“With me or without me, Colonel, we are going to whip the traitors,” George said. “I console myself with that.”
Colonel Andy nodded. “Yes, sir. We are. But you ought to play a bigger part. You’ve earned the right, by the Lion God’s talons.”
“I think I have, too.” Doubting George sighed. “Marshal Bart doesn’t, and he and King Avram are the only ones who matter. Bart thinks I’m slow because I waited for all my men before I hit Bell and the Army of Franklin. I think I was just doing what I had to do. And we won, gods damn it.”
“That’s right, sir. We sure did.” Colonel Andy still had plenty of confidence in George. The only trouble was, Colonel Andy’s confidence didn’t matter. Bart’s did. And Bart had decided other men could do a better job. He was the Marshal of Detina. He had the right to do that. And if George didn’t care for it, what could he do? Nothing. Not a single, solitary thing.
“Baron Logan the Black,” George muttered. At least he’d been spared that humiliation. To be ousted by a man who wasn’t even a professional soldier… But it hadn’t happened. He had gone forward. He had won. He had got no credit for it. Nor, by all appearances, would he ever.
He found out exactly how true that was at supper. He’d just sat down to a big plate of spare ribs (though he doubted the pig they’d come from had thought them spares) when a scryer came in and said, “Sir, Marshal Bart wants to speak to you right away.”
“He would.” Doubting George didn’t want to speak to the Marshal of Detina. What a mere lieutenant general wanted in such circumstances mattered not at all. “Well, run along and tell him I’m coming.” He cast a last longing glance at the spare ribs before heading off to the scryers’ pavilion.
There was Bart’s image, staring out of a crystal ball. Bart wasn’t an impressive man to look at. In a crowd, he tended to disappear. But no one could deny he had a driving sense of purpose, a refusal to admit he could be defeated, that had served Detina well. “Good evening, Lieutenant General,” he said now when he spotted George. “How are you?”
“Hungry, sir, if you want to know the truth,” George answered. “What can I do for you at suppertime?”
If the barb bothered Bart-if Bart even noticed it was a barb-he gave no sign. He said, “I want you to move your force to Wesleyton in western Franklin as soon as is practicable. The less delay the better. You must be in place there in two weeks’ time.”
“Move the force I have left, you mean,” Doubting George said.
“Yes, that’s right,” Bart agreed, again ignoring the sarcasm. “I have an important task for you there.”
“Do you?” George said. “I thought my sole and entire function in this army was to stay where I am and grow moss. What else am I supposed to be doing?”
“Before too long, I aim to commence operations against Duke Edward of Arlington,” Bart replied, still impassive. “If he is dislodged from the works covering Pierreville, he is likely to retreat eastward. Your men in Wesleyton will keep him from using western Franklin as a refuge, and you will be able to hold him until I can catch up with him with the bulk of my force and destroy the Army of Southern Parthenia.”
He was as calm as if talking about the qualities of pine boards. But he meant every word of it. Of that Doubting George had no doubt at all. The idea left him slightly-no, more than slightly-stunned. Ever since the beginning of the War Between the Provinces, the Army of Southern Parthenia had been a fearful prodigy to all of King Avram’s generals and armies that had to face it. It had been… but it was no more. Bart had its measure.
And for that, Doubting George admitted to himself, the nondescript little man who wouldn’t believe false King Geoffrey’s armies could beat him deserved to be Marshal of Detina.
Whether he deserved it or not, though, what he had in mind failed to delight George. “You want me to go to Wesleyton and sit there, just in case Duke Edward happens to come my way?”
“That’s right.” Bart nodded, pleased that he understood. “Of course, since you will be there with your army, Edward’s less likely to come that way. He’s slippery as a barrister, Edward is, and so we’ve got to make sure he’s shut up tight.”
“I… see,” George said slowly. “Isn’t there anything more useful I could be doing than sitting around in Wesleyton impersonating a cork?”
“I don’t believe so,” Bart answered. “It’s a useful thing to do, and the other pieces of your army are off doing different useful things in other places. This seems a good enough thing for the men you still have with you to do.”
“A good enough thing,” Doubting George echoed. “Gods damn it, Bart, we were more than ‘good enough’ not so long ago.”
“Finally, yes. But you could have whipped Bell sooner. You should have whipped Bell sooner. Instead, you had King Avram and me half out of our minds with worry that the Army of Franklin would get around you and head for the Highlow River.”
“Well, Marshal, if his Majesty thought that-and especially if you thought that, you were out of your minds, and not just halfway, either,” George said. “Bell wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was his army. He’d come as far as he could. If you’d had a look at his men, you could have seen that for yourself. I did. And I knew what I saw, too,” George said.
Did something glint in Marshal Bart’s eyes? George wasn’t sure. The marshal had perhaps the deadest pan in Detina, too. Bart said, “You are entitled to your opinion, Lieutenant General. I am also entitled to mine. My opinion is that sending you to Wesleyton is the best thing I can do right now, given the way the war is going. Carry out your orders.”
“Yes, sir,” Doubting George said woodenly.
Bart turned to his scryer. His image vanished from the crystal ball. George refrained from picking up the ball and chucking it into the Franklin River. He couldn’t have said why he refrained from chucking it into the river, but refrain he did. Afterwards, he decided it had to prove he was a more tolerant man than even he would have imagined.
“Carry out your orders.” In his mouth, the commonplace soldierly phrase somehow turned into a curse. Bart had the right to tell him to do it-had the right and used it. And I reserve the right to reckon Bart is a first-class son of a bitch, Doubting George thought.
That didn’t eliminate the need to do as Bart said, worse luck. The general commanding-not that George had so very much left to command any more-turned and strode out of the scryers’ tent. None of the mages in there said a word to him. In fact, they all seemed to be pretending they were somewhere else. Scryers, like other sorcerers, often missed emotions they should have seen. What Doubting George felt was too raw, too obvious, for even a scryer to miss.
Colonel Andy bustled up to George before he’d gone very far from the pavilion. Someone must have told the adjutant George had been summoned. “Well?” Andy asked expectantly. “What did he have to say for himself now?”
“Wesleyton is lovely this time of year, don’t you think?” George answered.
“Wesleyton?” His adjutant gaped. “What the hells has Wesleyton got to do with anything? Who in his right mind would want to go to Wesleyton? It’s not even a good place to die, let alone to live.”
“No doubt you’re right, Colonel.” Doubting George couldn’t help smiling, no matter how miserable he was. “Miserable or not, though, that’s where we’re going: you and I and as much of my army as Marshal Bart has graciously let me keep.”
“Are we?” Colonel Andy said, and the commanding general nodded. Andy asked, “And why, pray tell, are we going to Wesleyton? I understand why Whiskery Ambrose went there last year: to take it away from the traitors. But we’ve held it ever since. What’s the point of sending a whole lot more men there now?” Doubting George explained Marshal Bart’s reasoning. His adjutant looked like a chipmunk who’d just bitten down on a cast-iron acorn. “That’s one of the strangest things I’ve ever heard, sir. How likely is it that the Army of Southern Parthenia’s going to come running in our direction?”