Harry Turtledove - Sentry Peak

“Here’s the general!” someone called from the trenches. Southron soldiers whooped and cheered. A couple of them scaled their hats through the air.

“Careful, boys,” George said. “You’ll make old Thraxton and his pet he-witches try and curl my beard for me if they find out I’m around.”

“And do you think they can do it?” a soldier asked, as if delivering a cue in a play.

“Oh, I have my doubts,” George answered. The soldiers cheered louder than ever. They played up the nickname he’d got back at the military collegium, and enjoyed it when he did the same.

“Shut up, you gods-damned noisy fools!” a northern sentry yelled from his post not far beyond the line.

“To the hells with you!” the southrons yelled back, and much else besides. They finally made the enemy soldier so angry, he shot his crossbow at them. The bolt harmlessly buried itself in the ground. A southron added, “And you can’t shoot worth a gods-damn, either!”

“Why don’t you southron bastards go back to your own kingdom and leave us alone?” the sentry called.

“This is our kingdom!” George yelled before any of his men could answer. “Detina is one kingdom. It always has been. It always will be.”

“Liar!” the northerner shouted back. “If you think we’re going to let that son of a bitch of an Avram turn all our blonds into nobles, you can gods-damned well think again.”

“He’s never said he wanted to do anything of the kind.” George rolled his eyes in exasperation. “All he wants to do is turn them into Detinans.”

“That’s bad enough!” the sentry said, and shot another crossbow quarrel in the direction of the southrons.

“Don’t worry about him, sir,” said one of the soldiers in gray tunic and pantaloons. “He shoots at us all the time, but he hasn’t hit anybody yet.”

“You ought to send out a couple of fellows with knives and get rid of him once for all,” George said.

Eyes wide, the soldier shook his head. “By the Lion God, no! If we sneak over and cut that bastard’s throat, the stinking traitors are liable to put somebody there who really knows how to handle a crossbow.”

“All right.” Doubting George yielded the point. He had to fight hard not to yield to laughter, too. “Leave him there, then, if it makes you happy. In that case, though, you have to go on listening to him.”

“He’s a fool,” the soldier said dismissively. But the question he asked next showed he wasn’t quite so sure: “Sir, do you think a blond could ever become a Detinan nobleman? Do you think that could ever happen?”

George had his doubts but, for once, didn’t voice them. He didn’t much care for the idea, but he also didn’t tell the soldier that. What he did say was, “I don’t know and I don’t care and I’m not going to worry about it. Don’t you worry about it, either. Like I said, the only thing that matters is holding the kingdom together. If we can do that, the gods will take care of us, right?”

“Yes, sir,” the fellow said. “That’s a good way to look at things, sir.”

“I hope it is,” Doubting George said. He hadn’t thought about the question the trooper had put to him. He wondered whether King Avram had thought it all the way through. If blonds were to become the same as real Detinans in law, what was to keep them from becoming part of the nobility? What was to keep them, even, from marrying into the royal family? Nothing he could see.

He shrugged. It wasn’t his worry, for no blonds would marry into his family any time soon. He was perfectly happy with his wife, who was now living in a rented house in Georgetown. He hadn’t even tomcatted around his Parthenian estate when he was there, as so many nobles did. Unlike a lot of his neighbors, he wasn’t liege lord to young serfs who looked like him.

How will the blonds make their way in the world if they aren’t serfs any more? he wondered. He shrugged again. He didn’t see any of them in this regiment, but he’d had a fair number under his command, and they’d fought as well on Merkle’s Hill and other places as anybody else. That had surprised him at first, but one thing he didn’t doubt was what he saw with his own eyes.

Having looked over the fieldworks with his own eyes, he went back into Rising Rock. When he got to the hostel where General Bart made his headquarters, Colonel Andy said, “Oh, there you are, sir.”

George looked around behind himself, as if he might have been somewhere else. “Well, yes, I think so. What of it?”

“Only that the commanding general’s been looking for you, sir,” his adjutant replied.

“Ah.” That was business. Doubting George nodded. “Well, he’ll probably find me pretty soon. Will he find me in his rooms, do you suppose?”

“Er, yes, sir, I believe he will.” Andy suffered George’s occasional fits of whimsy in much the same way as he might have suffered a bout of yellow fever.

“Good,” George said. “I’ll wander upstairs, then, and see if he does find me there.” He headed for the fancy spiral staircase, leaving his adjutant scratching his head behind him.

When he knocked on the commanding general’s door, Bart opened it himself. General Guildenstern would have, too, but Guildenstern likely would have had to shoo a scantily clad blond wench out of the chamber first. Not being a noble had never stopped him from tomcatting. “Good day, George,” Bart said. “Good to see you.”

“Good to be seen, sir,” George said, deadpan as usual.

Bart scratched his head. His quizzical expression looked very much like Andy’s. He rallied faster than George’s aide-de-camp had, though, saying, “How would you like to look over the latest plan for attacking Count Thraxton’s army?”

“I think I’d like that pretty well, sir,” George answered.

“Do you, eh?” Bart said. “I was wondering if you’d tell me you didn’t care.”

Innocent as a sneakthief who’d seen a judge more times than he could count, George said, “I can’t imagine why, sir.”

“No, eh?” General Bart’s eyes glinted-or maybe it was just a trick of the light. “I doubt that.”

“I can’t imagine why, sir,” George repeated, and stepped into the commanding general’s chamber.

Rain drummed down out of a chilly, leaden sky. Captain Ormerod’s boots squelched in mud when he stepped out of his tent. Peering south from the forward slopes of Sentry Peak toward Rising Rock, he saw rain and mist and not much else. He cursed. Even his curses sounded dull and commonplace and gray.

Then he said, “If this is what licking the southrons up by the River of Death got us, gods damn me to the hells if I don’t think we’d’ve been better off getting whipped.”

Lieutenant Gremio was looking south, too, with rain dripping from the brim of his hat and from a threadbare cape some southron didn’t need any more. He shook his head. “Losing is always worse,” he said, ready as ever for an argument. Sure enough, he was a barrister to the very core of his being.

But Ormerod said, “No. Look at the southrons.”

“I can’t, not with all this rain and fog.” Gremio was also relentlessly precise.

Precision notwithstanding, Ormerod ignored him. “Look at the southrons,” he repeated. “They lost by the River of Death. They had to run back here and hole up in Rising Rock. And they went and did things. They brought in more men. They made sure they kept their supply lines open. What can we do to them now?”

“Beat them again,” Gremio answered.

“Fine,” Ormerod said. “Let’s beat them. How do you propose to do it?”

“I’m not a general,” Gremio said. “Even you have a higher rank than I do, sir.” He let reproach creep into his voice-probably reproach for Ormerod’s having that higher rank. “But I am sure those in command must have some notion of how to go about it.” Maybe that was where the reproach came from. Maybe. Ormerod didn’t believe it.