“You wouldn’t be breathing if you had run your mouth,” Florizel replied. Gremio looked for an answer to that, found none, and decided it might have been just as well.

As he’d expected, the Army of Franklin swung back toward the southeast, the direction of the glideway line that kept General Hesmucet and the southrons fed. The Army of Franklin was for the time being making do without a glideway line; the countryside was rich and fertile, and the soldiers had no trouble keeping themselves fed.

Juices sizzled as a fowl-a fowl that had probably belonged to a loyal northern farmer-cooked over a fire. Turning the stick that spitted the bird, Sergeant Thisbe said, “If we can feed ourselves off the country here, why can’t the southrons do the same?”

Gremio started to give that a flip answer, but stopped with the words unspoken. “Good question,” he said after a pause. “The only thing I can think of is, there are a lot more of them than there are of us. Of course, they also have a proper baggage train, and we don’t.”

“We burned ours in Marthasville,” Thisbe said.

“We can move faster without it.” Gremio put the best face on things he could.

“Yes, and we can start starving faster, too.” But Thisbe lifted the fowl from the flames. He blew on it, then drew his knife from its sheath and started carving. Handing Gremio a leg, he said, “You fancy the dark meat, don’t you?”

“Right now, I fancy anything that’ll keep my stomach from bumping up against the notches on my backbone,” Gremio answered. He ate the hot flesh, savoring the grease from the skin. Somebody else had a pot full of turnips boiling over another fire. Gremio got a tin plate piled high with them. He ate and ate, then blissfully thumped his belly. “Do you know what, Sergeant?”

“No, sir. What?” Thisbe spoke with his mouth full: he was still demolishing his plateload.

“Those turnips needed salt,” Gremio declared.

“You’re right,” Thisbe agreed. “But I’m still better with ’em than I would be without ’em.”

“Can’t quarrel with that,” Gremio said. “Can’t quarrel with anything, not any more.” He yawned. “Can’t do anything much right now except roll over and go to sleep.” He wrapped himself in his blanket-much more to hold mosquitoes at bay than to keep him warm-and did just that.

When the army started marching again the next morning, it kept on going southeast. Without a baggage train to delay it, it did move faster than the southron force. General Hesmucet didn’t seem much interested in pursuit, anyhow; maybe Marthasville was enough to satisfy him. Gremio hoped so. He’d had enough fighting against long odds to suit him for a while-for the next hundred years, come to that.

Bell passed well south of Marthasville on his way east. Gremio knew at once when the Army of Franklin returned to land that had seen war already this campaigning season. How long would the swath of war, the gouge of the Lion God’s claws, scar Peachtree Province? If not for generations, he would have been astonished.

He was astonished when Bell passed over the glideway line with no more than a few hasty spells from the sorcerers. “What’s the point of that?” he asked anyone who would listen to him. “Even southrons can put things to rights in a hurry.”

But Colonel Florizel, for once, had an answer that satisfied him: “I hear we’re heading east into Dothan to rest and refit, and then we’ll come back and hit the southrons a proper lick.”

“Gods know we could use rest and refit,” Gremio said, and the regimental commander nodded. Gremio asked, “Will we get any reinforcements? We could use them, too.” They could use them to replace the men Lieutenant General Bell had thrown away in one futile attack after another. Gremio saw no point to saying that, but he thought it very loudly.

Florizel only shook his head. “No reinforcements I’ve heard about, Captain. If we’d had more men handy, don’t you suppose they would have come into Marthasville a long time ago?”

“You’re probably right,” Gremio admitted. “But the southrons keep getting fresh men whenever they need them. It would be nice if we didn’t have to depend on the soldiers who started the war.”

That was an exaggeration, but not an enormous one. Florizel’s answering grimace showed a broken front tooth. That tooth hadn’t been broken when the war was new; Gremio would have taken oath on it. Little by little, the fighting wore the men down in all sorts of ways.

Here, though, marching was easy. Hesmucet mounted no real chase of the Army of Franklin. Maybe Marthasville had been his target all along. Or maybe… “Maybe he doesn’t think we can hurt him any more,” Gremio said once the battered army entered the province of Dothan.

“If he doesn’t, he’ll get himself a nasty surprise,” Sergeant Thisbe declared. “We’ve still got teeth, by the gods.”

Gremio nodded. Man for man, northern soldiers remained at least as formidable as their southron counterparts. Teeth, as Thisbe had said. But how strong were the jaws that held those teeth? The more Gremio thought about the state of the Army of Franklin, the closer he came to despair.

“Corporal, take up the company standard!” Lieutenant Griff commanded.

“Yes, sir!” Rollant said, and he did. Pride swelled in him till he felt about to float away like an inflated pig’s bladder. The more he thought about the state of General Hesmucet’s army, about how far they’d come and how much they’d done, the more he imagined he was on the point of floating away.

That must have shown on his face, for Smitty, grinning, asked him, “You happy, your Corporalship, sir?”

“Oh, just a little,” Rollant answered. “Yes, just a little.”

“Form up for parade,” Griff called to his men. “I don’t want anybody missing a step, not a single step, when we go through town today. Marthasville is ours, and fairly won, as General Hesmucet said in his order of the day. And I want those traitor bastards to know we aren’t just good enough to lick ’em-we can be fancier than they are, too.” Rollant nodded vigorously. He wanted to show up, to show off before, the people who had once bound him to the land. Treat me like a cow with hands, will you? You’ll see!

Horns blared. Griff started shouting again. Colonel Nahath’s order carried farther: “Forward-march!”

Forward Rollant went, holding the gold dragon on red high. The standard fluttered in the breeze. Griff nodded. “That’s good. That’s very good, Corporal. Let the folk of Marthasville see the kingdom’s true flag. They’ve looked at the reversed banner too long.”

Rollant shook the standard to display the dragon better still. He wanted the Detinans in Marthasville to get a good look at it-and at him. He strutted. He swaggered. He displayed the stripes on his left arm as best he could, so the people who’d called themselves liege lords would see what a blond could do when he got the chance.

Marching through Rising Rock the summer before had been enjoyable. Marching through Marthasville…

Lieutenant Griff chose that moment to ask him almost the same question Smitty had: “Having a good time, Corporal?”

Rollant looked around. Lining this main street were hundreds, more likely thousands, of glum-looking Detinans: women, children, and men with beards gray or white. The younger men were in false king Geoffrey’s army. Every single spectator seemed to be looking straight at him. He knew that was an illusion, but even so…

“Sir, I feel about ready to quit this world altogether,” he said.

Griff laughed out loud and slapped him on the shoulder. “I don’t blame you a bit. It must be pretty fine, getting to spit in these northerners’ eyes.”

“As a matter of fact, sir, it is.” Rollant looked at Griff with more respect than he was in the habit of giving the company commander. Griff was too young for his job, and too weedy besides, but he was plenty brave enough, and every now and then proved he wasn’t stupid, either. His remark showed more understanding of the way blonds thought than Rollant would have looked to see from any Detinan, northerner or southron.