Sentry Peak wotp-1

by Harry Turtledove

  When they got here, they brought everything they needed to stay, Ormerod thought. I wish we were able to do that more often.

  Wishing, as usual, did him very little good. All he could do was trot forward, roaring at the top of his lungs and urging his men on. The sooner they closed with the southrons, the sooner the engines wouldn’t matter any more. And the enemy didn’t have enough engines to stop the charge cold-he gauged such things with the practiced eye of a man who’d gone toward a good many strongly held positions.

  Now he was close enough to see individual southron soldiers-and they were close enough to start shooting at his comrades and him. A few of them had yellow hair under their gray caps. Was one of them Rollant, his runaway serf? I should have killed him, back there near the River of Death.

  A few field engines had come along with the northerners’ hastily mustered force. A stone landed among the southrons, and suddenly there was a gap, three men wide, in their line. More soldiers in baggy gray pantaloons strode forward to fill it.

  With a buzz like that from the wings of an angry hummingbird, a crossbow quarrel zipped past his head. They started shooting, too, shooting as they advanced. The waiting southrons were bound to be more accurate, but some of the bolts from the advancing northerners struck home, too. A gray-clad soldier threw up his hands and pitched over backwards.

  Ormerod yanked his sword from its scabbard. Before long, this work would be hand to hand. “King Geoffrey!” he yelled, and let out another roar.

  “King Avram!” the southrons shouted. That only made Ormerod more furious. That they should want to be ruled by someone who would twist the ancient laws and customs of Detina all out of shape was bad enough in and of itself. That they should want to force Avram’s rule on the part of Detina which wanted nothing to do with him was much, much worse, at least to Ormerod’s eyes.

  “Provincial prerogative!” he cried.

  “Freedom!” the southrons yelled back.

  “How is it freedom when you want to take my gods-damned serfs off my gods-damned land?” Ormerod demanded. He didn’t get an answer to that, or at least not a carefully reasoned one. His regiment and the southrons collided, and the argument between them went on at a level much more basic than words.

  He stabbed a southron in the shoulder. The fellow howled like a wolf and twisted away, blood darkening his tunic. The men of Ormerod’s regiment and the southrons pounded away at one another with shortswords and with crossbows swung club-fashion. They kicked and bit and punched and wrestled and cursed one another as they grappled.

  “Come on, boys!” Ormerod yelled. “We can do it!”

  But more southrons, some armed with crossbows, others with pikes, came up to help hold back King Geoffrey’s men. More northerners came forward, too, but not so many: for one thing, the southrons seemed to have more men on the spot, and, for another, their engines did a better job of hindering the advance of the northern reinforcements.

  Back and forth the fight swayed. If the northerners could drive their foes back to and over the pontoon bridge, the southrons’ supply route to the east would break once more. If not… Ormerod preferred not to think about if not. All he thought of was the man just ahead of him and, after that son of a bitch fell to his sword, the next closest southron. He stormed past the body of the soldier he’d just slain, shouting, “King Geoffrey! Provincial prerogative forever!”

  Then, to his horrified dismay, a new shout rose off to the flank: “Unicorn-riders! Southron unicorn-riders!”

  His men and the men close by all howled in alarm. A compact group of soldiers had little trouble holding unicorns at bay, but the beasts and the warriors aboard them could be dangerous to men in loose order, especially when those men were already fighting for their lives. He saw a couple of men in Geoffrey’s blue break off their struggle with the southrons and speed toward the rear.

  “No!” he cried. “Stand your ground! It’s your best chance!”

  But they would not listen to him. And they were the first of many. Before long, it wasn’t a matter of driving the southrons back over their pontoon bridge. Rather, the struggle was to keep the enemy from turning victory into rout.

  Cursing, Ormerod had to fall back or risk getting cut off from his comrades and captured or killed. He shook his fist toward the east, toward the unicorn-riders who’d ruined his side’s chance for a win. A moment later, he was cursing even louder and more sulfurously.

  “Stand!” he shouted. “Stand, gods damn you! Those aren’t unicorns! Those are a bunch of wagon-hauling asses, and you’re a bunch of stupid asses for letting them panic you like this! Stand!”

  His men, King Geoffrey’s men, would no more stand their ground than they’d listen to him. They thought they knew what had happened, and they weren’t about to let facts bother them when their minds were made up. They streamed back toward Sentry Peak.

  Ormerod kept on cursing, which did him no good whatever. And then, hating himself, hating his men, and hating the asses most of all, he joined the retreat. “We’ve got trouble here,” he growled to Lieutenant Gremio. He wished Gremio would have argued, but the other officer only nodded.

  * * *

  There were times when Lieutenant General Hesmucet wondered why his parents had named him after the blond chieftain who’d fought the Detinans so ferociously during the War of 1218. When he was a boy, he’d had endless fights because of his name. Now that he was grown to be a man, he found it more useful than otherwise: people remembered him on account of it.

  And he aimed to be remembered. He looked back at the long column of men in King Avram’s gray he led. They’d started out from their base by the Great River when news of the disaster north of Rising Rock reached them. Now, at last, after much travel by glideway and a good deal of marching, they’d come east to Rising Rock to help General Bart defend the place against the traitors and drive them out of Franklin and back into Peachtree Province.

  Hesmucet took one hand off the reins of his unicorn and scratched his close-cropped dark beard. Even after two and a half years of war, he found the idea that the northerners were traitors to the Kingdom of Detina strange. When Geoffrey declared himself king in Avram’s despite, Hesmucet had been provost at a military collegium up in the north. His friends there had tried to persuade him to fight for Geoffrey, but he hadn’t been able to bear the thought of tearing the kingdom apart like a chicken wing. He’d gone south once more to take service with Avram, and none of the northerners had tried to stand in his way.

  His aide-de-camp rode up to him and said, “Sir, we’re coming up to the battlefield by Brownsville Ferry.”

  “Yes, I can see that for myself, Major Milo; thank you,” Hesmucet said. “I didn’t think those bodies scattered over the ground had got there by themselves.”

  Major Milo flinched a little. Anyone who dealt with Hesmucet had to deal with his sharp tongue. “It was a noble victory,” the aide-de-camp said. “Two noble victories, in fact.”

  Hesmucet shrugged. “It was a battle. Battles are hells on earth, nothing else but. We may need to fight them, but we don’t need to love them.”

  Milo said, “If you don’t mind my saying so, sir, that strikes me as an… unusual attitude for a soldier.”

  “I don’t mind your saying so-why should I?” Hesmucet replied with another shrug. “But I know the kind of business I’m in. Do you think a garbage hauler expects to stay clean as he goes about his job?”

  Milo must have thought he’d gone too far. His voice was stiff as he said, “We don’t haul garbage, sir.”

  “No, indeed.” Lieutenant General Hesmucet waved at the field, and at the twisted, bloated, stinking corpses lying on it. The motion disturbed a few ravens close by. They flew up into the air with indignant croaking squawks. “We don’t haul garbage, Major. We make it.”

  His aide-de-camp pondered that, then shook his head, rejecting the idea. Hesmucet laughed quietly to himself. Major Milo came from a family with noble blood, and naturally looked on war as
a noble pursuit. Hesmucet had a different view: to him, war was what you needed to do when the fellow with whom you were arguing wouldn’t listen to reason. You hit him, and you kept on hitting him till, sooner or later, he fell over. Once he went down, he wouldn’t argue any more.

  Several asses had been put out to graze among the unicorns. Hesmucet pointed their way. “What’s that in aid of?” he wondered aloud. “They’re supposed to be kept off by themselves.”

  “Shall I find out, sir? I see some of our men nearby there,” Major Milo said. He might be prissy, but he was conscientious.

  And Hesmucet had had his bump of curiosity tickled. “Yes, why don’t you?” he said, and rode off to one side of the track so his men could keep moving while he waited. Milo trotted his unicorn over to the soldiers watching the foraging beasts, spoke briefly with them, and then came back toward Hesmucet. To the general’s surprise, his aide-de-camp wore a grin. “What’s so funny?” Hesmucet called.

  “Well, sir, it seems those asses are unicorns, in a manner of speaking.” Sure as hells, Major Milo was grinning.

  “They sure look like asses to me.” Hesmucet was a man for whom what he saw, and only what he saw, was real.

  But now Milo laughed out loud. “Oh, but sir, those asses are brevet unicorns. They broke loose from their wagons during the last fight, and they helped panic Geoffrey’s men, so they’ve been promoted for the duration.”

  “I see.” Hesmucet laughed, too. “I quite like that, Major. Already more brevets in this war than you can shake a gods-damned stick at.”

  Detina’s regular army, its professional army, was tiny. Through most of the kingdom’s history, its main role had been to subdue the wild blond tribes in the far east. But now both King Avram and Grand Duke Geoffrey had recruited vast hosts to enforce their vision of what Detina ought to be. A man who’d been a captain in the regular army might command a division these days. He’d be breveted a brigadier or even a lieutenant general.

  But, unless his sovereign chose to confirm that rank among the regulars, he’d go back to being a captain when the war finally ended, if it ever did, with only a captain’s pay and only a captain’s prospects, and very likely with all his chances for glory behind him forever. Hesmucet knew a good many human asses breveted up beyond their proper rank, so why not the kind that went on four legs as well? Who could guess what sort of unicorns they’d make?

  “Well, I hope they enjoy their privileges,” he said, and used the reins and the pressure of his knees to urge his own veritable unicorn forward to the head of his army. Major Milo stuck close by his side. There ahead lay the pontoon bridge Bill the Bald had stretched across the river. The unicorns’ hooves thudded on it. Shading his eyes with his hand, Hesmucet could see Rising Rock ahead.

  “There’ll be a great wailing and gnashing of teeth among the traitors when they find out we’re here,” he said.

  His aide-de-camp nodded. “They haven’t been able to keep reinforcements out, and they haven’t been able to keep supplies out, either. I think they’re going to be sorry before very long.”

  “So do I,” Hesmucet agreed. But then he checked himself. “Of course, General Guildenstern no doubt thought the same cursed thing. Still, General Bart will have a lot more to throw at the northerners than Guildenstern did-and he’ll do a better job with what he’s got, too, unless I miss my guess.”

  As if to underscore his words, the troopers he led began marching over the bridge that led toward Rising Rock. Their footfalls were a dull thunder-Hesmucet glanced up to the sky, thinking of the might of the Thunderer-that went on and on and on. No traitors were about to hear that sound, but it would have brought only dismay to them if they had.

  General Bart met Hesmucet at the eastern outskirts of Rising Rock. “Good to see you,” Bart said, a broad smile on his face. “Now we have the old team back again.”

  Hesmucet clasped his superior’s hand. “Good to be here, sir. We’ve always whipped the traitors when we fought them together. I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t do it again.”

  “I hope you’re right.” Bart eyed the long columns of men in gray tunics and pantaloons tramping into Rising Rock. “Now that you’re here, now that Thraxton can’t starve us out of this place any more, we’re going to give it a try, anyhow.”

  “We’ve beaten Thraxton before. We can beat the son of a bitch again,” Hesmucet said. Bart frowned slightly: not so much a turning down of the mouth as a vertical line between his eyebrows. He was as hard-driving a general as any, but he had little taste for harsh language.

  But he was also willing to make allowances for Hesmucet he wouldn’t have for most officers. “I think our chances are good,” he said. “Doubting George could have held Rising Rock against Thraxton the Braggart by himself, provided only that Thraxton didn’t cut off his victuals altogether. We’ve got his army-he has command over what was Guildenstern’s whole force-and the divisions Fighting Joseph brought from the west (if Duke Edward sent James of Broadpath here, we could afford to bring men east, too), and now you’re here as well. When we hit, we’ll hit hard.”

  “That’s what the whole business of war is all about, sir,” Hesmucet said.

  “I am glad you’re here, by the gods,” Bart said. “When it comes to matters of fighting, we think alike, you and I. There’s no one better than Lieutenant General George for receiving a blow from the enemy, but he’s slower than I wish he were when it comes to striking. And as for Fighting Joseph…”

  Voice dry, Hesmucet said, “I don’t expect King Avram is brokenhearted at having an excuse to send Fighting Joseph out here to the east, a long way away from Georgetown and the Black Palace.”

  “I don’t expect you’re wrong.” Bart’s voice was dry, too. “I don’t suppose he could have tried a usurpation after losing at Viziersville this past spring, but I don’t suppose he was very comfortable to have around just the same.”

  “No doubt that’s so, sir.” Hesmucet leaned forward in the saddle. “Will he give you trouble?”

  “He may,” Bart answered. “He thinks of glory for himself first and everything else afterwards. He always has; it’s the way the gods made him. He will try to seize as much independent command as he possibly can-that’s the way the gods made him, too. But he will also fight hard. I know that. He didn’t get his nickname for nothing. I don’t mind him getting some of what he wants, so long as he gives me what I want.”

  Hesmucet chuckled. “Well, sir, if any man can keep asses and unicorns in harness together, you’re the one.” He snapped his fingers. “And speaking of which, did you hear about the asses breveted as unicorns?”

  “I did indeed,” Bart said. “By all accounts, they deserve their brevets a good deal more than some two-legged officers who’ve got them.”

  “I thought the very same thing,” Hesmucet said. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “Come into the city now,” Bart urged. “I’ll show you the enemy’s dispositions north and west of here, and we can start planning how best to strike them.”

  “Nothing I’d like better, sir,” Hesmucet said. “Is it true that Ned of the Forest isn’t leading the traitors’ unicorn-riders any more? I heard that, and I believed it because I wanted it so much, but is it so?”

  Bart nodded. “It is. Thraxton, you know, will quarrel with anyone.”

  “That he will,” Hesmucet said. “I’m not sorry he quarreled with Ned. I don’t know where Ned’s gone-”

  “Off toward the Great River, I hear, while you were coming this way,” Bart told him.

  “Is that a fact?” Hesmucet said. “Well, our unicorn-riders over there can try to get rid of him. I don’t think we’ll ever have peace in Franklin or Cloviston till Ned of the Forest is dead. But to the hells with me if I’m sorry we won’t be facing him here. He’d make bringing supplies into Rising Rock a much tougher job than it is now, and you can’t tell me any different.”

  “Nobody ever could tell you any different about anything,” Bart said. “
That’s one of the things that makes you a good soldier.”

  “I don’t know about that, sir.” Hesmucet plucked at his beard as he pondered. “I have my doubts, in fact. You have to keep your eye on the enemy every minute, or else he’ll make you sorry.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Bart said. “Of course you keep your eye on the enemy. But you do what you want to do; you don’t do what he wants you to do. You always try to make him dance to your tune.” He laughed. “I try to do the same, the only difference being that I can’t recognize my tune even if a band starts playing it right in front of my face.”

  “Ah.” Hesmucet ignored the feeble joke, whose like he’d heard before, to bring his wit to bear on the essence of what Bart said. “I think you’re right. That’s the way you’ve run your campaigns-I know that for a fact.”

  “All but once, when Ned got into my rear as I was coming north along the Great River,” Bart said. “Ned fights the same way, and when he hits a supply line, it stays hit, by the gods. I had to pull back. It was that or starve.”

  “But you went north again later, after Ned rode off somewhere else,” Hesmucet said. “Ned left. You stayed. And you won: King Avram holds every inch of the Great River these days, and what Geoffrey wanted to be his realm is torn in half.”

  “If you keep moving forward, if you make the foe respond to you, good things are pretty likely to happen,” Bart said. “And if you keep your army together. General Guildenstern is a brave officer-no one ever said differently-but he split his in three pieces, and he’s lucky worse didn’t happen to it. I make plenty of mistakes, but I won’t make that one.”

  “No, I don’t suppose you would, sir,” Hesmucet said. “You haven’t made many mistakes, not that I’ve seen.” From many men, that would have been flattery. He made it a simple statement of fact, and wouldn’t have said it if he hadn’t believed it.