“No, eh?” Ormerod raised an eyebrow. “Suppose you enlighten me, then.”
He’d intended it for sarcasm, but Gremio took him seriously. Trust a barrister, Ormerod thought. But then Gremio said, “You’re unhappy for the same reason I’m unhappy. You’re unhappy for the same reason half the army’s unhappy: you think we ought to be sliding in east of Rising Rock, too.”
And Ormerod, in the face of such obvious, manifest truth, could do nothing but nod. “That’s right, by the gods!” he burst out. “If we can all see it, why in the seven hells can’t Count Thraxton?”
“What Thraxton sees are the holes in our ranks,” Gremio said, and Ormerod nodded again. Major Thersites remained in command of the regiment for the wounded Count Florizel, and, after two days of hard fighting on the slopes of Merkle’s Hill, a much-depleted regiment it was, too. Gremio added, “And, by what I’ve heard, Thraxton thinks the southrons will run right out of Rising Rock if we poke them a little.”
“Gods grant he’s right,” Ormerod said. But, after marching on for a couple of paces, he added, “The southrons don’t much like running. Things’d be a lot easier if they did.”
“I am aware of this,” Gremio said. “I am also aware that we did hurt them badly. I hope that will outweigh the other.”
“It had better.” Ormerod tramped on. “After all we did, after all we went through…”
“I don’t know what we can do but hope,” Gremio said. He trudged along for a while without saying anything more. Ormerod thought he had no more to say. But then he did continue: “It shouldn’t have been like this.”
Ormerod just grunted and kept on going. He’d figured that out for himself. They marched through Rossburgh, which the southrons had abandoned not long before. Some of the people in the little town cheered them. Others jeered: “Why aren’t you getting out ahead of the southrons instead of just following along in back of them like a pack of hounds?”
“You see?” Gremio said. “Even the villagers can see what Count Thraxton can’t.” He shrugged a melodramatic shrug. “Who would do better, though? Not Leonidas the Priest, not unless I miss my guess.”
“No. He’s holy, but…” Ormerod said no more than that. He needed to say no more than that. After a few steps and a longing look at a tavern, he added, “Ned of the Forest might be up to the job.”
“He might be up to it, but he’d never get it,” Gremio said. “He has no birth to speak of. How many noble officers would obey a jumped-up serfcatcher?”
“Any noble who tried disobeying Ned would be sorry afterwards,” Ormerod said, which didn’t mean he thought Gremio was wrong. Though only a minor noble himself, he didn’t like the idea of obeying a jumped-up serfcatcher, either. But thinking of serfcatching made him notice Rossburgh in a way he hadn’t before. He was just about out of the place by then, but that didn’t matter. Turning to Gremio, he asked, “You notice anything funny about this town?”
“Aside from its being the place they made the woodcut of when they wrote the lexicon entry for `the middle of nowhere,’ no,” the barrister answered.
“Not enough blonds,” Ormerod said. “Hardly any blonds at all, in fact. They must have run away with the southrons.”
“Nothing we haven’t seen before,” Gremio said, though that wasn’t strictly true. Thraxton’s men hadn’t often been lucky enough to recapture land from which the southrons forced them. The serfs had shown their opinion of living under King Geoffrey-they’d shown it with their feet. Ormerod didn’t much care to see that opinion expressed.
The regiment encamped a few miles south of Rossburgh as the sun slid below the horizon. Major Thersites prowled from one fire to another. When he came to the one beside which Ormerod and Gremio sat, he said, “Well, even if the general doesn’t know what in the seven hells he’s doing, maybe things will turn out all right. Maybe.” Thersites didn’t sound as if he believed it.
Even though Gremio and Ormerod had been saying very much the same thing, it sounded different in Thersites’ mouth. They’d said it with regret. Thersites spoke with relish, as if he’d expected nothing better from Thraxton and the other nobles set over the army. Ormerod said, “We have to think they’re doing the best job they can.”
“If they are, gods help us all,” Thersites said. “If I wanted a rock garden outside my house, I know whose heads I’d start with. If these are the best we can do, I reckon we deserve to lose the war.”
“Why go to war, then, sir, if you feel like that?” Ormerod asked. He was too weary to want a quarrel with his bad-tempered neighbor.
“Why? I’ll tell you why. On account of the southrons are worse, that’s why,” Thersites replied. “But that doesn’t make what we’ve got in charge of us any too bloody good. I hate having to choose between thieves and fools, I purely do, but we’ve got more fools in fancy uniforms than you can shake a stick at. I’d like to shake a stick at some of ’em, and break it over their heads, too.”
Contempt blazed from him. Part of it was contempt for the southrons, part for the army’s higher officers. And part of it, Ormerod realized, was contempt for him and people like him. He fit into the neat hierarchy of life in the north. Thersites didn’t, even if he called himself a noble and lived like a noble. He was one who’d forcibly kicked his way into the picture from the outside, and still felt on the outside looking in.
Before Ormerod had the chance to think about what he was saying, he blurted, “You remind me of Ned of the Forest.”
Lieutenant Gremio stirred beside him, plainly unsure how Major Thersites would respond to that. And Thersites in a temper was nothing any man in his right mind took lightly. But the new regimental commander only nodded. “Thank you kindly,” he said, and bowed to Ormerod. “Ned’s a man, by the gods. He doesn’t need any blue blood to make him a man, either. He just is.” He bowed again, then went off toward another campfire.
“Well, you got away with that,” Gremio said once he was out of earshot. “I wasn’t sure you would.”
“Neither was I,” Ormerod answered. “Thersites is… touchy.”
“Touchy!” Lieutenant Gremio rolled his eyes. “Thersites is a fellow who hates everybody that’s better than he is: everybody who’s handsomer, or who has more silver, or who has bluer blood. And since there are a lot of people like that, Thersites has a lot of people to hate.”
“He doesn’t hate Ned,” Ormerod pointed out.
“No, I see he doesn’t.” Gremio spoke with exaggerated patience. “You got lucky-Ned’s everything he wants to be.”
“But Ned hasn’t got any noble blood at all.” Ormerod didn’t think Thersites did either, not really, but nobody liked to say anything about that, not out loud. Thersites’ temper was most uncertain.
“And he’s a brigadier without it,” Gremio said. “And he got the chance to tell Count Thraxton off right to his face, if what they say is true. All Thersites can do is grumble behind Thraxton’s back. He’d probably give his left ballock to be Ned of the Forest.”
“I’d give my left ballock to be back on my own estate, with no more worries than a serf running off every now and then.” Ormerod sighed for long-gone days. “I didn’t know when I was well off, and that’s the truth.”
“Gods curse King Avram for overturning what was right and natural,” Gremio said. “We couldn’t let him get away with it.”
“Of course not,” Ormerod agreed around a yawn. “Not if we wanted to stay men.” He lay down, rolled himself in his blanket, and went to sleep.
Breakfast the next morning was hasty bites of whatever he had in his knapsack. Count Thraxton might not have pursued the southrons so swiftly as Ormerod would have liked, or down the path he reckoned proper, but Major Thersites pushed the regiment hard. It was almost as if Thersites intended to drive General Guildenstern’s army out of Rising Rock all by himself.