Sentry Peak (29 page)

He hadn’t bothered finding out where Count Thraxton now made his headquarters. It wasn’t anywhere he much wanted to go. Thraxton proved to be inhabiting a farmhouse near Proselytizers’ Rise: a prosperous farmhouse, by its colonnaded front.
He doesn’t do so bad for himself
, Ned thought,
no matter what he does to the poor army
.

Maybe it would just be business.
By the gods, I hope it’ll just be business
. Ned made his face a gambler’s blank as he strode into the parlor. He drew himself up straight and saluted Count Thraxton. “Reporting as ordered, sir.”

Thraxton, as usual, looked as if his belly pained him. Perhaps he even looked as if it pained him more than usual. “Ah, Brigadier Ned. I am very pleased to see you.” If he was pleased, he hadn’t bothered telling his face about it.

“What can I do for you, sir?” Ned asked. The sooner he was gone, the happier he would be.

“I am not pleased that you led your men so far afield while chasing Whiskery Ambrose’s unicorn-riders,” Thraxton said, pacing back and forth through the parlor and looking at the wall rather than at Ned of the Forest.

“Would you have been more pleased if they’d come down on us and rampaged all around?” Ned demanded.

“I would have been more pleased had your men been closer to my hand and more ready to obey my orders,” the Braggart answered.
What orders?
Ned thought scornfully.
If you’d had any halfway sensible orders to give, we’d be in Rising Rock by now
. Thraxton went on, “Accordingly, I am detaching three regiments from your command and transferring them to the control of Brigadier Spinner, the cavalry commander for the division led—formerly led, I should say—by Dan of Rabbit Hill.”

Ned most cordially loathed Brigadier Spinner. From everything he could tell, the feeling was mutual. “You can’t do that!” he blurted.

“You are mistaken.” Thraxton’s voice came cold as a southron blizzard. “I can. I shall. I have.” Relenting ever so slightly, he added, “These regiments will be returned to you after Spinner comes back from his planned raid east of Rising Rock.”

“If you want my men, why in the seven hells don’t you send me out?” Ned barked.

“Because if I send Spinner, I have some assurance he will do as I command and return when I command,” Count Thraxton replied, more coldly still. “You have given me no reason for any such confidence. You may pick the regiments you wish to turn over to him.” Another tiny concession.

Too tiny—far too tiny. But the order was legal. Ned knew that all too well. If he refused it, Thraxton would sack him, too. Choking back his fury—he wouldn’t give the Braggart the satisfaction of showing it—he snarled, “Yes, sir,” saluted again, and stalked out.

Had Brigadier Spinner been standing outside the farmhouse, Ned might have drawn sword on him. But the other general of unicorn-riders was nowhere to be seen. Still fuming, Ned of the Forest stomped back to his own men. Soldiers who saw him had the good sense to stay out of his way and not ask unfortunate questions.

He arrived among the unicorn-riders in the foulest of foul tempers. Seeing his visage, Colonel Biffle hurried over to him in some alarm, asking, “Is something wrong, sir?”

“Wrong? You just might say so, Biff. Yes, you just might.” The whole story poured out of Ned, a long howl of fury and frustration.

“He can’t do that,” Biffle blurted when Ned finally finished.

“I told him the same thing, but I was wrong, and so are you,” Ned said. “If he wants to bad enough, he bloody well can. That’s what being a general is all about.” He said something else, too, something his beard and mustache fortunately muffled. After a moment spent recapturing his temper, he went on more audibly: “The one reason I’ll sit still for it at all is that he did promise he’d give me my men back once Spinner was done with them. If it wasn’t for that . . .” His left hand dropped to the hilt of his saber.

“Whose regiments will you . . . lend to Brigadier Spinner, sir?” Biffle paused in the middle there to make sure he found and used the right word, the word that would not ignite Ned further.

“I was thinking yours’d be the one I keep for my own self,” Ned replied, and Colonel Biffle preened a little. Ned of the Forest slapped him on the back, hard enough to stagger him. “He’s a pile of unicorn turds, Biff, but there’s not a single stinking thing we can do about it.” He yawned. “Only thing I want to do now is sleep. When I wake up, maybe I’ll find out Thraxton the Braggart was nothing but a bad dream. Too much to hope for, I reckon.” He went into his tent.

When he woke up the next morning, Count Thraxton and what he’d done remained all too vivid in his memory. But, as he’d told Biffle, he couldn’t do anything about the Army of Franklin’s sour commanding general. What he could do was get himself some breakfast; his belly was empty as, as . . . 
Empty as Thraxton’s head
, he thought happily, and went out to get some food in better spirits.

He was sitting on the ground, eating fried pork and hard rolls and talking things over with Colonel Biffle, when a runner came up, saluted, and said, “Count Thraxton’s compliments, sir, and he asked me to give you this.” He handed Ned a rolled sheet of paper sealed with Thraxton’s seal, saluted again, and hurried off.

“What’s he want now?” Biffle asked.

“Don’t know. Suppose I’d better find out.” Ned broke the wax seal with a grimy thumbnail. He wasn’t fluent with pen in hand, but he had no trouble reading. And Thraxton’s hand, though spidery, was more legible than most.
Upon due consideration
, he wrote,
I have decided that, with a view to the best interests of the Army of Franklin as a whole, your cavalry regiments shall in fact be permanently transferred to the command of Brigadier Spinner. Trusting this meets with your approval, I remain . . . 
He closed with the usual polite, lying phrases.

Ned of the Forest sprang to his feet, rage on his face. So did Colonel Biffle, alarm on his. “What’s wrong, sir?” he asked, as he had so often lately.

“That lying son of a bitch!” Ned ground out. “I’m going to tell him where to go and how to get there, and I may just send him on the trip.” He stormed off toward Thraxton’s headquarters, Biffle in his wake.

An adjutant tried to turn him aside from Count Thraxton. He brushed past the man as if he didn’t exist and roared into the parlor. Thraxton gave him an icy stare. “What is the meaning of this intrusion?” he demanded.

Ned of the Forest took a long, deep, angry breath. “I’ll tell you what. You commenced your cowardly and contemptible persecution of me soon after the battle of Pottstown Pier, and you have kept it up ever since. You did it because I reported to Nonesuch facts, while you reported gods-damned lies. You have begun again your work of spite and persecution and kept it up. This is the second formation of unicorn-riders organized and equipped by me without thanks to you or King Geoffrey. These men have won a reputation second to none in the army, but, taking advantage of your position as the commanding general in order to humiliate me, you have taken these brave men from me.”

He thrust his left index finger at Count Thraxton’s face. Thraxton retreated into a corner and sank down onto a stool. Ned pressed after him. “I have stood your meanness as long as I intend to. You have played the part of a gods-damned scoundrel, and are a coward, and if you were any part of a man I would slap your jaws and force you to resent it. You have threatened to arrest me for not obeying your orders promptly. I dare you to do it, and I say to you that if you ever again try to interfere with me or cross my path it will be at the peril of your life.”

Thraxton said never a word. He sat there, pale and shaking, while Ned kept prodding with that finger. At last, snarling in disgust, Ned turned on his heel and stormed out of the farmhouse. Colonel Biffle followed. Once Biffle was outside, Ned thunderously slammed the door.

As the headed back toward the unicorn-riders’ camp, Biffle remarked, “Well, you are in for it now.”

“You think so?” Ned shook his head to show he didn’t. “He’ll never say a word about it. He’ll be the last man to mention it. Mark my word, he’ll take no action in the matter. I will ask to be relieved and transferred to a different part of the fight, and he will not oppose it.”

“I hope you’re right, sir.” The regimental commander didn’t sound convinced.

“I reckon I am,” Ned said. “And if I chance to be wrong, I’ll kill the mangy son of a bitch and do King Geoffrey a favor.”

“Geoffrey won’t thank you for it,” Colonel Biffle said.

“I know,” Ned answered. “Nobody ever thanks the fellow who kills the polecat or drains the cesspool or does any of the other nasty, smelly jobs that need doing just the same. But I don’t think it’ll come to that.” He sighed. “By the gods, though, Biff, I wish it would.”

VIII

P
eering down into Rising Rock from the height of Sentry Peak, Earl James of Broadpath grunted in dissatisfaction. He turned to the officer commanding one of the regiments holding Sentry Peak for King Geoffrey. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Major . . . ?”

“Thersites, sir,” the officer replied. He was an ugly customer, and would probably be dangerous in a fight.

“Major Thersites, yes.” James nodded. “Correct me if I’m wrong, as I say, but doesn’t it look to you as if the stinking southrons are bringing more and more men into Rising Rock?”

“It surely does, your Excellency,” Thersites said. “I’ve been telling that to anybody who’d listen, but nobody cares to listen to the likes of me. If you don’t have blue blood, if you’re from Palmetto Province instead of Parthenia . . .”

James of Broadpath did have blue blood, but he was from Palmetto Province, too. Sure enough, the Parthenians looked down their noses at everybody else. He said, “Count Thraxton will hear about this. I’ll make sure Thraxton hears about it.” He liked saying
I told you so
as much as any other man.

“Is it true what they say about Thraxton and Ned?” Major Thersites asked.

“To the seven hells with me if I know,” James answered. He told the truth: neither Ned of the Forest nor the commanding general of the Army of Franklin was saying much about whatever had passed between them. Rumor, though, rumor blew faster and stronger than the wind. But James was not about to gossip with a lowly major he barely knew.

Thersites said, “Anybody wants to know what I think, I wish Ned would’ve cut his liver out and fed it to the Lion God. Maybe then we’d get ourselves a general with some notion of what in the hells he was doing.”

“Maybe,” James said, and said no more. He’d learned his discipline in the stern school of Duke Edward of Arlington. No matter how much he agreed with this regimental commander, he wouldn’t show it. In fact . . . “If you’ll excuse me . . .” He bowed and started down the northern slope of Sentry Peak, the less steep slope that faced away from Rising Rock.

A puffing runner met him while he was still halfway up the mountain. “Your Excellency, you are ordered to Count Thraxton’s headquarters over by Proselytizers’ Rise as fast as you can get there.”

“Oh, I am, am I?” Earl James wondered what sorts of plots and counterplots were sweeping through Thraxton’s army now, and what the commanding general wanted him to do about them. Cautiously, he asked, “Why?”

“Because . . .” The messenger paused to draw in a deep, portentous breath. “Because King Geoffrey’s there, your Excellency. He’s come east from Nonesuch to find out what the hells is going on here.”

“Has he?” James said. He’d been with the Army of Franklin for three weeks now, and he wondered about that himself. But regardless of what he wondered, only one answer was possible, and he gave it: “I’ll come directly, of course.”

He hurried down the mountain, so that he was bathed in sweat when he got to flatter ground. Heaving his bulk up onto the sturdy unicorn that bore him, he booted the beast into a gallop as he went off toward the southwest.

The unicorn was blowing hard when he reined in beside the farmhouse from which Thraxton led the army. He hadn’t made the acquaintance of the sentry who took charge of the beast. After a moment, he realized why.
He’s not one of Thraxton’s men. He’s one of the king’s bodyguards
.

“Go on in, your Excellency,” the sentry said. “You’re expected.” James nodded. What would have happened to him had he not been expected? Nothing good, most likely.

As he started for the farmhouse, Leonidas the Priest rode up, gaudy in his crimson ceremonial robes. Leonidas waved to him and called, “Now, if the Lion God so grant, we shall at last see justice done.”

James of Broadpath cared less than he might have about justice. Victory mattered more to him. He just nodded to Leonidas the Priest and strode into the farmhouse. Baron Dan of Rabbit Hill waited there. So did Count Thraxton. And so, sure enough, did King Geoffrey. Careless of his pantaloons, James dropped to one knee and bowed his head. “Your Majesty,” he murmured.

“Arise, your Excellency,” Geoffrey said. His voice was light and true. Like his cousin and rival king, Avram, he was tall and thin as a whip. There the resemblance ended. Avram looked like a bumpkin, a commoner, a railsplitter. Geoffrey was every inch the aristocrat, with sculptured features, a firm gaze, and a neatly trimmed beard than ran under but not on his chin. As James got to his feet, Leonidas the Priest came in and bowed low to the king: he went to his knees only before his god. Geoffrey nodded to him, then spoke in tones of decision: “Now that we are met here, let us get to the bottom of this, and let us do it quickly.”

Count Thraxton looked as if he’d just taken a big bite from bread spread with rancid butter. “Your Majesty, I still feel your visit here is altogether unnecessary. This army has done quite well as things stand.”

“I know how you feel, your Grace,” Geoffrey said. He was not normally a man to care much for the feelings of others, but Thraxton was a longtime friend of his. Nevertheless, having made up his mind, he went ahead; he was nothing if not stubborn. “I have had a number of complaints from these officers here” —he waved to James, Leonidas, and Dan— “and also from several brigadiers about the way the Army of Franklin has been led since the fight at the River of Death. As I told Earl James, for the sake of the kingdom I intend to get to the bottom of these complaints, and to set the army on a sound footing for defeating the southrons.”

“Very well, your Majesty.” Thraxton still looked revolted, but he couldn’t tell King Geoffrey what to do and what not to do.

Geoffrey swung his gaze from the unhappy Thraxton to the Army of Franklin’s subordinate—and insubordinate—generals, who were just as unhappy for different reasons. “Well, gentlemen?” the king asked. “What say you? Is Count Thraxton fit to remain in command of this host, or is he not?”

James of Broadpath blinked. He’d never expected King Geoffrey to be so blunt. Geoffrey was a good man, a clever man, a brave man, an admirable man . . . but not a warm man, not a man to make people love him. James could see why. Avram would have handled things more deftly—but Avram wanted to wreck the foundations upon which the northern provinces were built. And so James, like the rest of the north, had no choice but to follow Geoffrey.

And, like Leonidas the Priest and Dan of Rabbit Hill, he had no choice but to answer Geoffrey’s question. Leonidas spoke first: “Your Majesty, in my view you must make a change. Count Thraxton has shown he has no respect for the gods, and so we cannot possibly expect the gods to show him any favor.”

“I agree with the hierophant, though for different reasons,” James of Broadpath said.
I must not hang back
, he thought.
As the king said, it’s for the kingdom’s sake
. “Once we beat the southrons, we should have made a proper pursuit. We should have flanked them out of Rising Rock instead of chasing them back into the town and letting them stand siege there—not that it’s a proper siege, since we don’t surround them and since they keep bringing in reinforcements.”

“They have a demon of a time doing it,” Thraxton broke in, “and they will have an even harder time keeping all those men fed.”

“They never should have had the chance to get them into Rising Rock in the first place,” James returned, his temper kindling.

King Geoffrey held up a slim hand. “Enough of this bickering. Too much of this bickering, in fact. And I have not yet heard from Baron Dan. How say you, your Excellency?”

“Oh, I agree with Leonidas and James here,” Dan of Rabbit Hill replied without hesitation. “An army is only as good as its head. With Thraxton in charge of the Army of Franklin, we might as well not have a head.”

Thraxton glared. Dan glared back. James wondered whether, in all the history of the world, a commanding general had ever had to listen to his three chief lieutenants tell his sovereign that he wasn’t fit to hold the post in which that sovereign had set him.

By King Geoffrey’s expression, he hadn’t expected those chief lieutenants to be quite so forthright, either. But he could only go forward now. “Very well, gentlemen,” he said. “You tell me Count Thraxton does not suit you. To whom, then, should command of this army go?”

Again, Baron Dan didn’t hesitate: “The best man this army could possibly have at its head is Duke Edward of Arlington.”

Well, that’s true enough
, James thought. He’d asked James of Seddon Dun for Duke Edward himself. Edward was the best man any Detinan army, northern or southron, could possibly have at its head. King Avram had thought so, too. He’d offered the duke command of the southron armies as the war began. But Edward, like most northerners, had chosen Geoffrey as his sovereign, and had been making the southrons regret it ever since.

King Geoffrey knew exactly what he had in Duke Edward. He didn’t hesitate, either, but shook his head at once. “No,” he said. “I rely on Edward to hold the southrons away from Nonesuch.”

Dan of Rabbit Hill had to bow to that. But, as he bowed, he muttered under his breath, loud enough for James to hear: “If we hang on to Nonesuch and nothing else, we’ve still lost the stinking war.”

The king, perhaps fortunately, didn’t hear him. “Earl James,” Geoffrey said, “perhaps you have another candidate in mind?”

“Perhaps I do, your Majesty,” James of Broadpath said. “If you cannot spare Duke Edward from the west, Marquis Joseph the Gamecock might do very well here. The kingdom has not got all the service it might have from him since he was wounded last year and Duke Edward took charge of the Army of Southern Parthenia. He’s a brave and skillful soldier, and I happen to know he is quite recovered from his wound.”

King Geoffrey was not a warmhearted man—that had already occurred to James. But the icy stare the king gave him now put him in mind of a blizzard down by the Five Lakes country. As Geoffrey had once before, he said, “No,” again, this time even more emphatically. “Whatever Marquis Joseph’s soldierly qualities—and I do not choose to debate them with you—he does not hold my trust. He who names him again does so on pain of my displeasure.”

Like Dan of Rabbit Hill, Earl James bowed his head. He knew too well why the king and Marquis Joseph didn’t get along. Joseph had the habit of telling the truth as he saw it. Such men did not endear themselves to princes.

“Holy sir, have
you
a suggestion?” Geoffrey asked Leonidas the Priest.

“Either of the men my comrades named would improve this army,” Leonidas replied, drawing another black look from Count Thraxton. Ignoring it, he went on, “If, however, they will not do, you could also do worse than Marquis Peegeetee of Goodlook.”

But, once again, King Geoffrey shook his head. “All the objections pertaining to Marquis Joseph also pertain to him in equal force. And he is better at making plans than at carrying them to fruition.”

That held some truth. Marquis Peegeetee had seized a fort in Karlsburg harbor, a blow that marked the formal break between King Geoffrey and King Avram. Between them, he and Marquis Joseph had won the first battle at Cow Jog, down in southern Parthenia. Since then, though, his luck had been less good. Even so, James would have preferred him to Count Thraxton. James, by then, would have preferred a unicorn in command to Thraxton.

King Geoffrey said, “General Pembert is a skilled soldier, and available for service here.”

That produced as much horror in the generals as their suggestions had in the king. “He’s not even a proper northern man!” Leonidas exclaimed, which was true—Pembert came from the south, but had married a Parthenian girl, and had chosen Geoffrey over Avram perhaps because of that.

“He surrendered the last fortress we held along the Great River, your Majesty,” James added. “He hauled down the red dragon and gave the place to General Bart.”

“He was forced to yield by long siege,” the king said. “In his unhappy situation, who could have done better?”

“Your Majesty, I’m sorry, but you can’t pretty it up like that,” Baron Dan of Rabbit Hill said. “If you put General Pembert in charge of the Army of Franklin, my guess is that the soldiers will mutiny against him.”

Geoffrey glared. No king ever cared to hear that he couldn’t do what he wanted to do. His mouth a thin, hard line, Geoffrey said, “I cannot accept the men your officers proposed to head this army, and it seems the officer I named does not suit you. That being so, I find myself left with no choice but to sustain Count Thraxton here in command of this force.”

Leonidas the Priest came out with something James of Broadpath had not expected to hear from a hierophant. “I thank you, your Majesty,” Count Thraxton said quietly.

“You’re welcome, my friend,” King Geoffrey replied.
If Thraxton weren’t his friend, he’d be heading into the retirement he deserves
, James thought. But the king hadn’t finished: “Since you remain in command, I also confirm your dismissal of your wing commanders.”

Leonidas said something even more pungent than he had before. Dan of Rabbit Hill threw his hands in the air in disgust. Geoffrey’s decision there followed logically from the one that had just gone before. Even so, Earl James was moved to say, “Your Majesty, I hope you won’t regret this.”

Geoffrey stared at him out of eyes as opaque and unblinking as a dragon’s. “I never regret anything,” the king said.

Having had King Geoffrey sustain him, Count Thraxton should have felt relief and pride. Try as he would, though, he could muster up no more than a shadow of either emotion. What filled him most of all was overwhelming weariness.
I have fought so hard for this kingdom
, he thought dolefully,
fought so hard, and for what? Why, only to see the men I led to victory turn on me and stab me in the back
.

Even dismissing Leonidas and Dan brought scant satisfaction. As he strode through the front room of his farmhouse headquarters, candlelight made his shadow swoop and slink after him, as if it too were not to be trusted when his back was turned.

He sighed and scowled and sat down at the rickety table that did duty for a desk. His shadow also sat, and behaved itself. He found himself actually letting out a small sigh of relief at that. When his shadow didn’t leap about the room like a wild thing, it reminded him ever so much less of Ned of the Forest.