And it would double the size of the force you command, which is what you’ve got in mind, Hesmucet thought. Aloud, he said, “I find myself reasonably satisfied with the command arrangements as they exist at present.”
“Do you indeed, sir? Do you indeed?” From Fighting Joseph’s tone, Hesmucet might have expressed a fondness for scratching his backside in public or eating with his fingers. More scornfully still, Fighting Joseph said, “And who could possibly replace James the Bird’s Eye?” Who but me? he all but shouted.
“If you must know, I had in mind Brigadier Oliver,” Hesmucet replied.
Now Fighting Joseph frankly stared. “Oliver? You must be joking… sir. I hope you’re joking. Oliver the blond-lover? Oliver the gods-drunk? Oliver with his right arm gone? Lion God’s twitching tail, it’d be like putting a cross between Bell and Leonidas the Priest in charge of a wing.”
“No.” Hesmucet shook his head. “Oliver’s pious, but he knows soldiering as well as he knows the gods. And he’s not brash and rash, the way Bell is. He thinks before he moves.”
“I agree,” Doubting George said. “Before the war, I thought Oliver was a horrible windbag, and I wished he would quit blathering on about loosing the blonds from the soil. But that is King Avram’s policy now, so we all needs must follow it. And Brigadier Oliver is a more than capable soldier, as the commanding general said.”
“Giving that wing to such an untried man-and a junior untried man-is an outrage when senior officers are available,” Fighting Joseph insisted. “Not only an outrage, but also a gross injustice.”
“I’m sorry, General, but I don’t agree,” Hesmucet said. “Brigadier Oliver will have that wing.”
“Disgraceful.” Fighting Joseph drew himself up to his full height, which was perhaps an inch less than Hesmucet’s. In a voice like thunder, he said, “If that is your final decision, I cannot abide the insult, and must offer my resignation from King Avram’s service and from this, his host.”
Without a doubt, he thought Hesmucet would find him indispensable and would knuckle under to that threat. Without a doubt, he had never so badly misjudged a situation-which, with Viziersville on his record, was saying a great deal. Hesmucet had all he could do not to chortle with glee. “Lieutenant General George, you are my witness,” he said. “Fighting Joseph has tendered his resignation.”
“Yes, sir,” Doubting George agreed. “I heard him do it.”
“And you shall also be my witness that I accept the said resignation, effective immediately,” Hesmucet went on.
“Yes, sir,” George repeated. “I will so testify, at need.”
Fighting Joseph first looked as if he didn’t believe his ears, then as if he didn’t want to. “How-how dare you?” he spluttered. “How do you think you can manage this army without me?”
“I expect I’ll manage,” Hesmucet answered. “And, since you’ve resigned, it’s not your concern anyway. A good evening to you, General. I trust you will make a splendid success of yourself in civilian life.”
Still looking as if he’d been hit in the head with a rock, Fighting Joseph, having fought for the last time, stumbled out of Hesmucet’s headquarters. Hesmucet found a jar of spirits and poured a mug for himself and one for Doubting George. Though he’d lost James the Bird’s Eye, his men had held Bell’s, and he was rid of Fighting Joseph. He wondered which of those would prove the bigger victory.
“Bell had his chance,” Lieutenant General George told his brigadiers. “He had it, and he couldn’t do anything with it. Now it’s our turn, by the gods, and we’ll see how well he likes that.”
“That’s right,” Absalom the Bear rumbled. The big man went on, “The traitors have played games with us for too long. I don’t believe they’ve got the men to play games any more.”
“We’ve got Brigadier Oliver pushing up to our left,” George said. “Now Hesmucet is going to stretch this wing up toward the right, toward the glideway link with Dothan Province and the one with northern Peachtree Province. Once we’ve got those in our hands, too, how’s Lieutenant General Bell going to feed Marthasville?”
“That’s simple, sir,” Brigadier Brannan said. Doubting George’s commander of siege engines paid close attention to logistics. His handsome face twisted into a thoroughly nasty grin. “He won’t. Those bastards will starve, and then we’ll clean ’em out.”
Absalom shook his head. “No, I don’t think that’s how it’ll happen. When we move against the glideway lines to Dothan and to the north of Peachtree Province, Bell will have to come out against us, to try to knock us away. Then we’ll lick him, and what can he do after that? Not fornicating much.”
“I think you may be right,” Doubting George said. “Bell isn’t the sort of man who’s going to let himself be shut up in a place and stand siege. What he wants to do is get out there and attack.”
“Look how much good it did him these past couple of days,” Brannan said. “Of course he’ll want to go out and try it again.”
George shrugged. “He’ll just think he had bad luck, or that his soldiers let him down. Attacking is what he knows how to do. It’s all he knows how to do. If you send a carpenter out to try fixing something, of course he’s going to hammer nails into it, even if it’s a blanket with a rip and not a board at all.”
“Let Bell come,” Absalom said. “Let him come, and we’ll pound nails into him.”
“We’ll pound nails into the boards of his funeral pyre,” Doubting George said. “The beauty of our position now is, we don’t have to try to break into Marthasville. We can do the traitors every bit as much harm by stretching out past them. And when we do, they have to come out against us and attack our fieldworks. We don’t have to try to break through theirs.”
“I like that,” Absalom the Bear said. “We’ve had to go up against too many of their earthworks. It might as well be their turn for a while. And I’ll tell you something else: the men will like it, too.”
“That’s a fact,” Brannan agreed. “If you’re trying to fix wool or rock or water, a hammer’s not the right tool for the job.”
“We’re the ones with the tools for the job now,” George said. “Let’s get moving and do it. Some of Brigadier John the Lister’s men will fill in on our left as we shift.”
Brannan smiled. “Good old Ducky. He’s reliable, by the Thunderer’s prong.”
“That he is.” Doubting George didn’t doubt it in the slightest. When Fighting Joseph resigned because Hesmucet had named Brigadier Oliver commander of James the Bird’s Eye’s wing rather than giving it to him, that had given the general commanding one more slot to fill. John the Lister-often called by the nickname Brannan had given him-was a thoroughly capable officer, one who did what needed doing without demanding praise before, during, and afterwards. With him on his flank, George felt much happier than he would have with Fighting Joseph there.
George’s wing started sliding around to the right, to the east of Marthasville, the next morning. He’d wondered if Bell would try to strike him a blow at once, but the northern soldiers stayed in their entrenchments. Only a few unicorn-riders in blue dogged the southron troops. Doubting George sent his own unicorn-riders forward and drove them away.
“They’re only trying to see what we’re up to,” Absalom the Bear said. “They can’t stop us.”
“I know that,” Doubting George replied. “I don’t care. I don’t want them seeing anything, either. It might cause us trouble later on.”
As his wing advanced, though, he wondered whether anything would cause the southrons in Peachtree Province trouble ever again. Hesmucet had had the right of it: but for Joseph the Gamecock’s army and Duke Edward’s over in Parthenia, King Geoffrey had little left with which to hold his kingdom together. And, now that Bell had taken the army once Joseph’s and smashed it up, little remained to hold back the men in gray as they advanced.