you want?”
“I want you to get the credit you deserve for saving this army,” Absalom said stubbornly. “You did that, and everybody knows it. You ought to be commanding here—you and nobody else.”
“No, no, no,” Doubting George said yet again. He was more flattered than angry, but he knew he had to look more angry than flattered, and he did.
“But why not?” Absalom the Bear demanded. “You saved the army, and—”
“Enough,” George broke in. Now he really was starting to get angry. “For one thing, I’m a long way from the only one who’s done something like that, you know. Bart saved King Avram’s army at Pottstown Pier, sure as sure he did, and that was an even bigger fight than the one by the River of Death.”
Absalom tried again: “But—”
“No, no, no.” George cut him off again. “I named one thing, but it’s the small one. Here’s the big one coming up. The big thing, the important thing, the thing that really matters, is that we lick Grand Duke Geoffrey and the traitors. How that happens doesn’t matter a copper’s worth. That it happens is the biggest thing in the world. Have you got that, Brigadier?”
Absalom the Bear was eight years younger than Doubting George, and close 写真アップロード to a head taller. Had he so desired, he could have flattened George without breaking a sweat. George knew that. If he knew it, Absalom had to know it, too. But the big, muscular brigadier quailed before him like a young lieutenant taking a dressing-down from the king. “Yes, sir,” Absalom said earnestly. “I’m sorry, sir. 車 買い取り I didn’t mean any harm, sir.”
“No one will use me to play the game of factions in King Avram’s army. No one,” George said. “Have you got that?”
“Yes, sir,” Absalom repeated. “I . . . I hadn’t seen it like that. Now that you point things out to me, I know you’re looking at them from higher ground than I was.”
“All right, then. I’ll say no more about it.” But Doubting George held up a forefinger. “No, I will say one thing more after all. If by any chance you have friends who think the same way you did, make it very plain to them that I will not be a party to any of this. I ask no names. I don’t want to know. But if there has been some stupid conspiracy, I expect it to dissolve.”
“Yes, sir. It will, sir.” Absalom the Bear fled as precipitately as most of General Guildenstern’s army had when James of Broadpath threw his soldiers into the gap in the southrons’ line. But he hadn’t fled quite fast enough. He’d told George what George hadn’t wanted to hear.
Now alone on the streets of Rising Rock, George sighed. His breath smoked in front of his face. The day, like a lot of days lately, was cool and damp and misty. Maybe that mage Hesmucet had found was doing his job. Maybe the weather would have been like this anyway. How could anyone not a mage tell?
At the thought of Hesmucet, Doubting t