Cabell of Broken Ridge strode up to Thraxton’s headquarters only a couple of minutes later. He now commanded the wing Dan of Rabbit Hill had led before. Count Thraxton had hesitated more than a little before naming him to the post, not least because his blood was higher than Thraxton’s. When old King Buchan died, there’d been some talk in the north of raising Cabell to the throne, though Geoffrey soon solidified his claim to rival Avram. Cabell seemed content as one of Geoffrey’s officers. Thraxton, who was never content himself, mistrusted that, but found no better choice despite his misgivings.
“At your service, your Grace,” Cabell said now, bowing courteously. He was a darkly handsome man with a round face and long, dark mustachios that swept out like the horns of a buffalo.
“Good,” Thraxton said. Cabell hadn’t got there fast enough to suit him, but hadn’t been so slow as to disgrace himself, either. And Thraxton was much more cautious about offending a duke than he would have been with an earl or a baron or a man of no particular breeding like Roast-Beef William.
“What’s in your mind, sir?” Old Reliable asked now.
“I have ordered James of Broadpath south and west to strike against Whiskery Ambrose at Wesleyton,” Thraxton answered. “After he has beaten Ambrose, he will return here or strike farther south, as opportunity presents itself.”
“That’s a bold strategy, sir,” Cabell of Broken Ridge said.
“Bold, yes. Bold but risky.” Roast-Beef William plucked at his graying beard. “We could find ourselves in trouble if the southrons strike while James is away. Dividing your force in the face of the enemy… It’s how Guildenstern came to grief, you know.”
“But Guildenstern did not know where we were.” Thraxton pointed down toward Rising Rock. “We see everything the southrons do at the moment they do it. They cannot possibly surprise us.”
“With our position, we can hold them anyhow,” Cabell said.
“I hope you’re right, your Grace,” Roast-Beef William said.
“Of course I am.” Cabell of Broken Ridge had no doubts whatever.
Thraxton always had doubts. More often than not, he had doubts about the men who served under him. He said, “We can hold, and we shall hold, provided that my wing commanders stay alert to any movement the southrons might seek to prepare.” He spoke as if expecting to discover Cabell and Roast-Beef William snoring in their tents: if he couldn’t find a quarrel any other way, he would make one.
Roast-Beef William only shrugged; he never had been a quarrelsome sort. But Duke Cabell, predictably, bristled. “Why did you pick us to command the wings, if you didn’t think we could do what you wanted?” he demanded.
Hearing the question made Thraxton regret his choice. He snapped, “That’s my concern, not yours.”
“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” Roast-Beef William said in some alarm as Thraxton and Cabell glared at each other. “Remember, gentlemen, the more we fight among ourselves, the happier General Bart will be down there in Rising Rock.”
Duke Cabell of Broken Ridge nodded and half bowed. “That is well said, sir, and I shall try to take it to heart.”
“If my subordinates were more subordinate and less insubordinate, we should not have these problems,” Thraxton said. Roast-Beef William coughed gently, from him as strong as a string of oaths from another man. Thraxton turned his scowl on the other officer, but the man called Old Reliable looked back out of steady and innocent eyes, and Thraxton was the first to look away. He gave a slow, reluctant nod. “As you say, William. The point is well taken.”
“Thank you, sir,” Roast-Beef William said. “And I know one other thing we should do.”
“And that is?” Thraxton’s voice got some of its usual rasp back. If Roast-Beef William presumed to try to give him orders…
But the wing commander said, “Sir, we should pray to the Thunderer to keep the weather good, so we can go on watching Rising Rock,” and Count Thraxton found he had to nod.
Earl James of Broadpath and his men marched south and west out of Rising Rock in the midst of a driving rain. The autumn had been mild up till then. “Just my luck,” he muttered under his breath, as rain beat down on his broad-brimmed traveler’s hat. “Just my fornicating luck.”
“Sir?” said an aide riding nearby.
“Never mind,” James replied. “Just talking to myself. In the temper I’m in, I’m the only one I’m fit to talk to.”
His heavy-boned unicorn squelched along. When the rain first started falling, he hadn’t been sorry; it would lay the dust on the road. But, of course, more than a little rain was worse than none at all when it came to movement, for it quickly turned roads to bogs. This one was well on the way. And James of Broadpath rode at the head of the army. Once some thousands of footsoldiers had churned up the mud, how would the asses and unicorns hauling supplies and siege engines fare? None too well, and James knew it.
“Glideway,” he said, again more to himself than to anyone else. “We have to get to the glideway port at Grover. Once we do, we’ll be all right.” Grover was thirty miles away: less than two days’ march in good weather, considerably more than two days’ march through muck.
How much more, James soon discovered. His weary, filthy men got into the little town in northwestern Franklin on the fourth day out from Proselytizers’ Rise. He rode to the glideway port there. At the port, he discovered that none of the glideway carpets he’d been promised were anywhere about.
At that point, he lost his temper and began bellowing like a bull just before a sacrifice. His roars routed out a buck-toothed clerk who looked like nothing so much as a skinny, frightened rabbit. The poor clerk’s terror meant nothing to James. “Where in the seven hells are my carpets, you son of a bitch?” he roared.
“Sir, I don’t know anything about them,” the clerk quavered.
“Well, the Lion God rip your throat out, why don’t you?” James said. “If the fornicating glideway clerk doesn’t know where the devils my stinking carpets are, who the devils does?”
“All glideway carpets in the military district of the Army of Franklin are under the personal control of Count Thraxton, sir,” the clerk said.
James of Broadpath clapped a hand to his forehead. “He was supposed to send them here, or enough to let my ragtag and bobtail deliver some sort of attack on Whiskery Ambrose up in Wesleyton. How in the hells am I suppose to deliver any sort of attack on him if half my men drown in the mud before we get to Wesleyton?”
“I wouldn’t know about that, sir,” the glideway clerk said primly. “No, sir, I wouldn’t know about that at all. If you want to find out about that, sir, you’d have to take it up with Count Thraxton his own self.”
“I thought I bloody well had, before I started for this miserable, stinking hole in the ground of a village,” James snarled. The clerk looked furious-in a rabbity sort of way-but James was too irate himself to care a copper for his feelings.
At that moment, a scryer came up to James and said, “Excuse me, your Excellency, but I’ve just received a message from Count Thraxton’s scryers, inquiring as to where we are and asking why we haven’t made better progress toward Wesleyton.”
James of Broadpath stared at the sorcerer. His expression must have been something to behold, for the fellow drew back in alarm. “He complains that we haven’t got closer to fornicating Wesleyton?” he whispered.
“Yes, sir,” the scryer answered.
“Oh, he does, does he?” From a whisper, Earl James’ voice rose to a deep-throated rumbling roar, rather like the precursor to an earthquake, that sent both the scryer and the glideway clerk backing away from him in alarm not far from terror. “He does, does he? Why, that…” James proceeded to express his detailed opinion of Thraxton’s ancestry, likely destination, and intimate personal habits-matters on which he had nothing save opinions, but those strongly held ones.