“May it be so, sir,” George replied, “but I have my doubts.”

“Of course you do,” Hesmucet answered. “Why else would they call you Doubting George?” They also called George the Rock in the River of Death; if it hadn’t been for the stand his soldiers had made the autumn before, Thraxton the Braggart’s men wouldn’t just have beaten southron General Guildenstern’s army-they would have annihilated it. George had earned all the credit he’d got for himself that day.

Hesmucet contemplated General Guildenstern’s fate. These days, that worthy was chasing blond savages on the trackless steppes of the east. He was lucky to have been allowed to remain in King Avram’s service: if going off to the steppes to harry savages counted as luck, at any rate.

That could happen to me if I bungle this campaign, General Hesmucet thought. Unusually for a Detinan, he was named after a blond himself: the chieftain who’d given the kingdom so much trouble in the War of 1218. That did nothing to improve his opinion of blonds, and especially of unsubdued blonds. As far as he was concerned, the only good one was a dead one.

He brought himself back to the business at hand. “I had a message by scryer this morning from Marshal Bart in the west,” he told Doubting George.

“Did you indeed?” George said, as if that were a great surprise to him. “And what did the marshal say?”

“That he is moving north today against Duke Edward of Arlington and the Army of Southern Parthenia,” Hesmucet answered.

“Thunderer and Lion God bring him all success,” George said. Hesmucet wondered exactly what the lieutenant general was thinking. Like Duke Edward, Doubting George was a Parthenian. Also like Edward, he was a serfholding noble. Unlike Edward, though, he’d stayed loyal to Avram and the idea of a united Detina rather than going into revolt and treason with his province and false King Geoffrey.

Did George ever stop to count the cost? He’d paid one: Geoffrey had confiscated his lands (as Avram had confiscated Duke Edward’s estate, which lay just across the river from the royal capital at Georgetown). Had George chosen to shout, “Provincial prerogative forever!” he could have kept his holdings-and the north would have gained a dangerous fighting man.