Harry Turtledove - Sentry Peak

He said, “If they do, they’ve done a hells of a good job of keeping it secret from everybody else.”

Gremio grunted. He couldn’t very well deny that, not when it was staring not only him but the whole Army of Franklin square in the face. At last, sounding a good deal less than happy, he said, “We can only hope that all the changes the army has seen will lead to a happy result.”

“Not fornicating likely.” That wasn’t Ormerod; he and Gremio both jerked in surprise. When Ormerod whirled, he found Major Thersites standing behind them. Thersites could move quiet as a cat when he chose. He stood bareheaded in the chilly rain, letting it drip down his face. “Not fornicating likely,” he said again, relishing the phrase. “We had our chance, had it and didn’t take it. Now we’re just waiting for the other boot to drop-on us.”

Ormerod wished Colonel Florizel still commanded the regiment. Florizel was a good, solid fellow; even when he worried, he never showed it. Thersites, on the other hand, spoke his mind in a thoroughly ungentlemanly way-and would gleefully gut anyone who accused him of being ungentlemanly. Picking his words warily, Ormerod said, “It is true that we might have done better after the fight by the River of Death.” Finding himself agreeing with Thersites made Ormerod wonder about his own assumptions.

“Better?” Thersites snorted now. “We couldn’t have done worse if we’d tried for a year. I’ve seen plenty of mugs of beer with better heads on ’em than Thraxton the Braggart’s got.” That jerked a laugh out of Ormerod. Thersites went on, “Not chasing Guildenstern hard-that was plenty smart, wasn’t it? And sending James of Broadpath off to the hells and gone when the southrons are getting ready to up and kick us in the ballocks-why, gods damn me to the hells if that wasn’t even smarter.”

It was true. Every word of it was true. Ormerod knew as much in his belly. He still wished Thersites hadn’t come right out and said so. The man had a gift for pointing out things that would have been better left unnoticed.

Gremio spoke with as much care as he would have used before a hostile panel of judges: “I think Count Thraxton ordered Earl James away because the two men had a certain amount of difficulty working together.” As a barrister, he saw the world in very personal terms.

Thersites saw it that way, too. He also saw it in very earthy terms. “James is no fool. He knows Thraxton is a dried-up old unicorn turd, same as everybody else with an ounce of common sense does. No wonder Thraxton sent him off to Wesleyton. He knows what a proper general’s supposed to be like, James does. Thraxton ran Ned of the Forest out of this army, too, and don’t think we won’t regret that .”

He’d complained about Ned’s departure before. Ned , Ormerod thought, is what he wishes he were . Gremio said, “We can’t do anything about it now.”

“Of course we can, by the Thunderer’s hammer,” Thersites said. “We can pay for it-and we will.” He squelched away.

“What a disagreeable man,” Gremio said. But he said it in a low voice. He was right, too, no doubt of that. But being right about a disagreeable man’s disagreeability (Ormerod wondered if that was a word, and rather hoped it wasn’t) could have disagreeable consequences.

“He says what he thinks,” Ormerod observed.

“If that doesn’t prove my point, curse me if I know what would,” Gremio answered.

Ormerod went back to what they’d been talking about before Thersites made his appearance: “What are we going to do here? What can we do here, except wait for the southrons to hit us and hope we can beat them?”

“I don’t know,” Gremio said-not the most common admission for a barrister to make. “As I told you before, I hope our generals do.”

“Well, I hope so, too,” Ormerod said. “I hope for all kinds of things. But hoping for ’em doesn’t mean I’m going to get them. If Count Thraxton doesn’t know what in the hells he’s doing, he could have fooled me.”

Lieutenant Gremio raised an eyebrow. But he was too smooth to contradict his superior too openly. Instead, he changed the subject: “If you had everything you hope for, what would it be?”

“Why, for us to have our own kingdom,” Ormerod answered at once. “For us to whip the southrons out of our land. That’s what we’re fighting for, isn’t it?”

“And after we’ve won the war?” Gremio asked.

“All I want to do is go back to my estate and go on like nothing ever happened,” Ormerod said. “That’s what we’re fighting for, too.”

“Well, so it is.” But Gremio had an ironic glint in his eye that Ormerod neither liked nor trusted. The barrister from Karlsburg asked an innocent enough question: “How likely do you think that is?”

Ormerod didn’t like to reflect any more than he had to. “If we can lick the southrons, why shouldn’t things go back to the way they ought to be?”

“They might,” Gremio allowed. “They might, but I wouldn’t count on it. And if they don’t, it’s Avram’s fault, the gods chase him through the seven hells with whips forever.”

Even Ormerod figured out what he was talking about. “You mean the serfs, don’t you? With King Geoffrey running things, they’ll fall back into line soon enough, you wait and see.”

“I hope you’re right,” Gremio said. “As I say, though, I wouldn’t count on it. Avram’s told the blonds they can be free, and they aren’t going to forget. Ideas are corrosive things.”

“Chasing the serfs through the fields with whips will bring them back into line,” Ormerod said. “They’ve risen up before. We’ve whipped them every fornicating time they tried it. If we have to, we can bloody well do it again.”

“We’ve done such a good job of sitting on them-the past hundred years especially-that most of them forgot things could be any other way,” Gremio said. “It won’t be like that any more.”

“We can do it,” Ormerod repeated, but he didn’t sound quite so sure of himself any more. “Or we could do it, anyway, if the southrons didn’t keep stirring up trouble in our land. That’s another reason to have our own kingdom: to keep them from bothering the blonds, I mean.”

“Yes, but can we?” Gremio asked. “If they don’t respect provincial borders, why should they care about the bounds between kingdoms?”

With a grunt, Ormerod studied a new idea. The more he studied it, the less he liked it. As Gremio said, ideas were corrosive things. They kept a man from resting easy with the way the world had always worked. “We’d have to conquer the southrons, beat ’em altogether, to keep ’em from meddling. That’s what you’re saying.” He sounded accusing. He felt that way, too.

“We can’t conquer the southrons, not in a thousand years,” Gremio said. “The south is bigger than we are.”

He was right. Ormerod knew it. Keeping Avram’s men from conquering the north was hard enough-more than hard enough. “You’re saying we’ll never have peace!” Ormerod cried in dismay.

Gremio shrugged a barrister’s shrug. “I didn’t say that. You did.”

For a moment, Ormerod accepted the remark. Then he wagged a finger at the lieutenant. Voice sly, he said, “I know what you barristers do. You trick a man into saying what you wanted him to, and then you act like it wasn’t your fault at all.”

“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.” Gremio did his best to sound innocent. His best wasn’t quite good enough, for he also ended up sounding amused.

“A likely story,” Ormerod told him. “If you don’t think we’ll ever have peace even if we do lick the southrons, why’d you join the army in the first place?”