Sentry Peak (8 page)

A lot of the people lining the streets to watch Avram’s soldiers go by were blonds. They were the ones who whooped and cheered and clapped their hands. They cheered hardest, too, when they saw fair heads among the brunet Detinan majority. A very pretty girl of his own people caught Rollant’s eye and ran her tongue over her lips in what would have been a promise if he hadn’t swept out of sight of her forever a few seconds later. He sighed, partly for the missed chance and partly because he missed his wife.

The dark-haired Detinans who’d come out to look over General Guildenstern’s army looked less happy. “Did you ever see such a lot of vinegar phizzes in all your born days?” Smitty asked. “They never reckoned we’d get all the way up here. Shows what they knew when they backed Geoffrey the traitor.”

“What do you want to bet some of ’em’ll sneak off to tell Count Thraxton everything they can about us?” Rollant answered. Smitty scowled, but nodded.

“Silence in the ranks!” Sergeant Joram boomed again, and then, “At the beat, we shall sing the battle hymn of the kingdom.”

“How can we do both of those at once?” Smitty asked, which struck Rollant as a reasonable question.

It struck Joram rather differently. “You, Smitty—water duty tonight,” the sergeant snapped. He checked himself: “No, wait. I already gave that to Rollant. You can dig the latrine trench for the squad, and cover it over tomorrow morning.”

Smitty winced. He didn’t sing the battle hymn with any notable enthusiasm. Rollant did. Some sergeants would have put Smitty on water duty and handed
him
the nastier latrine detail. Even in the south, not everybody gave blonds a fair shake—not even close. Rollant tried not to fret about that. Compared to being bound to the land, with even less hope of getting off the land than an ox or an ass—which might be sold—the life of a carpenter in New Eborac wasn’t bad at all.

“To the seven hells with King Avram!” somebody in the crowd shouted.

“Hurrah for good King Geoffrey!” someone else cried.

“Arrest those men!” Half a dozen officers and sergeants from the Detinan army yelled the same thing at the same time.

Soldiers went into the crowd to do just that, but came back emptyhanded. They couldn’t tell who had shouted, and no one pointed a finger at the guilty men.
No blonds must have seen them
, Rollant thought. A moment later, he shrugged. That was not necessarily so. Maybe some of his people had seen, but were keeping quiet because they would have to go on living in Rising Rock along with the Detinans. A man who opened his mouth at the wrong time was liable to have something unfortunate happen to him, even if King Avram’s troopers did occupy his home town.

When the leading regiments of General Guildenstern’s army marched out of Rising Rock heading west, the troops at the tail end of the column hadn’t yet reached the east side of town. That said something about the size of the army. It also said something about the size of Rising Rock. Sure enough, the place could fall into New Eborac and never get noticed.

The field to which Captain Cephas led his men had plainly been used as a campground by Thraxton the Braggart’s army not long before. The grass was trampled flat. Black patches showed where fires had burned. A lingering stench suggested that the northerners hadn’t been careful about covering all their latrine trenches.

“Smitty!” Sergeant Joram pointed. “You dig a fresh trench there, among the old ones.”

“Have a heart, Sergeant,” Smitty said pitifully.

Asking a sergeant to have a heart was like asking a stone to smile. You could ask, but asking didn’t mean you’d get what you wanted. Joram didn’t even bother shaking his head. All he said was, “Get a shovel.” He turned to Rollant. “Gather up the squad’s water bottles. Looks like the ground slopes down over behind those bushes. Probably a creek somewhere over there. Go find it.”

“Right, Sergeant.” Rollant knew better than to say anything else. Some of the bottles he got were of oiled leather, others of earthenware. Most, though, were stamped from tin, and almost identical to one another. The manufactories in the south might not make very interesting goods, or even very fine ones, but they made very many. That counted, too; King Geoffrey’s domain had trouble matching them.

Joram must have grown up on a farm: as he’d predicted—and as Rollant had thought, too—a stream wound on toward the Franklin River. He wasn’t the only man in Avram’s gray filling water bottles there; far from it. “These stinking things are light enough to carry when they’re empty,” said a dark-haired soldier with a scar on his cheek, “but they’re fornicating heavy once they’re full of water.”

Several troopers laughed. “That’s the truth,” Rollant said, and they nodded. But if
he’d
complained about having to carry the water bottles, one of them would have been sure to call him a lazy blond. If he wanted the Detinans to think him even half as good as themselves—if he wanted them to think he deserved to be reckoned a Detinan himself—he had to show he was twice as good as they were.

Out in the middle of the stream, a red-eared turtle stared at the soldiers from a rock. Had Rollant seen it in his days as a serf on Ormerod’s estate, he would have tried to catch it. Turtle stew was tasty, and serfs didn’t always have enough to eat after paying their liege lords the required feudal dues. He’d learned, though, that most southrons not only didn’t eat turtles but were disgusted at the idea that anybody would. This one slid into the water undisturbed by him.

Not far from where he was filling the water bottles, a mossy stone bridge spanned the stream. One glance at it told him it had been there since before the Detinans crossed the Western Ocean: it was the work of his own people. Detinan arches used proper keystones; this one didn’t.

We were something
, he thought.
We weren’t as strong as the invaders, but we were something, all by ourselves. Whatever we were becoming, though, the gods—our gods, the Detinan gods, I don’t know which gods—didn’t let us finish turning into it. Now we’re part of something else, something bigger, something stronger, and I don’t know what we can do except try to make the best of it
.

He was putting the stoppers in his water bottles when the bushes on the far side of the stream rustled. He didn’t have his crossbow with him, but a couple of men close by did. If a few of King Geoffrey’s soldiers still lingered, they would have a fight on their hands.

“Come out of there, you gods-hated northern traitor son of a bitch,” rasped one of the troopers with Rollant.

More rustling, and out of the bushes came not northern soldiers but a scrawny blond man and woman in filthy, tattered clothes and four children ranging in size from almost as tall as the woman down to waist high on her. The man—plainly a runaway serf—said, “You’re Good King Avram’s soldiers?”

That made the Detinans laugh. The one who’d called the challenge answered, “If we weren’t, pal, you’d already have a crossbow quarrel between the ribs.”

“Gods be praised!” the serf exclaimed. “We’re off our estate for good now. The earl’ll never get us back again.” He led his wife and children across the bridge toward the soldiers. They were halfway across when he noticed Rollant. “Gods be praised!” he said again. “One of our own, a soldier for the southron king.” Then, pointing at Rollant, he let loose with a spate of gibberish.

“Speak Detinan,” Rollant answered. “I don’t understand a word you’re saying.” Back in the old days, blonds in what was now Detina had spoken scores of different tongues. This one sounded nothing like the one Rollant’s ancestors near Karlsburg had used. That language was nearly dead these days, anyhow, surviving only as scattered words in the Detinan dialect the serfs of Palmetto Province spoke.

The runaway looked disappointed. In Detinan, he said, “I want to be a soldier for King Avram, too, and kill the nobles in the north.”

“What about us?” the woman with him asked, pointing to the children and herself as they finished crossing the bridge.

One of the troopers in Detinan gray had a different question: “What do we do with ’em?”

“Let the blond fellow here deal with them,” another veritable Detinan answered. “They’re his, by the gods.”

Rollant would have bet a month’s pay one of the dark-haired men would say that. He’d already escaped to the south. He had not a word of this serf’s language. But his hair was yellow, not brown. To a man whose forefathers had crossed the Western Ocean—or even to one who’d crossed himself—that made all the difference.

And, Rollant had to admit, it made some difference to him, too. He waved to the serf and his family. “Come along with me. I’ll take you to my captain. He’ll decide what to do with you.” He pointed to the water bottles he’d filled. “You can help me carry these, too.”

That set the other soldiers laughing. “He’s no fool,” one of them said. “Doesn’t feel like working himself when he can get somebody else to do it for him.” Had he used a different tone of voice, he would have been mocking a lazy serf. But he sounded more admiring than otherwise: one soldier applauding another’s successful ingenuity.

“Come on,” Rollant said again. The escaped serf ran forward and picked up almost all the water bottles. For him, bearing burdens for King Avram’s soldiers was a privilege, not a duty—and a nuisance of a duty at that. Rollant smiled as he grabbed the couple of bottles the runaway hadn’t. “When I finally got into the south, I was the same way you are now,” he told the fellow.

“My liege lord can’t tell me what to do any more,” the serf said simply. “He can’t come sniffing after my woman any more, neither.”

Rollant led the whole family of runaways back to the encampment. Sergeant Joram glared at him. “I sent you after water, not more blonds,” he growled, and then, before Rollant could say anything, “Take ’em to the captain. He’ll figure out what to do with ’em.”

Since Rollant had intended to do just that, he obeyed cheerfully. Captain Cephas eyed the newcomers and said, “We can use somebody to chop wood. You handy with an axe, fellow?” The escaped serf nodded. Cephas turned to the woman. “Can you cook? The fellow we’ve got could burn water.”

“Yes, lord, I can cook,” she answered softly.

“I’m not a lord. I’m just a captain,” Cephas said. “We’ll put the two of you on the books. Half a common soldier’s pay for you” —the man— “and a third for you” —the woman. Their delighted expressions on realizing they’d get money for their labor were marvels to behold. Rollant understood that. He’d felt the same way. Only later would they find out how little money they were getting.

Count Thraxton knew a lot of his soldiers had expected him to fall back all the way to Marthasville after retreating from Rising Rock. Of all the towns in Peachtree Province, Marthasville was the one King Geoffrey
had
to hold, for it was a great glideway junction, and most of the paths leading from the long-settled west to the eastern provinces passed through it. Falling back closer to it—to Stamboul, say, halfway there—might even have been prudent.

But, after his vow to Ned of the Forest, Thraxton would have reckoned himself forsworn—and, worse, the officers serving under him would have reckoned him forsworn—had he retreated that close to Marthasville. And so he didn’t go very far to the northwest, but made his new headquarters at a little town in southern Peachtree Province called Fa Layette, not far from the picturesquely named River of Death.

Death suited Thraxton’s present mood. Nor was that mood improved when a fellow who’d escaped from Rising Rock after the southrons seized it was brought before him and said, “They paraded right through the town, sir, the whole scapegrace army of ’em, all their stinking bands blaring out the battle hymn of the kingdom till your ears wanted to bust.”

“May the Hunt Lady flay them. May the Thunderer smite them,” Thraxton said in a voice so terrible, his informant flinched back from him as if he were the Thunderer himself. “May their torn and lightning-riven souls drop into the seven hells for torment eternal. That they should dare do such a thing in a city that is ours . . .”

“A city that
was
ours,” the fellow from Rising Rock said. Thraxton fixed—transfixed—him with a glare. He didn’t just flinch. He spun on his heel and fled from the chamber where he’d been speaking with Thraxton.

“Shall I bring him back, sir?” asked the young officer who’d escorted the refugee into Thraxton’s presence. “Do you think you can learn more from him?”

“No: only how great an idiot he is, and I already have a good notion of that,” Thraxton answered. The junior officer nodded and saluted and also left the chamber in a hurry.

Count Thraxton hardly noticed. He set an absentminded hand on the front of his uniform tunic. His stomach pained him. It often did—and all the more so when he contemplated the spectacle of General Guildenstern, a man with neither breeding nor military talent, parading through Rising Rock, through the city Thraxton himself had had to abandon.

I am the better soldier
. Thraxton was as sure of that as he was that the sun was shining outside.
I am the better mage
. That went without saying. No general in either army could come close to matching him in magic.
Then where are my triumphs? Where are my processions?

He could have had them. He should have had them. Somehow, they’d slipped through his fingers. Somehow, he’d ended up here in Fa Layette, a no-account town if ever there was one, while Guildenstern, his inferior in every way, victoriously paraded through Rising Rock.

It wasn’t his fault. It couldn’t possibly have been his fault. He was the one who deserved that parade, by the gods.
And I shall have it
, he thought. He always knew exactly what he was supposed to do, and he always did it, but somehow it didn’t always come off quite the way he’d expected. Since the mistakes weren’t, couldn’t have been, his, they had to belong to the officers serving under him.

Slowly, Thraxton nodded. That was bound to be it. Had any general in all the history of Detina—in all the history of the world—ever been worse served by his subordinates? Thraxton doubted it. Even now, the men who led the constituent parts of his army were not the warriors he would have wanted. Ned of the Forest? A boor, a bumpkin, a lout. Leonidas the Priest? No doubt he served the Lion God well, but he had a habit of being tardy on the battlefield. Dan of Rabbit Hill?
Better than either of the others
, Thraxton thought,
but not good enough
. Dan had a fatal character flaw: he was ambitious. Thraxton tolerated ambition only in himself.