“Well, gods damn them, let’s see how they like this,” he growled, and spurred his unicorn toward them. If he killed a couple, the rest might run away. He’d seen that happen before.
He didn’t see it this time. He didn’t see the crossbow quarrels buzzing past his head, either. They were going too fast for that. He didn’t see them, but he heard them. They sounded like a swarm of angry wasps. For a moment, he thought a big repeating crossbow had decided to open up on him alone, an honor he could have done without.
Then he realized it wasn’t one big repeating crossbow, but a lot of quick-shooting weapons in the hands of southron troopers. They seemed to be crank- and lever-operated and to shoot ten-bolt clips, and they put more quarrels in the air than anything he’d ever imagined. One tugged at the brim of his hat. A couple of inches to one side and it would have hit him in the face.
Another bolt glanced off his blade, sending a shiver up his left arm. And another caught his unicorn in the neck. The beast’s scream of pain turned to a gurgle. It staggered, stumbled, toppled.
Were this Ned’s first unicorn lost in battle, he might have been badly hurt. But, having had so many mounts killed under him, he knew what to do. He kicked free of the stirrups even before the unicorn went down. When it did, he rolled away instead of getting crushed beneath its body. And then he was on his feet and running forward, shouting, “Come on, boys! Let’s get ’em!”
On came his riders, all of them roaring like the Lion God: the fierce northern war cry that struck fear into southron souls. They shot as they advanced, too. Ned of the Forest didn’t believe in closing with the sword as the be-all and end-all of battles. If crossbow quarrels would kill the foe, that was fine with him. That the southrons ended up dead mattered. How they ended up that way didn’t.
Hard-Riding Jimmy’s men were still shooting, too, shooting as if they’d brought all the bolts in the world with them. More quarrels hissed past Ned’s head. One snipped a slice from his sleeve. It might have been a friend, pulling on his arm to urge him to go that way. It might have been, but it wasn’t.
And he was one of the lucky ones. All around him, dismounted unicorn-riders in blue fell. The cries of the wounded echoed through Folly-free Gap. He wondered how the place had got that name. However that had happened, it was badly miscalled. Trying to force his way through was turning out to be nothing but folly.
“How many of those southron sons of bitches are there?” a trooper howled after two quarrels buried themselves in the dirt at his feet and a third snarled by his body.
“And how long can they keep shooting those gods-damned crossbows of theirs?” another soldier complained.
“Don’t you know about that?” asked a third, who at least wasn’t disheartened. “They load ’em on the day they sacrifice to the Lion God and keep shooting ’em all week long.”
Ned of the Forest laughed. He would have laughed harder if the soldier hadn’t told too much of the truth in sour jest. The enemy’s quick-shooting crossbows made him seem to have at least three times as many soldiers as he really did. Since he probably outnumbered Ned’s men anyway, that just made matters worse.
To the hells with Lieutenant General Bell, too, Ned thought angrily. He might have had some chance in spite of those fancy crossbows if he’d had his whole force along. With only half of it? He shook his head. Barring a miracle, it wasn’t going to happen, and the gods had been chary about handing the north miracles lately.
Then Ned shook his head again. There was a miracle, or what would do for one: Colonel Biffle remained on his unicorn and unwounded, though he was even closer to the enemy than Ned. He kept urging his men on. They would surge forward, whereupon a blizzard of bolts would knock them back till they could nerve themselves for another surge.
Ned looked for Major Marmaduke. Maybe magic would help. But Marmaduke was down with a quarrel in his shoulder; a soldier stooped beside him to bind up the wound. There would be no fancy wizardry today, even if Marmaduke had had such a thing in him, which was anything but obvious.
Spying Ned, Biffle called, “We can’t do it, sir, not the way they’re shooting.”
Before Ned could answer, a bolt plucked the hat off his head. Calm as if no one were taking aim at him, he turned, stooped, picked it up, and set it back in place. “If we get in amongst ’em-”
“How?” Colonel Biffle asked bluntly.
Ned started to reply, but realized he had nothing to say. His men were not going to get in amongst the southrons, not with the enemy spraying so many quarrels all over the landscape. He’d been in a lot of hard fights in more than three years of war, but this was the first time he’d had to own himself whipped. Pain and wonder in his voice, he said, “What can we do, then, Biff?”
“I only see two things,” Biffle said. “We can hang on here and keep getting shot to no purpose, or we can pull back, maybe see if we can outflank these sons of bitches, maybe just wait and see how Bell does back at Poor Richard and hope that makes them leave the gap on their own.”
“Pull back.” The words tasted foul in Ned’s mouth. But they weren’t going forward here, and they weren’t going to outflank Hard-Riding Jimmy, either.
Folly-free Gap was the only way through the hills. Oh, Ned’s unicorn-riders could filter past a few men at a time, but far too slowly to do them any good. “It’s up to Bell, then,” Ned said, hoping that wasn’t so bad an omen as it seemed.
* * *
As Captain Gremio mustered the men of his company along with the rest of Colonel Florizel’s regiment, along with the rest of the wing, Brigadier Patrick the Cleaver came riding up on his unicorn to look over the ground his men would have to cross before closing with the southrons entrenched outside of Poor Richard.
Seeing Patrick’s face, Sergeant Thisbe whistled softly. “He doesn’t look very happy, does he?” the underofficer said in a low voice.
“He sure doesn’t,” Gremio answered, also quietly. Patrick stared toward the waiting field fortifications sheltering John the Lister’s men, then shook his head. His sigh was loud enough to make people thirty or forty paces from him turn and look his way.
Colonel Florizel rode his unicorn out toward Patrick. The young brigadier from the Sapphire Isle reined in. He managed a weary nod for Florizel. The two high-ranking officers spoke together not twenty feet in front of Gremio and Thisbe.
“We must be after doing it, Colonel.” Patrick pointed toward the southrons’ works. “Come what may, we have to take them. There’s to be no shooting till the skirmishers amongst those southron spalpeens flee back to their line. So says the great and mighty Lieutenant General Bell, and he is to be obeyed.”
“I shall so order my company officers, sir,” Florizel said stiffly.
“You do that. They all must know. I’ll not give Bell the least excuse to tell me I would not follow his orders in every particular.” Yes, Patrick sounded weary and gloomy beyond his years.
Florizel also eyed the long, long stretch of ground the northern army would have to cross before closing with John the Lister’s soldiers. He saluted Patrick the Cleaver, then remarked, “Well, sir, there will not be many of us that will get back to Palmetto Province.”
Patrick nodded. He reached out and let his left hand rest for a moment on the regimental commander’s shoulder. “Well, Florizel, if we are to die, let us die like men.” His voice held sadness, but no fear. He flicked the unicorn’s reins. The white beast slowly walked on down the line.
Florizel shook himself, as if awakening from a dream, a bad dream. He turned to Gremio, asking, “Did you hear that?”
“Yes, sir,” Gremio replied. “It didn’t sound good.” He too stared across the expanse of ground he would have to cover before breaking into the southrons’ lines. How bare it seemed! “If you’ll forgive my saying so, it doesn’t look good, either.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Florizel agreed glumly. “Come what may, though, we can only do our duty. The gods, I trust, will favor our cause. The gods must favor our
cause.”
“They had better,” Gremio said. “If they don’t, we’ve got no chance at all.”
He waited for the regimental commander to round on him for talking like a defeatist. But Baron Florizel only nodded. His gaze kept going back toward the southrons’ entrenchments, there so far away. “We would stand a better chance if we were asked to storm almost any other position, I fear,” he said.
Gremio also nodded. Florizel had always been a man who looked for the best, hoped for the best, expected the best. If he now thought the Army of Franklin would have a hard time managing what Lieutenant General Bell required of it… Gremio was used to drawing inferences from evidence. He didn’t care for the inferences he couldn’t help drawing here.
Otho the Troll commanded the brigade of which Florizel’s regiment was a part. He came by now on foot. His broad, muscular shoulders slumped, as if he carried a sack full of rocks on his back. “No help for it,” he muttered, again and again. “No help for it at all.”
Sergeant Thisbe walked up to Gremio and spoke in a low voice: “I wish they’d send us, sir. All this waiting around and thinking about what we’ve got to try and do wears on the nerves.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” Gremio agreed. “Me, I’m scared green.”
“You, sir?” Thisbe sounded astonished. “You never show it.”
“That only proves I’m a better actor than I thought,” Gremio said. “All barristers have to act some. It’s part of the job. But I haven’t been this frightened since Thraxton the Braggart’s spell went awry at Proselytizers’ Ridge last year. That wasn’t my fault. It was the spell. I see what we’ve got to do now, and I’m terrified. No magic today. Just me.”
“I’m scared, too,” Thisbe said. “I wouldn’t admit it to anybody but you, but I am. They can massacre us, and we don’t even get to shoot back at ’em till we’re just about up to their trenches. If we get that far.”
Before Gremio could answer, bugles sounded up and down the line. Without being told to, standard-bearers stepped out in front of their companies and regiments and flourished the flags. Officers-Gremio among them-drew their swords. The bugles cried out again, this time with an order officers and underofficers echoed: “Advance!”
Advance they did, at a steady, rapid pace. Once his feet sent him toward the enemy, Gremio found a lot of his fear falling away, as if he’d left it behind where he’d waited while Patrick’s wing shook itself out into line of battle. Logically, that was madness. Every step took him closer to danger. But now he was doing something, not waiting and brooding. It helped.
His men came with him. Not a one hung back. In a way, that made him proud of them. In another way, he thought them all idiots. He thought himself an idiot, too. At some point, the men of the Army of Franklin would get close enough for the southrons to open up on them with everything they had. Every step he took brought that point closer. Who else but an idiot would deliberately march into deadly danger?
“Come on, men!” Thisbe called. “Let those bastards hear you! Let ’em know whose side the Lion God’s on!”
They roared. Southron prisoners had told Gremio that that roar was worth regiments of men on the battlefield. The soldiers who fought for King Avram had no war cry to match it. Other companies and other regiments took up the great growl of the Lion God. Soon, all of Patrick the Cleaver’s men snarled out defiance at their foes.
Gremio hoped it made the southrons afraid. He looked back over his shoulder. His comrades and he had come more than halfway from their starting point toward the enemy’s line. More than a mile. Before too much longer, the southrons’ engines would bear on them. They would have to take whatever the men in gray dished out till they got close enough for revenge.
Thisbe said it-if we get that close, he thought, and wished he hadn’t.
On came the northerners, roaring fiercely. On they came… and a firepot arced through the air toward them, smoke trailing from the oil-soaked rag that would ignite it when it hit and burst. It landed fifty yards in front of the advancing men in blue. The splash of fire was impressive, but harmed no one.
“See? They are afraid of us, if they start shooting that soon!” Thisbe said scornfully. Gremio hoped the sergeant was right, though he doubted it-both sides usually started trying their weapons beyond their true reach. Even if Thisbe was right, though, how much difference would it make in the end? Avram’s men would have plenty of chances to do more and worse.
Another catapult let fly, this one hurling a thirty-pound stone ball. Instead of sticking where it landed, it bounded toward the men from the Army of Franklin. They scrambled to get out of its way. Once, a long time before, an incautious soldier had tried to stop a bounding catapult ball with his foot. It had looked easy, and safe enough-and had cost him a broken leg for his foolishness. People knew better now.
More firepots flew. So did more stones. Some of them smashed down among the northerners. Men crushed or burning shrieked and fell. The rest closed their ranks and kept on. Up on his unicorn, Florizel brandished his sword. “Forward!” he cried.
And then the enemy’s repeating crossbows began their ratcheting clatter. Soldier after blue-clad soldier went down, some kicking, some screaming, some silent and still. Gremio watched a skirmisher out ahead of the main line take two or three staggering steps while clutching at his chest, then crumple bonelessly to the ground.
But the pits that held John the Lister’s skirmishers were very close now. Men in gray scrambled up out of those pits and ran back toward their main line. “There’s the sign, Colonel,” Gremio called. “May we shoot now?”
“Yes!” Florizel answered. “Shoot! Send all those sons of bitches to the hells and gone!”
Behind Gremio, crossbows clicked and snapped. His men, those who still stood, took vengeance on the southrons for everything they’d endured. “Kill the bastards!” they shouted, and the pickets in gray died like flies, most of them perishing long before they reached their own entrenchments.
But they’re only pickets, Gremio thought uneasily. A moment later, he once more wished he hadn’t had a thought, for all the southrons in the first row of proper earthworks leaped up onto the shooting steps, leveled their crossbows on the parapet, and delivered a volley the likes of which Gremio had never seen for sheer destructive power. Horrible screams rose all along the line of Patrick the Cleaver’s wing. Soldiers in blue toppled as if scythed.
Colonel Florizel’s unicorn might have charged headlong into a stone wall. Pierced by half a dozen quarrels, it crashed to the ground. Gremio feared for Florizel, but the regimental commander twisted free from his mount’s ruin and limped forward on his bad foot. “Bravely done, Colonel!” Gremio shouted. Florizel brandished his sword and went on.
So did Gremio. He had no idea why the gods had chosen to spare him. He knew that, had he had any sense, he would have run away. But his fear of looking bad in front of Thisbe and the ordinary soldiers of his company was worse than his fear of getting shot. By any logical standard, that was madness. Logic, though, died when battle beckoned. Fear of letting comrades down was the glue that held the Army of Franklin together-and probably all the armies on both sides.
Gremio almost stumbled over a body. The corpse wore blue, not gray: and not only blue, but also gold lace and stars and the other accouterments of rank. There lay Otho the Troll, shot once in the face, twice in the chest, and, for good measure, once in the leg. Gremio’s stomach did a slow lurch. Battles when brigadiers fell like common soldiers did not bode well for the side that lost them.
Colonel Florizel needed to know, if he didn’t already. “Colonel!” Gremio yelled. Florizel waved his sword again to show he’d heard. Gremio went on, “Brigadier Otho’s down.” That didn’t say enough. “He’s dead,” Gremio added. He couldn’t get much balder than that.
“Thank you, Captain,” Florizel answered. He wasn’t long on brains, but nobody could say he wasn’t brave.
The only question was, would bravery be enough? Another volley to
re into the northerners’ ranks. More men crumpled. Behind Gremio, Sergeant Thisbe yelled, “Keep going! For gods’ sake, keep going! When we get in amongst ’em, we can pay ’em back for everything they’ve done to us!”
Hearing Thisbe’s voice, Gremio let out a sigh of relief. He’d been through too much with the sergeant to want to think about… He didn’t have to think about it. There was the southrons’ parapet, just ahead. He sprang onto it. A soldier in gray in the trench thrust up at him with a pike. He beat aside the spearhead with his sword. Shouting, “Provincial prerogative forever!” he leaped down into the trench.
He wasn’t alone there for even a heartbeat. “Follow the captain!” Thisbe shouted. Yelling King Geoffrey’s name, the northern soldiers did. Southrons rushed up to reinforce their men in the trench line. The soldiers thrust with pikes and slashed with swords and shot the bolts they had in their crossbows and then used the weapons to smash in their foes’ heads. No one on either side gave an inch of ground. Both sides fed more men into the fight.
This wasn’t war any more. This was madness. Soldiers were killed where they stood and had no room to fall down. Men clambered up on corpses to get at their foes. No one down in the trenches could hope to load a crossbow. Soldiers behind the line passed forward weapons already loaded and cocked. Whoever got them shot at the first man in the wrong-colored uniform he saw. The soldiers who got the loaded crossbows tried to shoot, anyhow. Sometimes they got shot or speared before they could. Then someone else would clamber up onto their bodies and shoot or thrust at the foe till he was wounded or killed. It went on and on and on.
Why am I still alive? Gremio wondered after perhaps half an hour went by. He had no idea, save that he was luckier than he deserved. Blood turned his blue tunic and pantaloons black, but it wasn’t his blood. Most of it wasn’t, anyhow. He had a couple of cuts and a crossbow graze that was actually a little more than a graze, but nothing he had to worry about except getting crushed to death in the press, which was anything but an idle fear.
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