“I’ve got a whole swarm of scouts out ahead of us,” Hesmucet said. “If Joseph wants to try to ambush me, I wish him joy of it.”

“He won’t have an easy time of it,” George agreed. “But he has his own scouts, too, you know.”

Hesmucet nodded sourly. “Every single gods-damned northerner who sees us is a scout for Joseph the gods-damned Gamecock,” he said, and waved in the direction of a woman planting crops in a field. “Her husband’s probably fighting for Geoffrey, and she probably has ways of getting news to his commanders.”

“Too true,” George said. “The other thing you’ll notice in country where we’ve been around for a while is that you’ll see almost no blonds in the fields. They will all have abandoned their lands and their liege lords and run off to us.”

“I know,” Hesmucet replied. “And gods damn me to the hells if I know whether that’s a good thing or not, Lieutenant General. I have no great use for blonds. I never have, and I probably never will. I don’t know what the devils we’re going to do with all these northern blonds if they aren’t going to be serfs any more. And if anybody, including King Avram himself, has any clearer notion, it would come as a great surprise to me.”

Doubting George chuckled. “You sound more like a northern aristocrat than many a northern aristocrat I’ve heard. If you feel that way, why didn’t you side with Grand Duke Geoffrey against King Avram? Some few southrons did.”

“And they’re all traitors, too, and they all deserve to be crucified for treason right along with Geoffrey,” Hesmucet ground out. “It’s very simple, as far as I’m concerned. There is only one Kingdom of Detina. One, mind you, not two or three or twelve or twenty-seven. And there’s no doubt whatsoever that Avram is the rightful King of Detina. As far as I can see, that settles that. I’m a simple man. I don’t much believe in or care about complicated arguments.”