When he reached the top of Sentry Peak, the first thing he felt was surprised disappointment: he wanted to keep going up and up and up. But then, as he looked around, that disappointment drained away, to be replaced by awe. He murmured, “You can see forever.”
For the first time, he grasped one of the reasons the Detinan gods lived atop Mount Panamgam: the view. There below Sentry Peak lay Rising Rock, with a loop of the Franklin River thrown around it like a serpent’s coil. Beyond Rising Rock, the flatlands of the province of Franklin stretched out endlessly, green of farm and forest gradually fading toward blue. He wondered if he could see all the way across Franklin and into Cloviston to the south.
If he turned around and looked back the way he’d come, there lay Peachtree Province. If he looked straight west, those distant mountains beyond Proselytizers’ Rise had to belong to Croatoan. And there to the northeast lay Dothan, where the blonds had had one of their strongest kingdoms before the Detinans arrived, and where, as was true in his own Palmetto Province, they still outnumbered folk of Detinan blood.
But his eye did not linger long on the distant provinces. Instead, it fell once more to Rising Rock. “If we can get engines onto the south slope of Sentry Peak here,” he said, “we can almost reach the town itself, and we can surely reach the southron soldiers in those field works down there.” He pointed to the trenches and breastworks near the base of the mountain.
“General Guildenstern was a fool for not letting this place anchor his line north of the town,” Gremio said.
“You’re right,” Ormerod agreed-he could hardly say Gremio was wrong, not when he’d just come out with such an obvious truth. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t take advantage of him for being a fool.”
“No, and we’d better,” Lieutenant Gremio said. “If we didn’t have a fool commanding our own army, we’d be over there” -he pointed east- “astride the southrons’ supply line instead of here just outside of Rising Rock.”
“Maybe Count Thraxton had some reason for doing things the way he did.” Ormerod tried to make himself believe it. It wasn’t easy.
Gremio killed his effort dead: “Of course Thraxton had a reason: he’s a chucklehead.”
Ormerod looked down at Rising Rock, tiny and perfect and almost close enough for him to reach out and touch it. “Maybe we can starve the bastards out anyway. Here’s hoping.” Gremio’s look said he would sooner have had something more solid than hope. So would Ormerod, but he made the most of what he had.
Even though Earl James of Broadpath could heave his bulk up to the top of Sentry Peak and peer down into Rising Rock, even though Count Thraxton’s men also held the peak line of Proselytizers’ Rise, he was furious, and he made no effort to hide it. “Idiocy!” he boomed at whoever would listen. “Nothing but idiocy!”
Some of Count Thraxton’s officers did their best to shush him. “Your Excellency, nothing good can come of these constant complaints,” one of them said.
Another was blunter: “Thraxton is liable to turn his magecraft your way, your Excellency, if you don’t restrain yourself.”
“Let him try, by the gods,” James rumbled. “I’m warded by Duke Edward of Arlington’s personal mage. I think Duke Edward’s mage should be a match for just about anyone, don’t you?” The colonel who’d warned him only shrugged and went away. James of Broadpath also shrugged. Thraxton was a mighty sorcerer-when everything went right. Had things gone right for him more often, James wouldn’t have needed to come east with his division from the Army of Southern Parthenia.
And most of Thraxton’s officers agreed with James, regardless of what their commander thought. Dan of Rabbit Hill and Leonidas the Priest had both backed him when he pushed Thraxton to make a proper pursuit. He had no doubt Ned of the Forest agreed with him, too, though Ned was fighting southwest of Rising Rock right now, holding off Whiskery Ambrose’s effort to come to General Guildenstern’s rescue from the direction of Wesleyton. And a good many lower-ranking officers had sidled up to him to say they regretted how things had turned out after the victory near the River of Death.
None of which, of course, mattered a counterfeit copper’s worth. Thraxton the Braggart commanded the Army of Franklin, and what he said went. King Geoffrey had his victory in the east. Whether he would have more than that one victory, whether he would have everything it should have brought, remained very much up in the air.
“I don’t care how fancy a mage Thraxton is,” James complained to Brigadier Bell. “He has all the vision of a blind man in a coal cellar at midnight.”
Bell looked up from the cot on which he lay. His usually fierce expression was dulled by heroic doses of laudanum. Even so, pain scored harsh lines down his cheeks and furrowed his forehead. Under the blanket that covered him, his body’s shape was wrong, unnatural, asymmetrical. I believe I would sooner have died than suffered the wounds he’s taken, James thought.
The laudanum dulled thought as well as pain. Bell’s words came slowly: “We should be on our way to…” He groped for the name of the town. “To Ramblerton. To the provincial capital. We shouldn’t be stuck here outside of… of Rising Rock.” Even drugged and mutilated, he too could see what James of Broadpath saw.
“There’s no help for it, Bell,” James said sadly. “He is the commander of this army. He gives the orders. Even if they’re stupid orders, he has the right to give them. I’ve argued till I’m blue in the face, and I had no luck getting him to change his mind. If you’ve got any notion of how to get him to do what plainly needs doing, I’m all ears.”
He was just talking; he didn’t expect Bell to come up with anything. What with the horrible wound-gods, Bell couldn’t even have fully recovered from the mangled arm he’d got down in the south less than three months before-and the potent drug, that Bell could talk at all was a minor miracle. The other officer looked up at him from the cot and spoke with terrible urgency: “Let the king know, your Excellency. If the king knows, he’ll do what needs doing.”
Gently, James shook his head. “Remember, Count Thraxton is Geoffrey’s dark-haired boy. If it weren’t for Geoffrey, Thraxton wouldn’t have held his command out here even as long as he has.”
He wondered if Bell even heard him. “Let the king know, James,” the wounded man repeated. “The king has to know.”
“All right,” James of Broadpath said. “I’ll let him know.” He didn’t mean it, but he didn’t want to upset poor Bell. The wound might still kill him, or fever might carry him off. No point tormenting him with refusals at a time like this.
But then, as James left the tent where Bell lay, he plucked at his beard in thought. Coming right out and speaking to King Geoffrey would surely fail; he remained convinced of that. Even so…
“How could I be worse off? How could we be worse off?” he murmured, and hurried away to the pavilion the scryers called their own.
One of the bright young men looked up from his crystal ball. “Sir?”
“I want you to send a message to Marquis James of Seddon Dun, over in Nonesuch,” James of Broadpath said.
“To the minister of war? Yes, sir,” the scryer said. “You will, of course, have cleared this message with Count Thraxton?”
“I don’t need to do any such thing, sirrah,” James rumbled ominously, and tapped his epaulet to remind the scryer of his own rank.
“Yes, sir,” the fellow said-he was just a first lieutenant, an officer by courtesy of his skill at magecraft rather than by blood or courage. Technically, he was in the right, but a lieutenant technically in the right in a dispute with a lieutenant general would often have done better to be wrong. The youngster had the sense to know it. Licking his lips, he bent low over the crystal ball. “Go ahead, sir.”