Harry Turtledove - Advance and Retreat

“It won’t make any difference,” Smitty said. “Wherever we go in the north, blonds look at you like you’re the Thunderer come to earth.” He held up a hand. “I take it back. I expect it’ll make some difference, on account of gods only know when we’ll see another girl that fine.”

“If you need a woman so bad, wait your turn at a brothel,” Rollant said.

Smitty shrugged. “I’ve done it now and again, but a willing girl’s more fun than one you’ve got to pay. That way, she wants it, too. She’s not just… just going through the motions, you might say.”

“All right. I won’t argue with you about that,” Rollant said. “It’s one of the reasons I steer clear of these women. They don’t care much about me . If I weren’t a sergeant, they wouldn’t look twice. They care about the stripes.”

“Well, so do you,” Smitty said.

Rollant grunted. That crossbow quarrel had hit the target, sure enough. He was proud of the sergeant’s stripes not least because they showed what he’d done in a Detinan-dominated world. How could he be surprised if other blonds saw them the same way?

“Yaaa! You stinking blond!” The shout came from an upstairs window. “You don’t know who your father was!”

When Rollant looked up, he saw no one in the window. Whoever had yelled at him lacked the courage of his convictions. “Of course I do,” Rollant shouted back. “He’s the fellow who paid your mother three coppers. She’d remember-it’s twice her going rate.”

That set Smitty giggling. Rollant wondered if an enraged northerner would come boiling out of the false-fronted wooden building, ready to do or die for his mother’s honor, if any. But everything stayed quiet after the initial jeer. Smitty said, “Well, I guess your old man got his money’s worth.”

“Right.” Rollant’s answering smile was tight. For centuries, Detinans had made free with blond women. But if a blond man presumed to look at a Detinan woman, let alone to touch her, dreadful things were liable-no, were sure-to happen to him. Back in Palmetto Province, Baron Ormerod’s wife had been a famous beauty. Whenever Rollant was anywhere near her, he’d kept his eyes to the ground to make sure he didn’t anger her or his liege lord. So had every other male serf with an ounce of brains in his head. Ormerod hadn’t been a particularly nasty overlord. With some things, though, no one dared take chances.

Even in New Eborac City, Rollant treated Detinan women with exaggerated deference. He paid attention to them as customers, not as women. That wasn’t just because he was a married man. He’d found some of them attractive. Some of them, by the looks and gestures they’d given him, found him attractive, too. But he’d never had the nerve to do anything about it, even if it would have helped pay back debts hundreds of years old. If it went wrong, if he guessed wrong, or if a woman just changed her mind or felt vindictive… He would have been lucky to last long enough to be crucified. A mob might have pulled him out of prison and taken care of matters on the spot.

“Let’s go back,” Smitty said suddenly. “I’ve seen more of this miserable place than I ever wanted to.”

“Suits me fine,” Rollant answered. “The traitors were so proud of Marthasville. They thought it was a big thing. Only goes to show they didn’t really know what a big thing is.”

When they got to the glideway depot, Lieutenant Joram collared both of them. “We’re moving west again soon. Get the men out of the dives and onto the carpets, fast as you can.”

In the end, they all went together. One man, or even two, was too likely to be ignored, maybe to get knocked over the head. Anybody who tried to take out Joram, Rollant, and Smitty at once would have a fight on his hands, though.

They hauled blind-drunk soldiers out of taverns and poured them onto the waiting carpets. They hauled soldiers out of brothels, too: some smug and sated, others frustrated because they were taken away before they could worship the Sweet One. One of those tried to slug Joram. Instead of ordering him held for court-martial, the company commander knocked him cold, slung him over his shoulder, and lugged him back to the depot.

Some of the women in the brothels were Detinans, not blonds. That surprised Rollant, who’d assumed every harlot in the north came from his own people. His being there in a uniform with three stripes on his sleeve surprised the whores, too. One of the Detinans, perhaps the best-looking woman in the waiting room in the place he and Smitty went to while Joram was dealing with the coldcocked soldier, called out to him: “You want to try something you never did before, Yellowhair?” She stood up and waggled her hips to show exactly what she meant. The silk shift she wore was so thin, so transparent, Rollant wondered why she’d bothered putting it on. On the other hand, she might have looked even more naked with it than she would have without it.

Staring at her, he almost forgot the question she’d asked. Only when the other women jeered at him did he remember and shake his head. “I’m here to get men from my company out, not to dally myself,” he managed.

That brought more jeers and catcalls. “You’ve got a lot of gods-damned nerve, taking business away from us like that,” a blond harlot said.

“By the Sweet One’s… teeth, haven’t you got enough?” Rollant asked.

“Come upstairs with me,” urged the Detinan woman in the transparent shift. Rollant shook his head again, even if his eyes never left her. She saw that-she couldn’t very well help seeing it. A slow smile spread across her face. Her lips were very red, very inviting. She said, “On the house, Yellowhair. Come on. It’ll be something different for both of us. Is it true what they say about blond men?” She was looking at him, too, but not at his face.

“On the house?” Three other women lounging on the couches in the waiting room said it at the same time, in identical tones of astonishment. By that astonishment, Rollant guessed how big a compliment he’d just got. In a brothel, what could be more perverse than lying with a man for nothing?

Somehow, Rollant shook his head once more. “I’m-I’m a married man,” he said.

That might have been the funniest thing the whores ever heard. They clung to one another, howling with laughter. Smitty spoke up: “If he doesn’t want you, sweetheart, I’ll take you up on that.”

“Corporal!” Rollant said. “We haven’t got time.”

“I won’t take long,” Smitty said blandly.

But the Detinan harlot shook her head. “Not unless you pay me the going rate, soldier. There’s nothing special about you .”

“Hells there’s not,” Smitty said, angry now. “Just let me-” He took a step forward. Rollant grabbed him as two very large, very muscular bouncers sprang into the waiting room.

“Get away!” Rollant told them. He had to wrestle with Smitty, who was furious and not making the slightest effort to hide it. “Calm down, gods damn it!” Rollant said. “We didn’t come in for that anyway.”

“All right. You’re right.” Smitty quit trying to break away from him. “Odds are I’d end up poxed anyway.”

The harlots all screeched furiously. The bouncers advanced on Smitty. They both carried stout bludgeons. Rollant let go of his comrade. Smitty’s shortsword hissed from the scabbard. So did Rollant’s. The bouncers stopped. “Good thinking,” Rollant told them. “We’re all free Detinans here, right? We can all speak our minds, right?”

One of the bouncers jerked his thumb toward the door. “I’m speaking my mind: get the hells out of here.”

“Have we got all our men out of the rooms here?” Rollant asked Smitty.