"She smelled awful pretty, though, didn't she?" Lani said. Georgia buried her face in her hands again. But before she did, she aimed a glare at Lani that should have buried her.
The other women mercenaries listened with interest not far from fascination. Some tried to pretend they were doing no such thing. Others didn't bother. New faces meant new gossip. New gossip was always welcome. By the look of things, there'd be plenty of new gossip to go around. Georgia hated gossip. No, that wasn't quite true. Most of the time, she liked it as well as anybody else. What she hated was gossip about her. With Lani in tow, that was a forlorn hate.
Baron Howard went to war with his southern neighbor, Baron Ritz, for the most common reason any two barons tangled: over grazing rights. Baron Ritz's rabbits had taken to hopping the fence between the two domains and stuffing themselves on Baron Howard's meadows. Baron Howard squawked. When squawking did about as much good as squawking usually does, he undertook more direct action. His archers started shooting the trespassing bunnies. That increased the hasenpfeffer ration at Castle Howard. It also made Baron Ritz squawk. Baron Ritz's squawks to Baron Howard did as much good as Baron Howard's squawks to Baron Ritz had done. This being the case, Baron Ritz undertook direct action of his own. His archers started shooting Baron Howard's archers.
And so. A war. Adding a few strands of barbed wire to the damn fence would have saved both barons silver and casualties, to say nothing of rabbits. It never entered either of their heads. Not a whole lot of things did.
Georgia got all this in bits and pieces from Slim Jim and the other mercenaries as they bounced across the meadows toward battle. Curls led the Howard war party. Lani didn't care about what was going on one way or the other. She knew which side she was on, and the side she wasn't on was the enemy. Georgia wished the world were as simple as Lani made it out to be.
"Who's going to be in charge of Baron Ritz's men?" Georgia asked.
"Probably his son, Al," Slim Jim answered. "He's the oldest Ritz brother."
"Is he any good?"
"He ain't bad. His pa's a lot ritzier, though, if you know what I mean." The sergeant dropped his voice. "Of course, same thing's so about old man Howard and Curls. What worries me is, folks say Baron Ritz has hired a bunch of crackers up from the south. Some o' them are rough customers."
"They'll all be in gray, right? And their captain'll wear one of those fancy plumed hats?"
Slim Jim nodded. "Sure sounds like crackers to me. You have been around the block once or twice, haven't you?" Georgia warmed at the admiration in his voice. But he went on, "What about it?"
"I'll tell you what," Georgia said, and she did.
"You reckon that'll work?" Slim Jim asked, and then, "You want we should do it, or should we leave it to Curls?"
"We oughta take care of it," Georgia said at once. "Either that Curls won't do it at all or else he'll do it the wrong kind of way."
The sergeant glanced over toward Baron Howard's son, who was lolloping along on his war bunny without a visible care in the world. "I reckon you sized him up right the first time. All right—we'll handle it." Georgia nodded, pleased with herself and him both. Maybe friendship was blossoming there, maybe even something more. Whatever it was, she'd worry about it after the battle.
When they got to the fence between Baron Howard's land and Baron Ritz's, Ritz's archers shot at them till Howard's bowmen made the enemy soldiers keep their heads down. The rest of Baron Howard's men used cutters to open a way through the wire. What that meant, of course, was that till the fence got fixed the rabbits on both sides could go wherever they pleased. Rabbits going where they pleased was most of what the war was all about. Nobody seemed to worry about that, not even a little bit. They could have been fighting about rock oil coming up out of the ground or something else equally stupid. Every so often, they just wanted to fight.
As soon as they'd hopped a little ways into Baron Ritz's lands, Georgia saw why his bunnies were leaping the fence. Baron Howard had much better grazing country, full of clover and alfalfa and buckwheat and other tasty things for the little rascals to eat. Baron Ritz's border country was bloody boring, and would have been boring to a bunny, too.
Horns blared. Ritz's riders bounded toward Baron Howard's. The border country was about to get bloody in the literal sense of the word.
There was the cracker chief—sure enough, plumed hat over gray surcoat. Before setting spurs to her own bunny, Georgia and Slim Jim both smacked Lani on the back. "That one! Go get that one, Lani!" they yelled. "The one with the feather!"
"The one with the feather," Lani agreed. "I'll do it. You betcha I will." She couched her lance, let out a war cry that didn't have any words but that made every hair on Georgia's head stand bolt upright anyway, and thundered down on the foe.
And the rest, as they say, is history, or possibly fantasy.
A battlefield after a battle is not a pretty place. The only thing worse than fighting a battle, though, is fighting it and losing it. If you've fought a battle and lost it and you're still on the field afterwards, the most likely explanations are that you're a prisoner or you're dead. Neither of those is anything to write home about. Of course, if you're dead you probably won't start writing War and Pieces any time real soon, no matter how much you might know about war or be in pieces.
Bits of Ritz's army bucketed off in all directions—anything to get away from the ferocious warriors and fierce bad war rabbits who fought for Baron Howard. Curls was beside himself with glee—and if one of him was annoying, two would have been downright obnoxious, to say nothing of excessive. "We whupped 'em!" he shouted to anybody who would listen. "We beat the bastards, and we bounced their buggering bunnies!"
He wasn't wrong. That didn't make him any less irritating. Georgia stayed as far away from him as she could. Slim Jim made much better company. Surveying the chili con carnage, the sergeant nodded to Georgia and said, "Well, you was right, no two ways about it."
"About what?" Georgia wasn't beside herself with glee. The looting hadn't been as good as she'd hoped. Baron Ritz's troopers must have been as broke as she was. Now a lot of them were not just broke but broken.
"That Lani, she fights like a son of a bitch," Slim Jim said. "Them crackers just weren't the same after what she done to their captain."
"Oh. That." Lani had unrabbited him. She'd bent over and plucked the lance out of his hand and broken it across her knee. And then she'd leaned down in the saddle and given him a big kiss. There he was, standing with a bunch of other captives and looking as if he wished she'd only killed him. How was he supposed to live this down? Who'd hire him now? What would people call him? The Cute Mercenary? He'd have to go to night school and study accounting or something.
"Be damned if I don't think Baron Howard'll pay her a bonus for what she done," the sergeant said.
"Yeah?" That made Georgia perk up.
Slim Jim looked as if he was afraid he'd said too much. Quickly, he added, "I can't promise, mind you. It's up to the baron. But if it was up to me, I sure would."
Georgia knew what that meant. It had almost as much tease in it as Curls' wife. "Well, we'll find out," she said, which was a lot politer than hauling off and kicking something—preferably Slim Jim.
Curls had the brains to post scouts to make sure Baron Ritz's men didn't regather and counterattack during his march back to his own lands. That surprised Georgia, who wouldn't have bet he could add eleven and ten without dropping his pants. But Ritz and the crackers had truly crumbled. They stayed away. Georgia was willing to bet it would be a long, long time before the beaten baron's bunnies bounded over the barrier between the baronies.