Harry Turtledove: Marching Through Peachtree

“He certainly is,” Florizel said. “And any man dismissed from his command by Thraxton the Braggart has to have more going for him than meets the eye.”

“Hmm. I hadn’t thought of that. You’ve got a point, your Excellency, no doubt about it,” Gremio said. That he meant. But it remained one of the all too few points in Leonidas’ favor, as far as he was concerned. The hierophant of the Lion God was a holy and pious man. As far as Gremio could see, though, neither holiness nor piety was an essential soldierly virtue. Of those virtues, Leonidas had displayed very few.

“Thraxton was a disaster for this army-a disaster, I tell you,” Florizel said. “I do hope Count Joseph will be able to pick up the pieces and shape us into a decent fighting force once more.”

“So do I,” Gremio said. “He’d better. If he doesn’t, this whole eastern land is lost to King Geoffrey, and I don’t see how he can hope to hold off King Avram without it.”

“Avram is a tyrant. The gods hate him,” Florizel growled. Gremio nodded; he certainly agreed with that, and knew hardly anyone from Palmetto Province who didn’t. His home province had been the first to renounce allegiance to Avram and fall in behind Geoffrey’s banner. After a ruminative pause, Colonel Florizel continued, “But, as you say, Captain, Geoffrey does need land of which to be the king. We shall have to do everything in our power to hold back General Hesmucet, then.”

“He’ll have more men than we do,” Gremio said gloomily. “The southrons always have more men than we do-except at the River of Death, and Count Thraxton frittered away what we won there.”

“They may have more men, but we have better mages,” Florizel said. “We have to have strong sorcery at our disposal, for we need it to keep the serfs subdued. The southrons are a land of shopkeepers and peddlers. What need have they for the true practice of magecraft?”

“The true practice of magecraft is a very fine and important thing,” Gremio said. “What we’ve had… Everyone denies it, but everyone knows we lost at Proselytizers’ Rise because Thraxton bungled his spells. One of them was supposed to come down on the southrons’ heads but landed on our poor men instead, and sent them running off to be shot down like partridges.”

“I have heard that,” Florizel said. “I was not close by at the time of the battle, so I can’t testify as to its truth.”

Gremio smiled. “Spoken like a barrister, sir.”

“From you, Captain, I will take that for a compliment,” the regimental commander replied with a smile of his own. “There are other men, you will understand, who would use it intending something else.”

“Yes, sir,” Gremio said resignedly. He knew people sneered at men who practiced law. He never had quite understood why. Without barristers and solicitors, how would men who disagreed solve their problems? By going to war with one another, that’s how, he thought. Some wars were necessary-this one, for example, since King Avram insisted on trampling down long-established law and custom in the northern provinces. But most arguments were, or could be, settled more readily than that.

Colonel Florizel tipped his hat and took his leave, still favoring that leg. In an odd sort of way, the wound he’d taken by the River of Death might have saved his life. Major Thersites, who’d taken over the regiment while Florizel couldn’t fight, had died on the forward slopes of Sentry Peak, vainly trying to hold back Fighting Joseph’s southrons. Florizel was a brave man. He might easily have perished there himself.

Gremio missed Thersites even less than he missed Captain Ormerod. The major had been a swamp-country baron. He’d claimed he was a baron, at any rate, and he was a good enough man of his hands that no one ever challenged him on it. But all he’d done, besides aping and envying his betters, was criticize and carp at them. A little of that was bracing. A lot of it was like drinking vinegar all the time. Gremio wondered in which of the seven hells the unlamented Thersites’ soul currently resided.

“Leonidas the Priest in charge of a wing again!” Gremio said-even easier and more enjoyable to resent a live man than a dead one, for a live man might yet offend afresh, where a dead man’s affronts were fixed, immutable.

After a moment, though, Gremio shrugged. The Army of Franklin hadn’t performed noticeably better without Leonidas than it had with him. Presumably, that meant his return wouldn’t hurt the army much.

Someone coughed behind Gremio, as if tired of waiting to be noticed. Gremio turned. “Oh. Sergeant Thisbe,” he said. “What is it?”

The company’s first sergeant was a lean young man who, unusually for a Detinan, kept his cheeks and chin shaved smooth. Gremio approved of him; he did his job competently and without any fuss. “I was just wondering, sir,” he said now, “if the colonel had any word on when we’d be moving out of winter quarters. The sooner I can prepare the men, the better.”

“Quite right, quite right,” Gremio said approvingly. “But no, Joseph the Gamecock has yet to issue any orders along those lines.”

“All right, sir,” Thisbe said. “I expect we’ll know when General Hesmucet starts moving north against us.”

“I should hope so,” Gremio exclaimed. “This is our country, after all. When the enemy moves through it, the people always let us hear what he’s up to.”

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said. “Same as the blonds do for the foe with us.”

“Er-yes,” Gremio said. It wasn’t so much that Thisbe was wrong. The sergeant, in fact, made a real and important point. “Good of you to think of that.” Here in the north, Detinans were so used to thinking of their serfs as hewers of wood and drawers of water, they too readily forgot blonds were men like any others, with eyes to see, wits to think, and tongues to speak.

“I hear we’ve got serfs digging trenches and making earthworks for us from here all the way up to Marthasville,” Sergeant Thisbe said. “Do you really suppose, sir, that some of them won’t tell the southrons as much of what we’re up to as they can figure out?”

“No, I don’t suppose anything of the sort.” Even had Gremio supposed anything of the sort, he wouldn’t have admitted it. A barrister never admitted anything he didn’t have to. He went on, “We do try to keep as many blonds from escaping as we can, you know. I’m sure the general commanding is doing his best to make sure no really important information gets to Hesmucet.”

“I hope so.” Thisbe’s light tenor could be remarkably expressive. Here, the sergeant packed a world of doubt into three words. Gremio wouldn’t have wanted to go to court against a barrister with such dangerous skills.

Before he could say so-he would have meant it as nothing but praise-horns blared, summoning the regiment to assembly. No, not just the regiment: the whole brigade, maybe even the whole army. Those horns were blaring all over the encampment in and around Borders.

“We can talk about this more another time, Sergeant,” Gremio said. “For now, we’ve got to round up the men.” He spoke of them as if they were so many sheep. He sometimes thought of them that way, too, though he was careful not to let them know it. He had to keep their respect, after all.

“Yes, sir.” Thisbe saluted. The sergeant went about the job with quiet but unhurried competence. Gremio wondered what he’d done in or around Karlsburg before taking service with King Geoffrey’s army. He didn’t know; unlike most of his men, Thisbe didn’t talk much about what he’d done or what he hoped to do. He just did whatever needed doing, and did it well.

Thanks in no small part to him, Gremio’s company was among the first in Colonel Florizel’s regiment to assemble. Small farmers, tradesmen, shopkeepers-by now, after three years of war, telling at a glance what a soldier had been was a hopeless, unwinnable game. Despite individual differences, all the men looked very much alike: lean, sun-browned, poorly groomed, dirty, wearing blue uniforms in no better shape than they were. Some of those blue tunics and pantaloons had started life as gray tunics and pantaloons, and been taken from southrons who didn’t need them any more and then dyed. Some few gray pantaloons hadn’t been dyed at all. That went against orders, but happened nonetheless.