“Half our army is smaller than the whole of his,” George said slowly. “Not a lot smaller, mind you, but it is.”

“So what?” General Guildenstern answered, airily once more-or perhaps the spirits were starting to have their way with him. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a dozen times: my guess is that he’s hightailing it for Stamboul.”

“I’m still not sure you’re right about that, sir,” Doubting George said, in lieu of some stronger and less politic expression of disagreement.

“So what?” Guildenstern repeated. That struck George as a cavalier attitude even for a cavalier. But then the commanding general went on, “Suppose I am wrong. Suppose Thraxton the Braggart’s lurking in the undergrowth just outside of town here. Suppose he hits you when you come after him.”

“I am supposing all that, sir,” George replied. “I don’t suppose I like any of it very much.”

“By the gods, why not?” Guildenstern said. “You said it yourself: half our army isn’t much smaller than all of his. Suppose he does attack you. Don’t you think you can keep him in play till I come up with the rest of our troopers? Don’t you think we can smash him between us, the way you’d smash a hickory nut between two stones?”

Now Lieutenant General George was the one who said, “Ahh.” He took a pull at his own glass of spirits. Maybe Guildenstern wasn’t the best general in the world (as long as Duke Edward of Arlington kept breathing, Guildenstern surely wasn’t the best general in the world). But he wasn’t the worst, either. The move that flanked Thraxton the Braggart out of Rising Rock had been his idea. And this ploy here… It puts me in danger, Doubting George thought, but it gives me the chance to show what I can do, too… if Thraxton really is hanging around not far north of here. George nodded. “That just might do the job, sir.”

“I think so myself,” Guildenstern said complacently. “How soon can you have your half of the army ready to move?”

“Sir, I can put them on the road tomorrow at sunrise,” George answered. “I know you’ll be ready to follow close on my heels.”

He knew nothing of the sort. And, just as he’d expected, the commanding general looked appalled. “That strikes me as too precipitate,” Guildenstern said. “The army should have at least two or three days more to recover itself before plunging on.”

“We’ve already had all the time we need, sir,” Lieutenant General George said. “Why, just today I had a delegation of soldiers asking me why we weren’t already up and doing.” That was fiction of the purest ray serene. George didn’t care. If it got General Guildenstern moving, he was of the opinion that it benefited King Avram and the whole Kingdom of Detina.

“Insolent rogues!” Guildenstern rumbled. “I hope you gave ’em what they deserved.” If he wanted to be up and doing, it was more likely in a bedchamber than anywhere else.

“Why, yes, sir,” Doubting George said. “I gave ’em each two silver crowns from my own pocket, for being true Detinan patriots.”

What General Guildenstern gave him was a harassed look. Guildenstern might have outmaneuvered Thraxton around Rising Rock, but George had just outmaneuvered the commanding general here. “Very well,” Guildenstern said. “If you set out tomorrow, you may rest assured I’ll follow the day after.”

“Thank you, sir,” Doubting George said. “I knew I could rely on you. I knew the kingdom could rely on you.”

He knew nothing of the sort. What he did know was what a devilish liar he’d turned into. He hoped the Thunderer would have mercy on him. It’s not for my own advantage, he thought apologetically. It’s for Detina. No lightning bolt crashed through the roof and smote him where he sat. He chose to believe that meant the god knew he was telling the truth.

“Yes, we must save the kingdom,” Guildenstern said, as if the idea had just occurred to him. He got to his feet. “And, if I’m going to be marching out of Rising Rock day after tomorrow, I have some urgent business I’d best attend to now.” He bowed to Doubting George and departed.

George suspected the urgent business resided in the commanding general’s pantaloons and nowhere else but. He shrugged as he rose, too. Even in his jaundiced opinion, Guildenstern wasn’t the worst general around. Now that George had succeeded in reminding him of his duty, he would probably do it well enough.

And I have business of my own to attend to, George thought as he left the hotel and hurried through the twilight toward the encampment of the brigades he himself commanded. Sweat ran down his face and down his back and dripped from under his arms. Even though summer was on the point of turning to fall, Rising Rock’s muggy heat made it a place where nobody in his right mind wanted to hurry. Doubting George hurried anyway. Unlike his commanding general, he needed no one to remind him of his duty.

He was shouting for runners as he got to his own pavilion of gray canvas. The young men appeared as quickly as if a military mage had conjured them up. That was their duty, and they would have heard about it had they failed. “Sir?” one of them said, saluting.

“Hunt down Brigadiers Rinaldo, Brannan, Negley, and Absalom the Bear,” George said. “Inform them all that they are to be ready to move at first light tomorrow morning. We shall march on Thraxton the Braggart’s army then, our purpose being to bring him to battle and hold him in place so that General Guildenstern, following behind us, may fall upon him and destroy him altogether.”

The runners stared. Whatever they’d expected, that wasn’t it. After they took it in, though, they whooped and scattered. Reddish dust flew up from under their boots as they ran. The commanding general might be distracted, but they wanted to close with Thraxton.

Before long, the encampment started to stir like a just-kicked anthill, only with rather more purpose. Lieutenant General George chuckled a little and rubbed his hands together, as if he were an evil wizard on the stage in New Eborac. When word reached the half of the army that wasn’t going forward, the half General Guildenstern had kept for himself, that this half was, he suspected Guildenstern wouldn’t be able to stay in Rising Rock for even a few hours, no matter how much he might want to. He also suspected the commanding general hadn’t figured that out for himself. Well, too bad for the commanding general, he thought.

Colonel Andy, Doubting George’s aide-de-camp, came bustling up to him. Andy was a small, plump, fussily precise man, hopeless leading soldiers in the field but brilliant when keeping track of all the things they needed to do to reach the field with everything they had to have to fight well. “Sir, are we moving?” he asked, reproach in his voice. “You didn’t tell me we were moving. How can I be ready when I don’t know what to be ready for?”

“If I’d known, your Excellency, I would have told you,” George said, and set a reassuring hand on Andy’s shoulder. The aide-de-camp was only a baronet, hardly a nobleman at all, but despite that-or perhaps because of it-touchy about the way people used him. “I didn’t know it myself till General Guildenstern gave me the order less than half an hour ago.”

“He should conduct his business in a more businesslike manner,” Colonel Andy said with a sniff. He bowed to George; if he expected punctilious politeness, he also returned it. “What precisely-or even what approximately-are we expected to do, if the commanding general has any idea of that?” His opinion of Guildenstern was not high.

“We’re going after Thraxton the Braggart,” George answered. “The commanding general is of the belief that he’s falling back on Stamboul, or maybe even all the way to Marthasville.”

“What utter nonsense,” Andy said, a view that marched well with George’s own. “Thraxton’s an arrogant boor, but he’s not an idiot.” He added something under his breath. It might have been, Unlike some people I could name, but it might not have, too.