Would he ask me a question like that if I weren’t a blond? Such thoughts were never far from Rollant’s mind. He looked up at Joram and nodded. “Sometimes, Sergeant. Otherwise, we would’ve licked ’em already, don’t you suppose? And sometimes we’re better than they are.” But not often enough, gods damn it.
He waited for Joram to burst like a flung firepot and spill flames everywhere. But the sergeant only grunted and kept walking. Smitty whistled. “You got away with it,” he said. “And I know why.”
“It’s not because Joram loves blonds any too well,” Rollant said.
“No, of course not,” Smitty agreed, as if the idea that anyone-anyone Detinan, that is-could love blonds too well was too ridiculous to contemplate… and so it probably was. The farmer’s son went on, “You got away with it on account of you’re a corporal now. If an ordinary soldier-me, for instance-said something like that, old Joram’d run over him like a herd of unicorns.”
On account of you’re a corporal now. All his life, Rollant had been on the outside looking in as far as status was concerned. Being born blond would do that in the Kingdom of Detina. Joining King Avram’s army hadn’t improved things much. A blond who was also a common soldier was at the bottom of two different hierarchies.
But now he was off the bottom of one of them. He had stripes on his sleeve. He was the only blond in the whole regiment who did. Had Joram given him the same courtesy he would have given a Detinan corporal, a corporal whose skin was respectably swarthy, whose hair was respectably black?
“By the gods, maybe he did,” Rollant said softly.
“No maybes about it,” Smitty declared. “You’re a corporal, so you’ve got it easy. You get to tell people to cut firewood and fill canteens. You don’t have to do it yourself. And you don’t get the heat people like me do. You’d have to really make a botch of things to get chewed out.”
“Maybe,” Rollant said. But he wasn’t entirely convinced. If he made a mistake, he suspected-no, he was as sure as made no difference-he would lose his rank and become a common soldier again faster than a Detinan committing the same blunder.
“Standard-bearer!” Lieutenant Griff called. “Get the flag! We’re going to move out in a few minutes.”
“Coming, sir!” Rollant scrambled to his feet, poured the last of the tea down his throat, and hurried over to the company’s banner. He saluted it and put a pinch of earth at the base of the staff as he picked it up. It wasn’t quite an object of veneration in its own right, but it wasn’t far removed from being one. Who could tell for certain, after all, what was divine and what wasn’t?
Having gone through the ritual, he took hold of the flag. Carrying it made him feel stronger and braver than he really was. Of course, carrying it also made him a target. Were that not true, he wouldn’t have gained the job. Since that’s the way things work, I’d better be as strong and brave as I can.
Colonel Nahath’s regiment-and several others-started moving north a few minutes later. The traitors had fled back of Goober Creek, a miserable little stream about halfway between the Hoocheecoochee River and Marthasville itself. Joseph the Gamecock’s men also had unicorn-riders and raiders afoot still loose in the region between the Hoocheecoochee and Goober Creek. They would snipe at General Hesmucet’s men whenever they got a chance. The southrons’ column advanced with scouts on both wings.
Rollant knew that was so, but couldn’t have proved it himself. He couldn’t see the front of the column or the rear, and he couldn’t see very far off to the sides. That was partly because Nahath’s regiment was in the middle of the long file of men in gray and partly because of the choking clouds of red dust the men in front of him had already kicked up. The dust got in his eyes. It got in his nose and made him sneeze. It got in his mouth, leaving his teeth and tongue coated in grit. It turned his tunic and pantaloons a color halfway between rust and blood. It turned his skin the same shade, except where rills of sweat ran through and showed what color he was supposed to be.
Lieutenant Griff looked as much like a man made of red dust as did Rollant. When he spat, his spittle was brick-red. He was sweating even harder than Rollant, but was pretty red under the sweat, too. “Lion God’s tail tuft, it’s hot,” he said. “How does anybody stand this horrible weather year after year?”
“Sir, when I first came down to New Eborac from Palmetto Province, I thought I’d freeze to death every winter,” Rollant answered. “It’s all what you’re used to, I expect.” He’d done harder work than marching in hotter, stickier weather than this; Karlsburg took a back seat to nobody for dreadful summers.
“Gods-damned bugs.” Griff slapped at himself, but did nothing except raise a puff of dust from his tunic. “This is a horrible place.”
“Looks like pretty good farming country to me, sir, you don’t mind my saying so.” Rollant had had to learn how to contradict Detinans. As a serf in Palmetto Province, he never would have dared do any such thing. As a carpenter in New Eborac City, he had to. If he didn’t, everyone would have cheated him unmercifully.
Even in the army, a good many Detinans didn’t want to hear a blond telling them they were wrong. Griff took it pretty well. He said, “You’d have to have a leather hide and iron muscles to do a proper job of working it.”
“Maybe.” Rollant hid a grimace. His blond ancestors hadn’t known about iron; they’d used the softer bronze instead. Detinan swords and armor and iron-headed quarrels, along with Detinan unicorns and Detinan magecraft, had cast down the blond kingdoms of the north. Even now, some blonds had a superstitious reverence for iron. Rollant didn’t, not in the top part of his mind, but he still knew what the strong metal had done to his folk.
Just then, lightning smote from a clear blue sky, striking the head of the column. Distant screams came back to Rollant’s ears. Lieutenant Griff cursed. “They’re playing the Thunderer’s game,” he growled. “And where were our mages? Asleep, or else with their thumbs up their arses.”
Northern wizards still had the edge on their southron counterparts, although King Avram’s sorcerers were at last gaining. The northerners had always had a need for man-killing magic: they had to hold their serfs in subjection. Southron mages helped manufactories make more. That didn’t prepare them to meet lightnings.
Another crash of thunder, as if the Detinan god were indeed pounding mortals here below. More screams rose from the southrons, these louder and closer. If the traitors strike us again, Rollant thought nervously, the next bolt would hit right about… here. He looked up toward the heavens, but saw only sun and sky. Mages made lightning from nothing.
Just putting one foot in front of the other and marching on wasn’t easy. Rollant made himself do it, and made himself hold the standard extra high. “Well done, Corporal!” Lieutenant Griff called. “They can’t make us afraid if we don’t let them.”
Rollant was afraid. If Griff wasn’t, Rollant thought something had to be wrong with him. I’m not showing it, he thought. Maybe he’s just not showing it, either. Men lived behind masks. No one wanted to admit he was a coward, even to himself. And so soldiers who would sooner have run away went into battle without a murmur.
When the next lightning bolt crashed down, Rollant did flinch. He couldn’t help himself. He noticed Lieutenant Griff drawing into himself, too, which helped make him feel better. This bolt didn’t land in the roadway and on the southron soldiers; it came down wide to the right, and raised a great cloud of dust and fountain of earth in a roadside field.
“Well, well,” Griff said with a certain sardonic glee. “The mages on our side really aren’t all asleep. Who would have thought it?”