Fighting Joseph said, “Turn me loose, General. Just turn me loose, and I’ll show you what I can do.”
“You’ll be in the fight, never fear,” Bart said. Joseph’s handsome, ruddy face showed nothing but confidence. Earlier in the year, he’d commanded the whole western army after Whiskery Ambrose failed so spectacularly with it. And Joseph had failed, too, letting Duke Edward of Arlington trounce him at Viziersville with about half as many men as he commanded. Joseph would never have charge of a whole army again.
He had to know that. He wasn’t a fool-no, he wasn’t that particular kind of fool. But he remained an ambitious man. He would try to stretch what command he had here in the east as far as Bart would let him, and then a little further. Bart didn’t intend to let him get away with much of that.
But what he intended and what would actually happen were two different beasts. Fighting Joseph had a will of his own, and Thraxton the Braggart had a will of his own, too-quite a will of his own, Bart thought with wry amusement. Nothing would go exactly as planned. No, not exactly. Still and all, I aim to have my will be the one that prevails.
“Will you be ready to move on Sentry Peak when the day and the hour come?” he asked Fighting Joseph.
“Of course, sir.” Joseph sounded affronted. “I am always ready to move.”
There Bart believed him. Joseph might prove too aggressive, but he was unlikely not to be aggressive enough. Bart turned to Doubting George. “What about you, Lieutenant General?”
“Give the order, sir, and my men and I will obey it,” George replied. “You have only to command.”
Bart hoped he meant that. George was no glory hound, as Fighting Joseph was. He made an indomitable defender; they were calling him the Rock in the River of Death these days. But he wasn’t so good at going forward as he was at not going back. “I shall rely on you,” Bart said, and Doubting George nodded.
“Tell me where to go,” George said. “Tell me what to do. By the gods, I’ll do it. If you think you have another man who can do it better, give it to him. The kingdom comes before any one soldier.”
“Well said,” Bart replied. “An example for us all, as a matter of fact.” He looked at Fighting Joseph. Joseph stared blandly back, as if he didn’t have the slightest notion of what Bart had in mind. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he truly was blind to what other people thought of him. Maybe. Bart wouldn’t have bet anything on it he couldn’t afford to lose.
Bart wouldn’t have bet anything on it anyway. Spirits had been his vice, not rolling dice or a spinning wheel of chance. Fighting Joseph had been rich and then poor several times in quick succession in silver-rich Baha out in the far east. He would gamble on anything, including his superiors’ patience.
With some relief, Bart turned away from him and toward Lieutenant General Hesmucet. “Are you ready to fight?” he asked, already confident of the answer.
Sure enough, Hesmucet nodded. “I’ve been ready for days, sir. So have my men. We’re just waiting for you to turn us loose.”
“Don’t worry. I intend to,” Bart replied. Hesmucet didn’t puff himself up the way Fighting Joseph did. He didn’t prefer the defensive, as Doubting George did. He wanted to go forward and grapple with the enemy. In that, he was very much like Bart himself. If a strong man and a weak man grappled and kept on grappling, sooner or later the strong man would wear down the weak one.
“When we start fighting the northerners, we have to hit them with everything we’ve got and go right on hitting them till they fall over,” Bart said. “That’s what will win the fight for us.”
“We shall win glory for King Avram,” Fighting Joseph declared.
“As long as we win the fight,” Doubting George put in. Bart decided George really didn’t care about glory, and that he’d meant what he said when he urged his own replacement if Bart thought that would help defeat Thraxton’s men. It wasn’t that he had no pride; Bart knew better. But he really did put the kingdom ahead of everything else. Bart had to admire that.
He said, “All right. I think we know what we’re supposed to do. That was the point of calling you together, so we’re through here. Lieutenant General Hesmucet, stay a bit, if you’d be so kind. I want to talk with you about weather magic when we do attack the traitors.”
“Yes, sir,” Hesmucet said as the other officers rose from their seats and headed back to their own commands. “At your service, sir.”
“At King Avram’s service,” Bart said, and Hesmucet nodded. Bart resumed: “He made us, and he can break us. That’s what being a king is all about.”
“Yes, sir,” Hesmucet repeated. “But we can make him or break him, too. That’s what fighting a civil war is all about.”
Had Fighting Joseph said that, he would have meant trying to break the king and seize the throne himself. Hesmucet’s mind didn’t work that way. Neither did Bart’s. He said, “Can we do this the way we’ve planned it?”
“I think so,” Hesmucet answered. “We’ve got more men. We’ve got more engines. We’ve got more of everything, except…” His voice faded.
“Except fancy magecraft,” Bart finished for him. Hesmucet nodded. Bart shrugged. “Most of the time, it doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to. If it did, the northerners would have licked us by now.”
“I know that,” Hesmucet said calmly. “But Thraxton’s sure to throw everything he’s got at us. He doesn’t want to have to fall back into Peachtree Province again.”
“We just have to stop him,” Bart said.
“Guildenstern couldn’t,” Hesmucet said. “His mages couldn’t, either. If the traitors are playing with loaded dice, we have trouble. You know that’s so.”
“Yes, I know that’s so-if they are,” Bart agreed. “But I also know I’m not going to lose much sleep over it. I’ll tell Phineas and the others to do their best. That’s all they can do. If they do their best, and if our soldiers do their best, I think we’re going to win.”
“Yes, sir.” Hesmucet didn’t sound as if he believed it himself, not at first. But then he paused, stroking that short beard, hardly more than stubble, he wore. His smile, Bart thought, was quizzical. “Do you know, sir,” he said, “there are a lot of generals who, if they said something like that, you’d right away start figuring out what would go wrong and how you’d keep from getting the blame for it. But do you know what? When I listen to you, I think you’re going to do exactly what you say you’ll do. And if that’s not pretty peculiar, to the seven hells with me if I know what is.”
“Thraxton the Braggart’s just a mage. He’s not a god,” Bart said. “He makes mistakes, the same as anybody else does. He did it down at Pottstown Pier, and he did it again at Reillyburgh. If we jog his elbow right when he’s trying to do three or four things all at the same time, he’ll likely do it once more. And if he does, we’ll lick him.”
“But if he doesn’t…” Hesmucet still had doubts.
Bart sighed. “Look at it this way, Lieutenant Generaclass="underline" the traitors have to do everything perfectly to have a chance of beating us. We can make some mistakes and still beat them. General Guildenstern made every mistake in the book, but they couldn’t run him out of Rising Rock even so. Don’t you think the Braggart knows that as well as we do?”
“He has to,” Hesmucet said. “He’s not stupid.”
“No, that’s never been his trouble,” Bart agreed. Both men chuckled. Bart continued, “But it has to weigh on his mind, wouldn’t you think? Knowing he’s got to be perfect, I mean, knowing he’s got no margin for error. It’s easy to walk along a board lying in the middle of the road. But take that board to New Eborac and stretch it out between the top floors of a couple of blocks of flats, where you’ll kill yourself if you fall off. How easy is it then? The more a mistake will cost, the more you worry about it…”