“I think you’re mistaken in that, sir,” Major Zibeon said, gathering himself. “And Joseph is looking for ways to get Ned of the Forest to attack Hesmucet’s supply line. When Ned strikes a glideway track, you may be sure it is properly struck. Ned plays the game for keeps.”
“It is not a game,” Bell insisted. “It is a war for the safety of our kingdom, one we must not lose. But if such as Joseph remain in charge over us, the war will be lost before it is well begun, for we shall do no fighting in it.”
“Joseph believes the war is already lost, if it be a matter of man against man, for the southrons have too many more men than we do,” Major Zibeon said. “To him, our best hope is to make the southrons weary of spending their lives to subdue us.”
“I have heard Joseph upon this subject more times than I care to. He would, I am certain, make a most excellent bookkeeper,” Bell said, acid in his voice. “Up until this time, I was unaware that casting accounts had become a cardinal military virtue.”
Zibeon was an imperturbable sort of man, but he winced. “Your outspokenness may land you in difficulty, sir,” he remarked.
“So what?” Bell said with a laugh. “What can my friends do to me that my foes haven’t done already?” He made certain the crutch under his right armpit was secure before gesturing at his ruined body.
Did Major Zibeon flush? In the firelight, Bell couldn’t be sure. His aide-de-camp said, “If you offend those set above you badly enough, they can remove you from your command.”
“Only Joseph the Gamecock is set above me in all the Army of Franklin,” Bell said. “Should he dare to have the nerve to seek my removal, you may rest assured I would appeal to the king.”
“Would Geoffrey hearken to such an appeal?”
He’d better, Bell thought. But not even Major Zibeon knew of the letters he was writing to the king in Nonesuch. And so Bell stuck to what everyone in the northern provinces-and probably half the southrons, too-knew: “King Geoffrey and Count Joseph have been known to disagree in the past. Anyone who disagrees with Joseph may have Geoffrey on his side.”
“May, I believe, is the critical word,” Zibeon said. “Remember, sir, that we left Detina over the question of who was and who should be at the top of the hierarchy. Geoffrey’s natural instinct is to support those who are higher against those who are lower. That means Joseph, not you.”
“My natural instinct is to go out and smash the enemy,” Bell retorted, “and Joseph the Gamecock has done a good, thorough job of stifling it. I am no bookkeeper on the battlefield, regardless of what he may be.”
“When we get to Fat Mama-”
“No.” Bell cut off his aide-de-camp with a toss of the head. “I told you once, and I tell you again, he’ll find some excuse to run away from there, too. You mark my words and wait and see.”
“Yes, sir,” Major Zibeon said tonelessly. “If you will excuse me, sir…” He strode off into the night.
Lieutenant General Bell grunted. He didn’t think he’d convinced Zibeon. On the other hand, he didn’t worry about it very much. His aide-de-camp had gone on and on about hierarchies. In the hierarchy of the northern army, Bell ranked far above Zibeon. He didn’t have to worry about what the major thought unless he chose to do so.
Unfortunately, the same did not apply to Joseph the Gamecock’s opinions. Joseph could do as he pleased here-could and would, unless King Geoffrey reined him in. “Fat Mama,” Bell said contemptuously. He turned around and stumped back into his pavilion.
When he lay down, he couldn’t sleep. He took another slug of laudanum. The doses he poured down would have felled a man not used to the drug: would have knocked him out and might have stopped his heart. But the laudanum didn’t even make Bell sleepy. If anything, it energized him, so that he lay on his cot with thoughts whirling like comets through his brain. Not all of them would be the best thoughts; he knew that. He would have to look at them in the morning, or whenever he turned out to be less drugged.
When I’m drugged all the time, though, how do I choose between the good ideas and those that aren’t so good? he wondered. He shrugged, then wished he hadn’t; even with the unicorn-stunning dose of laudanum in him, pain shot through his ruined left shoulder.
He did eventually fall asleep, whether in spite of the laudanum or because of it he could not have said. And as he slept, he dreamt. In his dream, he was whole. He had two legs. His arm did everything an arm should do. And, indeed, he did more than a mortal man might expect to do, for he found himself flying up to the mountain beyond the sky where the gods dwelt.
“What is your wish?” the Lion God asked him. The god had a lion’s head on a hero’s body, though his hands and feet were clawed and a tail lashed from the base of his spine.
Even facing the gods, Bell did not hesitate. “Lord, let me lead this host!” he said fervently.
“What will you do with it if you lead it?” the Thunderer asked.
“Go forth and fight the foe wherever I find him,” Bell answered.
The two martial gods looked at each other. “So shall it be,” they said together.
Lieutenant General Bell woke up then, with the sound of the gods’ voices ringing in his ears, ringing in his soul. He knew he remained a cripple. For a moment, for one precious moment, it didn’t matter. “The Army of Franklin shall be mine,” he whispered. He hadn’t asked the gods how well he would do with the army if he got it. He didn’t worry about it now that he was awake, either.
III
“So this is how we’re going to play the game, eh?”
Doubting George said to Hesmucet as the southron army tramped north towards a hamlet with the unlovely name of Fat Mama.
“That’s how it looks to me,” General Hesmucet answered. “We’ll fight somewhere, Joseph the Gamecock will pull back, and then we’ll have to fight again.”
“He’s not been making things easy for us,” George observed. “Of course, that’s not his job, is it?”
“He won’t stake everything on one throw of the dice, gods damn him,” Hesmucet said. “We flanked him out of Borders, we beat him out of Caesar, but his army’s still intact, and he’s still got it between us and Marthasville.”
“And as he falls back, he concentrates his force. And we have to thin ours out to protect our supply line,” Doubting George said. “That’s not good. If Ned of the Forest got athwart the glideway…”
“I’m doing my best to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Hesmucet said. “I’ve sent a good-sized force of unicorn-riders out from Luxor on the Great River against him. With luck, Sam the Sturgeon will whip Ned. Even without luck, he’ll keep him too busy to bother our supplies.”
“May it be so.” Lieutenant General George pointed ahead. “What are those men doing?”
“They’re digging trenches, that’s what they’re doing,” Hesmucet said.
George had already seen that for himself. “Yes, sir,” he said. “What I should have asked was, why are they doing it? We’re supposed to be on the march, not so? Did you give any order for us to entrench?”
“Lion God claw me if I did,” Hesmucet answered.
“Well, then,” George said, and rode toward the soldiers who were digging in. “What are you men playing at?” he demanded in his most formal tones.
“Making us some trenches, sir, just in case,” one of the southrons replied.
“I see that. What I don’t see is any traitors close by,” George said. “In case of what, then? Since there aren’t any traitors close by, why do you think you need the earthworks?”
“Just in case, sir, like I said,” the soldier answered. He flipped another spadeful of red Peachtree dirt up onto what would be the parapet of the growing trench. “Somebody saw that the northerners had been digging a couple of fields over, so we thought we’d better have some trenches of our own.”