If they had tried to fight in Hail, they would have been quickly surrounded and destroyed. That was obvious. Like Doubting George’s army after the fight in front of Ramblerton, General Hesmucet’s force kept extending tentacles of soldiers, hoping to trap its foes. As Joseph the Gamecock had in Peachtree Province, he traded space for time. The difference here was, he really couldn’t afford to lose any more space at all, and he-along with the north-was fast running out of time.
Old men and boys and women cursed Joseph’s soldiers as they marched south through Hail. A white-bearded fellow pointed to the governor’s palace and shouted at Gremio, who stood out perhaps because of his epaulets: “That’s where we started! That’s where we said we wouldn’t be part of Detina any more, not if gods-damned Avram was going to take our serfs off the land where they belong. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“It means a great deal to me, sir,” Gremio answered stiffly.
“Then why the hells are you running away instead of fighting to save it?” the old man howled.
“Why? Because we can’t save it,” Gremio said. “If we try, we’ll lose the palace and we’ll lose this army, too. This way, the army lives to fight” — or to run, he thought- “another day.”
He didn’t convince the man with the white beard. He hadn’t thought he would. The local kept right on yammering complaints and protests. That, of course, did him no good at all. Meanwhile, Joseph the Gamecock’s army went about wrecking everything in Hail that might have been of some use to General Hesmucet. They set the arsenal ablaze: it had more sheaves of crossbow quarrels and more squat, deadly firepots than the soldiers could take with them. Up in flames they went, to keep the southrons from seizing them and flinging them at Joseph’s men.
Bolt after bolt of indigo-dyed wool and cotton cloth burned, too. Hesmucet’s men might dye it gray and turn it into their tunics and pantaloons. Better they didn’t have the chance. So said Joseph, and no one disobeyed. More fires rose up to the heavens.
Joseph had almost waited too long. His little army was just pulling out of Hail at sunset as the vanguard of Hesmucet’s much bigger army entered the provincial capital. Gremio’s regiment stopped for the night a few miles south of town, when it got too dark to march any farther. Campfires flickered to life.
Sergeant Thisbe pointed back toward Hail. “Look!”
Fire made the northern horizon glow red and yellow and orange, though light had leaked out of the rest of the sky. “The town is burning,” Gremio said dully, less sad and surprised than he’d ever dreamt he might be. “Maybe our fires got loose. Maybe the southrons are torching it. What difference does it make now? What difference does anything make now?”
“How can we go on?” Thisbe asked. “The place where everything started… in the southrons’ hands and burning? How can we go on?”
Gremio looked north toward those flickering flames, which leaped higher every moment. Everything in Hail was going to burn; nothing could be plainer than that. And nothing could be plainer than the answer to Thisbe’s question, either. Gremio looked around. No one but the underofficer was paying the least attention to what he said. “We can’t go on any more,” he replied. “What’s the use? It’s over. It’s done. It’s broken. We’ve lost. The sooner this cursed war ends, the better.”
There. He’d said it. That he’d said it felt oddly liberating. He waited to hear what Sergeant Thisbe would say now that he’d said it. The underofficer looked at him for a long moment, then slowly nodded. “Yes, sir,” Thisbe said after perhaps half a minute’s silence, and then, “If that’s how you feel, what do you aim to do now?”
“I’m going home,” Gremio answered. “That’s the best thing I can think of to do.” Now he was the one who hesitated before asking, “Will you come with me?”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said again, this time right away. “I’d be pleased to come along, if you’re sure you want the company.” Thisbe again waited a moment before asking, “Will you tell Colonel Florizel before you go?”
“No.” Gremio shook his head. “That would only put the weight on him, not on me, where it belongs. This is my choice. Florizel’s not a blind man, and not nearly so stupid as I thought when I first got to know him. If-no, when-we run into each other after the war, I’ll explain myself then, but I won’t need to do much explaining.”
“Yes, sir,” Thisbe said one more time.
They left Joseph the Gamecock’s army in the gray half-light before dawn the next morning. Fires from the burning Hail still lit the sky. A sentry challenged them. Someone was still alert and doing his job the best way he knew how. Gremio didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. He gave his name and rank. The sentry said, “Advance and be recognized.” As soon as the fellow saw his epaulets, he nodded and said, “Pass on, sir-and you, too, Sergeant.”
“Thank you,” Thisbe answered, with no trace of irony Gremio could hear.
Leaving the army was easy. Gremio wasn’t sure how hard evading Hesmucet’s men would prove. He hurried west, out of the southrons’ line of march, reasoning they would be more interested in Joseph’s army than in a couple of stragglers from it. His reasoning wasn’t always what he wished it would be, but he turned out to be right about that. He saw men in gray in the distance three or four times. They probably saw him, too, but they kept on moving south. Two soldiers already out of the fight didn’t matter to them.
And Gremio and Thisbe weren’t the only stragglers on the road: nowhere near. Others were getting away from Joseph’s army, too. Civilians were fleeing the wrath Hesmucet’s men were showing against Palmetto Province-and the greater wrath those civilians feared he would show. And blonds were on the road, straggling seemingly just for the joy of straggling. If they weren’t bound to their liege lords’ estates any more, they would go wherever they pleased. That was what their feet seemed to be saying, anyhow.
Both Gremio and Thisbe still carried crossbow and shortsword. That made the other wanderers through the ruins of King Geoffrey’s hopes-and those of Palmetto Province-walk wide around them, which suited Gremio fine.
“What do you reckon Karlsburg’ll be like?” Thisbe asked. “You think anything’ll be left of it at all?”
“I don’t know,” was all Gremio could say. “We’ll find out when we get there.”
Thisbe nodded. “Makes sense.”
Gremio wondered whether anything made sense. The estate he and Thisbe passed that afternoon made him doubt it. Serfs worked in the fields and garden plots there as if the War Between the Provinces had never started, let alone taken this disastrous turn for King Geoffrey’s cause. He wondered what the liege lord had told his blonds. Whatever it was, they seemed to believe it. That would probably last till the first gray-uniformed southron found the place. It hadn’t happened yet.
After tramping on till nightfall, Gremio and Thisbe camped by the side of the road. The sergeant made a little fire. They didn’t have much to eat-only some bread Gremio had brought with him. He hadn’t wanted to take much, for the men who stayed behind were every bit as needy as he was. Once they’d eaten, they rolled themselves in their blankets on opposite sides of the fire and fell asleep.
Two more days of marching (and a little judicious hen-stealing) brought them to the outskirts of Karlsburg. A troop of gray-clad unicorn-riders trotted up the road toward them. Thisbe started to reach for a crossbow bolt, then hesitated. “We can’t fight them all, sir,” the underofficer said. “What now?”
“Let’s see what they do,” Gremio answered.
The southron unicorn-riders made no overtly hostile move. They reined in just in front of Gremio and Thisbe. Their captain looked the two northerners over, then asked, “You boys out of the war?”