“A good thing, too, sir, if anyone wants to know what I think,” Rollant answered. “They’d hack us to pieces if they did.”
Bell’s men had dug shooting pits in front of their first line of trenches, as John the Lister’s army had done in front of Poor Richard. Men in blue popped up out of those pits and started sending crossbow quarrels toward the advancing southrons. One hummed past Rollant’s ear. Another-thock! — punched a hole in the standard he carried. It would have punched a hole in him, too, had it happened to fly a few feet lower.
Behind him, crossbowmen began to shoot at Bell’s men. Zip! Zip! More bolts flew past, too close for comfort. Every so often, a standard-bearer or an officer got shot in the back “by accident” when someone in the ranks who didn’t care for him let fly. As a blond, Rollant knew plenty of people didn’t care for him. He couldn’t do anything about it now, and tried not to think about it.
Motion ahead and to his right caught his eye. It wasn’t, as he’d hoped, Hard-Riding Jimmy’s men sweeping down on the traitors’ flank. Instead, it was Ned of the Forest’s unicorn-riders, red dragon on gold flying from their standards, maneuvering to block Hard-Riding Jimmy and keep him from doing whatever he’d set out to do.
Well, who ever saw a dead unicorn-rider? Rollant thought, not without bitterness. If a footsoldier said that out loud to a unicorn-rider, it was guaranteed to start a fight. That didn’t mean Rollant and his comrades didn’t think such things, though.
Unicorn-riders lent a touch of style to what would otherwise be vulgar brawls. Past that, on the southron side at least, they’d never been good for much. Maybe Hard-Riding Jimmy could change that. Rollant would believe it when he saw it.
The northerners in the shooting pits ran back toward their own line. “Provincial prerogative!” they shouted, and, “King Geoffrey!”
“Freedom!” Rollant yelled back. “King Avram and freedom!” He took one hand off the flagpole to shake a fist at Bell’s men.
Still waving his sword, Lieutenant Griff ran ahead of his men toward the earthen breastwork in front of the northerners’ forward trench. “King Avram and one Detina forever!” Griff shouted. Rollant hustled forward to keep up with the company commander. Griff swung the sword again. “Avram and free-”
A crossbow quarrel caught him in the throat. He made a horrible gobbling noise and threw up both hands to clutch at the wound. The sword fell forgotten to the ground. Blood, dreadfully red, fountained out between Griff’s fingers. Seeing so much blood, Rollant knew the wound had to be mortal. Griff couldn’t have bled much more or much faster if a stone had struck off his head. He staggered on for another couple of steps. Then his knees gave out, and he crumpled to the ground.
Rollant stooped to snatch up the sword he had dropped. An officer’s blade, it was half again as long as the stubby weapon the blond carried on his hip. As he bent to take it-shifting the company standard from right hand to left at the same time-another bolt hissed malevolently over his head. If he hadn’t bent down, it might have caught him in the face. “Thank you, Thunderer,” he muttered. “I’ll do something nice for you if you let me live through this fight.”
When he straightened, he waved the standard and swung the sword. A standard-bearer, he’d found, had to have some ham in him, or the rest of the men wouldn’t follow him the way they should.
And now he had the perfect war cry to make his comrades give all they could. “For Lieutenant Griff!” he shouted, and ran on, past the company commander’s body.
“For Lieutenant Griff!” the men behind him roared.
Griff’s fall meant Sergeant Joram was in charge of the company for the time being. He ran up alongside of Roland. Joram had his own way of getting the most out of his men. Pointing to Rollant, he bellowed, “Are you sons of bitches going to let this fellow do it all by himself?”
“Sergeant-” Rollant began, and then let it go. He’d already seen that Joram didn’t have too much against blonds. The sergeant was also trying to get the men to fight hard. Later might be the time to talk about it. Now wasn’t.
“Avraaaam!” Joram yelled as he sprang up onto the parapet. He shot one traitor, threw his crossbow in the face of another, drew his shortsword, and leaped down into the trench.
“Avraaaam!” Rollant echoed. He jumped down into the trench, too, and spitted a northerner before the man in blue could shoot him.
Another northerner rushed forward, grappling with him to wrestle away the company standard. Struggling and cursing, Rollant couldn’t get his arm free enough to stab the enemy soldier. He hit him in the face with the pommel of Lieutenant Griff’s sword. Something-probably the northerner’s nose-flattened under the impact. The man howled but hung on and tried to trip him. Rollant smashed him again with the weighted pommel. The second blow persuaded the traitor he wasn’t going to get what he wanted. He lurched down the trench, his face dripping blood.
More and more southrons jumped into the trench. Northern pikemen rushed up to drive them back. That was bad-pikes had far more reach than shortswords. But southron pikemen joined the fight moments later, thrusting and parrying against their foes. Rollant was too busy trying to stay alive to pay much attention to the details. He did know that southron reinforcements eased the pressure on his comrades. The southrons were into the Army of Franklin’s trenches, and it didn’t look as if Bell’s men could throw them out again.
There was Colonel Nahath, scrambling up out of the first trench and pointing to the next one with his sword. “Come on, boys!” he cried. “Are you going to let a pack of dirty, stinking traitors slow us down?”
“No!” the soldiers shouted. They hurried after the regimental commander. The northerners they fought were dirty and stinking. Rollant and his comrades weren’t, or not so badly; they’d spent the past couple of weeks in far better quarters than their foes had. A few days in the field, though, and nobody civilized would want to get anywhere near them, either.
“Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!” That was Sergeant Joram, urging his men on. Rollant waved the company standard again. Then he too fought his way up onto the high ground between the trenches. He waved the standard yet again. Joram nodded. “That’s the way to do it, Corporal!”
“King Avram!” Rollant yelled, and sprang down into the melee in the second trench. A bolt lifted his hat from his head and carried it away. He didn’t even have time to shudder at his narrow escape. He was a standard-bearer, and so a target. He was a blond in a gray uniform, and so a target. He was a blond in a gray uniform who’d had the presumption to fool his superiors into thinking he deserved to be a corporal and bear a standard-so northerners would think of it, anyhow-and so doubly or triply or quadruply a target. He was glad he’d picked up luckless Lieutenant Griff’s sword. It gave him more reach than most of his foes had. It wouldn’t do anything against crossbow quarrels, of course, but by now the trench was so packed with battling men, hardly anybody could raise a crossbow, let alone aim one.
Again, Bell’s men tried to drive the southrons out of the trench. Again, gray-clad reinforcements swamped them. Rollant climbed up over dead bodies-he hoped they were all dead-wearing blue and gained the next stretch of open ground between entrenchments.
“Fancy meeting you here,” Smitty said, panting.
Rollant looked him up and down. “You mean they haven’t killed you yet?” he demanded.
“I don’t think so.” The other soldier patted himself, as if looking for bolts or a pike or two that might have pierced him when he was busy with something else. He shook his head. “Nope. I still seem to be more or less alive. How about you?”
“About the same, I think. Come on, let’s get back to it,” Rollant said. “We’ve pushed ’em pretty hard so far.”
“Haven’t broken through yet, though.” Smitty spoke with a connoisseur’s knowledge of what he wanted. “But who knows? We just might.”
“Yes.” Rollant nodded. “We just might.” That was as much of a breather as he allowed himself. He waved the
standard and rushed forward into the fight. If the southrons did break through at last, he wanted to be part of it. After so much hard struggle, he thought he’d earned the right.
Later that day, a crossbow quarrel nicked his left ear. He bled all over his tunic, but it wasn’t even close to a serious wound. A healer put a stitch in it and said, “I don’t even think you’ll have a scar.”
“Oh.” Rollant almost felt cheated-with the little wound, and with the battle. The northerners gave ground, but they didn’t break. He wanted them ruined, not just driven back. He could see that that smashing victory ought to be there. He could see it, but he couldn’t-Doubting George didn’t seem able to-find a way to reach out and grab hold of it.
* * *
Captain Gremio’s regiment, along with the rest of what remained Colonel Florizel’s wing, was posted at the far right end of the Army of Franklin’s line. “Lieutenant General Bell expects the southrons to concentrate their attack against this wing,” Gremio told his company commanders-three captains, four lieutenants, and three sergeants. “You’ve got to let your men know they’d better fight hard. A lot is liable to depend on them when the southrons move. And I think the southrons are going to move today.” As if to underscore his words, the sun rose in the northeast and spilled blood-colored light over their lines and over the works in front of Ramblerton to the south.
Sergeant Thisbe raised a hand. When Gremio nodded, Thisbe asked, “How does Bell know this is where Doubting George aims to hit hardest?”
“I can’t tell you that, because Colonel Florizel didn’t tell me,” Gremio answered. “I don’t know whether Bell told his wing commanders how he knows-or why he suspects, I should say.” As usual, he spoke with a barrister’s relentless precision.
One of the other company commanders-Gremio didn’t see who-muttered, “I hope Bell’s not right the way he was when he sent us at the southrons’ trenches by Poor Richard.”
“That will be enough of that,” Gremio said sharply. He wished the other man hadn’t done such a good job of voicing his own fear. He’d lost faith in the commanding general. That did him exactly no good, as Bell was going to keep right on giving orders regardless of whether Gremio had faith in him. The regimental commander continued, “We ought to get the men fed early, too, in case we do have to fight today.”
None of the company commanders quarreled with that. They got the cooks working earlier than usual, and grumbling more than usual on account of it. Even so, only about half the men got breakfast before warning cries from the sentries in the shooting pits out in front of the main line announced that the southrons were indeed coming forth. Gremio got nothing to eat himself. His belly growled in disappointed resentment when he rushed out of the breakfast line and up toward the parapets.
When he looked to the south, his jaw dropped. That wasn’t hunger. It was shock. He’d known Avram’s soldiers would be moving against the Army of Franklin. He’d known, yes, but he’d never dreamt the move would look like… this. From one end of the line to the other, miles of southrons swarmed forward under what looked like thousands of company and regimental standards. The attack might not succeed. Whether it did or not, though, it was the most awe-inspiring thing Gremio had ever seen.
“Forward!” he shouted to his own soldiers. “By the Thunderer’s lightning bolt, come forward! We have to beat them back!”
Up came the men, some eating, others complaining they’d got no breakfast. Thisbe’s light, clear voice put paid to that: “Will you be happy if you get killed with full bellies?”
Gremio half expected some stubborn soldier to answer yes. No one did, or no one he heard. The men filed into the trenches, baggy wool pantaloons flapping as they ran. They loaded their crossbows. Some of them thrust quarrels into the dirt in front of them so they could reload faster.
On came the southrons. It was a couple of miles from their line to the one the Army of Franklin held. We came that far over open country at Poor Richard, Gremio thought, and then they tore hells out of us. Maybe we can do the same to them.
But it wouldn’t be easy. Even the part of the southron army that had fought at Poor Richard had had far more engines than the Army of Franklin boasted. Gremio shook his head. How can you boast about something you don’t have?
Not only that, unicorns were hauling the southrons’ catapults and repeating crossbows right along with the rest of the army. Yes, Gremio’s side started shooting first, but Doubting George’s men wasted no time replying in kind. A stone thudded into the front of the parapet. It didn’t plow through, but dirt flew out and hit Gremio in the face.
Farther down the line, a firepot came down on top of the parapet, sending up a great gout of flame and smoke. Another one landed in the trenches. Burning men shrieked, some not for long. With the sulfurous reek of the firepots came the stink of charred flesh.
A soldier on the shooting step suddenly toppled, shot through the head by a long, thick bolt from a repeating crossbow. The scouts in the shooting pits in front of the main line came out and dashed back toward the entrenchments. More than a few of them fell, shot in the back, before they made it. Some of them were shot by their own comrades in the trenches, too. The southrons had made the same mistake at Poor Richard. Why didn’t we learn from them? Gremio wondered.
Southrons were falling, too. A stone knocked down three men before losing its momentum. Repeating crossbows cut down more. And firepots burst among the soldiers in gray.
“Shoot!” Gremio shouted when he judged the southrons were in range of his men’s weapons. Up and down the entrenchment, crossbows clacked and snapped. Men reloaded with frantic haste. Someone not far from Gremio cursed horribly when his bowstring broke. He fit a replacement to the crossbow and went back to the business of slaughter.
Gremio didn’t need long to see that the southrons assailing his end of the line were veterans. In the face of what the northern soldiers flung at them, they went to the earth and started shooting back from their bellies. Some of them began to dig in; Gremio watched the dirt fly. Raw troops would have charged home in spite of everything, not knowing any better. They would have paid for it, too, paid gruesomely. The Army of Franklin punished the southrons here, but less than Gremio would have hoped.
Sergeant Thisbe said, “They don’t have orders to take our trenches no matter what, the way we did a couple of weeks ago with theirs.” The underofficer-now the company commander-sounded bitter. Gremio had a hard time blaming Thisbe for that, not when he was bitter himself.
“We’re holding ’em here.” Gremio peered off toward the left. “Anybody know how we’re doing along the rest of the line?”
He didn’t, even after peering. A swell of ground just a little to the east kept him from seeing much. All he could do was wonder-and worry. Even here, where the Army of Franklin seemed to be doing fine, a hells of a lot of southrons were attacking. If Lieutenant General Bell happened to be wrong, if this wasn’t the stretch where Doubting George’s army was pushing hardest, what was happening off to the left, out of Gremio’s sight but, with luck, not out of the commanding general’s?
Lieutenant General Bell? Wrong? Gremio laughed. How could anyone possibly imagine Bell making a mistake? The idea was absurd, wasn’t it? Of course it was. Up till now, Bell had conducted a perfect campaign, hadn’t he? Of course he had. The Army of Franklin had smashed John the Lister at Summer Mountain, hadn’t it? And then gone on to destroy John’s remnants at Poor Richard?
He shook his head. Some of those things could have happened. Some of those things should have happened. But they hadn’t. That was at least partly Bell’s fault. Could he make another mistake? Gremio knew too well that he could.
Thinking along with him-as the underofficer so often did-Sergeant Thisbe asked, “What if they’re hammering us at the far end of the line?”
“Then they are,” Captain Gremio replied with a fatalistic shrug. “I don’t know what we can do about it except either send reinforcements or run away.”
Off
to the south, something roared. The chill that ran through Gremio had nothing to do with the weather. A roar like that touched him deep in his brain, deep in his belly. A roar like that meant, Whatever is making this noise wants to eat you-and it can. Another roar resounded, and another, and another.
The dragons looked old as time, deadly as murder, and graceful enough to make an eagle blush. Their great bat wings effortlessly propelled them toward the northerners’ trenches. They took no notice of the southrons out in the open below them. It was as if they’d decided to feast on pork, and didn’t care whether mutton was out there waiting for them.
Several northerners didn’t wait to be eaten. They jumped out of the trenches and ran away, as fast as they could go. “Hold!” Gremio shouted, though he wanted nothing more than to run, too.
“Why?” somebody yelled back, fleeing faster than ever.
For a couple of heartbeats, Gremio found himself altogether without an answer. Then the rational part of his mind reasserted itself. “Because they’re magical!” he exclaimed. “They aren’t real. They can’t be real. When was the last time anybody saw a dragon that isn’t on a flag west of the Great River? Over in the Stony Mountains, out past the eastern steppes, yes. But here? Not a chance!”
“They sure look real,” someone else said.
And they did. The fire that burst from their jaws looked real, too. More men, not willing to take the chance, scrambled out of the fieldworks and started running away. The southrons shot several of them when they broke cover.
Colonel Florizel limped past. “Don’t panic, boys!” he shouted. “It’s just the gods-damned southrons telling lies again. What else are they good for?” He nodded to Gremio. “And a fine day to you, Captain. We’re doing pretty well here, aren’t we?”
“We’re holding them, sir, sure enough,” Gremio answered. Florizel had limits-anything requiring imagination was beyond his ken. Within those limits, though, he made a pretty good soldier-exactly how good, Gremio had come to understand more slowly than he should have. The captain asked, “How are we doing off to the left? I can’t tell from here.”
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