“I intend to do exactly that, sir,” George answered. “As soon as I am ready, I will do it.”
“And just when do you expect to be ready, Lieutenant General?” Marshal Bart asked pointedly. “You’ve already dithered too long.”
“I am not dithering, sir,” George replied with dignity. “I am waiting for a couple of good brigades to come in from the far side of the Great River. As soon as they’re here, I will land on Bell like a ton of barristers.”
“I am of the opinion-and King Avram is also of the opinion-that you have enough men to do the job without these footsoldiers from beyond the Great River,” Bart said. “I want you to get on with it, George.”
“Sir, I will attack when I am ready,” Doubting George said stiffly. “Until I am sure I can do the job as it should be done, I don’t see how I can-or why I should-launch an attack.”
“Lieutenant General, if you stay in Ramblerton much longer without attacking, you put your command in jeopardy,” Marshal Bart said. “Do I make myself plain?”
“Odiously so,” George answered. “If you want to replace me, you have the right to do just that. You are the marshal, after all.”
“Confound it, George, I don’t want to replace you,” Bart said irritably. “I want you to go out there and fight and win. The longer you sit there and don’t fight, though, the worse you look, and the louder people scream for your head.”
“Tell those people to go scream about something else,” George said. “Have I ever let you down? Have I ever let the kingdom down?”
“No, but they say there’s a first time for everything. I’m beginning to wonder myself,” Bart said. “I tell you that frankly, as one soldier to another. You outnumber Bell. He is there in front of you. Go strike him.”
“You outnumber Duke Edward. He is there in front of you. Go strike him,” Doubting George said.
“You are not so funny as you may think. If you saw the works of Pierreville, you would be more sparing of your advice.”
“Sir, it could be,” George allowed. “I do not understand the situation there. I admit it. And you do not understand the situation here-only you refuse to admit it.”
“I understand that I am the commanding general of all the armies of the Kingdom of Detina,” Marshal Bart said. “I understand that I have ordered you to attack. I understand that you are not attacking. What more do I need to understand about Ramblerton?”
“That ordering me to attack when my army is not ready is about as bad a mistake as you can make… sir,” Doubting George said. “That you are flabbling over nothing. Bell will not get away, and I will whip him.”
“You are a stubborn man, Lieutenant General,” Bart said. “I warn you once more, though: you are trifling with your career.”
“I will take the chance, sir,” George replied. “Let history-and you-judge by the result.”
“If you don’t get moving before too long, history would judge me if I didn’t remove you from your command,” the marshal said. “You had better bear that in mind if you mean to sit around with a superior force.”
“You will do what you think best,” Doubting George said stolidly, not showing any of the outrage that boiled up in him at Bart’s threat. “I wish you would credit me with doing the same, though.”
“I believe you are doing what you think best,” Marshal Bart said. “But if I do not also happen to think that is the best thing to do, I would be remiss in my duty if I did not take steps to see what I want done, done.”
“You want a victory. I will give you a victory. If I don’t give you a victory, send me out to the trackless east and let me chase the blond savages along with Guildenstern and John the Hierophant.”
“I want a victory now, Lieutenant General. You have it in your power to give me what I want,” Bart said. “If you don’t give me what I want, I will get it from someone else. That is the long and short of it.” Bart turned to the scryer dealing with his end of the mystic connection between crystal balls. The scryer broke it. Bart’s image vanished from the crystal ball in front of Doubting George.
George’s scryer asked, “Do you want to send any messages of your own, sir?”
“Eh? No.” George shook his head. “Not only that, I didn’t want to hear the one I just got.”
“I don’t blame you a bit,” the scryer said. Then, remembering such conversations were supposed to be confidential, he turned red. “Not that I was paying much attention to it.”
“No, of course not.” George’s irony was strong enough to make the scryer flinch. “Just keep that convenient forgetfulness in mind when you’re talking with anybody else, eh?” The wizard nodded quick and, George thought, sincere agreement. It wasn’t so much that he had George’s interests uppermost in his mind. But he had to know the general commanding could make his life amazingly miserable if he let his mouth run away with him.
Doubting George stalked away from the room full of crystal balls. Miserable invention, he thought. They let distant commanders inflict their stupidity on someone on the spot. If the ignorant bastards off in the west actually knew what they were doing and what things were like here… He shook his head. As he’d seen, that was too much to ask for.
He went out onto the streets of Ramblerton. He hoped he wouldn’t have anyone asking him questions out there. No such luck. Colonel Andy emerged a couple of minutes later. Someone must have tipped him off that George had been summoned to talk on a crystal ball. “Well?” George’s adjutant asked.
“No, as a matter of fact, it’s not so well,” George answered. “Bart wants everything to start yesterday.”
“And if it doesn’t?” Andy asked.
“He’ll throw me out on my ear,” George answered. “Then he’ll go and pull somebody else’s strings.”
Andy scowled like an irate chipmunk. “That’s a hells of a thing for him to go and do. Fat lot of gratitude he shows for all you’ve done. If you hadn’t saved things by the River of Death, we might really be worrying about how to hold on to Cloviston now.”
“Nothing I can do about it,” Doubting George said. “Anyone who puts his faith in a superior’s gratitude is like the fellow who said he believed in no gods at all till the Thunderer hit him with a lightning bolt: you can try it, but chances are it won’t do you much good.”
He’d heard that story since he was a little boy. For the first time, he paused to wonder if it was so. From some of the things Alva had said, the wizard believed the gods were a lot less powerful than most people thought. A solid conservative, George doubted that, but the Thunderer hadn’t smitten Alva with any lightning bolts. And, if the Inward Hypothesis somehow turned out to be true, how much room did it leave for the action of the gods in the world? Less than George would have wanted, plainly.
To his relief, Colonel Andy brought him back to the mundane world of battles: “Could you make Marshal Bart happy and attack the traitors now?”
“I suppose I could,” George replied, “but we’d have more of a chance of coming away with a bloody nose if I did. When I hit them, I want to hit them with everything we can get our hands on. For that, I need those last two brigades from the east side of the Great River to get here.”
“What if Bart replaces you before they do?” Andy asked nervously.
“Why, then I suppose they send me off to hunt blonds out on the steppe. I already told Bart I’d go.” George spoke with equanimity. In fact, he doubted anything so dreadful would happen. He was a brigadier in the regulars, and he wouldn’t have lost a battle like Guildenstern or John the Hierophant. Odds were he’d just spend the rest of his career in Georgetown counting crossbow quarrels or something equally useful.
Andy… If I remember rightly, Andy is a captain of regulars, George thought. His adjutant probably would get sent to the steppe, and to one of the less prepossessing forts there. No wonder he seemed nervous.