“You’re right again, sir,” Colonel Biffle said.
“And what does that mean? There’s hardly a thing left here, but the southrons didn’t burn what there was.” Ned made a harsh, chopping gesture with his left hand. He couldn’t have been more disgusted if he’d heard Thraxton the Braggart was returning to command in the Army of Franklin. He shook his head. No, on second thought, he could.
Biffle said, “It means they used magic to get over the river. It can’t mean anything else.”
“You’re right. You’re just exactly right. That’s what it means.” Ned of the Forest repeated that chopping gesture. “And how did they get away with using magic to build their miserable bridge when we’re supposed to have the best wizards in Detina? How, Biff? Riddle me that.”
“Either they’ve got themselves some good ones from somewhere, or else ours aren’t as good as they’ve been telling folks they are,” Biffle said. “Maybe both.”
Both hadn’t occurred to Ned. When Colonel Biffle suggested it, though, it made entirely too much sense to him. “Wouldn’t be a bit surprised,” he said. “But it’s purely a shame and a disgrace, that’s what it is. The southrons have got more men than we do. They’ve got more of just about everything than we do, except grit and wizards. If they start licking us when it comes to magecraft… Well, Lion God’s tail tuft, Biff, why keep on fighting in that case? We’re whipped, grit or no grit.”
“Yes, sir,” Biffle said. “But what can we do about it? Us unicorn-riders, I mean.”
“Not much,” Ned said morosely. “Still and all, I’m going to hash it out with Lieutenant General Bell. Maybe he knows something I don’t. Or maybe he’ll give me some laudanum. Then I won’t care any more, either.”
“Lieutenant General Bell’s doing the best he can,” Biffle said. “If he didn’t have something to hold back the pain, he’d be hard up.”
“Oh, I know that, Biff,” Ned answered. “I really do. He’s not like Thraxton the Braggart, that cowardly, conniving, shriveled-up little unicorn turd of a man. Bell does try hard, and he’s a good fighter himself-or he was, before he got ruined. I don’t reckon it was his fault this army didn’t lay into the southrons at Summer Mountain. By the way he carried on, he gave the right orders, but the fellows under him didn’t do what he told ’em to.”
“By the way they carried on, his orders weren’t as good as he said they were,” Colonel Biffle replied.
That was also true, and worried Ned of the Forest. It reminded him much too much of how things had been during the unhappy command of Thraxton the Braggart. Ned tugged on the reins, jerking his unicorn’s head around. He gave Biffle a few orders, then got the beast moving with the pressure of his knees and rode off toward the north, toward the main encampment of the Army of Franklin.
Lieutenant General Bell’s pavilion was at least twice the size of any other officer’s tent there, and dwarfed the miserable little shelters under which some of Bell’s soldiers slept. The rest of Bell’s men had no shelter at all. True, Bell was the commander of the army. True, his wound might have made him need more space-or be happy with more space-than a whole officer required. Even so…
Trying to hold in his unease, Ned announced himself to the sentries in front of the commanding general’s pavilion. One of them ducked inside. He returned a moment later, saying, “Lieutenant General Bell will see you, sir.”
“He’d better,” Ned rumbled; the idea that Bell might not see him filled him with fury. He ducked through the tent flap and into the pavilion.
His eyes needed a moment to adjust to the gloom inside. Bell sat in a folding chair. As Ned came in, the general commanding put a small bottle back into a leather pouch at his belt. “Good day, Lieutenant General,” Bell said, licking his lips. “And what can I do for you?”
Ned peered at him before answering. Once upon a time, people had spoken of Bell as the reincarnation of the Lion God on earth. These days, those leonine features might have been carved in cold butter that was then set in front of a fire. His face sagged. He had great dark bags under his eyes. His cheeks drooped. Even through Bell’s thick beard, Ned could see how jowly he’d become. The commander of unicorn-riders shivered. Pain and forced inactivity did dreadful things to a man.
Bell had asked him a question. He needed a moment to remember that, and then to answer: “I want to know where we’re going, sir, and what we’re going to do about the southrons now that they’ve holed up in Poor Richard.”
No matter how bad Bell looked, he hadn’t lost the urge to fight. “We’re going to hit them, that’s what,” he said. “We’re going to hit them, and we’re going to rout them, and then we’re going on to take Ramblerton. It must be done, and so it will be done.”
“Yes, sir,” Ned said. Bell was right-taking Ramblerton was something the northern cause desperately needed. Ned went on, “I’ve ordered Colonel Biffle, one of my regimental commanders, to lead the unicorn-riders across the Trumpeteth so we’ll be ready to hit the southrons that good hard lick you want just as soon as we can.”
“Have you?” Bell raised an eyebrow in surprise, like a lion thinking it might have scented prey. “Without waiting for orders or permission from me?”
“Yes, sir,” Ned of the Forest said again. His voice warned that he was another lion, not a lumbering buffalo. “They’re my men. I reckon I can tell ’em what to do without a by-your-leave from anybody, especially when it comes to putting them closer to the enemy.”
He waited to see how Lieutenant General Bell would take that. Bell started to cloud up, then checked himself and nodded. “All right. I will not complain of any man who wants to close with the southrons. That compares well with the miserable cowards commanding my crossbowmen and pikemen. They had a golden chance, a chance sent by the gods, to strike John the Lister a deadly blow, and did they take it? Did they? No! They sat inert, the spineless wretches, and let this magnificent opportunity dribble through their palsied fingers.”
Carefully, Ned said, “Sir, there’s a difference between things going wrong because somebody’s a coward and things going wrong just on account of they go wrong, if you know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean, which doesn’t mean I think you’re right,” Bell replied. “Wouldn’t you have attacked the gods-damned southrons if they were marching across your front? Of course you would have-you make a proper man. Those fools, poltroons, brigadiers… But I repeat myself.”
“When we get to Poor Richard, sir, it won’t be that bad,” Ned predicted.
“By the Thunderer’s holy foreskin, it had better not be.” Bell sounded very much like an angry lion.
“You’ll see.” Ned of the Forest spoke with all the confidence he could muster. He would, in due course, be proved right, if not in precisely the way he meant when speaking to Lieutenant General Bell.
Bell waved the words aside with a motion of his good hand. “Anything further to report, Lieutenant General? The southrons continue to flee before us, having even less spirit than my own brigade and wing commanders, and your men are crossing the Trumpeteth, which is actually not bad news.” By his scowl, he never expected to hear anything but bad news ever again. “Nothing more? Very well, then. You may rejoin your riders, and my congratulations for the spirit they-and you-have shown.”
“Thank you, sir.” Ned saluted and left the pavilion. His strides were lithe, pantherlike. He didn’t care to think about the crutches leaning close by Bell’s chair. Bell would never advance at anything but a caterpillar’s hitching crawl. No, Ned didn’t want to think about that. He’d already suffered several wounds. One instant of bad luck and he’d be no better off than the commanding general.
If everybody thought about those things, who’d go and mix it up? he wondered. How would you, how could you, fight a war?
He saw no answer, not at first. But as he swung up onto his unicorn-one more thing Bell would never do unless someone tied him to the saddle-he realized the answer was that most men didn’t think about such things
. He didn’t want to think about them himself, as he’d just proved, and he was as far from a coward as any man breathing. He shrugged and scowled and went on riding.
When he got down to the Trumpeteth, he found only a rear guard of his unicorn-riders still on the northern bank. The rest had crossed over with their animals on a motley little fleet of rowboats and rafts. Ned piled into a boat with the ordinary riders he commanded. They chivvied his unicorn aboard a raft, although the great white shining beast didn’t like the journey at all. Once on the southern bank of the Trumpeteth, Ned had to gentle the unicorn down again before it would deign to bear his weight.
“You know how to handle ’em, Lord Ned,” a trooper said admiringly.
“I ought to.” Ned of the Forest was not sentimental about unicorns, or about anything else that had to do with battle. “I’ve had enough of them killed out from under me.”
“That’s on account of you always head for where the fighting’s hottest,” the soldier said.
“I’m going to tell you a secret about how to be a general,” Ned said. “Do you want to hear it?”
“Yes, sir!” The trooper leaned forward. If he could have pricked his ears ahead like a unicorn, he would have done that, too.
“All right, then. Here it is: if you want to be a general, you have to want to go where things are the hottest, and you have to make your men want to follow you. If you can manage that, you’ll do all right.”
“Lord Ned, sir, you make a hells of a general,” the soldier said.
“Thank you kindly.” Ned’s smile was a little less carnivorous than usual. He liked praise, and being called Lord Ned. Unlike most of the officers who fought for King Geoffrey, he was no noble. He’d made a good living before the war as a serfcatcher. A lot of blond serfs ran away from the land and liege lord to whom they were bound, and Ned had more than a little genius for poking through the jungles and woods and swamps where they liked to hide and bringing them back. That was how he’d come to be known as Ned of the Forest.
But serfcatching, while it might bring money, didn’t bring respect. Thraxton the Braggart wasn’t the only officer who looked down his nose at Ned for his work and his low birth. Most of the scornful ones, though, had learned to keep their mouths shut. For one thing, Ned had proved an even better commander of unicorn-riders than he was a serfcatcher. And, for another, he’d made it plain he had no qualms about killing men supposedly on his own side who were rash enough to insult him.
He booted his unicorn into motion. It was a big, sturdy beast. It needed to be, to carry a man with his big, sturdy frame. He brought it up to a fast trot.
Unicorn-riders waved as he went past. He waved back, or sometimes lifted the broad-brimmed felt hat from his head for a moment to greet the troopers. That made them wave even more, and cheer, too.
Before too long, he caught up with Colonel Biffle at the head of the column. “What’s the word, sir?” Biffle asked.
“Well, Biff, I’ll tell you,” Ned answered. “When the whole army gets down to Poor Richard, the stinking southrons had better look out for themselves.”
“All right.” But Biffle frowned. “That won’t be an easy position to crack, not if John the Lister digs in like he can.”
“Bell thinks we can lick ’em. Even more to the point, Bell thinks we should’ve licked ’em at Summer Mountain,” Ned said. “Somebody’s going to pay on account of we didn’t.”
“Somebody’s going to pay, all right,” Colonel Biffle agreed gloomily. “I tell you, Lord Ned, if we go at ’em at Poor Richard, it’s liable to be us.”
“We’ve got to do some fighting. Bell’s dead right about that,” Ned said. “John the Lister won’t disappear if we don’t. Neither will Doubting George, down in Ramblerton. We went into this war talking about what a bunch of cowards the stinking southrons were. Well, by now we know that isn’t so. If we want to shift ’em, we’ll have to shift ’em. You know what I mean?”
“I sure do,” Biffle replied. “And don’t I wish I didn’t?”
“Can’t be helped,” Ned of the Forest said. “Everything’d be a lot easier if we only had to fight when we were sure of winning. But sometimes we have to stand up there and prove we are men. Don’t you reckon that’s right?”
Colonel Biffle gave him a reluctant, half shamefaced nod. They rode on together toward Poor Richard. It wasn’t far.
* * *
John the Lister looked back toward the Trumpeteth from the position he’d chosen for his army, just outside the little town of Poor Richard. His men dug like moles at the high end of a long, bare stretch of ground that ran north for a couple of miles. Turning to his adjutant, he said, “If the traitors care to attack me here, I will give them a warmer greeting than they care for.”
One of Major Strabo’s wandering eyes looked towards one stretch of the lines the southrons were preparing, the other toward another. “The devils in the seven hells might give them a warmer greeting than we can. No one else, I think.”
“They cannot flank us out here, as they did before,” John said.
“No, indeed,” Strabo said, looking around his superior. “They would be idiots to try, which may not stop them.”
“We’ve got a glideway line straight back to Ramblerton,” John the Lister said. “Doubting George can send us all the food and bolts and firepots and fodder we need, and the line’s well fortified.”
“Yes, sir.” Major Strabo pointed toward the line of entrenchment; his finger, unlike his eyes, went straight. “As you say, they’ll likely be through if they try to go through us.”
“They’d be idiots to try to do that, too,” John said. “In fact, if you ask me they were idiots to mount this whole invasion. Why isn’t Bell fighting General Hesmucet? As far as I can see, none of the traitors is off fighting Hesmucet. How can they call themselves a kingdom if he marches across Peachtree Province to Veldt and the Western Ocean?”
“Simple, sir,” Strabo answered. “They can lie.”
“That’s about what it comes down to, sure enough,” John the Lister said. “As a matter of fact, that’s just what it comes down to. Hesmucet was right: once you crack the shell, there’s nothing but wind and air behind it.”
“Some of that wind and air is coming this way,” his adjutant pointed out.
“Let ’em come,” John replied. “If they want to charge up that slope, in the face of everything we can throw at ’em, they’re welcome to try. Have we got the engines lined up where they’re supposed to be?”
“Yes, sir. Catapults and repeating crossbows both,” Major Strabo said. “And we’ve got plenty of stones and firepots and bolts for them. If all the traitors in the world want to charge up that slope against us, I think we can murder the lot of them.”
John eyed Strabo with more than a little surprise. His adjutant was no blithe optimist. Strabo, in fact, was inclined to see difficulties whether they were there or not. If he thought the southrons would have no trouble holding this position, he was likely to be right. John certainly hoped he was right.
At the same time, John wondered what Lieutenant General Bell would do when he saw what sort of position the southrons had at Poor Richard. He wouldn’t have an easy time assailing it, even if his army was close to twice as big as John’s. He couldn’t ignore it and keep marching south, either.
What did that leave? Nothing John saw just then.
Maybe Bell will give up and go away. Maybe he’ll throw his hand in the air and march back to Dothan. John the Lister laughed.
“What’s funny, sir?” Major Strabo asked. John explained. Strabo laughed, too. “The likelihood of that is most unlikely,” he said, a sentence obscure even by his standards.
“Uh, yes,” John said.
“Bell’s options are impenetrable in their opacity,” Strabo added.
“Not only that, nobody has a real good notion of what the son of a bitch will do,” John said.
“Indeed,” Strabo said. “And in fact.”
“That, too,�
�� John agreed gravely. “Now, in fact, I’m going to round up the famous Major Alva, see what more help he thinks he can give us here, and have another look at our works, make sure everything is sited just the way I want it.”
“Yes, sir,” Strabo said. “The one thing we haven’t sighted is the traitors.”
John thought about groaning at that, but decided not to bother. Strabo’s plays on words were frequent enough-and bad enough-that acknowledging them only encouraged him to do worse. John sometimes thought he couldn’t do worse, but his adjutant kept proving him wrong.
He waved for a runner. “Yes, sir?” the young man in gray asked.
“Tell Major Alva to meet me at the top of the slope there.” John pointed. “Tell him I want to see him as soon as he can get there.” Doubting George had warned him Alva was a free spirit. From everything John had seen so far, Doubting George had understated things.
But the wizard got to the field fortifications in good time, only a couple of minutes after John the Lister himself. And Alva did remember to salute. He looked as if he was reminding himself of something before he did it, but he did salute. Then he said, “Tell me, sir, what do you think of the Inward Hypothesis?”
Of all the questions John had expected to get on what might become a battlefield, that one might have been the very last. He blinked, wondering if he’d heard rightly. Deciding he had, he answered, “I don’t really know, Major. It’s not something a soldier needs to worry about, is it?”
He’d done his best to dodge the question. He learned trying to evade Alva wasn’t a good idea. The wizard’s eyebrows shot up, as if he couldn’t believe his ears. He said, “Don’t you think it’s important for every Detinan-for everyone in the whole world-to wonder about how the gods fit into the scheme of things? If they say, ‘Be,’ and something is the very next heartbeat, then we look at them one way. But if they say, ‘Be after you go about shaping yourselves and changing for thousands or maybe millions of years,’ then we look at them another way altogether. Or I do, anyhow. What about you, sir?”
Advance and Retreat wotp-3 Page 11
