Harry Turtledove - Sentry Peak

No sooner had that thought crossed Ormerod’s mind than he saw a blond young man in ragged pantaloons-no tunic at all, and no shoes, either-making his way east with a bundle at the end of a stick on his shoulder. The serf was moving against the flow of soldiers on the road, toward the advancing southrons.

“Runaway!” Ormerod shouted, and pointed at him. He was amazed nobody’d pointed and shouted at the serf before he did.

The blond young man ran for the cover of the trees that grew close to the road. He dropped his bundle so he could run faster. Ormerod cursed; he couldn’t send men after the runaway without disrupting the company’s march.

Then he stopped cursing and pointed again. “Shoot him!” he yelled.

Some of his men hadn’t bothered waiting for the order. They were already cocking their crossbows and setting bolts in them. Triggers snapped. Bowstrings thrummed. Quarrels hissed through the air. With a meaty thunk! , one of them caught the fleeing serf in the small of the back. He shrieked and fell on his face.

Ormerod trotted after him. The serf kept trying to crawl toward the woods. He wasn’t going to make it. Ormerod saw that right away. If a crossbow quarrel didn’t hit a bone, it could punch right through a man. By the trail of blood the serf was leaving, the bolt that hit him had done just that.

Drawing a knife from the sheath on his belt, Ormerod stooped beside the blond man. The fellow stared at him out of eyes wide with hate and pain. “I’ll cut your throat for you, if you want, and put you out of your pain,” Ormerod said. He did what needed doing with runaways, but he wasn’t deliberately cruel about it.

“Red Lady curse you,” the serf ground out. “Death Lord pull you under the dirt and cover over your grave.”

“Serfs’ curses. Serfs’ gods,” Ormerod said with a shrug. “They won’t bite on a Detinan. You blonds ought to know that by now. Last chance: do I finish you, or do I walk away and let you die at your own speed?”

Blood dribbled from a corner of the serf’s mouth. He’d bitten his lips or his tongue in his torment. His eyes still held hate, but he nodded up at Ormerod and said, “Get it over with.”

The noble caught him by his yellow hair, jerked his head back, and drew the knife across his throat. More blood spurted, scarlet as the Lion God’s spires. The serf’s expression went blank, vacant. Ormerod let his head fall. The blond lay unmoving. Ormerod plunged his knife into the soft earth to clean it, then thrust it back in its sheath.

His men had kept going while he finished the runaway. He quickmarched after them, and was panting a little by the time he caught up. “Dead?” Lieutenant Gremio asked him.

“I didn’t go after the bastard to give him a kiss on the cheek and tell him what a good boy he was,” Ormerod answered. “Of course he’s dead.”

“His liege lord could bring an action against you for slaying him rather than returning him to the land to which he’s legally bound,” Gremio observed. “It falls under the statutes for deprivation of agricultural resources.”

“His liege lord could toast in the seven hells, too,” Ormerod said. “As far as I’m concerned, that sort of action falls under the Thunderer’s lightning bolt.”

“I merely mentioned what was legally possible,” Gremio said with his annoying lawyerly precision. Baron Ormerod spat in the dirt of the roadway to show what he thought of such precision.

As Colonel Florizel had said it would, his regiment camped just outside Rising Rock that night. Florizel said, “Ned’s unicorn-riders are supposed to keep the enemy away from us till we fall back, too.” He eyed Ormerod and the rest of his captains. “Ned is an able officer, but I wouldn’t put all my faith in his riders, any more than I would put all my faith in any one god.”

Ormerod had already planned to post double pickets to make sure his company got no unpleasant surprises from the east. After hearing that, he posted quadruple pickets instead. But the southrons didn’t trouble his men, and the regiment, along with the rest of Count Thraxton’s rear guard, passed a quiet night.

“Ned knows his business,” Ormerod remarked the next morning.

“Nice that somebody does,” Lieutenant Gremio answered. He looked around to make sure nobody but Ormerod was in earshot, then added, “It’d be even nicer if some more people up above us did.”

Ormerod grunted. “And isn’t that the sad and sorry truth? But there’s not one cursed thing we can do about it, worse luck.” He raised his voice so the whole company could hear him: “Come on, boys. We’ve got to move out. I wish we didn’t, but we cursed well do.” Along with the rest of the regiment, the rest of the rear guard, he and his company marched out of Rising Rock, out of the province of Franklin, and into… he didn’t want to think about what they were marching into. Into trouble , was what crossed his mind.

“General?” someone called outside of Earl James of Broadpath’s pavilion. “Are you in there, General?”

“No, I’m not here,” James answered. “I expect to be back pretty soon, though.”

As he’d hoped it would, that produced a fine confused silence. When he strode out of the pavilion, the runner who’d come up was on the point of leaving. He brightened when he saw James. “Oh, good, your Excellency,” he said. “Duke Edward’s compliments, and he’d like to see you at your earliest convenience.”

“Would he?” James of Broadpath said. “Well, of course I’ll see him straightaway. He’s in his pavilion?” He waited only for the runner to nod, then hurried over to the rather mean tent housing the commander of the Army of Southern Parthenia. He was panting and sweating by the time he got there, though the walk wasn’t very long. His bulk and Parthenia’s heat and humidity didn’t go together. As Duke Edward’s sentries saluted, James asked, “Is his Grace here?”

“Yes, your Excellency, he is, and waiting for you, too-or I think so, anyhow,” one of the sentries answered. He raised his voice: “Duke Edward? Earl James is here to see you.”

“Is he?” Duke Edward of Arlington came out of the pavilion. James saluted. Punctilious as always, Edward returned the courtesy. Then he plucked a folded sheet of paper from the breast pocket of his indigo tunic and presented it to James. “This may possibly be of interest to you, your Excellency.”

“Ah?” James rumbled. The paper was sealed with a dragon’s mark stamped deep into golden wax. “That is King Geoffrey’s seal,” James breathed, and Edward nodded. Only a king would or could use the dragon’s mark, and Avram’s sealing wax would have been crimson, not gold-not that Avram was likely to send a sealed letter to a general in his rival’s service.

With his thumbnail, James broke the seal. He opened the paper. The spidery script within was King Geoffrey’s, too; James had seen it often enough to recognize it. The missive read, In regard to the proposal to send the army under the command of General James of Broadpath, the said army presently constituting a wing of the Army of Southern Parthenia commanded by General Edward of Arlington, to the aid and succor of the Army of Franklin commanded by General Thraxton, the aforesaid proposal, having been endorsed by the aforementioned General Edward of Arlington, is hereby accepted and approved. Let it be carried out with the greatest possible dispatch. Geoffrey, King in the northern provinces of Detina .

“You know what it is, your Grace?” James asked.

“I don’t know, no, but from your countenance I should guess his Majesty has chosen to send your soldiers east,” Duke Edward replied.

“He has.” Earl James of Broadpath bowed to his commanding officer. “And I am in your debt, sir, for your generous endorsement.”