“Count Thraxton?” Joseph said. “What does he want?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, sir,” the sentry answered. “Will you see him, or shall I send him away?”
“I’ll see him.” Joseph had no more desire to see Thraxton than he did some demon from one of the seven hells. As a matter of fact, there had been times during the war when he’d wondered if the Braggart was a demon from one of the seven hells. But he couldn’t send the man away, not when Thraxton served as King Geoffrey’s eyes and ears in Peachtree Province.
“Count Thraxton!” the sentry announced in a loud voice, holding open the farmhouse door.
“Your Grace,” Joseph the Gamecock murmured, bowing to the general who’d commanded the Army of Franklin before him.
“Your Grace,” Thraxton the Braggart replied, returning the bow. Thraxton was tall and lean and sallow, with a face as mournful as a bloodhound’s though much bonier. A grizzled beard covered hollow cheeks; sad eyes peered out from beneath a bramble patch of eyebrows. If he’d ever been happy in all his days, he hadn’t bothered telling his face about it.
Joseph waved him to a chair. “Sit down, your Grace, please.” He didn’t like having Thraxton looming over him like a bad omen. The Braggart folded up, one section at a time, as he sat. Joseph stayed on his feet, pacing back and forth as he asked, “What can I do for you today, General?”
“I have come to tell you, sir, that King Geoffrey is not pleased with your plan to man the forts around Marthasville with Satrap Brown’s militiamen and to move the Army of Franklin away from the city,” Thraxton replied.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Joseph the Gamecock said. “Why does he object to it?”
“His Majesty’s view, if I may speak frankly…” Thraxton waited for Joseph to nod. Joseph refused to give him the satisfaction. Thraxton coughed a couple of times-wet, almost consumptive coughs-and went on, “His Majesty is concerned that you intend to retreat away from Marthasville, and to leave the place undefended against the southrons. That is insupportable, both politically and militarily.”
“In the first place, he’s wrong, and, in the second place, he’s wrong,” Joseph said. “If I put my own men in the forts, how can I possibly hope to attack the southrons? With my own force and nothing more, I can defend but I can’t hope to attack.”
“King Geoffrey is less certain of this than you are,” Thraxton declared.
“Well, bully for him,” Joseph said acidly. “I’m here, and he’s over in bloody Nonesuch. Which of us is likely to know better what this army is good for and what it isn’t, do you suppose?”
“His Majesty has other sources of information besides yourself.” Thraxton’s tone was opaque, oracular.
Someone’s been telling tales out of school, was what the Braggart had to mean. As soon as the words were out of Thraxton’s mouth, Joseph the Gamecock could make a pretty good guess who that someone was, too. “Gods damn Lieutenant General Bell to the nastiest hell there is,” he growled.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Count Thraxton said, which was a lie, and a lie made all the more annoying because it was so obvious.
“Oh, I’ll just bet you don’t,” Joseph said.
Thraxton’s narrow shoulders went up and down in a shrug. He had to be dead to shame-he didn’t even care if he got caught out. “It’s beside the point, in any case,” he said. “Here is the point: will you take his Majesty’s advice on how to defend Marthasville, or will you not?”
“Did he set me over the Army of Franklin, or is he in command of it himself?” Joseph asked.
“You command the army,” Thraxton the Braggart answered, and a twist of his thin lips showed how much he wished he still commanded it himself. “You command the army, but Geoffrey rules the kingdom.”
“Fine,” Joseph the Gamecock said. “Let him rule the kingdom, then, and I promise not to tell him how to do it-so long as he doesn’t tell me how to command the army. Seems a fair enough bargain to me.”
Count Thraxton’s lips got even thinner and even paler. Joseph hadn’t thought they could. “I doubt King Geoffrey will care for the joke, your Grace,” Thraxton said in frigid tones.
“I wasn’t joking,” Joseph said.
“What a pity,” Count Thraxton replied.
Lieutenant General Bell had just taken a long, grateful gulp of laudanum when his aide-de-camp stuck his head into his farmhouse headquarters. Bell was anything but glad to see Major Zibeon. He’d gone too long without the drug since his quarrel with Joseph the Gamecock; his nerves were jangling, not only from the agony of his wounds but from craving for the potent tonic that salved him. His voice had a bark in it as he demanded, “What now?”
“Sir, Count Thraxton would speak with you,” Zibeon replied.
“Thraxton?” Bell said, and the junior officer nodded. Part of Bell wished he’d waited a little longer to take the laudanum. If he was going to talk with King Geoffrey’s friend-to say nothing of the king’s snoop here in Peachtree Province-he should have had wits as clear as he could make them. But no help for that now. Clear wits or not, he had to see Thraxton. “Send him in.”
“Good day, Lieutenant General,” Thraxton said, his tone and expression suggesting that all good days were no more than figments of other men’s imaginations. “I have just come from speaking with Count Joseph.” His voice got even chillier, no mean feat.
“Good day, your Grace,” Bell said. “Is he ever going to use this army of ours, or is he just going to keep running with it?”
“Ah.” Thraxton leaned forward markedly. “So you would fight the southrons, then, if the Army of Franklin were in your hands?”
“I sure would, sir.” Bell’s wits were clear enough to leave him with no doubts on that score. “We could whip those sons of bitches, if the men only had the chance to do it.”
“You think so, do you?” Thraxton said.
“Sir, I’m sure of it,” Bell replied.
“This is what I had hoped to hear from Joseph the Gamecock,” Thraxton the Braggart said. “It is what King Geoffrey has been hoping to hear from Joseph through this whole campaign. He has not heard it. I did not hear it. That being so, I am authorized to remove Count Joseph from his command here.”
“And?” Bell could say no more than that, and even the one word came out as a breathy whisper.
“And,” Thraxton continued sourly, “to offer the said command to you, Lieutenant General, should you prove willing to accept it.”
For a moment, Bell thought the laudanum had taken effect all at once, instead of gradually as it usually did. Then he realized joy could bring a feeling as intense as distillate of poppy juice. “Your Grace,” he said, “you and his Majesty honor me far beyond my deserts.”
“We had better not,” Count Thraxton answered. “The kingdom needs you to go forward and beat the southrons. We cannot afford delay-we have had altogether too much of delay-and we cannot afford defeat.”
“You may rely on me and on my brave men, sir,” Bell said.
“I do, Lieutenant General. The kingdom does,” Thraxton the Braggart replied. “It is late in the day, I know, to make this change, but King Geoffrey decided it must be made. He sends you his wishes for good fortune, and for a fresh start in driving the noxious foe from our soil.”
When he said fresh start, he hesitated as if the words tasted bad. And, when he said them, Bell saw why he himself had the command and Thraxton did not. Thraxton had already failed with the Army of Franklin. He’d proved he did not have good fortune. Maybe Bell would show he did.
“For the kingdom, sir, I will go forward,” Bell declared. “Have you yet told Joseph the Gamecock he is removed?”