Marching Through Peachtree

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Firepots kept bursting inside Marthasville, spreading destruction farther with each passing day. North of the city, southron soldiers began moving toward the west and south, aiming at completing the ring around it. With all the glideways leading into the place in southron hands, only wagons could bring in victuals through the narrowing gap in the enemy’s lines. Roast-Beef William knew all too well that wagons could not keep the Army of Franklin fed, no matter how badly its numbers had shrunk because of the recent string of lost battles.

When he said as much to Bell, the general commanding gave him a cold stare. “If your men had held at Jonestown, Lieutenant General, we would still hold a glideway with which to bring in necessities,” Bell said.

“I am sorry, sir.” Roast-Beef William did his best to hold on to his temper. “With my little force, I was a boy trying to do a man’s job. We must have been outnumbered three or four to one. No one could have held against those odds.”

“So you say now,” Bell snapped. “What it looks like to me is that your soldiers were too afraid to come out of their entrenchments and give the southrons a proper fight.”

That did it. “You may criticize me all you please,” William said, “but, sooner than criticizing the courage of my men-who are, I remind you, also your men-you would do better to look in the mirror. You were the one who sent me north to Jonestown, sure the southrons would have only a small force in the neighborhood. Your judgment there proved as wrong as most of your other judgments since taking command of this army. Sir.”

Lieutenant General Bell flushed. “You are insubordinate.”

And you are incompetent. But if Roast-Beef William said that, he would be insubordinate. A dogged sense of duty kept him from doing anything likely to get him removed from command of his wing, though escape from the Army of Franklin looked more inviting with every passing day. Without false modesty, he was sure whoever replaced him would do worse. He didn’t know how much he could help the army in its present agony, but he didn’t want to hurt it.

He said, “I told you several days ago that I did not think we could hold Marthasville. Nothing has happened since to make me change my mind. Did your correspondence with General Hesmucet bear any fruit?”

Bell flushed again. “None whatsoever,” he growled. “He does not fear the gods. He is blind to shame. He has proved himself a liar of the purest ray serene.”

He will not do what I wanted him to do: that was what Bell had to mean. Roast-Beef William had no great trouble making the translation. “That being so, sir, what’s now to be done?” he asked.

Bell’s head went back and forth, back and forth, like that of a caged animal. “I don’t know, gods damn it. I just don’t know.”

The comparison to a caged animal, unfortunately, was all too apt. “Will you lose Marthasville, sir, or will you lose Marthasville and your army?” William inquired. “That’s the only choice you have left.”

“I can’t leave Marthasville,” Bell moaned. “I don’t dare leave Marthasville. What will King Geoffrey say if I do?”

“What will the king say if you don’t?” William returned. “What will he say if you’re trapped here with your army?”

“Go away,” Bell said. “This is not a choice I have to make on the instant, and I do not intend to.”

“Yes, sir,” Roast-Beef William replied, polite again. “But don’t take too long-there, I beg you on bended knee. If the manacles close around us, I don’t think we can break free of them.”

“Go away,” Bell said again, and William went.

Men marched to and fro through the streets of Marthasville. Roast-Beef William looked on the activity as he would have looked on the thrashings of a man about to die of smallpox: they seemed dramatic, but in fact meant nothing. The man would die; the city would fall. William didn’t know when and he didn’t know how, not yet. Of the thing itself he had no doubts whatever.

He rode back to his own headquarters, which he kept as far from that of Lieutenant General Bell as he could. He still hadn’t forgiven Bell for sending him up to Jonestown without enough men to do the job required of him. Bell had thought he could not only hold the southrons but drive them back. But Hesmucet’s army had proved larger and stronger than Bell imagined.

I was the one who had to pay the price for his mistake, Roast-Beef William thought as he dismounted from his unicorn. I had to pay for it, and I got blamed for it. Otherwise, he would have had to blame himself, and it’s plain he’s not very good at that.

A couple of wizards in long blue robes came out of the house William was using and hurried up the street in the direction from which he’d come. “Where away so fast?” William called after them.

One of the mages condescended to turn around. He answered, “Lieutenant General Bell has summoned us, sir. He aims to strike yet another blow against the gods-damned southrons.”

“Does he?” Roast-Beef William said. The wizard nodded, then hustled off down the street. William started to hurl another question after him, then decided not to bother. Here, for once, he completely approved of whatever Bell tried to do. The southrons had too many men, too many engines, to make charging into battle against them a good bet. Bell had needed four stinging defeats to see as much, but Roast-Beef William was glad he finally had. In magecraft, though, where the balance of power lay wasn’t nearly so obvious.

Maybe we’ll get some good out of this, William thought. It would be nice if we got some good somewhere. We haven’t seen much lately.

All he could do was send orders to his men to keep them alert in case the southrons in front of them tried to storm Marthasville. He wasn’t sure they could hold back the southrons, but he did intend to try.

“Four lost battles,” he grumbled, though no one was listening. Even after he’d been driven out of Jonestown, Bell had struck at the southrons again, this time east of Marthasville. That hadn’t worked, either. Roast-Beef William shook his head. Bell seemed to have a hard time learning some lessons.

William braced himself for lightnings and thunderbolts and dragons in the air and all the rest of the extravagant wizardry northern mages had at their disposal. He didn’t know whether wizardry could win the day hereabouts. He did know nothing else was likely to, not for King Geoffrey’s cause.

When darkness fell at noon the next day, hope surged in Roast-Beef William. When lightnings crackled through the darkness, he sent up prayers to the Lion God and the Thunderer. When the earth trembled beneath his feet, he cried out for joy, certain the sorcerers had found ways to do what Lieutenant General Bell could not.

But the southrons didn’t flee their lines in wild disorder. They didn’t flee at all. The lightnings crackled, but few smote. The shaking earth didn’t shake their trenches to pieces and entomb the enemy soldiers in them. And the darkness that had fallen at noon lifted by half past one.

When the mages attached to Roast-Beef William’s wing returned from the headquarters of the general commanding, they were in a sad state. They all looked thinner than they had on going off to serve Lieutenant General Bell. Their robes were limp and stained with sweat; the sharp reek of fear filled William’s nostrils.

“In the name of the gods, what happened?” he demanded.

“We were beaten,” one of the wizards replied in a hollow voice. His eyes were wide and staring, as if he’d seen things men were not meant to see. “The southrons beat us at sorcery. What is the the world coming to, when such a disaster can come to pass?”

“I don’t know.” William was also troubled; if soldiers hadn’t beaten back King Avram’s armies, and if magic also looked like failing, what remained for the north? Not much. The words tolled like mourning bells inside Roast-Beef William’s mind. He asked, “What do we do now? What can we do now?”

“Sir, I don’t know,” the mage said. “I haven’t any idea. All I know is, I want to go to bed and sleep for a year. If you’ll excuse me, sir…” He staggered off, not really caring whether William excused him or not.

William knew he should have gone to see Bell again, to plan the next move for the Army of Franklin. He knew, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He might have been someone hesitating to enter a sickroom that held a loved one who would die soon-such images kept cropping up in his mind. Duty called, yes, but sometimes even duty did no good. What could he say now that hadn’t already been said? Bell knew what shape the army was in. Would he choose to let it perish? Even if he didn’t, how could he hope to save Marthasville?

As far as William could see, none of those questions had answers he cared to contemplate. What do we do? What can we do? Wait for the death, burn the body, and then try to pick up the pieces. That was all he saw ahead.

Two days later, the only thing that had changed was that the southrons were several miles closer to drawing their ring around Marthasville. Roast-Beef William had trouble caring even about that. He was sunk in such gloom when Major Zibeon came to his headquarters and said, “Lieutenant General Bell requests your presence at once, sir.”

“He does, eh?” Roast-Beef William eyed Bell’s aide-de-camp with more than a little curiosity. “What does he need me for in such a tearing hurry?”

“I couldn’t presume to say, sir,” Zibeon replied.

“No?” William doubted that (and, doubting, wished Doubting George had chosen Geoffrey over Avram). Any aide-de-camp worth his boots had a pretty good idea of what his principal was thinking. “Well, I’ll come and find out.”

“Thanks,” Zibeon said, as if Roast-Beef William were doing him a favor rather than obeying an order. William scratched his head. Bell’s dour aide-de-camp rarely wasted politeness on anyone but the commanding general, and sometimes not on him. But Zibeon went on, “Ride with me, if you care to, sir.”

“I don’t mind if I do.” Roast-Beef William gave Zibeon a quizzical look. “Are you feeling all right?”

“No,” Zibeon said, and said not another word till they got to Bell’s headquarters. Then he unbent enough to add, “You’ll see.”

What Roast-Beef William saw was that Lieutenant General Bell was smiling. He wondered how much laudanum Bell had had. He would have thought that enough to make Bell happy would also have been enough to stop Bell’s heart. But the commanding general said, “Good day, William. I am convinced we finally have the southrons where we want them.”

“Sir?” Roast-Beef William said in real astonishment.

Bell nodded. “Just so. They think to trap us here. By the gods, I shan’t allow it. We shall break out from this prison in which they seek to contain us and then strike with all our strength at the glideway line-the single glideway line-that keeps them fed and supplied. What can they do when they start to starve? Run back to Franklin with their tails between their legs, that’s what.”

“That is… a most ambitious plan, sir,” William said at last.

“But it will work!” Bell said. “Claws of the Lion God, it will work. If we can hit them one good lick…”

Slowly, Roast-Beef William nodded. Bell wasn’t thinking about abandoning Marthasville. He was thinking about attacking the enemy. As long as he thought about the attack, the abandonment wouldn’t bother him. Under other circumstances, that would have horrified Roast-Beef William. As things were, it left him more pleased than otherwise. If the Army of Franklin didn’t get out of Marthasville, before long it wouldn’t be able to get out of Marthasville.

And so, with another nod, William said, “I think you have a good plan there, sir. We should commence without delay.”

“See to it, then,” Bell said-he wasn’t, and never would be, any sort of military administrator. “Draft the necessary orders for my signature.”

“Yes, sir,” William said resignedly. I should have expected this, he thought. “I suppose you’ll want to destroy whatever supplies we can’t take with us.”

“Indeed,” Bell said, which meant he hadn’t thought of that for himself. “Take care of all the details. That’s why I rely on you.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you so much, sir.” But then Roast-Beef William shook his head. Don’t put his back up. He’s doing what needs doing. If too much of the work falls on your shoulders, then it does, that’s all.

“We’re going to make Hesmucet wish he never came so far up into Peachtree Province,” Bell declared. “He’ll rue the day-see if he doesn’t.”

And the general commanding had some chance of being right. William could see as much, see it very clearly. The odds were still long, but they were better than they would be if the Army of Franklin stayed here in Marthasville and waited for doom to fall on it. “Give me pen and paper, sir,” Roast-Beef William said. “I’ll get to work on those orders right now.”

Lieutenant General Bell laughed. “That’s the man I knew I had. The gods-damned southrons will be sorry yet.”

“Here’s hoping you’re right, sir,” William said. “Where’s that paper? I want to make sure this is done the way it ought to be.”

Gremio touched a torch to a pile of crates. As they began to burn, he said, “I wonder what’s in these.”

“Wait a while and see what they smell like,” Sergeant Thisbe suggested.

“No time,” Gremio said. “We’ve got a lot more burning to do. And do you know what else? It’s more fun than I thought it would be.”

“Fun? I don’t know about that,” Thisbe said. “What I do know is, we’ve got to do this, or else the southrons will march into Marthasville and use everything we couldn’t take with us.”

“Me, I’m just glad we’re getting out of Marthasville,” Captain Gremio said. “I thought we’d stay penned up here till the southrons took us.” He paused to set another fire.

“Sounds like Lieutenant General Bell’s got himself another idea.” Thisbe started a new fire, too. He looked at the incendiary madness all around, as Gremio was doing. “Between the southrons and us, there won’t be a whole lot of Marthasville left after all this is done.”

“Good,” Gremio said, which made the sergeant send him a startled look. He explained: “Better we don’t leave Hesmucet anything much to get his hands on.”

“Something to that, sir, I suppose,” Thisbe said, “but it’s hard, it’s mighty hard, on the people who live here.”

To the seven hells with the people who live here, Gremio thought callously. He couldn’t see that the folk of Peachtree Province or Satrap Brown had done anywhere near enough to help the Army of Franklin defend this vital town. But he didn’t say that out loud; he’d seen that Sergeant Thisbe was more inclined to give people the benefit of the doubt than he was himself unless he was paid to do so.

“Come on, you men!” Colonel Florizel boomed to the regiment as a whole. “If we’re going to deny the enemy these goods, let’s not shillyshally around. Let’s make a fire the foe will remember to the end of his days.”

Something like wonder in his voice, Thisbe said, “The colonel’s having a good time.”

“Well, why not?” said Gremio, who was having a good time himself. “Doesn’t this take you back to the days when you were a boy, starting fires and raising hells for the sport of it?”

“I hadn’t thought of it like that,” Thisbe admitted.

“You’re too responsible now, that’s why,” Gremio said. “You’re far and away the best sergeant I’ve ever known. If you’d let me put you up for a-”

“Sir, I don’t want a promotion,” Thisbe said firmly, and Gremio had to give it up again.

His long, thin face lit by the hellsish glare of burning supplies, Brigadier Alexander the Steward stalked among the men of his wing. “Hurry it up there!” Old Straight called to the soldiers. “Set the fires and then form up to move out of Marthasville. We’ve still got a hells of a lot of fighting ahead of us.”

Alexander’s tone went further to reassure Captain Gremio than any of the orders Lieutenant General Bell had given lately. Those orders, as Florizel had read them out, seemed an odd mixture of defiance and desperation. Gremio had trouble figuring out whom Bell was defying, the enemy or the gods themselves. The cause for the desperation, however, seemed obvious enough.

“Douse torches!” Colonel Florizel shouted. “Form up!”

Instead of dousing his torch, Gremio threw it onto a fire already burning. Sergeant Thisbe’s joined it a moment later. Officer and underofficer grinned at each other. Gremio called, “My company-form up!”

“Get moving!” Thisbe echoed. “You know what needs doing. Do it and don’t make a fuss about it.”

As the sun rose, the Army of Franklin marched out of Marthasville to the northwest, the only gap remaining in the line the southrons were throwing around the city. Gremio didn’t know how many men General Hesmucet had close by. That worried him. But the southrons evidently doubted they had enough for a successful attack on Bell’s army, for it escaped without incident.

Seeing land that hadn’t been fought over was something of a relief. “Pretty good country,” Colonel Florizel allowed. “Not so nice as around Karlsburg, back in Palmetto Province, but pretty good even so.”

“Yes, sir.” Gremio nodded. “But do you see how many of the serfs’ huts are standing empty? Most of the blonds have run off to the southrons.”

“Gods damn them, and gods damn that wretch of a King Avram,” Florizel said. “How are the lords around these parts going to make a crop now?”

“They probably won’t,” Gremio answered. “But I don’t think Hesmucet cares. Do you?”

“Do I care?” Florizel said-whether sardonic or obtuse, Gremio couldn’t tell. “Gods-damned right I care. This is my kingdom. Of course I care what happens to it. It’s that son of a bitch of a Hesmucet who doesn’t care.”

“Yes, sir,” Gremio said resignedly. He looked back over his shoulder at the great columns of smoke still rising from Marthasville. Either a few soldiers remained behind setting still more fires or the ones already set had spread from abandoned supplies to the city itself. Gremio wondered how hard the southrons would try to put those fires out. Not very, unless he missed his guess.

“Where do you suppose we’ll go, sir?” Sergeant Thisbe asked after they’d marched for a while.

“South, I suppose,” Gremio replied. “I don’t know just when, but I’d think we’re going to have to do that. If we strike at Hesmucet’s glideway line, maybe his army will starve and break up.”

“That would be a splendid victory,” Thisbe said.

“So it would.” Gremio didn’t tell the sergeant he found it unlikely. He found any hope of victory unlikely. Saying as much would have discouraged those who might be more optimistic, though, and so he held back. The men had enough trouble keeping their spirits up as things were.

Well before noon, southron unicorn-riders began dogging the Army of Franklin. They didn’t attack; they just hung close. Gremio waited for the aggressive Bell to order his own riders to drive them away. Those orders didn’t come. What does that mean? he wondered. Did Bell think his unicorn-riders couldn’t drive back the southrons? Or was he so desperate to get away from Marthasville that he didn’t want to waste time fighting? Whichever the answer, Gremio didn’t think it boded well for his force.

When he cautiously remarked on that, Florizel said, “I doubt the southrons will bother us much for a little while. They’ll be too busy with Marthasville, don’t you think?”

Gremio clicked his tongue between his teeth, considering. “You could well be right, sir,” he said.

“We’ve given ’em a present,” the regimental commander said. “They’ll take it. Why wouldn’t they? It’s sitting there for ’em, all sweet and juicy as a blond wench with her legs open.”

“And losing it hurts us,” Gremio added.

Colonel Florizel nodded. “And losing it hurts us,” he agreed. “We’d better cut their army off from its supplies, or Geoffrey’s badly wounded.”

“You… don’t usually talk like that, sir,” Gremio said. And the last time I talked like that, you came as near as near can be to calling me a coward. I had to try to get myself killed to make you change your mind.

“I’m not blind,” Florizel answered. “I know we needed to hold Marthasville. I know we didn’t do it. I’m not stupid, either, no matter what a highfalutin’ barrister might think.”

“Sir, I’ve never said anything of the sort,” Gremio insisted.

“I know you didn’t. I never said you did,” Florizel told him. “I said what you were thinking, and I wasn’t wrong, was I?”

He used words as precisely as if he were a barrister himself. Gremio said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir. You’ve led this regiment well, and I’ve never thought otherwise.” That was the truth, too, even if it wasn’t altogether responsive.

“You wouldn’t be breathing if you had run your mouth,” Florizel replied. Gremio looked for an answer to that, found none, and decided it might have been just as well.

As he’d expected, the Army of Franklin swung back toward the southeast, the direction of the glideway line that kept General Hesmucet and the southrons fed. The Army of Franklin was for the time being making do without a glideway line; the countryside was rich and fertile, and the soldiers had no trouble keeping themselves fed.

Juices sizzled as a fowl-a fowl that had probably belonged to a loyal northern farmer-cooked over a fire. Turning the stick that spitted the bird, Sergeant Thisbe said, “If we can feed ourselves off the country here, why can’t the southrons do the same?”

Gremio started to give that a flip answer, but stopped with the words unspoken. “Good question,” he said after a pause. “The only thing I can think of is, there are a lot more of them than there are of us. Of course, they also have a proper baggage train, and we don’t.”

“We burned ours in Marthasville,” Thisbe said.

“We can move faster without it.” Gremio put the best face on things he could.

“Yes, and we can start starving faster, too.” But Thisbe lifted the fowl from the flames. He blew on it, then drew his knife from its sheath and started carving. Handing Gremio a leg, he said, “You fancy the dark meat, don’t you?”

“Right now, I fancy anything that’ll keep my stomach from bumping up against the notches on my backbone,” Gremio answered. He ate the hot flesh, savoring the grease from the skin. Somebody else had a pot full of turnips boiling over another fire. Gremio got a tin plate piled high with them. He ate and ate, then blissfully thumped his belly. “Do you know what, Sergeant?”

“No, sir. What?” Thisbe spoke with his mouth full: he was still demolishing his plateload.

“Those turnips needed salt,” Gremio declared.

“You’re right,” Thisbe agreed. “But I’m still better with ’em than I would be without ’em.”

“Can’t quarrel with that,” Gremio said. “Can’t quarrel with anything, not any more.” He yawned. “Can’t do anything much right now except roll over and go to sleep.” He wrapped himself in his blanket-much more to hold mosquitoes at bay than to keep him warm-and did just that.

When the army started marching again the next morning, it kept on going southeast. Without a baggage train to delay it, it did move faster than the southron force. General Hesmucet didn’t seem much interested in pursuit, anyhow; maybe Marthasville was enough to satisfy him. Gremio hoped so. He’d had enough fighting against long odds to suit him for a while-for the next hundred years, come to that.

Bell passed well south of Marthasville on his way east. Gremio knew at once when the Army of Franklin returned to land that had seen war already this campaigning season. How long would the swath of war, the gouge of the Lion God’s claws, scar Peachtree Province? If not for generations, he would have been astonished.

He was astonished when Bell passed over the glideway line with no more than a few hasty spells from the sorcerers. “What’s the point of that?” he asked anyone who would listen to him. “Even southrons can put things to rights in a hurry.”

But Colonel Florizel, for once, had an answer that satisfied him: “I hear we’re heading east into Dothan to rest and refit, and then we’ll come back and hit the southrons a proper lick.”

“Gods know we could use rest and refit,” Gremio said, and the regimental commander nodded. Gremio asked, “Will we get any reinforcements? We could use them, too.” They could use them to replace the men Lieutenant General Bell had thrown away in one futile attack after another. Gremio saw no point to saying that, but he thought it very loudly.

Florizel only shook his head. “No reinforcements I’ve heard about, Captain. If we’d had more men handy, don’t you suppose they would have come into Marthasville a long time ago?”

“You’re probably right,” Gremio admitted. “But the southrons keep getting fresh men whenever they need them. It would be nice if we didn’t have to depend on the soldiers who started the war.”

That was an exaggeration, but not an enormous one. Florizel’s answering grimace showed a broken front tooth. That tooth hadn’t been broken when the war was new; Gremio would have taken oath on it. Little by little, the fighting wore the men down in all sorts of ways.

Here, though, marching was easy. Hesmucet mounted no real chase of the Army of Franklin. Maybe Marthasville had been his target all along. Or maybe… “Maybe he doesn’t think we can hurt him any more,” Gremio said once the battered army entered the province of Dothan.

“If he doesn’t, he’ll get himself a nasty surprise,” Sergeant Thisbe declared. “We’ve still got teeth, by the gods.”

Gremio nodded. Man for man, northern soldiers remained at least as formidable as their southron counterparts. Teeth, as Thisbe had said. But how strong were the jaws that held those teeth? The more Gremio thought about the state of the Army of Franklin, the closer he came to despair.

“Corporal, take up the company standard!” Lieutenant Griff commanded.

“Yes, sir!” Rollant said, and he did. Pride swelled in him till he felt about to float away like an inflated pig’s bladder. The more he thought about the state of General Hesmucet’s army, about how far they’d come and how much they’d done, the more he imagined he was on the point of floating away.

That must have shown on his face, for Smitty, grinning, asked him, “You happy, your Corporalship, sir?”

“Oh, just a little,” Rollant answered. “Yes, just a little.”

“Form up for parade,” Griff called to his men. “I don’t want anybody missing a step, not a single step, when we go through town today. Marthasville is ours, and fairly won, as General Hesmucet said in his order of the day. And I want those traitor bastards to know we aren’t just good enough to lick ’em-we can be fancier than they are, too.” Rollant nodded vigorously. He wanted to show up, to show off before, the people who had once bound him to the land. Treat me like a cow with hands, will you? You’ll see!

Horns blared. Griff started shouting again. Colonel Nahath’s order carried farther: “Forward-march!”

Forward Rollant went, holding the gold dragon on red high. The standard fluttered in the breeze. Griff nodded. “That’s good. That’s very good, Corporal. Let the folk of Marthasville see the kingdom’s true flag. They’ve looked at the reversed banner too long.”

Rollant shook the standard to display the dragon better still. He wanted the Detinans in Marthasville to get a good look at it-and at him. He strutted. He swaggered. He displayed the stripes on his left arm as best he could, so the people who’d called themselves liege lords would see what a blond could do when he got the chance.

Marching through Rising Rock the summer before had been enjoyable. Marching through Marthasville…

Lieutenant Griff chose that moment to ask him almost the same question Smitty had: “Having a good time, Corporal?”

Rollant looked around. Lining this main street were hundreds, more likely thousands, of glum-looking Detinans: women, children, and men with beards gray or white. The younger men were in false king Geoffrey’s army. Every single spectator seemed to be looking straight at him. He knew that was an illusion, but even so…

“Sir, I feel about ready to quit this world altogether,” he said.

Griff laughed out loud and slapped him on the shoulder. “I don’t blame you a bit. It must be pretty fine, getting to spit in these northerners’ eyes.”

“As a matter of fact, sir, it is.” Rollant looked at Griff with more respect than he was in the habit of giving the company commander. Griff was too young for his job, and too weedy besides, but he was plenty brave enough, and every now and then proved he wasn’t stupid, either. His remark showed more understanding of the way blonds thought than Rollant would have looked to see from any Detinan, northerner or southron.

And then the band struck up “The Battle Psalm on the Kingdom.” Rollant forgot about Griff, as he forgot about everything but that fierce, triumphant music. No one had ever accused him of singing well. No one ever would. But he was loud and enthusiastic. Past that, what really mattered? If the haughty Detinans of Marthasville didn’t care for the way he sounded, too bad for them.

Not many blonds were watching the southron soldiers tramp past. Most of them, he guessed, had already fled their liege lords and the land to which they were supposed to be bound. But the few who’d stayed behind were wildly excited now. A pretty woman, seeing Rollant’s golden hair and beard, blew him a kiss and twitched her hips in a way that could mean only one thing.

Lieutenant Griff noticed her, too. “You find her once we go into bivouac, Corporal, and you won’t sleep alone tonight.”

“I’ve got a wife, sir,” Rollant said uncomfortably. He’d been away from Norina a long time now, and missed her-missed any woman-no less than any other man, blond or Detinan, would have done.

“She’s a long way off,” Griff said.

“I couldn’t do that, sir. I wouldn’t do that,” Rollant said. “If I did that to her, why wouldn’t she do it to me?”

Griff gave him a curious look. “I wouldn’t have expected you to take your oaths so seriously.”

“Why? Because I’m a blond… sir?” Rollant could have said a great deal more than that, but not without being insubordinate.

“Well, let me put it like this,” Griff answered: “I know plenty of Detinans who don’t turn down whatever they can get, and they don’t care a curse about whether they’re married or not.”

“There are people like that,” Rollant agreed. Captain Cephas, who’d commanded the company before Griff, had been a man like that. Now he was dead, along with the blond woman who’d been his lover and her blond husband. Rollant didn’t care to bring up Cephas. He did say, “The fun they have doesn’t usually make up for the trouble they cause. That’s what I think, anyhow.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Griff said. “But not everybody thinks about trouble before he thinks about getting it in.” He didn’t mention Captain Cephas, either, but Rollant would have been surprised if he weren’t thinking about him, too.

Rollant took a look at Marthasville itself, not at the Detinans still living in it. “I can see why Bell finally left this place,” he said. “Hardly enough left of it to defend.”

“Are you sorry?” the company commander asked.

“Sorry? Me? No, sir,” Rollant answered. “But I’ll tell you something: even with Marthasville all smashed up the way it is, the Detinans are still living a lot better than they ever let their serfs live.”

“From what I’ve seen in the countryside, Corporal, I’d say you’re probably right,” Griff told him. Rollant blinked again; he wouldn’t have bet Griff noticed anything unmilitary in the countryside.

At last, the regiment tramped out of Marthasville. Hereabouts, people reckoned it a big city. Before escaping from his liege lord’s estate in Palmetto Province, Rollant would have thought it one, too. After ten years of living in New Eborac… He shook his head. As far as he was concerned, Marthasville was nothing but an overgrown town.

“We camp here,” Griff told him, pointing to a meadow next to a stand of pines.

“All right, sir,” Rollant said. “Any particular place you want me to plant the standard?”

Griff pointed to a tiny swell of ground. “How about right there?” Rollant shrugged; it seemed as good a place as any other. He stabbed the butt end of the flagpole into the brick-red-almost blood-red-dirt. That done, he took up a pinch of earth and sprinkled it at the base of the pole. Griff nodded approval. “You know all the rituals, sure enough.”

Even though you’re a blond. That had to be lurking behind his words. That lurked behind so many Detinans’ thoughts whenever they dealt with blonds. Rollant knew it would keep on lurking in Detinans’ thoughts for as long as he lived. Maybe by the time his children were grown, Detinans would be able to accept blonds as people like any others. And maybe they wouldn’t, too.

Colonel Nahath came up to the standard and spoke to Griff: “We’re going to act as provost guards in Marthasville, keep the men from tearing the place up too much and keep them from squabbling with the locals. I’m sending companies in on rotation. Yours will go in there tonight.”

“Yes, sir,” Griff said, the only thing a junior officer could say at an order from a senior. “Uh, sir, a question?” When Nahath nodded, Griff asked, “What about Rollant here and the other blonds I’ve got?”

Nahath plucked at his beard, but not for long. “They’re soldiers,” he said. “They can do a soldier’s job. If they can’t do a soldier’s job, they shouldn’t wear the uniform.” He eyed Rollant. “What do you say to that, Corporal?”

“I’ll do my best, sir,” Rollant answered. “Of course, some of the traitors won’t be used to doing what a filthy, stinking blond serf tells them to.”

“A point,” Colonel Nahath said. “Do you think you can persuade them?”

Rollant’s smile was large and predatory. “Sir, I look forward to it.”

Nahath and Griff both laughed. The regimental commander said, “Try to leave them breathing once they’re persuaded.”

“Oh, I suppose so, sir,” Rollant said, which made the two Detinan officers laugh again. Rollant asked, “May I pick a partner, sir?”

At the serious question, the colonel and lieutenant looked at each other. “Well, that’s probably not a bad notion. You should have someone you can trust at your back,” Nahath said. Rollant gave him a grateful nod. At least Nahath recognized he couldn’t trust all Detinans at his back.

“Why me?” Smitty asked as they walked back toward Marthasville together. “What did I do to you?”

“Saved my neck a few times,” Rollant answered. “Maybe you’ll do it again.”

“After you hauled me off to go patrolling?” Smitty shook his head. “Not gods-damned likely, pal. I could be asleep right now.”

“Thanks, Smitty. You’re a true friend.” Rollant thought-he was almost sure-the farmer’s son from outside New Eborac City was joking. Smitty cracked wise about anything and everything. But a bit of doubt still lingered. Would Smitty have said the same sorts of things had Sergeant Joram plucked him into duty? Knowing Smitty, he likely would, Rollant thought, and relaxed a bit.

Marthasville looked bigger when he came into it as part of a two-man patrol and without an army at his back. Torches blazed in front of every surviving business. Eateries and taverns and brothels looked to be thriving, with long lines of men in gray snaking forward in front of the latter. The women inside those places were almost sure to be blonds. Rollant shook his head and did his best not to think about that.

A Detinan in civilian clothes stared at him and Smitty. “You think you’re a soldier, butter-hair?” he asked Rollant. His accent proclaimed him a local.

“No,” Rollant answered. “I know I’m a soldier. I’ve been through the war, and that’s a hells of a lot more than you can say.”

Even by the torchlight, he saw the northerner flush. “You ought to be unicornwhipped, talking to your betters like that.”

“Get lost, traitor. If you don’t get lost, you’ll be sorry.” That wasn’t Rollant; it was Smitty.

The northerner swore at him: “Gods-damned son of a bitch, you’re the traitor-a traitor to the Detinan race.”

“You’d better get lost,” Smitty said, “or we’ll run you in.”

“I’d like to see you try,” the northern man said.

Rollant didn’t need a second invitation. He jerked his shortsword from its scabbard. Smitty’s came free, too. “Come along, or you’ll be sorry,” Rollant said. He took a step toward the man from Marthasville.

Not till the fellow’s hands writhed in his first pass did Rollant realize he might have made a mistake. Not till his own feet seemed to freeze to the dirt of the street did he realize he might have made a very bad mistake. Laughing, the local said, “If you’re going to net a dragon, you had best think on where you’ll find a net to hold him.”

Smitty seemed stuck, too. He howled curses. Laughing still, the man-the mage-from Marthasville drew a knife and advanced on them. “In King Avram’s name, let us go!” Rollant exclaimed.

And he could move again.

The mage hadn’t let him go, or Smitty, either. When they did move, the fellow’s jaw dropped. He tried his enchantment once more; it did him no good. He tried to flee, but Rollant and Smitty were younger and faster. Rollant brought him down with a ferocious flying tackle. “Cut the bastard’s throat,” Smitty urged. “He’s dangerous.”

Rollant shook his head. “We’ll hogtie him and give him to the provost marshal,” he said. “Practicing magic against us? They’ll make him wish we’d cut his throat.” He and Smitty bound the northerner hand and foot, threw his knife in the gutter, and hauled him away.

After they’d handed him over to higher authority, Smitty said, “You called on King Avram, and that freed us from the spell.”

“I thought the same thing,” Rollant said. “What do you suppose it means?”

“It means King Avram, gods bless him, has a powerful name, that’s what,” Smitty said.

“That powerful?” Rollant asked.

“Well, I wouldn’t have thought so, either,” Smitty said. “But you saw what happened, same as I did. That stinking wizard had us in trouble.” Rollant shivered. The wizard had had them in a lot of trouble. Smitty went on, “Then you spoke the king’s name, and we were all right again. Good thing, too.”

“Yes, a very good thing,” Rollant agreed. “Now we know King Avram is someone very special indeed.” He frowned; that didn’t get his meaning across so well as he would have liked. He tried again: “We knew it before, but now we know it.” His frown got deeper. That still wasn’t right.

Or maybe it was. Smitty said, “We know it in our bellies, you mean.”

“Yes!” Rollant said gratefully. And, knowing it in his belly, he got through the rest of the patrol without trouble. By then, he wanted a chance to use Avram’s name again. As he went back to camp, though, he decided he might have been lucky not to get one.

Jim the Haystack, the burgomaster of Marthasville, stared nervously at General Hesmucet. “You can’t mean that,” he said.

“Of course I can,” Hesmucet said, watching with a certain fascination the ugly wig that probably gave Jim his nickname. “I am in the habit of meaning what I say. I usually do, and this is no exception.”

“But you can’t burn Marthasville!” Jim the Haystack wailed. That dreadful wig seemed about ready to topple over sideways in his discomfiture. He looked like a man who needed to run to the latrine.

None of that mattered to Hesmucet. “I not only can, sir, I intend to,” he said. “I cannot stay here, not while Lieutenant General Bell is running around loose and making a nuisance of himself. If I left the place intact, you traitors would go on getting use from it. I can’t have that, not when I’ve come all the way up from Franklin to take it away from you. And so I’ll give it to the fire.”

“I know your mind and time are constantly occupied with the duties of your command,” Jim the Haystack said, wig nodding above his forehead. “But it might be that you have not considered this subject in all its awful consequences.”

“I believe I have,” Hesmucet said.

As if he hadn’t spoken, the burgomaster went on, “On more reflection, you, I hope, would not make the people of Marthasville an exception to all mankind, for I know of no such instance ever having occurred-surely never in Detina-and what has this helpless people done, that they should be driven from their homes, to wander strangers and outcasts, and exiles? I solemnly petition you to reconsider this order, or modify it, and suffer this unfortunate people to remain at home, and enjoy what little means they have.”

“Very pretty, sir, but no.” Hesmucet shook his head. “I give full credit to your statements of the distress that will be occasioned, and yet shall not revoke my orders.”

“In the names of the gods, why?” Jim the Haystack howled.

“Because they were not designed to meet the humanities of the case, but to prepare for future struggles,” Hesmucet answered. “We must have peace, not only at Marthasville, but in all Detina. To stop war, we must defeat the traitor armies which are arrayed against the laws and the rightful king.”

“He is not the rightful king,” Jim the Haystack said. “He is a low-down thief.”

“Well, that is your opinion. I have a different one,” Hesmucet told him. “Now that war comes home to you, you feel very different. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our kingdom deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. But you cannot have peace and a division of our kingdom.”

“You have the soldiers here,” Jim the Haystack said bitterly, “so you will do as pleases you best. But I still think it is barbarous, truly barbarous, to send the whole of the population of Marthasville off to fend for itself as best it may.”

“I believe you. I appreciate that you are sincere, and that burning this town will work a hardship on the people who live here,” Hesmucet replied. “But winning the war comes first. I also doubt that, earlier in the war, you lost any sleep or shed a single tear when the armies that follow false King Geoffrey made loyal civilians-men, women, and children-flee them, barefoot and in rags, down in Franklin and Cloviston.”

Jim the Haystack looked at him as if he’d suddenly started speaking gibberish. No, the burgomaster cared for nothing but his own people and his own side. That didn’t surprise General Hesmucet, but it did sadden him. Jim only said, “Have you no mercy? Have you no compassion?”

“None, not when there’s a war to be won,” Hesmucet said. “And that, sir, is about all the time I have to give you. You have made your views very plain. Now let me make one thing very plain to you. If any men of Marthasville attempt to interfere with my soldiers in the performance of their duties, I will show exactly how little mercy I have. If you think being dispossessed works a hardship on your population, opposing me will work a much greater one. Do you understand?”

“Perfectly,” the burgomaster replied. “You are saying you not only are a barbarian, but are proud to be one.” Hesmucet stared at him, unblinking. Jim the Haystack flinched. He said, “I will take your words to the honest citizens of the town I govern.”

“Take my words to the sons of bitches, too,” Hesmucet said. “I expect they’re the ones who really need to hear them. Good day, sir.”

Wig still nodding shakily above his brow, Jim the Haystack departed. Once he was gone, Hesmucet allowed himself the luxury of a chuckle. He called for a runner and asked him to summon Doubting George. He was still chuckling when his second-in-command arrived.

“What’s so funny, sir?” George asked.

“The arrogance of some of these northern men, who think they can turn me from my course even after their army has lost battle after battle,” Hesmucet answered. He explained what the burgomaster of Marthasville had tried to talk him into, or rather, out of, doing.

Doubting George shook his head. “Some people don’t understand the way the world is put together,” he said sadly. “Of course, you could say the whole north doesn’t understand the way the world works. If it did, it never would have tried to leave Detina.”

“You’re right about that,” Hesmucet said. “We’re bigger than they are and stronger than they are, and we’re beating them down. That burgomaster didn’t care what his side’s soldiers did farther south, and he never expected to see us come this far north.”

“What Geoffrey calls his kingdom has a miserable scrawny body, but a head full of fire,” George said. “Plenty of fine officers to lead the men, but they have a hard time keeping them in food and shoes and clothes.”

“I like the figure,” Hesmucet said. “We southrons, we’ve had a big, strong body with a head full of rocks. But the north will never be anything but scrawny, no matter how fiery its head gets. And our head can get a little fire of its own.”

“Just so,” George agreed. “You and Marshal Bart have gone a long way towards proving that. You’ve whipped the Army of Franklin, and Bart’s got the Army of Southern Parthenia penned up north of Nonesuch.”

“Only trouble here is, Bell doesn’t know he’s whipped, gods damn him,” Hesmucet said. “He keeps wanting to make trouble.”

“People who want to make trouble find themselves in it more often than not,” George observed. “I don’t think Bell will be different from any of the rest.”

“I intend to go after him,” Hesmucet said. “He thinks he can give us fits by cutting the glideway link from Rising Rock. I don’t think he can do it for long, but even if he does, what difference will it make? His gods-damned army’s living off the countryside now. Does he think we can’t do the same?”

“If he does, he’s a fool,” Doubting George said. “Of course, nothing much he’s done in this campaign would make me believe he’s not a fool.”

“I’m going ahead with things just as planned,” Hesmucet said. “We chase the people out of Marthasville, we burn the place, we leave a garrison behind to hold the ruins and keep the traitors from getting any more glideway carpets through, and then we go after the Army of Franklin.”

“Sounds good to me, sir,” George said.

The only people to whom it didn’t sound good were the inhabitants of Marthasville. Their opinions mattered not at all to General Hesmucet. They cursed and reviled him as his provost guards routed them from their homes. “You may stay if you like,” he said cheerfully. “You’ll go up in smoke, but you may stay. I won’t stop you, but I sure as hells will burn you.”

They cursed him harder than ever after that, but not a one of them stayed to burn with the city. He’d expected nothing different.

The stink of smoke still lingered in the air from the time when Bell’s men had fired whatever they couldn’t bring with them. “I bet the traitors had a roaring good time burning things,” Hesmucet told one incendiary. “But we’ll have a better one, on account of this whole stinking town goes up now.”

Go up Marthasville did. Hesmucet’s soldiers spread cooking oil and whale oil all through the city before starting their blazes. That made the fires flare up even hotter and brighter when the men did set them. Hesmucet took off his hat and fanned his face with it, but the heat still made drops of sweat run down his cheeks.

Not far from him, a northern woman cried out in despair: “Traa! I’ve got to get back to Traa!”

“Oh, shut up, you stupid bitch,” said the handsome man with jug-handle ears next to her. “The southrons burned that place weeks ago.”

“You go to the hells, Thert the Butler!” the woman said furiously. “I’ll build it up again, you see if I don’t.”

“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a-” Thert answered, and then howled, because she kicked him in the shin.

“Move along, both of you!” a provost guard shouted. “Move along right now.” He was a blond. Not only that, Hesmucet saw, he was a corporal. If the northern man noticed that, he wouldn’t like it at all. But he seemed more interested in quarreling with the woman than in arguing with the provost guard.

As the flames took hold and spread, the provost guards stopped having to order people to abandon the burning Marthasville. No one could stay in or close to those flames and hope to live. Hesmucet, no coward, had to retreat himself. He watched the fires from a distance of several hundred yards.

Not far from him, an artist sketched the scene. Hesmucet nodded approval. “You get it down just the way it looks,” he said. “I want people to remember this for the next hundred and fifty years.”

“That’s what I’m doing, sir,” the artist said. “Let people see what they get for rebelling against the rightful king.”

“Good,” Hesmucet said. “People should see such things. They should know what treason costs. If the gods be kind, we’ll never have to fight another war like this in all the history of the kingdom.”

“That’s what I’m hoping for, sir,” the artist said. “You’ve certainly set the scene for me, I will say that.”

“No, indeed.” Hesmucet shook his head. “The men who followed false King Geoffrey into betrayal set this scene for you. If not for them, Marthasville would still be a thriving northern town.”

“Yes, sir.” The artist nodded vigorously. “Instead, they’ve got-this.” He held up the sketch so Hesmucet could get a good look at it. The flames from the burning city gave the commanding general plenty of light.

“Good job,” he said. “Gods-damned good job. Let it be a warning to those who talk of treason and rebellion. We ought to be fighting out on the eastern steppes, driving back the blond savages who’ve caused us so much trouble over the years. That’s what we ought to be doing, not squabbling amongst ourselves. Geoffrey’s treason has cost us years-years, I tell you-in which we could have been bringing this whole great land under Detinan rule.”

“Can’t turn blonds into serfs any more,” the artist said, perhaps incautiously.

But General Hesmucet, in an expansive mood, shrugged instead of snarling. “Those savages wouldn’t make good serfs anyway,” he said. “They don’t bend, the way the blonds in the kingdoms of the northeast did hundreds of years ago. They break instead. They’re brave men; I don’t deny it-they might almost be Detinans, as far as that goes. But we will break them, and sweep them off the land, and use it for our own purposes.” He might almost have been talking of breaking so many untamed unicorns.

The artist nodded again and returned to his work. I’d better do the same, Hesmucet thought. He shouted for his unicorn. When he’d swung up onto the beast, he rode rapidly up toward the head of his army. Every few hundred yards, the marching men in gray tunics and pantaloons would raise a cheer. Each time they did, Hesmucet took off his hat and waved it. Every cheer made him feel as good as if he’d just had a strong slug of spirits.

“Are we going to lick these stinking northern sons of bitches?” he called to the men as he took his place at the fore.

“Yes, sir!” the soldiers shouted, and raised another cheer.

“Are we going to make them sorry they ever tried to pull out of Detina?”

“Yes, sir!” The yells came louder than ever.

“Are we going to make them wish gods-damned Geoffrey’s father had pulled out of his mother?”

“Yes, sir!” This time, bawdy laughter mixed with the soldiers’ replies.

“All right, then,” Hesmucet said. “We are the meanest, toughest bunch of soldiers the Kingdom of Detina has ever seen. We have licked the traitors, and we’re going to go right on licking them, and there isn’t one single gods-damned thing they can do about it. And what do you think of that?”

By their yells and whoops, the men liked the idea. Hesmucet liked it, too. But there was one thing the northerners might do, and he knew it. If they did cut the supply line back to Rising Rock and keep it cut, his life would get harder. Have to make sure they don’t keep it cut, then, he thought, and hoped he could manage that.

Horns blared, all through the camp of the Army of Franklin. “Forward!” Colonel Florizel shouted.

“Forward!” Captain Gremio echoed. Forward the men of his company, Florizel’s regiment, and the whole Army of Franklin went, west out of Dothan and back into Peachtree Province once more. Lieutenant General Bell had grit, if nothing else. And a few days to rest and recuperate, a few days away from the hells Marthasville had become, did wonders for the army. By the way they marched, the men once more believed they could lick any number of southrons on the face of the earth.

Gremio wasn’t so sure they were right. But now they weren’t pinned in the city. Now they could pick where along Hesmucet’s tenuous supply line they attacked. The supply line surely had more weaknesses than the army did.

It had better have more weaknesses than the southron army did, Gremio thought. If it doesn’t, we won’t be able to hurt it. And if we can’t hurt it, we-and Geoffrey’s kingdom-are in a lot of trouble.

Sergeant Thisbe tramped along beside Gremio, never complaining, always competent. Catching the company commander’s eye on him, he nodded and said, “We’ll give it our best shot, sir.”

“I know we will,” Gremio answered. “That’s what we have to do. Uh, one of the things we have to do,” he amended. Remembering one of the other things the Army of Franklin had to do these days, he raised his voice to a shout: “Foragers out to the flanks! Move, move, move!”

Move the men did, many of them with grins on their faces. The Army of Franklin had no formal supply train, not any more. The southrons had closed all the glideway lines into Marthasville, and east of the city those were few and far between. If the army was to survive, it had to live off the countryside. The men had done that plenty of times in enemy-held territory, less often in land nominally ruled by King Geoffrey. But necessity made a stronger law than any of the ones Gremio had argued in the lawcourts. The soldiers took what they needed, and worried not at all about it.

“A good thing this is rich country,” Thisbe remarked as the foragers went a-scrounging. “We’d be hungry if it weren’t.”

“True enough,” Gremio said. “Good for us-but it’s also good for the southrons. Even if we do cut them off from their base of supply, they may well be able to live off the country, too. I worry about that.”

“Do you really think they can forage as well as we can, sir?” Thisbe asked.

Gremio laughed. “I’d have to doubt that,” he admitted. “We’ve got the best collection of thieves left uncrucified running around loose in this army. They’ll nab anything that isn’t nailed down, and they’ll try to pry up the nails if it is. I’m proud of them, by the gods.”

“Where exactly are we headed for?” Thisbe said.

With another laugh-a sardonic one this time-Gremio answered, “What, you think they tell me anything?” He raised his voice again, this time to call to Colonel Florizel: “Sir, where are we going?”

“Back to Whole Mackerel, from what I hear,” Florizel replied from unicornback. “The southrons have a supply base there. If we take it away from them, we live high on the hog for a while, and they don’t.”

“Sounds good to me.” Gremio imagined plundering a southron supply base. His mouth watered at the thought of it. But food wouldn’t be the only thing there. He thought of shoes and pantaloons and medicines and all the other things that kept an army going and that were in sadly short supply in the north.

A farmer wailed as foragers took his livestock. “You bastards are nothing but a pack of brigands!” he wailed. “Might as well have the gods-damned southrons here instead.”

“You will be compensated for your loss,” Gremio said. He pulled a scrap of paper and a pencil from a pantaloon pocket. “Let me have your name and what was taken from you. I will write you a receipt.”

“A receipt? A gods-damned receipt?” the farmer shouted. “Who in the hells is going to pay me for whatever’s wrote on a stinking receipt?” Every use of the word seemed filled with greater scorn.

“King Geoffrey’s government will, sir, after the war is won,” Gremio answered.

Snatching the paper form his hand, the farmer tore it to shreds and flung those shreds to the breeze. “Bugger King Geoffrey’s government with a pine cone!” he cried. “The son-of-a-bitching thing’s gonna be as dead as shoe leather when the war’s over. Why in the hells didn’t I get southrons stealing from me? Their receipts’d be worth something later on, I reckon.”

“Be careful how you speak,” Gremio said coldly. “You tread close to treason.”

“Futter you, too, pal,” the farmer said. “I talk like a free Detinan, on account of I gods-damned well am one. If you don’t like it, too bad. You think we’ve got a chance of winning against King Avram’s bastards? You got to be crazy if you do, and you don’t look like no crazy man to me.” He stormed off, still cursing.

Captain Gremio stared after him. He didn’t think he was a crazy man, and he didn’t think it likely King Geoffrey’s men could beat King Avram’s. After more than three years of war, that seemed a very forlorn hope indeed. Why go on fighting, then? he wondered.

He shrugged. The Army of Franklin wasn’t beaten yet. As long as Lieutenant General Bell could still strike the encroaching southrons, the northern cause wasn’t lost. We have to keep trying, Gremio thought. As long as we keep trying, something good may happen. If we give up, it surely won’t.

Was that reason enough? Gremio shrugged again. He didn’t know. He did know some detachments of provost marshals were crucifying deserters. That was another good reason to stay on.

General Hesmucet’s men had unicorn-riders patrolling well east of the glideway line. Gremio got only a glimpse of them as they rode off to the west to let the main body of southrons know they’d spotted the Army of Franklin. He sighed. “I wish we could have taken Whole Mackerel by surprise.”

“When the southrons came at it, they came at it from out of the east, and now we’re doing the same thing,” Sergeant Thisbe said. “That’s strange.”

“I hadn’t thought about it like that, but you’re right,” Gremio said. “One thing: the foraging won’t be so good from here on out. The southrons will have been there before us. We’ll just have to run them out of the place and take away all the food they’ve stored up in town.”

He made it sound very easy. If fighting the southrons were easy, though, Bell would have done better all through this campaign. Of course, Hesmucet had always had the advantage of numbers. He wouldn’t here. Gremio didn’t know how big the garrison at Whole Mackerel was, but it couldn’t hope to match the whole Army of Franklin. The rest of Hesmucet’s army would still be up near Marthasville.

That meant… “We’d better move fast,” Gremio said. “We have to take the town before they can reinforce it.”

“That makes good sense, sir,” Sergeant Thisbe agreed.

It might have made good sense to them. It didn’t seem to have crossed Bell’s mind. He paused to camp for the night about five miles outside of Whole Mackerel. “We ought to keep going,” Gremio said discontentedly.

“I’m pleased to see your spirit,” Colonel Florizel told him. “Still and all, though, we’ll do better going in fresh and well rested.”

“True, sir,” Gremio said. “But the southrons will have all night to get ready for us, and that won’t help our attack.”

“You really are bolder than you were,” Florizel said. “You can’t attack by yourself, though.”

Gremio didn’t think he was any bolder than he’d ever been. He was just quibbling over tactics, as he often did. When he complained because he thought Bell was charging ahead when he shouldn’t, Florizel reckoned him a coward. He’d been right then, but it hadn’t done any good. Now he thought Bell was hanging back when he ought to go on. That made the regimental commander happier, but it also wouldn’t change anything else.

Maybe I ought to keep my mouth shut, Gremio thought. For a Detinan, and especially for a Detinan barrister, that was a very strange notion indeed.

Horns blared before daybreak the next morning, ordering the northern army into line of battle. “We’ll do the best we can, and we’ll strike the enemy a strong blow for King Geoffrey,” Gremio told his men. They raised a cheer.

“And we’ll steal all the good food and the crossbow quarrels the stinking southrons have fetched up here to Whole Mackerel from Rising Rock,” Sergeant Thisbe added. “We’ll eat like nobles, and we’ll shoot like we’ve got repeating crossbows.”

The soldiers in blue cheered louder for Thisbe than they had for Gremio. “Well said, Sergeant,” Gremio told him. “You got a better rein on what makes them go than I did.”

“Thank you very much, sir,” Thisbe said. “Trying to put in a little extra, that’s all.”

“You did splendidly,” Gremio said. “You should speak up more often.”

Before Thisbe could answer, the horns screamed again, this time ordering the Army of Franklin forward against the southrons’ entrenchments in front of Whole Mackerel. They tried ours and didn’t like them very well, Gremio thought. Why should we have an easier time with theirs?

Some of the entrenchments the northerners would be assailing were the ones their serfs had dug a few months earlier. Now King Avram’s gray-clad soldiers held them. And those men in gray seemed no more inclined to give them up than the Army of Franklin had been earlier in the year.

“Only a piddly little garrison in front of us, boys,” Colonel Florizel boomed. “They’ll run like rabbits, the gods-damned sons of bitches.”

Roaring as if possessed by the Lion God, the northerners swarmed toward the easternmost trenches. Even before they came into range, firepots and stones flew through the air. Repeating crossbows began their harsh clack-clack-clack. No, the southrons weren’t about to give up and go away.

But Florizel had been right. Yes, the southrons had men in their forward trenches and engines behind them, but they didn’t have very many men or very many engines. Lieutenant General Bell’s men pelted them with bolts and stones and firepots of their own. Before long, the southrons fell back towards Whole Mackerel, the artificers in charge of their engines hitching those to teams of unicorns and hauling them away to keep them from being captured.

“Forward!” Gremio called. “We’ve got to keep pushing them, not let them rally. Keep moving!”

When they came to the southrons’ second line of trenches, another storm of missiles greeted them. Looking ahead, Gremio saw that the enemy’s main lines of defense didn’t guard the town of Whole Mackerel itself, but rather the nearby supply depot. Sure enough, they knew what Bell wanted.

Roaring and shouting, the Army of Franklin bore down on those works. Now the southrons had no room for retreat, not unless they wanted to give up what their foes so desperately needed to take. They had to fight.

They had to-and they did. They had a great many more engines in amongst these fieldworks than they’d used farther forward. Stones and firepots and darts took a heavy toll on the northerners. The southrons whooped and cheered to watch their foes fall.

“Keep moving, men!” Gremio shouted again. “Look, there on that parapet-that’s got to be their commander. If we can kill him, maybe we’ll suck the spirit out of them.”

That wasn’t sporting. It wasn’t chivalrous. A man of noble blood probably never would have said anything so crude. None of that stopped Gremio from thinking he’d had a good idea there. His men did, too. So did the crews of a nearby battery of engines. They started aiming at the black-haired officer waving a sword, too.

A moment later, he clapped a hand to his cheek and tumbled off the parapet. Gremio and everyone close by raised a cheer. “Forward!” he yelled. “Now let’s see how tough those bastards are!”

He soon found out how tough their commander was. The man reappeared inside of a couple of minutes. He was even easier to spot than he had been before-a bloody bandage covered half his face. Gremio could hear his shouts through the din of battle: “We can whip these bastards! Who the hells do they think they are, coming around to bother honest people? Give ’em a good kick in the arse and throw ’em back!”

And the southrons obeyed. They fought with a stubborn, stolid courage different from the incandescent northern variety but no less effective for that. Some of their outer entrenchments fell to the Army of Franklin, but only after they were filled with dead men wearing tunics and pantaloons both blue and gray. And the northerners didn’t come close to overrunning the supply depot, though they fought all day.

Towards evening, Bell ordered a withdrawal. Colonel Florizel put the best face on things he could: “Well, boys, we’ll hit ’em another lick tomorrow, and then we’ll whip ’em for sure.”

“What if the southrons send up reinforcements by then?” Gremio asked.

Florizel started to say something harsh, but checked himself. “No, you were all for forging ahead,” he reminded himself. “In that case, Captain, we don’t have such an easy time of it. Satisfied?” Gremio nodded, though that wasn’t the word he would have used.