Relieved, Gremio said, “I do my best, sir.”
“If we all do our best, Captain, we have some hope of coming out of this campaign with whole skins,” Brigadier Alexander said. “If we don’t, well, things won’t look so good. This is Colonel Florizel’s regiment, is it not?”
Gremio nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“You men have put up a good record,” Alexander said. “If all the company-grade officers here are up to your level, Captain, I can see why. And I’ll tell the same to your colonel. Your name is…?”
“Gremio, sir.”
“Very well. Carry on, Captain Gremio.” The wing commander swept on down the line, now and then pausing to pull his boots out of mud thicker than usual. Gremio doubted he would have that problem himself, not for a while. He would be walking on air for the rest of the day.
And he’d won respect from his men that he hadn’t had before. If Brigadier Alexander approved of him and would say so out loud, who were common soldiers to disagree? They obeyed him more promptly than he’d ever seen them do before. He’d enjoy it while it lasted, for he didn’t think it would last long.
It did suffice to bring Colonel Florizel over to him. The regimental commander asked, “How did you get Brigadier Alexander to say such fine things about you?” Florizel sounded half suspicious, half jealous. Alexander, evidently, hadn’t said any fine things about him.
Deadpan, Gremio answered, “I told him I’d learned everything I know about fighting from you, sir.”
That actually did hold some truth. Florizel would never become a brigadier himself. He was no great tactician, nor, to be just, did he claim to be one. But he was brave, and he knew how to make his men like him and fight bravely for him. There were plenty of worse regimental commanders in the Army of Franklin, and some worse men in charge of brigades, too.
And, like a lot of men, he was no more immune to flattery than flies were to honey. He coughed and scuffed his boots in the mud and murmured, “Well, Captain, that was a mighty kind thing to say. Mighty kind indeed.”
Oh, dear, Gremio thought. He took that literally, didn’t he? The best thing he could find to do was change the subject, and so he did: “The new wing commander worries that we won’t be able to drive the southrons back.”
Brigadier Alexander had done more than worry. He’d been at least as gloomy about the campaign as Gremio was himself. But Florizel was and always had been an optimist. Saying something that didn’t suggest total victory lay right around the corner took nerve.
“He’ll fight hard,” Florizel said now, and with that Gremio could not disagree. The colonel went on, “As long as we’re still on this side of the Hoocheecoochee, things aren’t too bad. We’ve still got us and the river between the southrons and Marthasville, and we’ve got to keep them out of there.”
“Er-yes.” Gremio did his best to keep from showing how astonished he was. If the ever-hopeful Florizel couldn’t paint any brighter picture than that, the Army of Franklin was in less than the best of shape.
Florizel set a hand on his shoulder. “The gods may yet decide to smile on us, even if the loss of Leonidas was a heavy blow. We should all try to deserve well of them, to show them we deserve to be the ones they choose in this fierce and remorseless struggle. I think we can do that. I pray we can.”
“May it be so.” Gremio hoped the gods would favor the north, too. In his glummer moments, he feared nothing short of that would suffice to save Geoffrey’s kingdom from Avram’s onslaught. The southrons might have been a python, squeezing the life out of the north an inch at a time.
“These are very strong works,” Florizel said. “The enemy will have a hells of a time trying to go through us.”
“Yes, sir,” Gremio agreed. “What worries me, though, is whether he can go around us instead. That would be just as bad.”
“I suppose it might, but I don’t think it will happen,” Florizel said. “Brigadier Spinner’s patrols ride up and down the Hoocheecoochee.”
“I wish we had Ned of the Forest here,” Gremio said, not for the first time.
“He’s a ruffian, a man of no breeding,” Earl Florizel said.
A man of no breeding himself, Gremio replied, “He’s also the best commander of unicorn-riders King Geoffrey has who’s still breathing. Which carries the greater weight?”
Florizel seriously thought that over. At last, reluctantly, he nodded. “Ned is a very fine man on the back of a unicorn-which makes him no less of a ruffian, be it noted.”
“Yes, sir,” Gremio said dutifully. “Still, I’m glad he’s on our side.”
“So am I, although I still wish we didn’t have to resort to such tools,” the regimental commander said.
“It’s a war, sir,” Gremio said. “If it weren’t for the fighting, we’d all be doing something else.” Florizel also nodded at that, but he didn’t look happy about it. To a Detinan noble, war was the normal state of affairs, peace the aberration. The world didn’t really work that way, but nobles were trained to think it did. They have other things wrong with them, too, Gremio thought.
From the hills above the valley of the Hoocheecoochee River, General Hesmucet could look down on Joseph the Gamecock’s army and spy out everything the enemy did even as he did it. Hesmucet relished that. The northerners had looked down on his lines from their position atop Commissioner Mountain, and he was sure that had cost him men.
When Joseph halted the bulk of his army on the eastern bank of the Hoocheecoochee, Hesmucet had been surprised. Only a very bold general or a very foolhardy one was likely to offer battle with his back to a sizable stream. Examining the works the northerners occupied, however, convinced Hesmucet that Joseph was neither the one nor the other. He had sound defenses there.
Earlier in the campaign, Hesmucet might have tried to bull his way past those defenses, in the hope of breaking through and wrecking the traitors’ army. But he’d tried that at Commissioner Mountain, and it hadn’t worked. That made him hesitate now. So did the strength of the entrenchments in which the northerners sheltered.
Joseph’s men held a line about six miles long. Hesmucet began sending detachments of Marble Bill’s unicorn-riders out beyond their lines, in the hope of getting down to the river and forcing a crossing. If my men get over the Hoocheecoochee, Joseph will have to retreat in a hurry, he thought hungrily. Then he’s mine.
But the enemy commander could see that as well as he could. Blue-uniformed unicorn-riders were numerous and fierce. Marble Bill’s men came back again and again without ever reaching the banks of the Hoocheecoochee.
“Anyone would think they had some idea of what we’ve got in mind,” Lieutenant General George said when Hesmucet cursed about the unicorn-riders’ misfortunes.
“D’you think so?” Fighting Joseph asked. Hesmucet winced. Doubting George had been sardonic. Fighting Joseph meant it. Time and again, Hesmucet had seen that courage and brains too often had only a nodding acquaintance.
“It is a possibility, you know,” George said. “Some folk do seek to study what the foe might be up to. That often saves you from nasty surprises, or so they say.”
“Not a bad notion.” By the way Fighting Joseph spoke, the said notion plainly was entering his handsome head for the first time. By his record, that struck Hesmucet as all too likely.
“We’ll keep moving, that’s all,” he said. “As long as we are moving, something good may happen. If we pull into a shell, the way turtles do, we’ll never get anywhere, and that’s as plain as the nose on my face.”
“Even as plain as the nose on mine,” said Doubting George, who owned one of formidable proportions.