Point of Hopes by Melissa Scott Read Free Book Online Page B

handsome man could go far in Coindarel’s service.
Eslingen had earned his sergeancy the hard way, but his promotion
to lieutenant, and the royal commission that came with it, had come
by way of Coindarel’s roving eye.
    “ Will you be going with Martreuil,
Eslingen?” Bathias asked, and the older man shook himself back to
the present.
    “ No, sir. There are plenty of other
companies still hiring, even this late in the season.” It was a
sore point—Eslingen had lost any claim to gentility when he lost
his commission, and Martreuil, it had been made very clear, was
taking only Coindarel’s gentleman-officers—and he was relieved when
Bathias merely grunted, his mind already clearly elsewhere.
Probably on the palace, Eslingen thought. Bathias was of noble
birth and could claim board and lodging from the queen on the
strength of it, and he could do worse than to be seen at court,
too.
    “ I’m sorry to hear it,” Bathias
said. “You’re a good officer, and could do well in the royal
service.”
    “ Thank you, sir.” Eslingen kept his
face still with an effort, waiting for the dismissal. The line at
the paymaster’s table had dwindled to a single trooper, a skinny,
huge-handed former stable boy whom Eslingen had signed on at an inn
outside Labadol because he’d needed someone who could handle the
major-sergeant’s bad-tempered gelding. Then he, too, had accepted
his pay and made his mark on the muster list, and turned away to
join his fellows waiting at the edge of the Drill Ground. The
taverns and inns where most of the recruiting officers did their
work lay only a few steps away, along the Horse-Gate
Road.
    “ You’ve served me well,” Bathias
said, and held out his hand. Eslingen took it, startled at this
presumption of equality, and then Bathias had released him, and was
reaching into his own wide sash. “And, Eslingen. I know you’re not
a sergeant anymore, but I also know we didn’t serve out the season.
Will you take this from me, as a token of my appreciation?” He held
out a bag the size of a man’s hand. It was embroidered—not
expensively, Eslingen thought, probably by one of the farm-girls we
took on at Damais—with Bathias’s arms and the regimental
monogram.
    Eslingen took it, stiffly, and felt, through the
linen and the coarse threads of the monogram, the square shape and
weight of at least a pillar. That was more than he could afford to
refuse, and he tucked the purse into his own sash. “Thank you,
sir,” he said again, stiff-lipped, saluted, and turned away.
    The rest of the company’s sergeants were standing by
the sundial that stood at the city end of the Drill Ground, and
Anric Cossezen, the senior sergeant, lifted a hand to beckon him
over. Eslingen came to join them, and Maggiele Reymers said,
“You’ve come up in the world, Philip, if the captain deigned to
give you his hand.”
    “ He gave me drink-money, too,”
Eslingen said, before any of the others could point it out, and
Saman le Tamboer laughed.
    “ Betwixt and between, Philip,
neither fish nor fowl.”
    Eslingen shot the other man a look of dislike—le
Tamboer had a sharp tongue on him, to match his sharp Silklands
eyes—and Cossezen said, “Have you given a thought to Ganier’s
offer? It’s decent money, and a good chance for plunder.”
    “ If,” le Tamboer added,
honey-sweet, “the lieutenant doesn’t mind serving with us peasants
again.”
    Eslingen ignored him, said to Cossezen, “I’ve
thought about it, yes, and I’ve wondered why a man with Ganier’s
reputation is still hiring, so late in the year.”
    Reymers laughed. “That had crossed my mind,
too.”
    “ Ganier always hires his dragons
last,” Cossezen said.
    Eslingen shook his head. “I’ve fought in the
Payshault, Anric. I’ve no mind to do it again, not this year. I’ll
see who else is hiring.”
    “ No one,” le Tamboer
said.
    “ Then I’ll wait until someone is,”
Eslingen answered.
    “ How nice to have the money,”