“Shall I… respond that we’re doing the best we can, sir?” the scryer asked when his fulminations finally faded.
“No, by the gods,” James said, his outrage kindling anew. “Get your fornicating crystal ball. I’ll tell Thraxton what I think of him and his nagging myself, to the hells with me if I don’t.”
“Sir-”
“Get it!” James shouted, and the scryer fled. When he returned, he had the crystal ball with him. “Good,” James said grimly. “Now get me that two-faced son of a bitch, so I can talk with him face to face to face.” He laughed at his own wit.
Looking distinctly green, the scryer murmured the spells he needed to activate his crystal ball. An image appeared in it. It wasn’t Thraxton’s, but that of his chief scryer. James’ scryer spoke briefly to him, then said, “Count Thraxton is not available, your Excellency. He’s plotting strategy with Roast-Beef William and with Duke Cabell. The scryer says it’s urgent.”
Elbowing aside his own scryer, James stared at the fellow who served Count Thraxton. “Plotting, indeed,” he ground out. “He is plotting against me, and you’re welcome to tell him I said so.”
“Your Excellency, I am certain you are mistaken,” the scryer back by Proselytizers’ Rise said smoothly. “Count Thraxton wishes you every success.”
“Count Thraxton wishes I would jump off a cliff,” James of Broadpath retorted. “Why did he send me out without any proper help on the glideways here?”
“I’m sure that’s an oversight on the part of someone else,” Thraxton’s scryer said.
“Are you? I’m not,” James answered. “Who controls routing for the glideways in this part of the kingdom? His Grace does, his Grace and no one else.”
“Why would he want you to fail, your Excellency?” the scryer asked. “There’s no sense to it, as you’ll see if you think about things for just a moment.”
“No, eh?” James sounded thoroughly grim. “Why would he send me forth without arranging the glideways unless he wanted me to fail? He has to know I need them; whatever else he is, he’s no fool. And why would he order me to hurry without giving me any possible chance to do so? To put himself on the record as hustling me along, that’s why. Of course, nothing about the glideways is on the record, is it?”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t know, sir,” the scryer answered. “I am not privy to Count Thraxton’s thoughts.”
A lot of those thoughts surely went through him to the officers Thraxton commanded. Even so, James had trouble getting angry at the fellow. He would not have wanted a scryer who blabbed his ideas to the world at large. Still… He took a long, deep, angry breath. “You tell Count Thraxton for me that I want to see enough glideway carpets to move my army get here to Grover pretty gods-damned quick. And you tell him that, without those carpets, I can’t move against Whiskery Ambrose in Wesleyton. I can’t, and I won’t. Have you got that?”
“I certainly do, your Excellency,” Thraxton’s scryer said. “The count will hear of this.”
“He’d bloody well better,” James rumbled. He made a sharp chopping gesture to his own scryer, who broke the mystical link between the two crystal balls.
Eyes wide, his scryer asked, “Would you really stop the advance on Wesleyton, sir?”
“Of course I would,” James growled. “How in the hells can I go on with it unless I’ve got glideway carpets? If these rains keep up, we’d be a fornicating month getting there by road, and we’ll all starve by the time we did.” He knew he was exaggerating. He also knew he wasn’t exaggerating a great deal.
He got his glideway carpets. They started coming in the next day. That surprised him. He hadn’t expected them in the least. Maybe Count Thraxton had some vestigial sense of shame after all. No sooner had that thought crossed James’ mind than he shook his head. He wouldn’t have bet anything on it that he couldn’t afford to lose.
Loading men and unicorns and wagons and engines onto the carpets was another adventure, especially since the rain kept falling-and especially since Thraxton the Braggart kept haranguing James for more speed. James made a point of having his scryer tell Thraxton he was busy whenever the general commanding the Army of Franklin asked for him. Had he spoken with Thraxton, he knew what he would have said-and he knew the other man would not have cared to hear it.
At last, several days after it should have, James’ force started southwest down the glideway. Even that went more slowly than it should have. James didn’t know why. The mages claimed the wretched weather had nothing to do with it. But when James bellowed, “What in the seven hells does, then?” they only shrugged and shook their heads.
And, of course, they couldn’t simply take the glideway straight to Wesleyton, climb off the carpets, and come out fighting Whiskery Ambrose’s men. The southrons were in possession of the glideway for about the last third of the distance to Wesleyton. As soon as James’ men got down to the Little Franklin River, the glideway journey was over. They had to go back to being soldiers again.
James of Broadpath hoped Whiskery Ambrose would come out and fight him with his whole army. He’d fought Ambrose when the southrons attacked the Army of Southern Parthenia, and Duke Edward had crushed him without any great effort. Ambrose was unquestionably brave. Having said that, one said everything there was to say about his military virtues. If he’d attacked the position Duke Edward had taken for the next hundred years, all he would have done was kill every southron man born of the next several generations. In the field, in a standup fight, James was sure he could beat him.
But Whiskery Ambrose refused to give James a standup fight. His unicorn-riders and a few footsoldiers skirmished with James’ men, delaying them, falling back, skirmishing again, and again retreating toward Wesleyton. James, who had been frustrated from the very beginning of this misbegotten campaign, soon felt ready to bite nails in two.
Lacking nails, he also felt ready to bite in two the captured southron captain who was brought before him. “Gods damn you, why don’t you sons of bitches fight?” he shouted into the man’s startled face.
“Sir, you’d have to ask General Ambrose about that,” the captain said.
“To the hells with General Ambrose,” James said. “If he is a general, why doesn’t he come out and give battle?”
The captain raised an eyebrow. “If you’re such a fine general, why don’t you make him?” James glared at him. The southron looked back steadily enough. He went on, “General Ambrose has orders to hold Wesleyton, and that is what he intends to do.”
Cursing under his breath, James sent the prisoner away. Whiskery Ambrose always followed orders to the limit, presumably because he couldn’t come up with any better ideas on his own. Had he been ordered to drive James away, he would have bravely done his best-and played straight into James’ hands.
As things were, James had no choice but to press on despite wretched roads and worse weather. He had his orders, too, and he had Count Thraxton back outside Rising Rock nagging him ahead through the scryers. They faithfully delivered all of Thraxton’s messages. James ignored some and answered those he couldn’t ignore. He didn’t want Thraxton to be able to make a case that he’d been derelict.
“I know where the dereliction lies,” he told Thraxton’s chief scryer. “King Geoffrey will know it, too-you mark my words.”
“King Geoffrey and the count are intimate friends,” the scryer answered. “You slander Count Thraxton at your peril.”
“I fail to tell the truth about him at the kingdom’s peril,” James retorted. “And his Grace is the greatest slanderer left at large.”
“Shall I convey that opinion to him?” the scryer asked acidly.