Sentry Peak (30 page)

He ground his teeth, loud enough to be plainly audible, hard enough to hurt. Why in the name of the gods hadn’t he done more when that backwoods savage stormed in here, fire in his eye and murder in his heart? Thraxton was no coward; no man who’d ever seen him fight would claim he was. No, he was no coward, but there for a few dreadful minutes he’d been thoroughly cowed.

But he was still the commanding general, and thanks to King Geoffrey he would go on holding that post. And, if Ned had briefly cowed him, he didn’t have to keep the man around to remind himself of his humiliation. He inked a pen and began to write.

Headquarters, Army of Franklin, Proselytizers’ Rise
. The familiar formula helped steady him, helped ease the perpetual griping pain in his belly.
Count Thraxton to King Geoffrey of Detina. Your Majesty: Some weeks since I forwarded an application from Ned of the forest for a transfer to the Great River for special service. At that time I withheld my approval, because I deemed the services of that distinguished soldier necessary with this army
.

After looking at what he’d written, he slowly shook his head.
By the gods, what a liar I am!
went through his mind. All he wanted was to get Ned of the Forest as far away from him as he could, and to do it as fast as he could. If that meant telling polite lies, tell polite lies he would. He would do almost anything never again to have to face the murder in Ned’s eyes.

Pen scritching across paper, he resumed:
As that request can now be granted without injury to the public interests in this quarter, I respectfully ask that the transfer be made at this time. I am, your Majesty, very respectfully, your obedient servant, Count Thraxton, general commanding
.

There. It was done. He sprinkled fine sand over the ink to dry it, then folded the letter and sealed it with his signet ring. Once the wax was dry, he called for a runner. Handing the young man the letter, he said, “Take this to the king at once.”

“Yes, sir,” the runner said, and hurried away. He asked no questions. That was as well, for Thraxton knew he had few answers.

If he went over to the crest of Proselytizers’ Rise—not a long journey at all, less than a mile from this farmhouse—he could look down into Rising Rock and see the scores, the hundreds, of fires of the southron soldiers encamped there. James of Broadpath’s words came back to haunt him.
You wanted to chase Guildenstern out of Rising Rock, and you ended up chasing him into it instead
.

Thraxton stepped outside and stared up at the stars. A mosquito bit him on the neck. Absently, hardly noticing what he was doing, he cursed the buzzing pest. The curse he chose might have slain an unwarded man. Used against a mosquito . . . The bug, which was flying off, burst into flame as if it were a firefly. But fireflies burned without consuming themselves. The mosquito’s whole substance went into the fire, and it abruptly ceased to be.

If only I could do to the southrons what I did to the mosquito
. But the men who followed King Avram
were
warded, worse luck. He’d managed to break through those wards and cast confusion into General Guildenstern’s mind, but the effort had left him all but prostrated. And, because he did break through, the Army of Franklin had won the fight by the River of Death. But the effort winning took had left the army all but prostrated, too. Everyone who called for a hard, fierce pursuit of the southrons conveniently failed to notice that.

You swore an oath you would take back Rising Rock. You swore an oath you would chase the southrons all the way out of the province of Franklin
. That didn’t look like happening any time soon.

Now, in the recesses of his mind, the caverns where insults and reproaches lay unforgotten, Ned of the Forest fleered at him once more: not this latest outburst, but the one back in Rising Rock. Thraxton knew plenty of men called him the Braggart, but few had the nerve to do it to his face.

Thraxton looked up at the stars again.
I did everything I could
, he thought. He’d had one man in four killed or wounded in the latest battle; the River of Death had lived up to its name. How could he pursue after that?

“I couldn’t,” he muttered, drawing a curious look from a sentry. Fortunately, the man had the sense to ask no questions.

But Thraxton held his thoughts to himself.
They want me to get east of the southrons, to slip between them and their supply base at Ramblerton. How can I do that when the army has no bridges to cross the Franklin River? If I send men across at the fords and the river rises—as it might, after any thunderstorm—they’ll be cut off from any hope of aid. Can people see that? It doesn’t seem so
.

He went back into the farmhouse, took off his boots, and lay down on the iron-framed cot that did duty for a bed: the softer one the farmer who’d abandoned the place left behind had proved full of vermin, and they, like the southrons, showed a higher degree of immunity to his spells than he would have liked.

Most of the bugs, unlike most of the southrons, were finally deceased. The ones that survived didn’t bother Thraxton much. Even so, sleep was a long time coming. He knew as well as his fractious generals that he might have got more from the fight by the River of Death, and knowing that ate at him no less than it ate at them. They were full of bright ideas. He didn’t think any of their bright ideas would work. Unfortunately, he’d come up with no bright ideas of his own. That left him . . . sleepless on a hard cot near Proselytizers’ Rise, when he’d hoped to go back into Rising Rock in triumph.

When sleep did come, it did a better job of ambushing him than he’d done of catching the southrons unaware as they pushed into Peachtree Province. He woke with a feeling of deep surprise, almost of betrayal: what else might his body do to him while he wasn’t looking?

He broke his fast with a couple of hard rolls and a cup of rather nasty tea. Southron galleys prowled outside the ports of the north, those that hadn’t fallen to King Avram’s men. Getting indigo out, getting proper tea in, grew harder month by month.

Count Thraxton had just finished his abstemious meal when a runner came in and said, “Your Grace, the king will see you now.”

“Very good.” Thraxton got to his feet. “I’ll come.” Only after he’d got moving did he reflect on the absurdity of that. If King Geoffrey wanted him to come, of course he would. He had no business speaking as if he were doing his sovereign a favor. He’d been commanding the Army of Franklin a long time; maybe he’d got used to the idea of having no one around of rank higher than his.

He ducked his way into the pavilion he’d had run up for the king. Dropping to one knee, he murmured, “Your Majesty.”

“Arise, old friend,” Geoffrey said. Thraxton straightened. The king seemed in a mood to put aside some of the formality of his office. He waved Thraxton to a stool and sat down on another one himself, though he sat very straight, as if his back pained him. “What can I do to help you win back Franklin?”

“Give my army another wing the size of James of Broadpath’s,” Thraxton replied without the least hesitation. “Give me the unicorn-riders and siege train and artisans that go with such a force. If I had them, I would sweep the southrons from this province as a cleaning wench sweeps dust from a parquet floor.”

“If I had such men, I would give them with both hands,” King Geoffrey replied. “I have them not, I fear. To give you Earl James and his followers, I had to rob Duke Edward in Parthenia and pray the southrons would stay quiet. We are . . . stretched very thin these days, you know.”

“Yes.” Thraxton’s doleful nod matched his doleful countenance. “You do know, however, that the southrons have sent reinforcements into Rising Rock?”

“I know it,” Geoffrey said. “The more men they have there, the faster they will starve. So I hope, at any rate.”

“Indeed.” Thraxton nodded again, this time in more willing agreement. “We have our hand on their windpipe to the east of here. I will do everything I can to squeeze it shut.”
Maybe I’ll parade through the streets of Rising Rock yet. Maybe
.

King Geoffrey nodded, too. “Good. May the gods favor our cause, then. Now . . . I shall transfer Ned of the Forest to the vicinity of the Great River, as you ask. I gather the two of you have known a certain amount of friction trying to work together.”

“You might say so, yes.” Thraxton remembered Ned’s index finger stabbing at his face like the point of a sword.

“Very well. I was given to understand as much.” Geoffrey paused, looking thoughtful.
He’s going to tell me something I don’t want to hear
, Thraxton thought; he needed no magecraft to realize as much. And, sure enough, the king went on, “In his own way, Ned is valuable to the kingdom. I understand why he needs to leave this army, but I would not have him leave while feeling ill-used. That being so, I intend to promote him from brigadier to lieutenant general before sending him east toward the Great River.”

“You will of course do as you please in this regard,” Thraxton said woodenly. “If it were up to me . . .”
If it were up to me, Ned of the Forest would face the worst of the seven hells before I finally let him die
. But he couldn’t very well tell that to King Geoffrey, not after what the king had just told him.

“Sometimes these things can’t be helped,” Geoffrey said. “Winning the war comes first. If we do not win the war, all our petty quarrels crash to the ground along with all our hopes. Do you want to live in a world where our serfs are made into our liege lords?”

“No, by the gods,” Thraxton replied, as he had to. And he told the truth. But he didn’t care to live in a world where Ned of the Forest was allowed to prosper, either.

“I’m glad that’s settled, then,” the king said. It wasn’t settled—it was a long way from settled—as far as Count Thraxton was concerned. But, though Geoffrey was his friend, Geoffrey was also his sovereign. He couldn’t say what lay in his heart. His stomach twinged painfully. Of itself, his left hand rubbed at his belly. So far as he could tell, that did no good at all, but sorcery and medicine had failed him, too. Geoffrey went on, “Having dismissed Dan of Rabbit Hill and Leonidas, with whom do you intend to replace them? You will need men you can trust.”

“Indeed, your Majesty,” Thraxton said, in lieu of laughing in King Geoffrey’s face. Men he trusted were few and far between. When he thought about how many men put under his command had shamelessly betrayed him, he found it altogether unsurprising that that should be so.

“What do you say to Roast-Beef William, then?” Geoffrey asked.

Count Thraxton stroked his graying beard. The year before, he and Roast-Beef William had commanded armies moving more or less together down into Cloviston, toward the Highlow River. They’d had to come back to the north after accomplishing less than Thraxton would have liked, but he’d got on with the other general about as well as he got on with anyone: faint praise, perhaps, but better than no praise at all.

Geoffrey could have proposed many worse choices. If Thraxton hesitated much more, perhaps Geoffrey would propose somebody worse. And so he nodded. “Yes, your Majesty, I think he would suit me.”

“Good,” Geoffrey said. “I think his appetite for fighting matches his appetite for large slabs of red, dripping meat.”

“Er—yes.” Thraxton wondered if he’d made a mistake. He would, from time to time, have to eat with his wing commanders. His own appetite was abstemious. Having to watch Roast-Beef William demolish a significant fraction of a cow at suppertime would do nothing to improve it.
The sacrifices I make for the kingdom
.

“All right, then.” The king seemed to tick off another item on his agenda. “You may choose your second wing commander in your own good time. Getting one man named, though, is important.”

“As you say, your Majesty. Is there anything more?” As far as Thraxton was concerned, there’d been quite enough already.

But King Geoffrey nodded. “It is essential that you drive the southrons from as much of Franklin as you possibly can. Essential, I say. We should be hard pressed to make a kingdom without this province.”

“I understand.” Count Thraxton made himself nod. Making himself smile was beyond him. “I shall do everything as I can to carry out your wishes, your Majesty. Without more men, though . . .” The king glared at him so fiercely, he had to fall silent. But if the north could not get more men where they were needed most, how was it to make any sort of kingdom, with or without Franklin?

General Bart was not a happy man as the glideway brought him into Adlai, the town in southern Dothan Province closest to Rising Rock. He wasn’t happy that King Avram had had to send him to Rising Rock to repair matters after General Guildenstern met disaster by the River of Death, and he was in physical pain. A few days before, up in the steaming subtropical heat of Old Capet, General Nat the Banker had lent him a particularly spirited unicorn, and he’d taken a bad fall. His whole right side was still a mass of bruises. He could ride again, but walking remained a torment.

His aide, a hatchet-faced young colonel named Horace, strode onto the glideway carpet and said, “Sir, we’re in luck—General Guildenstern is here in Adlai, on his way south after King Avram recalled him.”

“Is he, your Grace?” Bart said, and Colonel Horace nodded. Horace was a duke’s son. That amused Bart, whose father had been a tanner. He knew he took perhaps more pride than he should at giving nobles orders; in the south, what a man could do counted for at least as much as who his father was. That was much less true in the north, where the nobles’ broad estates gave them enormous power in the land.

“He would speak to you, sir, if you care to speak to him,” Horace said.

“Of course I will,” Bart answered. “I wish I hadn’t had to make this trip, and I expect he wishes the same thing even more than I do. It’s good of him to want to talk to me at all, and not to spit in my eye.”

Colonel Horace contemplated that. “Sometimes, sir, I think you’re a little too good at seeing the other fellow’s point of view.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” Bart shrugged, which hurt. “Don’t forget, Colonel, I went to the officers’ collegium with these other fellows and served alongside ’em—our officers and the ones who chose Geoffrey. Knowing how the other fellow thinks is a big help in this business.”