“If everything were to my liking, Major, we’d be fighting a good many miles south of this place,” Bell answered. His aide-de-camp grunted and gave him a reproachful look. He relented: “Seeing as we are here, this house will do well enough.”
“Thank you, sir,” Zibeon said. “That is what I had in mind-as I think you knew well enough.”
Few men were bold enough to reproach Lieutenant General Bell to his face. Joseph the Gamecock did it, but that hardly counted. Zibeon had the nerve to speak his mind. Because he did, Bell treated him with more respect than he would have otherwise. “Well, maybe I did,” he admitted.
From up in the trenches, someone shouted, “Here comes the head of the southron army, out of the hills we just left.”
“We should never have left them,” Bell muttered, more to himself than to anybody else. Then, grudgingly, he spoke aloud: “I’d better go out and have a look, don’t you think, Major?”
“Might be a good idea, sir,” his aide-de-camp replied. Zibeon softened that; Bell could tell. What it meant in plain Detinan was, You’d have to be an idiot if you didn’t. Bell made his slow, painful way out of the farmhouse once more and, shading his eyes with the palm of his hand, peered south.
Sure enough, the reddish dust hanging in the air above the hills was the sign of an army on the march. Through the dust came sparkles of sunlight on spearpoints and metal-shod unicorn horns. Bell wished for more rain, which would have laid the dust and slowed the southrons’ movements. Now, though, the sun blazed down on the Army of Franklin as fiercely as if the Sun God were angry at the north.
How can we win, if even the gods turn against us? Bell thought. But he shook his big, leonine head. The gods surely fought for King Geoffrey. How could it be otherwise, when they’d subjected and bound the blonds’ gods just as the Detinans themselves had subjected the natives of this land and bound them to the soil?
Pointing, Major Zibeon said, “Looks like the stinking southrons are going into line of battle.”
“They always tap at our lines, thinking we’ll run,” Bell said. “It’s because we do run when Joseph the Gamecock tells us to. They take us for cowards, may they suffer in the seven hells for all eternity.”
“We’ll make a few of them suffer now, unless I’m wrong,” Zibeon said. “They can’t hope to shift us when we’re in earthworks and they’re not.”
“Earthworks make men cowards,” Bell declared. He was far from the only general on either side to sing that song, but sang it louder and more stridently than most. “If this were my army, we would come out and fight. We wouldn’t shelter behind walls of mud, the way we do now.”
Up came the southrons. They shot a few bolts at the men in the trenches. Joseph the Gamecock’s men shot back. A few southrons fell. The rest drew back. They wouldn’t press home attacks against earthworks, either. Cowards, Bell thought. Nothing but cowards.
Major Zibeon’s thoughts were going down a different glideway line. He asked, “How are we going to keep the southrons from reaching the Hoocheecoochee at a point beyond our lines? If they manage that, we’re in trouble.”
There, for once, Bell felt some sympathy with Joseph the Gamecock. “Patrols of unicorn-riders,” he answered. He approved of such patrols. They were aggressive, and anything aggressive met with his approval.
But Zibeon said, “Patrols of unicorn-riders are all very well, sir, but gods damn me if I think Brigadier Spinner’s the right man to lead our mounted men. I wish we had Ned of the Forest here.”
“Everyone wishes for Ned of the Forest,” Bell told him. “There’s only one of the man, though, and he’s over by the Great River. Spinner is capable enough.”
“The southrons can afford to get by with men who are capable enough,” his aide-de-camp said. “They have room to make their mistakes good. If we make a mistake, they’ll land on us with both feet. What we need is a genuine, for-true genius of an officer leading unicorn-riders. We only had two in all the north: Jeb the Beauty, who was over in Parthenia-”
“And who, I hear, got killed not long ago,” Bell broke in with a sigh. “It’s a hard war, and it’s not getting any easier.”
“Jeb the Beauty, who’s dead,” Zibeon agreed, “and Ned of the Forest. We need him here, at the point of decision, not off running a sideshow in the east.”
“He and Count Thraxton had a row, as I recall. That’s what got him transferred,” Bell said. “I don’t know all the details; that wasn’t long after I turned lopsided.” He waggled his stump a little, even though it hurt. If he could laugh at his own mutilations, no one else would have the nerve to laugh at them.
Zibeon’s bushy eyebrows climbed almost to his hairline. “A row? You might just say so, sir. If what people say is true, Ned came out and said he would challenge Thraxton, except he didn’t suppose Thraxton was enough of a man to accept it.”
From what Bell had seen before his wound by the River of Death, Count Thraxton, whatever else one said about him, was a proud and touchy fellow. His own eyebrows rose. “And the count let that go by without taking the challenge and without punishing Ned of the Forest?”
“He did indeed,” Zibeon said solemnly. “I have seen Ned of the Forest in a temper, sir. He’s not a man anyone at all would care to take lightly.”
Zibeon was a pretty hard case himself, and not easily impressed. If he found Ned formidable, formidable Ned was. Even so… “How could Count Thraxton possibly live down the disgrace?”
“What disgrace, sir?” the aide-de-camp replied. “Thraxton is King Geoffrey’s friend, as you must know. When was the last time you heard of a king’s friend who disgraced himself to the point of making people notice?”
That bit of cynicism made Bell’s face twist with pain which, for once, wasn’t physical. Zibeon had the right of it there, sure enough. If Geoffrey decides Joseph the Gamecock must go-no, when he decides it, for he surely will-won’t he replace him with his friend? And if he does, what becomes of me?
He began to regret his own letters. Yes, he’d had weakening Joseph’s position in mind. But he hadn’t intended to strengthen anyone’s but his own. Could he serve under Count Thraxton if the warrior mage returned to command? Everyone, not just Ned of the Forest, had trouble serving under Thraxton the Braggart.
Can I write letters of a different tone? Bell wondered. After a moment’s thought, he shook his head. Too late now, gods damn it.
All he could do now was fight as well as he could and hope Joseph the Gamecock wouldn’t suffer some irremediable disaster while Count Thraxton was down here on his watching brief. He would have fought hard anyhow, for his pride’s sake, and for his kingdom’s sake, too. So he told himself, at any rate. But now he also had solid personal reasons.
Zibeon said, “Maybe this will work out all right, sir. We do have a good position to defend.”
“So we do,” Bell said. He couldn’t afford to malign Joseph, he realized, not even to his aide-de-camp, not for the time being.
“Of course, I have to hope we’ll get the chance to defend it,” Major Zibeon added.
“How not?” Bell asked in real, obvious perplexity.
“Outflanking. We were talking about this, sir.” Zibeon spoke with what sounded like exaggerated patience.
“My gods-damned shoulder is hurting again,” Bell mumbled. And it always did. But he was such a straight-ahead fighter, he’d already forgotten Hesmucet didn’t have to be. He took a big swig of laudanum. “There. I’ll think better now,” he declared. Zibeon said not a word.
VI
Captain Gremio was no general. Gremio hadn’t been a soldier at all before the war, or a domain-holding noble-the closest peacetime equivalent-either. But, like so many others, he’d had plenty of experience since the fighting began in Karlsburg harbor more than three years before.