Harry Turtledove - Sentry Peak

And I have business of my own to attend to , George thought as he left the hotel and hurried through the twilight toward the encampment of the brigades he himself commanded. Sweat ran down his face and down his back and dripped from under his arms. Even though summer was on the point of turning to fall, Rising Rock’s muggy heat made it a place where nobody in his right mind wanted to hurry. Doubting George hurried anyway. Unlike his commanding general, he needed no one to remind him of his duty.

He was shouting for runners as he got to his own pavilion of gray canvas. The young men appeared as quickly as if a military mage had conjured them up. That was their duty, and they would have heard about it had they failed. “Sir?” one of them said, saluting.

“Hunt down Brigadiers Rinaldo, Brannan, Negley, and Absalom the Bear,” George said. “Inform them all that they are to be ready to move at first light tomorrow morning. We shall march on Thraxton the Braggart’s army then, our purpose being to bring him to battle and hold him in place so that General Guildenstern, following behind us, may fall upon him and destroy him altogether.”

The runners stared. Whatever they’d expected, that wasn’t it. After they took it in, though, they whooped and scattered. Reddish dust flew up from under their boots as they ran. The commanding general might be distracted, but they wanted to close with Thraxton.

Before long, the encampment started to stir like a just-kicked anthill, only with rather more purpose. Lieutenant General George chuckled a little and rubbed his hands together, as if he were an evil wizard on the stage in New Eborac. When word reached the half of the army that wasn’t going forward, the half General Guildenstern had kept for himself, that this half was , he suspected Guildenstern wouldn’t be able to stay in Rising Rock for even a few hours, no matter how much he might want to. He also suspected the commanding general hadn’t figured that out for himself. Well, too bad for the commanding general , he thought.

Colonel Andy, Doubting George’s aide-de-camp, came bustling up to him. Andy was a small, plump, fussily precise man, hopeless leading soldiers in the field but brilliant when keeping track of all the things they needed to do to reach the field with everything they had to have to fight well. “Sir, are we moving?” he asked, reproach in his voice. “You didn’t tell me we were moving. How can I be ready when I don’t know what to be ready for?”

“If I’d known, your Excellency, I would have told you,” George said, and set a reassuring hand on Andy’s shoulder. The aide-de-camp was only a baronet, hardly a nobleman at all, but despite that-or perhaps because of it-touchy about the way people used him. “I didn’t know it myself till General Guildenstern gave me the order less than half an hour ago.”

“He should conduct his business in a more businesslike manner,” Colonel Andy said with a sniff. He bowed to George; if he expected punctilious politeness, he also returned it. “What precisely-or even what approximately-are we expected to do, if the commanding general has any idea of that?” His opinion of Guildenstern was not high.

“We’re going after Thraxton the Braggart,” George answered. “The commanding general is of the belief that he’s falling back on Stamboul, or maybe even all the way to Marthasville.”

“What utter nonsense,” Andy said, a view that marched well with George’s own. “Thraxton’s an arrogant boor, but he’s not an idiot.” He added something under his breath. It might have been, Unlike some people I could name , but it might not have, too.

Doubting George didn’t ask. Instead, he said, “Be that as it may, we’re going after the traitors. If it turns out they’re closer, we’ll hit them, and then General Guildenstern will come up and finish them off.”

“And what route shall we take?” his aide-de-camp demanded. “I have been given to understand that knowing where we’re going is considered desirable in these affairs. This may be only a rumor, but I do believe it holds some truth.”

“Er-yes,” Lieutenant General George said. “The only real route we have starts in the gap between Sentry Peak and Proselytizers’ Rise. Once we get up into Peachtree Province, what we do will depend on where Thraxton really turns out to be, don’t you think?”

“Improvisation at the end of a campaign often leads to victory,” Colonel Andy said, sniffing. “Improvisation at the beginning of a campaign often leads to disaster. The gods grant that this one prove the exception.”

“Your Excellency, we are going after Thraxton the Braggart,” George said. “I don’t know where we’ll find him, but I expect we will. When we do, we’d better be ready to give him a kick right where it’ll do the most good. I rely on you to help us do that.”

“You expect me to make ham without a pig,” Andy said. “I shall do what I can, but I could do more if I knew more.”

“I intend to move along the western slope of Sentry Peak,” Doubting George said. “That way, if the traitors try to strike at us, they’ll have a harder time hitting us from the flank. Past that, we’ll just have to see.”

His aide-de-camp sniffed again. “Not good enough. Not nearly good enough.” But off he went, to do his best to make pork-free ham for George’s army.

Ned of the Forest urged his unicorn across a stream in the forest north of the River of Death. The animal’s every step took him farther from Fa Layette, and from Thraxton the Braggart. The farther he got from Thraxton, the happier he became.

A squirrel peered out from behind the trunk of an oak and chattered indignantly at him and at the rough-looking men in faded indigo riding behind him. Ned chuckled and spoke to Colonel Biffle, who followed him most closely: “If we weren’t in such a rush, somebody’d bag that little fellow for the supper pot.”

“Somebody may yet,” Biffle answered.

But Ned shook his head. “We don’t slow down for anything. We don’t slow down for anybody. One of my men tries to make us slow down and I find out about it, he’ll be one sorry so-and-so, and you can bank on that.”

“All right, Ned,” Colonel Biffle said hastily. “Everybody knows better than to get your angry up-everybody this side of Count Thraxton, anyway,” he added in lower tones.

“People had ought to know that,” Ned said. “I’m a peaceable man, but…” He normally spoke in a quiet voice, so quiet one had to listen closely to him to make out what he was saying. But when his temper rose, an astonishing transformation came over him. His eyes flashed. He shouted. He cursed.

“But…” Colonel Biffle echoed, and let out a nervous chuckle. “When your angry is up, your men are a lot more afraid of you than they ever could be afraid of the graybacked lice who fight for King Avram.”

“Good,” Ned said.

They went on for a while in silence. The road they followed hardly deserved the name. It was little more than a game track. But Ned’s scouts had already traveled it from one end to the other, as they had most of the paths in the woods, and they knew just where it hit the main road leading north from Rising Rock.

After splashing through another small stream, Ned held up his hand and reined in. “Column, halt!” Colonel Biffle called from behind him, and the column did halt. Biffle asked, “What is it, sir?”

“I want to be sure the pack animals are keeping up with us all right,” Ned answered. “Pass the word back, and then send it forward to me again. We can all use a little blow till it comes.”

“Yes, sir,” Biffle said, and back the word went. In short order, it returned: the laden asses-and even a few unicorns-were where they were supposed to be.