“I am Lieutenant General George, commander of this wing of King Avram’s army,” George said gravely. “Do I understand you to be a mite discouraged with the northern cause?”
“Discouraged?” the prisoner shouted. “Discouraged?” He spat on the rammed-earth floor. “That for the fornicating northern cause. I curse the northern cause, every fornicating piece of it. I curse King Geoffrey and his ministers and his satraps and public men, clean down to the lowest pothouse politico who advocates his cause. I curse the whole fornicating Army of Franklin, from Joseph the Gamecock and Bell the Bloody Butcher down to the mangiest, most miserable jackass. I curse its downsittings and its uprisings. I curse its movements, marches, battles, and sieges. I curse all its paraphernalia, its catapults and its crossbows. I curse its banners, bugles, and drums. And I curse the whole gods-damned institution of serfdom, which brought about this miserable, fornicating war.”
By then, the fellow’s guards had tears of laughter running down their cheeks. Doubting George held his face straight, which was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. “You are a man of strong opinions, sir,” he remarked.
“I know what’s what. I know eggs is eggs. I know pigs is pigs,” the prisoner said. “And I know we’ve got pigs in charge of us. Curse ’em all. Curse ’em, and make bacon of ’em, too.”
“Dare I ask your view of my side in this conflict?” George inquired.
“Futter you southrons, too,” the northern man said at once. “You bastards are winning the war by magic, and where’s the fair fight in that?”
“By magic?” George said in surprise. “Your side is the one credited with the stronger sorcerers.”
“Unicorn dung!” the prisoner exclaimed. “Stinks like it, too. Our wizards brag. You ever hear tell of Thraxton the Braggart? We brag, but your buggers really do things. We aren’t the ones who keep miles and miles of glideway tunnel in our back pantaloon pockets, way you bastards do.”
“Glideway tunnel?” Doubting George had never imagined that as something a wizard might keep handy in a pocket.
But it made perfect sense to the prisoner. “We go after your glideways, how else can you fix ’em so gods-damned fast, without you having tunnel right there ready to go and stick it through a hill? Ought to stick it up Bell’s backside, is where it ought to go.”
He went back to cursing, this time aiming his venom at the new commander of the Army of Franklin. But he’d been dead serious about the tunnels; Doubting George could tell as much. If only such a thing were possible, it would have been a good idea. When the latest string of blasphemies slowed, George asked, “How did you happen to get caught?”
“I got stuck in the mud, gods damn it,” the prisoner answered. He wiped at his forehead with a forearm. That dislodged the wig he was wearing. He didn’t realize it had gone awry, and looked even more absurd and bedraggled than he had a moment before.
“Would you say you’re representative of the soldiers going into Geoffrey’s militia these days?” George asked.
“Why shouldn’t I be?” the northern returned. “You see anything wrong with me? You saying there’s something wrong with me?” He looked comically indignant.
“No, not at all,” Doubting George said soothingly. Eyeing the young, strong guards, he contrasted them to their captive. King Avram’s dominions still had plentiful reserves of men. False King Geoffrey, on the other hand, was trying to wring a few last drops of water from a dry fleece.
“What are you southron bastards going to do with me?” the prisoner asked.
“Not much,” George told him. “We’ll feed you a meal-gods know you look like you could use one-and then we’ll ship you south to a prisoners’ camp. You’ll wait there till you’re properly exchanged for a southron your side has captured or till the war ends, whichever comes first.”
“Can’t be over too soon,” the prisoner declared mushily. “I want to get back to my life, is what I want to do.”
“Don’t we all?” Doubting George said. “If Geoffrey hadn’t let Palmetto Province start calling him king-”
“Gods damn Geoffrey! Devils fry him for breakfast and roast him for supper,” the prisoner said, and he was off again on another wild string of curses.
George decided he didn’t need to hear any more. He hadn’t really learned anything from the prisoner, save that the man had a remarkably foul mouth. Or so he thought till he went outside and considered the matter for a little while. True, the fellow with the broken false teeth and the wig askew hadn’t told him anything about where the northern armies were, how many men they had, or what they intended to do. But did that mean he’d told him nothing?
After a little more thought, Doubting George shook his head. That a scrawny old man had been hauled into the militia at all said something about the straits the north was in. That he hated the man who called himself his king and the commanders set over him said something, too. And if Grand Duke Geoffrey could have heard what it said, he would have shivered, no matter how oppressively hot the weather in Nonesuch was at this season of the year.
“He will hear,” George murmured to himself. “We’ll make him hear, and I doubt it will take very long.”
Roast-Beef William was not a happy man. His wing had fought its heart out, trying to push the southrons back into Goober Creek. Then the weary men had marched all night before trying to dislodge Hesmucet’s left from the glideway line leading to Julia. They hadn’t quite managed either feat, but the number of dead and wounded they’d left on the field told how hard they’d tried.
It told Roast-Beef William, at any rate. He couldn’t see that the soldiers’ effort and suffering meant that much to Lieutenant General Bell, who was glaring at him like the angry lion he resembled. “I don’t care how hard they tried,” Bell said furiously. “I care that they failed.”
“Sir, if you set out to do the impossible, you shouldn’t be surprised when you fall short,” William said.
“Impossible? No such thing,” Bell declared. “If only your men had pressed their second attack, they would have rolled up the stinking southrons and thrown them back in disorder.”
“Sir…” Roast-Beef William resisted the impulse to pick up his chair and break it over the commanding general’s head. “Sir, we’d fought a battle the day before. We’d marched fifteen miles at night with bad guides to get to where we could deliver that second attack. And then, after the way we fought, you complain because we didn’t do enough? For shame, sir! For shame!”
“The plan was good. If the plan was good but didn’t succeed, that must be the fault of the men who went to carry it out,” Bell said.
Sighing, William said, “Sir, the plan was less good than you think. If you attack soldiers in entrenchments when yours are not, you had better have more men than they do, not fewer. They waited for us to get close, and then they shot us down like partridges. You cannot blame our defeats on the brave soldiers who serve us.”
“You’re wiser in hindsight than you were in foresight,” Bell said, “for you didn’t protest these orders when I gave them.”
That held some truth, more than Roast-Beef William cared to think about. He hadn’t opposed Bell’s first attack, the one that had failed to push the southrons back over Goober Creek. Casting about for some means to defend himself, he said, “I did warn you the men you sent to attack James the Bird’s Eye would be too weary to give their best.”
“Oh, what a hero you are!” Bell jeered. In defeat, he was proving as bad-tempered and sarcastic as Joseph the Gamecock or Thraxton the Braggart ever had. Criticizing, it seemed, had proved easier than commanding. Camp rumor said Joseph, before departing, had warned that that would be so. However prickly Joseph was, he’d always known a hawk from a handsaw. Bell… Roast-Beef William wasn’t so sure about Bell.