Marching Through Peachtree wotp-2 Read online

  George looked north and west, too. “If Marshal Bart is setting off to tangle with Duke Edward and the Army of Southern Parthenia, don’t you suppose it’s time we paid a social call on Joseph the Gamecock and the Army of Franklin?”

  “Ah,” Hesmucet said. “That must be what this little assemblage here is all about.”

  Again, Doubting George spoke as if in surprise: “Well, who would ever have thought of such a thing?”

  This time, Hesmucet looked back over his shoulder. The entire might of his force was mustered there: unicorn-riders aboard mounts whose horns were shod with polished iron; pikemen whose spearheads gleamed in the bright spring sun; endless regiments of crossbowmen with shortswords on their hips to give them something with which to fight in case they shot their bolts and missed; mages riding asses. The soldiers’ tunics and pantaloons and the mages’ robes were all of one shade of gray or another. Hundreds of color-bearers carried the red dragon on gold. Great columns of ass-drawn supply wagons and siege engines on wheeled carriages completed the immense warlike host.

  “Are we ready?” Hesmucet asked George.

  “You’re the general commanding, sir,” Doubting George replied. Hesmucet cocked his head to one side, studying the reply. George wished Marshal Bart had named him, not Hesmucet, commander over all of King Avram’s armies east of the Green Ridge Mountains. He made no bones about that. But was he so jealous and resentful as to be unable to serve as Hesmucet’s chief subordinate?

  He’d better not be, Hesmucet thought. If he is, I’ll find somebody else, and I won’t waste a heartbeat before I do. For now, he gave George the benefit of the doubt. “That’s right,” he said. “I am. Let’s go, then.”

  He waved to the mounted trumpeters just behind him. Their polished bugles gleamed like gold under the strong spring sun as they raised them to their lips. The first thrilling notes of the Detinan royal hymn blared forth. A moment later, a great cheer from the long column of gray-clad soldiers drowned out the hymn.

  “Forward!” Hesmucet shouted, trying to make himself heard above the din. “Forward against the traitors!” Those of his men who did hear him cheered louder than ever.

  In the manner of a northern noble, Doubting George made his unicorn rear and paw the air with its forelegs. That, too, wrung a cheer from the soldiers. Hesmucet, who was only an ordinary rider himself, found the stunt showy and artificial. Again, he wondered whether George was trying to show him up. Again, he gave his second-in-command the benefit of the doubt.

  I wonder if Joseph the Gamecock has these worries, he thought as he began to ride north. I know Thraxton the Braggart did. But then, Thraxton worried about every officer under his command. He did everything he could to make every officer under his command hate him, too. Just as well for the rightful king’s cause that Thraxton never came close to realizing it.

  Thraxton, these days, was back in Nonesuch, giving King Geoffrey advice. The two of them got on well, however much trouble both of them had getting along with anybody else. They deserve each other, Hesmucet thought.

  “You’re not dividing up the force,” Lieutenant General George remarked.

  “No, I’m not,” Hesmucet agreed. “I don’t know where in the seven hells we’ll end up having to fight. Wherever it is, I want to strike as hard a blow as I can with my men.”

  “Good,” Doubting George said. “When Guildenstern marched north from Rising Rock last fall, he split his army into three parts. We’re lucky Count Thraxton didn’t destroy us in detail. Losing the battle by the River of Death was bad, but that would have been even worse.”

  “I’ve got a whole swarm of scouts out ahead of us,” Hesmucet said. “If Joseph wants to try to ambush me, I wish him joy of it.”

  “He won’t have an easy time of it,” George agreed. “But he has his own scouts, too, you know.”

  Hesmucet nodded sourly. “Every single gods-damned northerner who sees us is a scout for Joseph the gods-damned Gamecock,” he said, and waved in the direction of a woman planting crops in a field. “Her husband’s probably fighting for Geoffrey, and she probably has ways of getting news to his commanders.”

  “Too true,” George said. “The other thing you’ll notice in country where we’ve been around for a while is that you’ll see almost no blonds in the fields. They will all have abandoned their lands and their liege lords and run off to us.”

  “I know,” Hesmucet replied. “And gods damn me to the hells if I know whether that’s a good thing or not, Lieutenant General. I have no great use for blonds. I never have, and I probably never will. I don’t know what the devils we’re going to do with all these northern blonds if they aren’t going to be serfs any more. And if anybody, including King Avram himself, has any clearer notion, it would come as a great surprise to me.”

  Doubting George chuckled. “You sound more like a northern aristocrat than many a northern aristocrat I’ve heard. If you feel that way, why didn’t you side with Grand Duke Geoffrey against King Avram? Some few southrons did.”

  “And they’re all traitors, too, and they all deserve to be crucified for treason right along with Geoffrey,” Hesmucet ground out. “It’s very simple, as far as I’m concerned. There is only one Kingdom of Detina. One, mind you, not two or three or twelve or twenty-seven. And there’s no doubt whatsoever that Avram is the rightful King of Detina. As far as I can see, that settles that. I’m a simple man. I don’t much believe in or care about complicated arguments.”

  “Any man who calls himself simple opens himself to suspicion, in my view,” George said. “If someone else calls him simple, simple he may be. If he calls himself simple, simple he is not, for if he were, he would not see that there was any other possibility.”

  “Hmm.” After thinking about it for a little while, Hesmucet took off his gray felt hat and scratched his head. “That’s a little too… unsimple for me.”

  “Is it? You’ll forgive me, sir, but I have my doubts about that,” Doubting George said. He hadn’t got his nickname by accident; from everything Hesmucet could see, he had his doubts about everything. After a moment, he went on, “And things generally aren’t quite so clear as you make them out to be, if you’ll be kind enough to forgive me that as well.”

  “No, eh?” Now Hesmucet bristled. He didn’t care to be told he was, or even might be, mistaken about anything. “How not?”

  “Well, sir, if you reckon blonds worthless for anything but serfdom, how is it that you have some thousands of them serving in the various regiments of your army?”

  “They aren’t all good soldiers, by any means.” Having taken a position, Hesmucet was not a man to retreat from it even in the face of long odds.

  “No doubt you’re right, sir.” For a moment, Lieutenant General George sounded like the northern noble he was: most dangerous when most polite. “But then, would you say all the ordinary Detinans fighting for King Avram are good soldiers?”

  “Only a fool would say all of them are, and I hope I’m not that particular kind of fool,” Hesmucet replied. “I will say, though, that more Detinans make good soldiers than is true for the blonds. We’re warriors in the blood, and they’re not.” He stuck out his chin and defied Doubting George to disagree with him.

  And Doubting George didn’t-not, at least, in so many words. He did murmur, “Surely the chieftain for whom you’re named would have some remarks on that subject.” Hesmucet’s ears grew hot; Hesmucet the blond had been as fierce a warrior as any ever born, whether of his kind or among the swarthy Detinans. George added, “These northern blonds, you must recall, have been raised as serfs. If you untie a man who’s been tightly bound, do you not expect to see the marks of the rope on his flesh for a time?”

  “Well, well,” Hesmucet said. “I didn’t think you were a blond-lover, sir.”

  He wondered if he’d gone too far. In a different tone of voice, that could have been a deadly insult. As things were, George only shrugged and remarked, “Some of them, I assure you, are quite lovable.” He too
k his hands from the reins for a moment to shape an hourglass in the air.

  Hesmucet laughed. “Well, maybe so. I have heard stories along those lines. I suspect you would know better than I, though.” How had Doubting George amused himself on his estate in Parthenia? Did he use the labor of any young serfs who looked like him?

  George didn’t answer any of that. Instead, he counterattacked: “You had your chances, too, sir, didn’t you? Don’t I remember that you were teaching in a military collegium near Old Capet when Grand Duke Geoffrey took the northern provinces out of Detina?”

  “I was indeed,” Hesmucet replied. “But what you also need to remember is that I had my wife along with me while I was there.”

  “I see,” George said. “Yes, that could matter. It would make more difference to some than to others, I suppose.”

  Which sort are you? lingered behind his words. “I’m not General Guildenstern, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Hesmucet said.

  “Few men are,” Doubting George replied. “I know of at least one pretty little blond girl in Rising Rock whom Marshal Bart-he was only General Bart then, of course-turned down flat. Not that she was so flat herself, you understand, and not that Guildenstern had turned her down before, either.”

  “I’m not surprised Bart turned her down,” Hesmucet said. “He really is enamored of his wife.”

  “She-the blond girl-was quite miffed,” George said. “Marshal Bart’s wife would have been, had things gone otherwise. `Turned me down flat,’ the maid kept saying.”

  “Let’s see if we can turn the traitors down flat,” Hesmucet said, and his second-in-command nodded agreement. Hesmucet wondered if George had tried to soothe the blond girl’s wounded feelings. Bold as he was, he lacked the nerve to ask.

  * * *

  Captain Gremio was still getting used to wearing epaulets on both shoulders. He’d spent the first two and a half years of the war as Captain Ormerod’s lieutenant in this company of crossbowmen recruited from in and around Karlsburg, the capital and chief town of Palmetto Province. But Ormerod had stopped a crossbow quarrel trying to stem the northerners’ rout at Proselytizers’ Rise, and so the company had been in Gremio’s hands ever since. He’d finally even got the rank that went with company command.

  Not all the other officers in Colonel Florizel’s regiment approved of Gremio’s promotion. His lip curled. He had a long, thin, intelligent face-and a gift for making his lip curl and assuming other expressions at need: he was a reasonably successful barrister in Karlsburg.

  His success in his chosen field kept his brother officers from making their sneers too open. But it also guaranteed that the sneers would be there. Almost all those putative brothers were noblemen, liege lords, owners of broad estates and overlords of serfs sometimes by the dozen, sometimes by the thousand. They looked down their noses at him because he made his living by his own wits and not from the sweat of blond brows.

  He looked down his nose at them because they were, for the most part, blockheads of the purest ray serene. He also envied them because, in the society of the north, acquiring an estate full of hard-working serfs was the be-all and end-all. He was a hard-working curiosity. The nobles, in their opinion and his as well, were the salt of the earth.

  “Good morning, Colonel Florizel,” he called, tipping his hat as the regimental commander limped by.

  “And a good day to you as well, Captain.” Florizel, though a belted earl, did treat Gremio as if he were of noble blood himself. Gremio couldn’t find fault with the regimental commander over that, and Gremio was a man who, before the war began, had made his living by finding fault.

  “How’s your leg, your Excellency?” he asked now.

  “Well, it’ll never be what it was,” Earl Florizel replied. He’d been wounded in the battle by the River of Death the autumn before, and hadn’t been able to get about for some time afterwards. Even now, he looked as if he would be more comfortable leaning on a stick. But he went on, “If Lieutenant General Bell can lead a wing without a leg, I suppose I can try to lead a regiment with a sore one.”

  “Bell’s courage is an example to us all,” Gremio agreed. He had a lower opinion of Lieutenant General Bell’s brains, but kept that to himself. It didn’t change the point Colonel Florizel was trying to make.

  Florizel snapped his fingers. “Speaking of wing commanders, that reminds me. You’ll be pleased to hear that Leonidas the Priest has returned to command a wing of the Army of Franklin.”

  “I will?” Captain Gremio said in real surprise. “Why?”

  Colonel Florizel had big bushy eyebrows. They fluttered now, like moths trying to escape from his forehead. “Why? I’ll tell you why, Captain. Because having a hierophant of the Lion God leading our soldiers will surely lead the god to support us with claws and fangs.”

  “Surely,” Gremio said. Being a barrister, he had practice disguising his tone, and Florizel would think he had agreement, not sarcasm, in mind. “Indeed, sir, Leonidas the Priest is a very holy and pious man.”

  “He certainly is,” Florizel said. “And any man dismissed from his command by Thraxton the Braggart has to have more going for him than meets the eye.”

  “Hmm. I hadn’t thought of that. You’ve got a point, your Excellency, no doubt about it,” Gremio said. That he meant. But it remained one of the all too few points in Leonidas’ favor, as far as he was concerned. The hierophant of the Lion God was a holy and pious man. As far as Gremio could see, though, neither holiness nor piety was an essential soldierly virtue. Of those virtues, Leonidas had displayed very few.

  “Thraxton was a disaster for this army-a disaster, I tell you,” Florizel said. “I do hope Count Joseph will be able to pick up the pieces and shape us into a decent fighting force once more.”

  “So do I,” Gremio said. “He’d better. If he doesn’t, this whole eastern land is lost to King Geoffrey, and I don’t see how he can hope to hold off King Avram without it.”

  “Avram is a tyrant. The gods hate him,” Florizel growled. Gremio nodded; he certainly agreed with that, and knew hardly anyone from Palmetto Province who didn’t. His home province had been the first to renounce allegiance to Avram and fall in behind Geoffrey’s banner. After a ruminative pause, Colonel Florizel continued, “But, as you say, Captain, Geoffrey does need land of which to be the king. We shall have to do everything in our power to hold back General Hesmucet, then.”

  “He’ll have more men than we do,” Gremio said gloomily. “The southrons always have more men than we do-except at the River of Death, and Count Thraxton frittered away what we won there.”

  “They may have more men, but we have better mages,” Florizel said. “We have to have strong sorcery at our disposal, for we need it to keep the serfs subdued. The southrons are a land of shopkeepers and peddlers. What need have they for the true practice of magecraft?”

  “The true practice of magecraft is a very fine and important thing,” Gremio said. “What we’ve had… Everyone denies it, but everyone knows we lost at Proselytizers’ Rise because Thraxton bungled his spells. One of them was supposed to come down on the southrons’ heads but landed on our poor men instead, and sent them running off to be shot down like partridges.”

  “I have heard that,” Florizel said. “I was not close by at the time of the battle, so I can’t testify as to its truth.”

  Gremio smiled. “Spoken like a barrister, sir.”

  “From you, Captain, I will take that for a compliment,” the regimental commander replied with a smile of his own. “There are other men, you will understand, who would use it intending something else.”

  “Yes, sir,” Gremio said resignedly. He knew people sneered at men who practiced law. He never had quite understood why. Without barristers and solicitors, how would men who disagreed solve their problems? By going to war with one another, that’s how, he thought. Some wars were necessary-this one, for example, since King Avram insisted on trampling down long-established law and custom in the northern pro
vinces. But most arguments were, or could be, settled more readily than that.

  Colonel Florizel tipped his hat and took his leave, still favoring that leg. In an odd sort of way, the wound he’d taken by the River of Death might have saved his life. Major Thersites, who’d taken over the regiment while Florizel couldn’t fight, had died on the forward slopes of Sentry Peak, vainly trying to hold back Fighting Joseph’s southrons. Florizel was a brave man. He might easily have perished there himself.

  Gremio missed Thersites even less than he missed Captain Ormerod. The major had been a swamp-country baron. He’d claimed he was a baron, at any rate, and he was a good enough man of his hands that no one ever challenged him on it. But all he’d done, besides aping and envying his betters, was criticize and carp at them. A little of that was bracing. A lot of it was like drinking vinegar all the time. Gremio wondered in which of the seven hells the unlamented Thersites’ soul currently resided.

  “Leonidas the Priest in charge of a wing again!” Gremio said-even easier and more enjoyable to resent a live man than a dead one, for a live man might yet offend afresh, where a dead man’s affronts were fixed, immutable.

  After a moment, though, Gremio shrugged. The Army of Franklin hadn’t performed noticeably better without Leonidas than it had with him. Presumably, that meant his return wouldn’t hurt the army much.

  Someone coughed behind Gremio, as if tired of waiting to be noticed. Gremio turned. “Oh. Sergeant Thisbe,” he said. “What is it?”

  The company’s first sergeant was a lean young man who, unusually for a Detinan, kept his cheeks and chin shaved smooth. Gremio approved of him; he did his job competently and without any fuss. “I was just wondering, sir,” he said now, “if the colonel had any word on when we’d be moving out of winter quarters. The sooner I can prepare the men, the better.”