“Why not?” James said. “He already knows my view of him, and his of me is unlikely to go lower.”
“Very well.” The scryer did his best to sound ominous. James of Broadpath laughed in his face. The scryer mouthed something that was surely not a compliment. A moment later, the crystal ball in front of James went dark.
He laughed again. He’d had the last word, and he hadn’t even said anything.
In spite of everything, he got his army moving again the next morning. The men went forward with a will. They thought they could take Wesleyton. They thought they could do anything. Under Duke Edward, they’d proved they could time and again.
Can they do it without Duke Edward? James wondered, and then, even more to the point, Can they do it under me? He was going to find out. He’d always longed for independent command. Now he had it, even if not quite under the circumstances in which he’d wanted it.
That afternoon, his little army came up against the outworks around Wesleyton. He looked from them to the keep at the heart of the town, then let out a long, sad sigh. One glance was plenty to tell him Whiskery Ambrose had orders much easier to obey than his own.
After Rollant’s regiment helped drive the traitors back from the Franklin River and helped open the way for supplies and for the forces led by Fighting Joseph and by Lieutenant General Hesmucet, it had little fighting to do for a while. That suited him fine. He and Smitty made their tent as comfortable as they could, adding scrounged extra cloth to make it more wind- and waterproof and piling up springy, fragrant pine boughs on which they could lie snug and warm in their blankets.
Rollant was sitting in front of the tent spooning up mush mixed with salt pork from his mess tin when somebody not far away let out a cheer. His head whipped around. Several more people started to whoop and holler. A moment later, Rollant did, too.
Smitty stuck his head out of the tent. “What in the hells?” he said. “How am I supposed to write a letter to my folks if you’re yelling your fool head off?”
“Captain Cephas is back-for good, this time, looks like,” Rollant exclaimed. “See? There he is.”
“What?” Smitty said, this time in an altogether different tone of voice. Then he started cheering, too.
The wounded officer made his way through the company, shaking hands with all his men. He remained thinner and paler than Rollant remembered, but he was back, and that was all that mattered. “Good to see you, sir!” Rollant said.
“Good to be seen, believe me.” Cephas’ hand went to the right side of his ribcage. “For a while there, I didn’t think anyone would see me again.” He clasped Smitty’s hand after Rollant’s, and asked him, “Are you still raising trouble?”
“Every chance I get, sir,” Smitty said proudly.
“Good. Keep it up,” Cephas said with a grin, and went on to the next tent.
Smitty looked about ready to burst with pride. Rollant said, “Remember, now, he won’t tell you that when Sergeant Joram brings you up before him.”
“Spoilsport,” Smitty said. After a moment, he added, “I can think of one man in the company who isn’t happy to see the captain again.”
“Who, Lieutenant Griff?” Rollant shook his head. “You’re wrong, Smitty. I saw him-he was grinning fit to burst.”
“So he was,” Smitty agreed. “But he’s not the fellow I meant. It’s Hagen who isn’t happy to see Captain Cephas back, and that’s because Corliss is.”
“Oh.” Rollant glanced toward the serfs he’d brought in from just outside of Rising Rock. Sure enough, smiles wreathed Corliss’ pretty face. And, sure enough, her man scowled at Cephas’ back. “I don’t like that,” Rollant said. “I don’t like that one bit, as a matter of fact. That could be trouble. It could be a lot of trouble.”
“You’re repeating yourself,” Smitty remarked. “Not only that, you’re saying the same thing over and over.”
“Well, what if I am?” Rollant said. “I’ll tell you something else-once. I wouldn’t want to be Captain Cephas if he does start messing around with Corliss, or even if Hagen just thinks he is.”
“You’re worrying too much,” Smitty said with a dismissive wave. “Gods above, Rollant, Hagen is only a-” Several words too late, he broke off. Even with his swarthy skin, his flush was plain to see.
Rollant took off his cap and displayed his own head of blond hair. “Just in case you’d forgotten, I’m only a serf, too. Only a runaway serf, come to that. If you want to take me across the lines to my old liege lord, you’d put some gold in the pockets of your pantaloons.”
“Oh, shut up,” Smitty said. “I didn’t mean it like that. You’ve proved you’re a man, by the gods.”
“And Hagen hasn’t?” Rollant was unwilling to let it go. “Is that on account of the color of his hair?”
“Gods dammit, it’s on account of he’s not a soldier.” Now Smitty was starting to sound angry, too. “Anybody who’s no soldier and tries to take on one of us’ll be sorry he was ever born-but not for very long, because it’s the last thing he’ll ever do.”
That held some truth-enough to melt some of Rollant’s anger. Not all of it, though. “How long are blonds going to have to keep on proving themselves in Detina?” he asked bitterly. “We didn’t invite you black-bearded bastards to sail over here. How long are we going to stay strangers in our own land?”
With anyone but Smitty, that would have put him in trouble. It was one step over the line, or more likely two. Before King Avram succeeded, Rollant never would have dared say such a thing to an ordinary Detinan: he would have been too likely to end up in gaol as an insurrectionary. But Avram had taken over the Black Palace promising to free the northern serfs from their bondage to the land and, by implication, to turn them into something like ordinary Detinans themselves. If that didn’t let Rollant speak his mind every now and again, what ever would?
Slowly, Smitty said, “The more you look at things, the more complicated they get, don’t they?”
It wasn’t an apology, but it felt like a step toward one. Rollant said, “That’s what this war is all about-to make sure Detina doesn’t stay the way it used to be.”
“All I joined up for was to make sure Grand Duke Geoffrey didn’t change Detina into two different kingdoms,” Smitty said. “That’s all most of us joined up for. This other business, it… just happened.”
Rollant should have got used to being an afterthought in Detinan affairs. He should have, but somehow he hadn’t. And, if blonds were an afterthought, why had the north tried to set up its own kingdom to keep them tied to the land?
He almost threw that in Smitty’s face, too. Almost, but not quite. A blond who pushed too hard only ended up pounding his head against a wall. And most of Smitty’s heart was in the right place. If not quite all of it was, when had the world ever been perfect?
Sergeant Joram strode by. He nodded to Rollant. “Nice day, isn’t it?” he remarked.
Incautiously, Rollant answered, “If you ask me, it’s chilly.”
Sergeant Joram beamed. “Then you need some work to warm you up, don’t you? Draw yourself an axe and chop firewood.”
“Sergeant!” Rollant said, cursing having grown up in the milder autumns that prevailed down in Palmetto Province. He didn’t think Joram was picking on him because he was a blond. Joram picked on people because he was a sergeant, and that was all sergeants were good for-or so things seemed to common soldiers, at any rate.
Incautiously, Smitty laughed at Rollant’s fate. Joram beamed at him, too. “Misery loves company,” the sergeant observed. “You can chop wood, too.”
“Have a heart, Sergeant!” Smitty howled. Joram went on his merry way. For a heartless man, he walked very well. Even the blond warriors who’d fought against Smitty’s ancestors had surely known hearts were in short supply among underofficers.