“We should have fought in Flanders in the old days.”
“We were not born in the old days,” the Colonel said. “So we automatically could not have fought then.”
“I wish we could have fought with the Condottieri when all you had to do was out-think them and they conceded. You could think and I would convey your orders.”
“We’d have to take a few towns for them to respect our thinking.”
“We would sack them if they defended them,” the Gran Maestro said. “What towns would you take?”
“Not this one,” the Colonel said. “I’d take Vicenza, Bergamo and Verona. Not necessarily in that order.”
“You’d have to take two more.”
“I know,” the Colonel said. He was a general now again, and he was happy. “I figured that I’d by-pass Brescia. It could fall of its own weight.”
“And how are you, Supreme Commander?” the Gran Maestro said, for this taking of towns had pulled him out of his depth.
He was at home in his small house in Treviso, close to the fast flowing river under the old walls. The weeds waved in the current and the fish hung in the shelter of the weeds and rose to insects that touched the water in the dusk. He was at home, too, in all operations that did not involve more than a company, and understood them as clearly as he understood the proper serving of a small dining room; or a large dining room.
But when the Colonel became a general officer again, as he had once been, and thought in terms that were as far
