Jim the Haystack looked at him as if he’d suddenly started speaking gibberish. No, the burgomaster cared for nothing but his own people and his own side. That didn’t surprise General Hesmucet, but it did sadden him. Jim only said, “Have you no mercy? Have you no compassion?”
“None, not when there’s a war to be won,” Hesmucet said. “And that, sir, is about all the time I have to give you. You have made your views very plain. Now let me make one thing very plain to you. If any men of Marthasville attempt to interfere with my soldiers in the performance of their duties, I will show exactly how little mercy I have. If you think being dispossessed works a hardship on your population, opposing me will work a much greater one. Do you understand?”
“Perfectly,” the burgomaster replied. “You are saying you not only are a barbarian, but are proud to be one.” Hesmucet stared at him, unblinking. Jim the Haystack flinched. He said, “I will take your words to the honest citizens of the town I govern.”
“Take my words to the sons of bitches, too,” Hesmucet said. “I expect they’re the ones who really need to hear them. Good day, sir.”
Wig still nodding shakily above his brow, Jim the Haystack departed. Once he was gone, Hesmucet allowed himself the luxury of a chuckle. He called for a runner and asked him to summon Doubting George. He was still chuckling when his second-in-command arrived.
“What’s so funny, sir?” George asked.
“The arrogance of some of these northern men, who think they can turn me from my course even after their army has lost battle after battle,” Hesmucet answered. He explained what the burgomaster of Marthasville had tried to talk him into, or rather, out of, doing.
Doubting George shook his head. “Some people don’t understand the way the world is put together,” he said sadly. “Of course, you could say the whole north doesn’t understand the way the world works. If it did, it never would have tried to leave Detina.”
“You’re right about that,” Hesmucet said. “We’re bigger than they are and stronger than they are, and we’re beating them down. That burgomaster didn’t care what his side’s soldiers did farther south, and he never expected to see us come this far north.”
“What Geoffrey calls his kingdom has a miserable scrawny body, but a head full of fire,” George said. “Plenty of fine officers to lead the men, but they have a hard time keeping them in food and shoes and clothes.”
“I like the figure,” Hesmucet said. “We southrons, we’ve had a big, strong body with a head full of rocks. But the north will never be anything but scrawny, no matter how fiery its head gets. And our head can get a little fire of its own.”
“Just so,” George agreed. “You and Marshal Bart have gone a long way towards proving that. You’ve whipped the Army of Franklin, and Bart’s got the Army of Southern Parthenia penned up north of Nonesuch.”
“Only trouble here is, Bell doesn’t know he’s whipped, gods damn him,” Hesmucet said. “He keeps wanting to make trouble.”
“People who want to make trouble find themselves in it more often than not,” George observed. “I don’t think Bell will be different from any of the rest.”
“I intend to go after him,” Hesmucet said. “He thinks he can give us fits by cutting the glideway link from Rising Rock. I don’t think he can do it for long, but even if he does, what difference will it make? His gods-damned army’s living off the countryside now. Does he think we can’t do the same?”
“If he does, he’s a fool,” Doubting George said. “Of course, nothing much he’s done in this campaign would make me believe he’s not a fool.”
“I’m going ahead with things just as planned,” Hesmucet said. “We chase the people out of Marthasville, we burn the place, we leave a garrison behind to hold the ruins and keep the traitors from getting any more glideway carpets through, and then we go after the Army of Franklin.”
“Sounds good to me, sir,” George said.
The only people to whom it didn’t sound good were the inhabitants of Marthasville. Their opinions mattered not at all to General Hesmucet. They cursed and reviled him as his provost guards routed them from their homes. “You may stay if you like,” he said cheerfully. “You’ll go up in smoke, but you may stay. I won’t stop you, but I sure as hells will burn you.”
They cursed him harder than ever after that, but not a one of them stayed to burn with the city. He’d expected nothing different.
The stink of smoke still lingered in the air from the time when Bell’s men had fired whatever they couldn’t bring with them. “I bet the traitors had a roaring good time burning things,” Hesmucet told one incendiary. “But we’ll have a better one, on account of this whole stinking town goes up now.”
Go up Marthasville did. Hesmucet’s soldiers spread cooking oil and whale oil all through the city before starting their blazes. That made the fires flare up even hotter and brighter when the men did set them. Hesmucet took off his hat and fanned his face with it, but the heat still made drops of sweat run down his cheeks.
Not far from him, a northern woman cried out in despair: “Traa! I’ve got to get back to Traa!”
“Oh, shut up, you stupid bitch,” said the handsome man with jug-handle ears next to her. “The southrons burned that place weeks ago.”
“You go to the hells, Thert the Butler!” the woman said furiously. “I’ll build it up again, you see if I don’t.”
“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a-” Thert answered, and then howled, because she kicked him in the shin.
“Move along, both of you!” a provost guard shouted. “Move along right now.” He was a blond. Not only that, Hesmucet saw, he was a corporal. If the northern man noticed that, he wouldn’t like it at all. But he seemed more interested in quarreling with the woman than in arguing with the provost guard.
As the flames took hold and spread, the provost guards stopped having to order people to abandon the burning Marthasville. No one could stay in or close to those flames and hope to live. Hesmucet, no coward, had to retreat himself. He watched the fires from a distance of several hundred yards.
Not far from him, an artist sketched the scene. Hesmucet nodded approval. “You get it down just the way it looks,” he said. “I want people to remember this for the next hundred and fifty years.”
“That’s what I’m doing, sir,” the artist said. “Let people see what they get for rebelling against the rightful king.”
“Good,” Hesmucet said. “People should see such things. They should know what treason costs. If the gods be kind, we’ll never have to fight another war like this in all the history of the kingdom.”
“That’s what I’m hoping for, sir,” the artist said. “You’ve certainly set the scene for me, I will say that.”
“No, indeed.” Hesmucet shook his head. “The men who followed false King Geoffrey into betrayal set this scene for you. If not for them, Marthasville would still be a thriving northern town.”
“Yes, sir.” The artist nodded vigorously. “Instead, they’ve got-this.” He held up the sketch so Hesmucet could get a good look at it. The flames from the burning city gave the commanding general plenty of light.
“Good job,” he said. “Gods-damned good job. Let it be a warning to those who talk of treason and rebellion. We ought to be fighting out on the eastern steppes, driving back the blond savages who’ve caused us so much trouble over the years. That’s what we ought to be doing, not squabbling amongst ourselves. Geoffrey’s treason has cost us years-years, I tell you-in which we could have been bringing this whole great land under Detinan rule.”
“Can’t turn blonds into serfs any more,” the artist said, perhaps incautiously.
But General Hesmucet, in an expansive mood, shrugged instead of snarling. “Those savages wouldn’t make good serfs anyway,” he said. “They don’t bend, the way the blonds in the kingdoms of the northeast did hundreds of years ago. They break instead. They’re brave men; I don’t deny it-they might almost be Detinans, as far as that goes. But we
will break them, and sweep them off the land, and use it for our own purposes.” He might almost have been talking of breaking so many untamed unicorns.
The artist nodded again and returned to his work. I’d better do the same, Hesmucet thought. He shouted for his unicorn. When he’d swung up onto the beast, he rode rapidly up toward the head of his army. Every few hundred yards, the marching men in gray tunics and pantaloons would raise a cheer. Each time they did, Hesmucet took off his hat and waved it. Every cheer made him feel as good as if he’d just had a strong slug of spirits.
“Are we going to lick these stinking northern sons of bitches?” he called to the men as he took his place at the fore.
“Yes, sir!” the soldiers shouted, and raised another cheer.
“Are we going to make them sorry they ever tried to pull out of Detina?”
“Yes, sir!” The yells came louder than ever.
“Are we going to make them wish gods-damned Geoffrey’s father had pulled out of his mother?”
“Yes, sir!” This time, bawdy laughter mixed with the soldiers’ replies.
“All right, then,” Hesmucet said. “We are the meanest, toughest bunch of soldiers the Kingdom of Detina has ever seen. We have licked the traitors, and we’re going to go right on licking them, and there isn’t one single gods-damned thing they can do about it. And what do you think of that?”
By their yells and whoops, the men liked the idea. Hesmucet liked it, too. But there was one thing the northerners might do, and he knew it. If they did cut the supply line back to Rising Rock and keep it cut, his life would get harder. Have to make sure they don’t keep it cut, then, he thought, and hoped he could manage that.
* * *
Horns blared, all through the camp of the Army of Franklin. “Forward!” Colonel Florizel shouted.
“Forward!” Captain Gremio echoed. Forward the men of his company, Florizel’s regiment, and the whole Army of Franklin went, west out of Dothan and back into Peachtree Province once more. Lieutenant General Bell had grit, if nothing else. And a few days to rest and recuperate, a few days away from the hells Marthasville had become, did wonders for the army. By the way they marched, the men once more believed they could lick any number of southrons on the face of the earth.
Gremio wasn’t so sure they were right. But now they weren’t pinned in the city. Now they could pick where along Hesmucet’s tenuous supply line they attacked. The supply line surely had more weaknesses than the army did.
It had better have more weaknesses than the southron army did, Gremio thought. If it doesn’t, we won’t be able to hurt it. And if we can’t hurt it, we-and Geoffrey’s kingdom-are in a lot of trouble.
Sergeant Thisbe tramped along beside Gremio, never complaining, always competent. Catching the company commander’s eye on him, he nodded and said, “We’ll give it our best shot, sir.”
“I know we will,” Gremio answered. “That’s what we have to do. Uh, one of the things we have to do,” he amended. Remembering one of the other things the Army of Franklin had to do these days, he raised his voice to a shout: “Foragers out to the flanks! Move, move, move!”
Move the men did, many of them with grins on their faces. The Army of Franklin had no formal supply train, not any more. The southrons had closed all the glideway lines into Marthasville, and east of the city those were few and far between. If the army was to survive, it had to live off the countryside. The men had done that plenty of times in enemy-held territory, less often in land nominally ruled by King Geoffrey. But necessity made a stronger law than any of the ones Gremio had argued in the lawcourts. The soldiers took what they needed, and worried not at all about it.
“A good thing this is rich country,” Thisbe remarked as the foragers went a-scrounging. “We’d be hungry if it weren’t.”
“True enough,” Gremio said. “Good for us-but it’s also good for the southrons. Even if we do cut them off from their base of supply, they may well be able to live off the country, too. I worry about that.”
“Do you really think they can forage as well as we can, sir?” Thisbe asked.
Gremio laughed. “I’d have to doubt that,” he admitted. “We’ve got the best collection of thieves left uncrucified running around loose in this army. They’ll nab anything that isn’t nailed down, and they’ll try to pry up the nails if it is. I’m proud of them, by the gods.”
“Where exactly are we headed for?” Thisbe said.
With another laugh-a sardonic one this time-Gremio answered, “What, you think they tell me anything?” He raised his voice again, this time to call to Colonel Florizel: “Sir, where are we going?”
“Back to Whole Mackerel, from what I hear,” Florizel replied from unicornback. “The southrons have a supply base there. If we take it away from them, we live high on the hog for a while, and they don’t.”
“Sounds good to me.” Gremio imagined plundering a southron supply base. His mouth watered at the thought of it. But food wouldn’t be the only thing there. He thought of shoes and pantaloons and medicines and all the other things that kept an army going and that were in sadly short supply in the north.
A farmer wailed as foragers took his livestock. “You bastards are nothing but a pack of brigands!” he wailed. “Might as well have the gods-damned southrons here instead.”
“You will be compensated for your loss,” Gremio said. He pulled a scrap of paper and a pencil from a pantaloon pocket. “Let me have your name and what was taken from you. I will write you a receipt.”
“A receipt? A gods-damned receipt?” the farmer shouted. “Who in the hells is going to pay me for whatever’s wrote on a stinking receipt?” Every use of the word seemed filled with greater scorn.
“King Geoffrey’s government will, sir, after the war is won,” Gremio answered.
Snatching the paper form his hand, the farmer tore it to shreds and flung those shreds to the breeze. “Bugger King Geoffrey’s government with a pine cone!” he cried. “The son-of-a-bitching thing’s gonna be as dead as shoe leather when the war’s over. Why in the hells didn’t I get southrons stealing from me? Their receipts’d be worth something later on, I reckon.”
“Be careful how you speak,” Gremio said coldly. “You tread close to treason.”
“Futter you, too, pal,” the farmer said. “I talk like a free Detinan, on account of I gods-damned well am one. If you don’t like it, too bad. You think we’ve got a chance of winning against King Avram’s bastards? You got to be crazy if you do, and you don’t look like no crazy man to me.” He stormed off, still cursing.
Captain Gremio stared after him. He didn’t think he was a crazy man, and he didn’t think it likely King Geoffrey’s men could beat King Avram’s. After more than three years of war, that seemed a very forlorn hope indeed. Why go on fighting, then? he wondered.
He shrugged. The Army of Franklin wasn’t beaten yet. As long as Lieutenant General Bell could still strike the encroaching southrons, the northern cause wasn’t lost. We have to keep trying, Gremio thought. As long as we keep trying, something good may happen. If we give up, it surely won’t.
Was that reason enough? Gremio shrugged again. He didn’t know. He did know some detachments of provost marshals were crucifying deserters. That was another good reason to stay on.
General Hesmucet’s men had unicorn-riders patrolling well east of the glideway line. Gremio got only a glimpse of them as they rode off to the west to let the main body of southrons know they’d spotted the Army of Franklin. He sighed. “I wish we could have taken Whole Mackerel by surprise.”
“When the southrons came at it, they came at it from out of the east, and now we’re doing the same thing,” Sergeant Thisbe said. “That’s strange.”
“I hadn’t thought about it like that, but you’re right,” Gremio said. “One thing: the foraging won’t be so good from here on out. The southrons will have been there before us. We’ll just have to run them out of the place and take away all the food they’ve stored up in tow
n.”
He made it sound very easy. If fighting the southrons were easy, though, Bell would have done better all through this campaign. Of course, Hesmucet had always had the advantage of numbers. He wouldn’t here. Gremio didn’t know how big the garrison at Whole Mackerel was, but it couldn’t hope to match the whole Army of Franklin. The rest of Hesmucet’s army would still be up near Marthasville.
That meant… “We’d better move fast,” Gremio said. “We have to take the town before they can reinforce it.”
“That makes good sense, sir,” Sergeant Thisbe agreed.
It might have made good sense to them. It didn’t seem to have crossed Bell’s mind. He paused to camp for the night about five miles outside of Whole Mackerel. “We ought to keep going,” Gremio said discontentedly.
“I’m pleased to see your spirit,” Colonel Florizel told him. “Still and all, though, we’ll do better going in fresh and well rested.”
“True, sir,” Gremio said. “But the southrons will have all night to get ready for us, and that won’t help our attack.”
“You really are bolder than you were,” Florizel said. “You can’t attack by yourself, though.”
Gremio didn’t think he was any bolder than he’d ever been. He was just quibbling over tactics, as he often did. When he complained because he thought Bell was charging ahead when he shouldn’t, Florizel reckoned him a coward. He’d been right then, but it hadn’t done any good. Now he thought Bell was hanging back when he ought to go on. That made the regimental commander happier, but it also wouldn’t change anything else.
Maybe I ought to keep my mouth shut, Gremio thought. For a Detinan, and especially for a Detinan barrister, that was a very strange notion indeed.
Horns blared before daybreak the next morning, ordering the northern army into line of battle. “We’ll do the best we can, and we’ll strike the enemy a strong blow for King Geoffrey,” Gremio told his men. They raised a cheer.
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