Fury made John the Lister grab for the hilt of his sword. Half a heartbeat later, he checked the motion, knowing he’d been foolish. Even the bolt from a repeating crossbow right on the riverbank would have splashed harmlessly into the Franklin, less than halfway on the journey to that northern unicorn-rider.
Hard-Riding Jimmy came up beside John. On his face was the same frustration as John felt. “We’ll be a while bridging this stream, and longer if their troopers give us a hard time while we’re working at it,” Jimmy said.
“I know,” John answered unhappily. He shook his head toward the traitors on the far bank. “They’re going to get away, gods damn them.”
Jimmy tempered that as best he could: “Some of them will get away. But an awful lot of them gods-damned well won’t.”
“Well, I can’t tell you you’re wrong,” John the Lister said. “Still, I wanted more. I wanted this whole army destroyed, not just wrecked. So did Doubting George.”
The southrons’ commander of unicorn-riders laughed. “If all our officers were so bloodthirsty, we’d’ve won this war two years ago.”
“We’re supposed to be bloodthirsty,” John said. “We’ve spent too much time putting up with men who aren’t. And d’you think Bell and Ned of the Forest didn’t want to drink our gore? They knew what they wanted to do to us, all right; they just couldn’t bring it off.”
“I admire Ned. I hate to admit it, but I do,” Jimmy said. “Wasn’t that a lovely spoiling attack his men put in a couple of days ago? As pretty as anything I’ve ever seen, especially considering how worn they had to be.”
“Yes. They’re still bastards, though,” John said. “He’s a bastard, too, but he’s a bastard who’s monstrous good at war.”
“That he is,” Jimmy said. “And now, sir, if you’ll excuse me…” He rode off.
Out in the Franklin River, a galley flying King Avram’s flag drew near. John scowled at it. Why couldn’t it have come sooner, to attack the now burning pontoon bridge before Bell’s soldiers crossed it? A moment later, he got his answer to that. Cunningly hidden catapults on the northern side of the river opened up on the galley. Stones and firepots splashed into the Franklin all around it. It hastily pulled back out of range.
John the Lister shook his fist at the northerners again. But then, suddenly, he started to laugh. In the end, how much difference did it make that a few of them had managed to escape? For all practical purposes, the war here in the east was won.
Before long, the soldiers in Doubting George’s army would go elsewhere-maybe after Lieutenant General Bell’s men, maybe off to the west to help finish off the armies there that remained in the field for false King Geoffrey. Either way, how likely was it that Geoffrey’s rule would ever be seen in this part of the kingdom again? Not very, and John knew it.
From now on, if the locals wanted to send a letter, they would have to send it through a postmaster loyal to King Avram. If they wanted to go to law against each other, they would have to do it in one of Avram’s lawcourts. If one of the local barons wanted to keep on being a baron, he would have to swear allegiance to Avram. If he didn’t, if he refused, he wouldn’t be a baron any more. He would be an outlaw, and hunted down by Avram’s soldiers.
And, from now on, all the blonds in this part of the kingdom would be free men, no longer bound to their liege lords’ lands as they had been for so many hundreds of years. Ever since the invaders from the far side of the Western Ocean overwhelmed the blonds’ kingdoms they’d found in the north of what became Detina, they’d looked on the people they’d conquered as little more than domestic animals that happened to walk on two legs. That had changed-changed some-in the south, where blonds had been fewer and the land itself poorer, and where serfdom never really had paid for itself. Now, no matter how little the northerners liked it-and John the Lister knew how little that was-it was going to change here, too.
King Avram had always been determined about that. He’d made his views plain long before succeeding old King Buchan. He’d made them so plain, Grand Duke Geoffrey had rebelled the instant the royal crown landed on Avram’s homely head, and he’d taken all the northern provinces with him, even if some of them hadn’t actually abandoned Avram till after the fighting started. Geoffrey’s war was going on four years old now. It wouldn’t-couldn’t-last much longer. After the spilling of endless blood and endless treasure, King Avram would get his way.
John the Lister wondered how well things would work once peace finally returned to the kingdom. Like a lot of southrons (and almost all northerners), he remained unconvinced that the average blond was as good a man, as smart a man, as brave a man, as the average Detinan. He’d needed the war to convince him that some blonds could match some Detinans in any of those things. He knew one of his regiments had a blond sergeant in it, thanks to the promotion from Colonel Nahath. That a blond could rise so high, could give orders to Detinans and get away with it, still surprised him. That a Detinan with such abilities who’d started as a common soldier would probably be a captain or a major by now never once crossed John’s mind.
One other thing of which John was convinced was that the Detinans in the north weren’t about to accept blonds as their equals, no matter what King Avram had to say about it and even if they did lose the War Between the Provinces. The brigadier wondered how that would play out in the years to come. How many soldiers would Avram need to garrison the northern provinces to make sure his will was carried out? Would he keep them there to make sure it was? He was a stubborn man; John knew as much. But the northerners, like any Detinans, were stubborn, too.
Gods be praised, it isn’t my worry, John the Lister thought. All he had to do was carry out commands. King Avram was the one who had to give them, and to figure out what they ought to be. Most of the time, Brigadier John had the same schoolboy fancies as flowered in the heart of any other man. What if I were King of Detina? Wouldn’t it be wonderful, for me and for everybody else?
Looking at what lay ahead for the kingdom, at what King Avram would have to do if he wanted to knit things back together for south and north yet at the same time cling to his principles, John decided the current king was welcome to the job. After he’s straightened things out-then, maybe…
John got so lost in his reverie, he didn’t notice another unicorn coming up beside his. A dry voice snapped him back to the here-and-now: “Well, Brigadier, it hasn’t turned out too bad the past couple of weeks, has it? No matter what those bastards over in Georgetown say, I mean.”
Snapping to attention on unicornback wasn’t practical. John the Lister did salute. “No, sir. Not too bad at all.”
“Glad you agree,” Doubting George said. “Of course, Baron Logan the Black would have done everything a hells of a lot better. He’s sure of it even now, I bet, and so is Marshal Bart.”
Sarcasm like that flayed. John said, “Sir, I don’t see how anybody could have done anything better on this campaign.” Maybe his words held some flattery. He knew they also held a lot of truth.
Doubting George muttered something into his beard, something distinctly un flattering to the Marshal of Detina. Part of John the Lister hoped the general commanding would go into more detail; he liked gossip no less than anyone else in King Avram’s gossip-loving armies. But all George said after that was, “Well, by the Thunderer’s prick, we’ve done every single thing we were supposed to do with the Army of Franklin. We’ve done every single gods-damned thing we were supposed to do to the Army of Franklin, too.”