Sentry Peak (3 page)

Then the escaped serf let out a sigh of relief as full awareness returned. His pantaloons and tunic were dyed gray, not the blue of the indigo he’d slaved to grow. The traitors wore blue, not King Avram’s men. And that wasn’t the overseer screaming at him, only his sergeant. As a matter of fact, Sergeant Joram had more power over him than the overseer ever had, but Rollant didn’t mind. When he joined Avram’s host, he’d chosen to come under the rule of men like Joram. He’d never chosen to do as his one-time northern liege lord and overseer told him to do. He’d expressed his opinion of that relationship by fleeing to the south the first chance he got—and then again, after the serfcatchers ran him down with dogs and hauled him back to his liege lord’s estate.

All around him, his squadmates were stirring and stretching and yawning and rubbing their eyes, as he was doing. Sergeant Joram roared at them as loudly as he roared at Rollant, though their hair was dark. Joram treated everyone like a serf—or rather, like a free man in the army.

No, Rollant hadn’t had to join King Avram’s host to return to the north country to make war against the baron who’d chained him to the land—that was how he thought of the fight, in purely personal terms. He’d been making pretty good money as a carpenter down in New Eborac. He’d married a pretty blond girl he met there; her family had escaped feudal ties a couple of generations before. They had two towheaded children.

Norina had wept when he took King Avram’s silver bit. “I have to,” he told her. “Geoffrey and the northern nobles are trying to make sure we never get our place in the sun.”

His wife hadn’t understood. He knew that. Norina took for granted the freedom to go where she wanted when she wanted and do whatever she pleased once she got there. Why not? She’d enjoyed it all her life. Rollant hadn’t, which made him realize exactly how precious it was.

Right now, that freedom consisted of standing in line along with a lot of other poorly shaved, indifferently clean men and snaking toward the big brass kettles hung above three fires. When Rollant got up to the fire to which his line led, a bored-looking cook slapped a ladleful of stew down on his tin plate. Rollant eyed it with distaste: barley boiled to death, mushy carrots, and bits of meat whose origin he probably didn’t want to know. He’d eaten better back on the baron’s estate.

“You want pheasant and asparagus, blond boy, you pay for ’em out of your own pocket,” the cook growled. Rollant went off and sat on the ground to eat. The cook snarled at the dark-haired fellow behind him, too.

One of Rollant’s squadmates, a youngster named Smitty, sat down beside him. He ate a spoonful of the stew and made a face. “The crocodile they threw in the stewpot died of old age,” he said.

“Crocodile?” For a heartbeat or two, Rollant thought Smitty meant it. His horizons had expanded enormously since he’d escaped his liege lord, and even more since Norina taught him his letters, but he remained hideously vulnerable to having his leg pulled by men who’d been free to learn since birth. He took another spoonful himself. “Just a dead jackass, I think, or maybe one of the barons who live up here.”

Smitty grinned at him. “Bet you’d like to see every traitor noble from Grand Duke Geoffrey on down boiling in a pot.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” Rollant said simply.

“And to keep the kingdom from breaking in two,” Smitty said. “If Geoffrey gets away with this, Detinans’ll be fighting wars among themselves forever.”

“I suppose so.” But Rollant couldn’t get very excited about the idea. Smashing the nobles who held down serfs like him—that was something he understood in his belly.

He went down to a little stream to rinse his tin plate, then stuck it in the knapsack in which he carried most of his earthly goods. Along with the meager contents of the knapsack, he had a shortsword on his right hip (he always hoped not to have to use it, for he knew nothing of swordplay but hack, swing, and hope for the best), a quiver full of crossbow quarrels, and the crossbow itself.

He patted that crossbow as he took his place in the ranks for the day’s march toward Rising Rock. It was a splendid weapon. All you had to do was pull to cock it, drop in a quarrel, aim, and squeeze the trigger. Thousands of flying crossbow bolts made battlefields very unhealthy places for unicorns—and for the men who rode them. A quarrel would punch right through a shield, right through chain, and right through plate, too.

Smitty came up to stand beside him. “Did you ever shoot one of these things before you joined the host?” Rollant asked.

“On my father’s farm, sure—you know, hunting for the pot,” Smitty answered. “How about you?”

Rollant shook his head. “Never once. Northern nobles don’t want serfs knowing how easy crossbows are to use. They’re afraid we’d find out how easy they are to kill. And do you know what?” He grinned a ferocious grin. “They’re right.”

“Why do you say ‘we’?” Smitty asked. “You’re not a serf any more. You haven’t been one for a while.”

“That’s true,” Rollant said in some surprise. “But it’s not just something you can forget you ever were, either.” The way he talked proved as much. Having grown up tied to his liege lord’s land had marked him for life—scarred him for life, he often thought.

Sergeant Joram strutted up in front of the men. “Let’s go!” he boomed. “Next stop is Rising Rock.” Rollant cheered at that. So did most of the soldiers with him. They all knew Geoffrey and his forces couldn’t afford to lose the town. They all knew he couldn’t keep it, either, not with the small army he had there. Joram went on, “Any traitors get in our way, we smash ’em into the mud and march over ’em. That’s all I’ve got to say about that.”

More cheers rose. Rollant yelled till his throat hurt. The chance to smash the men who’d mistreated him was all he wanted. He’d dreamt of revenge for years, ever since he fled the north for New Eborac. In a way, he was almost grateful to Geoffrey and the other high lords who were trying to carve their own kingdom from the flesh of Detina. If they hadn’t, he might never have got the chance to hit back.

Thin in the distance, trumpets blared at the head of the column. As with an uncoiling snake beginning to crawl, that head began to move before the tail. Rollant’s company was somewhere near the middle. He breathed the dust the men ahead of him kicked up marching along the dirt road, and his feet and his comrades’ raised more dust for the men behind them. His toes wiggled inside his stout marching boots. He’d rarely worn boots, or shoes of any kind, on Baron Ormerod’s estate near Karlsburg.

Through the haze of reddish dust, Sentry Peak punctuated the skyline to the northwest. Most of the countryside hereabouts was pretty flat; were it otherwise, Sentry Peak would have been named Sentry Knob or some such, or perhaps wouldn’t have been named at all. Rising Rock lay by the foot of the mountain. West of Rising Rock swelled the lower elevation of Proselytizers’ Rise, named after the bold souls who’d preached about their gods when Detina was first being colonized from the west. Rollant’s early relatives hadn’t cared to listen; they’d had gods of their own, and the proselytizers had got no farther than the rise.

Rollant knew the names of the gods his forefathers had worshiped, and some of their attributes. He believed in them, but didn’t worship them himself. The settlers’ gods had proved themselves stronger.

And so has our southron army
, he thought. Most of the war had been fought in the traitors’ lands. They’d mounted a couple of invasions of the south, but had been beaten back each time. When Rising Rock fell, they’d be driven out of Franklin altogether. Rollant’s hands tightened on the crossbow he carried. He wanted the northern nobles to pay for everything they’d done.

Where was his own liege lord? Somewhere in one of Geoffrey’s armies—Rollant was sure of that. Baron Ormerod wouldn’t be a great marshal; he hadn’t owned estates wide enough for that, and he was no mighty mage. But he was convinced the gods said he had the right to keep serfs on the land whether they wanted to stay there or not.

A farmer looked up from the field he was cultivating as Rollant’s company marched past. He was old and stooped with endless years of labor; otherwise he probably would have been fighting for Geoffrey, too. Shaking his fist at the men in gray, he shouted, “By the seven hells, why don’t you sons of bitches get on home and leave us alone? We never done nothing to you.”

Rollant pushed his way to the edge of the company so the farmer could see him. “Say that again!” he called to the northern man. “Go ahead—try and make me believe it. I could use a good laugh.”

“You!” The fellow shook his fist again. “Wasn’t for your kind, we wouldn’t have no trouble. I hope the Lion God bites your balls off, you stinking runaway.”

Rollant started to bring up his bow and pull back the string, then checked himself and laughed instead. “What’s funny?” Smitty asked him. “Nobody would’ve blamed you for shooting that bugger.”

“I was just thinking—he hasn’t got any serfs of his own,” Rollant answered. “He couldn’t dream of a farm big enough to work with serfs. Look at his homespun tunic. Look at those miserable pantaloons—out at the knees, a patch on the arse. But he thinks he’s a duke because his hair is brown.”

“A lot of these northerners think like that,” Smitty said. “If they didn’t, Grand Duke Geoffrey would have to fight the war by himself, because nobody would follow him.”

“Conquerors,” Rollant muttered darkly. His own people had had real kingdoms in the north when the Detinans landed on the coast. They’d had bronze spearheads and ass-drawn chariots—which hadn’t kept them from going down to defeat before the iron-armored, unicorn-riding invaders, whose magecraft had proved more potent, too. In the south, blonds had been thinner on the ground, and more easily and thoroughly caught up in the kingdom that grew around them.

Such musings vanished from his head when a troop of unicorns ridden by men in blue burst out of the pine woods behind the farmer’s fields and thundered toward his company. “Geoffrey!” the riders roared as their mounts galloped over and doubtless ruined the crops of the northerner with the ragged pantaloons and the lordly attitude.

General Guildenstern’s army had unicorn-riders, too. They were supposed to keep enemy cavalry off King Avram’s footsoldiers. But Geoffrey’s riders had proved better all through the war. They looked likely to be better here, for no gray-clad men on unicornback were in position to get between them and Rollant and his companions.

“In line to the right flank! Two ranks!” shouted Captain Cephas, the company commander. “Shoot as you find your mark—no time for volleys.”

Close by, another officer was yelling, “Pikemen forward! Hurry, curse you! Get in front of those unicorns!”

The pikemen did hurry. But the troop of riders had chosen their moment well. Rollant could see that the pikemen wouldn’t get there fast enough.

Because he’d gone over to the side of the road to shout at the farmer, he was among the crossbowmen closest to the on-thundering unicorns. That put him in the first rank. He dropped to one knee so his comrades in the second rank could shoot over him. Then it was the drill swearing sergeants had pounded into him: yank back the crossbow string, lay the quarrel in the groove, bring the weapon to his shoulder, aim along the two iron studs set into the stock, pull the trigger.

The crossbow bucked against his shoulder. Other triggers all around him clicked, too. A unicorn crashed to the ground. Another fell over it, sending its rider flying. A northerner threw up his hands and slid off his mount’s tail, thudding to the ground as bonelessly as a sack of lentils. A wounded unicorn screamed and reared.

But most of the troop came on. They smashed past the pikemen before the wall of spearheads could fully form. Rollant had time for only two shots before he had to throw down his crossbow and snatch out his sword. He might not be very good with it, but if it wouldn’t save his life, nothing would.

A unicorn’s horn spitted the crossbowman beside him. The fellow on the unicorn slashed at Rollant with his saber. Rollant got his own sword up just in time to turn the blow. Sparks flew as iron belled off iron. The unicorn pressed on. When the northerner slashed again, it was at someone else. He laid a crossbowman’s face open, and shouted in triumph as the fellow shrieked.

Rollant stabbed the unicorn in the hindquarters. Its scream was shrill as a woman’s. It reared, blood pouring from the wound. While the rider, taken by surprise, tried to fight it back under control, Rollant stabbed him, too, in the thigh. More blood spurted, astonishingly red. Rollant could smell the blood. That iron stink put him in mind of butchering day on Ormerod’s estate. The rider bellowed like a just-castrated bullock. Then a pikeman ran up and thrust him through from behind. Ever so slowly, he toppled from his mount.

Surviving northerners broke free of the press and galloped away. King Avram’s unicorns came up just in time to chase them as they went. Smitty said, “They paid a price today, by the gods.” He had a cut over one eye, and didn’t seem to know it.

“That they did.” Rollant rammed his shortsword into the ground to clean off the blood. Baron Ormerod had always screamed at his serfs to take care of their—his—ironmongery. Rollant looked at the bodies strewn like broken dolls, and at the groaning wounded helped by their comrades and by the healers. Even as he watched, a healer cut the throat of a southron too terribly gashed and torn to hope to recover. “They paid a price, sure enough,” Rollant said. “But so did we.”

General James of Broadpath was a belted earl. The northern noble needed a good deal of belt to span his own circumference, and had to ride a unicorn that would otherwise have made a career of hauling great jars of wine from hither to yon. Despite his girth, though, he’d proved a gifted soldier; few of the commanders who fought under the Duke of Arlington had done more to keep Avram’s larger host from rampaging through the province of Parthenia and laying siege to Nonesuch, the town in which Grand Duke Geoffrey—no, King Geoffrey—had established his capital.

With a little more luck
, James thought,
just a little more, mind you, we would have been laying siege to Georgetown, and hanging Avram from the flagpole in front of the Black Palace. We came close
. Sighing, he stroked his beard, which spilled in curly dark ringlets halfway down his broad chest.
Close
counted even less in war than any other time.