“Oh, I read them all the time,” Bart said. “I read them-I just make sure I don’t believe them.”
Hesmucet laughed out loud. Bart had a deadpan way of being funny he’d never met in another man. Here, though, the commanding general gave him a quizzical stare. He might have been funny, but he didn’t seem to have intended to. Hesmucet said, “When we do move, we’ll whip ’em.”
“That’s the idea,” Bart agreed. “Not much point to moving unless you move intending to whip the other fellow and then keep after him. I don’t know why so many generals have trouble with that notion, but they seem to.”
He made it sound so simple. When he fought, he made it look simple, too. Maybe it was, to him. Hesmucet felt the same way, and also tried to fight the same way. Bart was right: a lot of officers on both sides either wouldn’t move at all or moved for the sake of moving. And when they fought…
“If Thraxton had known what to do next after he beat Guildenstern by the River of Death, this army would have been in a lot more trouble than it was,” Hesmucet said.
“Well, I can’t tell you you’re wrong, because I think you’re right,” General Bart said. “When you’ve got somebody in trouble, you’d better go after him immediately.” He pronounced the word immejetly; aside from an eastern twang, it was one of the very few quirks his speech had. He nodded, as if to emphasize the point to Hesmucet. “If you don’t go after him, he’ll come after you sooner than you’d like.”
“That’s the truth,” Hesmucet said. “That’s the gods’ truth, and we’re going to prove it to the Braggart. And now, if you excuse me, I aim to make sure we’re good and ready to do just that.”
“Good.” Bart waved a hand in genial dismissal.
For the rest of the day, Hesmucet prowled through the force he’d brought west from along the Great River. He made sure the men had plenty of food and the unicorns and asses plenty of fodder. Considering the state Rising Rock had been in before the supply line back to Ramblerton opened up, victuals were his most urgent concern. As he’d expected and hoped, everything there was as it should have been.
But he didn’t stop with smoked meat and hard biscuits and hay. He spent a lot of time with the armorers, checking to be certain his men had enough crossbow bolts to fight a battle, and that the siege engines had more than enough darts and firepots.
“We’ll be fine, sir,” an armorer assured him. “Don’t you worry about a thing-we’ll be just fine.”
“If I didn’t worry, we might not be fine,” Hesmucet answered, which left the armorer scratching his head in bemusement.
And Hesmucet conferred with his mages. He knew from experience that magecraft got short shrift in most southron armies, sometimes including his own. The south was a land where artificers earned more respect than wizards, and a good many southron generals reckoned that having enough munitions would get them through almost any fight. Sometimes they were right. But sometimes they were wrong-and when they were wrong, they were disastrously wrong.
Hesmucet was not that sort of southron general. Maybe that was because he’d spent some time teaching at a northern military collegium, and seen how important sorcery was to the serf-keeping nobility of the north. If the traitors used it as an effective weapon of war-and they did, over and over again-he was cursed if he wouldn’t do the same.
One of his mages said, “You do realize, sir, that we are not fully a match for our northern counterparts. I am embarrassed to admit that, but I would be lying were I to deny it.”
A good many southron generals would have thrown their hands in the air at hearing such a thing. Again, Hesmucet was not that sort of southron general. He said, “Don’t worry about it.”
“Sir?” the mage said. His colleagues, especially those newly attached to Hesmucet’s command, looked startled, too.
“Don’t worry about it,” Hesmucet repeated. “I don’t ask you to beat Thraxton the Braggart all by yourselves with your magecraft. I ask you to make the son of a bitch work hard to get anything past you. If we can hold the traitors anywhere close to even when it comes to magic, we ought to whip them, because we’re stronger than they are every other way.”
Again, the mages-especially the new ones-gaped. “What a refreshing attitude,” said the one who’d spoken before.
“I wish more officers had it,” another added wistfully.
“Don’t fall down on the job, now,” Hesmucet warned. “We can’t afford to let the traitors ride roughshod over us.”
“Of course not, sir,” a mage said, as if northern wizards hadn’t ridden roughshod over their southron counterparts too many times.
But Hesmucet couldn’t rub the sorcerers’ noses in that. He was trying to build them up, not to tear them down. He said, “I’m sure you’ll all give your best for the king and for Detina.”
One of the mages, a youngish fellow with an eager gleam in his eye, stuck up a hand as Hesmucet was about to leave. When Hesmucet nodded to him, he said, “Sir, would it be useful to keep these clouds and this mist around for a while longer?”
“Useful? I should say so,” Hesmucet answered. “With the traitors peering down on us from Sentry Peak and Proselytizers’ Rise, the more bad weather, the better. But can you do anything about that? By what I’ve heard, weather magic is a nasty business.”
“It is, sir, if you try to make it sunny in the middle of a rainstorm or to bring snow in the summertime,” the sorcerer said. “But it’s a lot easier to ride the unicorn in the direction he’s already going-that’s what the proverb says, anyhow, and I think it’s true. This time of year, low-hanging clouds and fogs and mist happen all the time around Rising Rock.”
“So you can keep them happening?” Hesmucet said, and the mage nodded. Hesmucet stabbed out a finger at him. “But can you keep them happening and keep Thraxton the Braggart from noticing you’re doing it?”
“I think so, sir,” the wizard replied. “He might notice, he or his mages, if they really set their minds to investigating-but why would they? They know the weather around Rising Rock as well as we do-better than we do, in fact. Chances are, they’d just grumble and go on about their business.”
“I like the way you think,” Hesmucet said. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Alva, sir.”
“Well, Alva, you just talked yourself into a good deal of work, I’d say,” Hesmucet told him. “What happens if Thraxton decides to try a spell to lighten things up around these parts?”
“For one thing, sir, he’s working against the way the unicorn’s going,” Alva answered. “He’s a mighty mage, but he could try a spell like that and have it rain for a week afterwards-and he knows it, too. For another, even if he did try his spell and had it work, he probably wouldn’t notice mine. And even if he did notice mine, how are we worse off for trying?”
There was a question to warm Hesmucet’s heart. “We aren’t, by the gods,” he said. “Go ahead and take a shot at it, Alva. And you’re right-Thraxton’s spells have a way of going wrong just when he needs them most.”
Some of the other sorcerers congratulated Alva. Rather more of them looked jealous. That surprised Hesmucet not at all. People who wanted to get out there and do things, from all he’d seen, were more likely to draw people trying to hold them back than people trying to push them ahead.
He thought about warning the wizards. In the end, he held his tongue. Again, he was trying not to put pressure on them. I wouldn’t treat my brigadiers so tenderly, he thought. But mages weren’t brigadiers. If you tried to treat a tiger like a unicorn, you’d be sorry.
And if you treat southrons like men of no account and don’t believe they’ll do as they said and fight to keep the kingdom one, you’ll be sorry. Hesmucet looked toward Thraxton’s headquarters on Proselytizers’ Rise and nodded. Thraxton couldn’t see or hear him, of course, but he didn’t care.