Courteous and modest as always, Edward murmured, “You do me too much honor, your Excellency,” while returning the bow. He went on, “As I told you, I shall forward your request to King Geoffrey with my favorable endorsement. I do not promise that that will guarantee his approval, of course.”
“Of course,” James said. Even more than Count Thraxton, King Geoffrey was a law unto himself. Maybe that was why he left Thraxton in command in the east: one kindred spirit recognizing another.
“Even so, however,” Duke Edward continued, “you might do well to keep your men ready to move to a glideway at a moment’s notice.”
“Yes, sir!” James said. The duke bowed again, this time in dismissal. More pleased with himself than he’d expected to be, Earl James left his commander’s pavilion.
On the way back to his own, he met Brigadier Bell, who commanded a division of his army. With his flowing beard and fierce, proud features, Bell had been called the Lion God enfleshed. These days, he looked more like a suffering god; he’d had his left arm smashed and ruined two days before the charge up that ill-omened hill by Essoville. The wound still tormented him. The shrunken pupils of his eyes showed how much laudanum he used to hold the pain at bay.
“Will we go, your Excellency?” he asked James. Wounded or not, drugged or not, he was always ready-always eager-to go toward battle.
“Duke Edward will endorse the proposal and pass it on to the king,” James said. “The decision is Geoffrey’s, but the duke thinks he will approve.” Bell whooped. James asked him, “General, can you fight?”
“I can’t hold a shield, but what of it?” Bell replied gaily. “So long as I am smiting the foe, the foe can’t very well smite me.”
“Stout fellow,” James of Broadpath said. He made as if to pat Bell on the shoulder, but arrested the motion, not wanting to cause the man more pain. Bell was like a falcon: take the hood off him at the right time, fly him at the enemy, and he’d always come back with blood on his claws. And if King Geoffrey uses me as I useBell… well, fair enough, James thought. It is the duty I owe the kingdom. A moment later, he had another thought: Duke Edward would approve.
Ned of the Forest preferred camping out with his unicorn-riders to going into Rising Rock to sup with Count Thraxton. Ned had nothing in particular against Rising Rock, or against any other town. He’d served on the burghers’ council in Luxor before Avram became king, and he liked the luxuries only town living afforded. But supping with Thraxton was another business altogether.
“You ever go to a dinner where you wished you had yourself a taster on account of you wonder if the fellow who invited you put something nasty in the food?” he asked one of his regimental commanders.
To his surprise, Colonel Biffle nodded. “Happened once, sir. The fellow who invited me was afraid one of the other gents there was too friendly with his wife. If he’d wanted to poison him, he might’ve botched things and poisoned some other folks, too-me, for instance.” Ned had trouble imagining anyone wanting to poison Biffle, who was as good-natured a man as had ever been born.
Thraxton, on the other hand… “The serf who nursed our army commander, Colonel, must’ve been a wench with sour milk.”
Biffle laughed, a big, comfortable laugh from a big, comfortable man. “I expect you can handle him, Brigadier,” he said. He was a viscount and Ned a man of no birth, but he deferred to the commander of unicorns as if it were the other way round. Most men did.
But Ned’s shrug was anything but satisfied. “I shouldn’t have to try and handle him, Colonel,” he said. “Guildenstern and the gods-accursed southrons should be the ones who have to handle him. I tell you, I spoke frankly to him this evening, and I’d take oath he tried to magic me afterwards.”
At that, Colonel Biffle’s round, pleasant face did take on a look of alarm. “Are you sure you’re hale, sir? Whatever else you may say about him, Thraxton’s a formidable wizard.”
“Not formidable enough,” Ned answered. “Miserable old he-witch has had a whole pile of chances to kick Avram’s men right in the slats. Has he done it? I’ll tell you what he’s done-we’re going to have to clear out of Rising Rock, on account of he didn’t see Guildenstern coming till he was almost here.”
“We really are going to have to leave, sir?” Biffle asked unhappily.
“No doubt about it. Not even a tiny piece of doubt,” Ned said, more unhappily still. “If we stay where we’re at, the southrons’ll run roughshod over us in spite of the great and famous Count Thraxton the Braggart’s mighty sorcery. They’ve got cursed near twice the men we do-of course they’d run roughshod over us. Then they’d bag the whole stinking army, and Rising Rock, too. This way, they just get Rising Rock. Happy day! And once we’re done running, Thraxton’ll make it sound like a victory to King Geoffrey. He always does.” He spat on the ground in disgust.
“What can we do if they run us on into Peachtree Province?” Biffle asked.
“Hit back some kind of way, Colonel. That’s all I can tell you,” Ned replied. “You want to know how, you’ll have to ask Thraxton the Braggart. It’ll be a fine thing, him commanding the Army of Franklin when it’s really the army that got run clean out of Franklin.” He spat again.
Colonel Biffle wandered off, shaking his head. Ned of the Forest didn’t wander. He stalked. He’d eaten his fill with Thraxton, but he checked the cookpots from which his riders ate to make sure the cooks were doing their job. Count Thraxton, no doubt, would have turned up his nose at the food-but then, Count Thraxton turned up his nose at just about everything and everyone. This was what Ned ate most of the time. Not least because he ate it most of the time, it wasn’t bad.
His troopers, those of them still awake, tended their unicorns, currying the white, white hair or picking pebbles out from between their hooves and the iron shoes they wore or doctoring small hurts. Ned nodded approval. “Way to go, boys,” he called. “Take care of your animals and they’ll take care of you.”
“That’s right, General,” one of the riders answered. “That’s just right.”
“You bet it is.” Ned nodded again, emphatically this time, and the rider grinned at having his commander agree with him. Ned grinned, too. What a liar I’m getting to be, he thought. Oh, he took good care of his unicorns when he wasn’t riding one of them into a fight, too. But when he did take saber in hand… He tried to remember how many unicorns he’d had killed out from under him since he went to war for King Geoffrey. Eighteen? Nineteen? Something like that. The generals who were known for their mounts-Duke Edward of Arlington, for instance-didn’t take their beasts into battle.
Ned shrugged. He didn’t care about any one unicorn nearly so much as he cared about licking the southrons. He could always get himself another mount. If King Avram prevailed, he couldn’t very well get himself another kingdom.
There was his pavilion, and there were the serfs who took care of the cavalry’s baggage wagons and the asses and unicorns that hauled them. The big blond men-some of them bigger and stronger than Ned, who was a big, strong man himself-gathered round the general. They were all his retainers-not quite his serfs, since he had no patent of nobility, but he looked out for them and they looked out for him.
They all carried knives. Had they wanted to mob him and melt off into the countryside or run away to the southrons afterwards, they could have. They didn’t. By all appearances, it never entered their minds. One reason for that, perhaps, was that Ned never let it seem as if it entered his mind, either.
He ruffled the pale hair of the biggest and strongest serf. “Well, Darry, what do you hear?” Folk with dark hair often ran their mouths as if serfs had no more notion of what was going on than did horses or unicorns. Ned had taken advantage of that a good many times. His drivers and hostlers made pretty fair informal spies.