Sergeant Joram winced. “Lion God’s hairy ears, Smitty, stuff a sock in it. You couldn’t carry a tune in a knapsack.”

“Sergeant!” Smitty said reproachfully, but he did quiet down.

“I told you you couldn’t sing, too,” Rollant said. “Would you listen to me?”

“I wouldn’t listen to Joram if he weren’t my sergeant,” Smitty answered. “That’s what being a free Detinan is all about: the only person you have to listen to is yourself, most of the time.”

“By the gods, I know that,” Rollant said. “Why do you think I ran away from my liege lord’s estate? I got sick of having somebody else tell me what to do all the time. Wouldn’t you?”

Before Smitty could answer, Joram went on, “And you, Rollant, you sound like a cat just after its tail got stepped on.”

“Thank you, Sergeant,” Rollant said sweetly. Under his breath, he said something else, something less polite. Smitty guffawed. Sergeant Joram sent them both suspicious looks, then went off to harass somebody else.

Smitty said, “I’ll tell you something. Back before the war, I didn’t have any idea what being a serf was like. We haven’t had anybody tied to the land since before my pa was born, not in New Eborac we haven’t. But this whole business of soldiering, of having somebody telling you what to do just on account of he’s got himself a higher rank than yours-it sticks in the craw, it surely does.”

Rollant didn’t particularly like taking orders, either, not when he’d run away from Baron Ormerod to escape them. By the mad fortune of war, Ormerod had almost killed him in the skirmishing before the battle by the River of Death, and he had killed his former liege lord not long after gaining the top of Proselytizers’ Rise. He couldn’t think of many things of which he was more proud.

Still, Smitty needed an answer. Rollant did his best to give him one: “It’s not the same.