“Any noble who tried disobeying Ned would be sorry afterwards,” Ormerod said, which didn’t mean he thought Gremio was wrong. Though only a minor noble himself, he didn’t like the idea of obeying a jumped-up serfcatcher, either. But thinking of serfcatching made him notice Rossburgh in a way he hadn’t before. He was just about out of the place by then, but that didn’t matter. Turning to Gremio, he asked, “You notice anything funny about this town?”
“Aside from its being the place they made the woodcut of when they wrote the lexicon entry for `the middle of nowhere,’ no,” the barrister answered.
“Not enough blonds,” Ormerod said. “Hardly any blonds at all, in fact. They must have run away with the southrons.”
“Nothing we haven’t seen before,” Gremio said, though that wasn’t strictly true. Thraxton’s men hadn’t often been lucky enough to recapture land from which the southrons forced them. The serfs had shown their opinion of living under King Geoffrey-they’d shown it with their feet. Ormerod didn’t much care to see that opinion expressed.
The regiment encamped a few miles south of Rossburgh as the sun slid below the horizon. Major Thersites prowled from one fire to another. When he came to the one beside which Ormerod and Gremio sat, he said, “Well, even if the general doesn’t know what in the seven hells he’s doing, maybe things will turn out all right. Maybe.” Thersites didn’t sound as if he believed it.
Even though Gremio and Ormerod had been saying very much the same thing, it sounded different in Thersites’ mouth. They’d said it with regret. Thersites spoke with relish, as if he’d expected nothing better from Thraxton and the other nobles set over the army. Ormerod said, “We have to think they’re doing the best job they can.”
“If they are, gods help us all,” Thersites said. “If I wanted a rock garden outside my house, I know whose heads I’d start with. If these are the best we can do, I reckon we deserve to lose the war.”
“Why go to war, then, sir, if you feel like that?” Ormerod asked. He was too weary to want a quarrel with his bad-tempered neighbor.
“Why? I’ll tell you why. On account of the southrons are worse, that’s why,” Thersites replied. “But that doesn’t make what we’ve got in charge of us any too bloody good. I hate having to choose between thieves and fools, I purely do, but we’ve got more fools in fancy uniforms than you can shake a stick at. I’d like to shake a stick at some of ’em, and break it over their heads, too.”
Contempt blazed from him. Part of it was contempt for the southrons, part for the army’s higher officers. And part of it, Ormerod realized, was contempt for him and people like him. He fit into the neat hierarchy of life in the north. Thersites didn’t, even if he called himself a noble and lived like a noble. He was one who’d forcibly kicked his way into the picture from the outside, and still felt on the outside looking in.
Before Ormerod had the chance to think about what he was saying, he blurted, “You remind me of Ned of the Forest.”
Lieutenant Gremio stirred beside him, plainly unsure how Major Thersites would respond to that. And Thersites in a temper was nothing any man in his right mind took lightly. But the new regimental commander only nodded. “Thank you kindly,” he said, and bowed to Ormerod. “Ned’s a man, by the gods. He doesn’t need any blue blood to make him a man, either. He just is.” He bowed again, then went off toward another campfire.
“Well, you got away with that,” Gremio said once he was out of earshot. “I wasn’t sure you would.”
“Neither was I,” Ormerod answered. “Thersites is… touchy.”
“Touchy!” Lieutenant Gremio rolled his eyes. “Thersites is a fellow who hates everybody that’s better than he is: everybody who’s handsomer, or who has more silver, or who has bluer blood. And since there are a lot of people like that, Thersites has a lot of people to hate.”
“He doesn’t hate Ned,” Ormerod pointed out.
“No, I see he doesn’t.” Gremio spoke with exaggerated patience. “You got lucky-Ned’s everything he wants to be.”
“But Ned hasn’t got any noble blood at all.” Ormerod didn’t think Thersites did either, not really, but nobody liked to say anything about that, not out loud. Thersites’ temper was most uncertain.
“And he’s a brigadier without it,” Gremio said. “And he got the chance to tell Count Thraxton off right to his face, if what they say is true. All Thersites can do is grumble behind Thraxton’s back. He’d probably give his left ballock to be Ned of the Forest.”
“I’d give my left ballock to be back on my own estate, with no more worries than a serf running off every now and then.” Ormerod sighed for long-gone days. “I didn’t know when I was well off, and that’s the truth.”
“Gods curse King Avram for overturning what was right and natural,” Gremio said. “We couldn’t let him get away with it.”
“Of course not,” Ormerod agreed around a yawn. “Not if we wanted to stay men.” He lay down, rolled himself in his blanket, and went to sleep.
Breakfast the next morning was hasty bites of whatever he had in his knapsack. Count Thraxton might not have pursued the southrons so swiftly as Ormerod would have liked, or down the path he reckoned proper, but Major Thersites pushed the regiment hard. It was almost as if Thersites intended to drive General Guildenstern’s army out of Rising Rock all by himself.
That wasn’t going to happen, no matter how much Thersites and Ormerod might want it. Guildenstern had too many men in the town, and they sheltered behind formidable field fortifications. But those works to the north and west of the town weren’t quite so formidable as they might have been.
“Look, boys!” Thersites called, pointing ahead. “I don’t think those sons of bitches have a single man up on Sentry Peak.”
“If they don’t, we ought to get up there and take it away from them,” Ormerod said, excitement in his voice no matter how tired he was.
Major Thersites needed nothing more to spur him into action. Maybe he wouldn’t even have needed Ormerod’s push, though Ormerod had his own strong opinion about that. But now Thersites’ nod was as sharp and fierce a motion as a tiger turning toward prey. “Yes, by the gods,” he said softly, and then raised his voice to a full-throated battlefield shout: “My regiment-to the left flank, march!”
Some of his men let out startled exclamations. They didn’t obey quite so fast as they would have moved for Colonel Florizel. But move they did, scrambling up the steep slopes of Sentry Peak toward the rock knob’s summit a couple of thousand feet above the town of Rising Rock. And not a single southron soldier shot at them or even tried to roll a rock down on their heads.
Ormerod enjoyed himself, scampering like a mountain antelope and leaping from one boulder to another with a childlike zest he hadn’t known he could still muster. If he fell during one of those leaps, he would be very sorry. All the more reason not to fall, he told himself, and leaped again.
He wasn’t the only one whooping like a little boy, either. Half the company, half the regiment, squealed with glee as they climbed. And, once Thersites had shown the way, the regiment wasn’t the only force scaling Sentry Peak. No one above the rank of colonel had ordered the ascent, but it made obvious good sense to everyone near the foot of the mountain.
Panting more than a little, Lieutenant Gremio said, “I do believe I would have fallen over dead if I’d tried to make this climb back before I took service with King Geoffrey’s host. It’s made a man of me. I spent too many years peering at law books. No more.”
“No, no more.” Ormerod hadn’t wasted his time with books before Geoffrey raised his banner in the north. He’d worked on his estate, worked almost as hard as the serfs whose liege lord he was. But he was a fitter, harder man after two and a half years of war, too.