“What for?” Griff asked. “To catch them?”
“No, sir!” Rollant heard the shock in his own voice. “Catch a jewelbird? That’d be about the worst kind of bad luck there is. We just liked to have ’em around, on account of they’re pretty. We couldn’t have much that was pretty, but I never heard of a liege lord who minded us drawing jewelbirds to our huts-didn’t cost anything, except for the little bit of molasses.”
Griff tramped on for a while. Rollant wondered if he’d talked too much or too openly. Smitty wouldn’t have minded his remarks. Neither would Sergeant Joram. But then the company commander said, “When you first got to New Eborac, Corporal, you must have felt as if you’d fallen into some whole new world. The biggest city in Detina can’t be anything like an estate outside Karlsburg.”
That was far and away the most perceptive comment Rollant had ever heard Lieutenant Griff make. “You’re right, sir,” the escaped serf said. “Are you ever right! When I first came down south, I thought I would go clean out of my mind. So many people, and all of ’em packed together like olives in a jar… But I got used to it. And do you know what the best part was?”
“I know what it would have been for me,” Griff replied. “What was it for you?”
“Nobody could tell me what to do,” Rollant said at once. “I was on my own. I’d starve if I didn’t work hard. Things weren’t easy, especially at first, but I was working for myself, not for my gods-damned liege lord. When somebody gave me silver, I got to keep all of it. That’s pretty fine.”
Again, Griff marched on for several silent steps. Again, Rollant wondered if he’d gone too far. But the young lieutenant said, “No wonder you’ve got stripes on your tunic sleeve and our flag in your hands. You sound just like any other free Detinan.”
I am just like any other free Detinan, Rollant thought. But that was true only in certain ways. One way it was untrue was in the eyes of a great many free Detinans, from south as well as north. Rollant would have guessed Griff to be among that number, but he seemed to be mistaken there.
On trudged the regiment. “Where are the traitors?” Rollant wondered. “I’d have thought they’d’ve pitched into us by now.”
Lieutenant Griff’s leer might have come from Smitty. “Do you really want them around, Corporal?”
“Want them? Hells, no, sir. But what you want and what you get are two different beasts.” Any serf learned that in a hurry, generally about as fast as he learned to walk or talk. Soldiers got the same lesson, but at an older age.
“I wish this country would open out a bit,” Lieutenant Griff said. “That would help us figure out just where we are. Unless I’m altogether daft, we can’t be too far from the Hoocheecoochee.”
“If it does open out, somebody will see us,” Rollant said. “I don’t think I want that.”
“A point,” Griff allowed. “A distinct point. I do wish we had better maps, though. They would tell us a good deal about where we are, too.”
Now Rollant nodded without reservation. He tremendously admired maps. There was something sorcerous about the way they made paper correspond to landscape. By what he’d overheard army mages saying, there was something sorcerous about them: many were made by using the law of similarity, and sorcery between map and landscape could also help guide soldiers.
Something crackled in the undergrowth to the side of the road. Lieutenant Griff snatched out his sword. “What in the hells was that?” he said, his voice breaking like a youth’s.
“An animal-I hope.” Rollant took a couple of sidling steps away from the company commander. Griff carried a sword, but he wasn’t practiced with it. Southron officers, unlike their counterparts in the traitors’ armies, for the most part weren’t nobles who’d learned swordplay from birth. They carried their weapons as much for show as for fighting-some (though not Griff) also bore crossbows, with which they were actually dangerous.
“It had better be an animal,” Griff said, still brandishing the blade in a way that made Rollant nervous. “If it’s a gods-damned northern son of a bitch, he’ll bring every traitor in the world down on us.”
Rollant wished he could have argued with that, but the lieutenant was obviously right. The standard-bearer’s head swiveled this way and that. An ambush could do gruesome things to the company, to the whole regiment. And I don’t even need a SHOOT ME! sign, Rollant thought. I’m carrying the flag. Of course they’ll try to shoot me.
He wondered whether getting promoted in exchange for making himself such a prominent target was as good a bargain as he’d thought at the time. Yes, becoming a corporal was a great honor for a blond. But could he enjoy the honor with a crossbow quarrel through his brisket? Not likely.
No yells of alarm rang out from the company ahead, nor roaring cries from northern soldiers. No bowstrings thrummed, no triggers clicked. No one yelled false King Geoffrey’s name or shouted, “Provincial prerogative forever!” Except for chirping birds and scolding squirrels, the woods remained quiet. The only sounds of men were those of footfalls on dirt.
Lieutenant Griff sheathed his sword once more. “Must have been a beast after all,” he said with no small relief.
“Yes, sir.” Rollant sounded relieved, too, not least because he no longer ran the risk of being spitted on that long, sharp blade. A crossbowman’s shortsword hung on his own left hip. He was no swordsman, either. He’d fought a real swordsman-fought his own liege lord, Baron Ormerod, in fact-in the skirmishes before the battle by the River of Death. He counted himself lucky to have escaped with his life.
A commotion came from up ahead, and a confused babble of voices. It didn’t sound like trouble, but Griff got out his sword again. The sense of the cry tore back through the regiment. What people were yelling was, “The river! The river!”
“The river!” Rollant took up the cry, too. “The river!” He surged north. He wanted to see the Hoocheecoochee with his own eyes.
There it was: slow-flowing, brown, perhaps a furlong wide, or a little more. Was it too far south to have crocodiles in it? Rollant didn’t know. He also didn’t stick a foot into the water, not wanting to find out the hard way.
“How do we get across?” Smitty asked; he’d pushed up with Rollant. “Some of us could swim it, I suppose-if there’s nothing in there waiting to get fed, I mean.”
“I was just thinking the same thing,” Rollant answered. “I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I don’t know for certain.”
“Wouldn’t want to find out by getting munched,” Smitty said.
Colonel Nahath had some very definite ideas on what to do now that they’d got down to the Hoocheecoochee. He sent a runner off to the southeast to let Doubting George know he’d done it, and then issued a series of crisp commands: “Form a defensive perimeter, men. We’re at the river. We’re going to hold the crossing. Dig in. Set up your trenches and breastworks. If the traitors want us, they’ll have to pay for us.”
“Shouldn’t we try to cross the river, sir?” somebody asked.
“We will-as soon as the artificers throw a bridge over it,” the regimental commander said. “That’s what they’re for. And when they do”-he rubbed his hands together in anticipation-“when they do, boys, it’s my considered opinion that we’ve got Joseph the Gamecock and the Army of Franklin good and cornholed. What do you think of that?”
Rollant whooped and cheered and held the company standard in the crook of his elbow so he could clap his hands. The soldiers were making enough noise to draw every traitor for half a mile around, but no northerners seemed close enough to hear. Nahath sent off another messenger, in case something happened to the first.