Advance and Retreat wotp-3

by Harry Turtledove

  I wish I could fight them all singlehanded, Bell thought. Had he been whole, he would have, and gladly. Things being as they were, though… Things being as they were, Bell muttered to his driver. The man flicked the reins. The unicorn started forward. Each jolt as the wheels rattled across the bridge hurt. Bell wondered when he would get used to pain. He’d lived in so much for so long, but it still hurt. He suspected it always would.

  As soon as he’d crossed, wizards called down lightning. This time, the cursed southron sorcerers didn’t interfere with the spells. The lightnings smote. The bridge crashed in ruins into the Smew.

  Bell hoped to find a farmhouse in which to make his headquarters. He had no luck. Most of the country was woodland and scrub, with farms few and far between-so far that none of them made a convenient place from which to lead the Army of Franklin. Up went the pavilion. Even with three braziers burning inside it, it made a cold and cheerless place to spend a night.

  After a meager supper, Bell summoned his wing commanders and Ned of the Forest. When they arrived, he said, “We have to hold this line. We have to keep the southrons out of Dothan and Great River Province.”

  Stephen the Pickle looked as steeped in vinegar as his namesakes. “How do you propose to do that, sir?” he said. “We haven’t got the men for it, not any more we haven’t.” He looked as if he wanted to say more, but checked himself at the last minute.

  What Stephen didn’t say, Benjamin the Heated Ham did: “We’ve thrown away more men than we’ve got left. If we can make it to Great River Province or Dothan with the pieces of this army we’ve got left, that’d be the gods’ own miracle all by itself. Anything more? Forget it.” He shook his head.

  “Where is your fighting spirit?” Bell cried.

  “Dead,” Colonel Florizel said.

  “Murdered,” Ned of the Forest added.

  Glaring from one of them to the next, the commanding general said, “We need a great stroke of sorcery to remind the southrons they can’t afford to take us for granted, and to show them we are not yet beaten.” Stephen, Benjamin, Florizel, and Ned all stirred at that. Bell ignored them. “I aim to fight by every means I have at my disposal till I can fight no more. I expect every man who follows me to do the same.”

  “Trouble is, sir, we don’t have enough men left to fight,” Benjamin the Heated Ham said. “We don’t have enough wizards, either.” The other wing commanders and the commander of unicorn-riders all nodded at last.

  “Gods damn it, we have to do something!” Bell burst out. “Do you want to keep running till we run out of land and go swimming in the Gulf?”

  “No, sir,” Benjamin said stolidly. “But I don’t want to get massacred trying to do what I can’t, either.”

  Ned of the Forest said, “Sir, while we’re trying to hold this stretch of the Smew, what’s to keep the southrons from crossing the river east or west of us and flanking us out of our position or surrounding us?”

  “Patrols from your troopers, among other things,” Lieutenant General Bell replied, acid in his voice.

  “I can watch,” Ned said. “I can slow the southrons down-some. Stop ’em? No way in hells.”

  “If you fight here, sir, you doom us,” Stephen the Pickle said.

  “I don’t want to fight here. I want to form some kind of line we can defend,” Bell said.

  No one seemed to believe he could do it. Silent resentment rose in waves from his subordinate commanders. They had no hope, none at all. Bell waved with his good arm. Stephen, Benjamin, Florizel, and Ned filed out of the pavilion.

  I could use their heads in a rock garden, Bell thought, never once imagining they might feel the same way about him-or that they might have reason to feel that way. He called for a runner. What went through his mind was, Half the men in this army are runners. They’ve proved that. The young soldier who reported, though, was still doing his duty. Bell said, “Fetch me our mages. I want to see what we can expect from them.”

  “Yes, sir.” Saluting, the runner hurried away.

  In due course, the wizards came. They looked worn and miserable. Bell wondered why-it wasn’t as if they’d done anything useful. He said, “I propose holding the line of the Smew. I know I’ll need magical help to do it. What can you give me?”

  The magicians looked at one another. Their expressions grew even more unhappy. At last, one of them said, “Sir, I don’t see how we can promise you much, not when the southrons have handled us so roughly all through this campaign.”

  “But we need everything you can give us now,” Bell said, and then brightened. He pointed from one wizard to the next. “I know what we need! By the gods, gentlemen, I do. Give us a dragon!”

  “Illusion?” a mage said doubtfully. “I think we’re too far gone for illusion to do us much good.”

  “Not illusion.” Bell shook his big, leonine head. “I know that won’t serve us. They’ll penetrate it and disperse it. Conjure up a real dragon and loose it on the gods-damned southrons.”

  The wizards stared at one another again, this time in something approaching horror. “Sir,” one of them said, “there are no dragons any more, not west of the Great River. Not west of the Stony Mountains, come to that. You know there aren’t. Everybody knows there aren’t.”

  “Then conjure one here from the Stony Mountains,” Bell said impatiently. “I don’t care how you do it. Just do it. Let’s see Doubting George and his pet mage handle a real, live, fire-breathing dragon.”

  “Do you expect us to seize one out of the air in the Stonies, bring it here, and turn it loose?” a mage demanded.

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I expect, by the Lion God’s mane,” the general commanding said. “That’s what we need, that’s what we have to have, and that’s what we’d better get.”

  “But how?” The sorcerers made a ragged chorus.

  “How is your worry,” Lieutenant General Bell said grandly. “I want it done, and it shall be done, or I’ll know the reason why-and you’ll be sorry. Have you got that? A dragon-a real dragon, not one of the stupid illusions the southrons threw at us a few times in front of Ramblerton-by day after tomorrow. Any more questions?” He didn’t gave them time to answer, but gestured peremptorily. “Dismissed.”

  Out went the wizards. If anything, they looked even more put-upon than Bell’s subordinate commanders had a little while earlier. Bell didn’t care. He’d given them an order. All they had to do was obey.

  Bell stretched himself out on his iron-framed cot. He didn’t sleep long, though. When his eyes first came open, there in the darkness inside the pavilion, he couldn’t imagine what had roused him. It wasn’t a noise; no bright lights blazed outside the big tent; he didn’t need to ease himself. What was the trouble, then?

  Sentries in front of the pavilion murmured to one another. A single word dominated those murmurs: “Magic.”

  Grunting with effort, Bell sat up, pushing himself up with his good arm. Then he used his crutches and surviving leg to get to his foot. He made his slow way into the chilly night. The sentries exclaimed in surprise. Bell ignored them. Now he knew why he was awake. Like the sentries, he’d felt the power of the wizardry the sorcerers were brewing.

  He couldn’t see it. He couldn’t hear it. But it was there. He could feel it, feel it in his fingertips, feel it in his beard, feel it in his belly and the roots of his teeth. The power was strong enough to distract him both from his constant pain and from the laudanum haze he used as a shield against it.

  He stood there in the darkness, his breath smoking, and waited to see what that power would bring when it was finally unleashed. Something great, surely. What he wanted? It had better be, he thought.

  The marvel didn’t wear off. More and more soldiers came out of their tents to stare at the wizards’ pavilion. Like Bell, they stood there and stood there, careless of sleep, careless of anything, waiting, waiting, waiting.

  Dawn had begun painting the eastern horizon with pink and gold when the building bubble of power fina
lly burst. High overhead, the sky opened, or so it seemed to a yawning, half-freezing Bell. The sky opened, and a dragon burst forth out of thin air, a great winged worm where nothing had been before. Had it stooped on the Army of Franklin… But it didn’t. The wizards held it under so much control, at least. Roaring with fury, it flew off toward the Smew River, off toward the southrons.

  * * *

  Doubting George had a habit of rising early so he could prowl about his army and see what was what. Major Alva had a habit of staying up very late on nights when he wasn’t likely to be needed the next day. Every so often, the two of them would run into each other a little before sunrise.

  So it chanced this particular morning. The commanding general nodded to the wizard. Alva remembered to salute. Doubting George beamed. Alva would never make a proper soldier, but he was doing a better and better impersonation of one.

  “How are things?” George asked. He expected nothing much from the wizard’s reply. As far as he could see, things were fine. Bell’s army was on the run. He hadn’t managed to crush it altogether, and realized he probably wouldn’t, but he was driving it out of the province from which it drew its name, driving it to the point where it would do false King Geoffrey no good.

  Waving to the north, Alva answered, “The mages over there are up to something, sir.” He was a beat slow using the title, but he did.

  “What is it this time?” Doubting George was amazed at how scornful he sounded. Before finding Alva, he would have been worried. Northern magecraft had plagued the southron cause all through the war. Now? Now, in this weedy young wizard, he had its measure.

  Or so he thought, till Alva’s head came up sharply, like that of a deer all at once taking a scent. “It’s… something big,” the sorcerer said slowly. “Something very big.”

  “Can you stop it?” George asked. “Whatever it is, you can keep it from hitting us, right?”

  “It’s not aimed at us,” Alva answered. “It’s aimed… somewhere far away.”

  “Then why worry about it?” the commanding general asked.

  Alva didn’t answer him this time, not right away. The wizard stared north, his face tense and drawn. Much more to himself than to Doubting George, he said, “I didn’t think they could still manage anything like that.” He sounded both astonished and admiring.

  “Can you stop it?” George asked again, his voice sharp this time.

  “I… don’t know.” Alva didn’t look at him; the mage’s attention still aimed toward the north, as a compass needle did toward the south. “Maybe I could…” He raised his hands, as if about to make a string of passes, but then let them fall to his sides once more. “Too late… sir. Whatever they were trying to do, they’ve just gone and done it. Can’t you feel that?”

  Doubting George shook his head. “You know how Marshal Bart is tone-deaf and doesn’t know one tune from another? I’m like that with wizardry. A lot of soldiers are. Most of the time, it’s an advantage. Unless magic bumps right up against me, I don’t have to worry about it.”

  Shouts from the pickets and the forwardmost encampments said somebody was alarmed about something. Soldiers in gray tunics and pantaloons pointed up into the sky. “A dragon!” they shouted. “A gods-damned dragon!”

  “A gods-damned dragon?” Doubting George threw back his head and laughed. “Is that all the traitors could cook up? An illusion? It’s a stale illusion at that, because we aimed the seemings of dragons at them in the fights in front of Ramblerton. Good for little scares, maybe, but not for big ones.”

  Quietly, Major Alva said, “Sir, that is not the illusion of a dragon. That is… a dragon, conjured here from wherever it lives. My hat is off to Bell’s sorcerers.” He suited action to word. “No matter how desperate I was, I would not have cared to try the spell that brought it here.”

  “A real dragon?” George, who’d served in the east, had seen them before, flying among the peaks of the Stony Mountains. “What can your magic do against a real dragon, now that the beast is here?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” Alva answered. “Not much, I don’t think. Magic isn’t what drove dragons out to the steppe and then to the mountains. Hunting is.”

  Stooping like an outsized hawk, the dragon dove towards a knot of tents. Flame burst from its great jaws. The southron soldiers hadn’t panicked till that moment, thinking it an illusion similar to those Alva and their other wizards had also used. Then the tents-and several soldiers-burst into flame. Some of the screams that rang out were anguish. More were terror, as the men realized the beast was real-real, angry, and hungry.

  They were good soldiers. As soon as they realized that, they started shooting at the dragon. Ordinary crossbow bolts, though, slowed it about as much as mosquitoes slowed a man.

  The dragon roared, a noise like the end of the world. It didn’t like ordinary crossbow quarrels, any more than a man liked mosquitoes. As a man will pause to swat, the dragon paused to flame. As mosquitoes will get smashed, so a couple of squads of soldiers suddenly went up in smoke.

  “Do something, gods damn it!” Doubting George shook Major Alva. He didn’t even realize he was doing it till he noticed the wizard’s teeth clicking together. Then, not without a certain regret, he stopped.

  Once Alva had stopped clicking, he said, “I’m sorry, sir. I still don’t know what to do. Dragons aren’t a wizard’s worry.”

  “This one is,” George snapped.

  Before Alva could either protest or start working magic, the repeating crossbows opened up on the dragon along with the ordinary footsoldiers’ weapons. Those big crossbows shot longer, thicker quarrels and flung them faster and farther than a bow that a man might carry could manage.

  This time, the dragon’s roars were louder yet, louder and more sincere. Now it might have had wasps tormenting it, not mosquitoes. But however annoying they are, wasps rarely kill. The dragon remained determined to lash out at everything that was bothering it and everything it saw that it could eat. As far as Doubting George could tell, between them those two categories encompassed his whole army.

  Thuk! Thuk! Thuk! Crossbow bolts tearing through the membrane of the dragon’s wings sounded like knitting needles thrust through taut cotton cloth. Cotton, though, didn’t bleed. The dragon did. Drops of its blood smoked when they hit the ground. Soldiers that blood touched cried out in pain. But even if the dragon did bleed, that made it no less fierce, no less furious. On the contrary.

  It flew towards a battery of repeating crossbows that hosed darts at it. Again, the fang-filled jaws spread wide. Again, fire shot from them. The flames engulfed the repeating crossbows. Some of the crews managed to flee. Others kept working the windlasses till the very last moment, and went up in flames with the engines they served.

  The dragon landed then. Its tremendous tail lashed about, obliterating repeating crossbows its fire had spared. Doubting George cursed. Those engines would have been useful against the Army of Franklin. Now… now they might as well never have been built.

  But, with the dragon on the ground, the soldiers serving catapults started flinging firepots at it. Some of them had already let fly while the dragon was still in the air. That was not the smartest thing they could have done. Their missiles missed, and came down on the heads of southron soldiers still in their tents or in the trenches or rushing about.

  They aimed better with the beast on the ground. When a firepot burst on its armored back, the dragon remained grounded no more. It sprang into the air with a scream like all damnation boiled down into a pint. No mosquitoes here, and no wasps, either. Not even a dragon could ignore a bursting firepot.

  Screaming again, the terrible beast flew off… toward the west. That set Doubting George to cursing once more. He’d hoped the dragon would visit vengeance on the northern sorcerers who’d summoned it, but no such luck. Have to take care of that ourselves, he thought.

  Major Alva was staring in the direction the dragon had gone. “How much harm will it do before people finally manage to ki
ll it?” he wondered.

  “I don’t know. Probably quite a bit.” Even Doubting George was surprised at how heartless he sounded.

  Alva looked more appalled than surprised. “Don’t you care?”

  Shrugging, the commanding general said, “Not a whole hells of a lot. For one thing, the dragon won’t be doing it to us. For another, most of the people it will harm would rather see Geoffrey over them than Avram. Since Geoffrey’s wizards summoned it here, you could say they’re getting what they deserve.”

  “Oh.” The wizard considered. “You make a nasty sort of sense.”

  “We’re fighting a war, Major. There’s not much room for any other kind.” George stabbed a finger at the mage. “What are the odds the traitors will try flinging another dragon at us?”

  “Thunderer smite me with boils if I know… sir,” Alva answered. “I’ll tell you this, though: I wouldn’t have tried bringing one, let alone two. Anybody who works that kind of spell has to be as close to crazy as makes no difference.”

  “You say that?” George asked in amazement. “After the great sorceries you’ve brought off, you say that?”

  “Hells, yes, I say that,” the wizard told him. “What I do is dangerous to the enemy. It’s not particularly dangerous to me. If something goes wrong with one of my spells, well, then, it doesn’t work, that’s all. If something went wrong with the spells those northern wizards cast to snare that dragon, it would have eaten them or flamed them or something even worse, if there is anything worse. Anybody who risks bringing that down on his own head has got to be a few bolts short of a full sheaf, don’t you think?”

  “When you put it that way, I suppose so,” George said. “But you’re the one who knows about magecraft. I don’t, and I don’t pretend to.”

  Alva let out a barely audible sniff, as if to say that anybody who didn’t know much about wizardry had no business commanding an army. In this day and age, he might well have been right. But George was the fellow with the fancy epaulets on his shoulders. He had the responsibility. He had to live up to it.