Where was Thisbe? Gremio turned his head-at the moment, the only part of him that would move-but didn’t see the sergeant. He managed to twist his right arm free, and slashed at a southron who couldn’t hit back. It wasn’t sporting. He didn’t care. He just wanted to live, and killing southrons was the best way he knew how to do that.
After another time that might have been forever or fifteen minutes, the southrons ran out of men to throw into that part of the fight. Scrambling out of the trench over the bodies of the slain, Gremio dashed toward a farmhouse, the next southron strongpoint. And there, by the gods, came Thisbe, trotting along not ten feet away. Gremio ran harder. Maybe, in spite of everything, this was victory.
V
Rollant watched the Army of Franklin form its ranks.
He watched it advance over the flat, gently rising ground that led to the earthworks John the Lister’s army had thrown up outside of Poor Richard. As the northerners began to move, Smitty spoke with reluctant admiration: “They’ve got guts, don’t they?”
“That they do,” Rollant allowed. “And I want to see those guts scattered all over the landscape for the ravens and crows before the gods-damned sons of bitches get close enough to do me any harm.”
He made Smitty laugh. “You’re a funny fellow, your Corporalship, sir. Anybody who can tell a joke when the battle’s about to start has to be a funny fellow.”
Staring, Rollant asked, “What the hells makes you think I’m joking?”
He knew what the trouble was. Smitty didn’t take any of this quite so seriously as he did himself. Smitty was a Detinan, and fought to reunite his kingdom. Rollant was a blond. He knew why he fought, too. He wanted to see every northern liege lord and would-be liege lord dead or maimed. He had no doubt the northerners felt the same way about him, too.
Here came Bell’s men, proud banners flying before them. They were lean and fierce and terribly in earnest. If they hadn’t been in earnest, would they have marched down from Dothan, close to two hundred miles, when so many of them had no shoes? That he respected them made him want to kill them no less. If anything, it made him want to kill them more. He understood how dangerous they were.
Standing on the shooting step, he listened to the traitors roar as they came on. They thought the Lion God favored them. Rollant had a different opinion.
Not far behind him, catapults began to buck and creak. Stone balls and firepots whistled over his head. The first few fell short. But, as the northerners kept coming, the engines began clawing holes in their line. Rollant whooped and cheered when a stone took out a whole file of traitors.
“How would you like to be on the receiving end of that?” Smitty asked.
“Wouldn’t like it one gods-damned bit,” Rollant answered without hesitation. “But I like giving it to the traitors just fine. You bet I do. I hope the engines wipe them all out. Then we won’t have to do any fighting of our own.”
“That’d be good,” Smitty said. “I’m not what you’d call pleased when people try and kill me, either.”
John the Lister’s pickets shot a thin volley of their own at Bell’s men, who kept on coming despite what the engines did to them. They were brave, think what you would of them. Repeating crossbows behind Rollant started clattering. More northerners fell. The ones who weren’t hit leaned forward, as if into a heavy wind. Rollant had seen that before. He’d done it himself, when advancing into the teeth of a storm of bolts and stones and firepots.
“Be ready, men!” Lieutenant Griff called. “They’ll come into range of our crossbows soon.”
Rollant wished he had one of the quick-shooting weapons Hard-Riding Jimmy’s unicorn-riders used. He wanted to be able to knock down as many Detinan liege lords as he could. He laughed. He was already living every northern blond’s dream. Not only was he shooting at liege lords, he was getting paid to do it. If that wasn’t right up there with living alongside the gods, he didn’t know what was.
Only trouble was, the liege lords shot back.
They hadn’t shot till the southron pickets pulled back. They’d just kept coming, taking whatever punishment they got for the sake of striking back when they jumped down into their foes’ trenches. Rollant didn’t want them jumping in there with him. He made sure his shortsword was loose in its scabbard.
“Looks like they’re bunching toward the center,” Smitty said.
“It does, doesn’t it?” Rollant agreed. Their regiment was off to the left.
Not all of Bell’s men moved toward the center, though. Only a few paces from Rollant and Smitty, a soldier in gray tunic and pantaloons fell dead, a quarrel in his forehead. He’d been looking out from the shooting step, exposing no more than the top of his head. That was all some traitor’d needed.
“Be ready!” Griff called again. “Take aim!” Rollant nestled the stock of the crossbow against his shoulder as the company commander cried, “Shoot!”
He pulled the trigger. The crossbow kicked. The bolt he shot was one of scores flying toward the northerners. Several of them crumpled. He had no idea whether his bolt scored. The only way to improve his chances was to shoot again and again and again. Frenziedly, he loaded, cocked, aimed, and shot.
Northerners kept falling. But the ones who didn’t fall didn’t run, either. They called false King Geoffrey’s name and their fighting slogans. They roared as if the Lion God dwelt in all their hearts. They came closer and closer to the entrenchment where Rollant shot yet again.
This time, he was pretty sure he saw the bolt go home. The black-bearded Detinan clutched at his midsection and slowly fell to the ground in front of the trenches. Rollant nodded to himself. A wound like that was mortal. If it didn’t kill quickly, from loss of blood, it would in its own sweet time, from fever. Hardly anyone lived after getting shot in the belly. People said Ned of the Forest had, but people said all sorts of uncanny things about Ned. Thinking about Ned paralyzed Rollant, the way seeing a snake was supposed to paralyze a bird. A serfcatcher who’d turned into a first-rate general, and whose men had massacred blond soldiers? Yes, that was plenty to frighten him. He wasn’t ashamed to admit it.
He shot again when the northerners were only fifty yards or so from the parapet. One of their bolts dug into the rampart and kicked dirt up into his face. As he rubbed his eyes, a repeating crossbow opened up behind him, hosing death into the men from the Army of Franklin at close range. They crumpled, one after another after another.
That was too much for flesh and blood to bear. Instead of swarming forward into the trenches, the men in blue in front of Rollant broke and ran. He couldn’t imagine how they’d come as far as they had. John the Lister’s soldiers and engineers had hit the traitors with everything they had as soon as they came into range. How many northerners were already down, dead or dying or-luckily-only wounded? Hundreds? No, surely thousands.
Beside Rollant, Smitty shouted, “See how much the Lion God loves you now, you bastards!” He shot a running man in the back, then turned to Rollant in surprise. “Why aren’t you filling ’em full of holes, too?”
“I don’t know,” the blond answered. “Sometimes enough is enough, I guess.” As he watched, the repeating crossbow cut down more men from behind. Even his blood lust was sated.
“Be ready to go after them if we get the order to pursue,” Lieutenant Griff said.
“Pursue?” That startled Smitty and Rollant, who both echoed it. Rollant added, “I don’t think we’ve got the men to chase them.”
Colonel Nahath said, “Anyone who ordered us to pursue, given what we have and what Bell and the traitors have…” The regimental commander shook his gray-haired head. “He’d have to be crazy.”
That hadn’t always stopped officers on either side. Rollant knew as much. If someone wearing a brigadier’s star on each epaulet saw the northerners fleeing and decided they needed a clout in the backside, he’d order a pursuit. And if it got the regiment slaughtered, how much would he care?
But the order didn’t come. The din of ba
ttle got louder over to the right. “The sons of bitches are in the trenches there,” Smitty said.
“They can go in, but let’s see how many come out,” Rollant said savagely. He’d already done his duty and more. He would have been perfectly content to stay right where he was. If Bell’s men nerved themselves for another charge at this part of the line, he’d fight them off again. If they didn’t…
If they didn’t, as things turned out, he and his comrades would go to them. Colonel Nahath said, “Men, we’re shifting to the right, to make sure the traitors don’t break our line and cut us in half.”
Rollant had plunged the butt end of the company standard’s staff into the soft, damp dirt at the bottom of the trench. He snatched up the flag and carried it through the trenches toward the thicker fighting at the center of the southrons’ line. As long as he carried it, he wouldn’t be able to shoot at the traitors. He’d have to do his fighting with his shortsword. Sometimes, that meant he didn’t do any fighting. He didn’t think that would happen today.
Outside the parapet, a northern officer shouted, “For gods’ sake, men, rally! We can whip them yet. For gods’ sake, we can. All you have to do is fight hard, for-”
Smitty raised his crossbow to his shoulder and shot. No standard hampered him. The officer’s exhortation ended in a shriek. “Got the preachy son of a bitch!” Smitty said exultantly.
The traitors cried out in dismay. “For Gods’ Sake John is down!” one of them exclaimed.
“I think you just shot a brigadier,” Rollant told Smitty.
His friend set another bolt in the groove of his crossbow and grunted with effort as he yanked back the bowstring. “Too bad the bastard wasn’t a full general,” he said. Detinans were seldom satisfied with anything, no matter how fine it was. Not for the first time, Rollant wondered whether that was their greatest strength or greatest weakness. Most blonds lacked that restless urge to change things. The lack made them have a harder time keeping up with their swarthy neighbors.
A southron officer still on his feet despite a bloody bandage on his head and another wrapped around his left arm waved a sword with his good hand. “Go on in there, boys, and give ’em hells!”
“Avram!” Rollant shouted. “Avram and freedom!” It was getting dark. Before long, nobody would be able to see anybody else, to see his gray uniform or his blond hair or which standard he bore. His own side would be almost as likely as the enemy to shoot him unless he kept yelling. “Avram and freedom!” he cried once more, louder than ever.
Some of the soldiers battling around the farmhouse shouted the same thing. Others called Geoffrey’s name and cried out for provincial prerogative. Rollant’s comrades poured a volley of crossbow quarrels into those men, then rushed at them, drawing shortswords as they charged. Pikemen came up with the crossbowmen in Colonel Nahath’s regiment. They too stormed toward the northerners.
But more soldiers yelling for false King Geoffrey burst out of the trench line they’d overrun and reinforced their comrades already in the farmyard. If the southrons wanted to drive them back-indeed, if the southrons wanted to keep them from breaking through-they would have their work cut out for them.
“Avram!” Rollant shouted again. He shifted the company standard to his left hand and yanked out his shortsword. “Avram and freedom! Avram and victory!”
“Bugger Avram with a pine cone, you stinking southron son of a bitch!” a man in blue cried furiously. He too had a shortsword. He and Rollant hacked at each other. Rollant’s sword bit flesh. The northerner groaned. Rollant slashed him again, this time across the face. He reeled back, hands clutched to the spurting wound.
Lightning smashed down out of a clear though quickly darkening sky. Southrons near Rollant screamed, their cries almost drowned in a thunderclap like the end of the world. The stink of charred flesh made the blond want to gag. A couple of minutes later, another lightning bolt smote Colonel Nahath’s men. This one struck close enough to make every hair on Rollant’s body stand erect. The sensation was extraordinarily distinct and extraordinarily unpleasant.
“Where are our wizards?” That cry had risen from southron armies ever since the war was new. Southron mages usually managed to do just enough to keep the traitors’ wizards from destroying southron soldiers altogether. That was enough to have brought King Avram’s armies to the edge of victory. It wasn’t enough to keep a lot of men in gray tunics and pantaloons from dying unnecessarily. Rollant didn’t want to be one of those unnecessarily dead men. He didn’t even want to be a necessarily dead man. He wanted to live. How could he gloat at the beaten traitors if he didn’t?
Yet another bolt of sorcerous lightning smashed into the battlefield, this one striking the two-story farmhouse where dozens of southrons sheltered and from which they shot at their foes. When nothing much seemed to happen, one more thunderbolt hit the farmhouse. Its roof caught fire. Some of the southrons inside fled. Others must have thought a burning farmhouse safer than the hellsish battle all around, for they stayed where they were.
Rollant did his best to ignore the northerners’ magics. If they slew him, they slew him, and he couldn’t do much about it (he knew the protective amulet he wore around his neck was not proof against sorceries of that magnitude). And if he stood around gaping at them, some resolutely unsorcerous traitor would shoot him or spear him or run him through. All he could do was fight his own fight and hope John the Lister’s wizards eventually realized they had something important to do here.
“Geoffrey!” someone nearby yelled. Without even thinking about it, Rollant lunged with his shortsword. His blade cleaved flesh. The traitor howled.
“Well done, Corporal!” Lieutenant Griff called. A crossbow quarrel or swordstroke had carried away the lobe of his left ear. Rollant wondered if he even knew it. Then he shrugged. With the sort of fight this was turning out to be, Griff was lucky to have got away so lightly-and he himself, so far, luckier still.
* * *
John the Lister had known he would have a fight on his hands at Poor Richard. Even he hadn’t guessed the Army of Franklin would be able to make it as savage a fight as it was. A year and a half before, at Essoville down in the south, Duke Edward of Arlington had ordered the Army of Southern Parthenia to charge across open country against a fortified position. Most of the northern soldiers had given way under southron bombardment, and never reached the southrons’ lines at all. The few who did were quickly killed or captured.
Here… Bell’s men had to cross far more open ground than the Army of Southern Parthenia had. They had only a handful of engines of their own, where Duke Edward’s catapults had pounded and pummeled the southron line before the charge. But they held part of John’s position, refused to be dislodged, and still threatened to break through and cut his army in half. He had to admire them.
He also had to keep them from doing what they wanted. If he didn’t, his whole army was liable to perish. He knew how badly his men had hurt them as they advanced into the fight. Now that they were in it, they were striking back with a fury at least half compounded of the lust for revenge. John ordered more men to move from the flanks, where the northerners hadn’t been able to break into his entrenchments, to the center, where they had.
When lightning began striking in the center, John cursed and shouted, “Major Alva! Where in the hells is Major Alva?”
“I’m right here, sir,” Alva said from beside him: from, in fact, almost inside the breast pocket of his tunic.
John the Lister glowered at him, and not because he hadn’t noticed him, either. “What in the damnation are the traitors doing pounding us like that? Aren’t you here to stop them from working this kind of wizardry?”
“No, sir,” Alva answered. John glowered even more, but the mage ignored him, continuing, “I’m here to stop them from working any really big spells, and I’ve done that.” John suddenly noticed how weary he sounded. After a sigh and a shrug, Alva went on, “If you knew what they wanted to do, and what they almost did… Well,
they didn’t manage it, and they gods-damned well won’t now. This other stuff… This is fumbling in your pocket and and pulling out copper when you went looking for gold.”
“Oh.” John felt foolish. Not knowing exactly what to say, he tried, “I suppose I ought to thank you.”
“That would be nice. Not a hells of a lot of people ever bother,” Alva said. “But don’t worry about it. I won’t turn you into a red eft or anything like that if you don’t.”
“What in the name of the Lion God’s tail tuft is a red eft?” John the Lister demanded.
“It’s what you call a mostly water salamander-a newt-during the time it lives on land,” Major Alva answered. Somehow, John was sure he would remember that utterly useless bit of information the rest of his life.
At the moment, though, he had more things to worry about than red efts. Pointing toward the center of his line, he said, “Look. That farmhouse is burning. It’s a strongpoint for our men. If we get forced away from there, Bell’s army will break thought and split us in half. If that happens, we’ll all end up dead or captured. Stopping their lightning would make that a lot less likely, even if you don’t think much of it as far as magic goes.”
Alva very visibly paused to think it over. “Well, yes, I suppose you have a point,” he said at last, as if it was one he hadn’t thought of himself. Maybe he hadn’t, for he went on, “We really do need to win this battle, don’t we?”
“That would be nice, if you plan on living long enough to show how clever you are after this gods-damned war finally ends,” John the Lister said dryly.
“I do.” Now Alva sounded very determined. “Oh, yes. I certainly do.” He pointed at the farmhouse, as imperiously as a king. He said one word, in a language John did not know and never wanted to learn. The fire ceased to be. It might have been a candle flame he’d blown out; the disappearance was as sudden and abrupt as that. “Now,” the mage murmured, reminding himself, “the lightnings.”
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