His left hand folded into a fist. He slammed it down on his thigh. The story that refugee had told still burned within him. So Guildenstern had marched into Rising Rock with bands playing and banners waving, had he? When I take Rising Rock back, when I free it from the gods-accursed southrons, I shall have my own parade, and everyone will cry out my name.
With a nod, he spurred his unicorn up from a walk to a trot. What could be finer than streets lined with hundreds, with thousands, of cheering people, all of them shouting things like, “Huzzah for Thraxton!” “The gods bless the great Count Thraxton!” “Hurrah for Thraxton, savior of the realm!”? Nothing in the world could be finer than that, not to Count Thraxton.
And let those envious sons of bitches call me Thraxton the Braggart after that, he thought with a sour smile. Let them try. I shall have done something worth bragging about, something none of those feeble little men could hope to match.
In his mind, he saw himself bowing before King Geoffrey, heard the King acclaiming him Duke Thraxton of Rising Rock, imagined himself taking over broad new estates, earned by the swords-well, actually by the crossbows and pikes-of the men under his command. Maybe that was an even more splendid vision than the one he’d had a moment before.
He trotted past companies of footsoldiers trudging south toward what he hoped would be the battle. Reality differed from his visions, as reality had a way of doing. He heard one crossbowman say to another, “Who’s that scrawny old bugger? He looks like a teamster, but he rides like he owns the road. Silly old fool, anyone wants to know what I think.”
“Nobody gives a fart what you think, Carolus,” another trooper answered. “Nobody ever has, and nobody ever will, not even that old geezer.”
“Shut up, the both of you,” a third man said. “That was Thraxton the Braggart, and he’d just as soon turn you into a crayfish as look at you.”
Sooner, Thraxton thought. He pointed a finger at the soldier who’d spoken scornfully of him. For good measure, he also pointed at the fellow who’d used the nickname he hated. Then he muttered the spell he’d tried to use against Ned of the Forest. It had failed against Ned. It didn’t fail here. Both men doubled over, clutching their bellies. Then they both sprinted for the bushes off to the side of the road. With a harsh laugh, Count Thraxton urged his unicorn forward.
He reached the headquarters of Leonidas the Priest as the sun was sliding down the sky toward the western horizon. But, when he stuck his head into Leonidas’ pavilion, he discovered the hierophant of the Lion God wasn’t there.
“Er-how may I serve you, your Grace?” one of Leonidas’ aides asked. He sounded nervous, probably because he hadn’t expected Count Thraxton to come down toward the River of Death. He had more reason to be nervous than that. If he didn’t realize as much, he was going to find himself in as much trouble as his principal.
“Where is Leonidas?” Thraxton demanded.
“Offering sacrifice, your Grace,” the aide replied. “As always, he hopes to win the aid of the gods through his piety, and to enspirit the men he leads.”
“To enspirit them to do what?” Thraxton asked, acid in his voice.
“Why, to drive back the accursed southrons, of course,” the young officer said.
“They why won’t he attack them when I order him forward?” Thraxton snapped. Before the aide could answer, he held up a warning hand. “I don’t care to hear your response, sirrah. I care to hear Leonidas’. Fetch him here. Fetch him at once.”
“Sir, as I say, he is at his devotions,” the aide replied.
“Fetch him,” Thraxton said for the third time. “Let the underpriests finish the sacrifice. If he doesn’t care to come, tell him he would do better to cut his own throat than the lamb’s.”
That sent Leonidas’ aide off at a run. Thraxton folded thin arms across his narrow chest and waited, none too patiently. Before his temper quite kindled, the young officer came back with Leonidas the Priest, who as usual wore the vestments of his holy office rather than uniform. He looked most unhappy, which suited Thraxton fine. “Why are you harassing me, your Excellency?” he asked.
“Why do you not obey my orders?” Thraxton roared in return. “We have the foe divided. If we can strike him thus, he is ours. But we must strike. Why do you not move on him when I command it?”
“Oh.” Leonidas’ eyebrows rose. “Considering how we’ve had to fall back and back lately, and considering how I think we ought to fall back more to defend Marthasville, I didn’t imagine you could possibly have meant your order to go forward.”
“You shall obey me!” Count Thraxton had only thought he was roaring before. That full-throated bellow made everyone within earshot whirl and stare at him. Even Leonidas, after blinking a couple of times, bowed his head in acquiescence. Thraxton hoped that acquiescence didn’t come too late. Once upon a time, someone had written, Against stupidity, the very gods themselves contend in vain. Whoever that was, he’d probably known Leonidas the Priest.
Doubting George scratched his head. Some things could no longer be doubted, even by him. He’d called his brigadiers together to see if they still found such matters doubtable.
But when he said, “Seems to me there may be more traitors around these parts than if they were hightailing for Marthasville fast as they can go,” not a one of them argued. Instead, three heads bobbed up and down in solemn agreement and the fourth officer stood mute.
“I’d say you’re likely right, sir.” Brigadier Brannan might have been the handsomest man in King Avram’s army. He had curly black hair and a curly black beard, elegant eyebrows, and a proud hooked nose. He was also a professional soldier and a connoisseur of catapults; he commanded Doubting George’s dart- and stone-throwers. He went on, “Looks to me as if Thraxton’s decided to hang around and fight.”
“Can we lick him if he does?” George asked. He knew his own opinion, but wanted to hear what his brigadiers had to say.
But then Brigadier Negley said, “May it please you, sir, I’m not altogether convinced these aren’t more holdouts making nuisances of themselves, like those dragoons a few days ago.”
“Nonsense,” Brannan said.
Negley glared at him. He was handsome, too, in a foppish way. He wore a bushy mustache and a neatly trimmed little tuft of hair under his lower lip. He hadn’t been a soldier before the war-in fact, he’d got wealthy as a horticulturalist, of all unlikely things-but he’d raised a regiment of volunteers for King Avram and had fought it well enough to win promotion from colonel to brigadier.
“It isn’t nonsense,” he said, looking from Brannan to George and back again. “Some people just think they know everything to know, that’s all.” He sniffed. Having dismissed the catapult enthusiast, he spoke to George again: “Why should the traitors fight here when everything they need to hold is so much farther north?”
George couldn’t dismiss that argument out of hand, not when it was the same one General Guildenstern had made to justify splitting up his army. He said, “By all the signs I’ve seen, by all the reports the scouts are bringing in, there are more than holdouts in front of us. Suppose Thraxton the Braggart hits this column with everything he’s got. Can we whip him?”
His brigadiers looked at one another. Absalom the Bear was first to answer, in rumbling tones that helped explain how he’d acquired his nickname: “I wouldn’t care to bet on it, sir. He’s got more men than we do here, and we’re stretched out pretty stinking thin, too.”
Brigadier Rinaldo nodded. “He could hurt us. But I don’t think he’s stayed in the south, either. What’s the point of it?”