“Nothing we can do, is there?” Colonel Nahath said, changing course.
“Doesn’t seem to be,” John answered. “If the enemy gives us a hard time, we can always go out and fight him. I know Doubting George doesn’t seem to want to, but we can. But who’s going to protect us from the people on the same side as we are? No one ever has. No one ever will.”
“I suppose not.” Nahath sighed. “Seems a pity, doesn’t it? George has done so much good here in the east-and so have you, sir. You ripped the guts out of Bell’s army at Poor Richard, same way a tiger will rip the guts out of a sheep with his hind claws. They’re a sorry lot now. Have you seen them?”
“Seen them? I’ve even been up in an observation tower with a spyglass. They’re close enough for a man with a decent glass to see how many of ’em are barefoot.”
“I know.” Colonel Nahath nodded. “But they’ve still got pikes and crossbows and some engines. And they still don’t like us. When we do attack them, they’ll fight hard.” He sighed again. “I’ve never yet seen those bastards not fight hard. The first time would be nice. I don’t suppose I’d better hold my breath.”
“No, I don’t think you should, Colonel,” John the Lister said. “They’ll always fight hard. But if we can beat ’em once more, beat ’em the way they should be beaten, what’ll they have left to fight with after that?”
“Teeth. Fingernails. Ghosts,” Nahath answered. “That might be enough to scare some blonds-though that corporal I was telling you about would be angry if he heard me say so-but it doesn’t frighten me. If we beat ’em once more, sir, I think you’re right. I think they fall to pieces.” He tipped his hat. “I think we can give ’em that beating, too. If it’s not under Doubting George, I also think it’s a gods-damned shame you don’t get the chance to do it.” There. He’d come out and said it.
“That’s very kind of you, Colonel. I do appreciate it, believe me.”
The regimental commander shrugged. “I’m telling you what I think, sir. I’m just as much a free Detinan as Baron Logan the Black, even if he’s got a fancier pedigree than I do. He’s a brave man. He’s a good soldier, for a man who’s not a regular. But we’ve been through this whole campaign, and he hasn’t. A man who has ought to be in charge when it all pays off. That’s how I look at things, anyhow.” Nahath shrugged again. “Marshal Bart’s liable to look at it differently.”
“Looks like he does,” John said. Nahath nodded, saluted, and went on his way.
John strode down the board sidewalks and muddy streets of Ramblerton. Here was a town unusual in the Kingdom of Detina: a town with plenty of men of fighting age on the streets and going about their ordinary, everyday business. In most places, south and north, a large number of them would have been called to serve the gold dragon or the red. Not here. The southrons who occupied Ramblerton didn’t trust the locals to fight on their side, and they’d done their best to keep those men from slipping out of town and fighting for King Geoffrey. And so, in between one side and the other, the Ramblertonians had what neither side enjoyed: peace.
Having it, they refused to enjoy it. One of them jeered at John as he went by: “You southron bastards are scared to fight General Bell. You’ve never been anything but a pack of stinking cowards.”
John smiled his politest smile. “We’re winning,” he said, and kept walking.
“Blond-lover!” the Ramblertonian shouted.
Smiling still, John answered, “Well, most of the blonds I’ve thought of loving are a lot prettier than your sister.”
The man thought about that for two or three heartbeats. Then, bellowing like an aurochs in the mating season, he lowered his head and charged. No matter how furious he was, though, he’d never really learned anything about fighting. That was what the occupation of Ramblerton had done to the men who lived there: it had deprived them of the chance to become efficient killers.
John the Lister sidestepped and hit the local in the pit of the stomach with his left fist. “Oof!” the man said: a sound more of surprise and outgushing air than of pain. Pain or no, though, he folded up like a concertina. John straightened him with an uppercut to the point of the chin.
His foe was made of solid stuff. He stayed on his feet after that shot to the jaw, though his eyes went glassy. John the Lister’s sword hissed from its scabbard. Far more often than not, a brigadier’s sword was a parade weapon, nothing more.
High-ranking officers seldom came close enough to enemies in the field to use steel against them. Half a dozen of Bell’s brigadiers had died fighting in the front ranks at Poor Richard, but that was as unusual as everything else about the battle there.
But even though John seldom used the blade, he kept it sharp. Its point caressed the Ramblertonian’s throat just below the edge of his beard. Wan late-autumn sunshine glittered off the bright blade.
“You were just leaving, weren’t you?” John inquired in honeyed tones.
Blinking-and swaying more than a little-the local stood there with his mouth hanging open, trying to make his wits work enough to answer. A small trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth down into his beard. “Yes,” he said at last. “I reckon maybe I was.”
To make sure he was, his friends grabbed him and hauled him away from John the Lister. “He’d better be careful,” John called after them. “He might run into another southron coward and not live through it.”
None of them answered, which he thought mean-spirited.
If one southron can whip one northerner, how many southrons do we need to whip all the northerners in the Army of Franklin? John wondered. Fewer than we’ve already got, I think.
Most of the other southron officers in Ramblerton came up with the same answer. Doubting George had a different one. He was in command, and so his answer was the one that counted.
But how long would he stay in command? What sort of answer would Logan the Black come up with when he got here from the west? John the Lister had no trouble figuring that out. Logan would attack. He would probably win, too. And whatever glory there was would go to him.
If it doesn’t go to George, it ought to go to me. John had thought that before. It did him exactly no good. He wasn’t the one who got to apportion such things. Marshal Bart was, and Bart had chosen Baron Logan.
He can give out glory, John thought wonderingly. If that doesn’t make a man a god on earth, what would?
Then he shook his head. Bart could give out the chance for glory. There was no guarantee Logan the Black could seize it. But after John looked north toward the Army of Franklin’s curtailed lines, he let out a long sigh. If Logan couldn’t whip Lieutenant General Bell-if anybody couldn’t whip Lieutenant General Bell-now, he didn’t deserve glory.
A man in a gray robe came out of a building on the far side of the street: a tall, skinny, graceless man who looked as if he would fall over in a strong breeze. John the Lister waved to him. “Major Alva!” he called.
After a moment of blinking and staring and obviously trying to recall who this person wanting his attention was, Alva waved back. “Hello, sir,” he said, and trotted across the street toward John. An ass-drawn wagon full of barrels bore down on him. The teamster aboard the wagon jerked the reins hard. Braying resentfully, the asses stopped less than a yard from Alva. The teamster cursed like… like a teamster, thought John, who was too horrified at the sight of the best southron wizard east of the Green Ridge Mountains-and very possibly west of them, too-barely escaping destruction to indulge himself with fancy literary figures.
What was even more horrifying was that Alva himself had no idea he’d just escaped destruction. The braying jackasses and cursing teamster? The rattling wagon full of barrels? As far as he was concerned, they might have been in New Eborac City or on the far side of the moon. That meant he was liable to do something else just as idiotic this afternoon or day after tomorrow, and luck and a foul-mouthed teamster might not be enough to keep him safe then.