Had the fellow in maroon velvet lingered another moment, Joseph would have sped him on his way with a good, solid kick in the fundament. He might have realized that, for he withdrew precipitately even without the added impetus of the commanding general’s boot. Joseph’s stomach twinged. Hearing Thraxton the Braggart is around makes me as dyspeptic as he is.
Thraxton had brains. He also had a complete inability to get along with anyone else (a trait Joseph shared) or to make anyone follow his lead (which was not one of Joseph’s difficulties). The only exception to the general rule was that Thraxton had somehow formed an intimate friendship with King Geoffrey, a friendship that endured through thick and thin-and, given Thraxton’s other talents, or lack of same, there’d been much more thin than thick.
He has Geoffrey’s ear. He will drip poison into it. Joseph was as sure of that as he was of tomorrow’s sunrise. He shrugged. He couldn’t do anything about it. All he could do was hold the line of Commissioner Mountain and Snouts Stream as long as possible. The more southrons who died trying to pry him out of his position, the better the chance that the south would sicken of the war and make King Avram quit it or face upheaval at home.
Lieutenant General Bell would attack, the general commanding the Army of Franklin thought. He tossed his head like a man bothered by gnats. Duke Edward of Arlington, when angry, would twist so he seemed to be trying to bite his own ear. Joseph’s gesture wasn’t far removed from that. Bell would do any number of stupid things if only he had the chance. My job, not least, is to make sure he doesn’t get it.
Count Joseph sighed. But how am I supposed to manage that? He saw no clear answer. He’d seen few clear answers since the days when the northern provinces first broke away from Detina. He kept fighting nonetheless.
V
Once again, your Majesty, our forces have been orderedto make an inglorious retreat, Lieutenant General Bell wrote in yet another of his secret letters to King Geoffrey. Once again, we have taken heavy losses trying to hold a position that could not be held, this time including that heroic and pious soldier, Leonidas the Priest. Once again, the spirits of the men suffer because they always fall back and are never permitted to advance against the foe. How long, your Majesty, can this go on?
Bell examined that, wondering if it was too strong. He decided to leave it in. The king needed to know what was going on up here. If I don’t tell him the truth, who will? Bell thought.
“Commissioner Mountain,” he muttered under his breath. Who would have imagined General Hesmucet could have pushed the Army of Franklin back so far so fast? Who would have imagined Joseph the Gamecock would fall back so far so fast? Bell thought. That was what it came down to. “Disgraceful,” Bell said, again quietly. He wished he could shout.
Reaching for the bottle of laudanum he always carried, he yanked out the cork and drank. Then he sat in his folding chair and waited for relief. He needed ever larger draughts to get it, and got less no matter how much he took.
If he looked back over his shoulder, he could practically see Marthasville. Camp rumor said Count Thraxton had come there to take a long look at the way Joseph the Gamecock was fighting the southrons. Bell didn’t like the rumor. He was the one who was supposed to be informing King Geoffrey of how things were going. He had no great use for Thraxton the Braggart; the man had made a hash of the fighting by Rising Rock. Bell had been flat on his back then, still recovering from the amputation of his leg. He remembered the jouncing agony he’d gone through in the retreat from Proselytizers’ Rise up into Peachtree Province. Thraxton had botched the battle, no two ways about it.
But Thraxton was also Geoffrey’s friend. If the king decided to remove Joseph from his command, would he give that command back to Thraxton? Bell shook his leonine head. “That would be madness,” he rumbled. “Every man jack and every officer in this army knows of Thraxton’s blunders. The command should go elsewhere.”
He knew exactly where the command should go. He’d left hints in his letters to King Geoffrey. Maybe I should stop hinting and come right out and speak my mind, he thought. After all, the safety of the kingdom depends on it.
Voices outside his pavilion-voices, and then one of his sentries stuck his head inside and said, “Sir, General Joseph is here to see you.”
“Joseph? Here to see me?” Even with the gentle cloud of laudanum between himself and the world, Lieutenant General Bell knew his superior must not spy the letter to King Geoffrey. He swept it out of sight beneath some other papers, then nodded. “I am always pleased to see him.” That was a lie, of course, but a politic lie.
When Joseph the Gamecock ducked his way through the tent flap, he looked more pleased with himself and with the world as a whole than was his wont. “Let the southrons come,” he said. “Yes, by the gods, let them come! They’ll bloody their noses on our line, and they can’t outflank it.”
“You have said this before, your Grace,” Bell replied. “You have also proved mistaken before.”
“Not this time,” Joseph said. “As long as the rains keep coming, General Hesmucet will have a devils of a time moving men and supplies for them, and we’ve got solid sets of entrenchments running twenty miles north up Snouts Stream. I don’t think they can do it.”
“And when shall we attack them?” Bell inquired.
Joseph the Gamecock gave him a sour look. “I am in no hurry to make such an effort-and, if you will recall, the last time I tried to persuade you to send your whole wing forward, you broke out in a case of jimjams.”
“The enemy had engines on our flank. To advance would have been to give him a perfect chance to massacre us,” Bell insisted.
“You are the only one who ever saw those engines-and that includes the southrons,” Joseph said.
“I was there. You were not. Had you been there, you would have seen them, too. But you do not seem to consider your place to be at the fore.”
They’d called each other cowards now. They both glared, in perfect mutual loathing. Joseph the Gamecock said, “I have been glad to discover you will at least fight on the defensive.”
“Sir, I find your manner offensive,” Bell replied.
“I had hoped to find yours offensive, but no such luck,” Joseph said. “Still, so long as we fight hard here, the southrons will get no closer to Marthasville. And that is the point of the exercise.”
“That may be one point of the exercise, sir, but it’s not the only point,” Bell said. “The other thing we have to do is drive the southrons from our land, drive them back where they belong-and send them off with their tails between their legs, so they’ll know better than to trouble us again.”
“Good luck if you should ever be in the position to try, Lieutenant General,” Joseph the Gamecock said. “I don’t think it can be done now, not with things as they are. If some miracle-worker were to appear with crossbows that would shoot twice as far and ten times as fast as the usual weapons, we might whip King Avram’s men back to their kennel, but what are the odds of that? Without it, we have to try to make the foe sicken of the war. That’s my view, at any rate.”
“I know, sir,” Bell said sourly. “You never tire of stating it.”
“That’s because-although you may find it hard to believe-I have officers who don’t want to hear it,” Joseph the Gamecock replied. “I’m certain you of all people find that incredible.”
“Heh,” Bell said, unwilling to show Joseph he had the slightest idea what the general commanding was talking about now.
“You are holding an important part of this line, Lieutenant General,” Joseph told him. “I expect you to do just that: to hold, I mean. If a breakthrough occurs on the stretch of line where you command, you will find that I do not take the matter lightly. You have already failed more often than you should. Shall I comment further, or do I make myself plain?”