Harry Turtledove - Sentry Peak

“How can we do both of those at once?” Smitty asked, which struck Rollant as a reasonable question.

It struck Joram rather differently. “You, Smitty-water duty tonight,” the sergeant snapped. He checked himself: “No, wait. I already gave that to Rollant. You can dig the latrine trench for the squad, and cover it over tomorrow morning.”

Smitty winced. He didn’t sing the battle hymn with any notable enthusiasm. Rollant did. Some sergeants would have put Smitty on water duty and handed him the nastier latrine detail. Even in the south, not everybody gave blonds a fair shake-not even close. Rollant tried not to fret about that. Compared to being bound to the land, with even less hope of getting off the land than an ox or an ass-which might be sold-the life of a carpenter in New Eborac wasn’t bad at all.

“To the seven hells with King Avram!” somebody in the crowd shouted.

“Hurrah for good King Geoffrey!” someone else cried.

“Arrest those men!” Half a dozen officers and sergeants from the Detinan army yelled the same thing at the same time.

Soldiers went into the crowd to do just that, but came back emptyhanded. They couldn’t tell who had shouted, and no one pointed a finger at the guilty men. No blonds must have seen them , Rollant thought. A moment later, he shrugged. That was not necessarily so. Maybe some of his people had seen, but were keeping quiet because they would have to go on living in Rising Rock along with the Detinans. A man who opened his mouth at the wrong time was liable to have something unfortunate happen to him, even if King Avram’s troopers did occupy his home town.

When the leading regiments of General Guildenstern’s army marched out of Rising Rock heading west, the troops at the tail end of the column hadn’t yet reached the east side of town. That said something about the size of the army. It also said something about the size of Rising Rock. Sure enough, the place could fall into New Eborac and never get noticed.

The field to which Captain Cephas led his men had plainly been used as a campground by Thraxton the Braggart’s army not long before. The grass was trampled flat. Black patches showed where fires had burned. A lingering stench suggested that the northerners hadn’t been careful about covering all their latrine trenches.

“Smitty!” Sergeant Joram pointed. “You dig a fresh trench there, among the old ones.”

“Have a heart, Sergeant,” Smitty said pitifully.

Asking a sergeant to have a heart was like asking a stone to smile. You could ask, but asking didn’t mean you’d get what you wanted. Joram didn’t even bother shaking his head. All he said was, “Get a shovel.” He turned to Rollant. “Gather up the squad’s water bottles. Looks like the ground slopes down over behind those bushes. Probably a creek somewhere over there. Go find it.”

“Right, Sergeant.” Rollant knew better than to say anything else. Some of the bottles he got were of oiled leather, others of earthenware. Most, though, were stamped from tin, and almost identical to one another. The manufactories in the south might not make very interesting goods, or even very fine ones, but they made very many. That counted, too; King Geoffrey’s domain had trouble matching them.

Joram must have grown up on a farm: as he’d predicted-and as Rollant had thought, too-a stream wound on toward the Franklin River. He wasn’t the only man in Avram’s gray filling water bottles there; far from it. “These stinking things are light enough to carry when they’re empty,” said a dark-haired soldier with a scar on his cheek, “but they’re fornicating heavy once they’re full of water.”

Several troopers laughed. “That’s the truth,” Rollant said, and they nodded. But if he’d complained about having to carry the water bottles, one of them would have been sure to call him a lazy blond. If he wanted the Detinans to think him even half as good as themselves-if he wanted them to think he deserved to be reckoned a Detinan himself-he had to show he was twice as good as they were.

Out in the middle of the stream, a red-eared turtle stared at the soldiers from a rock. Had Rollant seen it in his days as a serf on Ormerod’s estate, he would have tried to catch it. Turtle stew was tasty, and serfs didn’t always have enough to eat after paying their liege lords the required feudal dues. He’d learned, though, that most southrons not only didn’t eat turtles but were disgusted at the idea that anybody would. This one slid into the water undisturbed by him.

Not far from where he was filling the water bottles, a mossy stone bridge spanned the stream. One glance at it told him it had been there since before the Detinans crossed the Western Ocean: it was the work of his own people. Detinan arches used proper keystones; this one didn’t.

We were something , he thought. We weren’t as strong as the invaders, but we were something, all by ourselves. Whatever we were becoming, though, the gods-our gods, the Detinan gods, I don’t know which gods-didn’t let us finish turning into it. Now we’re part of something else, something bigger, something stronger, and I don’t know what we can do except try to make the best of it .

He was putting the stoppers in his water bottles when the bushes on the far side of the stream rustled. He didn’t have his crossbow with him, but a couple of men close by did. If a few of King Geoffrey’s soldiers still lingered, they would have a fight on their hands.

“Come out of there, you gods-hated northern traitor son of a bitch,” rasped one of the troopers with Rollant.

More rustling, and out of the bushes came not northern soldiers but a scrawny blond man and woman in filthy, tattered clothes and four children ranging in size from almost as tall as the woman down to waist high on her. The man-plainly a runaway serf-said, “You’re Good King Avram’s soldiers?”

That made the Detinans laugh. The one who’d called the challenge answered, “If we weren’t, pal, you’d already have a crossbow quarrel between the ribs.”

“Gods be praised!” the serf exclaimed. “We’re off our estate for good now. The earl’ll never get us back again.” He led his wife and children across the bridge toward the soldiers. They were halfway across when he noticed Rollant. “Gods be praised!” he said again. “One of our own, a soldier for the southron king.” Then, pointing at Rollant, he let loose with a spate of gibberish.

“Speak Detinan,” Rollant answered. “I don’t understand a word you’re saying.” Back in the old days, blonds in what was now Detina had spoken scores of different tongues. This one sounded nothing like the one Rollant’s ancestors near Karlsburg had used. That language was nearly dead these days, anyhow, surviving only as scattered words in the Detinan dialect the serfs of Palmetto Province spoke.

The runaway looked disappointed. In Detinan, he said, “I want to be a soldier for King Avram, too, and kill the nobles in the north.”

“What about us?” the woman with him asked, pointing to the children and herself as they finished crossing the bridge.

One of the troopers in Detinan gray had a different question: “What do we do with ’em?”

“Let the blond fellow here deal with them,” another veritable Detinan answered. “They’re his, by the gods.”

Rollant would have bet a month’s pay one of the dark-haired men would say that. He’d already escaped to the south. He had not a word of this serf’s language. But his hair was yellow, not brown. To a man whose forefathers had crossed the Western Ocean-or even to one who’d crossed himself-that made all the difference.

And, Rollant had to admit, it made some difference to him, too. He waved to the serf and his family. “Come along with me. I’ll take you to my captain. He’ll decide what to do with you.” He pointed to the water bottles he’d filled. “You can help me carry these, too.”