“Be careful,” he called to his company. “Those bastards up ahead have nothing to lose. Don’t throw yourselves away if you can help it. King Geoffrey needs every single one of us.”
They weren’t going to listen to him. He could tell at once, by the way they leaned forward, how eager they were to get into this skirmish. Some of them were liege lords themselves. Others aspired to estates with serfs. Blonds who bore arms against Detinans contradicted everything they held dear and conjured up pictures of peasant revolts. Now the northerners had a chance to make the blonds pay, and they were going to take it.
As usual, soldiers from both sides started shooting too soon. Coming into crossbow range of each other, though, didn’t take long. Gremio hated the sound of quarrels humming past his ear. He hated even more the flat, unemphatic smack they made when they slapped into flesh. And the sounds that came from a man who’d been shot… He hated those most of all.
Blonds ahead began falling. Gremio wondered how many of them came from the southron provinces and how many were runaway serfs. He couldn’t very well pause and ask. All he could do was run toward them waving an officer’s sword that wouldn’t do him a bit of good till he got close enough for them to have a fine chance of killing him, too. The more he thought about it, the stupider a way to pass his time this seemed.
However much he wanted to, though, he couldn’t go back. Even if his superiors didn’t crucify him for cowardice, he’d never again be able to hold up his head among men. That mattered to him more than the possibility of getting shot. Not for the first time, he wondered why it should.
Beside him, Thisbe said, “It’s a good thing they’re all crossbowmen. We couldn’t charge them like this if they had pikemen with them.”
“Oh, yes, a very good thing-a bloody wonderful thing,” Gremio said in tones of something less than complete enthusiasm.
Sergeant Thisbe’s laugh abruptly turned into a yelp of pain. Instead of running, the underofficer took a couple of staggering steps and crashed to the ground, clutching at his left leg.
Gremio skidded to a stop just beyond him. “Go on, sir,” Thisbe said. “Go on. I’ll be all right.” He tried to get to his feet, tried and failed. The left leg of his pantaloons started to turn red. He began crawling away from the fight ahead.
“Here, I’ll help you.” Gremio knelt beside him. “Give me your arm. I’ll heave you upright, and you can use your good leg for a little ways. We’ve got to get you back to the healers, get that wound seen to.”
Thisbe waved him away, repeating, “Go on, sir. I’ll be all right.”
“Sergeant, give me your arm,” Gremio said in a voice harsher than he’d ever used with Thisbe. “That is an order.”
Thisbe looked as if he wanted to argue further, but then the wound must have twinged again, for he winced and nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“That’s better.” Gremio put the underofficer’s arm over his shoulder. “Let me have some help from your good leg if you can, Sergeant.” He straightened. Thisbe wasn’t a big man. Gremio had less trouble getting him up than he’d expected. “Come on,” he said.
“Sir, I don’t want to go to the healers,” Thisbe said.
“What you want doesn’t matter very much right now, Sergeant,” Gremio said. “What you need matters, and what you need is healing. I’ll get you there, never fear.”
“Sir, could you bandage me yourself?” Thisbe asked desperately. “By all the gods, sir, I’ll give you anything you like, anything at all, if only you don’t take me to the healers.”
“Why are you so afraid of them?” Gremio asked. “Is it for the same reason you never wanted to be promoted, no matter how much you deserve it?”
He was talking only to distract Thisbe from his pain, but the underofficer seized on his words and gave him a quick, urgent nod. “Yes, for just the same reason, sir! Don’t take me there, I beg you!”
Gremio used his free hand to scratch his head. If ever a man seemed in earnest, Thisbe was the one. “What is this precious reason of yours, sergeant?” the company commander asked.
Something more like fear than pain twisted Thisbe’s face. “I can’t tell you, sir. I don’t dare tell you. I don’t dare tell anybody.”
What was that supposed to mean? Gremio started to come out and ask the question, then stopped with the words unspoken. He’d had an arm around Thisbe for some little while now, while Thisbe had had one around him. The sergeant didn’t usually care to be touched. This time, there’d been no choice. Gremio thought he understood now why Thisbe had fought shy of it before. What he thought was madness, but there were times when madness made more sense than anything else. What he saw, what he heard-he could be wrong about all of that. What he felt? No. Madness or not, he thought it was true.
“Sergeant, I’ll look at your wound,” he said. “If I think I can just bandage it, I’ll do that. If I think it has to go to the healers to save your life, I’ll take you there. That’s the best I can offer, because I don’t-I especially don’t-want to lose you.”
“I suppose it’ll have to do, sir.” Despite pain, the underofficer picked up nuance. “Especially?” How much dismay was in that voice?
“Especially,” Gremio said firmly. He eased Thisbe down to the ground. “I’m going to look at the wound now. And then, Sergeant, I think you have a lot-a lot — of explaining to do.”
Thisbe let out a long, long sigh and then nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Lieutenant General Bell nodded happily to his aide-de-camp. “By the gods, Major, I know where I’m going again.”
“I’m glad to hear it, sir,” Major Zibeon answered. “Where are you going? Is the Army of Franklin going with you?”
“It certainly is,” Bell answered. “The time has come for the Army of Franklin to return to the province from which it takes its name. Franklin has groaned under the southron yoke since the war was young. High time it should be liberated from the hated, hateful foe.”
“Er-yes, sir,” Zibeon said. “How do you propose to arrange that, sir?”
“How? I’ll tell you how. By marching straight to Ramblerton and taking it away from the enemy, that’s how,” Bell answered. “We can do it. We’re ahead of Hesmucet. What have the southrons got in Franklin? A few piddling garrisons, that’s all. Ned of the Forest’s riders have driven them mad. When a real army erupts in their midst, they’ll run like rabbits.”
Major Zibeon didn’t say anything. He didn’t say anything at all. He looked from one map to another in Bell’s farmhouse headquarters, then turned away. He walked out into the cold rain, still without a word. He didn’t even shake his head. He simply walked away.
Bell started to call back his dour aide-de-camp. He didn’t. He let Zibeon leave. Calling him back would have meant wrangling with him, and Bell had had all the wrangling he could stand for a while. He felt as weary as a man bowed under the burden of twice his years. And his leg-or rather, the phantom still haunting the place where his leg had formerly dwelt-began to burn like fire.
The pain wasn’t real. How could it be, when the leg itself was gone a few inches below the hip? But, real or not, it hurt him. Not to put too fine a point on things, it tormented him. Cursing under his breath, he groped for his little bottle of laudanum.
He found it, pulled it from the tunic pocket where it hid-and dropped it. Had his left hand been in working order, he might have caught it. But, as far as movement went, his left hand-his whole left arm-was as much a phantom as his amputated leg. The bottle, the precious laudanum, thumped down on the rammed-earth floor.
Being made of thick glass, it didn’t break. Bell cursed in good earnest nonetheless. How the hells was he supposed to recover the drug for which his body screamed? For a whole man, it would have been the work of a moment. But then, a whole man wouldn’t have needed the laudanum so desperately as he did himself, and he was anything but whole.