Harry Turtledove: Advance and Retreat

“Not often enough,” Rollant said gravely. “But most of the time, yes, that’s what you do. That’s what you’d better do.” He tapped the stripes on his sleeve.

“I know it.” Smitty looked fearful. In confidential tones, he told the Ramblertonian, “He beats me when I disobey. He’s terrible fierce, he is. You wouldn’t want to mess with him, believe you me you wouldn’t.”

Animal . Rollant read the word on the local’s lips. But the fellow didn’t have the nerve to say it out loud. What he did say was, “It’s a disgrace to the Detinan race, that’s what it is.” He walked off with his nose in the air.

“How about that?” Smitty said. “How do you like being a disgrace to the Detinan race?”

“Me? I like it fine,” Rollant answered. “But I thought he was talking about you.”

“Was he? Why, that son of a whore! Of all the nerve,” Smitty said. He and Rollant both laughed. Rollant looked back over his shoulder. The Ramblertonian’s back had got stiffer than ever. The blond laughed again.

But the laughter didn’t last. By proclaiming he intended to release the Kingdom of Detina’s blond serfs from their feudal obligations and ties to the land, King Avram had also, in effect, proclaimed they were, or could at least become, Detinans like any others. The whole of the north set about forming its own kingdom and went to war sooner than admitting that possibility. Even in the south, blonds had a hard time of it although legally on the same footing as real Detinans. Rollant had seen that for himself as a carpenter. He’d had to be twice as good as his competitors to get half as far.

It was worse in the army. Detinans prided themselves on being a warrior race. They also assumed blonds couldn’t fight. Smitty had told the local he obeyed Rollant’s orders. And so he did-most of the time. A lot of his comrades had been less willing after Rollant won the promotion he would have had long since if his hair were properly black, his skin properly swarthy.

Of course, if his hair were properly black, his skin properly swarthy, he never would have had to flee from Baron Ormerod’s estate because he wouldn’t have been bound to the land in the first place. Detinans didn’t think about such things. Why should they? They didn’t have to. They weren’t bound, as his people were.

“How do you suppose that bastard would like working somebody else’s land his whole life long?” Rollant asked Smitty. “How do you suppose he’d like his baron flipping up his wife’s skirt, and nothing he could do about it if he wanted to keep his head on his neck?”

“Oh, he wouldn’t have to worry about that,” Smitty said.

“Ha!” Rollant said. “Just shows you’ve never been a serf.”

Smitty shook his head and repeated, “He wouldn’t have to worry about that.” Only when Rollant started to get angry did he condescend to explain himself: “Any woman he could get would be too ugly for a nobleman to want.”

“Oh.” Rollant felt foolish. “All right. You got me there.” He laughed, a little sheepishly.

The true Detinan flag, King Avram’s flag, gold dragon on red, flew above the keep at the heart of Ramblerton and on important buildings throughout the town. Displaying false King Geoffrey’s reversed banner was illegal as could be. Several Ramblertonians languished in jail for letting their patriotism outrun their good sense. As far as Rollant was concerned, they could stay there till they rotted.

When he’d been back on Baron Ormerod’s estate, he would have reckoned Ramblerton the grandest town in the world. No more. After New Eborac City, it seemed small and only half finished. Not a single street was cobbled. All of them were dirt: dusty in the summertime, muddy now that winter was on the way. People flung their slops wherever they pleased, which meant the place stank even worse than it would have otherwise. And, toward the north, Ramblerton just petered out, clapboard houses gradually giving way to woods as one low ridge after another marked the land’s rise from the banks of the Cumbersome River.

“No, not so much of a much,” Rollant muttered.

“What’s not so much of a much?” Smitty asked him.

“This place,” he answered.

Smitty wasn’t a city man. He came from a farm outside New Eborac City, and hadn’t liked going into town even when he’d had the chance. He shrugged now. “Just one more place we’ve got to hold on to,” he said.

“I should hope so!” Rollant said. “I’d like to see the gods-damned traitors try to take it away from us. They’d be sorry to the end of their days, by the Lion God’s fangs.”

He swore by the Lion God, the Thunderer, and the other gods of the Detinan pantheon. He believed in them. He worshiped them. His own blond ancestors had had gods of their own before the Detinans crossed the Western Ocean and took this land away from them. He still knew the names of some of them. He even believed in them, after a fashion. Worship them? He shook his head. They’d let his ancestors down when those ancestors needed them most. If he was going to worship gods, he wanted to worship gods who delivered.

“We ought to head back to camp,” Smitty said.

“That’s true.” Rollant kept on walking.

Smitty laughed. “I know why you don’t want to leave. You want to keep showing off in front of the traitors.”

Rollant thought that over. Solemnly, he nodded. “You’re right. I do.”

But, when Smitty turned back, he followed. Doubting George’s army held more people than Ramblerton, and sprawled over a wider area, too. If it weren’t for riverboats on the Cumbersome and all the glideway lines that came into the area, the army would have starved in short order. As things were, a swarm of blond laborers-runaway serfs-unloaded boats and glideway carpets and heaved crates and barrels into ass-drawn wagons that would take them exactly where they needed to go.

The laborers were working harder than they would have if they’d stayed on their liege lords’ estates. Plainly, they didn’t care. They were doing this work because they wanted to, not because they had to. Rollant understood that down to the ground.

He eyed the asses with a certain mournful sympathy. His ancestors had tried to use bronze axes and ass-drawn chariots against the thunderous unicorn cavalry of the Detinan conquerors. They’d tried, they’d fought bravely-and they’d gone down to the subjection a whole great segment of Detina had taken enough for granted to be willing to fight rather than see it abridged in any way.

As they neared the encampment, Rollant pointed ahead. “Something’s going on.”

“Sure is,” Smitty agreed. “Whole camp’s stirring like a beehive just before it swarms.”

“Where the hells have you two been?” Sergeant Joram growled when Rollant and Smitty reached their company. “We’re marching inside of an hour.”

“Marching?” Smitty said. “How come? Where are we going?”

Rollant was content to let Smitty ask the questions. Joram could have made his life as a corporal difficult, if not impossible. He hadn’t done that. But he wasn’t any great lover of blonds, either. Rollant stayed out of his way as much as he could-which was also, on general principles, a good thing to do with sergeants.

“We’re going up toward the Dothan border,” Joram answered now. “Doubting George has given John the Lister a whole wing’s worth of men, and we’re part of it. Seems like General Bell may be getting frisky up there, so they need us to make sure he doesn’t kick up too much trouble.”

“What’s he going to do?” Smitty said scornfully. “Invade Franklin? After all the lickings he took over in Peachtree Province, he hasn’t got the men for that, I wouldn’t think.”