Leonidas the Priest prowled the platform as the lion prowled the cage, waiting for the worshipers to gather. His vestments were partly of gold, but more of scarlet, as befitted a hierophant of the Lion God. Ormerod was proud to serve under such a holy man. He would have been prouder still had he reckoned Leonidas a better officer.
At last, the gongs stopped chiming. Leonidas the Priest raised his hands in a gesture of benediction. “We are gathered at the River of Death to fight for the life of our kingdom,” he said. “Death and life are brethren. The Lion God knows as much. So does the lamb, his victim.” He stroked the woolly little animal. It let out a desperate-sounding bleat.
An acolyte in crimson robes somewhat less magnificent than Leonidas’ held a deep red-glazed bowl under the lamb’s neck. Leonidas himself drew a knife from his belt and cut the lamb’s throat. The acolyte caught the spurting blood in the bowl. “It is accomplished!” Leonidas cried.
“It is accomplished!” Ormerod echoed, along with the other soldiers reverencing their god. “Death and life are brethren. Such is the wisdom of the Lion God.”
When the lamb was dead, Leonidas unchained the little carcass, lifted it, and gave it to the lion. With a soft grunt, the great beast began to feed. As the hierophant served the living symbol of his god, the acolyte passed the bowl of blood down to the waiting soldiers.
Ormerod stood near the portable altar. The bowl did not take long to reach him. He dipped the tip of his right index finger into it, then touched that finger to his forehead. “I am washed in the blood of the lamb,” he murmured, and put the finger in his mouth to lick off the blood. “Like the Lion God, I taste victory. So may it always be.”
Ritual accomplished, he passed the bowl-still warm with remembered life-to the soldier nearest him. In the worship of the Lion God, all brave men were equals. Even the southrons who worshiped him were Ormerod’s equals in that way… which didn’t keep him from wishing every one of them dead.
The last trooper who received the bowl brought it back to the acolyte, who, bowing gravely, returned it to Leonidas the Priest. Bowing in return, the hierophant accepted it from him and set it in the lion’s cage. The lion, a veteran of countless such services, walked over and flicked out his tongue, drinking from the bowl.
“Go forth, my fierce friends,” Leonidas called to the men who had come to worship with him. “Go forth and triumph over the wicked thieves who seek to steal everything we have, even our way of life.”
As Ormerod and Lieutenant Gremio walked back toward their encampment, Gremio remarked, “It’s nice to feel the gods are on our side. The way things look, I wonder if anyone else is.”
“We’ll whip the southrons yet-see if we don’t.” Ormerod spoke in ringing tones, not least to still his own unease.
“Do you know what I wish the gods would give us?” Gremio, on the other hand, was all but whispering. Ormerod shook his head. Still in that half whisper, the barrister from Karlsburg went on, “I wish they’d give us leaders who could count past ten without taking off their shoes.”
“Leonidas is a very holy man,” Ormerod said.
Gremio nodded. “No doubt of that, sir. But, once you’ve said it, you’ve said everything you can say to recommend him as a soldier.” He lifted a forefinger; Ormerod saw a tiny bit of lamb’s blood clinging to the cuticle and the crease between nail and flesh. “No, I take that back. He is brave, but how much good is bravery without wisdom?”
“I don’t know,” Ormerod answered. “I’d sooner have that than wisdom without bravery.”
“In a commander?” Gremio’s eyebrows rose. “I wonder.” Whether he wondered or not, he changed the subject, at least a little: “And as for Thraxton, he’d serve King Geoffrey better if anyone could stand him.”
“He’s a mighty mage,” Ormerod said.
“So he is-mighty enough to terrify his own side as well as the enemy,” Gremio said.
Ormerod snorted; that was scandalous, but hardly untrue. The company commander said, “King Geoffrey dotes on him. The gods must know why, even if no one else does.”
“It could be that no one at all knows why, the gods and King Geoffrey included,” Gremio remarked. Ormerod snorted again, on a different note this time. That was too cynical for him to stomach easily. Maybe his unease showed on his face, for Lieutenant Gremio said, “Go into the lawcourts often enough, Captain, and you stop believing in everything.”
“I suppose so.” Ormerod didn’t feel any happier. He wanted the men who fought under him to believe in what they were doing. He might have said more, but Gremio, whether he believed or not, had proved himself both brave and capable.
Back at the camp, a couple of serfs were tending to the company’s asses. The blonds looked up from their work when the soldiers returned from the worship service. Seeing the Detinans with the bloody mark of the Lion God on their foreheads, the serfs muttered back and forth. They worshiped Detinan gods, too. How not, when those gods had proved superior to their own pantheon? But they still recalled the deities they’d once followed. Ormerod gave the serfs a suspicious look. Wouldn’t they love to get some of their own back, after Avram loosed them from their feudal obligations? In their place, Ormerod knew he would have.
“They aren’t as good as we are,” he muttered. “Their gods aren’t as good as our gods are, either.”
“Well, their gods aren’t as strong as our gods are, anyway,” Lieutenant Gremio said. “In the end, that’s what counts, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so.” Ormerod knew he didn’t sound altogether happy about that. Strength mattered, of course. Without it, the Detinans never would have overthrown the blonds’ kingdoms after coming across the Western Ocean, never would have bound the natives to the soil. But if strength was the only thing that mattered… King Avram’s army had driven the one Count Thraxton commanded out of Franklin. Unless something splendid happened, the stinking southrons would drive Thraxton’s army farther north still. Ormerod wished he knew how something splendid might be made to happen. For the life of him, though, he didn’t.
As if his gloomy reflections were a cue, a scout came pelting back to him, calling, “Captain! Captain! The southrons! The southrons are coming up to the River of Death!”
Ormerod didn’t hesitate. “Forward, men!” he called. “Get your crossbows, get your pikes, and forward! We have to keep them from crossing the river.”
“Sir, our company’s not going to be able to do that all by itself,” Gremio said.
“Of course it won’t.” Ormerod pointed to the scout. “Go on to Colonel Florizel. Tell him what you just told me. If he doesn’t send you on to Leonidas the Priest, I’m a serf. Go on.” The scout pelted away. Ormerod raised his voice to a battlefield roar: “Forward!” He lowered it again. “No, we can’t hold the southrons off all by ourselves, but, by the gods, we’ve got to try.”
He waited for more argument from his lieutenant. After all, Gremio made his living by being argumentative. But now he only nodded. “Of course, sir. Let’s go fill the southrons full of holes.”
Along with the company, Ormerod hurried down toward the northern bank of the River of Death. Sure enough, a few unicorn-riders in gray had come up to the southern bank. They were peering north, as if wondering what awaited them.
Despite its fearsome name, the River of Death wasn’t a great stream. The far bank lay within easy crossbow range. Before Ormerod could even start giving orders, his men started shooting at King Avram’s troopers. A unicorn screamed as a quarrel went home. A man in gray toppled, clutching his belly.
“Well shot!” Ormerod said. “By the gods, well shot!”
A moment later, he discovered he might have been wiser not to draw notice to himself. Buzzing like an angry wasp, a crossbow quarrel zipped past his head and buried itself in a tree trunk. It would have buried itself in his flesh, too. He knew that all too well. He usually tried not to think about it. But when the Soulstealer’s cloak brushed by him, he couldn’t pretend he didn’t feel the breez
e of its passage.
Brave as if they fought for a cause Ormerod held dear, the southrons tried to charge across the river and get in among his men. But quick, fierce archery slew some, wounded more, and drove them all back to the southern bank. They started fighting as dragoons then, dismounting to give battle on foot.
Ormerod grinned. “They won’t advance that way,” he said. Since his job was to hold them south of the River of Death, he’d done exactly what he was supposed to.
* * *
Earl James of Broadpath felt like kicking someone, or perhaps several someones. The pox-ridden cretins who’d designed and created the chaotic jungle of glideways in the northern provinces of Detina would do in a pinch. No, he wouldn’t have minded pinching them at all, preferably with red-hot pincers.
Everything had been tolerable till he’d brought his army over the Veldt River from Palmetto Province into Peachtree. He’d thought he would get to Marthasville soon afterwards, and down to Fa Layette soon after that. His scryers had told Count Thraxton as much.
Coming into the town of Julia, though, on the Peachtree side of the Veldt, had begun his education into just how complicated glideways could be. An indigo-uniformed officer awaited him at the glideway port there. The fellow saluted and said, “Very good to see you here so soon, your Excellency. You must have made splendid time come up here from southern Parthenia.”
“Not splendid, but good enough,” James agreed, more than a little smugly.
“Excellent,” the officer said. He wore a broad smile, but not one of the sort that prompted Earl James to trust him. He’d seen that kind of smile on the faces of rivergalley gamblers and unicorn thieves. It didn’t match whatever was going on behind the fellow’s eyes.
When the officer didn’t say anything more right away, James of Broadpath asked him, “Why did you call me out onto the pier here? I would sooner have headed straight east towards Marthasville with my army.”
“I’m sure you would, sir,” the officer said, his nod as false as his smile. “And as soon as your army transfers from these carpets to those waiting to take them to Marthasville, so you shall.”
“As soon as my army does what?” James dug a finger into his ear, as if wondering whether he’d heard correctly.
“As soon as it transfers, sir,” the other officer said again. No, James’ ears hadn’t betrayed him.
That didn’t mean he understood what the other fellow was saying, or why he was saying it. “What’s wrong with the carpets we’re on?” he asked. “We’ve come this far on ’em. I don’t see much point in changing for the couple of hundred miles from here to Marthasville.”
“There is a point, I’m afraid,” the officer said. “You’ve come this far on the Northern Glideway. The route east is over the Peachtree Glideway.” Earl James’ bushy eyebrows rose. The other officer, a captain supercilious enough to be a general, condescended to explain: “They use different sorcerous systems, sir. A carpet that will travel with ease on the one will not, cannot, move a finger’s breadth on the other.”
As northern noblemen went, James of Broadpath had a mild temper. But he felt that temper fraying now. “What idiot made that arrangement?” he growled, wondering how much time this unexpected difficulty would cost him. However much it was, he couldn’t afford it.
“It isn’t like that, General,” the local captain insisted. “By the Thunderer’s prick, sir, it isn’t.” For once, he seemed sincere. “The fellows who made the Northern Glideway had the low bid for that stretch of the route, and the fellows who created the Peachtree Glideway came in with the low bid there. The two outfits worked with different sets of mages who favored different sets of sorcery. Simple as that.”
“Simple?” Earl James turned the word into a curse. “If things were simple, I wouldn’t have to change glideways here. They all ought to run on the same system.”
“They don’t even bother with that down in the south, sir.” The officer’s shrug said that, if even the gold-grubbing merchants of the southern provinces who backed King Avram couldn’t see the point to standardizing glideways, it wasn’t worth doing.
James thought otherwise. “If they all ran on the same system, Captain, I wouldn’t have to move my men off these carpets and onto the new ones. That sounds mighty fine to me.”
“Nothing to be done about it,” the local fellow said with another shrug. “Do I hear rightly that your men’ll be heading south from Marthasville?”
“What if you do?” James asked suspiciously. This fellow was without a doubt a son of a bitch, but that probably didn’t make him a southron spy. Probably.
“Well, your Excellency, if you’ll be going by way of the Northern Provinces and Western Ocean Glideway, you’ll have to change again once you get into Marthasville,” the captain said.
“What?” James of Broadpath’s bellow made heads whip toward him all over the glideway port. Curses cascaded from him.
“It can’t be helped, your Excellency,” the other officer said. That was bound to be true, but did nothing to improve James’ temper.
When he gave the necessary orders, his subordinates cursed as loudly and foully as he had. Brigadier Bell said, “We’ve come round three sides of a square, seems like. We might have done better just to march it.”
Reluctantly, Earl James shook his head. “No, I didn’t think so,” he replied. “Say what you will about glideways, but they’re faster, a lot faster, than shank’s mare.”
“I suppose so,” Bell agreed. “But I hate even to seem as if I’m moving away from the enemy when what I really want to do is close with him.” His right hand folded into a fist. His left hand twitched, as if it wanted to make a fist, too. But, hanging on the end of his ruined arm, it was all but useless.
“You’ll have your chance,” James assured him. The eager smile Bell gave in answer briefly banished the eternal pain from his face.
But when James’ army, having disembarked from the carpets that had brought them to Julia, made its way over to the far side of the glideway port and the carpets that were to take them on to Marthasville, the general wondered if he’d spoken too soon. Not nearly enough carpets waited on the Peachtree Glideway’s route toward Marthasville. “Where are the rest of them?” James demanded of the local captain. “I can’t fit my force onto what you’ve got here.”
“This is just about all the gliding stock on the Peachtree line, sir,” that worthy said. “We’ve got so many men fighting, we’re hard pressed to do anything else.”
“How am I supposed to fight if I can’t get to the battlefield?” James demanded.
“Oh, you will, sir-eventually,” the captain said. “How much difference does it make whether you fight tomorrow or the next day, though?”
“My friend” -James freighted the word with heavy irony- “it might make all the difference in the world.”
“It might,” the other officer said. “On the other hand, it might not mean anything at all. More often than not, it won’t.”
James was tempted, mightily tempted, to argue that with him. The only reason he desisted was the pointlessness of it. “What do you expect me to do, then?” he asked. “Take half my army to Marthasville, send the carpets back, and wait for the other half to catch up?”
“Sir, the only other choice you have is leaving all your army here in Julia,” the local officer told him. “If you want to do that, I don’t see how I can stop you, but I don’t suppose you’ll make Count Thraxton very happy.”
That, unfortunately, held altogether too much truth. James heaved a long, heartfelt sigh. “I don’t think I’ll make him happy letting him know I’m going to be late, either. But, as you say, I haven’t got much choice.” He raised his voice: “Brigadier Bell!”
“Sir!” The division commander hurried up to him.
“Brigadier, you are in charge of that part of the force which is compelled to remain behind in Julia until we free up carpets to bring it on to Marthasville,” James of Broadpath told him. “Bring on the rest of
the men as fast as ever you can. We’ll wait in Marthasville-or, possibly, we won’t. If Thraxton orders us forward, we’ll go on as fast as we can. Scryers will keep you informed.”
Bell saluted. “I understand, sir.”
“Good.” Earl James nodded approval. “And, because this delay is in no way our fault, the men need not suffer for it. Feel free to let them forage on the countryside hereabouts while they’re waiting for the carpets to return.”
At last, he succeeded in piercing the local captain’s sangfroid. “What?” the fellow yelped. “You can’t do that! They can’t do that!”
“Oh, yes, we can.” Brigadier Bell sounded as if he was looking forward to it. His good hand dropped to the hilt of his sword. “Just try and stop us.”
The captain didn’t try to stop him. The captain couldn’t try to stop him, not when even the force Bell had left far outnumbered the tiny garrison in Julia. Earl James of Broadpath was something less than astonished when several more glideway carpets from the Peachtree line slid silently into the local port. There still weren’t enough for him to take his whole army on to Marthasville at once, but the fraction left behind shrank from half to about a quarter.
At James’ command, a scryer sent word to Count Thraxton that he would be delayed. A few minutes later, the fellow came back with Thraxton’s answer: “His Grace, sir, is more than a little unhappy.”
“You may tell him I’m more than a little unhappy myself,” James said. “If he’s such a mighty mage, he’s welcome to conjure the army and me from Julia here all the way to Fa Layette.” He held up a warning hand before the scryer could hurry away. “You don’t need to tell him that.”
“All right, sir,” the scryer said. This time, James let him go.
Earl James soon discovered why the men who’d created the Peachtree Glideway had come in with the low bid: they’d done as little as they possibly could to make it worth traveling on. Their spells left a good deal to be desired. The whole glideway was sluggish; in the poorly maintained parts, the carpets barely moved at all. Watching the Peachtree Province farms and estates crawl past, James wondered if he would get stranded halfway to Marthasville. That captain’s head will roll if I do, he thought.
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