Harry Turtledove: Sentry Peak

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Now it came to pass when Avram succeeded his father Buchan as King of Detina that those in the north would not accept his lordship, anointing his cousin, Grand Duke Geoffrey, as king in their lands. For Avram had declared even before old King Buchan died that he purposed freeing the serfs of Detina. The subtropic north was a land of broad estates, the nobles there taking the fruit of the labor of their fair-haired tenant farmers while returning unto the said serfs but a pittance. By contrast, merchants and smallholders filled the south: men who stood foursquare behind Avram.

Declaring he had inherited the whole of Detina from King Buchan, Avram would not suffer Geoffrey to rule unchallenged in the north, and sent armies dressed all in gray against him. Geoffrey, in his turn, raised hosts of his own, arraying them in blue made from the indigo much raised on northern estates that they might thus be distinguished from the southron men. Now Avram had the larger portion of the kingdom, and the wealthier, but Geoffrey’s men were the bolder soldiers and, taken all in all, the better mages. And so the war raged for nigh unto three years, until Avram’s general named Guildenstern moved against the northern army under Thraxton the Braggart, which held the town of Rising Rock close by Sentry Peak…

Sweat streamed down General Guildenstern’s face. Hating the hot, muggy summer weather of the north, he took off his broad-brimmed gray hat and fanned himself with it. The unexpected motion spooked his unicorn, which sidestepped beneath him. “The gods curse you, you miserable creature,” he growled, and fought the animal back under control. It took a little while; he knew he was something less than the best rider in King Avram’s army. But I hold the highest rank . The warmth of the thought was far more pleasant than the warmth of the weather.

Beside him, Lieutenant General George shed his hat, too, and wiped his wet forehead with the sleeve of his gray tunic. His unicorn stayed quiet under him. Guildenstern noted that with a stab of resentment, as if it were a reproof of the way he handled his own mount. He saw slights everywhere, whether they were there or not. His thick, dark eyebrows came down and together in a fearsome scowl.

Lieutenant General George squinted into the westering sun, which glinted off the silver streaks in his black beard. “Do you know, sir,” he said, “now that we’ve forded the river, I don’t see how in the seven hells old Thraxton’s going to keep us from running him out of Rising Rock.”

Now Guildenstern’s eyebrows leaped upward in astonishment. His second-in-command was most often known as Doubting George, sometimes even to his face. He worried about everything. “That’s… good to hear,” Guildenstern said cautiously. If Doubting George thought Thraxton the Braggart couldn’t hold Rising Rock, he was very likely right.

And if by some mischance the army didn’t take Rising Rock even after Doubting George thought the town ought to fall, who would get the blame? Guildenstern knew the answer to that only too well. He would, no one else. Not his second-in-command, certainly.

He reached for the flask of brandy he wore on his belt next to his sword. He took a long swig. Peaches and fire ran down his throat. “Gods, that’s good,” he rasped-another warmth obviously superior to the local weather.

“Nothing better,” Lieutenant General George agreed, though he didn’t carry a flask in the field. He nodded to himself. “We’re coming at Rising Rock from three directions at once, and we outnumber Thraxton about eight to five. If he doesn’t fall back, he won’t have much to brag about once we’re through with him.”

“Count Thraxton is a sorcerer of no small power.” Guildenstern knew every officer within earshot was listening for all he was worth. He didn’t want any of his subordinates thinking the attack on Rising Rock would prove a walkover, just in case it turned out not to be.

“Oh, no doubt,” Doubting George said. “But we gain on the northerners in wizardry, so we do, and the Braggart’s spells have already gone awry a time or two in this war. I wouldn’t fall over dead with surprise if it happened again.”

Was he really as guileless as he seemed? Could anyone really be that guileless? Or is he laying traps beneath my feet? Guildenstern wondered. Had he been Doubting George’s second-in-command, that was what he would have done. He took another swig of brandy. He trusted what he carried in his flask. That was more than he could say of the men who served under him.

But I’m advancing , he thought. As long as I’m advancing, as long as I drive the traitors before me, no one can cast me down .

A haze of dust hovered over his army, as it did over any army marching on roads that had never been corduroyed. Because of the red-tinged dust, Guildenstern couldn’t see quite so far as he might have liked, but he could see far enough. The ordinary soldiers weren’t out to betray him. He was… pretty sure of that.

Regiments of crossbowmen made up the biggest part of the army. Save that they wore King Avram’s gray, many of them hardly looked like soldiers at all. They looked like what they were: butchers and bakers and chandeliermakers, tailors and toilers and fullers and boilers, grocers and farmers, woodsmen and goodsmen. Not for nothing did false King Geoffrey and the rest of the northern bluebloods sneer at King Avram’s backers as a rabble of shopkeepers in arms. Shopkeepers in arms they were. A rabble? In the first year of the war, perhaps they had been. No more. They’d never lacked for courage. Now they had discipline as well. The crossbow was an easy weapon to learn, and could slay at long range. That they were here, deep in the Province of Franklin whose lord had declared for Geoffrey, spoke for itself.

A fair number of the heads under those identical gray hats were blond, not dark. Serfs-former serfs, rather-had been free to bear arms or take on any other citizen’s duties in most of the southron provinces for a couple of generations. That accounted for some of the blonds in the ranks. Others had fled from their northern overlords. Avram’s orders were to ask no questions of such men, but to turn them into soldiers if they said they wanted to fight.

Even through the dust the marching army raised, the sun sparkled off serried ranks of steel spearheads. Archers were hideously vulnerable if cavalry-or even footsoldiers with pikes and mailshirts-got in among them. Posting pikemen of one’s own in front of them forestalled such disasters.

General Guildenstern’s smile turned as amiable as it ever did when he surveyed the spearmen. Far fewer blonds served among them. They were real soldiers-professionals, not conscripts or zealots. If you told a man who carried a pike to do something, he went out and did it. He didn’t ask why, or argue if he didn’t care for the answer.

The sun also gleamed from the iron-shod horns of the unicorn cavalry. Guildenstern sighed. The riders he commanded were far better at their trade than they had been in the early days of Geoffrey’s attempted usurpation. They still had trouble matching their northern foes, for whom riding unicorns was a way of life, not a trade.

And, of course, unicorns bred best in the north. “I wonder why,” General Guildenstern murmured.

“Why what, sir?” Doubting George asked.

“Why unicorns thrive better in the north than in our part of the kingdom,” the army commander answered. “Hardly anyone up here is virgin past the age of twelve.”