Marching Through Peachtree

XI

Lieutenant General Bell glowered at his scryer. “You’re sure you intercepted the southrons’ message?”

“As sure as I’m standing here before you, sir,” the scryer answered. “They might as well have been talking right into my crystal ball instead of Brigadier Murray the Coarse talking to General Hesmucet. Murray, he said, `I am short of a cheekbone, and one ear, but am able to whip all hells yet.’ And Hesmucet, he answered, `Hold the fort! I am coming!’ He was up near Commissioner Mountain then, sir, so I reckon he could come pretty gods-damned quick.”

“To the hells with him,” Bell said furiously. He could hear the moans of the wounded in his encampment here. He knew he wouldn’t be able to rouse his army to another attack before morning, and also knew morning was all too likely to be too late. Whole Mackerel had held.

Laudanum, he thought, and took a swig. The pain in his ruined arm and missing leg diminished. He could even look at the pain in his spirit with more detachment, which was really why he’d gulped down the drug. But that pain wouldn’t die, not altogether. He’d needed a win over the southrons and, yet again, he hadn’t got it.

“Anything else, sir?” the scryer asked.

“No,” Lieutenant General Bell answered. “Just pick up your crystal ball and get the hells out of here.” The scryer did.

Major Zibeon came into Bell’s tent a moment later. “You put a flea in his ear,” Bell’s dour aide-de-camp remarked. “What did he have to say?”

“That the stinking southrons are on their way here,” Bell answered. “We’ve wounded the commander here at Whole Mackerel, but he thinks he can hold out till Hesmucet arrives.”

“He’s likely right, especially if Hesmucet marches his men through the night,” Zibeon said, which was exactly what Bell didn’t want to hear. His own description of the words that had passed between Murray the Coarse and Hesmucet made them seem bloodless, businesslike. The scryer’s version hadn’t been like that. Both southron officers had sounded more than confident. That worried Bell as nothing else had. Zibeon grimaced, then asked, “Can we face the whole southron army?”

“No,” Bell answered. “No, gods damn it, we can’t.” He hated nothing more than admitting that. King Geoffrey had put him in command of the Army of Franklin to whip the southrons and to hold Marthasville. He hadn’t managed either. He didn’t like having to confront his limits and those of his army.

“What do we do, then, sir?” his aide-de-camp asked.

“We fall back,” Bell answered-strange and unnatural words to find in his mouth. They tasted bad, too, but he saw the need for them. “We fall back, and we try to hit that gods-damned glideway line somewhere else.”

To his surprise, Major Zibeon nodded. “Not bad, sir,” he said judiciously. “Even if we don’t wreck it, how much can Hesmucet do if he’s chasing us over the landscape where we’ve already fought? And he’ll have to chase us, too, on account of this army is still too big to ignore.”

Bell didn’t care for the sound of that still. Zibeon might as well have said, This is what’s left after you went and made a hash of things. But he nodded because, tone aside, his aide-de-camp had the essence of his plan down. “That’s right, Major. If Hesmucet is such a great hero, let’s see him catch us when we don’t feel like getting caught.”

Zibeon chuckled. “The southrons won’t like that.”

“Futter the southrons!” Bell exclaimed. “If they think I’m going to dry up and blow away because they squeezed me out of Marthasville, they can think again. They’ll have to work to drag us down.”

“I think that’s good, sir. I think that’s very good,” Major Zibeon said. “If the gods favor us, we may even be able to sneak back into Marthasville again.”

“That would be very fine.” Bell started to perk up, but then slumped again. “It would be very fine, I mean, but there’s not much left of Marthasville any more. Place isn’t worth having, not for anybody. And gods damn Hesmucet for that, too, along with everything else.”

“They will. I have no doubt of it.” Zibeon spoke with great conviction. “But we’d better do something to him in this world, too.”

“Draft the order for our move to the south, then,” Lieutenant General Bell said. “If he wants us, he’ll have to pin us down. And do you know what, Major? I don’t think the southrons can do it.”

“Yes, sir,” his aide-de-camp said. “And no, sir, I don’t don’t think they can pin us down, either.”

When morning came, a red-dust haze in the north warned that the southrons were approaching fast. Grunting and cursing and half blind with pain in spite of a new dose of laudanum, Bell clambered aboard his unicorn. Major Zibeon made him fast to the animal like a man lashing a sack of lentils to an ass’ back. And then, just before he was about to lead the army south, he had an idea. Calling the mages together, he asked them, “Can you make the southrons think we’ve gone east instead?”

They looked at each other: sad-faced men in blue robes, some afoot, others riding asses. The next mage Bell saw aboard a unicorn would be the first. He could manage, without one leg and with only one working arm. As for them… He shrugged, which also hurt. They could work magic-when things went well.

At last, one of them said, “I think we can, sir-for a while, anyway. Sooner or later, though, they’ll realize they’ve been following a will o’ the wisp.”

“Buy us as much time as you can,” Bell said. The mages nodded mournfully.

Bell did lead the Army of Franklin south then. He kept looking back over his good shoulder to see how close the southrons were getting. Looking back wasn’t easy, not when the dust of thousands of marching feet obscured his view. After a while, though, he did spy what looked to be just as much dust rising from the east. He hoped the mages would remember to mask the dust his army was actually making. He almost sent a rider back to remind them to be sure of that, but at the last minute checked himself. Mages had their pride, too.

A unicorn-rider from his own rear guard came trotting up to him. Saluting, the man said, “Sir, looks like the stinking southrons have swung off to the east. They aren’t coming right after us, anyways.”

“Good,” Bell said. Something had gone right, then. He made a noise halfway between a sigh and a groan. Not too many things had gone right for the Army of Franklin lately. To be relieved because the enemy’s pursuit had been drawn off was… Pitiful was the word that sprang to mind.

Another rider approached him. He eyed Roast-Beef William with more suspicion than he had the courier. Roast-Beef William hungered for his command, just as he’d hungered for it when Joseph the Gamecock had it. Was William writing letters to King Geoffrey? He’d better not be, Bell thought.

“What now?” he growled, his voice rough and edgy.

“I was going to ask you the same question, sir,” his wing commander replied. “I understand we can’t hope to hold our position with so many southrons coming after us, but where do we go from here?”

“Someplace with good foraging, from which we can strike a blow at the glideway up from Rising Rock, or at a detachment of southrons if they give us the chance,” Bell answered. There had been a time when the Army of Franklin could have stood up to the whole southron host-before it lost four expensive battles in a row outside Marthasville. Bell tried not to dwell on that.

“Sooner or later, the whole southron army will come after us,” William said.

“Later,” Bell told him, and explained what the mages were doing.

Roast-Beef William’s big head bobbed up and down. “That’s good, sir, but it won’t last forever. And the southrons are hard to fool the same way twice.”

“We’ve bought some time now.” Bell had never been a man to look to the far future. It would take care of itself. The problem right at hand always seemed more important. Without solving it, he couldn’t get to the far future, anyhow.

“Do you think the southrons are after us with their whole force?” William asked.

“Seemed that way, gods damn them,” Bell said. “Let them come. They aren’t going to accomplish anything that way.”

“Not unless they crush us,” Roast-Beef William said. But then, almost reluctantly, he nodded again. “We’re lighter and quicker than they are, no doubt.”

“Even so,” Bell said. “Any man who knows me knows I hate retreat to the very marrow of my bones-but there are times when it is needful, and this is one of those times.”

“Yes, sir,” Roast-Beef William said, and then muttered something under his breath.

“What was that?” Lieutenant General Bell asked sharply.

“Nothing, sir,” his wing commander answered. Bell glared at him. William looked back, stolid and innocent. Bell couldn’t press any more. What he thought he’d heard was, That’s what Joseph the Gamecock kept saying.

It wasn’t quite insubordination, but it came close. As far as Bell could see, the two cases were as different as chalk and cheese. Retreat seemed Joseph’s natural state. He fell back because he dared not face the foe, or so Bell was convinced. He himself, on the other hand, moved away from the southrons only because they so dreadfully outnumbered him. They hadn’t outnumbered Joseph to anywhere near the same extent.

Why the southrons now outnumbered the Army of Franklin so much more than they had when Joseph the Gamecock commanded it was something Bell stubbornly refused to contemplate.

As Bell and the Army of Franklin moved south and east, the general commanding had no trouble telling where General Hesmucet’s army had gone earlier in the summer and where the land had not seen the red-hot rake of war. Earthworks and field fortifications scarred the ground where Hesmucet’s men had moved. One wheatfield had entrenchments in three sides of a square dug through the middle of it. What the farmer would be able to do about that, Bell couldn’t imagine.

Farmhouses were burnt, barns and serfs’ huts razed. Of livestock and blonds in the region where Hesmucet’s men had gone, Bell saw next to none. Half a mile away from the southrons’ path, cows and sheep and unicorns grazed, though he still noted hardly any blonds. “Bastards,” he muttered, not knowing himself whether he meant Hesmucet’s men or the serfs who fled to them.

A little before noon, one of his wizards came up to him and said, “I’m sorry, sir, but their sorcerers just penetrated our spell of deception.”

“Well, gods damn them to the seven hells,” Bell said. But it scarcely counted as an outburst; he’d expected that news for a couple of hours. He gave the mage a grudging nod. “You did the best you could.”

“Why, thank you, sir!” The man sounded not only relieved but astonished. He must have looked for a firepot to come down on his head.

Bell condescended to explain: “You bought us more time that I thought you would. We’ve got away clean now.”

“Ah.” The mage nodded, with luck in wisdom. He gave Bell a salute that would have disgusted any sergeant ever born. “Happy to be of service, sir.” He saluted again, even more disreputably than before, and went off to rejoin his comrades in wizardry.

I take it back, Bell thought. I do know one mage who rides a unicorn-Thraxton the Braggart. The lines furrowing his brow, for once, had nothing to do with pain. Thraxton was a mighty sorcerer, no doubt about it-and the Army of Franklin would have ended up better off if he’d never cast a single spell, no doubt about that, either. If a man is an ass, who cares whether he rides a unicorn?

What would Thraxton have done with the Army of Franklin, had King Geoffrey given it back to him instead of to Bell? Something unfortunate-Bell was sure of that. Again, what he’d done to the Army of Franklin himself never crossed his mind. The men let me down. He was sure of it.

We’ll smash up the glideway line. We’ll cut Hesmucet off from all his supplies, Bell thought. We’ll see how much the soft southrons like living off the land. We’ll see how well they fight when they’re hungry and short of everything, the way we always are.

He had visions of Hesmucet’s men stumbling across the plains of Peachtree Province with hollow eyes and bony fingers, moaning for a crust of bread. On the other side of the Western Ocean, Great King Kermit’s army had all but come to pieces when it had to retreat from Pahzbull in the middle of a hellsish winter. That was more than fifty years ago now, but people still told stories about it.

Liking the vision in his own mind, Bell offered it to his aide-de-camp. Major Zibeon chewed it over, then said, “That would be very nice, sir-now which gods are going to supply the Sorbian winter here in Peachtree Province?”

Bell’s ears heated. Zibeon had been polite in calling him a fool, but he’d called him a fool nonetheless. “We can still whip them,” Bell growled.

“I hope you’re right. I even think you’re right, sir,” Zibeon said. “But I don’t see southron soldiers starving in the snow, not hereabouts.”

“What precisely do you see, Major?” Bell’s tone was certainly cold enough for a Sorbian winter.

“Right now, I see that we’ve stolen a march on the enemy,” Zibeon replied. “I see that we’d better take advantage of it, too.” And not even Lieutenant General Bell could argue with him there.

Rollant sprawled down by a campfire with a groan. “I’m sick of marching,” he said. “I don’t like it even when we’re going where we’re supposed to. When it turns out we spent the first half of the day going in the wrong gods-damned direction… I don’t fancy that a bit.”

Smitty was every bit as worn as he was, but managed a weary grin. “You go tell that to General Hesmucet, Rollant,” he said. “He’s bound to listen to you, right? After all, you’re not just anybody. You’re a corporal.”

“And you’re an idiot,” Rollant said. Smitty gave an extravagant wave of the hand, as if accepting praise far beyond his deserts.

Sergeant Joram tramped past. “Get water, Rollant,” he said.

Before Rollant had been promoted, that would have meant his going down to the closest creek with the squad’s water bottles. But, now that he was an underofficer, he got to tell other soldiers to go instead. But picked a couple who hadn’t had the duty for a little while: “Gleb, you and Josh take care of it.”

Josh groaned as he got to his feet, but didn’t argue. Gleb said, “I don’t want to do it. You had me do it a few days ago.”

“Yes, and it’s your turn again,” Rollant said. “We’ve been through everybody else in the squad since then. Go on. Get moving.”

Gleb shook his head. “Hells of a note when a blond thinks he can tell a real Detinan what to do.”

Ice and fire ran through Rollant. He hadn’t had much of that trouble-less than he’d expected-till now. Maybe he could head it off here. Tapping the stripes on his sleeve, he said, “It isn’t a blond telling you what to do, Gleb. It’s a corporal telling you. Now go fill our water bottles.”

“No,” Gleb said.

“He can put you on report, Gleb,” one of the other soldiers said. “Go on.”

“He can kiss my arse, that’s what he can do, gods-damned yellow-haired son of a bitch,” Gleb said, and stayed where he was.

Rollant did think about reporting him. But there was authority, and then there was authority. He sighed. He might have known this day was coming. Lieutenant Griff and Colonel Nahath had expected it sooner. Well, it was here now. He put down his crossbow, unbuckled his sword belt, and laid the shortsword by the bow. “Get up, Gleb,” he said.

“My, my,” the Detinan said as he got to his feet. He also undid his sword belt. “Think you’re hot stuff, don’t you, on account of you got yourself promoted? Well, I’ll tell you something, blond boy-that doesn’t mean a thing to me.”

“You talk too much.” Rollant’s heart thudded in his chest. He didn’t know if he could take Gleb. If he couldn’t, he doubted he’d ever be able to give another order again. But he surely wouldn’t be able to if he let the Detinan get away with disobeying.

He’d hoped Gleb would surge forward without any thought at all. No such luck-the soldier advanced cautiously, eyes wary, arms outstretched. Rollant threw a looping left. Gleb ducked under it and laughed scornfully. He dug a fist into Rollant’s ribs. “Oof!” Rollant said, and took a couple of stumbling steps backward.

Gleb laughed. “You’re not so fornicating tough, are you? I’m going to like stomping the shit out of you, you bet.”

The right Rollant threw was even wilder than the left had been. And it served its purpose: to persuade Gleb Rollant had no real stomach for a standup fight. With a nasty chuckle, Gleb closed on him.

Rollant slid a foot behind the Detinan and pushed, hard. Gleb let out a startled squawk. But, as he was falling, he grabbed Rollant and pulled him down, too. Everything till then had gone just as Rollant planned it. After that, the fight stopped having a plan. It was punch and gouge and kick and knee and elbow. Gleb’s teeth snapped shut an inch away from Rollant’s ear. He didn’t know whether that was because the Detinan was trying to bite him or because he’d just landed a good one to the pit of Gleb’s stomach. He couldn’t stop and ask, either.

Gleb hit him in the side of the head. He saw stars. But the Detinan howled and clutched at his own right hand. Rollant landed a blizzard of punches and brought his knee up between Gleb’s legs. Gleb let out a bubbling shriek. Rollant scrambled to his feet and kicked the Detinan several times. “Had enough?” he got out through bruised lips.

Gleb nodded. Rollant kicked him again, maybe hard enough to break a rib or two, maybe not. He didn’t want Gleb thinking he’d almost won and trying for another installment.

Something like that was on Gleb’s mind. “Wasn’t for your gods-damned hard head-” he mumbled.

That got him another kick. Once more, Rollant didn’t know if he’d broken the other man’s ribs, but he didn’t think he’d missed by much if he hadn’t. He stood over Gleb, breathing hard. “Get up,” he growled. Gleb stared at him out of one eye; the other was swollen shut. “Get up, you son of a bitch,” Rollant repeated. “You’re gods-damned well going to get your arse down to the creek and fill our water bottles.”

He waited. If Gleb said he couldn’t, he’d be even sorrier than he was already. Slowly, the Detinan struggled to his feet and started collecting water bottles. “Yes, Corporal,” he said mushily as he headed for the stream with Josh, who’d waited to see what happened. When he spat, he spat red.

So did Rollant. He ran his tongue over his teeth. He didn’t think he’d broken any. That was something. He looked at the other soldiers in his squad. Nobody said anything. He gestured. “Go on. Get back to setting up camp. It’s finished.” They all but fell over one another as they scrambled to obey.

Later that evening, Sergeant Joram came by, looked at Rollant, did a double take, and looked again. “By the gods, what happened to you?”

“Nothing,” Rollant answered, as a toddler might after breaking a vase.

Joram snorted. “Nothing, eh? I see that. Was it the kind of nothing I’d guess first time out?” Rollant only shrugged, which hurt. The sergeant tried another question: “What happened to the other fellow?”

“Nothing,” Rollant said again, but he couldn’t help adding, “Maybe a little more nothing than happened to me.”

“That a fact?” Joram said. Rollant nodded. That also hurt. Joram grunted. “Well, too bad for him and good for you. He decide he didn’t like the color of your hair?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sergeant,” Rollant said.

Joram made as if to clap him on the shoulder, then thought better of it. “All right,” he said. “Sounds like you took care of it, and that’s what counts.”

When Rollant called for men to put more wood on the fire or for any of the other small chores that needed doing, they kept on springing to obey. Maybe I should have fights more often. Then he shook his head, which also hurt. He’d come too close to losing this one. Now, if the gods were kind, he wouldn’t have to have any more. I’d sooner fight the traitors anyhow.

Once, not long before he lay down and went to sleep, he caught Gleb looking at him. The Detinan’s gaze flinched away when Rollant’s met it. Gleb, Rollant was happy to see, looked a good deal worse for wear than he did himself. And, by the way Gleb kept nursing that finger, he might really have broken it against Rollant’s head. Rollant felt not the least bit sorry for him.

Lieutenant Griff didn’t notice either Rollant or Gleb till morning. As Joram had the night before, he gaped at Rollant’s battered features. “With whom did you fight, Corporal?” he asked.

“Me, sir? I walked into a tree,” Rollant said woodenly.

“You look like you walked into a grinding mill,” Griff said, and then shouted, “Company-form up!”

The men obeyed. Griff stalked among them till he came to Gleb. “And what’s your excuse, soldier?” he demanded, his high, thin voice getting higher with suspicion.

“I fell down, sir,” Gleb answered, which was true, though he’d had help from Rollant.

Griff studied him. Now that his bruises had had time to appear, he looked ghastly. I suppose I do, too, Rollant thought. Griff said, “If you fall down again, you’ll be very sorry. Do you understand me?”

“I’m already sorry, sir,” Gleb mumbled.

“You’ll be even sorrier. So will anyone else who tries falling down that particular way.” Lieutenant Griff was growing up. He made the threat sound much more convincing than he could have when he first took over the company.

Rollant paid his ritual respects to the company standard and took the flagpole from the ground. Leaning the pole against his shoulder meant leaning it against a bruise. Gods damn you, Gleb, he thought as the regiment started after the Army of Franklin.

“What do you think of this whole business, Corporal?” Griff asked him.

“Me, sir?” Rollant said. “I think it’d be a good thing if we took the real path the traitors are using, instead of letting their mages trick us again.”

“I think so, too, but that isn’t what I was talking about,” the company commander said. “Don’t toy with me. I won’t stand for it.”

“Sorry, sir,” said Rollant, who was anything but sorry. Reluctantly, he went on, “I wish it hadn’t happened, that’s all. I hope it won’t happen again.”

“Not likely, not the way Gleb looks,” Griff said.

Rollant was moderately-more than moderately-grateful that Lieutenant Griff said nothing about the way he looked himself. He said, “Sir, the only way I would’ve lost that fight was if he killed me. I couldn’t afford to.”

Griff nodded. “I understand how you might feel that way.”

Did he? Rollant had as many doubts as Doubting George. Griff was a Detinan. How could he knew how desperate a blond might get in a kingdom where everything was stacked against him? Simple-he couldn’t. If he thought he could, he was imagining things.

“Still and all, though, Corporal, if you have cases of insubordination, you should bring them before me, just as I would bring them before Colonel Nahath,” Griff said.

“Yes, sir,” Rollant said resignedly. No, the lieutenant didn’t understand. Gleb hadn’t been insubordinate because he didn’t want to obey a corporal. He’d been insubordinate because he didn’t want to obey a blond, which wasn’t the same thing at all. The man inside the uniform had been more important than the stripes on the tunic’s sleeve. A corporal could appeal to the army’s disciplinary mechanism without losing face. A blond… Rollant shook his head. He’d had to fight that battle by himself. Now that he’d fought and won it, maybe he wouldn’t have to do it again. He’d proved his point, or so he hoped.

Shouts rose from up ahead. Rollant peered through the dust the men in front of him had kicked up, but he could not see much. “What’s going on?” Griff called, along with a good many other officers back in the middle of the army.

The answer took a while to reach Griff. At last, somebody said, “Our unicorn-riders are skirmishing with the traitors up at the front of the force. It’s nothing, really.”

It couldn’t have been anything much, or they would have got orders to deploy from column into line of battle. Rollant was as well pleased to keep marching, even if it was through land where he’d fought earlier in the summer. “Sir,” he asked, “what happens if the northerners do wreck our glideway line?”

“Not much,” Griff answered. “For one thing, this country is a forager’s dream. And, for another, we’ve got awfully good at repairing whatever damage they can do, and almost as fast as they can do it. So don’t worry your head about that.”

“All right, sir-I won’t,” Rollant said. Maybe Griff was patronizing him, saying that, as a blond, he was too ignorant-or perhaps just too stupid-to understand grand strategy. At another time, a time when his bruises didn’t hurt so much, he might have been offended. Now he just shrugged. Offended or not, quarreling with his company commander didn’t pay.

Before long, horn calls did summon the army to form line of battle. Rollant waved the company standard overhead so his comrades could go into line behind him. One more chance for the traitors to shoot me, he thought. But he wore a corporal’s stripes and drew a corporal’s pay precisely because he gave them that chance whenever his regiment went into action.

Then the horns rang out again, returning the force to column for marching. “That’s good,” Smitty said. “That’s very good. Somebody up there’s really clever.”

“Could you do better?” Rollant asked.

Brash as any Detinan, Smitty answered, “I couldn’t do a hells of a lot worse, could I?” Detinans always thought they could handle anything. Sometimes they were right, sometimes-more often, from everything Rollant had seen-wrong. But they never lacked for confidence.

“I wonder what happened up ahead,” Rollant said.

“What do you want to bet they ran away from us?” Smitty said.

“I wouldn’t touch that,” Rollant said. “I’ve got better things to do with my silver than giving it to you.”

“Since when?” Smitty said. “Name two. It’s not even like you sit around throwing dice all night long or spend it on loose women.”

“I’ve got a wife,” Rollant said stiffly, as he had to Griff in Marthasville.

“Hasn’t stopped a lot of people I know of, from General Guildenstern on down.” Smitty chuckled fondly. “He’d screw anything that moved, he would.”

“All I want to do is go home again and be with the woman I belong with,” Rollant said. In fact, that wasn’t quite true. What he wanted to do… But I haven’t done it, he thought, and then, Gods, I hope this war ends soon.

Roast-Beef William saluted Lieutenant General Bell. “Reporting as ordered, sir,” he said.

Bell returned the salute. His right arm still worked. It was one of the few pieces of him that did. Including his brain, William thought sourly. But King Geoffrey had named Bell to command the Army of Franklin, and so William-who prided himself on being known as Old Reliable-was duty-bound to obey him. No matter how much I want to do something-anything-else. Bell said. “I am going to use your wing as our rear guard, to hold off the gods-damned southrons as we move south.”

“Yes, sir,” Roast-Beef William said resignedly. “I hope you bear in mind the pounding we took at Jonestown.”

“I do,” Bell said. “All parts of the army suffered heavily around Marthasville, as I’m sure you know.”

And whose fault is that? William wondered. He thought of Joseph the Gamecock, who’d gone into retirement up in Dicon. What was Joseph saying about Geoffrey and Bell and about the way the army had been handled since his own departure? Nothing good-William was sure of that. Of course, considering everything that had happened since, nothing good deserved to be said.

“You will, I presume, perform the duties required of you?” Bell asked, an edge to his voice.

“Yes, sir,” William said. “Of course I will, sir. I hope we don’t need to do a whole lot of fighting, though.”

Bell sneered. “Haven’t got the stomach for it?”

“Haven’t got the men for it,” Roast-Beef William said. “Sir.” He turned on his heel and strode out of the farmhouse Bell was using for his headquarters. By the gods, he thought, for a couple of coppers I’d… He shook his head. Such thoughts about a superior officer would only land him in trouble. I’ve got to get away from this army. Enough is enough. Too much, in fact.

He shook his head again, trying to clear it. As if I’m not in trouble already. As if the whole army isn’t in trouble already. To the hells with me if I know whatBell’s doing. Rear guard? Where are we going? What will we do when we get there? He had no real answers. He didn’t think Bell had real answers, either, except letting Hesmucet chase after him for as long as the southron commander would.

The sun was setting, but enough light remained to let Roast-Beef William take a long look to the north. No sign of Hesmucet’s force at the moment. Maybe the Army of Franklin could keep on outrunning the southrons, but how much good would that do overall? Not a great deal, as far as William could see.

“Halt!” an alert sentry called. “Advance and be recognized.”

“I’m Lieutenant General William,” William said, moving slowly to keep from alarming the man and perhaps ending up with a crossbow quarrel between the ribs. “Do you recognize me?”

“Uh, yes, sir,” the sentry said. “Sorry, sir.”

“Don’t be,” Roast-Beef William said. “You should stay alert.”

“Well, yes, sir,” the man said. “But I shouldn’t come close to putting a hole in one of our generals, either. That wouldn’t be so good.”

“If you think I’m going to quarrel with you, soldier, you’d better think again,” William said, and the sentry laughed. William wasn’t so sure it was funny. For one thing, both sides had lost officers because their own men had shot them. For another, he couldn’t escape the nagging feeling that the Army of Franklin might be improved if a couple of its officers suffered such accidents. Thoughts like that bordered on mutiny. They were not the sort of ideas that should have been going through the mind of a man known as Old Reliable.

Roast-Beef William couldn’t drive them out of his head even so. If that wasn’t a telling measure of the state to which the Army of Franklin had fallen, he couldn’t imagine what would be. Maybe I should start writing letters. Anywhere would be better than here.

“Where will we be going now, sir?” the sentry asked.

“South, for the army as a whole,” William answered. “My wing will serve as rear guard.”

“Can the southrons catch up to us?” The sentry sounded interested and curious, not anxious and afraid.

That only shows he doesn’t understand the state we’re in, Roast-Beef William thought. As wing commander, he himself understood it altogether too well. If only King Geoffrey had put me in Joseph the Gamecock’s place once he decided he couldn’t stand leaving Joseph in command. By all the gods and goddesses, I couldn’t have done worse thanBell did.

But Bell looked like the Lion God and fought like a tiger, always hitting the enemy with everything he had. In Geoffrey’s eyes, those attributes counted for more than reliability. And so I kept right on being a wing commander, and so we lost a third of the army, and we lost Marthasville, and we took a couple of long steps toward losing the war.

“We’ll lick ’em, won’t we, sir?” The sentry sounded as if he had no doubt of it.

“We’re doing everything we can,” William answered. “If we can get astride the glideway line and cut it, the southrons may yet come to grief.”

“We’ll do it,” the sentry said.

And, more than a little to Roast-Beef William’s surprise, they did do it a couple of days later. A few miles south of Fat Mama, the Army of Franklin swarmed athwart the glideway line. William formed up his men facing north, to hold off Hesmucet’s southrons while mages disrupted the delicate spells without which glideway carpets would have done just as well in somebody’s parlor.

With no sign of the southrons anywhere close by, Roast-Beef William rode back perhaps a quarter of a mile to watch the wizards at work. The men in blue robes looked as weary as the soldiers guarding them. Almost, Roast-Beef William wished Thraxton the Braggart were back with the army. Almost. It wasn’t so much that Thraxton, like Bell, had led the Army of Franklin into disasters. That Thraxton was so gods-damned disagreeable while doing it counted for more. He’d proved that being a powerful mage wasn’t the same as being a successful one-proved it over and over, in fact.

The wizards chanted and made their passes and danced back and forth across the glideway line. They looked a lot like a holiday gathering at the Sweet One’s shrine. As soon as that thought crossed William’s mind, he wished it hadn’t. He had to fight the giggles for the rest of the incantation.

A line on the ground-presumably, the one tracing the path of the glideway line-began to glow red. The mages chanted harder than ever, and the glow got brighter and brighter. Before long, William was squinting at it through half-shut eyes. Even then, tears ran down his cheeks till at last he turned away.

With a sound as sharp and fierce as a bursting firepot, the spell ended. The assembled wizards cried out in triumph. Roast-Beef William turned back. The glideway line wasn’t glowing any more, but the air still quivered above it, showing the heat the mages had released.

“Well done!” William clapped his hands. “That should hold up the southrons a good long while, wouldn’t you say?”

“I hope so,” one of the mages answered answered. Roast-Beef William coughed. “Uh-I hope so, sir,” the mage amended. “We killed the glideway power dead as shoe leather, sure as hells we did.” His colleagues nodded.

“Well, then, the next time Hesmucet’s men try to use the line, they’ll get a nasty surprise,” William said. “Or am I misunderstanding something?”

“No, sir, you’re right about that,” the wizard said. “Question is, though, how long does it take ’em to repair what we just did?”

“How long would it take you?” Roast-Beef William asked.

Before answering, the man in the blue robe and his comrades put their heads together. At last, he said, “We’d probably be held up for a week, easy. We did a proper job here, we did.”

“That’s not bad,” Roast-Beef William said. It was almost as much as he’d hoped for, which, considering the way the war had been going lately, came close to a miracle straight from the gods.

But now the wizard coughed. “Uh, sir, you’ve got to remember, the southrons are better than we are at this kind of sorcery, same as we’re better than they are at battle magic.”

Roast-Beef William cursed softly. The fellow was bound to be right. Everything William had seen in the war pointed that way. He said, “All right, then, I’ll ask a different question: how long do you think the southrons will need to fix what you just did to the glideway line?”

The sorcerers huddled again. When they broke apart, the fellow who did the talking said, “A couple of days, if we’re lucky. A couple of hours, if we’re not.”

“A couple of days? A couple of hours?” Roast-Beef William clapped a hand to his forehead in astonished dismay and disbelief. “And it would stop you for a week? I knew we were behind them in that sort of sorcery. Thunderer’s prong, though-I never imagined we were so far behind.”

“Sorry, sir,” the wizard said. “That’s how it is.”

“In that case…” William plucked at his beard. “In that case, let’s see what we can do about it.”

Being the commander of the rear guard, he was supposed to hang back and resist the southrons anyhow. He posted a regiment in the pine woods near the glideway line with some very specific orders. He stayed behind himself, too; he wasn’t willing to order the men to try anything he wouldn’t do himself. He told the colonel, “If this doesn’t work out the way we want it to, we’ll just pull back. I’m not out for us to get stuck with an attack that hasn’t got a chance of working.”

“No, eh?” the colonel said. “You’d better not tell Bell that, or else he’ll throw you out of this gods-damned army.”

Roast-Beef William cleared his throat. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”

“Go ahead,” the colonel told him. “Won’t make any difference one way or the other. You can hear or not. Bell won’t.” As William had with the mage, he cleared his throat again. The colonel refused to be cowed. He said, “I’m a free Detinan, sir, and I’ll gods-damned well say what I please. Somebody ought to, don’t you think?”

“You can say it, Colonel,” William answered. “You can say it, but that won’t do you any good. Lieutenant General Bell will command this army, and we’ve had enough dissension already, don’t you think?”

“Oh, hells, yes,” the regimental commander said. “We’ve had all the dissension anybody could need. What we haven’t had, though, is a general who knows what the devils he’s doing.” He shook his head. “No, I take that back. We did have one, but King Geoffrey gave him the sack.”

He liked Joseph the Gamecock, did he? William thought. Only proves he didn’t know him very well. Hardly anybody who knew Joseph very well liked him. But that was neither here nor there. Aloud, Roast-Beef William said, “Let’s worry about the southrons, shall we, and not about who did what in our own army?”

“Yes, sir,” the colonel said. “If everybody thought the way you do, we’d have a lot better chance of whipping those bastards, and that’s a fact.”

He didn’t think that way himself. He’d proved as much, with his own factionalism. He didn’t even notice. Roast-Beef William didn’t waste time trying to correct him, either. He just made sure the northerners were as well positioned as they could be. After that, he had nothing to do but wait.

The southrons didn’t show up till close to noon the next day. By then, the northern officers were having all they could do holding their men in place. The soldiers of the Army of Franklin would fight like wildcats. Sometimes, though, they showed little more discipline than wildcats.

Southron mages wore gray robes. Other than that, by looks there was little to choose between them and their northern opposite numbers. They rode asses, as the northern wizards did. Even at a distance, they had the air of men who weren’t always sure what was going on around them. That put Roast-Beef William in mind of northern wizards, too.

They didn’t need long to discover where the northerners had wreaked sorcerous havoc on the glideway line. As soon as they found it, they set to work repairing the damage. Watching them, Roast-Beef William believed they wouldn’t take long to set it right. They showed a matter-of-fact competence often missing in battle.

They did, that is, till the bad-tempered colonel sent his men roaring forward. Roar they did, as if the Lion God had emerged from those pine woods. The southrons hadn’t been such fools as to let their wizards go to work alone-William thought wizards had no business doing anything alone-but they’d detailed only a couple of platoons of soldiers to guard them. And a couple of platoons weren’t nearly enough.

Volleys of crossbow quarrels knocked over some of the southron defenders and some of the mages. Even from the woods, Roast-Beef William heard the other wizards cry out in alarm and despair. Some turned to flee, which resulted in a couple of them being shot in the back. One, with more presence of mind than his friends, managed to call down two lightning bolts on the northerners before he too fell.

In a few minutes, it was all over. Neither William nor the colonel wanted to linger and face the full wrath of Hesmucet’s army. They pulled back to the north with a small, neat victory in hand. The troops were in high spirits. Victories, even small ones, were hard to come by lately.

Roast-Beef William wished he shared their delight. Part of him did, but only a small part. The rest… The rest wanted nothing so much as escape from an army where even small victories were hard to come by.

Doubting George shrugged. “Well, sir, what happened was, they snookered us. Nobody expected they’d be laying for our wizards, but they were, and they made us pay.”

“Pay too much,” General Hesmucet told him. “Much too much.”

“We can’t bring these things off perfectly all the time.” But George knew Hesmucet was right. “I won’t let it happen again, sir.”

“All right. I can’t ask for more than that from you, and I know you mean a promise like that when you make it,” the commanding general said. “The next question is, what’s Bell got in mind with his peregrinations all over southern Peachtree?”

“Making us go hungry, I’d say,” Doubting George replied. “He’s been after the glideway like a hungry hound after a beefsteak.”

“But he’s doing well enough without anything you’d call a supply line,” Hesmucet burst out. “Is he really so stupid as to think we can’t do likewise? By the gods, Lieutenant General, I could march my whole army across Peachtree Province to Veldt by the Western Ocean, and I wouldn’t go hungry, and the gods-damned traitors couldn’t even slow me down if I set out to do it.”

For a moment, George thought he was exaggerating for effect. Then he took another, longer, mental look at the question. Slowly, he nodded. “I do believe you’re right, sir.”

“I’m sure as can be that I’m right, gods damn it,” Hesmucet said with an arrogance that would either land him in serious trouble-as it had General Guildenstern-or make him a great soldier. Either way, it was an arrogance George knew he lacked himself. Hesmucet went on, “As a matter of fact, I’ve started talking by crystal ball with Marshal Bart and King Avram about doing exactly that.”

Doubting George’s bushy eyebrows flew up. “Have you?” Hesmucet had managed to do it without starting rumors flying all through the army-no mean feat. George wondered what sort of dire threats he’d used to keep the scryers quiet. Whatever they were, they’d worked.

“I have indeed,” Hesmucet said. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to bring Bell to battle. Doesn’t look that way, anyhow. He’s willing enough to raid and to strike at the glideway line, but he hasn’t got the stomach-or the men-for a standup fight any more. We’ve finally persuaded him of that.”

“He never was much of a scholar at Annasville, so I’m not surprised he took too long to learn,” George said. “He went a long way toward losing the traitors the war before he finally got the idea.”

“That breaks my heart,” Hesmucet said.

“I doubt it,” George said, and they both laughed.

But Hesmucet soon sobered. “Besides, the only other thing I might do is keep chasing Bell over this ground, and I don’t see much point to that, not when we fought over it earlier in the year-and not when I’m unlikely to catch up with him, as I said before.”

“I see your point, sir, but I have a question of my own,” George said. Hesmucet waved a hand, inviting him to ask it. He did: “If you go marching through Peachtree to the Western Ocean, what will the Army of Franklin do?”

“You mean, without our dogging its tracks?” Hesmucet said, and Doubting George nodded. The commanding general gave a splendid shrug. “Do you know what, Lieutenant General? Frankly, I don’t give a damn. I don’t think it can hurt King Avram’s cause enough to be worth worrying about.”

“Suppose it strikes down into Franklin,” George said. “Suppose it attacks Ramblerton or goes past the provincial capital down into Cloviston or even as far as the Highlow River.”

General Hesmucet shrugged again. “Bell’s welcome to try. My opinion-my strong opinion-is that he can’t pull it off.”

“What’s Bart’s opinion, sir? Or the king’s?”

“They aren’t so sure I can pull it off,” Hesmucet answered. “To the hells with me if I know why not, though. Lion God’s fangs, George, except for the Army of Franklin, what do the northerners have in the way of fighting men hereabouts? None to speak of, and you know it as well as I do. But Bart and King Avram aren’t out here in the field. They can’t see it for themselves, not with their mind’s eyes.”

He had a point. When Satrap Brown called out the Peachtree militia, he hadn’t been able to put very many men in false King Geoffrey’s service. Even so… “If you do head toward Veldt and the Western Ocean, you’re cutting yourself loose from your supply line. No glideway back to Rising Rock any more.”

“So what?” Hesmucet retorted. “I keep telling anyone who’ll listen, Bell’s already living off the countryside. Do you really think we’ll starve to death if we march to the Western Ocean?”

“Starve? No sir,” George answered. “I just think… I think I’d come up with a different plan, sir, is what I think.”

“You’re a more cautious man than I am,” Hesmucet observed. To George’s surprise and relief, it seemed only an observation, nothing more-not a slur on his courage, which it easily might have been. The commanding general continued, “Nobody can top you when it comes to making a stand and fighting on the defensive. I’ve seen that, and I’ve seen why they call you the Rock in the River of Death. You deserve all the praise you got there. But for going after the enemy and sticking your claws in him… There, Lieutenant General, I think I have the edge on you.”

“You’re probably right, sir,” George said in the same dispassionate tones Hesmucet had used. “Between the two of us, we make a pretty fair general, don’t we?”

Hesmucet laughed out loud. “Not too bad, by the gods. Not too bad.” He scratched his chin. His short, bristly beard rasped under his fingernails. “If I do get leave to strike out for the Western Ocean, I may leave you behind.”

Now Doubting George didn’t try to hold back his disappointment. “What have I done to deserve something like that?” he demanded.

“I told you: you’re a good defensive fighter,” Hesmucet replied. “If I go west, I may send you back into Franklin to make sure Bell doesn’t run wild down there.”

“That’s your privilege, of course, as the general commanding,” George said woodenly. “I will serve the kingdom as best I can wherever you place me.”

“I know you will,” Hesmucet said. “That’s why I’m thinking of doing it.”

“But, gods damn it, I want to be in at the death!” George burst out.

“I know. I know. I do understand that, believe me.” Hesmucet sounded sympathetic. But he also sounded unlikely to change his mind. “If I go west, I’ll need to leave someone behind I can rely on absolutely. From where I’m sitting now, that’s you. It is, if you look at it the right way, a compliment.”

“That’s what the priest of the Lion God told the courtesan after he shot his seed too soon,” Doubting George replied. “He may have thought so, but she surely didn’t.”

Chuckling, Hesmucet said, “You’ve always got a story, don’t you?”

“Every now and again, anyhow.” If he trotted out the wry jokes, George didn’t have to show how sorely he was hurt. He’d never been badly wounded; if he were, he suspected he would use his wit the same way. He wondered how much good it would do. It did less than he wanted here.

“This may all be moonshine, remember,” Hesmucet said. “Marshal Bart and the king are less happy about the notion than I am. They may just order me to keep after Bell with my whole army, no matter how useless that looks to me.”

“I told you, sir: I will do as you require,” George said. “I’m not Fighting Joseph, to stomp off in a huff because I don’t get my own way. He reminds me of a three-year-old throwing a fit because his mother took away his toy.”

“A lot of truth in that, by the gods.” Easy and friendly, Hesmucet came over and patted him on the shoulder. “You’re a good man, George. You’ve had some nasty jobs, and not the ones you would have taken if you’d had your druthers, and you’ve done fine with every gods-damned one of them. And now here’s one more, and I’m perfectly confident you’ll do fine with it, too.” He walked out of George’s pavilion, proud and cocky and in command.

Go ahead, George. Here’s some more garbage. You’re so good at cleaning it up, I know you’ll do fine cleaning up this lot, too. That was what Hesmucet meant, and he could say it and Doubting George had to take it, for he was a lordly, exalted general and George only a lowly lieutenant general.

Bart could have picked me to command this army. Knowing that gnawed at George. He could have, but he didn’t. And so Hesmucet gets to march to glory-if he doesn’t make a mess of things and let the traitors win glory instead. And what do I get? I get to stay behind and clean up another mess. If there is a mess. Maybe I get to stay behind at Ramblerton and twiddle my thumbs. Wouldn’t that be exciting?

He left the pavilion himself and stared south. Somewhere up ahead there, Bell was flitting ahead like a will o’ the wisp, drawing King Avram’s army after him, keeping it from doing what it should be doing. Hesmucet was right about that, sure as sure he was. But his being right took away none of the hurt. I want the glory. I want the people cheering me.

Over in King Geoffrey’s army, people called Roast-Beef William Old Reliable. He hadn’t got the job he wanted, either, not when Geoffrey fired Joseph the Gamecock. The Rock in the River of Death? It sounded fancier than Old Reliable, but what did it mean? The same gods-damned thing.

Colonel Andy came up to him. “Sir-” he began.

“What the hells d’you want?” Doubting George snarled, taking out his frustrations on his adjutant.

Andy stiffened. A very minor noble-a mere baronet-he had more than minor pride. “Pardon me for existing, sir,” he said icily.

“I’ll think about it.” George’s voice remained gruff. But then he relented: “I’m sorry, Colonel. I’m truly sorry. It had nothing to do with you.”

“It did not sound that way,” Andy observed.

“I know. I am sorry,” George said, and explained the visit he’d just had from Hesmucet.

“He goes off to have adventures and leaves you behind?” Andy said when he was done. “I don’t blame you a bit for being upset, sir.” His adjutant was fiercely loyal.

George knew he’d tried his best not to deserve such loyalty. “I do apologize,” he said again. “I had no business barking at you.”

“Never mind, sir. Never mind,” Colonel Andy replied. “Can you do anything to get him to change his mind?”

“I doubt it,” Doubting George said. “If I wore his boots, I daresay I’d do the same thing, and leave it up to some other sorry son of a bitch to handle whatever else needed handling. But I’m the sorry son of a bitch in question, and I suppose that’s why I barked.”

“Terrible. Just terrible.” Andy stroked his beard. “Did he tell you what forces you would have?”

“No, but I can make a good guess: whatever he doesn’t want and whatever I can scrape up,” George answered.

“Terrible. Just terrible,” Andy repeated. “We have to keep this from happening.”

“Only thing I can think of that would do it would be to beat Bell up here-beat him and take his army off the board altogether,” George replied. “I don’t believe it’s likely, though.”

“Why not?” With his plump cheeks and angry expression, Colonel Andy resembled nothing so much as an indignant chipmunk. “We’ve licked the Army of Franklin whenever it would give us battle.”

“That’s why not,” Doubting George replied. “I don’t think Bell has any intention of giving us another crack at him. I think he’ll keep on running and hope we keep on chasing him.”

“Cowardly son of a bitch,” his adjutant said with a distinct sniff.

“No, not Bell.” George shook his head. “You can call Bell a great many things, but he’s no coward. He’s finally figured out that one traitor isn’t worth two southron men, that’s all, and that what the northern bards have to say about it doesn’t mean a thing. It took him a lot longer than it should have, but he’s got it now.”

Andy sniffed again. “He’s pretty stupid.”

This time, George nodded. “He is pretty stupid. Brave and deadly-and stupid. He’s like a hawk on somebody’s wrist. Point it at prey and it will go out and kill. But ask it to figure things out for itself? No.”

“Only Geoffrey did,” Andy said.

“Only Geoffrey did,” Doubting George agreed. “Of course, Geoffrey is pretty stupid, too, if anyone wants to know what I think. He had a perfectly good general in charge of his army here, and sacked him for no good reason.”

“He wanted a general who would go out there and fight,” Colonel Andy said.

“Be careful what you want-you may get it,” George said. “Before he put his fighting general in there, he still had Marthasville, and the Army of Franklin was still a real army. Now Bell’s running around trying to make a pest of himself with what he has left, and there isn’t enough left of Marthasville to talk about. Brilliant change of command, wasn’t it? Just fornicating brilliant.”

Andy smiled. “Somehow, I don’t think you’re too sorry about that.”

“Who, me?” Doubting George said.

Rain poured down out of a leaden sky: surprisingly cold rain that soaked Rollant and the standard he bore and turned the red clay of southern Peachtree Province into red glue. He slogged on, one step after another, pulling each foot out of the mud in turn and then setting it down again. Every so often, he stepped off the road to scrape muck off his boots with some grass or a shrub.

The southron army’s asses and unicorns couldn’t do that. Not only did they struggle more than the footsoldiers, they also chewed up the road worse. One stretch was almost like soup. “I wish they wouldn’t send the beasts and wagons down the same road we use, not in this weather,” Rollant grumbled.

“Wish for the moon, while you’re at it,” Smitty said.

“Thanks, friend. You always know how to make me feel better.”

Smitty grinned. Water dripped off the brim of his hat-and off the end of his beaky nose. “Your wish is my command, your Corporalship, sir. As a matter of fact, your command is my command.”

“I’d command you to stop your nonsense, but I know better than to waste my breath,” Rollant said.

“Only proves you’re married, I’d say.”

“You know I am.” Rollant pointed at Smitty. “And I know you’re not. So what do you know about it?”

“Just watching my ma and pa,” Smitty answered. “But they’ve been together thirty years now without killing each other, so I expect they’re doing something right.”

Rollant had trouble arguing with that. A few minutes later, traffic on the road didn’t merely slow; it stalled altogether. “What the hells is going on here?” Rollant demanded irately, and he was far from the only one. As he stood there, the mud tried to suck him down into its cold, wet, slimy maw. Lieutenant Griff sent a man forward to see if he could discover what had gone wrong. The fellow sensibly trotted along on the grass by the side of the road, not in the roadway itself.

He came back by the same route. “There’s wagons up ahead stuck in what looks like a bog, sir,” he reported to Griff. “It’s so deep, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were crocodiles in it.”

“Well, why aren’t people going around?” Griff asked.

“A lot of ’em are trying to haul out the wagons,” the soldier replied. “They aren’t having much luck, though.”

“What are we supposed to do in the meantime?” Sergeant Joram asked. “Stand here in the mud and drown?” It must have been doing its best to pull him under, too.

Before long, a southron captain who was so muddy he might have been dipped in rust-colored paint ordered Griff’s company forward. “You men can lend a hand on the ropes,” he said.

That was when Rollant found out what underofficer’s rank was really worth. As corporal and standard-bearer, he stood around with Lieutenant Griff and Sergeant Joram and the other men with stripes on their sleeves. The common soldiers sloshed down into the bog-and the messenger had described it accurately-seized the long ropes fastened to the front end of the lead wagon, and pulled like men possessed.

I’ve still got just as much chance of getting killed as anybody else, he thought. More chance than most, because I bear the standard. But the rest of a corporal’s job looks a lot better than a common soldier’s.

Try as they would, the mud-streaked men in gray couldn’t shift the wagon. Then a mage on an ass muddy all the way to the belly rode up. The captain who’d summoned Griff’s company recognized him. “That’s Colonel Albertus!” he said. “He’s called the Great, thought gods know why.” He raised his voice: “Colonel Albertus, can you help us, sir?”

Albertus reined in. Most of the time, Rollant judged, he would have been an impressive man, with a long, pointed gray beard; a long, pointed nose; and piercing black eyes. At the moment, he resembled nothing so much as a drowned billy goat. His voice was deep and resonant: “I shall do what I can.”

“Sounds more like a circus mountebank than a proper wizard,” Sergeant Joram said behind his hand.

“Well, let’s see what he can do,” Rollant answered, and the sergeant nodded.

Colonel Albertus fixed the lead wagon with those piercing eyes and began to chant. He made pass after pass, his fingers writhing like so many serpents. The wagon began to twitch and shake. After a moment, it tried to rise, but was held in place by the sucking power of the mud. Albertus paused for a moment to curse, then incanted harder than ever.

“By the gods, maybe the old bastard can bring it off after all,” Joram said.

“I hope so,” Rollant said.

With a horrible squelching noise, the wagon did pull itself free of the encumbering mud. The weary soldiers who’d been trying to get it out raised a cheer-which cut off abruptly when, instead of stopping just above the bog, the wagon continued to rise till its dripping, mucky wheels were a good ten feet off the ground.

The men on the ropes who’d been closest to the wagon started to rise into the air, too, till they let go and fell back into the mud. Some of them squawked. Some cursed. Some did both at once. Rollant didn’t blame those last. Albertus the so-called Great had produced a sorcery more successful than it might have been. And, as with a lot of sorceries, this one, proving more successful than it might have been, was at best useless and at worst a help to the enemy.

“Well, Colonel, what in the hells are you going to do now?” demanded the captain who’d summoned Albertus. So much for respecting a superior officer, Rollant thought. But wizards were officers by courtesy, to let them order common soldiers around. Real fighting men, as he’d seen before, disdained them.

Albertus gave the wagon a distinctly wall-eyed stare. The stare he sent the contemptuous captain was something else again. Rollant was glad it wasn’t aimed his way; a poisonous snake might have aimed that sort of look at its prey the instant before it struck. “I shall endeavor to repair matters,” the mage said in a voice as coldblooded as a serpent.

If he put the captain in fear, that worthy hid it very well. “You can endeavor all you gods-damned well please,” he snarled. “You wouldn’t have to if you’d done it right the first time.”

“And if you splendid soldiers had done everything right the first time, this cursed war would have been over year before last,” Colonel Albertus retorted. The captain sputtered and fumed, but he kept quiet, because the wizard had spoken self-evident truth. Albertus’ smile didn’t show fangs, but it might as well have.

Turning back to the wagon, Albertus began another spell. This one sounded less imperious, more cautious, than the one he’d used before. Its results seemed less dramatic, too. Rollant approved of that; high drama and trouble were intimately associated in his mind. When Colonel Albertus called out a word of power and pointed at the uncannily floating wagon, it seemed more a request than a command.

And the request got results, too, where the earlier command had only caused a new and more spectacular problem. Little by little, the wagon drifted down till its wheels rested on the air a few inches above the mud from which it had been rescued.

Albertus gave the captain of footsoldiers an icy bow. “Now your men should be able to push and pull the wagon to drier ground,” he said.

“Go ahead and try it, boys,” the captain called. Cautiously, some of the soldiers took hold of the ropes and began to pull. Even more cautiously, others got behind the wagon and pushed. They all let out a cheer when it moved forward far more readily than it had while stuck in the mud.

“Thank you very much, sir,” the captain told Colonel Albertus. But he couldn’t resist getting in another dig: “Now do you suppose you can get the rest of ’em out of the muck without sending ’em halfway up to Mt. Panamgam?”

The mage aimed a harried look his way. “I shall bend every effort to that purpose.”

His efforts could have used a bit more bending. His first spell with the second wagon failed to get it out of the mud. The captain let out a loud, scornful snort. Colonel Albertus kept on incanting. When at last the wagon did emerge, it rose only two or three feet into the air. The men could push and pull it forward without much trouble.

Albertus’ spells went better still on the third and fourth wagons. He’d learned what needed doing by then, and he did it. Those wagons came out on the first try and rose only a foot or so above the surface of the mud. Not even the captain could complain. All he said was, “Appreciate it, Colonel.”

“Yes, well, I’m sure you’re welcome,” Albertus the Great said. He scrambled aboard his ass as if he’d never mounted it before and rode off down the road.

By the time Colonel Nahath’s regiment made camp, Rollant felt about ready to drop. His men had a hells of a time starting fires, even though the rain had eased off by then. Wet fuel and wet tinder made things difficult. At last, the squad got a couple of smoky blazes going. “Wish we had a mage along now,” Rollant grumbled. “He’d have set us up in a hurry.”

“Either that or he’d have burned down half the gods-damned province trying,” Smitty said. Rollant nodded. Mages could bungle things, sure enough, and often did.

He sat down on the wet ground. His tunic and pantaloons were already soaked; a little more water made no difference. To his surprise, the trooper named Gleb sat down next to him. Gleb’s face still showed the marks of their fight. He supposed his own did, too. Did Gleb want another try? If he did, Rollant was ready to give him one.

But all Gleb said was, “Ask you something, Corporal?”

“You can ask,” Rollant said roughly. “I don’t promise to answer.”

Gleb nodded. “All right. That’s fair enough.” He still hesitated. Rollant gestured impatiently, as if to say, Come on. Words spurted from Gleb in a rush: “How was it you were able to lick me when we tangled?”

To Rollant, the answer to that was plain as the sun in the sky. “How? I didn’t dare lose, that’s how.”

By Gleb’s frown, that made less sense to him than it did to Rollant. Of course, he’d never been a blond. He proved that by continuing, “But how could you beat me? I mean, you’re, uh, not a proper Detinan, and I am.”

As patiently as he could, Rollant said, “You’ve seen me fight the traitors, haven’t you?”

Gleb nodded again. “Well, yes.”

“I did that all right, didn’t I?” Rollant asked. Gleb nodded once more. In some exasperation, Rollant said, “Those bastards are Detinans, aren’t they? If I can fight them, why the hells can’t I fight you?”

“I don’t know.” Gleb’s broad shoulders went up and down in a shrug. “They’re the enemy. You’re supposed to fight them.”

Rollant tapped the stripes on his sleeve. “You know I almost had to get myself killed before they’d put these on me, don’t you?” This time, Gleb’s nod came much more slowly. Rollant persisted: “And you know why, too, don’t you? On account of I’m a blond, that’s why. You know all about that.”

The trooper muttered something. Rollant couldn’t make out what it was. Just as well, he thought. Then Gleb said, “It wasn’t like I thought it would be.”

“I’m trying to tell you why, gods damn it,” Rollant snapped. “I had to work so hard to get these stripes, I don’t want to lose them. If you licked me, I likely would’ve lost them. And so you would have had to kill me to make me quit. Is that plain enough for you?”

“Oh,” Gleb said. Maybe he got it. Maybe he didn’t. Rollant didn’t much care one way or the other. As long as the Detinan took his orders and gave him no trouble, what Gleb thought didn’t matter to him.

He wondered how much Gleb actually did think. Not much, unless he missed his guess. That didn’t matter, either, not unless his stupidity endangered the men around him-or it led him to something like picking a fight with a corporal who also happened to be a blond.

But I don’t happen to be a blond, Rollant thought. I am a blond. I happen to be a corporal. That’s how Detinans see it, anyway.

How Detinans saw it, though, didn’t matter so much to him, not any more. Regardless of how even Detinans in King Avram’s army with him looked at the world and at him, certain facts no one could deny. Here he sat, wet and miserable, in the middle of an invading army in the middle of Peachtree Province. He wore a gray tunic and pantaloons like everybody else’s. He got paid like everybody else, too. And that he’d come here with weapons to hand, ready to kill any Detinans who didn’t agree with his comrades and him, went a long way toward proving how much had changed since he was first grudgingly allowed to fight.

After the war, everybody’s likely to try to forget blonds did some of the fighting for King Avram, he thought. That’s the sort of thing ordinary Detinans won’t want to remember. They can go back to thinking we’re “just blonds” if they forget. Well, we can’t let that happen.

“Gleb,” he said, “looks like we’re a little short on firewood. Chop some more.” He waited to see what the soldier would do.

“All right, Corporal,” Gleb replied, and went off to obey the order. Slowly, Rollant nodded to himself. Sure as hells, some things had changed.