“Yes, sir,” Griff said, the only thing a junior officer could say at an order from a senior. “Uh, sir, a question?” When Nahath nodded, Griff asked, “What about Rollant here and the other blonds I’ve got?”
Nahath plucked at his beard, but not for long. “They’re soldiers,” he said. “They can do a soldier’s job. If they can’t do a soldier’s job, they shouldn’t wear the uniform.” He eyed Rollant. “What do you say to that, Corporal?”
“I’ll do my best, sir,” Rollant answered. “Of course, some of the traitors won’t be used to doing what a filthy, stinking blond serf tells them to.”
“A point,” Colonel Nahath said. “Do you think you can persuade them?”
Rollant’s smile was large and predatory. “Sir, I look forward to it.”
Nahath and Griff both laughed. The regimental commander said, “Try to leave them breathing once they’re persuaded.”
“Oh, I suppose so, sir,” Rollant said, which made the two Detinan officers laugh again. Rollant asked, “May I pick a partner, sir?”
At the serious question, the colonel and lieutenant looked at each other. “Well, that’s probably not a bad notion. You should have someone you can trust at your back,” Nahath said. Rollant gave him a grateful nod. At least Nahath recognized he couldn’t trust all Detinans at his back.
“Why me?” Smitty asked as they walked back toward Marthasville together. “What did I do to you?”
“Saved my neck a few times,” Rollant answered. “Maybe you’ll do it again.”
“After you hauled me off to go patrolling?” Smitty shook his head. “Not gods-damned likely, pal. I could be asleep right now.”
“Thanks, Smitty. You’re a true friend.” Rollant thought-he was almost sure-the farmer’s son from outside New Eborac City was joking. Smitty cracked wise about anything and everything. But a bit of doubt still lingered. Would Smitty have said the same sorts of things had Sergeant Joram plucked him into duty? Knowing Smitty, he likely would, Rollant thought, and relaxed a bit.
Marthasville looked bigger when he came into it as part of a two-man patrol and without an army at his back. Torches blazed in front of every surviving business. Eateries and taverns and brothels looked to be thriving, with long lines of men in gray snaking forward in front of the latter. The women inside those places were almost sure to be blonds. Rollant shook his head and did his best not to think about that.
A Detinan in civilian clothes stared at him and Smitty. “You think you’re a soldier, butter-hair?” he asked Rollant. His accent proclaimed him a local.
“No,” Rollant answered. “I know I’m a soldier. I’ve been through the war, and that’s a hells of a lot more than you can say.”
Even by the torchlight, he saw the northerner flush. “You ought to be unicornwhipped, talking to your betters like that.”
“Get lost, traitor. If you don’t get lost, you’ll be sorry.” That wasn’t Rollant; it was Smitty.
The northerner swore at him: “Gods-damned son of a bitch, you’re the traitor-a traitor to the Detinan race.”
“You’d better get lost,” Smitty said, “or we’ll run you in.”
“I’d like to see you try,” the northern man said.
Rollant didn’t need a second invitation. He jerked his shortsword from its scabbard. Smitty’s came free, too. “Come along, or you’ll be sorry,” Rollant said. He took a step toward the man from Marthasville.
Not till the fellow’s hands writhed in his first pass did Rollant realize he might have made a mistake. Not till his own feet seemed to freeze to the dirt of the street did he realize he might have made a very bad mistake. Laughing, the local said, “If you’re going to net a dragon, you had best think on where you’ll find a net to hold him.”
Smitty seemed stuck, too. He howled curses. Laughing still, the man-the mage-from Marthasville drew a knife and advanced on them. “In King Avram’s name, let us go!” Rollant exclaimed.
And he could move again.
The mage hadn’t let him go, or Smitty, either. When they did move, the fellow’s jaw dropped. He tried his enchantment once more; it did him no good. He tried to flee, but Rollant and Smitty were younger and faster. Rollant brought him down with a ferocious flying tackle. “Cut the bastard’s throat,” Smitty urged. “He’s dangerous.”
Rollant shook his head. “We’ll hogtie him and give him to the provost marshal,” he said. “Practicing magic against us? They’ll make him wish we’d cut his throat.” He and Smitty bound the northerner hand and foot, threw his knife in the gutter, and hauled him away.
After they’d handed him over to higher authority, Smitty said, “You called on King Avram, and that freed us from the spell.”
“I thought the same thing,” Rollant said. “What do you suppose it means?”
“It means King Avram, gods bless him, has a powerful name, that’s what,” Smitty said.
“That powerful?” Rollant asked.
“Well, I wouldn’t have thought so, either,” Smitty said. “But you saw what happened, same as I did. That stinking wizard had us in trouble.” Rollant shivered. The wizard had had them in a lot of trouble. Smitty went on, “Then you spoke the king’s name, and we were all right again. Good thing, too.”
“Yes, a very good thing,” Rollant agreed. “Now we know King Avram is someone very special indeed.” He frowned; that didn’t get his meaning across so well as he would have liked. He tried again: “We knew it before, but now we know it.” His frown got deeper. That still wasn’t right.
Or maybe it was. Smitty said, “We know it in our bellies, you mean.”
“Yes!” Rollant said gratefully. And, knowing it in his belly, he got through the rest of the patrol without trouble. By then, he wanted a chance to use Avram’s name again. As he went back to camp, though, he decided he might have been lucky not to get one.
Jim the Haystack, the burgomaster of Marthasville, stared nervously at General Hesmucet. “You can’t mean that,” he said.
“Of course I can,” Hesmucet said, watching with a certain fascination the ugly wig that probably gave Jim his nickname. “I am in the habit of meaning what I say. I usually do, and this is no exception.”
“But you can’t burn Marthasville!” Jim the Haystack wailed. That dreadful wig seemed about ready to topple over sideways in his discomfiture. He looked like a man who needed to run to the latrine.
None of that mattered to Hesmucet. “I not only can, sir, I intend to,” he said. “I cannot stay here, not while Lieutenant General Bell is running around loose and making a nuisance of himself. If I left the place intact, you traitors would go on getting use from it. I can’t have that, not when I’ve come all the way up from Franklin to take it away from you. And so I’ll give it to the fire.”
“I know your mind and time are constantly occupied with the duties of your command,” Jim the Haystack said, wig nodding above his forehead. “But it might be that you have not considered this subject in all its awful consequences.”
“I believe I have,” Hesmucet said.
As if he hadn’t spoken, the burgomaster went on, “On more reflection, you, I hope, would not make the people of Marthasville an exception to all mankind, for I know of no such instance ever having occurred-surely never in Detina-and what has this helpless people done, that they should be driven from their homes, to wander strangers and outcasts, and exiles? I solemnly petition you to reconsider this order, or modify it, and suffer this unfortunate people to remain at home, and enjoy what little means they have.”
“Very pretty, sir, but no.” Hesmucet shook his head. “I give full credit to your statements of the distress that will be occasioned, and yet shall not revoke my orders.”