All Rollant said was, “Yes, Sergeant.” He wanted to kill the traitors, too. He didn’t want to kill them because they were traitors, or because they were trying to tear the kingdom to pieces. All that was for ordinary Detinans. He wanted to kill them because one of their number had used him like a beast of burden till he was a grown man and able to run away, because uncounted thousands of them used other blonds the same way (and used their women worse), because almost every Detinan in the north wished he were a liege lord and able to use blonds so. If that wasn’t reason enough to want the traitors dead, Rollant was cursed if he knew what would be.
“Soldiers coming!” somebody called. “Coming out of the east!”
Rollant wasted no more time worrying about reasons to want to kill the enemy. The most basic reason was simplicity itself: if he didn’t kill northerners, one of them would be delighted to kill him. He put a new quarrel in his crossbow with frantic haste, then yanked back the string to cock the weapon.
Smitty had sensibly found shelter behind a low stone fence. Rollant got down behind the fence with him. Crouching on one knee, he peered over the fence in the direction of the rising sun. Sure enough, there came the cloud of dust that bespoke marching men.
It was a large cloud. “A lot of those bastards heading this way,” Smitty said.
“I know,” Rollant answered. “Well, we wondered where they were. Now we know. They want us, they’ll have to pay for us.”
“That’s right,” Smitty said. “They made us charge fences, back there in front of Rising Rock. Now we’ll see how well they like it, gods damn them.”
Rollant nodded. One of the things soldiers in this war quickly learned was how much protection mattered. A man behind a solid stone wall could stand off several out in the open-provided an engine or a wizard didn’t knock down the wall. That, unfortunately, happened, too.
And then, to his surprise, Rollant heard cheers from King Avram’s soldiers farther east. Some of the cheers had words attached to them. And those words were among the most welcome he’d ever heard: “They’re ours!”
When he heard those words, he cheered, too. He cheered, yes, but he didn’t show himself, not yet. When Detinans fought Detinans, one army looked all too much like another. Men had killed their own generals before, and you were just as dead with a friend’s bolt through you as with a foe’s.
But then somebody yelled, “Those are Fighting Joseph’s men, come to help us hold the supply line against Geoffrey’s traitors.”
At that, Rollant did get to his feet. If people could see who led the newcomers, he was willing to believe they followed King Avram. Then he saw the general himself, and did some yelling of his own: “There’s Fighting Joseph!”
A lot of men were yelling Fighting Joseph’s name, and he waved to the ordinary soldiers. He was an extraordinarily handsome man, with ruddy features and a piercing glance. Back in the west, he’d promised to lead his army straight to Nonesuch. If he had, people wondered if his next move would have been to overthrow King Avram and seize the throne for himself. They’d stopped wondering in a hurry, when Duke Edward of Arlington used half as many men as Fighting Joseph led to whip him soundly at Viziersville. He still made a good division commander, though.
“Hello, boys!” he called now from the back of the fine unicorn he rode. “We’re here, and there’s plenty more coming along after us. Your days on short commons are done, and once you’ve filled your bellies, we’ll throw the traitors out of here and boot them back to Peachtree Province once and for all.”
Everybody cheered. Rollant shouted himself hoarse. Smitty threw his hat in the air-and then recovered it in a hurry, before Sergeant Joram could growl at him for going without it. As he put it back on his head, he said, “It may not be so easy. Geoffrey’s men’ll try and knock us out of here, you wait and see if they don’t.”
IX
“Those sons of bitches!” Major Thersites shouted in a perfect transport of rage. “Those idiotic, gods-damned sons of bitches! What in the hells have we got generals for in the first place, if they can’t keep things like that from happening?”
Captain Ormerod had never seen him so furious. He wished Colonel Florizel were still commanding the regiment; Florizel was gentleman enough to keep his annoyance under control. He was also gentleman enough to tell the officers under him why he was annoyed. Cautiously, Ormerod asked, “What’s gone wrong now, sir?”
“I’ll tell you what’s gone wrong,” Thersites snapped. “The great mages and mighty scholars who command us have let the stinking southrons put a decent supply line back together, that’s what. How are we supposed to starve those buggers out of Rising Rock if they can bring in as many victuals as we can?”
“Oh, dear,” Ormerod said, in lieu of something a good deal stronger. “How did that happen?”
“How? I’ll tell you how,” Thersites growled. “All our bright boys were sound asleep, that’s how. They hit Brownsville Ferry from east and west at the same time, and ran our soldiers right out of there. Of course we never expected it. Why would the southrons want to keep themselves fed?”
Maybe he was right about how the unfortunate event had happened, maybe he was wrong. He was, as always, so full of bile against those set above him that Ormerod had trouble trusting his own judgment there. But Thersites was surely right about what the southrons’ advance meant. “We have to push them back,” Ormerod said.
“You can see that.” Thersites didn’t have any trouble with Ormerod-he outranked him. “I can see that. But can the great philosophers over on Proselytizers’ Rise see that? Not bloody likely!” He spat in fine contempt.
A couple of hours later, though, Earl James of Broadpath came riding up to the base of Sentry Peak on a unicorn that would have done better hauling a winery wagon. “Come on, you lazy good-for-nothings,” he called. “We’ve got some southrons to clear out east of here.”
“How did they get there in the first place?” Thersites asked him.
“Pulled a march on us, caught us by surprise,” James of Broadpath answered. “It’s war. These things happen. What matters is whether you fix them or not. Get your men ready to fight, Major.”
“Yes, sir,” Thersites said. James nodded and rode on. Thersites turned to Ormerod. “You heard the man. Let’s get ready to move.”
“Yes, sir,” Ormerod said, as Thersites had before. “Who will take our place here?”
“I have no idea, Captain,” the regimental commander answered. “But I’m not going to worry about it, either. I hope the big brains will see they need to move somebody else in if they move us out. I hope so, but you never can tell.”
With that something less than ringing reassurance, Ormerod had to be content. He hurried back to his own company, shouting for the men to line up ready to march. “What now?” Lieutenant Gremio asked in some exasperation. “Are they going to throw us at Rising Rock? They’re asking for us to get slaughtered if they do.”
“No, it isn’t that,” Ormerod said, and explained what it was. He added, “Remember what happened to Dan of Rabbit Hill and Leonidas the Priest. Criticizing the commanding general isn’t smart.”
“Getting ourselves in this mess isn’t smart, either,” Gremio retorted. “If I see that someone is an imbecile, should I keep quiet about it?”
“I don’t know. Should you?” Ormerod said. “Thersites certainly hasn’t. Do you want to be just like him?”
As he’d thought it would, that gave Gremio pause. The barrister from Karlsburg grimaced and said, “All right, Captain, you’ve made your point. And this is something that needs doing, no doubt about that. Will anyone replace us here?”
“I don’t know,” Ormerod said. “Nobody bothered to tell me.” Gremio grunted and rolled his eyes.
Ormerod’s company was the second one ready to march. That spared him and his men the rough side of Major Thersites’ tongue. “This isn’t a ladies’ social, Captain,” Thersites snarled at the commander of the last company to assemble. “If you don’t care to run the risk of getting shot, you shouldn’t have come along in the first place. You could be back in Palmetto Province happy and safe, you know.”