They struck again only moments after he spoke. He muttered something under his breath. Then he spoke aloud, again only one word. When the lightnings came down once more from the clear night sky, they struck off to one side of where they had been hitting.
“Is that still our position, or are they coming down on the traitors’ heads now?” Alva asked. “Their mages are a little stronger than I thought. I wanted to stop that bolt, but all I could do was shift it.”
John the Lister goggled. Alva was taking on several northern wizards at once… and winning? That sort of thing hadn’t happened all through the war. John wasn’t sorry to see it-he was anything but sorry to see it-but it took him by surprise. He needed a moment to remember the question Alva had asked. “I’ll need to send a runner and find out,” he said, several heartbeats slower than he should have.
“All right.” Alva stretched and yawned. He still looked like an unmade bed. But John the Lister saw why Doubting George, a man who had confidence in no one, relied on Major Alva.
On John’s command, a runner dashed toward the fighting. John hoped he wouldn’t get killed up there. More lightning struck, in about the same place as the last bolt. Which side was it punishing? They would-John hoped they would-know soon.
He turned to Alva. “If you can do this now, what will you do in peacetime, when you get a little older and you come into your full power?”
“Do you think it will be greater than this?” Alva asked interestedly. “I’ve wondered about that myself. I suppose I’ll just have to find out.”
Back came the runner, going flat out, his face streaked with sweat in spite of the chilly night. “Sir,” he panted, “those are still hitting our men, but not in such a bad spot.”
“Thank you,” John said, and turned to Alva. “What can you do about that, Major?”
“We’ll see,” the mage answered. “They’re rallying against me, but they haven’t got any one fellow who’s really strong. A bunch of bricks doesn’t make one rock, because they’ll fall apart if the rock hits them the right way. Now I have to find it.”
The northern wizards loosed another thunderbolt a couple of minutes later, in that same spot, while Alva stood there thinking hard. John the Lister wondered if the wizard’s arrogance-which he unquestionably had, despite his shambling manner-had got the better of him.
Then Alva laughed out loud, a sound childish in its sheer glee. He snapped his fingers and hopped up into the air. “That’s what I’ll do, by the Thunderer. Let’s see how they like it.”
This time, the charm he used wasn’t just one word. He brought it out in a way that made it sound almost like one of the work chants blond serfs used. John found himself tapping his foot to the rollicking rhythm. Alva was tapping his foot, too. With a last little hop and a skip-and a pass as intricate as any John had ever seen-he sent the spell on its way.
“What will it do?” John the Lister asked when he judged it safe to jog the wizard’s metaphorical elbow.
“Deflect the strike a little more,” Alva answered absently. “We’ll find out how they like that, and what they can do about it.” By his manner, he didn’t think they could do much. Yes, he had arrogance, all right. John waited to see if he deserved what he had.
When the lightnings didn’t return for some little while, the commanding general began to wonder whether Alva had altogether stifled the northern wizards despite saying he couldn’t. But then the thunderbolt crashed down once more. “Shall I send a runner to find out where that hit?” John asked. Later, he paused to wonder about the propriety of a brigadier’s asking a major-and a major by courtesy, at that-what he required. That was later. At the time, it seemed the most natural thing in the world.
And Alva nodded as if it was the most natural thing in the world, too. “Yes, sir, thanks very much,” he said. “I think I’ve done it, but I want to make sure.”
Off dashed another runner. He came back panting even harder than his predecessor had, but with an enormous grin stretched across his face. “Sir, that came down on the traitors who were moving up to reinforce their position near the farmhouse, and it tore the hells out them.”
At that news, John the Lister whooped and reached up to smack the taller wizard on the back. He almost knocked Alva over, and had to steady him to keep him from falling. “Well done, Major!” he exclaimed. “We’re holding them everywhere else, so they’re really stopped if we can stop them there.”
“Good. That’s good, uh, sir,” Alva answered. “They’ll try to break free of what I’ve done to them, you know. I don’t think they can, but there is the off chance that I’m wrong.”
“What then?” John asked. “Can they beat down your magic?”
“I don’t think so, sir,” the mage said. “But they might make me do some more work. You never can tell.”
Even as he spoke, another thunderbolt smote the battlefield. Blinking against the greenish-purple afterimages, John the Lister said, “I think that came down on the same part of the field as the last one. If it did, it came down on the northerners’ heads again, didn’t it?”
“I think so, sir. I hope so, sir,” Alva said. “We’d better find out, though, because I can’t say for certain.”
“All right.” John sent forth yet another runner.
This one didn’t even need to speak when he came sprinting back. The expression on his face said everything that needed saying. But he announced the news even so: “They dropped another one on their own men!”
John the Lister whooped and Major Alva hastily moved out of the way so he wouldn’t get walloped again. “I’ve got the deflection where I want it, sure enough,” he said once he was out of range of John’s strong right arm. “Now the only question is, how stubborn are they? Will they keep pounding their own people, or will they give it up as a bad job?”
“Bell commands them,” John said.
“Which means?” Alva asked. At John’s expression, he explained, “I don’t pay much heed to soldiers.”
“Yes, I’d noticed that,” John said, even more dryly than before. After a moment, he added, “You really should, you know. They’re the opponents you’re facing.”
“I suppose so. I hadn’t really looked at it that way. All a wizard usually worries about is other wizards.” With the air of a man making a large concession, Alva went on, “Tell me about Bell, then.”
“If he weren’t a man who charges like a unicorn in heat and kicks like an ass, would he have attacked us here?” John asked.
“Hmm. Maybe not. We have hit him hard, haven’t we?” Alva might have been noticing for the first time the carnage around him as carnage rather than as a problem-and not much more than an elementary problem, at that-in sorcery.
“If we hit him any harder…” John the Lister shook his head. “I don’t see how we could have hit him any harder. He must have lost three or four times as many men as we have. We’ve had reports of several northern brigadiers falling when they fought right up at the front like common soldiers.”
“That’s brave of them,” Alva said. “Isn’t it kind of stupid, too?”
“Soldiers fight. If they didn’t fight, they wouldn’t be soldiers any more,” John said, his voice clotted with disapproval.
“Sometimes, evidently, they aren’t soldiers any more even if they do fight,” Alva replied.
Before John had to worry about how to respond to that, lightning smashed down yet again in the same spot it had already struck twice. John didn’t need to send a runner. What had happened was very obvious. “Do you see?” he asked Alva. “Do you see, by the gods?”
“Yes, sir. I see.” The wizard sounded more respectful than he had up till now. “You were right, sir.”
That’s the key to it, John the Lister realized. I was right. He takes people who are right seriously. If you happen to be wrong… gods help you if you’re wrong around him. Maybe he’ll be a little less heartless when he gets older. Maybe not, too.
As if to prove how very right John was, one mor
e bolt of lightning smote that same place. “He is a stubborn fool, isn’t he?” Major Alva said. “His wizards are pretty stupid, too, to keep banging their heads against a wall they can’t knock over. Well, that’s their worry.”
“Yes. It is.” John allowed himself the luxury of a long sigh of relief. The northerners wouldn’t break through in the middle now, and they’d never come close to breaking through on the wings. His army would live. Sooner or later, Bell’s men would give up the attack and pull back. Then he could get his own force on the road south, get back into the works at Ramblerton.
I hope Doubting George thinks I’ve slowed Bell down enough, John the Lister thought. He’d better, by the gods. No matter what happened to the Army of Franklin here, we’ve paid a heavy price, too.
* * *
“I’m sorry, sir. I’m very sorry,” one of the blue-robed mages told Lieutenant General Bell. “We’ve done everything we know how to do, but that gods-damned southron won’t let us loose. It’s like… like wrestling, sir. Sometimes you’re pinned, and that’s all there is to it.”
“Sometimes you’re useless, is what you mean,” Bell snarled. “If you’d gone on pounding them there, we would have finished smashing them by now.”
“Sir, they’ve got a stronger wizard than we do,” the sorcerer replied. “I hate like hells to say that, since the son of a bitch is a southron. We ought to eat up southron mages the way we eat fried fish. We ought to, but we can’t, not with this one.”
“We were in amongst them,” Bell said. “We are in amongst them. But how can we break through if this mage of theirs stifles your spells?”
“Well, sir,” — the wizard picked his words with care- “if magic won’t do it for us, pikes and swords and crossbows will have to.”
“I told Patrick the Cleaver he dared not fail. I told him,” Bell muttered. He shouted for a runner. “Go up to the front and tell Brigadier Patrick we require a breakthrough at all costs. At all costs, do you hear me?”
“Yes, sir. A breakthrough at all costs.” The messenger hurried away. Bell might have sentenced him to death, sending him up to the part of the front where the fighting was hottest. The young man had to know that. So did Bell, though he didn’t give it a second thought; he’d gone into plenty of hot fighting himself. Had the runner hesitated, he would have had something to say. This way, he took a pull at his little bottle of laudanum and waited.
He was just starting to feel the drug, just starting to feel the fire recede from his shoulder and his missing leg, when the runner returned, which meant something close to half an hour had gone by. “Well?” Bell barked.
“Sir, we haven’t got the men in the center to break through,” the runner said.
Laudanum or no laudanum, Bell’s temper didn’t merely kindle-it ignited. “Haven’t got the men?” he shouted. “Who the hells told you that? Patrick the Cleaver? Patrick the coward? I’ll cashier the white-livered son of a bitch, so help me gods I will.”
But the messenger shook his head. “No, sir. Patrick’s down. He’s dead,” he added, to make himself perfectly plain.
“Oh.” Bell could hardly accuse a dead man of dereliction of duty. “Who’s in command there, then? Otho the Troll? Otho knows what we’re supposed to do-what we have to do.”
“No, sir. Brigadier Otho’s shot, too-shot dead.” Again, the runner didn’t seem to want to leave Bell in any doubt.
“Oh,” the general commanding repeated, this time on even more of a falling note. “Well, by the Lion God’s fangs, who is in command in the center?”
“A colonel from Palmetto Province, sir-a man named Florizel,” the runner answered. Florizel? Bell scratched his head. He’d heard the name-he was sure of that, but he could barely put a face to the man. He had no idea what sort of officer Florizel was. A live one, he thought. The runner, meanwhile, went on, “He says everything’s all smashed to hells and gone up there. From what I saw, sir, he’s right.”
The news couldn’t be good, not if a colonel was trying to command a wing. “Can we get help from the right or left, put the men where they’ll do the most good?”
“For Gods’ Sake John’s been shot dead, too, over on our right,” the runner said. “Florizel talked with men who saw him die.”
“Oh.” Bell was getting tired of saying that, but he didn’t know what else he could say. “What about Benjamin the Heated Ham, then, over on our left?” That was the only straw he had left to grasp.
“I don’t know, sir,” the runner replied. “I wasn’t over in that part of the field, and I can’t tell you what happened there.”
Bell didn’t know, either, not in detail. He did know the men on the left wing hadn’t broken into the southrons’ trenches, which wasn’t the best news in the world, or even anything close to it. With a sigh, he said, “I’d better find out, then.”
“Will you send me again, sir?”
“No.” Bell shook his head. “You’ve gone into danger once already.” The runner didn’t seem to know whether to look indignant or grateful. After two or three heartbeats, gratitude won. Lieutenant General Bell called for another runner.
“Yes, sir? What can I do for you?” This one sounded as eager as the last. The general commanding explained what he required. The runner saluted and hurried off toward the left wing.
Bell cocked his head, listening to the fighting ebb. He growled something his thick mustache and beard fortunately muffled. By the sound of things, his men had given everything they had in them. Even if the left had soldiers to shift to the center, could they revive the fight?
All he could do was wait till the runner came back. It seemed like forever, but this young man didn’t take much longer than the other one had. “Well?” Bell demanded when the fellow reappeared. “Is Benjamin breathing?”
“Yes, sir,” the messenger answered, “but John of Barsoom and Hiram the Cranberry are both dead, sir, so he’s got two brigades commanded by colonels. And that whole wing’s been shot to pieces.”
Oh seemed inadequate: that was more bad news than it could bear. Instead, Bell said, “What the hells happened?”
“The way Benjamin tells it, sir, the southrons’ right gradually sticks out. As the wing went forward, heading in toward the center, John the Lister’s men enfiladed them. That put them in trouble even before the enemy started shooting at them from the front.”
“Why didn’t Benjamin suppress the enfilading shots before he went through with the rest of the right?” Bell asked.
“I can’t tell you that, sir, not for sure. You’d have to ask him,” the runner replied. “But I did see that part of the field, and I saw the bodies lying on it. I’d say he tried, but found out he couldn’t.”
He tried, but found out he couldn’t. It sounded like something a priest would say before lighting a funeral pyre. And how great would the pyres be after this fight? For once, even Bell, who seldom counted the cost in a battle, shied away from thinking about that.
“Anything else for me, sir?” the runner asked.
“Eh?” Bell had to call himself back to the here-and-now. “No, never mind. You’re dismissed.”
“Thank you, sir.” The youngster saluted again and left.
Bell stared after him like a man suddenly realizing he was trapped in nightmare. The commanding general shook his head, as if trying to wake. He opened his mouth, starting to say, “No!” but checked himself at the last instant.
Seeing the motion, the nearest runner asked, “What are your orders, sir?”
What are your orders? It was a good question. Bell wished he had a good answer for it, or any answer at all. With his right and left wings smashed, with his center thwarted, what could he do? What could the Army of Franklin do?
“Sir?” the runner asked when he didn’t say anything.
He had to respond. The youngster was starting to stare. But all that came out was, “I have none.”
“Oh,” the runner said, in the same sort of tone Bell had used on hearing of disaster.
“Yes, sir.” The runner sounded relieved, perhaps hoping the situation wasn’t so black as he’d believed a moment before.
Maybe it wasn’t. On the other hand, maybe it was. Lieutenant General Bell reached for the laudanum bottle again, longing for the haze the drug could put between him and the pain of reality.
Messengers from the front came back to him, some on foot, others on unicornback. Their news was all the same: the northerners were pulling back from the forwardmost positions they’d won, back to lines they might hold if John the Lister’s men counterattacked. One of the runners said, “Some of the men on our left wing, sir, they’ll building breastworks out of bodies.”
“Are they?” Bell said tonelessly, and the soldier nodded. Bell muttered, then bestirred himself and waved to his own corps of runners. “Order my wing commanders here,” he told them. “We will confer, and decide how to take up the attack in the morning.” That the Army of Franklin would take up the attack in the morning he had no doubt.
Colonel Florizel was the first wing commander to arrive. He slid down off a unicorn and limped up to Bell. Saluting, he said, “Reporting as ordered, sir. We have done everything flesh and blood can do. You may rely on that.”
“Very well, Colonel,” Bell said. “Are you badly hurt there?”
“This is an old wound, sir,” Florizel answered. “I went through everything today without a scratch, though I lost a mount. I aim to offer up a lamb to the Lion God for thanksgiving. I can’t tell you how I got through-seemed like the crossbow bolts were thick enough to walk on.”
“Can you go forward at sunrise?” Bell asked.
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