“Maybe.” Biffle didn’t sound as if he believed it. Then he shrugged. “Odds are better than us going up against those forts, I expect. Odds of anything’d be better than that.”
“Don’t I know it!” Ned said. “It could work, I suppose. If John the Lister and Doubting George figure we’ve got no fight left in us, it could work. But by the Lion God’s claws, I hate laying my hopes on the off chance that the sons of bitches I’m up against don’t know what they’re doing.”
“Why?” Colonel Biffle said. “Been plain for a goodish while now that we don’t. Why should they be any different?”
Ned laughed. Biffle’s words held altogether too much truth. “Long odds, Biff,” he said. “Long odds indeed.”
“Well, we’ve had long odds before, and licked the southrons anyways,” Biffle said. “This past summer, down in Great River Province…”
“I know. I know. And maybe we can do it again,” Ned said. “Somehow or other, we’ve got to do it again. You reckon we can?”
He waited. For a long time, Colonel Biffle stood there without saying a word. Ned of the Forest coughed, telling him he would have an answer. Reluctantly, the regimental commander replied, “You had it right, Lord Ned. We’ve got to lick ’em. Anything we’ve got to do, we will.”
“How?” Ned neither minced nor wasted words.
All he got by way of a reply this time was a shrug. He coughed again, louder. Even more reluctantly, Colonel Biffle said, “Gods damn me if I know. Maybe the southrons really will make a mistake.”
“They’d better.” Ned of the Forest sounded as if he held his regimental commander responsible for it. Both men looked toward the works in front of Ramblerton. Even at this distance, Ned could see southrons in gray moving back and forth in those works. Even at this distance, he seemed to see a whole great swarm of southrons moving back and forth. “How many of those bastards are there?” he grumbled.
“Too many,” Biffle replied, which startled another laugh out of Ned. The colonel continued, “You put any southrons-any southrons, mind you-in a province that’s sworn loyalty to good King Geoffrey and that’s too fornicating many.”
“True enough,” Ned said. “It’ll take a good deal of pounding to be rid of ’em, though.”
Now his gaze went to Captain Watson, who was attacking a broken-down dart-thrower with a hammer and a set of wrenches. The young officer in charge of Ned’s engines was as much a mechanic as a leader of fighting men, as much a mechanic as any southron. That made him all the more valuable to the northern cause. Had Geoffrey had more men like Watson loyal to him, the north would have been in better shape. Ned saw that. After a little while, though, he also saw the north would not have been the land he knew were that so. How to win, though? Try as he would, Ned could not see that.
Once again, Rollant looked out at the northern army from the security of strong fortifications. Up at Poor Richard, Bell’s men had done everything they could to overwhelm the southrons’ works. Here… Rollant turned to Smitty. “Do you suppose Bell’d be dumb enough to try and attack us again?”
“I hope so,” Smitty answered at once. “If he does, we’ll kill every last one of the bastards he’s got left. We won’t get hurt doing it, either.”
“That’s how it looks to me, too,” the blond said. “I was wondering if maybe I was wrong.”
“Not this time,” Smitty said with a grin.
Rollant glared. “Funny. You and your smart mouth. I ought to set you chopping extra firewood for that.” Even as he spoke, he knew he wouldn’t.
By Smitty’s impudent grin, he must have known the same thing. “Have mercy, your Corporalship!” he exclaimed. “I’ll be good! I really will. I won’t give you any more trouble, not ever!”
Rollant laughed. “Do you know what you remind me of?”
“No, your illustrious Corporalship, but I expect you’re going to tell me, so that’s all right.”
With a snort, Rollant said, “You remind me of a fast-talking serf trying to flimflam his way out of trouble with his liege lord. I always used to wish I could talk that way when I got in trouble on Baron Ormerod’s estate. It never used to work for me, though.”
From behind them, Sergeant Joram growled, “It shouldn’t work for this fast-talking son of a bitch, either.” Rollant and Smitty both jumped; they hadn’t heard Joram come up. The sergeant went on, “Smitty, go chop firewood. Go chop lots of it. I want to see your hands bleeding when you bring it back. Go on, get out of here.”
Smitty disappeared as if made to vanish by magecraft. He knew there were times when he could argue with Sergeant Joram and times when he couldn’t. He also knew which was which, and that this was plainly one of the latter.
Joram folded massive arms across his broad chest. He eyed Rollant. “Flimflam, is it?” he said.
“Sergeant?” Rollant asked.
“You’ve made a good underofficer,” Joram said. “Truth to tell, you’ve made a better one than anybody figured you would. But you can’t be soft on somebody just because you like him and he’s a funny fellow.”
“I haven’t meant to be soft on anybody, Sergeant,” Rollant said. By his own standards, that was true. By Joram’s, it probably wasn’t. Joram was fair. He treated everybody under him the same way-miserably.
“Maybe not,” he said now, “but I think you go too easy on Smitty, and I know the two of you were pals before you made corporal.”
“Pals?” Not for the first time, Rollant wondered about that. Could a blond and an ordinary Detinan be pals? Didn’t too much history stand in the way? Rollant still thought so. That he wasn’t quite sure any more said something about Smitty-and something about how long he’d lived in the south.
“Ask you something, Sergeant?” he said.
“Go ahead,” Joram growled.
“When are we going to get out there and smash the traitors?”
“To the hells with me if I know. Whenever Doubting George gives the order.” The sergeant leered. “When he does, I promise you’ll hear about it.”
“Yes, Sergeant. I know that. But… even when we just had the little army John the Lister led, we put the fear of the gods in Bell’s men. Now we’ve got a lot more soldiers.” Rollant waved back toward Ramblerton. “We’ve got all these extra men, but Bell doesn’t even have what he hit us with before, because we chewed him up. So now maybe we ought to do some hitting of our own.”
“It’s not up to me,” Joram said. “It’s up to Doubting George. When he tells us to march, we march. When he tells us to stay where we are, we stay. When he tells you you can complain, go ahead and complain. Until he tells you you can complain-shut up, gods damn it.”
“What do free Detinans ever do but complain?” Rollant returned. “And if I’m not a free Detinan, what am I?”
That, of course, was the question of the War Between the Provinces. If a blond wasn’t a free Detinan, what was he? Northerners insisted he was a serf, and could never be anything else. King Avram disagreed with that, and had the southrons on his side. But even Avram didn’t seem convinced blonds would become ordinary Detinans the instant the north gave up the fight.
Joram’s heavy-featured face-the gods might have made him on purpose to be a sergeant-clouded up. But he had an answer that applied to Rollant, even if it didn’t to blonds in generaclass="underline" “What are you? By the Thunderer’s balls, you’re a corporal-and I’m a sergeant. If I tell you to swallow your bellyaching, you’d better swallow it, on account of I’ve got the right to tell you to. Have you got that?”
“Yes, Sergeant,” Rollant said-the only answer he could give. Joram recognized his right to be a corporal. As soon as that right was recognized, as soon as a blond’s right to pick up a crossbow or a pike and go fight the northerners was recognized, everything else would follow. And if Grand Duke Geoffrey wanted to deny it and call himself king in the north… too bad for him. He had left only the Army of Southern Parthenia and the Army of Franklin. Marshal Bart had one by the throat, while the other waited here for whatever Doubting George would do to it.