Zibeon’s dour face got no lighter. “Sir, I don’t know,” he answered, shrugging. “To find that out, you’d have to talk to them.”
“Oh, very well,” Bell said sourly. He wanted to talk to civilians about as much as he wanted to lose his other leg, but sometimes there was no help for a situation. His repeated attacks against Hesmucet’s army had shown him that. That he might not have made those attacks never, ever, occurred to him. “Who are these sons of bitches, anyhow?” he asked, not bothering to keep his voice down.
“One is called Jim the Ball, sir; the other is Jim of the Crew,” Zibeon replied. “They are both merchants of some considerable wealth.”
With a martyred sigh, Bell yielded to necessity. “Very well, Major. You may send them in, and we shall see what sort of wisdom they offer.” He rolled his eyes to show how little he expected.
One look told him how Jim the Ball had got his name; the man was nearly spherical, and his tunic and pantaloons contained enough material for a couple of tents. Jim of the Crew, by contrast, was tall and slim and muscular-the crew to which he belonged was probably that of a river galley. He bowed to Bell. Jim the Ball might have done the same, but he was so round, Bell had trouble being sure.
“Good day, gentlemen,” Bell said, wishing he were somewhere else-preferably, at the head of a victorious army, halfway down to the border with Franklin. “What can I do for you today?”
“Sir,” Jim the Ball said, “the southrons are-destroying Marthasville-one piece-at a time.” He was so very fat, he had to pause and sip air every few words.
“We want you to let them know how barbarous it is to pound a city to pieces with civilians still in it,” Jim of the Crew added. He could speak a whole sentence without needing several breaths to finish it.
“Why do you suppose General Hesmucet would pay the least attention to such a plea?” Bell asked.
“Why do you-think he wouldn’t?” Jim the Ball replied, again putting a caesura in his sentence.
“You said it for yourself, sir: he is a barbarous man,” Bell said.
“What, by the gods, have we got to lose?” Jim of the Crew said. “If we go to him under flag of truce and he sends us away, we’re no worse off than we were. But if he says yes, we save what’s still standing, anyhow.”
Bell plucked at his beard. A letter cost him nothing; these fellows were right about that. And complaining to Hesmucet might make him look better in the eyes of the world. The north could trumpet about Hesmucet’s cruelty and iniquity if he kept on pounding Marthasville after being begged to stop. The world outside Detina-the kingdoms on the far side of the Western Ocean-had been trying to pretend the north didn’t exist. No one recognized Geoffrey as a sovereign among sovereigns. It was humiliating. It was infuriating. And the north could do not a thing about it.
Pointing at the two merchants, Bell asked, “If I draft this missive, would you be willing to carry it through the lines to Hesmucet?”
They looked at each other, then both nodded. Several of Jim the Ball’s chins wobbled at the motion. “Yes, sir,” he said.
“We’d be happy to, sir,” Jim of the Crew agreed.
“Very well, then,” Bell said. “Return here in two days’ time, and we shall see what we shall see.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” Jim the Ball said. “We’ll be here.”
“If we haven’t been burned to charcoal, we’ll be here,” Jim of the Crew added. “If the southrons haven’t attacked, we’ll be here.”
“They won’t attack.” Bell spoke with great conviction.
“How do you know that?” Jim of the Crew asked, pressing harder on the commander of the Army of Franklin than he had any business doing.
But Bell answered, “How do I know, sir? I’ll tell you how: because they’re a pack of cowards. If they weren’t a pack of cowards, afraid of showing themselves outside of entrenchments, they would already have attacked Marthasville. They wouldn’t do what they’re doing to its defenseless civilian population.”
He thought he’d impressed the two civilians. But, as they were leaving, Jim of the Crew turned to Jim the Ball and said, “If the stinking southrons are such great cowards, how come they whipped us every time we tried to go after ’em around this city?”
“Beats me,” Jim the Ball said.
“That’s what I said-they’ve beaten us,” Jim of the Crew told him. “They’ve beaten us like a gods-damned drum. I don’t care who’s king over us any more, as long as all these fornicating armies go straight to the seven hells and gone.”
Lieutenant General Bell almost shouted for his provost guards to arrest Jim of the Crew as a traitor to King Geoffrey. But then he shook his head. Sending the merchant and his chum across the lines to General Hesmucet struck him as a worse punishment. With any luck at all, the southrons would miss their flag of truce and fill them full of crossbow quarrels. And it couldn’t happen to a more deserving pair, he thought maliciously.
Still, the idea of writing a formal letter of complaint to Hesmucet had an undeniable appeal. “Major Zibeon!” Bell called.
“Sir?” his aide-de-camp said. If he’d heard the scathing remarks from the two civilians, he didn’t show it.
“Fetch me pen and paper, if you please.”
“Yes, sir,” Zibeon replied. “Do you really think General Hesmucet will heed your request, sir?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Bell said. “But we’re no worse off for finding out, are we?”
“No, sir,” Major Zibeon admitted.
Even writing came hard for Bell. Most men wrote with one hand and steadied the paper with the other. Bell’s left arm was only a dead weight, his left hand useless and inert. He had to put a large stone at the top of the sheet Zibeon found for him. He gnawed at his luxuriant mustache as he groped for words.
Permit me to say, sir, he wrote, that the unprecedented measures you have taken against this city transcend, in studied and ingenious cruelty, all acts ever brought to my attention in the long and dark history of war. In the names of the gods of humanity, I protest, believing that you will find that you are depriving of their homes and firesides the wives and children of a brave people. This calculated cruelty can only redound to the disgrace of the sovereign whom you serve, and to your own. Give over, while yet you may. I am, General, very respectfully, your obedient servant, Bell, Lieutenant General.
He signed his name with a flourish and sanded the letter dry. Then he used wax and his signet to seal it. He thought of summoning Jim the Ball and Jim of the Crew to take it at once, but didn’t. After Jim of the Crew’s gibe, he almost hoped a firepot burst on the merchant’s roof.
Before the appointed day, Roast-Beef William came to see him. That left him imperfectly delighted with the world; he would almost rather have seen the two merchants again. But William was a wing commander, and so not easy to ignore. “What can I do for you, Lieutenant General?” Bell asked after the older man had made his bows.
“Well, sir, I was wondering what sort of plan you had for getting us out of the fix we’re in,” Roast-Beef William replied.
“I have sent forth Brigadier Spinner’s unicorn-riders, as you know, to strike against General Hesmucet’s supply line,” Bell said. That he was reduced to such small strokes galled him.
That even such small strokes hadn’t done all he wanted galled him even more. Roast-Beef William knew what Spinner had done, too-and, more important, what he hadn’t. “Supplies are still coming through to the enemy,” he remarked.
“I know that,” Bell said testily. His arm and his leg hurt more than usual; he longed for laudanum. “But what would you have me do? Do you suppose we can make another sally and drive the gods-damned southrons back from Marthasville?”
He leaned forward eagerly, awaiting William’s reply. If the wing commander thought another attack might succeed, he would order it. He hadn’t lost the desire to hit back at the southrons, only most of the means. If Roast-Beef William reckoned those available… But William shook his head. “No, sir. We haven’t really got the men to stand siege any more, let alone strike out. That was why I came to see you.”