Lieutenant General Bell laughed. “That’s the man I knew I had. The gods-damned southrons will be sorry yet.”

“Here’s hoping you’re right, sir,” William said. “Where’s that paper? I want to make sure this is done the way it ought to be.”

Gremio touched a torch to a pile of crates. As they began to burn, he said, “I wonder what’s in these.”

“Wait a while and see what they smell like,” Sergeant Thisbe suggested.

“No time,” Gremio said. “We’ve got a lot more burning to do. And do you know what else? It’s more fun than I thought it would be.”

“Fun? I don’t know about that,” Thisbe said. “What I do know is, we’ve got to do this, or else the southrons will march into Marthasville and use everything we couldn’t take with us.”

“Me, I’m just glad we’re getting out of Marthasville,” Captain Gremio said. “I thought we’d stay penned up here till the southrons took us.” He paused to set another fire.

“Sounds like Lieutenant General Bell’s got himself another idea.” Thisbe started a new fire, too. He looked at the incendiary madness all around, as Gremio was doing. “Between the southrons and us, there won’t be a whole lot of Marthasville left after all this is done.”

“Good,” Gremio said, which made the sergeant send him a startled look. He explained: “Better we don’t leave Hesmucet anything much to get his hands on.”

“Something to that, sir, I suppose,” Thisbe said, “but it’s hard, it’s mighty hard, on the people who live here.”

To the seven hells with the people who live here, Gremio thought callously. He couldn’t see that the folk of Peachtree Province or Satrap Brown had done anywhere near enough to help the Army of Franklin defend this vital town. But he didn’t say that out loud; he’d seen that Sergeant Thisbe was more inclined to give people the benefit of the doubt than he was himself unless he was paid to do so.

“Come on, you men!” Colonel Florizel boomed to the regiment as a whole. “If we’re going to deny the enemy these goods, let’s not shillyshally around. Let’s make a fire the foe will remember to the end of his days.”

Something like wonder in his voice, Thisbe said, “The colonel’s having a good time.”

“Well, why not?” said Gremio, who was having a good time himself. “Doesn’t this take you back to the days when you were a boy, starting fires and raising hells for the sport of it?”

“I hadn’t thought of it like that,” Thisbe admitted.

“You’re too responsible now, that’s why,” Gremio said. “You’re far and away the best sergeant I’ve ever known. If you’d let me put you up for a-”

“Sir, I don’t want a promotion,” Thisbe said firmly, and Gremio had to give it up again.

His long, thin face lit by the hellsish glare of burning supplies, Brigadier Alexander the Steward stalked among the men of his wing. “Hurry it up there!” Old Straight called to the soldiers. “Set the fires and then form up to move out of Marthasville. We’ve still got a hells of a lot of fighting ahead of us.”

Alexander’s tone went further to reassure Captain Gremio than any of the orders Lieutenant General Bell had given lately. Those orders, as Florizel had read them out, seemed an odd mixture of defiance and desperation. Gremio had trouble figuring out whom Bell was defying, the enemy or the gods themselves. The cause for the desperation, however, seemed obvious enough.

“Douse torches!” Colonel Florizel shouted. “Form up!”

Instead of dousing his torch, Gremio threw it onto a fire already burning. Sergeant Thisbe’s joined it a moment later. Officer and underofficer grinned at each other. Gremio called, “My company-form up!”

“Get moving!” Thisbe echoed. “You know what needs doing. Do it and don’t make a fuss about it.”

As the sun rose, the Army of Franklin marched out of Marthasville to the northwest, the only gap remaining in the line the southrons were throwing around the city. Gremio didn’t know how many men General Hesmucet had close by. That worried him. But the southrons evidently doubted they had enough for a successful attack on Bell’s army, for it escaped without incident.

Seeing land that hadn’t been fought over was something of a relief. “Pretty good country,” Colonel Florizel allowed. “Not so nice as around Karlsburg, back in Palmetto Province, but pretty good even so.”

“Yes, sir.” Gremio nodded. “But do you see how many of the serfs’ huts are standing empty? Most of the blonds have run off to the southrons.”

“Gods damn them, and gods damn that wretch of a King Avram,” Florizel said. “How are the lords around these parts going to make a crop now?”

“They probably won’t,” Gremio answered. “But I don’t think Hesmucet cares. Do you?”

“Do I care?” Florizel said-whether sardonic or obtuse, Gremio couldn’t tell. “Gods-damned right I care. This is my kingdom. Of course I care what happens to it. It’s that son of a bitch of a Hesmucet who doesn’t care.”

“Yes, sir,” Gremio said resignedly. He looked back over his shoulder at the great columns of smoke still rising from Marthasville. Either a few soldiers remained behind setting still more fires or the ones already set had spread from abandoned supplies to the city itself. Gremio wondered how hard the southrons would try to put those fires out. Not very, unless he missed his guess.

“Where do you suppose we’ll go, sir?” Sergeant Thisbe asked after they’d marched for a while.

“South, I suppose,” Gremio replied. “I don’t know just when, but I’d think we’re going to have to do that. If we strike at Hesmucet’s glideway line, maybe his army will starve and break up.”

“That would be a splendid victory,” Thisbe said.

“So it would.” Gremio didn’t tell the sergeant he found it unlikely. He found any hope of victory unlikely. Saying as much would have discouraged those who might be more optimistic, though, and so he held back. The men had enough trouble keeping their spirits up as things were.

Well before noon, southron unicorn-riders began dogging the Army of Franklin. They didn’t attack; they just hung close. Gremio waited for the aggressive Bell to order his own riders to drive them away. Those orders didn’t come. What does that mean? he wondered. Did Bell think his unicorn-riders couldn’t drive back the southrons? Or was he so desperate to get away from Marthasville that he didn’t want to waste time fighting? Whichever the answer, Gremio didn’t think it boded well for his force.

When he cautiously remarked on that, Florizel said, “I doubt the southrons will bother us much for a little while. They’ll be too busy with Marthasville, don’t you think?”

Gremio clicked his tongue between his teeth, considering. “You could well be right, sir,” he said.

“We’ve given ’em a present,” the regimental commander said. “They’ll take it. Why wouldn’t they? It’s sitting there for ’em, all sweet and juicy as a blond wench with her legs open.”

“And losing it hurts us,” Gremio added.

Colonel Florizel nodded. “And losing it hurts us,” he agreed. “We’d better cut their army off from its supplies, or Geoffrey’s badly wounded.”

“You… don’t usually talk like that, sir,” Gremio said. And the last time I talked like that, you came as near as near can be to calling me a coward. I had to try to get myself killed to make you change your mind.

“I’m not blind,” Florizel answered. “I know we needed to hold Marthasville. I know we didn’t do it. I’m not stupid, either, no matter what a highfalutin’ barrister might think.”

“Sir, I’ve never said anything of the sort,” Gremio insisted.

“I know you didn’t. I never said you did,” Florizel told him. “I said what you were thinking, and I wasn’t wrong, was I?”

He used words as precisely as if he were a barrister himself. Gremio said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir. You’ve led this regiment well, and I’ve never thought otherwise.” That was the truth, too, even if it wasn’t altogether responsive.