Sentry Peak

by Harry Turtledove

  He was right. Ormerod knew it. Keeping Avram’s men from conquering the north was hard enough-more than hard enough. “You’re saying we’ll never have peace!” Ormerod cried in dismay.

  Gremio shrugged a barrister’s shrug. “I didn’t say that. You did.”

  For a moment, Ormerod accepted the remark. Then he wagged a finger at the lieutenant. Voice sly, he said, “I know what you barristers do. You trick a man into saying what you wanted him to, and then you act like it wasn’t your fault at all.”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.” Gremio did his best to sound innocent. His best wasn’t quite good enough, for he also ended up sounding amused.

  “A likely story,” Ormerod told him. “If you don’t think we’ll ever have peace even if we do lick the southrons, why’d you join the army in the first place?”

  “On the off chance I might be wrong,” Gremio replied-and to that, Ormerod had no answer whatever.

  When he walked off shaking his head, he heard Gremio quietly chuckle behind him. The lieutenant had won this round in their ongoing skirmish, and they both knew it. Ormerod stared south toward Rising Rock. He would have relished a fight with the southrons just then. When he was fighting, he didn’t have to think. Encamped-becalmed-here on the lower slope of Sentry Peak, he couldn’t do much else. And, little by little, the Army of Franklin had stopped being the force besieging the town. These days, it felt more as if they were the besieged.

  He wondered if Rollant was down there somewhere, or if the runaway serf had perished during the fighting by the River of Death. Rollant had been fighting under Doubting George, who’d made the stand on Merkle’s Hill. He’d had plenty of chances to come to grief. Ormerod hoped he had. No serfcatcher would bring the blond back to Palmetto Province, not from out of the south. Even before the war, the southrons had laughed at the runaway-serf laws intended to bind blonds to the land. They surely wouldn’t pay those laws any attention these days.

  “Bastards,” Ormerod muttered under his breath. There weren’t so many blonds in the south and the southeast; the real Detinans there could afford to pretend blonds were as good, or almost as good, as anybody else. Up in the north, that would never do. Ormerod was as sure of it as he was of the power of the gods. But King Avram, that gods-damned fool, couldn’t see it, and so…

  And so my crops have gone to the hells these past three seasons, Ormerod thought resentfully. And so I’m here in the middle of nowhere, instead of taking care of my estate the way I ought to. He shook his fist in the direction of the southrons down in Rising Rock. Why don’t you go away and leave us alone?

  But they wouldn’t, and so they had to be driven away. Ormerod shook his fist at mist-shrouded Rising Rock again. Then he turned and shook his fist at Proselytizers’ Rise, too, and at Count Thraxton’s headquarters there. If Thraxton had pursued, maybe…

  Ormerod heard a thud behind him. He whirled, hand flashing toward his swordhilt. Shaking your fist at a mage wasn’t always a good idea, even when the mage couldn’t-or wasn’t supposed to be able to-see you. And Thraxton the Braggart had always been a bad-tempered son of a bitch. If he somehow knew, if he’d somehow shaped a sending…

  “Sorry, sir,” the blue-clad soldier in back of Ormerod said sheepishly. “Kicked that gods-damned rock hard enough to hurt. I expect I’d trip over my own two feet if there was nothing else handy.”

  “Heh,” Ormerod said, still jumpy. The soldier sketched a salute and ambled away. He didn’t know what he’d done to his company commander’s peace of mind. Ormerod hoped he never found out, either.

  One of the sergeants was doing a good, thorough, systematic job of chewing out a man who’d forgotten something the underofficer thought he should have remembered. The soldier was giving about as good as he got, denying everything and loudly proclaiming that the sergeant hadn’t told him about whatever it was and had no business bothering about him anyway, as it shouldn’t have been his job in the first place.

  Instead of spraying flames all over the place like a firepot, the sergeant said, “Ahh, to the hells with it. What we both want to do is rip another chunk off the gods-damned southrons. Till then, we’re just chewing on each other on account of we can’t get at them.”

  “Gods-damned right,” the common soldier said. “We’ll tear ’em a new one when we do, though.” The sergeant grunted agreement. Neither had the slightest doubt in his mind.

  And their certainty made a small, tender, flickering hope live in Captain Ormerod.

  * * *

  General Bart eyed his wing commanders and brigadiers. “Gentlemen, we are just about ready to attack,” he said. Some of them really were gentlemen-Doubting George, for instance. Bart was a tanner’s son. But he had the rank. That was all that mattered. If he did the job right, he would keep the rank and keep on giving orders to his social betters. If he didn’t, he would deserve whatever happened to him. That was how things worked. It struck him as fair. But things would have worked the same way even if it hadn’t.

  Fighting Joseph said, “Turn me loose, General. Just turn me loose, and I’ll show you what I can do.”

  “You’ll be in the fight, never fear,” Bart said. Joseph’s handsome, ruddy face showed nothing but confidence. Earlier in the year, he’d commanded the whole western army after Whiskery Ambrose failed so spectacularly with it. And Joseph had failed, too, letting Duke Edward of Arlington trounce him at Viziersville with about half as many men as he commanded. Joseph would never have charge of a whole army again.

  He had to know that. He wasn’t a fool-no, he wasn’t that particular kind of fool. But he remained an ambitious man. He would try to stretch what command he had here in the east as far as Bart would let him, and then a little further. Bart didn’t intend to let him get away with much of that.

  But what he intended and what would actually happen were two different beasts. Fighting Joseph had a will of his own, and Thraxton the Braggart had a will of his own, too-quite a will of his own, Bart thought with wry amusement. Nothing would go exactly as planned. No, not exactly. Still and all, I aim to have my will be the one that prevails.

  “Will you be ready to move on Sentry Peak when the day and the hour come?” he asked Fighting Joseph.

  “Of course, sir.” Joseph sounded affronted. “I am always ready to move.”

  There Bart believed him. Joseph might prove too aggressive, but he was unlikely not to be aggressive enough. Bart turned to Doubting George. “What about you, Lieutenant General?”

  “Give the order, sir, and my men and I will obey it,” George replied. “You have only to command.”

  Bart hoped he meant that. George was no glory hound, as Fighting Joseph was. He made an indomitable defender; they were calling him the Rock in the River of Death these days. But he wasn’t so good at going forward as he was at not going back. “I shall rely on you,” Bart said, and Doubting George nodded.

  “Tell me where to go,” George said. “Tell me what to do. By the gods, I’ll do it. If you think you have another man who can do it better, give it to him. The kingdom comes before any one soldier.”

  “Well said,” Bart replied. “An example for us all, as a matter of fact.” He looked at Fighting Joseph. Joseph stared blandly back, as if he didn’t have the slightest notion of what Bart had in mind. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he truly was blind to what other people thought of him. Maybe. Bart wouldn’t have bet anything on it he couldn’t afford to lose.

  Bart wouldn’t have bet anything on it anyway. Spirits had been his vice, not rolling dice or a spinning wheel of chance. Fighting Joseph had been rich and then poor several times in quick succession in silver-rich Baha out in the far east. He would gamble on anything, including his superiors’ patience.

  With some relief, Bart turned away from him and toward Lieutenant General Hesmucet. “Are you ready to fight?” he asked, already confident of the answer.

  Sure enough, Hesmucet nodded. “I’ve been ready for days, sir. So have my men. We�
��re just waiting for you to turn us loose.”

  “Don’t worry. I intend to,” Bart replied. Hesmucet didn’t puff himself up the way Fighting Joseph did. He didn’t prefer the defensive, as Doubting George did. He wanted to go forward and grapple with the enemy. In that, he was very much like Bart himself. If a strong man and a weak man grappled and kept on grappling, sooner or later the strong man would wear down the weak one.

  “When we start fighting the northerners, we have to hit them with everything we’ve got and go right on hitting them till they fall over,” Bart said. “That’s what will win the fight for us.”

  “We shall win glory for King Avram,” Fighting Joseph declared.

  “As long as we win the fight,” Doubting George put in. Bart decided George really didn’t care about glory, and that he’d meant what he said when he urged his own replacement if Bart thought that would help defeat Thraxton’s men. It wasn’t that he had no pride; Bart knew better. But he really did put the kingdom ahead of everything else. Bart had to admire that.

  He said, “All right. I think we know what we’re supposed to do. That was the point of calling you together, so we’re through here. Lieutenant General Hesmucet, stay a bit, if you’d be so kind. I want to talk with you about weather magic when we do attack the traitors.”

  “Yes, sir,” Hesmucet said as the other officers rose from their seats and headed back to their own commands. “At your service, sir.”

  “At King Avram’s service,” Bart said, and Hesmucet nodded. Bart resumed: “He made us, and he can break us. That’s what being a king is all about.”

  “Yes, sir,” Hesmucet repeated. “But we can make him or break him, too. That’s what fighting a civil war is all about.”

  Had Fighting Joseph said that, he would have meant trying to break the king and seize the throne himself. Hesmucet’s mind didn’t work that way. Neither did Bart’s. He said, “Can we do this the way we’ve planned it?”

  “I think so,” Hesmucet answered. “We’ve got more men. We’ve got more engines. We’ve got more of everything, except…” His voice faded.

  “Except fancy magecraft,” Bart finished for him. Hesmucet nodded. Bart shrugged. “Most of the time, it doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to. If it did, the northerners would have licked us by now.”

  “I know that,” Hesmucet said calmly. “But Thraxton’s sure to throw everything he’s got at us. He doesn’t want to have to fall back into Peachtree Province again.”

  “We just have to stop him,” Bart said.

  “Guildenstern couldn’t,” Hesmucet said. “His mages couldn’t, either. If the traitors are playing with loaded dice, we have trouble. You know that’s so.”

  “Yes, I know that’s so-if they are,” Bart agreed. “But I also know I’m not going to lose much sleep over it. I’ll tell Phineas and the others to do their best. That’s all they can do. If they do their best, and if our soldiers do their best, I think we’re going to win.”

  “Yes, sir.” Hesmucet didn’t sound as if he believed it himself, not at first. But then he paused, stroking that short beard, hardly more than stubble, he wore. His smile, Bart thought, was quizzical. “Do you know, sir,” he said, “there are a lot of generals who, if they said something like that, you’d right away start figuring out what would go wrong and how you’d keep from getting the blame for it. But do you know what? When I listen to you, I think you’re going to do exactly what you say you’ll do. And if that’s not pretty peculiar, to the seven hells with me if I know what is.”

  “Thraxton the Braggart’s just a mage. He’s not a god,” Bart said. “He makes mistakes, the same as anybody else does. He did it down at Pottstown Pier, and he did it again at Reillyburgh. If we jog his elbow right when he’s trying to do three or four things all at the same time, he’ll likely do it once more. And if he does, we’ll lick him.”

  “But if he doesn’t…” Hesmucet still had doubts.

  Bart sighed. “Look at it this way, Lieutenant General: the traitors have to do everything perfectly to have a chance of beating us. We can make some mistakes and still beat them. General Guildenstern made every mistake in the book, but they couldn’t run him out of Rising Rock even so. Don’t you think the Braggart knows that as well as we do?”

  “He has to,” Hesmucet said. “He’s not stupid.”

  “No, that’s never been his trouble,” Bart agreed. Both men chuckled. Bart continued, “But it has to weigh on his mind, wouldn’t you think? Knowing he’s got to be perfect, I mean, knowing he’s got no margin for error. It’s easy to walk along a board lying in the middle of the road. But take that board to New Eborac and stretch it out between the top floors of a couple of blocks of flats, where you’ll kill yourself if you fall off. How easy is it then? The more a mistake will cost, the more you worry about it…”

  He waited. Either he’d convinced Hesmucet or he hadn’t. Slowly, the other officer nodded. “That sounds good to me, sir. Now-did you still need to talk about Alva the weatherworker?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Bart answered. They both chuckled again. Hesmucet gave a salute so sloppy, some sergeant at the Annasville military collegium would have had an apoplexy seeing it. Bart returned an even sloppier one. When anybody could see them, they stayed formal. By themselves, they were more nearly a couple of friends than two of Avram’s leading officers.

  After Hesmucet left, Bart sent a runner to summon Colonel Phineas. The army’s chief mage arrived looking apprehensive. “You wanted me, sir?”

  “I certainly did,” Bart said. “I want you and your wizards to start doing everything you can to annoy the Army of Franklin. I want you to make the traitors stretch their own sorcerers as thin as they’ll go, and then a little bit thinner than that. Can you do it?”

  “Of course we can, sir,” Phineas said. “But I don’t see how doing it will change things one way or the other.”

  “Oh, it probably won’t,” Bart said placidly. “Do it anyhow.”

  “Yes, sir,” Colonel Phineas said. After a moment, he nerved himself to add, “I don’t understand, sir.”

  Shall I explain? Bart wondered. If he’s too stupid to see for himself, isn’t he too stupid to do us any good? But, in the end, he relented: “If the traitors are busy putting out lots of little fires all along their line, it’ll make them have a harder time noticing we’re setting a big fire right under their noses.”

  “Ah. Deception.” Phineas beamed. He could see something if you held it under his nose and shone a lamp on it. “Very commendable. Who would have thought deception could play a true part in matters military?”

  “Anyone who went to the military collegium, for starters,” Bart said.

  But the army’s chief wizard shook his head. “Not from the evidence I’ve seen thus far, sir. By all the signs, the only thing most officers are good for is bashing the foes in front of them over the head with a rock… No offense, sir.”

  “None taken,” Bart said, more or less truthfully. “We do try to surprise the chaps on the other side of the line every now and again. They try to surprise us every now and again, too, but we try not to let that work.”

  “Yes, sir.” But Colonel Phineas sounded even less convinced than Lieutenant General Hesmucet had. Then the plump, balding Phineas brightened. “Well, we will do what we can, I promise you. Deception? What a conceit!” Off he went, though Bart hadn’t given him any sort of formal dismissal.

  Colonel Horace came in a couple of minutes later. “What was the old he-witch muttering to himself about?” General Bart’s aide inquired. “He sounded happy as a pig rooting for turnips.”

  “He’s amazed that I have some notion of fooling the enemy instead of just pounding him to death,” Bart replied. “We do try to play these little games with the least loss we can.”

  “Of course we do, sir.” Horace bristled at the idea that anyone could think otherwise.

  “And we’ll have the chance to show the northerners just how we play them,” Bart said. “
Meanwhile, though, the less they see, the better.”

  “Absolutely, sir.” Colonel Horace was fiercely loyal. That made him a splendid aide. “High time they get the punishment they deserve.”

  “I wish this weren’t necessary,” Bart said. “I wish we weren’t fighting.” Even if that meant you were still a drunken failure? Yes, by the gods, even then. “But since we are fighting, we’d better win. Having two kingdoms where there should just be Detina is unbearable.”

  “It won’t happen.” Horace was also an all but indomitable optimist. “When we hit Thraxton, we’ll break him.”

  “May it be so,” Bart said. “Our job is to make it so, and we’re going to do our job. Wouldn’t you agree, Colonel?”

  Horace’s expression declared that Bart hadn’t needed to ask the question. “Thraxton will never know what hit him.”

  “That’s the idea,” General Bart said. “I don’t want him knowing what’s going to hit him, not till it does-and not then, not altogether.”

  * * *

  “How are things back by Rising Rock?” James of Broadpath asked Count Thraxton’s scryer after that scryer finished relaying Thraxton’s latest demand that he take Wesleyton on the instant, if not sooner.

  With a shrug, the fellow answered, “The southrons keep throwing little pissant magics at us every which way, so much so that nobody quite seems to know what’s going on here right now, sir.”

  “Oh, really? Why does that not surprise me?” Earl James rumbled. A moment later, he realized the remark was odds-on to get back to Count Thraxton. A moment later still, he decided he cared not a fig. Thraxton the Braggart already knew what he thought of him. Thraxton, James thought, had many flaws, but stupidity was not among them.

  “Along with everything else, sir, the weather around here’s been so nasty and misty, there could be a southron-or a regiment of southrons-right outside the tent and I wouldn’t know about it till the bolts started flying,” the scryer said. “That’s got something to do with it, too.”