Sentry Peak wotp-1 Page 3

  Sergeant Joram strutted up in front of the men. “Let’s go!” he boomed. “Next stop is Rising Rock.” Rollant cheered at that. So did most of the soldiers with him. They all knew Geoffrey and his forces couldn’t afford to lose the town. They all knew he couldn’t keep it, either, not with the small army he had there. Joram went on, “Any traitors get in our way, we smash ’em into the mud and march over ’em. That’s all I’ve got to say about that.”

  More cheers rose. Rollant yelled till his throat hurt. The chance to smash the men who’d mistreated him was all he wanted. He’d dreamt of revenge for years, ever since he fled the north for New Eborac. In a way, he was almost grateful to Geoffrey and the other high lords who were trying to carve their own kingdom from the flesh of Detina. If they hadn’t, he might never have got the chance to hit back.

  Thin in the distance, trumpets blared at the head of the column. As with an uncoiling snake beginning to crawl, that head began to move before the tail. Rollant’s company was somewhere near the middle. He breathed the dust the men ahead of him kicked up marching along the dirt road, and his feet and his comrades’ raised more dust for the men behind them. His toes wiggled inside his stout marching boots. He’d rarely worn boots, or shoes of any kind, on Baron Ormerod’s estate near Karlsburg.

  Through the haze of reddish dust, Sentry Peak punctuated the skyline to the northwest. Most of the countryside hereabouts was pretty flat; were it otherwise, Sentry Peak would have been named Sentry Knob or some such, or perhaps wouldn’t have been named at all. Rising Rock lay by the foot of the mountain. West of Rising Rock swelled the lower elevation of Proselytizers’ Rise, named after the bold souls who’d preached about their gods when Detina was first being colonized from the west. Rollant’s early relatives hadn’t cared to listen; they’d had gods of their own, and the proselytizers had got no farther than the rise.

  Rollant knew the names of the gods his forefathers had worshiped, and some of their attributes. He believed in them, but didn’t worship them himself. The settlers’ gods had proved themselves stronger.

  And so has our southron army, he thought. Most of the war had been fought in the traitors’ lands. They’d mounted a couple of invasions of the south, but had been beaten back each time. When Rising Rock fell, they’d be driven out of Franklin altogether. Rollant’s hands tightened on the crossbow he carried. He wanted the northern nobles to pay for everything they’d done.

  Where was his own liege lord? Somewhere in one of Geoffrey’s armies-Rollant was sure of that. Baron Ormerod wouldn’t be a great marshal; he hadn’t owned estates wide enough for that, and he was no mighty mage. But he was convinced the gods said he had the right to keep serfs on the land whether they wanted to stay there or not.

  A farmer looked up from the field he was cultivating as Rollant’s company marched past. He was old and stooped with endless years of labor; otherwise he probably would have been fighting for Geoffrey, too. Shaking his fist at the men in gray, he shouted, “By the seven hells, why don’t you sons of bitches get on home and leave us alone? We never done nothing to you.”

  Rollant pushed his way to the edge of the company so the farmer could see him. “Say that again!” he called to the northern man. “Go ahead-try and make me believe it. I could use a good laugh.”

  “You!” The fellow shook his fist again. “Wasn’t for your kind, we wouldn’t have no trouble. I hope the Lion God bites your balls off, you stinking runaway.”

  Rollant started to bring up his bow and pull back the string, then checked himself and laughed instead. “What’s funny?” Smitty asked him. “Nobody would’ve blamed you for shooting that bugger.”

  “I was just thinking-he hasn’t got any serfs of his own,” Rollant answered. “He couldn’t dream of a farm big enough to work with serfs. Look at his homespun tunic. Look at those miserable pantaloons-out at the knees, a patch on the arse. But he thinks he’s a duke because his hair is brown.”

  “A lot of these northerners think like that,” Smitty said. “If they didn’t, Grand Duke Geoffrey would have to fight the war by himself, because nobody would follow him.”

  “Conquerors,” Rollant muttered darkly. His own people had had real kingdoms in the north when the Detinans landed on the coast. They’d had bronze spearheads and ass-drawn chariots-which hadn’t kept them from going down to defeat before the iron-armored, unicorn-riding invaders, whose magecraft had proved more potent, too. In the south, blonds had been thinner on the ground, and more easily and thoroughly caught up in the kingdom that grew around them.

  Such musings vanished from his head when a troop of unicorns ridden by men in blue burst out of the pine woods behind the farmer’s fields and thundered toward his company. “Geoffrey!” the riders roared as their mounts galloped over and doubtless ruined the crops of the northerner with the ragged pantaloons and the lordly attitude.

  General Guildenstern’s army had unicorn-riders, too. They were supposed to keep enemy cavalry off King Avram’s footsoldiers. But Geoffrey’s riders had proved better all through the war. They looked likely to be better here, for no gray-clad men on unicornback were in position to get between them and Rollant and his companions.

  “In line to the right flank! Two ranks!” shouted Captain Cephas, the company commander. “Shoot as you find your mark-no time for volleys.”

  Close by, another officer was yelling, “Pikemen forward! Hurry, curse you! Get in front of those unicorns!”

  The pikemen did hurry. But the troop of riders had chosen their moment well. Rollant could see that the pikemen wouldn’t get there fast enough.

  Because he’d gone over to the side of the road to shout at the farmer, he was among the crossbowmen closest to the on-thundering unicorns. That put him in the first rank. He dropped to one knee so his comrades in the second rank could shoot over him. Then it was the drill swearing sergeants had pounded into him: yank back the crossbow string, lay the quarrel in the groove, bring the weapon to his shoulder, aim along the two iron studs set into the stock, pull the trigger.

  The crossbow bucked against his shoulder. Other triggers all around him clicked, too. A unicorn crashed to the ground. Another fell over it, sending its rider flying. A northerner threw up his hands and slid off his mount’s tail, thudding to the ground as bonelessly as a sack of lentils. A wounded unicorn screamed and reared.

  But most of the troop came on. They smashed past the pikemen before the wall of spearheads could fully form. Rollant had time for only two shots before he had to throw down his crossbow and snatch out his sword. He might not be very good with it, but if it wouldn’t save his life, nothing would.

  A unicorn’s horn spitted the crossbowman beside him. The fellow on the unicorn slashed at Rollant with his saber. Rollant got his own sword up just in time to turn the blow. Sparks flew as iron belled off iron. The unicorn pressed on. When the northerner slashed again, it was at someone else. He laid a crossbowman’s face open, and shouted in triumph as the fellow shrieked.

  Rollant stabbed the unicorn in the hindquarters. Its scream was shrill as a woman’s. It reared, blood pouring from the wound. While the rider, taken by surprise, tried to fight it back under control, Rollant stabbed him, too, in the thigh. More blood spurted, astonishingly red. Rollant could smell the blood. That iron stink put him in mind of butchering day on Ormerod’s estate. The rider bellowed like a just-castrated bullock. Then a pikeman ran up and thrust him through from behind. Ever so slowly, he toppled from his mount.

  Surviving northerners broke free of the press and galloped away. King Avram’s unicorns came up just in time to chase them as they went. Smitty said, “They paid a price today, by the gods.” He had a cut over one eye, and didn’t seem to know it.

  “That they did.” Rollant rammed his shortsword into the ground to clean off the blood. Baron Ormerod had always screamed at his serfs to take care of their-his-ironmongery. Rollant looked at the bodies strewn like broken dolls, and at the groaning wounded helped by their comrades and by the heale
rs. Even as he watched, a healer cut the throat of a southron too terribly gashed and torn to hope to recover. “They paid a price, sure enough,” Rollant said. “But so did we.”

  * * *

  General James of Broadpath was a belted earl. The northern noble needed a good deal of belt to span his own circumference, and had to ride a unicorn that would otherwise have made a career of hauling great jars of wine from hither to yon. Despite his girth, though, he’d proved a gifted soldier; few of the commanders who fought under the Duke of Arlington had done more to keep Avram’s larger host from rampaging through the province of Parthenia and laying siege to Nonesuch, the town in which Grand Duke Geoffrey-no, King Geoffrey-had established his capital.

  With a little more luck, James thought, just a little more, mind you, we would have been laying siege to Georgetown, and hanging Avram from the flagpole in front of the Black Palace. We came close. Sighing, he stroked his beard, which spilled in curly dark ringlets halfway down his broad chest. Close counted even less in war than any other time.

  Now the struggle in Parthenia seemed stalemated. However much mead the southron commander swilled, he’d beaten back Edward of Arlington’s invasion of the south and followed him into Geoffrey’s territory when he had to retreat. Neither army, at the moment, was up to doing much.

  Which meant… Earl James studied the map pinned down to the folding table in his silk pavilion. He rumbled something down deep in his chest. His beard and soup-strainer mustache so muffled it, even he couldn’t make out the words. That might have been just as well.

  He shook his head. He knew better. And what he knew had to be said, however unpalatable it might prove when it came out in the open.

  Muttering still, he left the tent and stepped out into the full muggy heat of late summer in Parthenia. He’d known worse-he’d been born farther north, in Palmetto Province-but that didn’t mean he enjoyed this. No one of his build could possibly enjoy summer in Parthenia.

  The sentries in front of Duke Edward’s pavilion (rather plainer than James’; Edward cared little about comfort, while the Earl of Broadpath relished it) stiffened into upright immobility when they saw James drawing near. Returning their salutes, he asked, “Is the duke in?”

  “Yes, your Excellency,” they chorused. One ducked into the pavilion. He returned a moment later, followed by Duke Edward.

  James came to attention and tried to make his chest stick out farther than his belly-a losing effort. Saluting, he said, “Good evening, sir.”

  “And a good evening to you as well, your Excellency,” Edward of Arlington replied. In his youth, he was said to have been the handsomest man in Detina. These days, his neat white beard proved him nearer sixty than fifty, but he remained a striking figure: tall and straight and, unlike Earl James of Broadpath, slim. “What can I do for you today?”

  “Your Grace, I’ve been looking at the map,” James said.

  Duke Edward nodded. “Always a commendable exercise.” Back in the days before war broke Detina in two, he’d headed the officers’ collegium at Annasville for a time. Even before then, he’d been known as a soldier who fought with his head as well as his heart. Now he went on, “Perhaps you’ll come in with me and show me what you’ve seen.”

  “Thank you, sir. I was hoping to do just that,” James said. Duke Edward held the tentflap wide for him with his own hands-till one of the sentries, scandalized that he should do such menial service, took the cloth from him. Grunting a little, James bent at what had been his waist and ducked his way into the pavilion.

  A couple of rock-oil lamps burned within, one by Edward’s table, the other next to his iron-framed camp bed. The stink of the oil made James’ nostrils twitch. The sight of the camp bed made him wince. He wouldn’t have cared to try to sleep in anything so… uncompromising. Not for the first time, Duke Edward put him in mind of a military saint: not a common breed in Detinan history. James, never modest about his own achievements, reckoned himself a pretty fair soldier, but he was willing to admit sainthood beyond him.

  Putting on a pair of gold-framed spectacles, Edward said, “And what have you seen, your Excellency? I presume it pertains to our army?”

  “Well, no, sir, or not directly,” Earl James answered, and his superior raised a curious eyebrow, inviting him to continue. He did: “I don’t expect we’ll be doing much fighting here in southern Parthenia for the rest of this campaigning season.”

  “That has something to do with what the mead-swiller who commands Avram’s army has in mind,” Edward observed, “but, on the whole, I believe you are likely to prove correct. What of it?”

  “We’re hard pressed in the east, your Grace,” James said. “By all reports, Count Thraxton will have to fall back from Rising Rock, and that’s a heavy loss. We’ve already lost Wesleyton, and Ramblerton and Luxor fell early in the war. Without any toehold at all in the province of Franklin, how can we hope to win?”

  “Sometimes the gods give us difficulties to see how we surmount them,” Duke Edward said.

  As far as James was concerned, that was more pious than helpful. He said, “By himself, I don’t see how Thraxton can surmount this difficulty. He hasn’t got enough men to hope to beat General Guildenstern. Who was it who said the gods love the big battalions? Some foreigner or other.”

  “A gloomy maxim, and one we have done our best to disprove here in Parthenia-but, I fear, one with some truth in it even so,” the duke said. “Do you have in mind some way to get around it?”

  “I hope so, sir,” James replied. “If you could send my army and me to the east, we would be enough to bring Count Thraxton up close to even in numbers with the accursed southrons. If we match them in numbers, we can beat them on the battlefield.” He spoke with great conviction.

  Duke Edward frowned-and, in frowning, did indeed look a great deal like a sorrowing saint. “I should hate to weaken the Army of Southern Parthenia to the extent you suggest. If that mead-swiller should bestir himself, we’d be hard pressed to stand against him.”

  “I do understand that, your Grace,” James of Broadpath persisted. “But he seems content to stay where he is for the time being, while Guildenstern presses Thraxton hard. If he weren’t pressing the Braggart hard, our army wouldn’t have to pull out of Rising Rock.”

  Edward of Arlington’s frown deepened. Maybe he didn’t care to hear Count Thraxton’s nickname spoken openly. Or maybe, and perhaps more likely, he just wasn’t used to anyone presuming to disagree with him. King Geoffrey was admired in the northern realm. Duke Edward was admired, loved, almost worshiped. Had he wanted the crown, he could have had it. He’d never shown the least interest. Even Geoffrey, who mistrusted his own shadow, trusted Edward.

  Earl James trusted Edward, too. But he didn’t believe Edward was always right. Usually-no doubt of that. But not always.

  “Holding our army between the southrons and Nonesuch is the most important thing we can do,” Edward said.

  Most of the duke’s subordinates would have given up in the face of such a flat statement. James, perhaps, had a larger notion of his own self-worth. Or perhaps he’d simply spent too long brooding over the maps in his own pavilion. He stuck out his chins and said, “Your Grace, we can lose the war here in Parthenia, yes. But we can also lose it in the east. If Franklin falls, if the southrons flood through the gaps in the mountains and storm up through Peachtree Province toward Marthasville-well, how do we go on with them in our heartland?”

  “Surely Count Thraxton’s men and his magecraft may be relied upon to prevent any such disaster,” Duke Edward said stiffly.

  “If Count Thraxton were as fine a soldier as the king thinks he is, if he were as fine a wizard as he thinks he is, he wouldn’t be falling back into Peachtree Province now,” James replied. “He’d have Guildenstern on the run instead.”

  One of Edward’s gray eyebrows rose again. “It would appear you are determined to do this thing, your Excellency.”

  “I am, your Grace,” James said.

>   “You do realize that, even if you were sent to the east, you would serve under Count Thraxton, he being of higher rank than you,” Edward said.

  You would serve under the man you’ve just called a blunderer, was what he meant, though he was too gracious to say any such thing. James of Broadpath sighed. “The good of the kingdom comes first,” he declared. “It is my duty” -my accursed, unpleasant duty - “to serve its needs before mine.”

  And there, for the first time in the conversation, he touched a chord with Duke Edward, who bowed to him and said, “Duty is the sublimest word in Detinan. You cannot do more than your duty. Prepare a memorial proposing this move, and I shall submit it to his Majesty with the recommendation that it be approved.”

  “Thank you, your Grace,” James replied, bowing in return. He wondered why he was thanking the duke. Serving under Edward was sometimes humbling but more often a pleasure and always an education. Serving under Thraxton, by everything James had heard, was an invitation to an apoplexy. Hesitantly, he said, “Tell me it isn’t true, sir, that Count Thraxton once picked a quarrel with himself.”

  “I believe that, as regimental quartermaster, he refused to issue himself something to which, as company commander, he believed himself entitled,” Edward said-which meant it was true.

  James grimaced. “I wish the king would have found someone, anyone, else to command our armies in the east. Thraxton… is not a lucky man.”

  “He is the man we have,” Duke Edward replied. “As I told you, he is the man under whom you will serve if your army fares east. Bear that in mind, your Excellency. Also bear in mind that, from all reports, Count Thraxton requires prompt, unquestioning obedience from those under his command.”

  “I understand, your Grace,” James said. Unquestioning obedience didn’t come easy to him. The duke had to know as much; James had never been afraid to tell him he was wrong when he believed that to be so. And James had been right a couple of times, too. If the charge hadn’t gone up that hill by Essoville in the face of massed stone- and dart-throwers and whole brigades of crossbowmen sheltered behind stone walls… It had been grand. It had been glorious. It had also been a gruesome disaster. James had warned it would be. Duke Edward had thought one more push would carry the day against the southrons. If it had… But it hadn’t.