Harry Turtledove: Marching Through Peachtree

“Of course you do,” Hesmucet answered. “Why else would they call you Doubting George?” They also called George the Rock in the River of Death; if it hadn’t been for the stand his soldiers had made the autumn before, Thraxton the Braggart’s men wouldn’t just have beaten southron General Guildenstern’s army-they would have annihilated it. George had earned all the credit he’d got for himself that day.

Hesmucet contemplated General Guildenstern’s fate. These days, that worthy was chasing blond savages on the trackless steppes of the east. He was lucky to have been allowed to remain in King Avram’s service: if going off to the steppes to harry savages counted as luck, at any rate.

That could happen to me if I bungle this campaign , General Hesmucet thought. Unusually for a Detinan, he was named after a blond himself: the chieftain who’d given the kingdom so much trouble in the War of 1218. That did nothing to improve his opinion of blonds, and especially of unsubdued blonds. As far as he was concerned, the only good one was a dead one.

He brought himself back to the business at hand. “I had a message by scryer this morning from Marshal Bart in the west,” he told Doubting George.

“Did you indeed?” George said, as if that were a great surprise to him. “And what did the marshal say?”

“That he is moving north today against Duke Edward of Arlington and the Army of Southern Parthenia,” Hesmucet answered.

“Thunderer and Lion God bring him all success,” George said. Hesmucet wondered exactly what the lieutenant general was thinking. Like Duke Edward, Doubting George was a Parthenian. Also like Edward, he was a serfholding noble. Unlike Edward, though, he’d stayed loyal to Avram and the idea of a united Detina rather than going into revolt and treason with his province and false King Geoffrey.

Did George ever stop to count the cost? He’d paid one: Geoffrey had confiscated his lands (as Avram had confiscated Duke Edward’s estate, which lay just across the river from the royal capital at Georgetown). Had George chosen to shout, “Provincial prerogative forever!” he could have kept his holdings-and the north would have gained a dangerous fighting man.

George looked north and west, too. “If Marshal Bart is setting off to tangle with Duke Edward and the Army of Southern Parthenia, don’t you suppose it’s time we paid a social call on Joseph the Gamecock and the Army of Franklin?”

“Ah,” Hesmucet said. “That must be what this little assemblage here is all about.”

Again, Doubting George spoke as if in surprise: “Well, who would ever have thought of such a thing?”

This time, Hesmucet looked back over his shoulder. The entire might of his force was mustered there: unicorn-riders aboard mounts whose horns were shod with polished iron; pikemen whose spearheads gleamed in the bright spring sun; endless regiments of crossbowmen with shortswords on their hips to give them something with which to fight in case they shot their bolts and missed; mages riding asses. The soldiers’ tunics and pantaloons and the mages’ robes were all of one shade of gray or another. Hundreds of color-bearers carried the red dragon on gold. Great columns of ass-drawn supply wagons and siege engines on wheeled carriages completed the immense warlike host.

“Are we ready?” Hesmucet asked George.

“You’re the general commanding, sir,” Doubting George replied. Hesmucet cocked his head to one side, studying the reply. George wished Marshal Bart had named him, not Hesmucet, commander over all of King Avram’s armies east of the Green Ridge Mountains. He made no bones about that. But was he so jealous and resentful as to be unable to serve as Hesmucet’s chief subordinate?

He’d better not be , Hesmucet thought. If he is, I’ll find somebody else, and I won’t waste a heartbeat before I do . For now, he gave George the benefit of the doubt. “That’s right,” he said. “I am. Let’s go, then.”

He waved to the mounted trumpeters just behind him. Their polished bugles gleamed like gold under the strong spring sun as they raised them to their lips. The first thrilling notes of the Detinan royal hymn blared forth. A moment later, a great cheer from the long column of gray-clad soldiers drowned out the hymn.

“Forward!” Hesmucet shouted, trying to make himself heard above the din. “Forward against the traitors!” Those of his men who did hear him cheered louder than ever.

In the manner of a northern noble, Doubting George made his unicorn rear and paw the air with its forelegs. That, too, wrung a cheer from the soldiers. Hesmucet, who was only an ordinary rider himself, found the stunt showy and artificial. Again, he wondered whether George was trying to show him up. Again, he gave his second-in-command the benefit of the doubt.

I wonder if Joseph the Gamecock has these worries , he thought as he began to ride north. I know Thraxton the Braggart did. But then, Thraxton worried about every officer under his command. He did everything he could to make every officer under his command hate him, too. Just as well for the rightful king’s cause that Thraxton never came close to realizing it .

Thraxton, these days, was back in Nonesuch, giving King Geoffrey advice. The two of them got on well, however much trouble both of them had getting along with anybody else. They deserve each other , Hesmucet thought.

“You’re not dividing up the force,” Lieutenant General George remarked.

“No, I’m not,” Hesmucet agreed. “I don’t know where in the seven hells we’ll end up having to fight. Wherever it is, I want to strike as hard a blow as I can with my men.”

“Good,” Doubting George said. “When Guildenstern marched north from Rising Rock last fall, he split his army into three parts. We’re lucky Count Thraxton didn’t destroy us in detail. Losing the battle by the River of Death was bad, but that would have been even worse.”

“I’ve got a whole swarm of scouts out ahead of us,” Hesmucet said. “If Joseph wants to try to ambush me, I wish him joy of it.”

“He won’t have an easy time of it,” George agreed. “But he has his own scouts, too, you know.”

Hesmucet nodded sourly. “Every single gods-damned northerner who sees us is a scout for Joseph the gods-damned Gamecock,” he said, and waved in the direction of a woman planting crops in a field. “Her husband’s probably fighting for Geoffrey, and she probably has ways of getting news to his commanders.”

“Too true,” George said. “The other thing you’ll notice in country where we’ve been around for a while is that you’ll see almost no blonds in the fields. They will all have abandoned their lands and their liege lords and run off to us.”

“I know,” Hesmucet replied. “And gods damn me to the hells if I know whether that’s a good thing or not, Lieutenant General. I have no great use for blonds. I never have, and I probably never will. I don’t know what the devils we’re going to do with all these northern blonds if they aren’t going to be serfs any more. And if anybody, including King Avram himself, has any clearer notion, it would come as a great surprise to me.”

Doubting George chuckled. “You sound more like a northern aristocrat than many a northern aristocrat I’ve heard. If you feel that way, why didn’t you side with Grand Duke Geoffrey against King Avram? Some few southrons did.”

“And they’re all traitors, too, and they all deserve to be crucified for treason right along with Geoffrey,” Hesmucet ground out. “It’s very simple, as far as I’m concerned. There is only one Kingdom of Detina. One, mind you, not two or three or twelve or twenty-seven. And there’s no doubt whatsoever that Avram is the rightful King of Detina. As far as I can see, that settles that. I’m a simple man. I don’t much believe in or care about complicated arguments.”