Smitty seemed stuck, too. He howled curses. Laughing still, the man-the mage-from Marthasville drew a knife and advanced on them. “In King Avram’s name, let us go!” Rollant exclaimed.

And he could move again.

The mage hadn’t let him go, or Smitty, either. When they did move, the fellow’s jaw dropped. He tried his enchantment once more; it did him no good. He tried to flee, but Rollant and Smitty were younger and faster. Rollant brought him down with a ferocious flying tackle. “Cut the bastard’s throat,” Smitty urged. “He’s dangerous.”

Rollant shook his head. “We’ll hogtie him and give him to the provost marshal,” he said. “Practicing magic against us? They’ll make him wish we’d cut his throat.” He and Smitty bound the northerner hand and foot, threw his knife in the gutter, and hauled him away.

After they’d handed him over to higher authority, Smitty said, “You called on King Avram, and that freed us from the spell.”

“I thought the same thing,” Rollant said. “What do you suppose it means?”

“It means King Avram, gods bless him, has a powerful name, that’s what,” Smitty said.

“That powerful?” Rollant asked.

“Well, I wouldn’t have thought so, either,” Smitty said. “But you saw what happened, same as I did. That stinking wizard had us in trouble.” Rollant shivered. The wizard had had them in a lot of trouble. Smitty went on, “Then you spoke the king’s name, and we were all right again. Good thing, too.”

“Yes, a very good thing,” Rollant agreed. “Now we know King Avram is someone very special indeed.” He frowned; that didn’t get his meaning across so well as he would have liked. He tried again: “We knew it before, but now we know it.” His frown got deeper. That still wasn’t right.

Or maybe it was. Smitty said, “We know it in our bellies, you mean.”

“Yes!” Rollant said gratefully. And, knowing it in his belly, he got through the rest of the patrol without trouble. By then, he wanted a chance to use Avram’s name again. As he went back to camp, though, he decided he might have been lucky not to get one.

Jim the Haystack, the burgomaster of Marthasville, stared nervously at General Hesmucet. “You can’t mean that,” he said.

“Of course I can,” Hesmucet said, watching with a certain fascination the ugly wig that probably gave Jim his nickname. “I am in the habit of meaning what I say. I usually do, and this is no exception.”

“But you can’t burn Marthasville!” Jim the Haystack wailed. That dreadful wig seemed about ready to topple over sideways in his discomfiture. He looked like a man who needed to run to the latrine.

None of that mattered to Hesmucet. “I not only can, sir, I intend to,” he said. “I cannot stay here, not while Lieutenant General Bell is running around loose and making a nuisance of himself. If I left the place intact, you traitors would go on getting use from it. I can’t have that, not when I’ve come all the way up from Franklin to take it away from you. And so I’ll give it to the fire.”

“I know your mind and time are constantly occupied with the duties of your command,” Jim the Haystack said, wig nodding above his forehead. “But it might be that you have not considered this subject in all its awful consequences.”

“I believe I have,” Hesmucet said.

As if he hadn’t spoken, the burgomaster went on, “On more reflection, you, I hope, would not make the people of Marthasville an exception to all mankind, for I know of no such instance ever having occurred-surely never in Detina-and what has this helpless people done, that they should be driven from their homes, to wander strangers and outcasts, and exiles? I solemnly petition you to reconsider this order, or modify it, and suffer this unfortunate people to remain at home, and enjoy what little means they have.”

“Very pretty, sir, but no.” Hesmucet shook his head. “I give full credit to your statements of the distress that will be occasioned, and yet shall not revoke my orders.”

“In the names of the gods, why?” Jim the Haystack howled.

“Because they were not designed to meet the humanities of the case, but to prepare for future struggles,” Hesmucet answered. “We must have peace, not only at Marthasville, but in all Detina. To stop war, we must defeat the traitor armies which are arrayed against the laws and the rightful king.”

“He is not the rightful king,” Jim the Haystack said. “He is a low-down thief.”

“Well, that is your opinion. I have a different one,” Hesmucet told him. “Now that war comes home to you, you feel very different. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our kingdom deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. But you cannot have peace and a division of our kingdom.”

“You have the soldiers here,” Jim the Haystack said bitterly, “so you will do as pleases you best. But I still think it is barbarous, truly barbarous, to send the whole of the population of Marthasville off to fend for itself as best it may.”

“I believe you. I appreciate that you are sincere, and that burning this town will work a hardship on the people who live here,” Hesmucet replied. “But winning the war comes first. I also doubt that, earlier in the war, you lost any sleep or shed a single tear when the armies that follow false King Geoffrey made loyal civilians-men, women, and children-flee them, barefoot and in rags, down in Franklin and Cloviston.”

Jim the Haystack looked at him as if he’d suddenly started speaking gibberish. No, the burgomaster cared for nothing but his own people and his own side. That didn’t surprise General Hesmucet, but it did sadden him. Jim only said, “Have you no mercy? Have you no compassion?”

“None, not when there’s a war to be won,” Hesmucet said. “And that, sir, is about all the time I have to give you. You have made your views very plain. Now let me make one thing very plain to you. If any men of Marthasville attempt to interfere with my soldiers in the performance of their duties, I will show exactly how little mercy I have. If you think being dispossessed works a hardship on your population, opposing me will work a much greater one. Do you understand?”

“Perfectly,” the burgomaster replied. “You are saying you not only are a barbarian, but are proud to be one.” Hesmucet stared at him, unblinking. Jim the Haystack flinched. He said, “I will take your words to the honest citizens of the town I govern.”

“Take my words to the sons of bitches, too,” Hesmucet said. “I expect they’re the ones who really need to hear them. Good day, sir.”

Wig still nodding shakily above his brow, Jim the Haystack departed. Once he was gone, Hesmucet allowed himself the luxury of a chuckle. He called for a runner and asked him to summon Doubting George. He was still chuckling when his second-in-command arrived.

“What’s so funny, sir?” George asked.

“The arrogance of some of these northern men, who think they can turn me from my course even after their army has lost battle after battle,” Hesmucet answered. He explained what the burgomaster of Marthasville had tried to talk him into, or rather, out of, doing.

Doubting George shook his head. “Some people don’t understand the way the world is put together,” he said sadly. “Of course, you could say the whole north doesn’t understand the way the world works. If it did, it never would have tried to leave Detina.”

“You’re right about that,” Hesmucet said. “We’re bigger than they are and stronger than they are, and we’re beating them down. That burgomaster didn’t care what his side’s soldiers did farther south, and he never expected to see us come this far north.”

“What Geoffrey calls his kingdom has a miserable scrawny body, but a head full of fire,” George said. “Plenty of fine officers to lead the men, but they have a hard time keeping them in food and shoes and clothes.”