“Well, sir, if you reckon blonds worthless for anything but serfdom, how is it that you have some thousands of them serving in the various regiments of your army?”
“They aren’t all good soldiers, by any means.” Having taken a position, Hesmucet was not a man to retreat from it even in the face of long odds.
“No doubt you’re right, sir.” For a moment, Lieutenant General George sounded like the northern noble he was: most dangerous when most polite. “But then, would you say all the ordinary Detinans fighting for King Avram are good soldiers?”
“Only a fool would say all of them are, and I hope I’m not that particular kind of fool,” Hesmucet replied. “I will say, though, that more Detinans make good soldiers than is true for the blonds. We’re warriors in the blood, and they’re not.” He stuck out his chin and defied Doubting George to disagree with him.
And Doubting George didn’t-not, at least, in so many words. He did murmur, “Surely the chieftain for whom you’re named would have some remarks on that subject.” Hesmucet’s ears grew hot; Hesmucet the blond had been as fierce a warrior as any ever born, whether of his kind or among the swarthy Detinans. George added, “These northern blonds, you must recall, have been raised as serfs. If you untie a man who’s been tightly bound, do you not expect to see the marks of the rope on his flesh for a time?”
“Well, well,” Hesmucet said. “I didn’t think you were a blond-lover, sir.”
He wondered if he’d gone too far. In a different tone of voice, that could have been a deadly insult. As things were, George only shrugged and remarked, “Some of them, I assure you, are quite lovable.” He took his hands from the reins for a moment to shape an hourglass in the air.
Hesmucet laughed. “Well, maybe so. I have heard stories along those lines. I suspect you would know better than I, though.” How had Doubting George amused himself on his estate in Parthenia? Did he use the labor of any young serfs who looked like him?
George didn’t answer any of that. Instead, he counterattacked: “You had your chances, too, sir, didn’t you? Don’t I remember that you were teaching in a military collegium near Old Capet when Grand Duke Geoffrey took the northern provinces out of Detina?”
“I was indeed,” Hesmucet replied. “But what you also need to remember is that I had my wife along with me while I was there.”
“I see,” George said. “Yes, that could matter. It would make more difference to some than to others, I suppose.”
Which sort are you? lingered behind his words. “I’m not General Guildenstern, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Hesmucet said.
“Few men are,” Doubting George replied. “I know of at least one pretty little blond girl in Rising Rock whom Marshal Bart-he was only General Bart then, of course-turned down flat. Not that she was so flat herself, you understand, and not that Guildenstern had turned her down before, either.”
“I’m not surprised Bart turned her down,” Hesmucet said. “He really is enamored of his wife.”
“She-the blond girl-was quite miffed,” George said. “Marshal Bart’s wife would have been, had things gone otherwise. `Turned me down flat,’ the maid kept saying.”
“Let’s see if we can turn the traitors down flat,” Hesmucet said, and his second-in-command nodded agreement. Hesmucet wondered if George had tried to soothe the blond girl’s wounded feelings. Bold as he was, he lacked the nerve to ask.
Captain Gremio was still getting used to wearing epaulets on both shoulders. He’d spent the first two and a half years of the war as Captain Ormerod’s lieutenant in this company of crossbowmen recruited from in and around Karlsburg, the capital and chief town of Palmetto Province. But Ormerod had stopped a crossbow quarrel trying to stem the northerners’ rout at Proselytizers’ Rise, and so the company had been in Gremio’s hands ever since. He’d finally even got the rank that went with company command.
Not all the other officers in Colonel Florizel’s regiment approved of Gremio’s promotion. His lip curled. He had a long, thin, intelligent face-and a gift for making his lip curl and assuming other expressions at need: he was a reasonably successful barrister in Karlsburg.
His success in his chosen field kept his brother officers from making their sneers too open. But it also guaranteed that the sneers would be there. Almost all those putative brothers were noblemen, liege lords, owners of broad estates and overlords of serfs sometimes by the dozen, sometimes by the thousand. They looked down their noses at him because he made his living by his own wits and not from the sweat of blond brows.
He looked down his nose at them because they were, for the most part, blockheads of the purest ray serene. He also envied them because, in the society of the north, acquiring an estate full of hard-working serfs was the be-all and end-all. He was a hard-working curiosity. The nobles, in their opinion and his as well, were the salt of the earth.
“Good morning, Colonel Florizel,” he called, tipping his hat as the regimental commander limped by.
“And a good day to you as well, Captain.” Florizel, though a belted earl, did treat Gremio as if he were of noble blood himself. Gremio couldn’t find fault with the regimental commander over that, and Gremio was a man who, before the war began, had made his living by finding fault.
“How’s your leg, your Excellency?” he asked now.
“Well, it’ll never be what it was,” Earl Florizel replied. He’d been wounded in the battle by the River of Death the autumn before, and hadn’t been able to get about for some time afterwards. Even now, he looked as if he would be more comfortable leaning on a stick. But he went on, “If Lieutenant General Bell can lead a wing without a leg, I suppose I can try to lead a regiment with a sore one.”
“Bell’s courage is an example to us all,” Gremio agreed. He had a lower opinion of Lieutenant General Bell’s brains, but kept that to himself. It didn’t change the point Colonel Florizel was trying to make.
Florizel snapped his fingers. “Speaking of wing commanders, that reminds me. You’ll be pleased to hear that Leonidas the Priest has returned to command a wing of the Army of Franklin.”
“I will?” Captain Gremio said in real surprise. “Why?”
Colonel Florizel had big bushy eyebrows. They fluttered now, like moths trying to escape from his forehead. “Why? I’ll tell you why, Captain. Because having a hierophant of the Lion God leading our soldiers will surely lead the god to support us with claws and fangs.”
“Surely,” Gremio said. Being a barrister, he had practice disguising his tone, and Florizel would think he had agreement, not sarcasm, in mind. “Indeed, sir, Leonidas the Priest is a very holy and pious man.”
“He certainly is,” Florizel said. “And any man dismissed from his command by Thraxton the Braggart has to have more going for him than meets the eye.”
“Hmm. I hadn’t thought of that. You’ve got a point, your Excellency, no doubt about it,” Gremio said. That he meant. But it remained one of the all too few points in Leonidas’ favor, as far as he was concerned. The hierophant of the Lion God was a holy and pious man. As far as Gremio could see, though, neither holiness nor piety was an essential soldierly virtue. Of those virtues, Leonidas had displayed very few.
“Thraxton was a disaster for this army-a disaster, I tell you,” Florizel said. “I do hope Count Joseph will be able to pick up the pieces and shape us into a decent fighting force once more.”
“So do I,” Gremio said. “He’d better. If he doesn’t, this whole eastern land is lost to King Geoffrey, and I don’t see how he can hope to hold off King Avram without it.”
“Avram is a tyrant. The gods hate him,” Florizel growled. Gremio nodded; he certainly agreed with that, and knew hardly anyone from Palmetto Province who didn’t. His home province had been the first to renounce allegiance to Avram and fall in behind Geoffrey’s banner. After a ruminative pause, Colonel Florizel continued, “But, as you say, Captain, Geoffrey does need land of which to be the king. We shall have to do everything in our power to hold back General Hesmucet, then.”