Marching Through Peachtree by Harry Turtledove

Author:Harry Turtledove [Turtledove, Harry]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, Alternate History
Published: 2011-01-08T06:00:00+00:00

across the river. Once that happens, I expect we may fight a bit."

"I suppose so," Rollant said. "But the more time we spend getting ready, the more time the traitors have to dig more trenches of their own. Whenever we come at the ones they've dug in, they make us pay for it." He also ground his teeth when he thought of blond serfs doing the digging for the northern soldiers.

"That's part of the game," Smitty answered. "The idea is to get around the bastards' flanks and hit 'em where they aren't dug in, or else to make them try to hit us when we are dug in instead."

"It would be nice," Rollant said wistfully. "It doesn't seem to happen very often, though, does it?" He swigged at his tea. It would have been better with some spirits poured into it, but pried his eyes open even as things were.

Sergeant Joram happened to be walking by. He glowered down at Rollant. "Are you suggesting, Corporal, that the traitors have better officers than we do?"

Would he ask me a question like that if I weren't a blond? Such thoughts were never far from Rollant's mind. He looked up at Joram and nodded. "Sometimes, Sergeant. Otherwise, we would've licked 'em already, don't you suppose? And sometimes we're better than they are." But not often enough, gods damn it .

He waited for Joram to burst like a flung firepot and spill flames everywhere. But the sergeant only grunted and kept walking. Smitty whistled. "You got away with it," he said. "And I know why."

"It's not because Joram loves blonds any too well," Rollant said.

"No, of course not," Smitty agreed, as if the idea that anyone—anyone Detinan, that is—could love blonds too well was too ridiculous to contemplate . . . and so it probably was. The farmer's son went on,

"You got away with it on account of you're a corporal now. If an ordinary soldier—me, for instance—said something like that, old Joram'd run over him like a herd of unicorns."

On account of you're a corporal now. All his life, Rollant had been on the outside looking in as far as status was concerned. Being born blond would do that in the Kingdom of Detina. Joining King Avram's army hadn't improved things much. A blond who was also a common soldier was at the bottom of two different hierarchies.

But now he was off the bottom of one of them. He had stripes on his sleeve. He was the only blond in the whole regiment who did. Had Joram given him the same courtesy he would have given a Detinan corporal, a corporal whose skin was respectably swarthy, whose hair was respectably black?

"By the gods, maybe he did," Rollant said softly.

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