“In the names of the gods, why?” Jim the Haystack howled.
“Because they were not designed to meet the humanities of the case, but to prepare for future struggles,” Hesmucet answered. “We must have peace, not only at Marthasville, but in all Detina. To stop war, we must defeat the traitor armies which are arrayed against the laws and the rightful king.”
“He is not the rightful king,” Jim the Haystack said. “He is a low-down thief.”
“Well, that is your opinion. I have a different one,” Hesmucet told him. “Now that war comes home to you, you feel very different. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our kingdom deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. But you cannot have peace and a division of our kingdom.”
“You have the soldiers here,” Jim the Haystack said bitterly, “so you will do as pleases you best. But I still think it is barbarous, truly barbarous, to send the whole of the population of Marthasville off to fend for itself as best it may.”
“I believe you. I appreciate that you are sincere, and that burning this town will work a hardship on the people who live here,” Hesmucet replied. “But winning the war comes first. I also doubt that, earlier in the war, you lost any sleep or shed a single tear when the armies that follow false King Geoffrey made loyal civilians-men, women, and children-flee them, barefoot and in rags, down in Franklin and Cloviston.”
Jim the Haystack looked at him as if he’d suddenly started speaking gibberish. No, the burgomaster cared for nothing but his own people and his own side. That didn’t surprise General Hesmucet, but it did sadden him. Jim only said, “Have you no mercy? Have you no compassion?”
“None, not when there’s a war to be won,” Hesmucet said. “And that, sir, is about all the time I have to give you. You have made your views very plain. Now let me make one thing very plain to you. If any men of Marthasville attempt to interfere with my soldiers in the performance of their duties, I will show exactly how little mercy I have. If you think being dispossessed works a hardship on your population, opposing me will work a much greater one. Do you understand?”
“Perfectly,” the burgomaster replied. “You are saying you not only are a barbarian, but are proud to be one.” Hesmucet stared at him, unblinking. Jim the Haystack flinched. He said, “I will take your words to the honest citizens of the town I govern.”
“Take my words to the sons of bitches, too,” Hesmucet said. “I expect they’re the ones who really need to hear them. Good day, sir.”
Wig still nodding shakily above his brow, Jim the Haystack departed. Once he was gone, Hesmucet allowed himself the luxury of a chuckle. He called for a runner and asked him to summon Doubting George. He was still chuckling when his second-in-command arrived.
“What’s so funny, sir?” George asked.
“The arrogance of some of these northern men, who think they can turn me from my course even after their army has lost battle after battle,” Hesmucet answered. He explained what the burgomaster of Marthasville had tried to talk him into, or rather, out of, doing.
Doubting George shook his head. “Some people don’t understand the way the world is put together,” he said sadly. “Of course, you could say the whole north doesn’t understand the way the world works. If it did, it never would have tried to leave Detina.”
“You’re right about that,” Hesmucet said. “We’re bigger than they are and stronger than they are, and we’re beating them down. That burgomaster didn’t care what his side’s soldiers did farther south, and he never expected to see us come this far north.”
“What Geoffrey calls his kingdom has a miserable scrawny body, but a head full of fire,” George said. “Plenty of fine officers to lead the men, but they have a hard time keeping them in food and shoes and clothes.”
“I like the figure,” Hesmucet said. “We southrons, we’ve had a big, strong body with a head full of rocks. But the north will never be anything but scrawny, no matter how fiery its head gets. And our head can get a little fire of its own.”
“Just so,” George agreed. “You and Marshal Bart have gone a long way towards proving that. You’ve whipped the Army of Franklin, and Bart’s got the Army of Southern Parthenia penned up north of Nonesuch.”
“Only trouble here is, Bell doesn’t know he’s whipped, gods damn him,” Hesmucet said. “He keeps wanting to make trouble.”
“People who want to make trouble find themselves in it more often than not,” George observed. “I don’t think Bell will be different from any of the rest.”
“I intend to go after him,” Hesmucet said. “He thinks he can give us fits by cutting the glideway link from Rising Rock. I don’t think he can do it for long, but even if he does, what difference will it make? His gods-damned army’s living off the countryside now. Does he think we can’t do the same?”
“If he does, he’s a fool,” Doubting George said. “Of course, nothing much he’s done in this campaign would make me believe he’s not a fool.”
“I’m going ahead with things just as planned,” Hesmucet said. “We chase the people out of Marthasville, we burn the place, we leave a garrison behind to hold the ruins and keep the traitors from getting any more glideway carpets through, and then we go after the Army of Franklin.”
“Sounds good to me, sir,” George said.
The only people to whom it didn’t sound good were the inhabitants of Marthasville. Their opinions mattered not at all to General Hesmucet. They cursed and reviled him as his provost guards routed them from their homes. “You may stay if you like,” he said cheerfully. “You’ll go up in smoke, but you may stay. I won’t stop you, but I sure as hells will burn you.”
They cursed him harder than ever after that, but not a one of them stayed to burn with the city. He’d expected nothing different.
The stink of smoke still lingered in the air from the time when Bell’s men had fired whatever they couldn’t bring with them. “I bet the traitors had a roaring good time burning things,” Hesmucet told one incendiary. “But we’ll have a better one, on account of this whole stinking town goes up now.”
Go up Marthasville did. Hesmucet’s soldiers spread cooking oil and whale oil all through the city before starting their blazes. That made the fires flare up even hotter and brighter when the men did set them. Hesmucet took off his hat and fanned his face with it, but the heat still made drops of sweat run down his cheeks.
Not far from him, a northern woman cried out in despair: “Traa! I’ve got to get back to Traa!”
“Oh, shut up, you stupid bitch,” said the handsome man with jug-handle ears next to her. “The southrons burned that place weeks ago.”
“You go to the hells, Thert the Butler!” the woman said furiously. “I’ll build it up again, you see if I don’t.”
“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a-” Thert answered, and then howled, because she kicked him in the shin.
“Move along, both of you!” a provost guard shouted. “Move along right now.” He was a blond. Not only that, Hesmucet saw, he was a corporal. If the northern man noticed that, he wouldn’t like it at all. But he seemed more interested in quarreling with the woman than in arguing with the provost guard.
As the flames took hold and spread, the provost guards stopped having to order people to abandon the burning Marthasville. No one could stay in or close to those flames and hope to live. Hesmucet, no coward, had to retreat himself. He watched the fires from a distance of several hundred yards.
Not far from him, an artist sketched the scene. Hesmucet nodded approval. “You get it down just the way it looks,” he said. “I want people to remember this for the next hundred and fifty years.”
“That’s what I’m doing, sir,” the artist said. “Let people see what they get for rebelling against the rightful king.”
“Good,” Hesmucet said. “People should see such things. They should know what treason costs. If the gods be kind, we’ll never have to fight another war like this in all the history of the kingdom.”