Harry Turtledove - Sentry Peak

“One more reason to win,” Guildenstern said, and caught her to him again.

If Count Thraxton had ever been happy in all his born days, his face didn’t know it. He was tall and thin and lean, beard and mustache and eyebrows going gray. His features might have come from one of the masks tragic actors wore so even people in the highest rows of the amphitheater could see what they were supposed to be feeling. His eyes were large and dark and gloomy, the eyes of a sorrowing hound. Harsh lines of grief scored his cheeks. His thin-lipped mouth perpetually turned down at the corners.

He’d looked mournful at his wedding, to one of the loveliest and wealthiest women in all of Detina. He’d looked mournful after their wedding night (wags said she had, too, but never where he could hear them: along with his skill at magecraft, he was uncommonly good with a sword). Now, with real disaster looming up from the south and east, he looked no worse-but no better, either.

A servant-a serf, of course-came up behind Thraxton, his footsteps obsequiously soft. “Supper is ready, your Grace,” he murmured. “The others have already taken their places.”

They hadn’t presumed to start eating without Thraxton. He wondered how long even that minimal courtesy would last. Not long, unless he started winning victories against the rabble of merchants and peasants who fought for scapegrace Avram and not Geoffrey-a man who, by the gods, knew how to be king. But Thraxton saw no victories around Rising Rock-only the choice between losing another battle and abandoning northwestern Franklin without a fight.

His stomach knotted. How was he supposed to eat, faced with such a dismal choice? But not appearing would only affront the generals who served under him. He nodded to the hovering serf: a sharp, brusque motion. “I’m coming,” he said.

His subordinates sprang to their feet when he strode into the dining room. All three of them bowed low. “Your Grace!” they chorused.

“Gentlemen.” Thraxton returned the bow, not quite so deeply. He sat down in the empty chair at the head of the table. Once he was comfortable, the other officers sat down again, too.

“May I pour you some wine, your Grace?” asked Leonidas the Priest, who sat at Thraxton’s right hand. Instead of the blue tunic and pantaloons that uniformed Geoffrey’s men, Leonidas wore the crimson vestments of a hierophant of the Lion God, with a general’s sunburst over each shoulder. Not only did he worship his chosen deity, he fed him well.

“Blood of the grape,” Thraxton said, and Leonidas smiled and nodded. Thraxton nodded, too. “If you would be so kind.” Maybe wine would let him see something he couldn’t see sober. Maybe, at the very least, it would help ease his griping belly.

On Thraxton’s left, Baron Dan of Rabbit Hill filled his own goblet with red wine. He was younger than either Thraxton or Leonidas, and waxed the tip of his beard and the ends of his mustache to points, as if he were a town dandy. Fop or not, though, he made a first-rate fighting man. Dan offered the bottle to the officer at the foot of the table, who commanded Thraxton’s unicorns. “Some for you, General?”

“No, thanks,” Ned of the Forest answered. “Water’ll do me just fine.” The harsh twang of the northeast filled his voice. Thraxton wasn’t altogether sure he could read or write; one of his lieutenants always prepared the reports he submitted. He was a gentleman only by courtesy of his rank, not by blood. Before the war, he’d been a gambler and a serfcatcher, and highly successful at both trades. Since the fighting broke out, he’d proved nobody could match him or his troopers-most of them as much ruffians as he was, not proper knights at all-on unicornback.

Baron Dan withdrew the wine bottle. Leonidas the Priest clapped his hands a couple of times in smiling amusement. “Any man who drinks water from birth and lives,” he observed, “is bound to do great things, much like one who survives snakebite.”

“Oh, I got bit by a snake once,” Ned said. “Any snake bites me, it dies.”

He might have meant he killed snakes with his knife or with a boot. By the way he made it sound, though, he thought his blood more poisonous than any venom. And he might have been right. He was the biggest man at the table, and without a doubt the strongest. His face was handsome, in a hard, weathered way. His eyes… His eyes worried even Thraxton, who had seen a great deal. They were hard and black and unyielding as polished jet. A killer’s eyes , Thraxton thought.

A lot of men were killers, of course. The world was a hard, cruel place. But most men pretended otherwise. Ned of the Forest didn’t bother.

The serf who’d led Thraxton in began carving the pork roast that sat in the middle of the table. He also served Geoffrey’s commanders baked tubers. Thraxton, Leonidas, and Dan ate in the approved manner, lingering over their food and chatting lightly of this and that. Ned’s manners proved he’d been born in a barn. He attacked his food as if he were a wolf devouring a deer he’d pulled down. In an astonishingly short time, his plate was empty. He didn’t bother asking the serf for a second helping. Instead, he stood up, leaned forward to grab the knife, and hacked off another big slab of meat. He slapped it down on the plate and demolished it with the same dispatch he’d shown at the first helping.

“A man of appetite,” Dan of Rabbit Hill said, more admiringly than not. He waved to the serf, who gave him a second helping about half the size of Ned’s.

“We are all men of appetite,” Leonidas said with another smile. “Some have a passion for spirituous liquors, some for the ladies, some for our meats, some for arcane knowledge and enlightenment.” He inclined his head to Count Thraxton, who acknowledged the compliment with another of his curt nods.

“This here is just supper,” Ned said, helping himself to still more pork. He took a big bite, then went on with his mouth full: “What I’ve got me an appetite for-a passion for, if you like-is killing those stinking southrons who reckon they’ve got some call to come up here and take our serfs away.”

“That is well said,” Thraxton murmured, raising his wine goblet in salute.

Had he been dealing with another proper gentleman, the lower-ranking officer would have drunk wine with him and graciously changed the subject. Ned of the Forest did not drink wine and had few graces. Staring across the table at Thraxton, he demanded, “Then why did we let those sons of bitches run us out of Wesleyton, southwest of here? Why are they running us out of Rising Rock, too?”

Leonidas the Priest coughed. Turning to Thraxton, he said, “What the distinguished soldier commanding the unicorns meant was-”

“I said what I meant,” Ned ground out. “I want a proper answer, too.” Those black, black eyes of his held Count Thraxton’s.

He is trying to put me in fear , Thraxton realized. Ned wasn’t doing a bad job of it, either, though the army commander refused to show that. Thraxton said, “The unfortunate truth, sir, is that General Guildenstern commands more soldiers than I do. We shall withdraw-I see no other choice-regroup, and strike back toward Rising Rock as opportunity permits.”

“Guildenstern’s got more men than we do, sure enough.” Ned nodded. “That’s an unfortunate truth, no doubt about it. Way it looks to me, though, the unfortunate truth is that nobody figured out what in the seven hells the bastard was up to till after he got his whole army over the Franklin River and started coming straight at us, and that was a lot too late.” He snapped his fingers. “So much for all your fancy magic. Sir.”