“A pass to take you through my lines, so you can bring Duke Brown’s complaints directly to General Hesmucet. Since he is the true cause of my excessive use of the glideways, he is the one who should hear about the satrap’s concerns. He has the name of a reasonable man. I am sure, when he hears he is bothering civilians, he will turn around and march back down to the south.”

“You mock me, sir,” Duke Brown’s man said indignantly. “You mock my principal as well. This shall not go unnoticed.”

“And I shall not lose a moment’s sleep over it,” Joseph the Gamecock said. “I have some small hope of coping with the enemy. But when the idiots alleged to be on my own side commence to move against me, I find myself helpless to resist them.”

“How dare you use such a word, sir?” the civilian said. “How dare you?”

“I dare because I am a soldier, and it is my duty to dare,” Joseph replied. “That is more than the satrap can say.”

“You will go too far, if you have not already,” the man in maroon said, biting the words off between his teeth. “And, speaking of soldiers, I will have you know that Count Thraxton has come to Marthasville, and is examining your conduct of this campaign very closely-very closely indeed.”

“By all the gods, I’m delighted to hear that-just delighted,” Joseph said. “Thraxton the Braggart’s the reason the Army of Franklin was in the fix I found it in-and now King Geoffrey sends him up here to sit in judgment on me? Not a chance he’ll be prejudiced, is there? Not half.”

“Your Grace, I don’t know what you want me to say.” The man in maroon sounded worried-not out of any concern for me, Joseph judged, but because he fears he’ll end up in trouble with the satrap. Well, too fornicating bad for him.

“Go tell Duke Brown that I am going to use the glideways as much as I need to, so I can defend his province for him whether he wants me to or not,” Joseph the Gamecock snapped. “And if by any chance you should happen to see the ever so illustrious Count Thraxton, thank him for me for the lovely predicament he left me in. And now he looks over my campaign? Gods protect me from my friends!”

Had the fellow in maroon velvet lingered another moment, Joseph would have sped him on his way with a good, solid kick in the fundament. He might have realized that, for he withdrew precipitately even without the added impetus of the commanding general’s boot. Joseph’s stomach twinged. Hearing Thraxton the Braggart is around makes me as dyspeptic as he is.

Thraxton had brains. He also had a complete inability to get along with anyone else (a trait Joseph shared) or to make anyone follow his lead (which was not one of Joseph’s difficulties). The only exception to the general rule was that Thraxton had somehow formed an intimate friendship with King Geoffrey, a friendship that endured through thick and thin-and, given Thraxton’s other talents, or lack of same, there’d been much more thin than thick.

He has Geoffrey’s ear. He will drip poison into it. Joseph was as sure of that as he was of tomorrow’s sunrise. He shrugged. He couldn’t do anything about it. All he could do was hold the line of Commissioner Mountain and Snouts Stream as long as possible. The more southrons who died trying to pry him out of his position, the better the chance that the south would sicken of the war and make King Avram quit it or face upheaval at home.

Lieutenant General Bell would attack, the general commanding the Army of Franklin thought. He tossed his head like a man bothered by gnats. Duke Edward of Arlington, when angry, would twist so he seemed to be trying to bite his own ear. Joseph’s gesture wasn’t far removed from that. Bell would do any number of stupid things if only he had the chance. My job, not least, is to make sure he doesn’t get it.

Count Joseph sighed. But how am I supposed to manage that? He saw no clear answer. He’d seen few clear answers since the days when the northern provinces first broke away from Detina. He kept fighting nonetheless.

Once again, your Majesty, our forces have been orderedto make an inglorious retreat, Lieutenant General Bell wrote in yet another of his secret letters to King Geoffrey. Once again, we have taken heavy losses trying to hold a position that could not be held, this time including that heroic and pious soldier, Leonidas the Priest. Once again, the spirits of the men suffer because they always fall back and are never permitted to advance against the foe. How long, your Majesty, can this go on?

Bell examined that, wondering if it was too strong. He decided to leave it in. The king needed to know what was going on up here. If I don’t tell him the truth, who will? Bell thought.

“Commissioner Mountain,” he muttered under his breath. Who would have imagined General Hesmucet could have pushed the Army of Franklin back so far so fast? Who would have imagined Joseph the Gamecock would fall back so far so fast? Bell thought. That was what it came down to. “Disgraceful,” Bell said, again quietly. He wished he could shout.

Reaching for the bottle of laudanum he always carried, he yanked out the cork and drank. Then he sat in his folding chair and waited for relief. He needed ever larger draughts to get it, and got less no matter how much he took.

If he looked back over his shoulder, he could practically see Marthasville. Camp rumor said Count Thraxton had come there to take a long look at the way Joseph the Gamecock was fighting the southrons. Bell didn’t like the rumor. He was the one who was supposed to be informing King Geoffrey of how things were going. He had no great use for Thraxton the Braggart; the man had made a hash of the fighting by Rising Rock. Bell had been flat on his back then, still recovering from the amputation of his leg. He remembered the jouncing agony he’d gone through in the retreat from Proselytizers’ Rise up into Peachtree Province. Thraxton had botched the battle, no two ways about it.

But Thraxton was also Geoffrey’s friend. If the king decided to remove Joseph from his command, would he give that command back to Thraxton? Bell shook his leonine head. “That would be madness,” he rumbled. “Every man jack and every officer in this army knows of Thraxton’s blunders. The command should go elsewhere.”

He knew exactly where the command should go. He’d left hints in his letters to King Geoffrey. Maybe I should stop hinting and come right out and speak my mind, he thought. After all, the safety of the kingdom depends on it.

Voices outside his pavilion-voices, and then one of his sentries stuck his head inside and said, “Sir, General Joseph is here to see you.”

“Joseph? Here to see me?” Even with the gentle cloud of laudanum between himself and the world, Lieutenant General Bell knew his superior must not spy the letter to King Geoffrey. He swept it out of sight beneath some other papers, then nodded. “I am always pleased to see him.” That was a lie, of course, but a politic lie.

When Joseph the Gamecock ducked his way through the tent flap, he looked more pleased with himself and with the world as a whole than was his wont. “Let the southrons come,” he said. “Yes, by the gods, let them come! They’ll bloody their noses on our line, and they can’t outflank it.”

“You have said this before, your Grace,” Bell replied. “You have also proved mistaken before.”

“Not this time,” Joseph said. “As long as the rains keep coming, General Hesmucet will have a devils of a time moving men and supplies for them, and we’ve got solid sets of entrenchments running twenty miles north up Snouts Stream. I don’t think they can do it.”

“And when shall we attack them?” Bell inquired.

Joseph the Gamecock gave him a sour look. “I am in no hurry to make such an effort-and, if you will recall, the last time I tried to persuade you to send your whole wing forward, you broke out in a case of jimjams.”