“What have they got to say about you?” Major Alva asked.
“If I’m doing my job, they say I’m trying to make a monkey out of them, too,” John replied. “Whichever one of us does best, the other fellow ends up swinging through the trees.” He mimed scratching himself.
“Sounds like the Inward Hypothesis in action to me,” Alva said. John glared at the wizard. Alva mimed scratching himself, too, carefully adding, “Sir,” afterwards.
IV
Captain Gremio’s shoes thudded on the bridge the northerners had thrown across the Trumpeteth River.
His company wasn’t so loud crossing over the bridge to the south bank as he would have liked. Not enough of them had shoes with which to thud. Bare feet and feet wrapped in rags made hardly any sound at all.
Unicorn hooves drummed quite nicely. From atop his mount, Colonel Florizel called, “Step it up, men! They’re waiting for us in Poor Richard.”
So they are, Gremio thought unhappily. And they’ve had a little while to wait now, too-plenty of time to dig trenches to fight from. Trenches saved lives. Without them, Joseph the Gamecock wouldn’t have been able to delay Hesmucet up in Peachtree Province for nearly so long as he had. And then Bell brought us out of our trenches and hit the southrons as hard as he could. And we lost Marthasville, and we’re losing the rest of Peachtree, too.
“Keep moving,” Sergeant Thisbe said. “We have to whip the southrons.”
“The sergeant’s right,” Gremio said. “We’ve got more men than John the Lister, and we’ll swamp his whole army.”
I hope we will. We’d better. Gods help us if we don’t. Maybe they won’t have dug too many trenches. Maybe.
His shoes stopped thudding and started thumping on dirt. “Over the river,” Thisbe said. “Not far to Poor Richard now.”
On they marched. One of the soldiers in the company exclaimed in disgust. “What’s the matter, Ludovic?” Gremio asked.
“I just stepped in some unicorn shit,” Ludovic answered.
“Well, wipe it off your shoe and keep going,” Gremio said.
“Captain, I haven’t had any shoes for weeks now,” Ludovic said.
“Oh. Well, wipe it off your foot and keep going, then,” Gremio said. “I don’t know what else to tell you. You can’t stop on account of that.”
“Make the southrons pay when you get to them,” Thisbe said.
“Wasn’t the gods-damned southrons. Was our own gods-damned unicorn-riders. I’d like to make those sons of bitches pay, them and their shitty unicorns.” Ludovic scattered curses with fine impartiality.
“If you find the fellow whose unicorn did it, you have my permission to pick a fight with him,” Gremio said gravely.
Ludovic pondered that. Like the weather on a changeable day, he brightened and then clouded up again. “How the hells am I supposed to do that, Captain? Gods-damned unicorn didn’t leave any gods-damned calling card, you know. Not except the one I stepped in.”
Snickers ran up and down the long files of marching men. Gremio said, “No, I suppose not. In that case, you’d better just slog along with everybody else, don’t you think?”
“You aren’t making fun of me by any chance, are you, sir?”
“Gods forbid, Ludovic.” Gremio had to deny it, even though it was true. A free Detinan who thought himself mocked would kill without counting the cost. An apology would have made Gremio lose face. A simple denial didn’t.
Ludovic nodded, satisfied. “That’s all right, then,” he said, and marched on without complaining any more about his filthy foot.
When the Army of Franklin camped that night, the southrons’ fires brightened the horizon to the south. “They’re waiting for us,” Gremio said as he seared a chunk of beef from one of the cows from the herd that shambled along with the army. It wasn’t very good beef-it was, in fact, vile, odious beef-but it was ever so much better than no beef at all.
“We knew they would be.” Sergeant Thisbe, searing another gobbet of that odious beef, didn’t sound worried. The only time Thisbe had ever sounded worried was about going to the healers after taking that wound in southern Peachtree Province. Other than that, nothing in army life that Gremio had seen fazed the underofficer. “We’ll lick ’em.”
“Of course we will.” Gremio couldn’t very well deny it, not in front of his men. Colonel Florizel had wanted his company commanders to make the men believe the war was still winnable. Gremio didn’t know whether it was or not. No matter how much he doubted it-and that was almost enough to make him his own side’s Doubting George-he couldn’t show his doubts. He understood why not: if the men thought they couldn’t win, why would they want to risk their lives for King Geoffrey?
“Poor southrons’ll be sorry they ever heard of Poor Richard,” a trooper declared.
A few men from the Army of Franklin had deserted. The ones who remained still kept plenty of fight. Maybe returning to the province for which the army was named helped. Maybe they were just too stubborn to know they were beaten. Whatever it was, Gremio didn’t want to disturb it. He wished he had more of it himself.
Thisbe pulled the ragged, sorry beefsteak from the flames. The sergeant sniffed at it and made an unhappy face before taking out a belt knife and starting to haggle off bite-sized chunks. “Better than nothing. Better than your belly rubbing up against your backbone,” Thisbe said.
“Yes, that’s true.” Gremio cut a bite from his own beefsteak. He stuck it in his mouth and chewed… and chewed, and chewed. Eventually, with a convulsive gulp, he swallowed. “Not a whole lot better than nothing,” he said.
“I think it is.” Thisbe, as usual, was determined to look on the bright side of things. “When you’re empty, you can’t hardly do anything. You feel all puny and sickly. It’s not a wonderful supper, gods know, but it’s a supper, and any supper is better than no supper at all.”
“Well, I can’t say you’re wrong. I was thinking the same thing a little earlier, in fact.” Gremio didn’t want to argue with Sergeant Thisbe. He wrestled another bite of meat down his throat. “Now I know why so many men in the company have no shoes. The drovers have been butchering them and called the shoeleather beef.”
Thisbe did smile at that, but then grew serious again. “I wonder what they’re doing with the hides of the cattle they’re killing. If they’re just leaving them for scavengers, that’s a shame and a disgrace. The Army of Franklin must have plenty of men who know how to tan leather. Maybe they could make shoes, or at least patch the ones that are coming to pieces.”
“That’s a good idea. That’s a hells of a good idea, as a matter of fact.” Gremio made fewer bites of the rest of his beefsteak than he should have. A couple of times, he felt like a small snake trying to choke down a large dog. When at last he swallowed the final bite, he jumped to his feet. “I’m going to find out whether we’re doing anything like that-and if we aren’t, why not.”
He hurried to Colonel Florizel’s pavilion. The regimental commander was gamely-which did seem the proper word-hacking away at a slab of meat no finer than the one Gremio had eaten. When Gremio explained Thisbe’s notion, Florizel paused, swallowed with no small effort, and then said, “That is clever. I have no idea what we’re doing with the hides. We should be doing something, shouldn’t we?”
“If we have any sort of chance to, we should, yes,” Gremio said. “If you don’t know, sir, who would?”
“Patrick the Cleaver, I suspect,” Florizel answered. “He sticks his nose into all sorts of things.”
The other side of that coin was, I can’t be bothered sticking my nose into all sorts of things. Calling Florizel on it would have been worse than useless. Gremio saluted and said, “Thank you, sir. I’ll speak with him.”