Sentry Peak wotp-1

by Harry Turtledove

  One of the directing mage’s assistants strode from one officers’ carpet to the next and spoke reassuringly: “We’re having just a little trouble with the sorcery on this stretch of the glideway, but it’s nothing to worry about. Pretty soon we’ll be going along sweet as you please.”

  “We’d bloody well better be,” James said. The placating smile on the face of the directing mage’s assistant never wavered. Maybe that meant he believed what he was saying. James of Broadpath hoped so. The other alternative was that he was lying and had no shame whatever.

  Before long, the carpets did begin to move more briskly along the glideway. That didn’t mean they ever got going as fast as those on the journey from the Army of Southern Parthenia’s encampment up to Julia had gone. James drummed his fingers on his knee, as if wishing could make the carpets speed up. Magecraft, unfortunately, didn’t work like that.

  Brisk movement or not, the glideway carpets didn’t get into Marthasville till after nightfall. James scowled at the officer waiting on the pier to greet him. “All right, what are you going to tell me’s gone wrong?” he growled.

  “Why, nothing, sir,” the fellow answered. “I’m here to guide you to the carpets to take your army south, that’s all.”

  “That’s what the chap in Julia said.” James raised a bristling eyebrow. “Then he found me half the carpets I needed.”

  “On my honor, your Excellency, I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that here,” the officer said. The captain back in Julia had promised no such thing. James suspected he hadn’t because he had no honor.

  This fellow kept his word, too. All the glideway carpets James’ army needed-and more besides-waited on the southbound glideway path. James called for a scryer. “Be so good as to let Count Thraxton know we’ve arrived in Marthasville with something close to three quarters of our force,” he said. “The rest is about a day and a half behind, back in Julia. Ask him whether he wants me to go down to Fa Layette straightaway, or whether he would sooner have me wait till everyone’s with me.”

  “Yes, sir,” the scryer said, and hurried away to do what needed doing with his crystal. A couple of minutes later, he returned. “Count Thraxton’s compliments, your Excellency, and he says you may use your own judgment. I am also to inform you that he’s trying to bring General Guildenstern to battle between Rising Rock and Fa Layette.”

  “He’s doing what?” Earl James demanded. “Did you hear that right? He’s trying to bring the southrons to battle now, before I can get there with my reinforcements?” Has he-?” He broke off. Has he lost his mind? was what he’d started to say. He couldn’t very well ask that of a scryer, no matter how loudly and vehemently he was thinking it.

  The scryer nodded vigorously. “Sir, the sorcerous link was very clear. I have told you exactly what Count Thraxton’s scryer told me.”

  “All right,” James said. It wasn’t all right, but he couldn’t do anything about it. He plucked at his bushy beard. “In that case, we’d better press ahead with the men we have here and let Brigadier Bell bring up the rest as fast as he can. Tell Count Thraxton’s man we shall hurry on toward him, and tell Brigadier Bell to wring as much speed from the Peachtree Glideway as he can. I don’t care if he has to start shooting people to do it-we’re going to need him.”

  “Yes, sir.” Off the scryer went again. James of Broadpath sighed. He’d heard Thraxton was difficult, but he’d never dreamt the eastern general could make himself so difficult so fast.

  IV

  “Smite them!” Count Thraxton told the messenger. “You tell Leonidas the Priest he is to smite them!

  He is not to delay, he is not to dawdle, he is to smite the foe in front of him with all the strength he commands. If he will only smite them, victory shall assuredly be ours. Tell him that. Tell him that in exactly those words.”

  “Yes, your Excellency.” The messenger’s lips moved silently as he went over Thraxton’s order. Like most in his service, he had a well-trained memory. After a moment, he nodded to himself and hurried away.

  “He is not to delay even an instant,” Count Thraxton called after him. The messenger nodded to show he’d heard and slammed the door on the way out.

  Thraxton’s lips moved silently, as the messenger’s had. He wasn’t committing anything to memory. On the contrary: he was cursing Leonidas the Priest. A terrible thing, to curse a hierophant of the Lion God, he thought. Very likely a useless thing as well: the god is bound to protect his votary. But what a pity if he is. And what must I do to make Leonidas move?

  His long, pale hands folded into long, furious fists. He’d done everything he knew how to do this side of riding up to the front from Fa Layette and kicking Leonidas the Priest in his holy backside. He’d blistered the ears of Leonidas’ scryer. The scryer, presumably, had blistered Leonidas’ ears. But Leonidas, instead of going forth to fall on the foe, had stayed in camp.

  “Why am I afflicted by blundering bunglers?” Thraxton howled; his own inner anguish was too great to let him keep silent. Others looked down their noses at him for losing battles. He looked down his nose at the subordinates who would not give him victory even when it lay in the cupped palms of his hands.

  And it did. As sure as the sun would rise in the east tomorrow, it did. His deep-set eyes swung toward the map. His shaggy eyebrows came down and together in a fearsome, anguished scowl that furrowed his forehead as if it were crossed by the gullies seaming the eastern plains.

  “We have them,” he whispered. “We need only reach out, and we have them.”

  The map plainly showed it. General Guildenstern had split up his army to pursue the one Thraxton commanded. When massed, Thraxton’s forces were greater than any one part of the southron host. He could fall on one enemy column, destroy it, and then turn on the next, and then on the third.

  He could. He didn’t even need James of Broadpath’s men to do it. The southrons still didn’t believe he’d stayed so far south in Peachtree Province. They’d been sure he would scuttle up to Stamboul, or even to Marthasville. He’d laid his trap. They’d stumbled into it. And now…

  And now his own generals were letting him down. He didn’t know what he had to do to make Leonidas the Priest go forward against Guildenstern’s invaders. Baron Dan of Rabbit Hill had a reputation as a splendid soldier, but he didn’t seem inclined to assail the southrons, either. And, as luck would have it, his men were posted farther than Leonidas’ from the foe.

  Maybe I should order Ned of the Forest forward against the enemy, Thraxton thought. But then he shook his head. Not unless I find no other way. For one thing, he reckoned Ned better at harassing the southrons than at actually hurting them. And, for another, Count Thraxton was not inclined to give the baseborn commander of unicorn-riders the chance to win real glory for himself.

  Thraxton looked up through the ceiling of the home in Fa Layette where he made his headquarters. In his mind’s eye, he saw the heavenly home of the gods. Why have you chosen to afflict me with idiots? he asked. If the gods had an answer, they did not choose to vouchsafe it to him.

  He held out his hands and looked at them. They were large-palmed, with long, thin fingers: the hands of a mage-which he was-or a chirurgeon or a fiddler, not those of a general, not really. He contemplated his fingers. They quivered, ever so slightly, as he did so. Somehow, victories kept slipping through them.

  “Not this time,” he said. “No, by the gods, not this time.”

  Sometimes magecraft was not enough. He shook his head. Sometimes one needed magecraft of a sort different from that found in grimoires. Sometimes the direct personal presence and encouragement of the commanding general were all the magic necessary to get a laggard, sluggard subordinate moving.

  “Encouragement,” he murmured, and his thin lips skinned back from his yellow teeth in a smile that would have made anyone who saw it quail. His hands folded into fists again. By the time he got done… encouraging Leonidas the Priest, the man would do what was required of him. Either that,
or Thraxton would try out some of his choicer sorceries on a soldier at least nominally on his own side.

  He muttered another curse. Some of the choicer sorceries he’d aimed at the southrons in battles past had unaccountably gone awry, coming down on the heads of his own troops. He’d managed not to talk about that in the reports he’d submitted to King Geoffrey. Most of the time, he managed not to think about it, too. Every so often, though, the memories would crawl out where he had to look at them.

  “Not this time,” he said. “Never again. May the gods cast me into the seventh hell if such a thing ever happens again.” Even when it had happened, it hadn’t been his fault. He was sure of that.

  And he was sure he could linger in Fa Layette no more. He’d sent the army forward again, and he would have to ride south to be with it, to lead it in the triumph he hoped to create.

  When he came bursting out of his study, his aides jumped in surprise. “Is something wrong, your Grace?” one of the young officers asked.

  “My being here is wrong,” Thraxton answered, “here in Fa Layette, I mean. I must go south to rejoin the brave soldiers who fight for King Geoffrey and our traditional way of life. I am confident that my presence at the fighting front will inspirit my men and make them more eager to fare forth against the southrons.”

  A couple of the aides suffered coughing fits. One of them turned quite red despite his swarthiness. He had so much trouble recovering, another captain passed him a flask. A long swig made him turn even redder, but he did stop coughing.

  “Are you certain you are all right, Nicodemus?” Thraxton asked coldly.

  “Uh, yes, sir. Sorry, sir,” Captain Nicodemus answered. “I had something go down the wrong pipe, I’m afraid.”

  “I daresay.” One of Count Thraxton’s shaggy eyebrows twitched. “You would do better not to suffer another such misfortune any time soon, I assure you. For now, though, go make sure my unicorn is ready. We have the enemy where we want him. Now we needs must strike him before he can pull the parts of his army together to make a single whole once more.”

  “Yes, sir!” Nicodemus said. He hurried to obey. If he also hurried to escape Thraxton’s presence… that did not altogether disappoint the general. Being loved had always proved elusive. Love failing, being feared would do well enough.

  He grimaced. He hadn’t made Ned of the Forest fear him. Ned hadn’t conveniently got himself killed, either. Count Thraxton shrugged. Ned would have more chances.

  When Count Thraxton walked across the street to the stables, the blond serfs who cared for the unicorns fawned on him. So did Captain Nicodemus. He suspected-no, he knew-the display of respect and affection from both aide and serfs was false, but he accepted it as no less than his due even so. Serfs who showed they thought themselves as good as Detinans deserved whatever happened to them, as far as he was concerned. Few estate-owning nobles in the northern provinces would have disagreed with him.

  He swung himself up onto the unicorn Captain Nicodemus gave him and began riding south toward the army’s encampments. He hadn’t gone far before peevishly shaking his head. Had the fighting begun, had the officers who were supposed to obey actually carried out their orders, he could have stayed back here in Fa Layette and let them destroy Guildenstern and the southron invaders in detail. But would they heed him? Another peevish headshake. King Geoffrey had made him commander in the east, but his subordinates seemed unaware of it.

  His aides came boiling out of the building he’d used as his headquarters since abandoning Rising Rock. “What about us, your Grace?” one of them called after him.

  Thraxton reined in and answered over his shoulder: “Come along if you care to.” If they came, well and good. If they didn’t, he would commandeer junior officers from the staffs of his division commanders. Like serfs, like unicorns, junior officers were for all practical purposes interchangeable.

  He didn’t let the aides delay him long. He turned toward the south and booted his mount forward once more. On toward the River of Death, he thought, and then, On toward Rising Rock again, once I give the stinking southrons what they deserve.

  His left hand folded into a fist. He slammed it down on his thigh. The story that refugee had told still burned within him. So Guildenstern had marched into Rising Rock with bands playing and banners waving, had he? When I take Rising Rock back, when I free it from the gods-accursed southrons, I shall have my own parade, and everyone will cry out my name.

  With a nod, he spurred his unicorn up from a walk to a trot. What could be finer than streets lined with hundreds, with thousands, of cheering people, all of them shouting things like, “Huzzah for Thraxton!” “The gods bless the great Count Thraxton!” “Hurrah for Thraxton, savior of the realm!”? Nothing in the world could be finer than that, not to Count Thraxton.

  And let those envious sons of bitches call me Thraxton the Braggart after that, he thought with a sour smile. Let them try. I shall have done something worth bragging about, something none of those feeble little men could hope to match.

  In his mind, he saw himself bowing before King Geoffrey, heard the King acclaiming him Duke Thraxton of Rising Rock, imagined himself taking over broad new estates, earned by the swords-well, actually by the crossbows and pikes-of the men under his command. Maybe that was an even more splendid vision than the one he’d had a moment before.

  He trotted past companies of footsoldiers trudging south toward what he hoped would be the battle. Reality differed from his visions, as reality had a way of doing. He heard one crossbowman say to another, “Who’s that scrawny old bugger? He looks like a teamster, but he rides like he owns the road. Silly old fool, anyone wants to know what I think.”

  “Nobody gives a fart what you think, Carolus,” another trooper answered. “Nobody ever has, and nobody ever will, not even that old geezer.”

  “Shut up, the both of you,” a third man said. “That was Thraxton the Braggart, and he’d just as soon turn you into a crayfish as look at you.”

  Sooner, Thraxton thought. He pointed a finger at the soldier who’d spoken scornfully of him. For good measure, he also pointed at the fellow who’d used the nickname he hated. Then he muttered the spell he’d tried to use against Ned of the Forest. It had failed against Ned. It didn’t fail here. Both men doubled over, clutching their bellies. Then they both sprinted for the bushes off to the side of the road. With a harsh laugh, Count Thraxton urged his unicorn forward.

  He reached the headquarters of Leonidas the Priest as the sun was sliding down the sky toward the western horizon. But, when he stuck his head into Leonidas’ pavilion, he discovered the hierophant of the Lion God wasn’t there.

  “Er-how may I serve you, your Grace?” one of Leonidas’ aides asked. He sounded nervous, probably because he hadn’t expected Count Thraxton to come down toward the River of Death. He had more reason to be nervous than that. If he didn’t realize as much, he was going to find himself in as much trouble as his principal.

  “Where is Leonidas?” Thraxton demanded.

  “Offering sacrifice, your Grace,” the aide replied. “As always, he hopes to win the aid of the gods through his piety, and to enspirit the men he leads.”

  “To enspirit them to do what?” Thraxton asked, acid in his voice.

  “Why, to drive back the accursed southrons, of course,” the young officer said.

  “They why won’t he attack them when I order him forward?” Thraxton snapped. Before the aide could answer, he held up a warning hand. “I don’t care to hear your response, sirrah. I care to hear Leonidas’. Fetch him here. Fetch him at once.”

  “Sir, as I say, he is at his devotions,” the aide replied.

  “Fetch him,” Thraxton said for the third time. “Let the underpriests finish the sacrifice. If he doesn’t care to come, tell him he would do better to cut his own throat than the lamb’s.”

  That sent Leonidas’ aide off at a run. Thraxton folded thin arms across his narrow chest and waited, none too patiently. Before his temper
quite kindled, the young officer came back with Leonidas the Priest, who as usual wore the vestments of his holy office rather than uniform. He looked most unhappy, which suited Thraxton fine. “Why are you harassing me, your Excellency?” he asked.

  “Why do you not obey my orders?” Thraxton roared in return. “We have the foe divided. If we can strike him thus, he is ours. But we must strike. Why do you not move on him when I command it?”

  “Oh.” Leonidas’ eyebrows rose. “Considering how we’ve had to fall back and back lately, and considering how I think we ought to fall back more to defend Marthasville, I didn’t imagine you could possibly have meant your order to go forward.”

  “You shall obey me!” Count Thraxton had only thought he was roaring before. That full-throated bellow made everyone within earshot whirl and stare at him. Even Leonidas, after blinking a couple of times, bowed his head in acquiescence. Thraxton hoped that acquiescence didn’t come too late. Once upon a time, someone had written, Against stupidity, the very gods themselves contend in vain. Whoever that was, he’d probably known Leonidas the Priest.

  * * *

  Doubting George scratched his head. Some things could no longer be doubted, even by him. He’d called his brigadiers together to see if they still found such matters doubtable.

  But when he said, “Seems to me there may be more traitors around these parts than if they were hightailing for Marthasville fast as they can go,” not a one of them argued. Instead, three heads bobbed up and down in solemn agreement and the fourth officer stood mute.

  “I’d say you’re likely right, sir.” Brigadier Brannan might have been the handsomest man in King Avram’s army. He had curly black hair and a curly black beard, elegant eyebrows, and a proud hooked nose. He was also a professional soldier and a connoisseur of catapults; he commanded Doubting George’s dart- and stone-throwers. He went on, “Looks to me as if Thraxton’s decided to hang around and fight.”