Sentry Peak (21 page)

That was hearsay, sure enough. But it was hearsay at a high level, which made it seem promising to Ormerod. One obvious problem still bothered him, though. “Where in the seven hells would these reinforcements come from?” he repeated. He paused a moment to turn out the pockets of his pantaloons. “I haven’t got any on me, that’s sure.”

Gremio smiled the dutiful smile of a junior officer who had to acknowledge a senior officer’s joke. Then he said, “I heard—I can’t prove it, mind—they’d be coming from Parthenia Province.”

“By the gods, that’d be fine if it was so,” Ormerod said. “About time King Geoffrey figured out that what happens over here in the east is important, too. The war’s bigger than just the fight to keep the southrons away from Nonesuch.”

Before the war, he’d cared little about the east. Karlsburg lay on the Western Ocean, and his estate was just a few miles outside the oldest city in Palmetto Province. Had Colonel Florizel’s regiment gone into the Army of Southern Parthenia rather than the Army of Franklin, he probably still wouldn’t care very much about the east. But his horizons had broadened since.

“King Avram!” shouted the southron soldiers in front of Florizel’s regiment. “King Avram and justice!”

“King Avram and thievery,” Ormerod muttered under his breath. He turned to Gremio. “Where in the seven hells is the justice if that scrawny little toad who calls himself king in Georgetown wants to take my serfs away from me without my leave? Answer me that.”

“Can’t do it,” Gremio said solemnly.

“Of course you can’t,” Ormerod said. “Those serfs have been on that land ever since we conquered it. He’s got no business interfering with me, none at all.” He raised his voice to a battlefield roar: “Come on! Let’s give those southrons some of their justice!”

Crossbow quarrels whistled past him as he led his company forward. But his men were shooting, too. Cries from ahead said they’d hit some of the enemy soldiers. And then, sooner than he’d expected, his men were in among the southrons. The whole fight in these woods had been like that. The trees and bushes were so thick, they hid things till too late, and made the battle more a series of bushwhackings and ambushes than a proper standup fight.

The men in gray cried out in dismay and surprise—they hadn’t thought the northerners could bring so many men to bear on them so quickly. Some of them threw down their crossbows and shortswords and threw up their hands. Some retreated up the slope of Merkle’s Hill. And some, even taken at a disadvantage, stood and fought.

Some of the men who wouldn’t retreat and wouldn’t surrender had yellow beards and golden hair under their hats. “King Avram!” one of them shouted, hurling himself at Captain Ormerod.

For a moment, Ormerod wondered if he’d run into Rollant again. But no—he’d never seen this blond before. “You’ll get what you deserve, runaway,” he snarled, and thrust at the enemy soldier’s chest.

The blond was no swordsman: he almost spitted himself on Ormerod’s blade. Only at the last instant did he beat it aside with his own. His answering slash was fierce but unskilled. Ormerod parried, thrust again. This time, he felt the yielding resistance of flesh as the sword slid into the blond’s belly. He twisted the blade as he drew it out, to make sure the wound would kill. The serf shrieked like a lost soul. Captain Ormerod hoped he was.

“May the gods give you what you deserve,” Ormerod panted as the runaway sagged to the ground. He raised his voice again: “Push them!”

But as the men in blue tried to advance, a barrage of flying boulders and firepots smashed into the ground. And the southrons had a couple of their accursed repeating crossbows stationed among the trees where they could rake the more open ground in front of them. Some of Ormerod’s men shot back at the engines, but they were out of range for hand-held weapons. The advance faltered.

“I don’t think we can do it, Captain,” Lieutenant Gremio said.

Baron Ormerod wondered whether they could do it, too. Enough engines in front of footsoldiers would simply shred them before they could close. But he said, “I’m going forward. Stay behind if you haven’t got the nerve to come with me.” He brandished his sword and trotted toward the catapults.

His men followed. Gremio came with the rest. He was cursing under his breath, but Ormerod didn’t mind that. As long as he followed, he was welcome to think whatever he liked.

Soldiers in blue fell, one after another. Some lay unmoving. Some thrashed and writhed and shrieked. A few tried to crawl back in the direction from which they’d come. The rest of the company slogged on.

Every so often, a soldier would pause to shoot and reload: bolts hissed past Ormerod from behind as the bigger, heavier ones from the repeating crossbows hummed by him—some much too close—from the front. He’d heard of officers shot in the back during charges like this. A man would take out his hatred and say it was an accident—if it ever came to light, which it probably wouldn’t.

Gray-clad troopers around the siege engines began falling. Ormerod’s soldiers had finally fought their way into range. As more quarrels reached the engines, they shot less often and less effectively. At last, their crewmen scurried back into the woods to keep from getting killed.

Roaring with fierce glee, Ormerod’s men swarmed over the engines, smashing and slashing them with spades and shortswords. “Let’s see Avram’s sons of bitches pound us with these now!” Ormerod shouted.

“I think we would have done better to save them, so our own artificers could turn them against the southrons,” Lieutenant Gremio said.

In a narrow sense, he was probably right. Ormerod cared nothing about narrow senses. He said, “Let the boys have their fun, Lieutenant. Look at the price they paid to earn it.” The ground in front of the engines was covered with fallen soldiers.

The southrons did not give the survivors long to enjoy their little triumph. The men who’d served the engines weren’t the only soldiers in gray on that part of Merkle’s Hill. Pikemen and crossbowmen assailed Captain Ormerod’s company in such numbers, he had to order them to fall back.

They lost more men retreating to about the place from which they’d begun the attack on the engines. Ormerod wondered if the assault had been worth it. He shrugged and made the best of it: “We hurt them.”

“And they hurt us, too,” Gremio said.

Ormerod would have bet that his lieutenant would say something like that. “We can’t do these little tricks without losses,” he replied.

Gremio was ready to argue. He always was—what barrister wasn’t? “But does what we gained justify the losses?” he asked.

“I don’t know how to weigh that.” Ormerod looked at the sky again. The sun was low, very low. He cursed. “I do know we’re not going to run the miserable southrons off this hill today. I know that’s not good, too.”

“No, it isn’t.” Gremio didn’t argue that. Ormerod wished he would have. Instead, the lieutenant went on, “You can bet they’ll have more men in their lines tomorrow than they have today. You can’t bet on it with us. You can only hope.”

“I do hope,” Ormerod said. “Parthenia Province, you tell me?” He waited for Gremio to nod, then twisted his fingers into a gesture invoking the Lion God. “That’d be very fine indeed. So it would. So it would. Here’s hoping it’s true.”

“Colonel Florizel thought so,” Gremio observed.

“Maybe he knows more now than when you heard from him.” Ormerod looked around. “Have you seen him lately? I haven’t.”

A trooper said, “Captain, he’s wounded. He went down with a bolt in the leg a couple of hours ago.”

“No wonder I haven’t seen him,” Ormerod said. “Is it a bad wound?” A bolt in the leg could prove anything from a little gash to a killer. At Pottstown Pier, General Sidney, one of King Geoffrey’s best officers, had tried to stay in the saddle with a crossbow quarrel in the thigh and had quietly bled to death before anybody, including himself, realized how badly he was hurt. But the trooper only shrugged— he didn’t know. Ormerod muttered a curse.

Gremio said, “That means Major Thersites is in charge of the regiment. I don’t much care for him.”

“Don’t let him hear that,” Ormerod warned. Truth was, he didn’t care much for Major Thersites, either. Thersites grew indigo on an estate deep in the swamps outside Karlsburg. He was liege lord over a good many serfs and called himself a baron, though neither Ormerod nor anyone else in the neighborhood was sure he truly had noble blood in his veins. But he’d killed the one man who said as much out loud, and being good at killing wasn’t the worst claim to nobility in the northern provinces of Detina in and of itself.

Lieutenant Gremio said, “I know.” With fairly obvious relief, he changed the subject: “You’re not going to order us forward again before sundown?”

Ormerod shook his head. “Not me. I don’t think we can break the southrons, and I don’t see much point to anything less. Of course, if Thersites tells us to advance, then we will.”

“Oh, yes, I understand that,” Gremio said. “But I agree with you, sir. We’ve done everything we can do today, I think. We’ve driven the southrons a long way. We might have done even better if Leonidas the Priest had started his attacks when Count Thraxton first ordered him to, but we’ll never know about that, will we?”

“Leonidas is a very holy man,” Ormerod said. “Surely the Lion God favors him.”

“Surely.” But Gremio’s agreement dripped irony. “And surely the Lion God favors a good many hierophants back in Palmetto Province, too. Does that suit them to command a wing of Count Thraxton’s army?”

The answer was obvious. It was so obvious, Ormerod didn’t care to think about it. To make sure he didn’t have to think about it, he ordered pickets forward. “I don’t expect Doubting George to try anything nasty during the night, but I don’t want to get caught with my pantaloons around my ankles, either,” he said.

“Sensible, Captain.” This time, Gremio sounded as if he meant it.

Here and there, northern soldiers started campfires on the lower slopes of Merkle’s Hill. The fighting hadn’t stopped everywhere, either there or farther west: shouts and curses and the occasional clash of steel on steel still sounded in the distance. And everywhere, near and far, wounded men moaned. Ormerod said, “I hate that sound. It reminds me of everything that can go wrong.”

Gremio gave him an odd look, or so he thought in the fading light. “I didn’t think you worried about such things.”

“Well, I do,” Ormerod answered.

A voice came from out of the gloom: “You do what, Captain?” Major Thersites strode up. He wasn’t a handsome man; one of his shoulders stood higher than the other, and a sword scar on his cheek pulled his mouth into a permanent sneer. Some said he’d got the scar in a duel. According to others, he’d got it from an outraged husband. Ormerod knew which version he believed.

But Thersites had somehow ended up with a higher rank than his own, and was at the moment commanding the regiment. It behooved Ormerod to speak softly, and he did: “I do worry about the cries the wounded make, sir. If I’m not lucky, I might be making them myself one day.”

“That’s true, but a soldier shouldn’t fret about it,” Thersites said. His voice had a permanent sneer in it, too.
Or maybe I’m just touchy
, Ormerod thought. Then Thersites added, “You can’t be ready to run away from a little pain,” and Ormerod knew he wasn’t the one who had the problem.

Stiffly, he said, “Command me, sir, and I shall advance.”

“Tomorrow,” Thersites replied. Ormerod’s nod was stiff, too.
I’ll show you
, he thought.

VI

C
ount Thraxton sat in a rickety chair in an abandoned farmhouse not far from the River of Death, staring into the fire. Baron Dan of Rabbit Hill and Leonidas the Priest perched on stools to either side of him; Ned of the Forest, too active to sit, paced back and forth through the bare little room.

“We hit them a mighty blow today,” Thraxton said.

“By the Lion God, we did,” Leonidas agreed. “We’ve driven them back over a mile, and bent their army nearly double. One more strong stroke tomorrow, and they fall into our hands.”

If you’d struck them a few days ago, when I ordered you to attack, they would have already fallen into our hands
, Thraxton thought resentfully. But Leonidas wasn’t wrong even now. “Strike that blow we shall,” Thraxton said.

“Almost had ’em today,” Ned of the Forest said. “I got a regiment of riders all the way around behind ’em, but they were bringing up reinforcements right where we came out, and so I couldn’t quite pull off what I had in mind.” He snapped his fingers. “Came
that
close, though.”

“So you said earlier this evening,” Thraxton answered. “It sounds very pretty, but it would be all the better for proof.”

That made Ned stop his pacing. The firelight flashed in his eyes as he growled, “If you’re calling me a liar, Count—”

“I said nothing of the sort,” Thraxton replied smoothly.

“You better not have,” Ned said. Thraxton ignored him. The count’s lean, somber face showed nothing. Inside, he jeered,
You stupid bumpkin, do you think I’m foolish enough to do anything so overt?

“Ned’s men fought very well today on Merkle’s Hill,” Baron Dan said. “They put up such a stand against a swarm of southrons that I took them for footsoldiers, not unicorn-riders.”

“Good,” Thraxton said, but not in a tone of voice to make either Dan of Rabbit Hill or Ned think he approved. They both glowered. He looked back at them as innocently as he could. The more they squabbled, the happier he was.

Leonidas the Priest said, “I am sure the Lion God will give our just cause victory when the fight resumes tomorrow.”

Before Count Thraxton could come up with a snide comeback to that, a commotion outside distracted him. His long, pale hand paused in midair, uncertain whether to reach for the sword on his belt or the sorcerer’s staff leaning against the wall behind him. Then one of the sentries exclaimed, “Earl James!” and Thraxton’s hand fell back into his lap.

“So he got here in time for the dance after all,” Ned of the Forest said. “Next question is, did he bring his friends along?”

“Surely he would not have come alone,” Leonidas the Priest said. One of Ned’s eyebrows rose. So did one of Count Thraxton’s.
Leonidas is a trusting soul
, he thought. A moment later, he amended that:
Leonidas is a trusting fool
.

Earl James of Broadpath strode into the farmhouse. He was a bear of a man, bigger and more imposing than Thraxton had expected, burly and shaggy and, at the moment, in something of a temper. Giving what struck Thraxton as a perfunctory nod, he said, “By the gods, your Grace, I’ve been wandering over some of the wretchedest landscape I’ve ever seen, trying to find out where in the eternal damnation you’d hidden your headquarters.”

“I am glad you did at last,” Thraxton said, his bloodless tone suggesting he was anything but glad. “Allow me to introduce my subordinates to you, General—though I expect you will already know Dan of Rabbit Hill.”

James rumbled laughter. Baron Dan smiled, too. “I expect I will,” James agreed. “We’re both out of Palmetto Province, we both graduated from the officers’ collegium at Annasville the same year, and Dan’s out of the Army of Southern Parthenia, too. Good to see you again, by the Thunderer.” He clasped Dan’s hand in his own big paw.

“Touching,” Count Thraxton murmured. “Here is my other wing commander, Leonidas the Priest, and the commander of my unicorn-riders, Ned of the Forest.”

Leonidas rose and bowed. Ned was already standing. He bowed, too. James returned both bows, bending as much as a man of his physique could. He and Ned of the Forest sized each other up—
like two beasts of prey meeting in the woods
, Thraxton thought with distaste. Earl James said, “I’ve heard of you. By all accounts, you do good work.”

That made Ned bow again, just as if he were a real gentleman. “Thank you kindly,” he answered. “Everybody knows the Army of Southern Parthenia does good work.”

Count Thraxton fumed. Ned had just given him the back of his hand, and more smoothly than he would have expected from such a lout. Thraxton wondered if James of Broadpath had noticed. He couldn’t tell: that thicket of beard kept James’ face from showing much.

With a small sigh, Thraxton returned to business: “How many of your men have come here with you, Earl James?”

“Rather more than half, your Grace,” James replied. “Brigadier Bell is bringing the rest forward as fast as the accursed glideways in Peachtree Province will let him. The southrons don’t have to go through this sort of nonsense when they move their troops from hither to yon, believe you me they don’t.”

“That, unfortunately, is true,” Thraxton said. “Nonetheless, the men you do have will greatly augment our strength. You are senior to Baron Dan, I believe?”

“I may be,” James said quickly, “but you don’t need to do anything on my account. Dan knows what’s going on hereabouts hells of a lot better than I do.”

“Rank must be served,” Thraxton declared. “Were it not for matters pertaining to rank, would we have a quarrel with King Avram’s so-called justice?” He turned the last word into a sneer. “By your rank, your Excellency, you deserve to command the wing Leonidas the Priest does not.”

Dan of Rabbit Hill said, “It’s all right, James. I don’t mind—I know things will be in good hands with you.”

Earl James bowed to him. “Thank you very much, your Excellency. That’s gracious of you.” He nodded to Thraxton. “If you’re going to give me this, your Grace, I’ll do my best with it. Baron Dan’s men are your right wing—have I got that much straight?”

“Not just the right wing—the whole right side of my army,” Count Thraxton replied. “I look forward to seeing what a man from the famous Army of Southern Parthenia can do here among us easterners.” In another tone of voice, that would have been a graceful compliment. As things were, he implied he didn’t expect much at all from James of Broadpath.

“I’ll do my best,” was all James said. No matter how well his beard concealed his expression from the outside world, he didn’t sound very happy. That suited Thraxton fine. He reckoned happiness overrated. Since he was rarely happy himself, he found little reason for anyone else to be.

“Let us examine the map,” he said. Happy or not, he had every intention of hurling his army at the southrons again as soon as it grew light.

But Ned of the Forest said, “Hold on. You just hold on there, by all the gods. You’re supposed to be a mage along with being a general. Isn’t that so, Count Thraxton, sir?”

“I
am
a mage,” Thraxton said coldly. “And your point is . . . ?”

“I’m coming to that, never you fear,” Ned said. “My point is, when we were up in Rising Rock you bragged this enormous brag about what all we were going to do—what all
you
were going to do—to the stinking southrons. What I want to know is, what’s General Thraxton’s brag worth? Can you do what you said you’d do, or is it all just wind and air?” He stared a challenge at Count Thraxton.

Thraxton stared back. He heartily wished Ned of the Forest dead. But wishes had nothing to do with magecraft, no matter what benighted serfs might think. Picking his words with care, Thraxton said, “I have been incanting all through the battle. Without my cantrips, we should be in far worse state today than we are.”

“So you say,” Ned jeered. “So you say. It’d be all the better for proof, that’s all I’ve got to tell you.”

Leonidas the Priest said, “You must remember, the southrons have mages in their service, too, mages who wickedly seek to thwart Count Thraxton in everything he undertakes.”

“Isn’t he better than any of those fellows?” Ned rounded on Thraxton. “Aren’t you better than any of those fellows? You
say
you are. Can you prove it?”

“I can prove it. I
will
prove it,” Thraxton replied. “By this time tomorrow, neither you nor Earl James nor anyone else will be able to doubt what I can do.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Are you answered?”

“Ask me tomorrow this time,” Ned of the Forest said. “I’ll be able to tell you then. Meanwhile, I’m going back to my men.” With a mocking bow, he swept out of the farmhouse.

“Never a dull moment here, is there?” James of Broadpath remarked.

“Not hardly,” Baron Dan said, a remark almost uncouth enough to have come from Ned.

“Perhaps we should rest now, and beseech the Lion God to show us the way to victory come the morning,” Leonidas the Priest said. “If he is gracious, he will send us dreams to show the direction in which we should go.”

“I know the direction in which we should go,” Thraxton said. “I intend to take us there.” He pointed toward the southeast. “The direction in which we should go is straight toward Rising Rock.”

“Well said.” Dan of Rabbit Hill nodded. Leonidas looked aggrieved because Thraxton wasn’t giving the Lion God enough reverence, but Thraxton cared very little how Leonidas looked.

“Let me have a look at the map,” James of Broadpath said. “Dan, if you’d be so kind as to walk over here with me and tell me what the southrons might be up to that doesn’t show up on the sheet here, I’d be in your debt.”

“I’d be glad to do that, sir,” Baron Dan replied.

Leonidas the Priest got to his feet. He didn’t go over to the map. Instead, he said, “I shall pray for the success of our arms,” and left the farmhouse. That struck Count Thraxton as being very much in character for him.

Then another thought crossed his mind:
and what of me?
He shrugged. He was what he was, and he didn’t intend to change. And one of the things he was, was a mage. He had done a good deal of incanting this first day of the fight, but it had been incanting of a general sort, incanting almost any mage, even a bungling southron, might have tried.
A bungling southron would not have done it so well
, he thought. He knew his own worth. No one else gave him proper credit—to his way of thinking, no one else had ever given him proper credit, not even King Geoffrey—but he knew his own worth.

And he realized he’d not been using his own worth as he should. He was a master mage, not a journeyman, and he’d been wasting his energy, wasting his talent, on tasks a journeyman could do. Any mage could torment the other army’s soldiers. What he needed to do—and it struck him with the force of a levinbolt from the Thunderer—was torment the other army’s commander.

General Guildenstern would be warded, of course. The southrons would have wizards protecting him from just such an assault.
But if I cannot overcome those little wretches, if I cannot either beat them or deceive them, what good am I?
Thraxton asked himself.

Decision crystallized. “Gentlemen, you must excuse me,” he told Dan of Rabbit Hill and Earl James. “I have plans of my own to shape.”

The two officers looked up from the map in surprise. Whatever they saw on Count Thraxton’s face must have convinced them, for they saluted and left the farmhouse. Thraxton pulled out first one grimoire, then another, and then yet another. He sat by the hearth and pondered, pausing only to put more wood on the fire every so often to keep the flames bright enough to read by.

What made him realize dawn had come was having to feed the fire less often. As the light grew, so did the sounds of battle from the south. He put down the grimoires and began to cast his spell. A runner came in with a message. Without missing a single pass, without missing a word of his chant, Thraxton seared the fellow with a glance. The runner gulped and fled. Whoever had sent him would just have to solve his own problems.

Thraxton’s spell reached out for his opposite number in King Avram’s army.
Strike for the head, and the body dies
, he thought. But General Guildenstern was well defended, better even than Thraxton had expected. One after another, counterspells grappled with his cantrip, like so many children’s arms trying to push aside the arm of one strong man.

Driving on despite them took all the power Thraxton had. A lesser man, a less stubborn man, would have given up, thinking the spell beyond his power. But Count Thraxton persevered.
This time
, he thought,
this time, by all the gods, I shall drive it home to the hilt
.

And he did. For once, the spell did not go awry, as had happened before. For once, it did not rebound to smite his own soldiers, as had happened before. For once, Count Thraxton lived up to a brag as fully as any man might ever hope to do. He cried out in something as close to delight as his sour spirit could hold, and in full and altogether unalloyed triumph.

As Count Thraxton and his generals hashed over the first day’s battle that evening in a farmhouse close by the River of Death, so General Guildenstern and his generals spent that same night doing the same thing in another farmhouse, a widow’s miserable little hut made of logs, only a very few miles to the south.

“Well, boys, we’re in a scrap, no two ways about it,” Guildenstern said. He swigged from a bottle of brandy. “Ahhh! That’s good, by the gods. We’re in a scrap,” he repeated, hardly noticing he’d already said it once. “We are, we are. But we can still lick ’em, and we will.”

He clenched the hilt of his sword as if it were a traitor’s neck. When Thraxton’s attack went in, he’d had to do some real fighting himself. He knew there were men who questioned his generalship—he had plenty of them right here in the farmhouse with him. But no man ever born could have questioned his courage.

He looked around at the assembled military wisdom—he hoped it was wisdom, at any rate. “All right. Here we are, not quite where we wanted to be when we set out from Rising Rock. But we aren’t lost yet. Anybody who says we are is a gods-damned quitter, and welcome to go home. Question is, what will that Thraxton son of a bitch try and do to us when the fighting picks up in the morning?”