Harry Turtledove - Sentry Peak

“On the off chance I might be wrong,” Gremio replied-and to that, Ormerod had no answer whatever.

When he walked off shaking his head, he heard Gremio quietly chuckle behind him. The lieutenant had won this round in their ongoing skirmish, and they both knew it. Ormerod stared south toward Rising Rock. He would have relished a fight with the southrons just then. When he was fighting, he didn’t have to think. Encamped-becalmed-here on the lower slope of Sentry Peak, he couldn’t do much else. And, little by little, the Army of Franklin had stopped being the force besieging the town. These days, it felt more as if they were the besieged.

He wondered if Rollant was down there somewhere, or if the runaway serf had perished during the fighting by the River of Death. Rollant had been fighting under Doubting George, who’d made the stand on Merkle’s Hill. He’d had plenty of chances to come to grief. Ormerod hoped he had. No serfcatcher would bring the blond back to Palmetto Province, not from out of the south. Even before the war, the southrons had laughed at the runaway-serf laws intended to bind blonds to the land. They surely wouldn’t pay those laws any attention these days.

“Bastards,” Ormerod muttered under his breath. There weren’t so many blonds in the south and the southeast; the real Detinans there could afford to pretend blonds were as good, or almost as good, as anybody else. Up in the north, that would never do. Ormerod was as sure of it as he was of the power of the gods. But King Avram, that gods-damned fool, couldn’t see it, and so…

And so my crops have gone to the hells these past three seasons , Ormerod thought resentfully. And so I’m here in the middle of nowhere, instead of taking care of my estate the way I ought to . He shook his fist in the direction of the southrons down in Rising Rock. Why don’t you go away and leave us alone?

But they wouldn’t, and so they had to be driven away. Ormerod shook his fist at mist-shrouded Rising Rock again. Then he turned and shook his fist at Proselytizers’ Rise, too, and at Count Thraxton’s headquarters there. If Thraxton had pursued, maybe…

Ormerod heard a thud behind him. He whirled, hand flashing toward his swordhilt. Shaking your fist at a mage wasn’t always a good idea, even when the mage couldn’t-or wasn’t supposed to be able to-see you. And Thraxton the Braggart had always been a bad-tempered son of a bitch. If he somehow knew, if he’d somehow shaped a sending…

“Sorry, sir,” the blue-clad soldier in back of Ormerod said sheepishly. “Kicked that gods-damned rock hard enough to hurt. I expect I’d trip over my own two feet if there was nothing else handy.”

“Heh,” Ormerod said, still jumpy. The soldier sketched a salute and ambled away. He didn’t know what he’d done to his company commander’s peace of mind. Ormerod hoped he never found out, either.

One of the sergeants was doing a good, thorough, systematic job of chewing out a man who’d forgotten something the underofficer thought he should have remembered. The soldier was giving about as good as he got, denying everything and loudly proclaiming that the sergeant hadn’t told him about whatever it was and had no business bothering about him anyway, as it shouldn’t have been his job in the first place.

Instead of spraying flames all over the place like a firepot, the sergeant said, “Ahh, to the hells with it. What we both want to do is rip another chunk off the gods-damned southrons. Till then, we’re just chewing on each other on account of we can’t get at them.”

“Gods-damned right,” the common soldier said. “We’ll tear ’em a new one when we do, though.” The sergeant grunted agreement. Neither had the slightest doubt in his mind.

And their certainty made a small, tender, flickering hope live in Captain Ormerod.

General Bart eyed his wing commanders and brigadiers. “Gentlemen, we are just about ready to attack,” he said. Some of them really were gentlemen-Doubting George, for instance. Bart was a tanner’s son. But he had the rank. That was all that mattered. If he did the job right, he would keep the rank and keep on giving orders to his social betters. If he didn’t, he would deserve whatever happened to him. That was how things worked. It struck him as fair. But things would have worked the same way even if it hadn’t.

Fighting Joseph said, “Turn me loose, General. Just turn me loose, and I’ll show you what I can do.”

“You’ll be in the fight, never fear,” Bart said. Joseph’s handsome, ruddy face showed nothing but confidence. Earlier in the year, he’d commanded the whole western army after Whiskery Ambrose failed so spectacularly with it. And Joseph had failed, too, letting Duke Edward of Arlington trounce him at Viziersville with about half as many men as he commanded. Joseph would never have charge of a whole army again.

He had to know that. He wasn’t a fool-no, he wasn’t that particular kind of fool. But he remained an ambitious man. He would try to stretch what command he had here in the east as far as Bart would let him, and then a little further. Bart didn’t intend to let him get away with much of that.

But what he intended and what would actually happen were two different beasts. Fighting Joseph had a will of his own, and Thraxton the Braggart had a will of his own, too- quite a will of his own , Bart thought with wry amusement. Nothing would go exactly as planned. No, not exactly. Still and all, I aim to have my will be the one that prevails .

“Will you be ready to move on Sentry Peak when the day and the hour come?” he asked Fighting Joseph.

“Of course, sir.” Joseph sounded affronted. “I am always ready to move.”

There Bart believed him. Joseph might prove too aggressive, but he was unlikely not to be aggressive enough. Bart turned to Doubting George. “What about you, Lieutenant General?”

“Give the order, sir, and my men and I will obey it,” George replied. “You have only to command.”

Bart hoped he meant that. George was no glory hound, as Fighting Joseph was. He made an indomitable defender; they were calling him the Rock in the River of Death these days. But he wasn’t so good at going forward as he was at not going back. “I shall rely on you,” Bart said, and Doubting George nodded.

“Tell me where to go,” George said. “Tell me what to do. By the gods, I’ll do it. If you think you have another man who can do it better, give it to him. The kingdom comes before any one soldier.”

“Well said,” Bart replied. “An example for us all, as a matter of fact.” He looked at Fighting Joseph. Joseph stared blandly back, as if he didn’t have the slightest notion of what Bart had in mind. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he truly was blind to what other people thought of him. Maybe. Bart wouldn’t have bet anything on it he couldn’t afford to lose.

Bart wouldn’t have bet anything on it anyway. Spirits had been his vice, not rolling dice or a spinning wheel of chance. Fighting Joseph had been rich and then poor several times in quick succession in silver-rich Baha out in the far east. He would gamble on anything, including his superiors’ patience.

With some relief, Bart turned away from him and toward Lieutenant General Hesmucet. “Are you ready to fight?” he asked, already confident of the answer.

Sure enough, Hesmucet nodded. “I’ve been ready for days, sir. So have my men. We’re just waiting for you to turn us loose.”

“Don’t worry. I intend to,” Bart replied. Hesmucet didn’t puff himself up the way Fighting Joseph did. He didn’t prefer the defensive, as Doubting George did. He wanted to go forward and grapple with the enemy. In that, he was very much like Bart himself. If a strong man and a weak man grappled and kept on grappling, sooner or later the strong man would wear down the weak one.