Sentry Peak (27 page)

“No. He’s holy, but . . .” Ormerod said no more than that. He needed to say no more than that. After a few steps and a longing look at a tavern, he added, “Ned of the Forest might be up to the job.”

“He might be up to it, but he’d never get it,” Gremio said. “He has no birth to speak of. How many noble officers would obey a jumped-up serfcatcher?”

“Any noble who tried disobeying Ned would be sorry afterwards,” Ormerod said, which didn’t mean he thought Gremio was wrong. Though only a minor noble himself, he didn’t like the idea of obeying a jumped-up serfcatcher, either. But thinking of serfcatching made him notice Rossburgh in a way he hadn’t before. He was just about out of the place by then, but that didn’t matter. Turning to Gremio, he asked, “You notice anything funny about this town?”

“Aside from its being the place they made the woodcut of when they wrote the lexicon entry for ‘the middle of nowhere,’ no,” the barrister answered.

“Not enough blonds,” Ormerod said. “Hardly any blonds at all, in fact. They must have run away with the southrons.”

“Nothing we haven’t seen before,” Gremio said, though that wasn’t strictly true. Thraxton’s men hadn’t often been lucky enough to recapture land from which the southrons forced them. The serfs had shown their opinion of living under King Geoffrey—they’d shown it with their feet. Ormerod didn’t much care to see that opinion expressed.

The regiment encamped a few miles south of Rossburgh as the sun slid below the horizon. Major Thersites prowled from one fire to another. When he came to the one beside which Ormerod and Gremio sat, he said, “Well, even if the general doesn’t know what in the seven hells he’s doing, maybe things will turn out all right. Maybe.” Thersites didn’t sound as if he believed it.

Even though Gremio and Ormerod had been saying very much the same thing, it sounded different in Thersites’ mouth. They’d said it with regret. Thersites spoke with relish, as if he’d expected nothing better from Thraxton and the other nobles set over the army. Ormerod said, “We have to think they’re doing the best job they can.”

“If they are, gods help us all,” Thersites said. “If I wanted a rock garden outside my house, I know whose heads I’d start with. If these are the best we can do, I reckon we deserve to lose the war.”

“Why go to war, then, sir, if you feel like that?” Ormerod asked. He was too weary to want a quarrel with his bad-tempered neighbor.

“Why? I’ll tell you why. On account of the southrons are worse, that’s why,” Thersites replied. “But that doesn’t make what we’ve got in charge of us any too bloody good. I hate having to choose between thieves and fools, I purely do, but we’ve got more fools in fancy uniforms than you can shake a stick at. I’d like to shake a stick at some of ’em, and break it over their heads, too.”

Contempt blazed from him. Part of it was contempt for the southrons, part for the army’s higher officers. And part of it, Ormerod realized, was contempt for him and people like him. He fit into the neat hierarchy of life in the north. Thersites didn’t, even if he called himself a noble and lived like a noble. He was one who’d forcibly kicked his way into the picture from the outside, and still felt on the outside looking in.

Before Ormerod had the chance to think about what he was saying, he blurted, “You remind me of Ned of the Forest.”

Lieutenant Gremio stirred beside him, plainly unsure how Major Thersites would respond to that. And Thersites in a temper was nothing any man in his right mind took lightly. But the new regimental commander only nodded. “Thank you kindly,” he said, and bowed to Ormerod. “Ned’s a
man
, by the gods. He doesn’t need any blue blood to make him a man, either. He just is.” He bowed again, then went off toward another campfire.

“Well, you got away with that,” Gremio said once he was out of earshot. “I wasn’t sure you would.”

“Neither was I,” Ormerod answered. “Thersites is . . . touchy.”

“Touchy!” Lieutenant Gremio rolled his eyes. “Thersites is a fellow who hates everybody that’s better than he is: everybody who’s handsomer, or who has more silver, or who has bluer blood. And since there are a lot of people like that, Thersites has a lot of people to hate.”

“He doesn’t hate Ned,” Ormerod pointed out.

“No, I see he doesn’t.” Gremio spoke with exaggerated patience. “You got lucky—Ned’s everything he wants to be.”

“But Ned hasn’t got any noble blood at all.” Ormerod didn’t
think
Thersites did either, not really, but nobody liked to say anything about that, not out loud. Thersites’ temper was
most
uncertain.

“And he’s a brigadier without it,” Gremio said. “And he got the chance to tell Count Thraxton off right to his face, if what they say is true. All Thersites can do is grumble behind Thraxton’s back. He’d probably give his left ballock to be Ned of the Forest.”

“I’d give
my
left ballock to be back on my own estate, with no more worries than a serf running off every now and then.” Ormerod sighed for long-gone days. “I didn’t know when I was well off, and that’s the truth.”

“Gods curse King Avram for overturning what was right and natural,” Gremio said. “We couldn’t let him get away with it.”

“Of course not,” Ormerod agreed around a yawn. “Not if we wanted to stay men.” He lay down, rolled himself in his blanket, and went to sleep.

Breakfast the next morning was hasty bites of whatever he had in his knapsack. Count Thraxton might not have pursued the southrons so swiftly as Ormerod would have liked, or down the path he reckoned proper, but Major Thersites pushed the regiment hard. It was almost as if Thersites intended to drive General Guildenstern’s army out of Rising Rock all by himself.

That wasn’t going to happen, no matter how much Thersites and Ormerod might want it. Guildenstern had too many men in the town, and they sheltered behind formidable field fortifications. But those works to the north and west of the town weren’t quite so formidable as they might have been.

“Look, boys!” Thersites called, pointing ahead. “I don’t think those sons of bitches have a single man up on Sentry Peak.”

“If they don’t, we ought to get up there and take it away from them,” Ormerod said, excitement in his voice no matter how tired he was.

Major Thersites needed nothing more to spur him into action. Maybe he wouldn’t even have needed Ormerod’s push, though Ormerod had his own strong opinion about that. But now Thersites’ nod was as sharp and fierce a motion as a tiger turning toward prey. “Yes, by the gods,” he said softly, and then raised his voice to a full-throated battlefield shout: “My regiment—to the left flank,
march
!”

Some of his men let out startled exclamations. They didn’t obey quite so fast as they would have moved for Colonel Florizel. But move they did, scrambling up the steep slopes of Sentry Peak toward the rock knob’s summit a couple of thousand feet above the town of Rising Rock. And not a single southron soldier shot at them or even tried to roll a rock down on their heads.

Ormerod enjoyed himself, scampering like a mountain antelope and leaping from one boulder to another with a childlike zest he hadn’t known he could still muster. If he fell during one of those leaps, he would be very sorry.
All the more reason not to fall
, he told himself, and leaped again.

He wasn’t the only one whooping like a little boy, either. Half the company, half the regiment, squealed with glee as they climbed. And, once Thersites had shown the way, the regiment wasn’t the only force scaling Sentry Peak. No one above the rank of colonel had ordered the ascent, but it made obvious good sense to everyone near the foot of the mountain.

Panting more than a little, Lieutenant Gremio said, “I do believe I would have fallen over dead if I’d tried to make this climb back before I took service with King Geoffrey’s host. It’s made a man of me. I spent too many years peering at law books. No more.”

“No, no more.” Ormerod hadn’t wasted his time with books before Geoffrey raised his banner in the north. He’d worked on his estate, worked almost as hard as the serfs whose liege lord he was. But he was a fitter, harder man after two and a half years of war, too.

When he reached the top of Sentry Peak, the first thing he felt was surprised disappointment: he wanted to keep going up and up and up. But then, as he looked around, that disappointment drained away, to be replaced by awe. He murmured, “You can see
forever
.”

For the first time, he grasped one of the reasons the Detinan gods lived atop Mount Panamgam: the view. There below Sentry Peak lay Rising Rock, with a loop of the Franklin River thrown around it like a serpent’s coil. Beyond Rising Rock, the flatlands of the province of Franklin stretched out endlessly, green of farm and forest gradually fading toward blue. He wondered if he could see all the way across Franklin and into Cloviston to the south.

If he turned around and looked back the way he’d come, there lay Peachtree Province. If he looked straight west, those distant mountains beyond Proselytizers’ Rise had to belong to Croatoan. And there to the northeast lay Dothan, where the blonds had had one of their strongest kingdoms before the Detinans arrived, and where, as was true in his own Palmetto Province, they still outnumbered folk of Detinan blood.

But his eye did not linger long on the distant provinces. Instead, it fell once more to Rising Rock. “If we can get engines onto the south slope of Sentry Peak here,” he said, “we can almost reach the town itself, and we can surely reach the southron soldiers in those field works down there.” He pointed to the trenches and breastworks near the base of the mountain.

“General Guildenstern was a fool for not letting this place anchor his line north of the town,” Gremio said.

“You’re right,” Ormerod agreed—he could hardly say Gremio was wrong, not when he’d just come out with such an obvious truth. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t take advantage of him for being a fool.”

“No, and we’d better,” Lieutenant Gremio said. “If we didn’t have a fool commanding our own army, we’d be over there” —he pointed east— “astride the southrons’ supply line instead of here just outside of Rising Rock.”

“Maybe Count Thraxton had some reason for doing things the way he did.” Ormerod tried to make himself believe it. It wasn’t easy.

Gremio killed his effort dead: “Of course Thraxton had a reason: he’s a chucklehead.”

Ormerod looked down at Rising Rock, tiny and perfect and almost close enough for him to reach out and touch it. “Maybe we can starve the bastards out anyway. Here’s hoping.” Gremio’s look said he would sooner have had something more solid than hope. So would Ormerod, but he made the most of what he had.

Even though Earl James of Broadpath could heave his bulk up to the top of Sentry Peak and peer down into Rising Rock, even though Count Thraxton’s men also held the peak line of Proselytizers’ Rise, he was furious, and he made no effort to hide it. “Idiocy!” he boomed at whoever would listen. “Nothing but idiocy!”

Some of Count Thraxton’s officers did their best to shush him. “Your Excellency, nothing good can come of these constant complaints,” one of them said.

Another was blunter: “Thraxton is liable to turn his magecraft your way, your Excellency, if you don’t restrain yourself.”

“Let him try, by the gods,” James rumbled. “I’m warded by Duke Edward of Arlington’s personal mage. I think Duke Edward’s mage should be a match for just about anyone, don’t you?” The colonel who’d warned him only shrugged and went away. James of Broadpath also shrugged. Thraxton
was
a mighty sorcerer—when everything went right. Had things gone right for him more often, James wouldn’t have needed to come east with his division from the Army of Southern Parthenia.

And most of Thraxton’s officers agreed with James, regardless of what their commander thought. Dan of Rabbit Hill and Leonidas the Priest had both backed him when he pushed Thraxton to make a proper pursuit. He had no doubt Ned of the Forest agreed with him, too, though Ned was fighting southwest of Rising Rock right now, holding off Whiskery Ambrose’s effort to come to General Guildenstern’s rescue from the direction of Wesleyton. And a good many lower-ranking officers had sidled up to him to say they regretted how things had turned out after the victory near the River of Death.

None of which, of course, mattered a counterfeit copper’s worth. Thraxton the Braggart commanded the Army of Franklin, and what he said went. King Geoffrey had his victory in the east. Whether he would have more than that one victory, whether he would have everything it should have brought, remained very much up in the air.

“I don’t care how fancy a mage Thraxton is,” James complained to Brigadier Bell. “He has all the vision of a blind man in a coal cellar at midnight.”

Bell looked up from the cot on which he lay. His usually fierce expression was dulled by heroic doses of laudanum. Even so, pain scored harsh lines down his cheeks and furrowed his forehead. Under the blanket that covered him, his body’s shape was wrong, unnatural, asymmetrical.
I believe I would sooner have died than suffered the wounds he’s taken
, James thought.

The laudanum dulled thought as well as pain. Bell’s words came slowly: “We should be on our way to . . .” He groped for the name of the town. “To Ramblerton. To the provincial capital. We shouldn’t be stuck here outside of . . . of Rising Rock.” Even drugged and mutilated, he too could see what James of Broadpath saw.

“There’s no help for it, Bell,” James said sadly. “He is the commander of this army. He gives the orders. Even if they’re stupid orders, he has the right to give them. I’ve argued till I’m blue in the face, and I had no luck getting him to change his mind. If you’ve got any notion of how to get him to do what plainly needs doing, I’m all ears.”

He was just talking; he didn’t expect Bell to come up with anything. What with the horrible wound—gods, Bell couldn’t even have fully recovered from the mangled arm he’d got down in the south less than three months before—and the potent drug, that Bell could talk at all was a minor miracle. The other officer looked up at him from the cot and spoke with terrible urgency: “Let the king know, your Excellency. If the king knows, he’ll do what needs doing.”