“That’s what I’m hoping for, sir,” the artist said. “You’ve certainly set the scene for me, I will say that.”
“No, indeed.” Hesmucet shook his head. “The men who followed false King Geoffrey into betrayal set this scene for you. If not for them, Marthasville would still be a thriving northern town.”
“Yes, sir.” The artist nodded vigorously. “Instead, they’ve got-this.” He held up the sketch so Hesmucet could get a good look at it. The flames from the burning city gave the commanding general plenty of light.
“Good job,” he said. “Gods-damned good job. Let it be a warning to those who talk of treason and rebellion. We ought to be fighting out on the eastern steppes, driving back the blond savages who’ve caused us so much trouble over the years. That’s what we ought to be doing, not squabbling amongst ourselves. Geoffrey’s treason has cost us years-years, I tell you-in which we could have been bringing this whole great land under Detinan rule.”
“Can’t turn blonds into serfs any more,” the artist said, perhaps incautiously.
But General Hesmucet, in an expansive mood, shrugged instead of snarling. “Those savages wouldn’t make good serfs anyway,” he said. “They don’t bend, the way the blonds in the kingdoms of the northeast did hundreds of years ago. They break instead. They’re brave men; I don’t deny it-they might almost be Detinans, as far as that goes. But we will break them, and sweep them off the land, and use it for our own purposes.” He might almost have been talking of breaking so many untamed unicorns.
The artist nodded again and returned to his work. I’d better do the same, Hesmucet thought. He shouted for his unicorn. When he’d swung up onto the beast, he rode rapidly up toward the head of his army. Every few hundred yards, the marching men in gray tunics and pantaloons would raise a cheer. Each time they did, Hesmucet took off his hat and waved it. Every cheer made him feel as good as if he’d just had a strong slug of spirits.
“Are we going to lick these stinking northern sons of bitches?” he called to the men as he took his place at the fore.
“Yes, sir!” the soldiers shouted, and raised another cheer.
“Are we going to make them sorry they ever tried to pull out of Detina?”
“Yes, sir!” The yells came louder than ever.
“Are we going to make them wish gods-damned Geoffrey’s father had pulled out of his mother?”
“Yes, sir!” This time, bawdy laughter mixed with the soldiers’ replies.
“All right, then,” Hesmucet said. “We are the meanest, toughest bunch of soldiers the Kingdom of Detina has ever seen. We have licked the traitors, and we’re going to go right on licking them, and there isn’t one single gods-damned thing they can do about it. And what do you think of that?”
By their yells and whoops, the men liked the idea. Hesmucet liked it, too. But there was one thing the northerners might do, and he knew it. If they did cut the supply line back to Rising Rock and keep it cut, his life would get harder. Have to make sure they don’t keep it cut, then, he thought, and hoped he could manage that.
Horns blared, all through the camp of the Army of Franklin. “Forward!” Colonel Florizel shouted.
“Forward!” Captain Gremio echoed. Forward the men of his company, Florizel’s regiment, and the whole Army of Franklin went, west out of Dothan and back into Peachtree Province once more. Lieutenant General Bell had grit, if nothing else. And a few days to rest and recuperate, a few days away from the hells Marthasville had become, did wonders for the army. By the way they marched, the men once more believed they could lick any number of southrons on the face of the earth.
Gremio wasn’t so sure they were right. But now they weren’t pinned in the city. Now they could pick where along Hesmucet’s tenuous supply line they attacked. The supply line surely had more weaknesses than the army did.
It had better have more weaknesses than the southron army did, Gremio thought. If it doesn’t, we won’t be able to hurt it. And if we can’t hurt it, we-and Geoffrey’s kingdom-are in a lot of trouble.
Sergeant Thisbe tramped along beside Gremio, never complaining, always competent. Catching the company commander’s eye on him, he nodded and said, “We’ll give it our best shot, sir.”
“I know we will,” Gremio answered. “That’s what we have to do. Uh, one of the things we have to do,” he amended. Remembering one of the other things the Army of Franklin had to do these days, he raised his voice to a shout: “Foragers out to the flanks! Move, move, move!”
Move the men did, many of them with grins on their faces. The Army of Franklin had no formal supply train, not any more. The southrons had closed all the glideway lines into Marthasville, and east of the city those were few and far between. If the army was to survive, it had to live off the countryside. The men had done that plenty of times in enemy-held territory, less often in land nominally ruled by King Geoffrey. But necessity made a stronger law than any of the ones Gremio had argued in the lawcourts. The soldiers took what they needed, and worried not at all about it.
“A good thing this is rich country,” Thisbe remarked as the foragers went a-scrounging. “We’d be hungry if it weren’t.”
“True enough,” Gremio said. “Good for us-but it’s also good for the southrons. Even if we do cut them off from their base of supply, they may well be able to live off the country, too. I worry about that.”
“Do you really think they can forage as well as we can, sir?” Thisbe asked.
Gremio laughed. “I’d have to doubt that,” he admitted. “We’ve got the best collection of thieves left uncrucified running around loose in this army. They’ll nab anything that isn’t nailed down, and they’ll try to pry up the nails if it is. I’m proud of them, by the gods.”
“Where exactly are we headed for?” Thisbe said.
With another laugh-a sardonic one this time-Gremio answered, “What, you think they tell me anything?” He raised his voice again, this time to call to Colonel Florizeclass="underline" “Sir, where are we going?”
“Back to Whole Mackerel, from what I hear,” Florizel replied from unicornback. “The southrons have a supply base there. If we take it away from them, we live high on the hog for a while, and they don’t.”
“Sounds good to me.” Gremio imagined plundering a southron supply base. His mouth watered at the thought of it. But food wouldn’t be the only thing there. He thought of shoes and pantaloons and medicines and all the other things that kept an army going and that were in sadly short supply in the north.
A farmer wailed as foragers took his livestock. “You bastards are nothing but a pack of brigands!” he wailed. “Might as well have the gods-damned southrons here instead.”
“You will be compensated for your loss,” Gremio said. He pulled a scrap of paper and a pencil from a pantaloon pocket. “Let me have your name and what was taken from you. I will write you a receipt.”
“A receipt? A gods-damned receipt?” the farmer shouted. “Who in the hells is going to pay me for whatever’s wrote on a stinking receipt?” Every use of the word seemed filled with greater scorn.
“King Geoffrey’s government will, sir, after the war is won,” Gremio answered.
Snatching the paper form his hand, the farmer tore it to shreds and flung those shreds to the breeze. “Bugger King Geoffrey’s government with a pine cone!” he cried. “The son-of-a-bitching thing’s gonna be as dead as shoe leather when the war’s over. Why in the hells didn’t I get southrons stealing from me? Their receipts’d be worth something later on, I reckon.”