But Hesmucet couldn’t rub the sorcerers’ noses in that. He was trying to build them up, not to tear them down. He said, “I’m sure you’ll all give your best for the king and for Detina.”
One of the mages, a youngish fellow with an eager gleam in his eye, stuck up a hand as Hesmucet was about to leave. When Hesmucet nodded to him, he said, “Sir, would it be useful to keep these clouds and this mist around for a while longer?”
“Useful? I should say so,” Hesmucet answered. “With the traitors peering down on us from Sentry Peak and Proselytizers’ Rise, the more bad weather, the better. But can you do anything about that? By what I’ve heard, weather magic is a nasty business.”
“It is, sir, if you try to make it sunny in the middle of a rainstorm or to bring snow in the summertime,” the sorcerer said. “But it’s a lot easier to ride the unicorn in the direction he’s already going-that’s what the proverb says, anyhow, and I think it’s true. This time of year, low-hanging clouds and fogs and mist happen all the time around Rising Rock.”
“So you can keep them happening?” Hesmucet said, and the mage nodded. Hesmucet stabbed out a finger at him. “But can you keep them happening and keep Thraxton the Braggart from noticing you’re doing it?”
“I think so, sir,” the wizard replied. “He might notice, he or his mages, if they really set their minds to investigating-but why would they? They know the weather around Rising Rock as well as we do-better than we do, in fact. Chances are, they’d just grumble and go on about their business.”
“I like the way you think,” Hesmucet said. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Alva, sir.”
“Well, Alva, you just talked yourself into a good deal of work, I’d say,” Hesmucet told him. “What happens if Thraxton decides to try a spell to lighten things up around these parts?”
“For one thing, sir, he’s working against the way the unicorn’s going,” Alva answered. “He’s a mighty mage, but he could try a spell like that and have it rain for a week afterwards-and he knows it, too. For another, even if he did try his spell and had it work, he probably wouldn’t notice mine. And even if he did notice mine, how are we worse off for trying?”
There was a question to warm Hesmucet’s heart. “We aren’t, by the gods,” he said. “Go ahead and take a shot at it, Alva. And you’re right-Thraxton’s spells have a way of going wrong just when he needs them most.”
Some of the other sorcerers congratulated Alva. Rather more of them looked jealous. That surprised Hesmucet not at all. People who wanted to get out there and do things, from all he’d seen, were more likely to draw people trying to hold them back than people trying to push them ahead.
He thought about warning the wizards. In the end, he held his tongue. Again, he was trying not to put pressure on them. I wouldn’t treat my brigadiers so tenderly, he thought. But mages weren’t brigadiers. If you tried to treat a tiger like a unicorn, you’d be sorry.
And if you treat southrons like men of no account and don’t believe they’ll do as they said and fight to keep the kingdom one, you’ll be sorry. Hesmucet looked toward Thraxton’s headquarters on Proselytizers’ Rise and nodded. Thraxton couldn’t see or hear him, of course, but he didn’t care.
Full of restless energy, Hesmucet hurried back to General Bart and told him what Alva had in mind. Bart nodded. “That’s worth a try,” he said. “It’ll be good, if he can bring it off.”
“Just what I thought, sir,” Hesmucet said.
Bart nodded again. “And even if it doesn’t work, it’ll give Thraxton and the other northerners something new to flabble about. Having ’em run every which way after something we’re trying is a lot better than letting ’em plan their own mischief and making us pitch a fit.”
“That’s… true.” Hesmucet gave the commanding general a thoughtful look. “That’s very true, as a matter of fact, and I hadn’t thought of it.”
“You don’t want to make things too complicated,” Bart said. “If you push first, the other fellow has a harder time pushing back. And if you’ve known the other fellow for years, you’ve already got a pretty good notion of what he’ll do and what he won’t do. We went to the same military collegium as the traitors’ generals. We fought alongside ’em before they tried to pull out of Detina. We know who’s smart and who’s a fool. We know who’s brave and who isn’t, and who gets drunk when he shouldn’t.”
Was he talking about himself? Even more than General Guildenstern, before the war he’d had a reputation as a hard-drinking man. But Guildenstern had kept right on tippling, while Hesmucet couldn’t recall seeing General Bart with a glass of brandy or even wine in his hand since the fight against Grand Duke Geoffrey started.
Bart went on, “And, by the gods, we know who can get along with people and get the most of out of them and who can’t, don’t we?”
At that, Hesmucet threw back his head and laughed out loud. “Now who could you be talking about, sir? The chap who changes his wing commanders the way a dandy changes his pantaloons?”
“Count Thraxton is a fellow with a little bit of a temper on him,” Bart said, “and since we know that, we ought to take advantage of it, don’t you think?”
He did make things sound simple, simpler than they’d seemed to Hesmucet. He made good sense, too. Hesmucet could see that. He ran a hand along his closely trimmed beard. Maybe, as Bart said, the simple ability to see and to do all the obvious and important things-and to realize they were obvious and important-was what set fine generals apart from their less successful counterparts.
In that case, Hesmucet thought, we’re in pretty good shape here in Rising Rock.
“No, no, no,” Doubting George said, not for the first time. “I don’t mind in the least. This is one of the things that happen in a war.”
Absalom the Bear shook his big, shaggy head back and forth, as if he were indeed the great beast that gave him his ekename. “It’s not fair, sir,” the burly brigadier said. “It’s not right. This ought to be your army now. You’re the one who made sure it’d still be an army.”
“It wasn’t my army when I did that-not that I did so much,” Lieutenant General George replied. “It was General Guildenstern’s.”
“So it was.” Absalom snorted. “And a whole great whacking lot of good he did with it, too.”
“What should I do-raise a rebellion?” George asked. “If I do, how am I different from Geoffrey?”
After that, Absalom looked like a flustered bear. “I certainly didn’t mean you should do anything of the sort, sir.”
“I doubted that you did,” George said dryly. “If you don’t want me leading my soldiers against General Bart and Lieutenant General Hesmucet, what do you want?”
“I want you to get the credit you deserve for saving this army,” Absalom said stubbornly. “You did that, and everybody knows it. You ought to be commanding here-you and nobody else.”
“No, no, no,” Doubting George said yet again. He was more flattered than angry, but he knew he had to look more angry than flattered, and he did.
“But why not?” Absalom the Bear demanded. “You saved the army, and-”
“Enough,” George broke in. Now he really was starting to get angry. “For one thing, I’m a long way from the only one who’s done something like that, you know. Bart saved King Avram’s army at Pottstown Pier, sure as sure he did, and that was an even bigger fight than the one by the River of Death.”
Absalom tried again: “But-”
“No, no, no.” George cut him off again. “I named one thing, but it’s the small one. Here’s the big one coming up. The big thing, the important thing, the thing that really matters, is that we lick Grand Duke Geoffrey and the traitors. How that happens doesn’t matter a copper’s worth. That it happens is the biggest thing in the world. Have you got that, Brigadier?”