[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

of there, when I left Adlai for Rising Rock here. If they can move up to the
Brownsville Ferry here"  he pointed again, this time only about eight miles
east of town "while we send men out that far, we'll hold either the river or
a good road all the way from Bridgeton to here."
George studied the map. "That's not a bad notion," he said at last. "It might
be worth trying." Fighting Joseph was a pretty good division commander, though
he'd failed as head of an army in the west.
"Glad you agree," Bart said. "I've already given the orders. Joseph will move
out today, and Brigadier Bill the Bald goes out of here tonight under cover of
darkness with all the bridging equipment he needs to span the Franklin at
Brownsville. He's a good officer and a pretty good soldier. He shouldn't have
any trouble at all."
"You've . . . already given the orders?" George said.
"That's right." Bart nodded. "I don't see any point to wasting time. Do you?"
"When you put it that way, no sir," George answered in some bemusement.
General Guildenstern would have spent endless hours bickering in councils of
Page 165
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
war, and would have ended up sitting on his haunches while Rising Rock
starved. That was what Count Thraxton hoped would happen.
"All right, then," Bart said. "I already told you if we're going to set about
fixing things, we'd better fix them."
"True enough." Doubting George studied the new commanding general. "I don't
think enough people know what to expect from you, sir."
"If they don't, they'll find out," Bart said. "If the traitors we're up
against don't find out quite soon enough, that won't break my heart." He
laughed briefly. "James of Broadpath's men are holding that stretch of line.
Nothing like giving my old groomsman a little surprise."
"You're lookingforward to this!" George exclaimed.
"You bet I am," General Bart replied. "George, you know it as well as I
do the northerners have got no business tearing this kingdom apart. If you
thought different, you'd be fighting for Geoffrey, not Avram."
"So I would a lot of men from Parthenia are," George said. "Brave men, too,
most of them."
"Brave men don't make a bad cause good by fighting for it, and they're
fighting for a bad cause a couple of bad causes, in fact," Bart said. "Making
their living from the sweat of serfs is a nasty business, nothing else but."
He paused. "I don't mean that personally, of course."
"Of course," Doubting George said dryly. "I have no serfs, not any
more Geoffrey confiscated my lands when I declared for Avram."
"Yes, I'd heard that." Bart did something George had rarely seen him do: he
hesitated. At last, he asked, "Does it bother you?"
"Having my property confiscated? Of course it does," George answered. "I
don't imagine Duke Edward is very pleased with King Avram for doing the same
thing to him." He eyed his superior. "Or did you mean, does it bother me that
I have no serfs any more?"
"The latter," Bart replied. "Forgive me if the question troubles you. But
there are few men who were liege lords serving in King Avram's army, for in
the south the serfs have been unbound from the land for a couple of
generations. If my curiosity strikes you as impertinent, do not hesitate to
say so."
"By no means, sir." George had had other southron officers ask him similar
questions, though few with Bart's diffidence and Bart, being his commander,
had the least need for diffidence. George went on, "I would sooner this were
only a fight to hold the kingdom together, that everything else could stay the
same. But I see it is not so, and cannot be so, and that the nobles in the
north are using their serfs in every way they can short of putting crossbows
in their hands to further the war against our rightful king. That being so, I
see we have to strike a blow not just against Geoffrey but also against the
serfdom that upholds him. But the kingdom will not be the same afterwards."
He waited to see how General Bart would take that. The commanding general
stroked his close-cropped beard. "I have judged from how you have conducted
yourself in the fights you've led that you were a man of uncommon common
sense, if you take my meaning. What you said just now has done nothing to
change my opinion."
Page 166
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"Thank you very much, sir." Doubting George did not have his nickname for
nothing; he'd been born with a cynical cast of mind. He was surprised at how
much the commanding general's praise pleased him a telling measure of how much
Bart himself had impressed him. "Do you know, sir, there's a great deal more
to you than meets the eye."
"Is there?" Bart said, and George nodded emphatically. The commanding general
shrugged in a self-deprecating way. "There could hardly be less, you know."
Even in the north, he would never have been a liege lord. Everything he was,
he owed to Detina's army. Without his training at the officers' collegium, he
might have ended up a tanner himself. When he'd left the army before King
Avram's accession, he'd failed at everything he tried. People said he'd dived
down the neck of a bottle. Maybe it was true; something in his eyes suggested
to George that it was: a certain hardness, perhaps. But Guildenstern drank to
excess in the middle of a battle, and George doubted General Bart would ever
do such a thing. Bart had been through that fire, and come out the other side.
Now the commanding general shook his head slightly, as if to divert the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]