“Geoffrey won’t thank you for it,” Colonel Biffle said.
“I know,” Ned answered. “Nobody ever thanks the fellow who kills the polecat or drains the cesspool or does any of the other nasty, smelly jobs that need doing just the same. But I don’t think it’ll come to that.” He sighed. “By the gods, though, Biff, I wish it would.”
VIII
Peering down into Rising Rock from the height of Sentry Peak, Earl James of Broadpath grunted in dissatisfaction. He turned to the officer commanding one of the regiments holding Sentry Peak for King Geoffrey. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Major…?”
“Thersites, sir,” the officer replied. He was an ugly customer, and would probably be dangerous in a fight.
“Major Thersites, yes.” James nodded. “Correct me if I’m wrong, as I say, but doesn’t it look to you as if the stinking southrons are bringing more and more men into Rising Rock?”
“It surely does, your Excellency,” Thersites said. “I’ve been telling that to anybody who’d listen, but nobody cares to listen to the likes of me. If you don’t have blue blood, if you’re from Palmetto Province instead of Parthenia…”
James of Broadpath did have blue blood, but he was from Palmetto Province, too. Sure enough, the Parthenians looked down their noses at everybody else. He said, “Count Thraxton will hear about this. I’ll make sure Thraxton hears about it.” He liked saying I told you so as much as any other man.
“Is it true what they say about Thraxton and Ned?” Major Thersites asked.
“To the seven hells with me if I know,” James answered. He told the truth: neither Ned of the Forest nor the commanding general of the Army of Franklin was saying much about whatever had passed between them. Rumor, though, rumor blew faster and stronger than the wind. But James was not about to gossip with a lowly major he barely knew.
Thersites said, “Anybody wants to know what I think, I wish Ned would’ve cut his liver out and fed it to the Lion God. Maybe then we’d get ourselves a general with some notion of what in the hells he was doing.”
“Maybe,” James said, and said no more. He’d learned his discipline in the stern school of Duke Edward of Arlington. No matter how much he agreed with this regimental commander, he wouldn’t show it. In fact… “If you’ll excuse me…” He bowed and started down the northern slope of Sentry Peak, the less steep slope that faced away from Rising Rock.
A puffing runner met him while he was still halfway up the mountain. “Your Excellency, you are ordered to Count Thraxton’s headquarters over by Proselytizers’ Rise as fast as you can get there.”
“Oh, I am, am I?” Earl James wondered what sorts of plots and counterplots were sweeping through Thraxton’s army now, and what the commanding general wanted him to do about them. Cautiously, he asked, “Why?”
“Because…” The messenger paused to draw in a deep, portentous breath. “Because King Geoffrey’s there, your Excellency. He’s come east from Nonesuch to find out what the hells is going on here.”
“Has he?” James said. He’d been with the Army of Franklin for three weeks now, and he wondered about that himself. But regardless of what he wondered, only one answer was possible, and he gave it: “I’ll come directly, of course.”
He hurried down the mountain, so that he was bathed in sweat when he got to flatter ground. Heaving his bulk up onto the sturdy unicorn that bore him, he booted the beast into a gallop as he went off toward the southwest.
The unicorn was blowing hard when he reined in beside the farmhouse from which Thraxton led the army. He hadn’t made the acquaintance of the sentry who took charge of the beast. After a moment, he realized why. He’s not one of Thraxton’s men. He’s one of the king’s bodyguards.
“Go on in, your Excellency,” the sentry said. “You’re expected.” James nodded. What would have happened to him had he not been expected? Nothing good, most likely.
As he started for the farmhouse, Leonidas the Priest rode up, gaudy in his crimson ceremonial robes. Leonidas waved to him and called, “Now, if the Lion God so grant, we shall at last see justice done.”
James of Broadpath cared less than he might have about justice. Victory mattered more to him. He just nodded to Leonidas the Priest and strode into the farmhouse. Baron Dan of Rabbit Hill waited there. So did Count Thraxton. And so, sure enough, did King Geoffrey. Careless of his pantaloons, James dropped to one knee and bowed his head. “Your Majesty,” he murmured.
“Arise, your Excellency,” Geoffrey said. His voice was light and true. Like his cousin and rival king, Avram, he was tall and thin as a whip. There the resemblance ended. Avram looked like a bumpkin, a commoner, a railsplitter. Geoffrey was every inch the aristocrat, with sculptured features, a firm gaze, and a neatly trimmed beard than ran under but not on his chin. As James got to his feet, Leonidas the Priest came in and bowed low to the king: he went to his knees only before his god. Geoffrey nodded to him, then spoke in tones of decision: “Now that we are met here, let us get to the bottom of this, and let us do it quickly.”
Count Thraxton looked as if he’d just taken a big bite from bread spread with rancid butter. “Your Majesty, I still feel your visit here is altogether unnecessary. This army has done quite well as things stand.”
“I know how you feel, your Grace,” Geoffrey said. He was not normally a man to care much for the feelings of others, but Thraxton was a longtime friend of his. Nevertheless, having made up his mind, he went ahead; he was nothing if not stubborn. “I have had a number of complaints from these officers here” -he waved to James, Leonidas, and Dan- “and also from several brigadiers about the way the Army of Franklin has been led since the fight at the River of Death. As I told Earl James, for the sake of the kingdom I intend to get to the bottom of these complaints, and to set the army on a sound footing for defeating the southrons.”
“Very well, your Majesty.” Thraxton still looked revolted, but he couldn’t tell King Geoffrey what to do and what not to do.
Geoffrey swung his gaze from the unhappy Thraxton to the Army of Franklin’s subordinate-and insubordinate-generals, who were just as unhappy for different reasons. “Well, gentlemen?” the king asked. “What say you? Is Count Thraxton fit to remain in command of this host, or is he not?”
James of Broadpath blinked. He’d never expected King Geoffrey to be so blunt. Geoffrey was a good man, a clever man, a brave man, an admirable man… but not a warm man, not a man to make people love him. James could see why. Avram would have handled things more deftly-but Avram wanted to wreck the foundations upon which the northern provinces were built. And so James, like the rest of the north, had no choice but to follow Geoffrey.
And, like Leonidas the Priest and Dan of Rabbit Hill, he had no choice but to answer Geoffrey’s question. Leonidas spoke first: “Your Majesty, in my view you must make a change. Count Thraxton has shown he has no respect for the gods, and so we cannot possibly expect the gods to show him any favor.”
“I agree with the hierophant, though for different reasons,” James of Broadpath said. I must not hang back, he thought. As the king said, it’s for the kingdom’s sake. “Once we beat the southrons, we should have made a proper pursuit. We should have flanked them out of Rising Rock instead of chasing them back into the town and letting them stand siege there-not that it’s a proper siege, since we don’t surround them and since they keep bringing in reinforcements.”
“They have a demon of a time doing it,” Thraxton broke in, “and they will have an even harder time keeping all those men fed.”
“They never should have had the chance to get them into Rising Rock in the first place,” James returned, his temper kindling.
King Geoffrey held up a slim hand. “Enough of this bickering. Too much of this bickering, in fact. And I have not yet heard from Baron Dan. How say you, your Excellency?”