Harry Turtledove - Sentry Peak

“Go forth, my fierce friends,” Leonidas called to the men who had come to worship with him. “Go forth and triumph over the wicked thieves who seek to steal everything we have, even our way of life.”

As Ormerod and Lieutenant Gremio walked back toward their encampment, Gremio remarked, “It’s nice to feel the gods are on our side. The way things look, I wonder if anyone else is.”

“We’ll whip the southrons yet-see if we don’t.” Ormerod spoke in ringing tones, not least to still his own unease.

“Do you know what I wish the gods would give us?” Gremio, on the other hand, was all but whispering. Ormerod shook his head. Still in that half whisper, the barrister from Karlsburg went on, “I wish they’d give us leaders who could count past ten without taking off their shoes.”

“Leonidas is a very holy man,” Ormerod said.

Gremio nodded. “No doubt of that, sir. But, once you’ve said it, you’ve said everything you can say to recommend him as a soldier.” He lifted a forefinger; Ormerod saw a tiny bit of lamb’s blood clinging to the cuticle and the crease between nail and flesh. “No, I take that back. He is brave, but how much good is bravery without wisdom?”

“I don’t know,” Ormerod answered. “I’d sooner have that than wisdom without bravery.”

“In a commander?” Gremio’s eyebrows rose. “I wonder.” Whether he wondered or not, he changed the subject, at least a little: “And as for Thraxton, he’d serve King Geoffrey better if anyone could stand him.”

“He’s a mighty mage,” Ormerod said.

“So he is-mighty enough to terrify his own side as well as the enemy,” Gremio said.

Ormerod snorted; that was scandalous, but hardly untrue. The company commander said, “King Geoffrey dotes on him. The gods must know why, even if no one else does.”

“It could be that no one at all knows why, the gods and King Geoffrey included,” Gremio remarked. Ormerod snorted again, on a different note this time. That was too cynical for him to stomach easily. Maybe his unease showed on his face, for Lieutenant Gremio said, “Go into the lawcourts often enough, Captain, and you stop believing in everything.”

“I suppose so.” Ormerod didn’t feel any happier. He wanted the men who fought under him to believe in what they were doing. He might have said more, but Gremio, whether he believed or not, had proved himself both brave and capable.

Back at the camp, a couple of serfs were tending to the company’s asses. The blonds looked up from their work when the soldiers returned from the worship service. Seeing the Detinans with the bloody mark of the Lion God on their foreheads, the serfs muttered back and forth. They worshiped Detinan gods, too. How not, when those gods had proved superior to their own pantheon? But they still recalled the deities they’d once followed. Ormerod gave the serfs a suspicious look. Wouldn’t they love to get some of their own back, after Avram loosed them from their feudal obligations? In their place, Ormerod knew he would have.

“They aren’t as good as we are,” he muttered. “Their gods aren’t as good as our gods are, either.”

“Well, their gods aren’t as strong as our gods are, anyway,” Lieutenant Gremio said. “In the end, that’s what counts, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so.” Ormerod knew he didn’t sound altogether happy about that. Strength mattered, of course. Without it, the Detinans never would have overthrown the blonds’ kingdoms after coming across the Western Ocean, never would have bound the natives to the soil. But if strength was the only thing that mattered… King Avram’s army had driven the one Count Thraxton commanded out of Franklin. Unless something splendid happened, the stinking southrons would drive Thraxton’s army farther north still. Ormerod wished he knew how something splendid might be made to happen. For the life of him, though, he didn’t.

As if his gloomy reflections were a cue, a scout came pelting back to him, calling, “Captain! Captain! The southrons! The southrons are coming up to the River of Death!”

Ormerod didn’t hesitate. “Forward, men!” he called. “Get your crossbows, get your pikes, and forward! We have to keep them from crossing the river.”

“Sir, our company’s not going to be able to do that all by itself,” Gremio said.

“Of course it won’t.” Ormerod pointed to the scout. “Go on to Colonel Florizel. Tell him what you just told me. If he doesn’t send you on to Leonidas the Priest, I’m a serf. Go on.” The scout pelted away. Ormerod raised his voice to a battlefield roar: “Forward!” He lowered it again. “No, we can’t hold the southrons off all by ourselves, but, by the gods, we’ve got to try.”

He waited for more argument from his lieutenant. After all, Gremio made his living by being argumentative. But now he only nodded. “Of course, sir. Let’s go fill the southrons full of holes.”

Along with the company, Ormerod hurried down toward the northern bank of the River of Death. Sure enough, a few unicorn-riders in gray had come up to the southern bank. They were peering north, as if wondering what awaited them.

Despite its fearsome name, the River of Death wasn’t a great stream. The far bank lay within easy crossbow range. Before Ormerod could even start giving orders, his men started shooting at King Avram’s troopers. A unicorn screamed as a quarrel went home. A man in gray toppled, clutching his belly.

“Well shot!” Ormerod said. “By the gods, well shot!”

A moment later, he discovered he might have been wiser not to draw notice to himself. Buzzing like an angry wasp, a crossbow quarrel zipped past his head and buried itself in a tree trunk. It would have buried itself in his flesh, too. He knew that all too well. He usually tried not to think about it. But when the Soulstealer’s cloak brushed by him, he couldn’t pretend he didn’t feel the breeze of its passage.

Brave as if they fought for a cause Ormerod held dear, the southrons tried to charge across the river and get in among his men. But quick, fierce archery slew some, wounded more, and drove them all back to the southern bank. They started fighting as dragoons then, dismounting to give battle on foot.

Ormerod grinned. “They won’t advance that way,” he said. Since his job was to hold them south of the River of Death, he’d done exactly what he was supposed to.

Earl James of Broadpath felt like kicking someone, or perhaps several someones. The pox-ridden cretins who’d designed and created the chaotic jungle of glideways in the northern provinces of Detina would do in a pinch. No, he wouldn’t have minded pinching them at all, preferably with red-hot pincers.

Everything had been tolerable till he’d brought his army over the Veldt River from Palmetto Province into Peachtree. He’d thought he would get to Marthasville soon afterwards, and down to Fa Layette soon after that. His scryers had told Count Thraxton as much.

Coming into the town of Julia, though, on the Peachtree side of the Veldt, had begun his education into just how complicated glideways could be. An indigo-uniformed officer awaited him at the glideway port there. The fellow saluted and said, “Very good to see you here so soon, your Excellency. You must have made splendid time come up here from southern Parthenia.”

“Not splendid, but good enough,” James agreed, more than a little smugly.

“Excellent,” the officer said. He wore a broad smile, but not one of the sort that prompted Earl James to trust him. He’d seen that kind of smile on the faces of rivergalley gamblers and unicorn thieves. It didn’t match whatever was going on behind the fellow’s eyes.

When the officer didn’t say anything more right away, James of Broadpath asked him, “Why did you call me out onto the pier here? I would sooner have headed straight east towards Marthasville with my army.”