly, he nodded. “Ned is a very fine man on the back of a unicorn-which makes him no less of a ruffian, be it noted.”

“Yes, sir,” Gremio said dutifully. “Still, I’m glad he’s on our side.”

“So am I, although I still wish we didn’t have to resort to such tools,” the regimental commander said.

“It’s a war, sir,” Gremio said. “If it weren’t for the fighting, we’d all be doing something else.” Florizel also nodded at that, but he didn’t look happy about it. To a Detinan noble, war was the normal state of affairs, peace the aberration. The world didn’t really work that way, but nobles were trained to think it did. They have other things wrong with them, too, Gremio thought.

From the hills above the valley of the Hoocheecoochee River, General Hesmucet could look down on Joseph the Gamecock’s army and spy out everything the enemy did even as he did it. Hesmucet relished that. The northerners had looked down on his lines from their position atop Commissioner Mountain, and he was sure that had cost him men.

When Joseph halted the bulk of his army on the eastern bank of the Hoocheecoochee, Hesmucet had been surprised. Only a very bold general or a very foolhardy one was likely to offer battle with his back to a sizable stream. Examining the works the northerners occupied, however, convinced Hesmucet that Joseph was neither the one nor the other. He had sound defenses there.

Earlier in the campaign, Hesmucet might have tried to bull his way past those defenses, in the hope of breaking through and wrecking the traitors’ army. But he’d tried that at Commissioner Mountain, and it hadn’t worked. That made him hesitate now. So did the strength of the entrenchments in which the northerners sheltered.

Joseph’s men held a line about six miles long. Hesmucet began sending detachments of Marble Bill’s unicorn-riders out beyond their lines, in the hope of getting down to the river and forcing a crossing. If my men get over the Hoocheecoochee, Joseph will have to retreat in a hurry, he thought hungrily. Then he’s mine.

But the enemy commander could see that as well as he could. Blue-uniformed unicorn-riders were numerous and fierce. Marble Bill’s men came back again and again without ever reaching the banks of the Hoocheecoochee.

“Anyone would think they had some idea of what we’ve got in mind,” Lieutenant General George said when Hesmucet cursed about the unicorn-riders’ misfortunes.

“D’you think so?” Fighting Joseph asked. Hesmucet winced. Doubting George had been sardonic. Fighting Joseph meant it. Time and again, Hesmucet had seen that courage and brains too often had only a nodding acquaintance.

“It is a possibility, you know,” George said. “Some folk do seek to study what the foe might be up to. That often saves you from nasty surprises, or so they say.”

“Not a bad notion.” By the way Fighting Joseph spoke, the said notion plainly was entering his handsome head for the first time. By his record, that struck Hesmucet as all too likely.

“We’ll keep moving, that’s all,” he said. “As long as we are moving, something good may happen. If we pull into a shell, the way turtles do, we’ll never get anywhere, and that’s as plain as the nose on my face.”

“Even as plain as the nose on mine,” said Doubting George, who owned one of formidable proportions.

“The gods help those who help themselves,” Fighting Joseph agreed. Hesmucet wished he wouldn’t have done so with a cliche, and then wished for all the gold in the Golden Province far to the east while he was at it.

“Maybe,” James the Bird’s Eye said, “we could give ourselves a better chance of reaching the river with magic.” For a southron to rely on wizardry was out of the ordinary in this war, but Major Alva was no ordinary southron mage.

“Not a bad notion,” Hesmucet agreed. “I will take that up with our sorcerers.” By that, he meant he would take it up with Major Alva, and all the wing commanders understood as much. The rest of the mages in the army, from Colonel Phineas on down, came close to matching the youngster only if all their efforts were added together. Looking from one officer to another, Hesmucet asked, “Anything else? Anyone think we have a real chance of going through Joseph the Gamecock’s position instead of around it?”

Nobody said anything, not even Fighting Joseph, who was much given to overcoming obstacles by charging straight at them and smashing them flat with his hard head. Hesmucet didn’t know whether to be relieved at the show of good sense or sorry he didn’t get the chance to squelch his annoying subordinate.

With a small shrug, he said, “Dismissed.” As the generals trooped away, he called for a runner and told him, “Fetch me Major Alva. Don’t just tell him I want him and then leave. Bring him back here yourself.”

“Yes, sir.” The soldier grinned; he’d been one of Hesmucet’s runners for some little while now. “If I don’t bring him, he’s liable to forget to come at all, isn’t he? He’ll just stand there thinking fancy thoughts.”

“He doesn’t know a whole lot about subordination,” Hesmucet agreed wryly. Alva knows even less about subordination than Fighting Joseph does, he thought. Fighting Joseph understands what he’s supposed to do; he just doesn’t do it. To Alva, the whole idea is bizarre. That thought led to another: if he’s not the ultimate free Detinan, who in the seven hells is?

Off went the runner. He returned in due course, Alva in tow. The mage did remember to salute when he came up to Hesmucet, and seemed proud of himself for remembering. “You wanted me, uh, sir?” he said.

“That’s right,” the commanding general answered. He gave Alva more leeway than he did to any other soldier in the army. Alva had earned more than any other soldier had. Hesmucet went on, “Can you work out some sort of masking spell that will let Marble Bill’s unicorn-riders get down to the Hoocheecoochee without the traitors’ finding out about it till too late?”

Major Alva gave him a bright smile. “Funny you should ask me that, sir. Marble Bill asked the very same thing a couple of days ago.”

“Did he? Well, good for him,” Hesmucet said. That was more initiative than the commander of unicorn-riders usually showed.

“Yes, sir, he did. I gave him a cantrip I thought would serve.” Alva’s smile slipped. “It didn’t. The northerners had a counterspell that sniffed it out, and beat back his column of riders.”

“Ah. Too bad,” Hesmucet said. “Well, they have good wizards of their own, and keeping us off the Hoocheecoochee is very important to them.”

“Their wizards are strong, but they aren’t all that good,” Alva said. “There’s a difference.” If there was, Hesmucet couldn’t see it. Alva added, “What’s so important about the river, anyway?”

“By the gods!” Hesmucet muttered. His pet mage lived in a world so abstract, things of real value meant nothing to him. Gently, the general commanding explained: “It’s the last big barrier in front of Marthasville, Major. If we can get across, Joseph the Gamecock will have a hells of a time keeping us out of the city.”

“Oh. All right.” The sorcerer nodded. He wasn’t stupid-on the contrary-but was as narrowly focused as a good burning glass. “I suppose that means you’ll want me to try another masking spell, then.”

“I did have that in mind, yes.” Hesmucet nodded, too. “Or anything else that will get us over the Hoocheecoochee-I’m not fussy about how it happens.”

Alva’s face tightened into the mask of concentration Hesmucet had come to know well. Alva sometimes stayed like that, hardly moving, hardly even seeming to breathe, for a couple of hours at a stretch. This time, though, he came out almost at once, to ask, “You will not want this to be a showy spell, am I right?”

“Showy?” Hesmucet frowned. “How do you mean?”

“A showy spell is something the other side notices,” Alva answered. “You’ll want them to notice nothing at all till the knife goes into their back? Not to have the slightest idea they’re being diddled?”

“Isn’t that how every single masking spell under the sun works?” Hesmucet asked.

“Oh, no… sir.” Major Alva sounded shocked. He launched into a technical disquisition in which Hesmucet found himself following perhaps one word in three. He did gather that some masking spells were like lamps shone in the enemy’s eyes, while others hung an opaque curtain between the foe and what he wished to see and still others sought to be transparent. He also gathered that the last sort was the hardest to bring off. It would be, he thought.

“You have it right,” he told Alva when the mage finally ran down. “I don’t want the traitors to have any idea what’s going on till it’s too late for them to do one fornicating thing about it.”

“I’ll see what I can come up with, sir.” Like a groundhog slipping back into hibernation, Alva returned to his trance of study.

There were other ways besides the sorcerous to keep the northerners from finding out what Hesmucet had in mind. He didn’t entrench up close to the traitors’ positions, but placed pickets well in front of his own lines. The enemy wouldn’t be able to see how many soldiers he had in place and how many he was using for his casts up and down the Hoocheecoochee, or how ready his army was to move in a hurry if somehow he managed to find a crossing.

Joseph the Gamecock has to be worried, he thought. He knows the Hoocheecoochee is his last strong line as well as I do. Feints toward the river both north and south kept false King Geoffrey’s unicorn-riders galloping this way and that. They couldn’t afford to assume that any move was a feint, not here they couldn’t. They had to take each one seriously.

Hesmucet won approval from one source whose opinion he valued-Doubting George said, “This is all very fine work, sir. The wider we stretch the traitors, the sooner they’ll break.”

“Glad you agree, Lieutenant General,” Hesmucet told him. “And glad we’re working together as well as we are.”

“So am I, sir,” George replied. “Only one who’d laugh if we pulled opposite ways, though, is Geoffrey.”

“There is that.” Hesmucet’s laugh held little real mirth. “Not that such considerations have stopped a good many other officers from wrangling with one another.”

“True enough, true enough. We’re a band of brothers, is what we are-and brothers fight like cats and dogs.”

“Don’t we just?” Hesmucet eyed his second-in-command. “If you were in Joseph the Gamecock’s boots, what would you do?”

“About what he’s doing,” George said. “I don’t know what else he could do, not with an army barely half the size of ours. He’s managed to make a nuisance of himself, hasn’t he?”

“Yes.” Hesmucet admitted what he could hardly deny. “Gods damn it, though, we need Marthasville. King Avram needs it. The whole kingdom needs it, to show we’re winning the war.”

“We go forward,” Doubting George said. “One lurch at a time, we do go forward. And Marshal Bart has Duke Edward of Arlington and the Army of Southern Parthenia pushed a lot farther north in Parthenia than they really want to be.”

“So he does,” Hesmucet said, “though the latest, I hear, is that Earl Early the Jubilant has managed to get loose and come south for an attack on Georgetown.”

“D’you think he can take the place?” George asked.

“I doubt it,” Hesmucet answered, and his wing commander smiled. Hesmucet went on, “Have you seen the works around Georgetown, Lieutenant General? They make the ones Joseph the Gamecock has thrown up here look like sand castles by comparison. King Avram set his artificers to work as soon as the war against Geoffrey began, and I don’t believe they’ve slowed down from that day to this.”

“No doubt you’re right, sir, but if all the soldiers are up in Parthenia with Marshal Bart…” Doubting George’s voice trailed away. “The best fortress in the world isn’t worth a counterfeit copper without some men inside it.”

“Avram can fill the forts up with clerks from all the Georgetown offices and hold off Earl Early till Marshal Bart has time to bring some real fighting men down from his own lines,” Hesmucet said. “With those works, even clerks with crossbows would do for a little while.”

“Here’s hoping it doesn’t come to that,” George said, and then, thoughtfully, “I wonder what sort of works Joseph the Gamecock has waiting for us outside of Marthasville itself.”

“We’ll find out, I hope.” Hesmucet smiled a wolfish smile. “And, once we cross the Hoocheecoochee, all the glideways to the east, to Dothan and the Great River, fall into our hands, even if we can’t break into the city yet.”

“That’s true. I hadn’t thought of it quite so, but that’s true,” George said. “And false King Geoffrey won’t be very happy about it, either.”

Hesmucet clasped both hands to his breast in false and exaggerated sympathy. George laughed out loud. “Too bad. My heart’s just breaking,” Hesmucet said in syrupy tones.

George laughed again, louder and harder. “If we do cross the Hoocheecoochee,” he said, “poor Geoffrey’s going to have kittens.”

“So he will,” Hesmucet agreed. “I told you once: what Geoffrey calls a kingdom is nothing but two armies and a lot of wind and air. Once we get over the river, we’ll show all of Detina how empty the north is.”

“May it be so. I think it will be so,” George said.

“We’ll make it so,” Hesmucet said. “Once we’re over the river, Joseph the Gamecock won’t be able to keep us from making it so.”

“Only trouble is, we’re not over the river yet,” George said.

“I think Alva can let us get men down to it even if we can’t manage any other way,” Hesmucet replied. “And once we reach it, we’ll cross it. Our artificers can throw a bridge over it in a hurry. Then”-he grinned-“we see what happens next.”

“Corporal Rollant!” Lieutenant Griff called.

“Yes, sir!” Rollant said proudly. He was sure he felt better about being promoted to the lowest grade of underofficer than Bart did about rising from general to marshal. For a blond to get stripes on his sleeve in King Avram’s army, to gain the privilege of giving orders to free Detinans…

“Take up the standard, Corporal!” Griff said.

“Yes, sir!” Rollant repeated, even more proudly than before. The company’s flag and its heavy pole seemed to weigh nothing at all as he lifted them from their stand. The soldiers saluted the standard as if worshiping a god. And so they are, he realized. This flag means Detina to them, and they reverence the kingdom as much as the Lion God or the Thunderer.

His mouth quirked up in what wasn’t really a grin, no matter what it looked like. They certainly wouldn’t risk their lives to free blonds from their-from our-bondage to the land, he thought. Avram hadn’t much wanted to fight the northerners over serfdom. He’d chosen war only when Geoffrey tried to set up his own kingdom in the north.

Horns blared. “Form up!” Lieutenant Griff screamed. The company he led hurried to obey. Rollant started to go to his own place, next to Smitty and Sergeant Joram. He’d taken that place ever since accepting King Avram’s silver on enlisting. But it wasn’t his any more. Now he belonged at the van of the company, so he could use the standard to signal which way the men should go.

The honor was not unmixed. For one thing, standard-bearers, by the nature of their job, made prominent targets. If the last fellow who carried the flag hadn’t got shot on Commissioner Mountain, Rollant wouldn’t have had it now. And, for another, he felt eyes on him as he took his place alongside Griff and the company trumpeter. Not all of his comrades were happy to see a blond promoted above them. Too bad, Rollant thought. If they’d wanted to save the standard, one of them could have done it himself.

Voice cracking as it often did, Lieutenant Griff said, “Men, our company-and Colonel Nahath’s regiment as a whole-have the distinction of probing up towards the Hoocheecoochee. This is a privilege granted only a few regiments of footsoldiers. The unicorn-riders are doing much more of it. But Lieutenant General George knows what we can do. He’s seen us fight. By the gods, he’s fought alongside us, on Merkle’s Hill by the River of Death. We’ll show him we deserve this chance he’s giving us, won’t we?”

“Yes, sir!” the men roared.

Rollant shouted as loud as anybody else. He had to, for appearance’s sake. But that didn’t mean he was excited about getting the chance to try to approach the Hoocheecoochee. He knew what Lieutenant Griff meant, no matter what the young officer actually said. What Griff meant was, What we’re going to try probably won’t work, but it does have a fair chance of getting a lot of us killed.

He looked toward Smitty. The farmer’s son caught his glance, shrugged ever so slightly, and raised an eyebrow, as if to say, What can you do? Smitty had been through a lot. He had no more trouble uncovering Griff’s hidden meaning than Rollant did.

Once Griff stood aside, Colonel Nahath harangued the whole regiment. His speech was smoother and more polished than Griff’s, but amounted to the same thing. Rollant felt like shrugging, too, but couldn’t, not standing out there in front of everybody. Nahath had got his orders, and was having to make the best of them. Rollant hoped there was a best to be made.

After the regimental commander stepped back, the horns blared again. “Forward!” Lieutenant Griff shouted, along with all the other men in charge of companies. Forward his own company went. Forward Rollant went at his head.

The day was hot and muggy. At this season of the year, any day in the north of Detina was likely to be hot and muggy. Flies buzzed and bit. With the flagstaff in his hands, Rollant couldn’t slap them away so readily as he had had before. His new rank and station had some difficulties he hadn’t thought about.

With so much heat and moisture, something close to a jungle grew down toward the southern bank of the Hoocheecoochee. Only a few roads ran through the undergrowth. Hoofprints and unicorn turds warned that the traitors patrolled them regularly. Rollant wouldn’t have wanted to meet unicorn-riders in such cramped surroundings.

A squirrel chittered in the branches overhead, scolding the marching soldiers. A jewelbird, glittering green with a ruby head, buzzed around Rollant and then flew off toward the north. The standard-bearer turned to Lieutenant Griff and said, “Sir, where I come from, we’d reckon that was good luck.”

“We haven’t got that superstition in New Eborac,” Griff said. Rollant bristled; he didn’t think of it as a superstition. But then Griff softened the comment: “We haven’t got that many jewelbirds, either. Too far south, and the winters are too cold.”

“I know.” Rollant nodded. “I miss ’em.” He didn’t miss many things about Palmetto Province. Jewelbirds, though, had never done him any harm. “Back around the serfs’ huts, some people would hang a bowl of molasses and water up at the top of a pole to get them to come and feed there.”

“What for?” Griff asked. “To catch them?”

“No, sir!” Rollant heard the shock in his own voice. “Catch a jewelbird? That’d be about the worst kind of bad luck there is. We just liked to have ’em around, on account of they’re pretty. We couldn’t have much that was pretty, but I never heard of a liege lord who minded us drawing jewelbirds to our huts-didn’t cost anything, except for the little bit of molasses.”

Griff tramped on for a while. Rollant wondered if he’d talked too much or too openly. Smitty wouldn’t have minded his remarks. Neither would Sergeant Joram. But then the company commander said, “When you first got to New Eborac, Corporal, you must have felt as if you’d fallen into some whole new world. The biggest city in Detina can’t be anything like an estate outside Karlsburg.”

That was far and away the most perceptive comment Rollant had ever heard Lieutenant Griff make. “You’re right, sir,” the escaped serf said. “Are you ever right! When I first came down south, I thought I would go clean out of my mind. So many people, and all of ’em packed together like olives in a jar… But I got used to it. And do you know what the best part was?”

“I know what it would have been for me,” Griff replied. “What was it for you?”

“Nobody could tell me what to do,” Rollant said at once. “I was on my own. I’d starve if I didn’t work hard. Things weren’t easy, especially at first, but I was working for myself, not for my gods-damned liege lord. When somebody gave me silver, I got to keep all of it. That’s pretty fine.”

Again, Griff marched on for several silent steps. Again, Rollant wondered if he’d gone too far. But the young lieutenant said, “No wonder you’ve got stripes on your tunic sleeve and our flag in your hands. You sound just like any other free Detinan.”

I am just like any other free Detinan, Rollant thought. But that was true only in certain ways. One way it was untrue was in the eyes of a great many free Detinans, from south as well as north. Rollant would have guessed Griff to be among that number, but he seemed to be mistaken there.

On trudged the regiment. “Where are the traitors?” Rollant wondered. “I’d have thought they’d’ve pitched into us by now.”

Lieutenant Griff’s leer might have come from Smitty. “Do you really want them around, Corporal?”

“Want them? Hells, no, sir. But what you want and what you get are two different beasts.” Any serf learned that in a hurry, generally about as fast as he learned to walk or talk. Soldiers got the same lesson, but at an older age.

“I wish this country would open out a bit,” Lieutenant Griff said. “That would help us figure out just where we are. Unless I’m altogether daft, we can’t be too far from the Hoocheecoochee.”

“If it does open out, somebody will see us,” Rollant said. “I don’t think I want that.”

“A point,” Griff allowed. “A distinct point. I do wish we had better maps, though. They would tell us a good deal about where we are, too.”

Now Rollant nodded without reservation. He tremendously admired maps. There was something sorcerous about the way they made paper correspond to landscape. By what he’d overheard army mages saying, there was something sorcerous about them: many were made by using the law of similarity, and sorcery between map and landscape could also help guide soldiers.

Something crackled in the undergrowth to the side of the road. Lieutenant Griff snatched out his sword. “What in the hells was that?” he said, his voice breaking like a youth’s.

“An animal-I hope.” Rollant took a couple of sidling steps away from the company commander. Griff carried a sword, but he wasn’t practiced with it. Southron officers, unlike their counterparts in the traitors’ armies, for the most part weren’t nobles who’d learned swordplay from birth. They carried their weapons as much for show as for fighting-some (though not Griff) also bore crossbows, with which they were actually dangerous.

“It had better be an animal,” Griff said, still brandishing the blade in a way that made Rollant nervous. “If it’s a gods-damned northern son of a bitch, he’ll bring every traitor in the world down on us.”

Rollant wished he could have argued with that, but the lieutenant was obviously right. The standard-bearer’s head swiveled this way and that. An ambush could do gruesome things to the company, to the whole regiment. And I don’t even need a SHOOT ME! sign, Rollant thought. I’m carrying the flag. Of course they’ll try to shoot me.

He wondered whether getting promoted in exchange for making himself such a prominent target was as good a bargain as he’d thought at the time. Yes, becoming a corporal was a great honor for a blond. But could he enjoy the honor with a crossbow quarrel through his brisket? Not likely.

No yells of alarm rang out from the company ahead, nor roaring cries from northern soldiers. No bowstrings thrummed, no triggers clicked. No one yelled false King Geoffrey’s name or shouted, “Provincial prerogative forever!” Except for chirping birds and scolding squirrels, the woods remained quiet. The only sounds of men were those of footfalls on dirt.

Lieutenant Griff sheathed his sword once more. “Must have been a beast after all,” he said with no small relief.

“Yes, sir.” Rollant sounded relieved, too, not least because he no longer ran the risk of being spitted on that long, sharp blade. A crossbowman’s shortsword hung on his own left hip. He was no swordsman, either. He’d fought a real swordsman-fought his own liege lord, Baron Ormerod, in fact-in the skirmishes before the battle by the River of Death. He counted himself lucky to have escaped with his life.

A commotion came from up ahead, and a confused babble of voices. It didn’t sound like trouble, but Griff got out his sword again. The sense of the cry tore back through the regiment. What people were yelling was, “The river! The river!”

“The river!” Rollant took up the cry, too. “The river!” He surged north. He wanted to see the Hoocheecoochee with his own eyes.

There it was: slow-flowing, brown, perhaps a furlong wide, or a little more. Was it too far south to have crocodiles in it? Rollant didn’t know. He also didn’t stick a foot into the water, not wanting to find out the hard way.

“How do we get across?” Smitty asked; he’d pushed up with Rollant. “Some of us could swim it, I suppose-if there’s nothing in there waiting to get fed, I mean.”

“I was just thinking the same thing,” Rollant answered. “I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I don’t know for certain.”

“Wouldn’t want to find out by getting munched,” Smitty said.

Colonel Nahath had some very definite ideas on what to do now that they’d got down to the Hoocheecoochee. He sent a runner off to the southeast to let Doubting George know he’d done it, and then issued a series of crisp commands: “Form a defensive perimeter, men. We’re at the river. We’re going to hold the crossing. Dig in. Set up your trenches and breastworks. If the traitors want us, they’ll have to pay for us.”

“Shouldn’t we try to cross the river, sir?” somebody asked.

“We will-as soon as the artificers throw a bridge over it,” the regimental commander said. “That’s what they’re for. And when they do”-he rubbed his hands together in anticipation-“when they do, boys, it’s my considered opinion that we’ve got Joseph the Gamecock and the Army of Franklin good and cornholed. What do you think of that?”

Rollant whooped and cheered and held the company standard in the crook of his elbow so he could clap his hands. The soldiers were making enough noise to draw every traitor for half a mile around, but no northerners seemed close enough to hear. Nahath sent off another messenger, in case something happened to the first.

Dirt flew as Rollant dug and dug. Inside of an hour, a formidable defensive position took shape all around him. “Let ’em come now,” somebody said. Rollant shook his head. He wanted reinforcements to get here first. He wasn’t afraid of fighting, but he wanted to do it on his army’s best terms if he possibly could.

Hammers thudded on planks. Piledrivers drove treetrunks into the muddy bottom of the Hoocheecoochee River. Doubting George watched the bridge snake toward the northern bank. Only a few yards to go now… and the northerners still didn’t seem to realize the southron army was about to cross.

Turning to Colonel Nahath, George said, “Your regiment’s just taken a long step toward winning this war for us.”

“Good,” the man from New Eborac said. “Anybody wants to know what I think, this gods-damned war’s already gone on too long and cost too much. The sooner we get it over and done with, the better off everybody will be.”

“Can’t argue with a single word of that, Colonel, and I don’t intend to try,” George said. He peered toward the north bank of the river. “I wish those engineers would hurry. How long can our luck hold?” Back at General Hesmucet’s headquarters, clever Major Alva was probably gnashing his teeth right now. The southrons had found a way to go over the Hoocheecoochee even without his masking spell.

No sooner were the words out of George’s mouth than an artificer came pelting back across the bridge and said, “Sir, it’s finished. Would you like to be the first man to cross to the far bank?”

Doubting George would have liked nothing better. But the northern courtesy with which he’d been raised made him shake his head. “Colonel Nahath deserves the honor,” he replied. “Without him, it wouldn’t be possible.”

“Thank you, sir,” Nahath said. “You’re a gentleman.”

“Go on,” George said with a smile more or less sincere. “Go on, and be quick, before I change my mind.”

“I wouldn’t blame you if you did,” Colonel Nahath said, but that didn’t stop him from hurrying across the bridge, his bootheels thudding on the planks. As soon as he got to the end of the timbers, he leaped high in the air and came down with both feet on the ground on the north bank of the Hoocheecoochee. He turned and waved to Doubting George.

After waving back, the lieutenant general hurried across the bridge himself. He’d given Nahath the privilege of going first, but that didn’t mean he despised going second. The ground under his feet on the far bank of the river felt no different from that on the side he’d just left. It felt no different, but it was, and he knew it.

So did Nahath. “Let’s push on toward Marthasville, sir,” he said.

“We will.” With a grin, George added, “Or did you mean just the two of us?”

“I’m ready.” Nahath grinned, too. By the way his narrow face had to twist to accommodate the expression, it didn’t alight there very often. He waved toward the city. “Doesn’t look like there’s anybody in the way right now to stop us.”

He was right about that, but only for a little while. “Some of those sons of bitches in blue would turn up-they always do. So we’ll have to bring some company along, that’s all.” Doubting George waved once more, this time back toward the southern bank of the Hoocheecoochee. Colonel Nahath’s regiment of men from New Eborac had earned the right to cross first, but a great many other regiments were lined up behind them now. Once this force got over the river, Joseph the Gamecock would have a hells of a time throwing it back.

On came the New Eborac regiment, each company with its standard fluttering at its head. One of the standard-bearers made George blink. He turned to Nahath. “Excuse me, Colonel, but did I just see a blond carrying a flag?”

“Yes, sir, you did,” Nahath answered. “That’s Corporal Rollant, who earned the spot for himself on Commissioner Mountain. You may remember, I brought the question of promoting him to you before I went ahead with it. You said he deserved the chance to fail, but he hasn’t failed yet.”

With his memory jogged, Doubting George nodded. “I do recall now, thanks. He still makes a strange sight, though.”

“This war has shown us a great many strange sights, sir,” Colonel Nahath said. “I think we’d better get used to it, because the kingdom won’t get any less strange in the peace that’s coming.”

“You’re likely right, Colonel.” George shook his head. “No, as a matter of fact, you’re certainly right. But I’m a northern man myself, you know, and I have to tell you that some things strike me as very strange the first time I see them.”

“You asked if Rollant was a good fighting man, a good soldier,” Nahath replied. “I told you he was, and I meant it. He hasn’t had much trouble since he got promoted-less than I expected. If he were an ordinary Detinan instead of a blond, he’d surely be a sergeant by now, and he might well be an officer.”

Contemplating the blond corporal was quite enough for Doubting George at the moment. Being a conservative had led him to radicalism, a step he hadn’t planned on taking. Blonds freed from the land, blonds promoted to underofficer, blonds who might eventually get promoted further still…

As he did whenever such notions disturbed him, he thought, I’d sooner have that than theKingdom ofDetina torn to pieces. It was true. Were it anything but true, he would have been fighting for Geoffrey, not Avram. But sometimes, as now, it was also cold, cold comfort.

He left a solid garrison to protect the bridge, then ordered the rest of his force forward toward Marthasville. As long as he was doing, he didn’t have to brood. And the chief city of Peachtree Province lay only a few miles away. George knew the northerners had a ring of forts around Marthasville, and entrenchments between those forts, but how many men did they have to put into the entrenchments? As long as the Army of Franklin remained on the east bank of the curving Hoocheecoochee, not many.

His army didn’t meet its first traitors in arms till it had been marching for most of an hour. Then a couple of unicorn-riders rode right up to the head of his column-and were promptly captured. They were indignant about it. When their captors brought them before Doubting George, one of them demanded, “What are you sons of bitches doing here? You’re supposed to be on the other side of the river.”

“Life is full of surprises,” George said.

“It isn’t fair,” the second unicorn-rider said. “We wouldn’t’ve come right on up to you gods-damned bastards if we’d known you were southrons. You ought to let us go.”

“I’m sure you’d do the same for a couple of our men,” George said. The northern unicorn-riders didn’t have the crust to claim they would and to make that convincing. George gestured to the men in charge of them. “Take them away and send them south.”

“Yes, sir,” the grinning guards said. They led their glum prisoners back toward the new bridge across the Hoocheecoochee.

An hour or so after that, real fighting began. Geoffrey’s men turned out to have more than a couple of unicorn-riders in the neighborhood. A squadron galloped through the fields that ran by the road on which the southrons were marching. They shot at the men in gray and then galloped off out of range. Some of Doubting George’s men shot back. One enemy rider tumbled off his mount, while a couple of footsoldiers in gray howled when quarrels struck them.

Another couple of squadrons of blue-clad men on unicorns got in front of the marching column and tried to stop it by sheer brute force. They had a battery of engines with them, and flung darts at the southrons from a range longer than that from which George’s men could shoot back at them. They were very brave-a lot of northern soldiers were-but it didn’t do them much good. George ordered his leading regiments to shift from column into line. They swept forward. The ends of their line lapped around the unicorn-riders on either side. The northerners had to retreat in a hurry to keep from being surrounded. They tried to set up for another stand half a mile farther north, but the southrons made them fall back again before they’d shot more than a couple of darts.

By the time the sun set, George’s force was almost halfway to Marthasville. He had a solidly garrisoned supply line leading back to the bridge over the Hoocheecoochee, and ordered his men to entrench around the camp they made. Once that was done, he told his scryer, “Now put me through to General Hesmucet.”

“Yes, sir,” the scryer said, and got out his crystal ball. George had already sent a runner back to the commanding general, but hadn’t spoken with him till now.

Before long, Hesmucet’s face appeared in the crystal ball. “Congratulations, Lieutenant General!” he said heartily. “You’ve stolen a march on Joseph the Gamecock-and you’ve stolen one on Major Alva, too.”

“That did occur to me, yes,” George said with a smile. “How’s he taking it?”

“He’s disappointed,” Hesmucet answered. “He was shaping what would have been a really magnificent masking spell, and now we don’t need it. He’ll just have to learn to live with it-part of growing up, you might say.”

“Yes, sir.” Doubting George hadn’t thought Hesmucet would be angry with him for moving before the planned moment, but was glad to be proved right. Hesmucet put success above method, as any good soldier did. George said, “We’re over the last barrier in front of Marthasville now.”

“So we are,” the general commanding agreed. “And it will be interesting to see what Joseph the Gamecock does about it.”

“He can’t very well stay on that side of the river,” George said. “If he does, we take the city and we smash up his army.”

“We’re liable to do all that even if he pulls back,” Hesmucet replied. “You’ve put him in a very nasty position, very nasty indeed. Congratulations, Lieutenant General.”

“Thank you, sir,” George said. “I was wondering what in the hells I would do if I were Joseph the Gamecock. By all the gods, I’ve got no good answers. I’d sure rather be where I am than where he is.”

“Don’t blame you a bit,” Hesmucet said. “But he’s kept his force in being. He can still hurt you-he can still hurt all of us-if he gets the chance. We can’t afford to be careless, not now.”

“Not ever,” Doubting George said.

“No, not ever.” Hesmucet leaned forward, so that he seemed about to step out of the crystal ball and sit down beside George. “Can I tell you a little secret?”

“Sir, you’re the one who’s in charge here,” George answered. “Only you know whether you can or not-or maybe I ought to say, whether you should or not.”

“Well, I’m going to, gods damn it.” Hesmucet bared his teeth in a fierce grin. “I’m glad you’re the one who found the way over the Hoocheecoochee, and not, say, Fighting Joseph.”

“I can’t imagine why, sir,” George said, deadpan. Both officers laughed. Doubting George had no trouble imagining how puffed-up and full of himself Fighting Joseph would have been had he got across the river ahead of every other southron officer. He would have started agitating for command over the whole force, and would have slandered General Hesmucet, Lieutenant General George, and Brigadier James the Bird’s Eye to anyone who would listen. To make sure people listened, Fighting Joseph would have pounded a drum and played a trumpet, too.

“What are your plans for tomorrow?” Hesmucet asked.

“Sir, unless you order me to do something else, I’m going to push on toward Marthasville,” George replied. “The deeper into Joseph the Gamecock’s rear I get, the harder the time he’ll have doing anything about me.”

“That’s good,” Hesmucet said. “That’s very good. It’s just what I’d do in your spot.” He grinned. It made him look surprisingly boyish. “And if that doesn’t prove it’s good, I don’t know what would. Anything else?”

“No, sir,” Doubting George said.

“All right, then.” General Hesmucet nodded to someone George couldn’t see: his scryer, for the crystal ball suddenly became just a ball of glass. George got up, stretched, and nodded. He knew what he was supposed to do, he knew what he had to do, and he thought he could do it. For a soldier, that was a good feeling.

But George didn’t have such a good feeling the next morning. The northerners still had no footsoldiers on this side of the Hoocheecoochee to oppose his army’s progress, but enough unicorn-riders were in the neighborhood to make real nuisances of themselves. They swarmed round the southron footsoldiers like the blond nomads on the steppes far to the east of the Great River, now and then darting in to shoot flurries of crossbow quarrels at them.

Disciplined volleys from his men knocked a good many traitors out of the saddle, and knocked over a good many unicorns as well. The white beasts were beautiful; seeing them fall and hearing them scream as they were wounded made George wince, hardened veteran though he was. But the northerners knew they had to slow his men, and they did.

By that time, a scryer with a crystal ball or a swift-riding messenger had surely got word back to Joseph the Gamecock that the southrons were over the Hoocheecoochee and threatening, as they’d threatened so many times farther south, to finish the job of outflanking him, cutting him off from Marthasville, and destroying him. It hadn’t happened yet. This time, though… Doubting George thought. This time, we just may manage it.

“Keep pelting those unicorn-riders with your bolts,” he called to his men. “If we can get ahead of the traitors…”

But Brigadier Spinner’s unicorn-riders understood what he wanted as well as he did himself. Spinner wasn’t Ned of the Forest. A man fighting him didn’t always have to look out for an unexpected stroke from a startling direction. What false King Geoffrey’s commander of unicorn-riders did here was unsubtle and obvious. That didn’t make it ineffective.

Every time George’s men had to stop and fight made him fume and curse. “Gods damn it,” he growled, “they’re liable to get away again.”

Joseph the Gamecock couldn’t have been more disgusted if he’d been pickled in bile. He’d known the southrons would sooner or later find a way around his position on the east bank of the Hoocheecoochee. But the report that Doubting George had crossed the river still infuriated him, for he hadn’t expected it to happen nearly as soon as this.

For a couple of hours after the first word came in that his right flank had been turned, he’d done his best to believe it was a mistake, a scout seeing what he feared he would see regardless of whether or not it was really there. But no such luck. Men in gray really had crossed the river, and he would have to respond or see the Army of Franklin smashed between hammer and anvil.

Men in blue fell back to the western bank of the river, marching over the foot bridges his miles of field fortifications had protected. Glideway carpets transported siege engines and other essentials over yet another bridge. The retreat went as smoothly as such things could. Why not? Joseph thought bitterly. We’ve had practice falling back.

When the last man and the last glideway carpet had come over the river, Joseph turned to his mages and spoke in harsh tones: “All right, gods damn it, now make sure the southrons can’t follow hard on our heels.”

“Yes, sir,” the mages chorused, and began to incant. The bridge over which the glideway carpets had passed was the first to feel their sorcery. Flames licked along the timbers supporting it. With a rending crash, it fell into the Hoocheecoochee. The spell made the timbers keep burning till they were altogether consumed, even though they were wet.

The foot bridges went next. Their timbers burned as thoroughly as had those of the glideway bridge. Those timbers rested on stone piers. The magic shook the piers back to their constituent stones and scattered those along the bottom of the river.

“That seems to have worked well enough,” Joseph said grudgingly.

“Yes, sir,” one of the mages replied. “The enemy won’t be able to use the bridges, and he’ll be hard pressed to get across the river at all.”

“He’s already across the river, gods damn him,” Joseph the Gamecock snapped. “Do you think we’d be doing this if he weren’t?”

“What I meant, sir, was-”

Joseph cut off the mage (if he’d had sword in hand, he might have used that, too). “I don’t care what you meant. Why didn’t any of you wonderful wizards warn me this was about to happen?”

“We aren’t infallible, sir,” the sorcerer said stiffly.

“Really? I never would have noticed,” Joseph the Gamecock said. The wizard winced and turned away.

Mounting his unicorn, Joseph rode up toward the head of the Army of Franklin. A few men snarled at him as he went by. He didn’t blame them. They were free Detinans speaking their mind. Had he been in their place, he would have snarled at the commanding general, too.

Another unicorn came up alongside of his after he reached the front of the column. He made himself turn his head. When he saw who’d joined him, he breathed a silent sigh of relief: it was Roast-Beef William, not Lieutenant General Bell. Instead of carping at him for retreating again, William only asked, “What are we going to do now, sir?”

“What we’ve been doing all along: try to hold the southrons out of Marthasville,” Joseph answered. “What hasn’t change. Why hasn’t changed. How…” He cursed under his breath. “How just got harder.”

“Yes, sir,” Roast-Beef William said. “The Hoocheecoochee was the last real line we had defending the city.”

“I haven’t given up hope,” Joseph said stubbornly. “I don’t intend to, either. Marthasville has a solid set of forts around it, and there’s high ground north of Goober Creek. The southrons will have to cross the creek before they attack the city. When they do, I intend to hit them in the flank. It’ll be the first decent chance I’ve had to attack since Fat Mama, and I don’t intend to let Bell take this one away from me.”

Roast-Beef William stroked his beard. “A bold plan, sir-no doubt of that. But have we got enough men to put garrisons into the forts around Marthasville and to attack the southrons at the same time? They outnumber us badly as things are.”

“You needn’t remind me of that,” Joseph the Gamecock said bitterly. “I think the southrons sow dragons’ teeth and reap soldiers, the way the Mad Cuss did in the legend. But I don’t intend to use the Army of Franklin to hold the forts.”

“What then, sir?” William asked, raising bushy eyebrows. “Shall we sow dragons’ teeth of our own, or make unicorn-riders of ghosts and shadows?”

“Satrap Brown commands a militia,” Joseph said. “The son of a bitch doesn’t like me any too bloody well, and I mislike him, too, but I still have the power to impress those men directly into King Geoffrey’s service. They’ve spent the whole stinking war looking precious in their pretty uniforms and scratching their backsides. Now it’s time to find out if they can fight even a little bit.”

Roast-Beef William looked dubious. He looked so very dubious, he might have practiced the expression in front of a glass. “I’d hate to put them into the line against Hesmucet’s men. The southrons are good soldiers, gods damn them, and they’re veterans. They’d go through raw militiamen like a good dose of castor oil.”

“I don’t intend to put them into the line, only into the forts around Marthasville,” Joseph the Gamecock answered. “If I’m going to offer the southrons any kind of resistance at all, Lieutenant General, somebody besides my soldiers has to fill those places.”

“Yes, sir.” Roast-Beef William still didn’t sound convinced. That worried Joseph. William, after all, was the man who’d written the tactical manual both sides used in this war. If he didn’t think well of Joseph’s plan, it was likely flawed.

Almost pleading, Joseph said, “I’ve got to try something. If I don’t, the southrons will just walk into Marthasville. We can’t have that.”

“No, we can’t,” William agreed. “Who would have thought, three years ago, that things could grow so desperate?”

Anyone with an ounce of sense might have, Joseph thought. We knew from the start how badly the southrons outweigh us. But we were wild to hold on to our provincial prerogatives, and so we didn’t stop to count the cost when we followed Geoffrey and rebelled against King Avram. We’re counting the cost now, though.

With every stride his unicorn took, Marthasville grew nearer. It wasn’t a great city, not compared to New Eborac in the south or to Old Capet here in the north. But Joseph had been in the field a long time, in the field or in small towns. Marthasville’s hostels and shops and temples made it look very grand indeed, a center of civilization in the middle of nowhere.

He’d seen too much nowhere lately. He was sick of it. He was sick of the whole war. Had someone given him the chance to go off and sit on the sidelines-promising, of course, that everything would go well in his absence-he would gladly have taken it. The trouble was, no one could make promises like that. Joseph had been trained as a soldier. As long as his kingdom needed him, his sword remained at its service.

And if that doesn’t make me a loyal northern man, gods only know what would. I’ve had nothing but insults and disrespect from King Geoffrey. They’re all I’ll ever get, as long as he is king. But I’ll put up with them for my kingdom and for my province. If I were a private man, though, I’d cut the liver out of that gods-damned son of a bitch.

As often happened, a good dose of lese majesty made him feel better. He looked back over his shoulder at the men he commanded. They knew things weren’t going any too well. No one but an idiot could think that seeing the southrons on this side of the Hoocheecoochee was good news. Still, they seemed in good enough spirits. If he needed fighting from them, he would get all he needed. And if I had as many of them as Hesmucet has southrons, this would be a different war.

But that reflection wasn’t what made Joseph the Gamecock look straight ahead once more. It also wasn’t what made him urge his unicorn up to a slightly faster pace. Along with all his marching men, he’d spied Lieutenant General Bell, tied onto his unicorn, coming up at a trot. Short of making his own mount gallop, Joseph couldn’t escape Bell.

“Well, your Grace,” his wing commander rumbled, “what are we going to do now? This skedaddle is a disgrace, nothing else but. A disgrace, I say.”

“Would you sooner have stood your ground with the enemy behind us as well as in front?” Joseph the Gamecock demanded. “Nobody would have got back to Marthasville in that case.”

“They should never have got over the river in the first place,” Bell declared.

“I quite agree,” Joseph said.

Bell blinked. “Well, then…” His voice trailed off.

“Unfortunately,” Joseph the Gamecock said, “we have to deal with what did happen, not with what should have happened. We should have attacked the stinking southrons outside of Fat Mama, but one of our wing commanders saw ghosts in the bushes and got a cold foot, and so the attack did not go in.”

“Now see here, sir-” Bell began, he being the wing commander in question.

“Oh, shut up,” Joseph told him. “When we go into position behind Goober Creek and when I see what we can do against Hesmucet, I may decide I want to listen to you again. Till then, no.”

“What we can do against Hesmucet?” Bell jeered. “You won’t do anything but retreat. By the gods, sir, it’s all you ever do.”

Joseph the Gamecock set a hand on the hilt of his sword. “Gentlemen, please!” Roast-Beef William said, edging his unicorn between Joseph’s and Bell’s. “When we quarrel, who gains? King Avram, no one else.”

“There is some truth in what you say, Lieutenant General,” Joseph said. “Some-but not enough.”

“Not enough, indeed,” Bell said. “We need a man in charge of this army, not someone who takes to his heels whenever the enemy comes near.”

They both started reaching for weapons again. “You were the one who wouldn’t go forward when I needed you!” Joseph shouted.

“Gentlemen!” Roast-Beef William said again. “I really must insist that you remember we are all on the same side.”

“If certain people would act like it-” Joseph the Gamecock said.

“Yes, indeed, if only they would,” Lieutenant General Bell broke in. They glared at each other.

“We must all serve the north,” William said. “We can settle our differences once victory is ours. Until then, we have to work together.”

“I serve the north, by the gods,” Joseph said. “In fact, I daresay my service to the north is more pure, more disinterested, than that of any other man in the army. The kingdom always comes first for me, not least because I-” He broke off. Because I despise the king might be true-in fact, certainly was true-but would gain him no points in this argument. “Because I was one of the first men out of Detina’s old army and into this new one,” he finished lamely.

“We need a fighter at the head of our force, a true battler,” Bell said. “Then we’d show the southrons what our army can do.”

“And if this army gets that kind of battler”-Joseph the Gamecock looked hard at Bell-“what the southrons will show him is that they have too many men and too many engines to be driven off as easily as he thinks.”

“How would you know?” Bell retorted. “You’ve only gone backwards. You don’t know what we can do if we can go forwards.”

“Yes, I do,” Joseph said. “We can throw the war away. If you go forward against a host bigger than your own, that’s what you do.”

“Duke Edward of Arlington would not agree,” Bell sniffed.

“I know Duke Edward, sir. We have our differences, but I will say that Duke Edward is a friend of mine.” Joseph the Gamecock fixed his unruly wing commander with a steady, scornful stare. “And I will also say one other thing: you, Lieutenant General, are no Duke Edward.”

That got home. Bell quailed and went red under his swarthy skin. Using his good arm, he jerked his unicorn’s head away and rode off at something not far from a gallop. Joseph watched him go with considerable satisfaction. Roast-Beef William looked less happy. “That won’t do us any good, sir,” he said.

“By the Lion God’s fangs, it did me a lot of good,” Joseph said. “I’m entitled to vent my spleen now and again, too.” He set a hand on his abdomen. He wasn’t quite sure whereabouts in there his spleen resided, but he was sure it had been well and truly vented.

Somewhere not far ahead lay Goober Creek. If he could get the satrap to use his militiamen in the forts around Marthasville, that would free up the whole Army of Franklin to strike at the invaders. Hesmucet had come a long way. He’d had a lot of men killed or wounded, and was using a lot of them to guard the glideway line back to Rising Rock that kept his army fed and supplied. I can do him quite an injury, Joseph the Gamecock thought. I can, and, by the gods, I will.