“Leonidas the Priest in charge of a wing again!” Gremio said-even easier and more enjoyable to resent a live man than a dead one, for a live man might yet offend afresh, where a dead man’s affronts were fixed, immutable.

After a moment, though, Gremio shrugged. The Army of Franklin hadn’t performed noticeably better without Leonidas than it had with him. Presumably, that meant his return wouldn’t hurt the army much.

Someone coughed behind Gremio, as if tired of waiting to be noticed. Gremio turned. “Oh. Sergeant Thisbe,” he said. “What is it?”

The company’s first sergeant was a lean young man who, unusually for a Detinan, kept his cheeks and chin shaved smooth. Gremio approved of him; he did his job competently and without any fuss. “I was just wondering, sir,” he said now, “if the colonel had any word on when we’d be moving out of winter quarters. The sooner I can prepare the men, the better.”

“Quite right, quite right,” Gremio said approvingly. “But no, Joseph the Gamecock has yet to issue any orders along those lines.”

“All right, sir,” Thisbe said. “I expect we’ll know when General Hesmucet starts moving north against us.”

“I should hope so,” Gremio exclaimed. “This is our country, after all. When the enemy moves through it, the people always let us hear what he’s up to.”

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said. “Same as the blonds do for the foe with us.”

“Er-yes,” Gremio said. It wasn’t so much that Thisbe was wrong. The sergeant, in fact, made a real and important point. “Good of you to think of that.” Here in the north, Detinans were so used to thinking of their serfs as hewers of wood and drawers of water, they too readily forgot blonds were men like any others, with eyes to see, wits to think, and tongues to speak.