“Misery loves company,” Rollant repeated spitefully. What Smitty said to him was a good deal more pungent than have a heart. Smitty didn’t have to waste politeness on a common soldier who was a blond to boot.
Mist shrouded the top of Sentry Peak and turned Proselytizers’ Rise, off to the west, into a vague dark gray shape hardly visible against the lighter gray of the sky. Smitty, still grumbling at everything, said, “This stinking fog means we can’t see what Thraxton the Braggart’s up to.”
“He can’t see what we’re up to, either,” Rollant pointed out as his axe thudded into a log. “Which counts for more?”
“I don’t know,” Smitty answered. “But after what that old he-witch did to us there by the River of Death, I want to keep an eye on him every gods-damned minute of the day and night.” He attacked the log in front of him as if it were Count Thraxton.
Rollant grunted with effort as he swung his own long-handled axe. Smitty had a point, perhaps a better one than he realized. To Detinans, magic was just another craft, just another skill. A man could be a fine mage in the same way as he could be a good cook. Rollant lived in that world, but wasn’t altogether of it. Among his people, magic was more personal, more dangerous. He dreaded a man like Count Thraxton in a way Smitty didn’t.
But when our magecraft met theirs, they smashed ours again and again, he thought. That must mean they’re right, or closer to right than we were, mustn’t it? However little he liked the idea, he supposed it had to be true.
He’d been sure Joram would come by to see how they were doing. The sergeant smiled sweetly. “Feeling warmer now?” he inquired.
“Just fine,” Smitty said. Rollant didn’t say anything. Joram might have turned whatever passed his lips into an excuse to pile more work onto his shoulders. Of course, if Joram was looking for an excuse to pile more work onto his shoulders, he could always just invent one.
But he said, “All right, boys, that will do for now. Get Hagen to haul it off to the cooks.” He raised his voice to a shout: “Hey, Hagen! Got a job for you.”
“What do you need, Sergeant, sir?” The serf treated Joram as if the underofficer were his liege lord. “You tell me what to do, I do it.” He grinned. “Not only that, you even pay me to do it.” He liked money. And Sergeant Joram had never bothered his wife-if Corliss was bothered.
“Take this firewood to the cooks,” Joram said.
“Yes, sir, Sergeant, sir,” Hagen said. Joram grinned, enjoying every word of that. Rollant did his best not to grin, too. His amusement sprang from rather different sources. He’d laid flattery on with a trowel a few times himself, or perhaps rather more than a few. He remembered getting out of trouble with Baron Ormerod more than once by pretending Ormerod was just this side of a god. The Detinan noble had eaten it up. What man wouldn’t?
As the blond whom Rollant had brought in to the company picked up a big armload of wood, Rollant and Smitty quietly got out of Joram’s sight, lest the sergeant find them something else to do. They were gone before Joram bothered to look for them. He could have yelled and called them back, but he didn’t bother. He could pick on any common soldier in the company; he didn’t need to concentrate on the two of them.
“He’s not a bad sergeant,” Rollant said.
“There are worse,” Smitty allowed. “But there are better ones, too. Some of those bastards only want to sit around and get fat, and they don’t make their men work any harder than they do themselves.”
“I think you’re dreaming,” Rollant told him. “Serfs still tell the story of a kingdom out in the east someplace, where the blonds rule everything and they make the Detinans grow things and make things for them. It isn’t real. I think most of the blonds who tell the story know it isn’t real. But they tell it anyway, because it makes them feel good.”
“Turning the tables, eh?” Smitty said, and Rollant nodded. Smitty pointed. “Who’s the fancy new tent for? That wasn’t here last night.”
“Captain Cephas wasn’t here last night, either-he was back in Rising Rock,” Rollant pointed out, adding, “And you people say blonds are dumb.”
Smitty thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand, as if to proclaim himself an idiot to the world at large. “Got to keep the captain feeling good,” he said.
Someone came out of the fancy tent: Corliss, Hagen’s wife. She looked as if someone-presumably Captain Cephas-had just made her feel good; Rollant had seen that slightly slack smile on his own wife’s face too many times after they made love to mistake it on another woman’s.
Corliss hurried away, back toward her own, smaller, tent. Smitty pursed his lips to whistle, but no sound came out. That might have been just as well. He turned toward Rollant. “She’s not trying to hide it, is she?”
“No.” Rollant felt… He didn’t know what he felt. How many blond women had had to lie down with Detinans since the invaders came over the Western Ocean? How many half-breed serfs remained tied to their noble fathers’ lands? More than any man, blond or dark, could easily reckon.
He didn’t think Cephas had forced himself on Corliss. He had no reason to think that. By all the signs, she’d been as eager as the officer. That should have made a difference. It did-and yet, it didn’t. What Rollant knew to be true had very little to do with what he felt.
As he had before, he said, “There’s going to be trouble.”
This time, Smitty picked his words with a little more care: “You worry too much, I think.”
“Well, let’s hope you’re right,” Rollant answered, which didn’t mean he agreed with the other soldier. He wished he knew what to do. He wished he thought anyone could do anything.
X
“Are we ready?” Lieutenant General Hesmucet demanded. General Bart shook his head. “Not quite yet,” he answered.
“What in the hells are we waiting for, then?” Hesmucet asked. “I’m here. Fighting Joseph is here. We’ve got unicorn-riders here all the way from Georgetown. What more do we need, sir? A fancy invitation from Thraxton the Braggart?” He was a hot-tempered man, and wanted nothing more than the chance to close with the traitors and beat them.
But Bart shook his head. “We’re still light on rations. Harvest is done, and there’s no foraging to speak of. I don’t want to move without being sure we won’t bog down because we’re too hungry to go forward.”
“Oh, very well,” Hesmucet said testily. “How long do you think we’ll need to build up the stores you want?”
“A couple of weeks more, unless Thraxton the Braggart pulls a sorcerous rabbit out of his hat,” Bart replied. “And I want to keep an eye on what’s happening off to the southwest. I may have to send out a detachment to help Whiskery Ambrose against Earl James. I hope I don’t, but you never can tell.” He sighed.
“Something wrong, sir?” Hesmucet asked. A sigh from General Bart often had more weight than a tantrum from a man with a spikier disposition.
“Only that I’d really rather not be fighting James,” the commanding general answered. “Back in the old army, back in the days when there was just one army, we were the best of friends.”
“That sort of thing will happen in a civil war, sir,” Hesmucet said. “I have plenty of friends among the traitors, too. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to lick them.”
“It doesn’t mean I don’t want to lick them, either, as you ought to know by now,” Bart said-a sharper comeback than he usually made. “It only means I wish I didn’t have to fight James. That’s all I said, and that’s all I meant.”
“Yes, sir,” Hesmucet replied, accepting the rebuke.
Bart chuckled. “I know you’re not a reporter or anyone else who claims he can read minds.”
“Ha!” Hesmucet’s answered smile was savage. “That would be funny, if only you were joking. You read what people have to say in the papers, they know what you’ll be up to six months from now.”