“Thank you.” After another long pause, Richard said, “What do you think of our chances of carrying on the war?”
“Well…” Ned puffed out his cheeks, then sighed loud and long and hard enough to make the flames of the candles on Richard’s desk dance. “Well, I don’t know how things are in the west. I’ve heard this and that and the other thing, but I don’t know, so I shouldn’t talk about that. Here in the east… hereabouts, would you be asking me to ride patrol against our own deserters if things were going the way they were supposed to?”
He waited. Richard the Haberdasher also waited, to see if he had anything else to say. When the nobleman decided no more was coming, he clicked his tongue between his teeth. “All right. That’s a fair answer. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I wish I could’ve had something different to tell you.” Ned sketched a salute and strode out of the room with the lurid wallpaper. He wondered if Richard would call him back. The other general didn’t.
When Ned ordered patrols out against deserters, he rode out with them. He never sent his men to any duty he wouldn’t take himself. And, before long, the squad with which he rode came across deserters: three men in the ragged ruins of blue uniforms sneaking away from Honey across the muddy fields around the town.
Ned spurred his unicorn toward them. The rest of the squad followed. The three footsoldiers froze in dismay. “What the hells do you think you’re doing?” Ned roared, aiming a crossbow at the leading man’s face.
The footsoldier looked at his pals. They looked back at him, as if to say, He asked you, so you answer him. The scruffy soldier gathered himself. “I reckon we’re going home,” he said, apparently deciding he might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb.
“I reckon you’re gods-damned well not,” Ned of the Forest thundered. “I reckon all three of you sorry sons of bitches are going to turn around and go back to Honey. I reckon I’ll put a crossbow quarrel through your brisket if you don’t, too.”
“You might as well go ahead and shoot us,” the soldier replied. “Won’t make any difference to the war either way.” Defiantly, he added, “Won’t make any difference if we go home, neither.”
He was right. Ned had known the war was lost for weeks. He felt a certain embarrassment at not being able to admit as much to the would-be deserter, and tried to cover that embarrassment with bluster: “By the Lion God’s pointed toenails, where would we be if everybody in King Geoffrey’s army acted the way you gutless bastards are doing?”
“Where?” the footsoldier answered. “About where we’re at now, I reckon. Don’t see how we could be much worse off, and that’s the gods’ truth.”
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.