“I would like nothing better, your Majesty,” Bell whispered.
“How many men have you got left?” the king asked. “Any at all? Or is it just you and some gods-damned scryer wandering in the dark?”
“No, sir. Not just me,” Bell said with such dignity as he could muster. “After the… the initial collapse” — he had to keep hesitating- “we retired in… fairly good order. We could fight again tomorrow if we had to.” We’d get slaughtered, but we could fight.
By the way King Geoffrey’s eyebrows twitched, he was thinking the same thing. But he didn’t say anything about that. What he did say was, “You did not answer my question, Lieutenant General. How many men have you got left?”
“Sir, I have not tried to make a count,” Bell answered. “My best guess would be about half of those who went into today’s fight.”
“Half?” Geoffrey yelped painfully. “That’s even worse than I thought, and I thought I’d thought things were as bad as they could be.” Now he paused, perhaps wondering whether he’d said what he meant to say. Apparently deciding he had, he continued, “What happened to the rest of them? Shot? Speared?”
“Not… not all, your Majesty,” Bell said; the king seemed intent on embarrassing him every way he could. “Some unknown but, I fear, fairly large number of men were captured by Doubting George’s footsoldiers and unicorn-riders.”
“And probably glad to come out of it alive,” Geoffrey commented, yet more acid in his voice. “What do you aim to do now? Whatever it is, do you think it will matter? Or will the southrons smash you to pieces, come what may?”
“I don’t think so, your Majesty,” Bell said. “We still can resist.” King Geoffrey hadn’t asked him how many engines he’d lost. That was likely just as well. If the king heard that Doubting George’s men had captured more than fifty, he’d burst like a firepot, except with even more heat. And Bell couldn’t blame him, however much he wanted to. He almost blamed himself-almost, but not quite. The disaster had to be someone else’s fault. Didn’t it?
IX
Had General Guildenstern won a victory, he would have got drunk to celebrate. John the Lister was sure of it. He saw Doubting George drunk, too, but drunk on triumph rather than spirits.
“I told you so,” George cackled. “Gods damn it, I told you so. I told you, and I told Marshal Bart, too. And do you know what else? I was right, that’s what else. We didn’t just lick ’em. We fornicating wrecked ’em.”
“Yes, sir,” John said dutifully.
He would rather have won a victory under Doubting George than under Baron Logan the Black, who would have been promoted over his head. The more George carried on, though, the more John wondered if listening to the general commanding was worth the triumph.
It was. Of course it was. He couldn’t remember ever making such an astounding, amazing, fantastic advance against the traitors, and wondered if it had an analog anywhere in the War Between the Provinces. Prisoners by the thousands, their war over at last, shambling off into captivity. More northerners dead on the field, and in the long retreat north from the field. More captured catapults and repeating crossbows than he’d ever seen before.
“Wrecked ’em,” Doubting George repeated, and John the Lister could only nod. The commanding general went on, “I’m going off to the scryers’ tent. Marshal Bart and Baron Logan need to know what we’ve done today, and so does King Avram. Yes, sir, so does King Avram.” Away he went, a procession of one.
John the Lister nodded again. No one doubted Doubting George now. He’d said he needed to wait, and would win once he was done waiting. And what he’d said, he’d done. Could he have won without waiting? John still thought so, but it didn’t matter any more.
And John, still a new brigadier of the regulars, knew this victory was better for his career than any Baron Logan the Black could have won. He was George’s reliable second-in-command. He would have been Logan’s second-in-command, too, but he would have been passed over for the main prize. Now nobody could say that about him. And a good thing, too, he thought.
Colonel Nahath came up to him. After the salutes and the congratulations, Nahath said, “I’ve got a little problem I’d like to talk over with you, sir.”
“Go ahead,” John said expansively. “Nobody has big problems, not after today. What’s your little one?”
“Well, sir, one of my company commanders, Lieutenant Griff, got killed in yesterday’s fighting,” Nahath said. “Sergeant Joram took over the company and did well with it. I’d like to promote him to lieutenant.”
“Go ahead,” John repeated. “That’s your problem? We should all have such little worries.”
But Colonel Nahath shook his head. “No, sir. That’s not my problem. The problem is, I’d like to promote my standard-bearer, a corporal, into the sergeant’s slot Joram’s leaving open. He’s carried the banner well and he’s fought bravely. He should get another stripe.”
“If he’s as good as all that, go ahead and promote him, by the gods,” John the Lister said. “Why are you flabbling about it, anyway?”
“Because the corporal’s a blond, sir.”
“Oh.” Sure enough, that got John’s attention. He snapped his fingers. “I remember. This is the fellow who grabbed the flagstaff when your standard-bearer got killed over in Peachtree, isn’t it? The one you said deserved a chance to fail as a corporal.”
“Yes, sir. His name is Rollant. And he hasn’t failed as a corporal. He’s had to win a fight or two to hold the rank, which an ordinary Detinan wouldn’t have, but he’s done it. From what poor Griff told me, Rollant told him he didn’t dare lose,” the colonel from New Eborac said. “If he can do a corporal’s job, why not a sergeant’s? He’s earned the chance to fail again, but this time I don’t think he will.”
“A blond sergeant,” John the Lister said musingly. “Who would have imagined that when the war started?”
“King Avram would have, I think,” Nahath answered.
John pursed his lips. When Avram announced his intention of freeing the blond serfs from the land and from their ancient ties to their liege lords, who had taken him seriously? (Well, Grand Duke Geoffrey and the northern nobles had, but that was a different story.) People in the south hadn’t dreamt blonds could ever amount to much even if they did have the right to leave the land. From a southron point of view, the war, at first, had been much more about holding Detina together than it had been about removing the serfs from bondage to the land.
But maybe Avram really had seen something in the blonds that almost everyone else missed. “You may be right, Colonel,” John said solemnly. “Yes, you may be right.”
“You don’t object if I promote this fellow, then?” Nahath asked. “I wanted to make sure before I went and did it.”
“If he’s been a good corporal, odds are he’ll make a good sergeant,” John said. “Go ahead and do it. The other thing to remember is, it likely won’t matter as much as it would have a year ago. I don’t see how the war can last a whole lot longer, not after what we’ve done the past couple of days.”
“I hope you’re right, sir. I’d like to go home, get back to the life I left when the fighting started,” Nahath said. He was a colonel of volunteers, not a regular at all. When the war ended, he would take off his gray uniform and go back to running his farm or putting up manufactories or practicing law or whatever he did.
John didn’t know what that was. He’d never asked. He would be glad to go on soldiering, even if he’d never again lead another army the size of the one he’d commanded here. He didn’t see how he could; the only enemies in his lifetime who’d truly challenged Detina were other Detinans.