One of the other unkempt soldiers plucked up enough courage to add, “That’s right.”
And so it was, but Ned didn’t intend to admit it. “You don’t get moving back to Honey right this minute, I’ll show you how you could be worse off. You want to try me? Get the hells out of here, before I decide to crucify you on the spot to give the other cowardly fools in this army a taste of what they can expect if they try running away.”
They blanched and turned around and started back toward the sad, sorry encampment of what had been the Army of Franklin. A couple of years before, when the war still seemed an even affair, Ned really would have crucified deserters. He’d done it a couple of times. A couple of years before, though, soldiers like these would never have thought of abandoning their army. They’d been through everything flesh and blood could bear, they’d seen hope slaughtered on the battlefield, and they’d had enough.
Ned turned back to the other unicorn-riders. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s see how many others who want to run away we can catch.”
“Yes, sir,” said the sergeant commanding the squad. By the way he said it, his heart wasn’t in what they were doing. He proved as much by adding, “When we run into poor miserable bastards like those fellows, though, can’t we just look the other way?”
“That’s not why we’re out here riding around,” Ned said. “We’ve got a job to do, and we’re going to do it.” Earl Richard the Haberdasher had thought his men were especially reliable. Ned had thought so himself. Now, suddenly, he wasn’t so sure. Was their hope failing, too?
Maybe it was. The sergeant said, “Not a whole hells of a lot of point to getting killed now, is there?”
“If you worry about getting killed, maybe you shouldn’t have turned soldier in the first place,” Ned of the Forest said coldly.
The sergeant was a typical swarthy Detinan. Not only that, his thick black beard grew up to just below his eyes. Even so, Ned could see him flush. He said, “I’ve never run away from anything, Lord Ned, and I’m not about to start now. But I’m not a blind man, either. If we were whipping the gods-damned southrons, would we be up here in Great River Province riding circles around stinking Honey to keep our poor, miserable footsoldiers from running away?”
Only one answer to that was possible, and Ned gave it: “No.” But he went on, “Irregardless of whether we’re winning or losing, we’ve got to keep fighting hard. Otherwise, we’re not just losing-we’ve lost.”
That sergeant was also as stubborn as any other freeborn Detinan. He said, “Well, sir, I reckon we can lose even if we do keep fighting hard. We fought like hells in front of Ramblerton, and a whole fat lot of good it did us.”
He wasn’t wrong about that, either. Again, Ned said the only thing he could: “Lieutenant General Bell is gone. We won’t make the mistakes we did on that campaign, not any more we won’t.”
“Of course we won’t, gods damn it.” The sergeant was as plain-spoken as any other freeborn Detinan, too. “We can’t make those mistakes any more. We haven’t got enough men left to make ’em.”
One more painful truth. Ned of the Forest shrugged. “You can either do the best you can as long as you’ve got a unicorn under your butt, or else I’ll muster you out and send you home right this minute. You won’t be a deserter, on account of I’ll give you a discharge.”
He waited. If the sergeant really was fed up and called him on that, he would have to let him go. But the underofficer said, “Oh, I’ll stick. You won’t be rid of me that easy. But I’ll be gods-damned if I like the way things are going.”
“I don’t reckon anybody does-except the southrons, I mean,” Ned said. “But we’re still here, and we’ve still got our crossbows. If we quit, King Avram wins. To hells with me if I want to make things that easy for him. Now come on.”
This time, he didn’t give the sergeant a chance to reply. He urged his own unicorn up to a trot. The squad-including the sergeant-followed him. Ned wasn’t completely comfortable when he stayed in the saddle too long. Old wounds pained him. He didn’t grumble about them. They didn’t keep him from getting about, or from fighting. There, if nowhere else, he sympathized with Lieutenant General Bell. Poor Bell had been a fine officer leading a brigade when he was all in one piece. He’d been a disaster in the larger commands he’d got after he was wounded. How much did the endless swigs of laudanum and the inability to go forward and see for himself have to do with that? More than a little, Ned feared.
A fine mist began drifting down from a lead-gray sky. Even this far north, where winters were relatively mild, this time of year the land seemed dead. Trees and bushes stood bare-branched, skeletal. Grass was yellow and brown, dry stalks bent and broken. Somewhere off in the distance, a raven’s croak sounded like the chuckle of a demon mocking the hopes of man.
Ned’s troopers muttered among themselves. He knew what they were muttering about, too: they were wishing they hadn’t heard the raven. The big black birds had an evil reputation, no doubt because they ate carrion. Ned felt a certain amount of superstitious dread, too, but he suppressed it. He had other things, things of the real world, to worry about, and for him things of the real world always counted for more than ghosts and spirits and haunts.
Would the desertions stop? How much difference would it make if they did? Would Doubting George or Hard-Riding Jimmy try to push past the Franklin River and finish off the remnants of the Army of Franklin here in Honey? If they did, what could Ned’s unicorn-riders do to stop them? Anything at all?
We’ve got to keep trying, Ned thought. If we don’t, then this war will end, and sooner, not later. The serfs’ll be off the land forever, and the southrons’ll go around telling ’em they’re just as good as real Detinans. Ned squared his broad shoulders and shook his fist toward the south in stubborn defiance. Can’t have that, gods damn it.
Marthasville again. Rollant hadn’t expected to see the biggest city in Peachtree Province again, not till John the Lister’s men got the order to move west and rejoin General Hesmucet’s army. Even after boarding the glideway carpet in northern Franklin, Rollant hadn’t expected to stop in Marthasville for very long. But here he was, cooling his heels in the town for a second day now. Too many glideway carpets had come into the city all at once, from east and west and north and south, and the officers in charge of such things were still untangling the snarl.
Before the war-and even during it, as long as false King Geoffrey’s men held the place-Marthasville had had pretensions of being a big city. Those pretensions made Rollant, who lived in New Eborac City, the metropolis of Detina, laugh. More than half the streets here were nothing but red dirt-red mud, at this season of the year. Cobblestones would have done wonders to improve them, but nobody’d bothered with-or been able to afford-cobblestones here. That by itself would have been plenty to take Marthasville out of the big-city class, as far as Rollant was concerned.
And Marthasville now wasn’t what it had been before Hesmucet captured it from the traitors. Hesmucet had burned it before setting out on his march across Peachtree to Veldt, and his siege engines had had their way with it even before it fell into his hands. Blackened ruins lined the muddy streets.
Here and there, people were already rebuilding. Elegant homes and fancy shops might have perished in the flames, but shacks built from salvaged lumber and tents sprouted everywhere. A forest fire burned oaks and maples, but toadstools and poison sumac sprang up where they’d stood. The shabby new structures catered to soldiers: they were saloons and brothels and gambling dens, all designed to separate southrons from silver as swiftly as they could.
Provost marshals patrolled the streets, but they could do only so much, especially now with the glideway snarl. Men in gray tunics and pantaloons wanted what the northerners were selling. If some of them ended up poisoned by bad spirits, or poxed or rolled in the brothels, or fleeced in the gambling dens, they didn’t seem to care. Every bit of it was part of having a good time.