Harry Turtledove - Sentry Peak

James set hands on hips and roared at the portmaster: “Where are they, you worthless, stinking clot?”

“Don’t blame me, your Excellency,” the portmaster answered. “By the gods, you can’t blame me. Something must have got buggered up somewheres further north-in Nonesuch its ownself, or up in Pierreville north of there. I can’t give you what I don’t got.” He spread his hands. He went further than that: he pulled out the pockets of his pantaloons to show he had no traveling carpets hidden there.

Cursing did no good. James cursed anyway. Setting his hand on the hilt of his sword did no good, either. That didn’t stop him from half drawing the blade. He said, “I can’t travel on what I haven’t got, either. And if I can’t travel, I can’t save the kingdom. The longer I have to wait here twiddling my thumbs, the longer the army has to wait here twiddling its thumbs, the greater the risk the war in the east will be lost past fixing. Well, sirrah, what do you say to that ?”

With a shrug, the portmaster answered, “Only one thing I can say, your Excellency: I can’t do nothing about it.”

The fleet of carpets finally glided into Lemon’s Justiciary nearer to noon than to sunrise. By then, James of Broadpath was about ready to murder the mages who piloted it. But that would only have made him later still getting to the northern border of Peachtree Province. And those mages, once he got a good look at them, proved plainly weary unto death. The southrons, being tradesmen ever ready to ship their goods now here, now there, had gone into the war with far more glideways and far more wizards able to exploit them than was true in the provinces that had declared for King Geoffrey. They’d got good use from them, too. Till he had to do it, Earl James hadn’t really worried about how hard it was to move and feed large numbers of soldiers. Glideways and their mages helped.

A few days before, he could have got to Peachtree Province by a relatively straight route through eastern Parthenia. But, as Duke Edward had said, one of Avram’s armies now bestrode that glideway path, which meant James’ men had a far more roundabout road to go. Once all his troopers-and their animals, and their catapults, and the fodder for the beasts and the darts and firepots for the engines-were finally aboard the carpets, they had to travel north through Parthenia, through Croatoan (which was supposed to mean something filthy in the language of the blond tribes that had dwelt by the shore of the Western Ocean when the Detinans first came from overseas), and into Palmetto Province before finally swinging east toward Marthasville in Peachtree Province… from which they would finally be able to go south toward the border and Count Thraxton’s waiting army.

The journey would have tried the patience of a saint. James doubted whether even Duke Edward could have stayed calm through its beginnings-especially through the half-day delay occasioned by ferrying men and beasts and impedimenta over a river whose bridge had collapsed for no visible reason save perhaps the malignity of the gods. James didn’t try. He bellowed. He cursed. He fumed. He consigned whoever had made that bridge to some of the less desirable real estate in the seven hells.

“Will we be in time, your Excellency?” Brigadier Bell asked once they got moving again.

“We’d better be,” Earl James of Broadpath growled. “In spite of everything, I think we will be. And when we get there on time, we’re going to make a lot of southron soldiers late.” He rubbed his beefy hands together in anticipation.

A gold dragon on red flew in front of every company as General Guildenstern’s army triumphally entered Rising Rock. “Show these traitors why they lost,” Captain Cephas told Rollant’s company. “March so you’d make King Avram proud of you.” He couldn’t have found a better way to make Rollant do his best. Serfs and ex-serfs cared more for Avram than did most free men.

Sergeant Joram added, “March so you’ll make me proud of you, or you’ll end up wishing you’d never been born.” Hearing that, Rollant changed his mind. Keeping his sergeant happy was ever so much more important than pleasing King Avram. The king was far away, in the Black Palace in Georgetown. He would never have anything directly to do with Rollant. Joram, by contrast…

At the head of General Guildenstern’s army, a band struck up the royal hymn. Beside Rollant in the ranks, Smitty murmured, “That’s pretty stupid. Grand Duke Geoffrey uses the same air as Avram.”

“Silence in the ranks!” Sergeant Joram shouted. The end of his pointed black beard twitched in indignation. “Rollant, you can haul water for the squad tonight for running your mouth.”

“But-” Rollant began. Then he bit down on whatever he’d been about to say. He wouldn’t make Joram change his mind, and he would make his squadmates hate him. Being a blond in a dark-haired world wasn’t easy. He had to keep swallowing injustice, and he never got the chance to give any out.

“Forward-march!” Captain Cephas called as the motion of the column finally reached his company. Off the soldiers went, always beginning with the left foot. Rollant hadn’t had an easy time learning that; it was the opposite of what he’d been used to doing on Baron Ormerod’s estate. Beginning with the right foot was the serfs’ way of doing things throughout northern Detina; nobles and strawbosses hadn’t bothered trying to change it. But Detinans themselves began with the left, and King Avram’s army was profoundly Detinan even if it included some blond soldiers.

“Left-right! Left, right, left, right!” Sergeant Joram’s cadence count underscored the difference.

Behind the kingdom’s banner-the banner whose colors the northern traitors reversed-Rollant strode into Rising Rock. Back in the days when he was a serf, this collection of clapboard and brick buildings, some of the latter rising four or even five stories high, would have awed him. He remembered how astonished he’d been when he sneaked through northern towns on his way south after fleeing Ormerod’s estate. Now he put on a fine southron sneer. You could drop Rising Rock in the middle of New Eborac and it would vanish without a trace. Even the gray stone keep by the river wasn’t so much of a much, not when set against the southron city’s temples and secular buildings that seemed to scrape the sky.

Up ahead, the band switched to the kingdom’s battle hymn. Rollant’s lips skinned back from his teeth in a fierce grin. The northerners hadn’t kept that one; they had their own martial music. The battle hymn of the kingdom belonged to King Avram alone, to him and to the serfs he was freeing from their longstanding ties to the land.

A lot of the people lining the streets to watch Avram’s soldiers go by were blonds. They were the ones who whooped and cheered and clapped their hands. They cheered hardest, too, when they saw fair heads among the brunet Detinan majority. A very pretty girl of his own people caught Rollant’s eye and ran her tongue over her lips in what would have been a promise if he hadn’t swept out of sight of her forever a few seconds later. He sighed, partly for the missed chance and partly because he missed his wife.

The dark-haired Detinans who’d come out to look over General Guildenstern’s army looked less happy. “Did you ever see such a lot of vinegar phizzes in all your born days?” Smitty asked. “They never reckoned we’d get all the way up here. Shows what they knew when they backed Geoffrey the traitor.”

“What do you want to bet some of ’em’ll sneak off to tell Count Thraxton everything they can about us?” Rollant answered. Smitty scowled, but nodded.

“Silence in the ranks!” Sergeant Joram boomed again, and then, “At the beat, we shall sing the battle hymn of the kingdom.”