But it had that advantage, and made the most of it. And Ned’s unicorn-riders came hurrying back-on foot, as dragoons-as soon as the trap was sprung. Not only that, but Ned’s commander of engines, a captain named Watson who seemed improbably young, got a couple of repeating crossbows placed in the roadway where they bore on the southrons. Those weapons put out even more quarrels, and quarrels that flew farther, than the southrons could manage with their quick-shooters.
Beset from front and flanks, the southrons did just what Gremio would have done in their boots: they fell back. And as they fell back, hungry, barefoot northerners dashed forward-not to push them back farther still, but to plunder the corpses they’d had to leave behind.
Gremio was no slower than anybody else. He pulled a pair of shoes-solid, well-made shoes, shoes that would last a while-about his size off the feet of a southron trooper who wouldn’t need them any more. He stole the trooper’s tea and hard biscuits and smoked meat, too. If he could have got his hands on some indigo dye, he would have also taken the man’s tunic; it was thick wool, better suited to this cold, nasty weather than his own. But he didn’t, and didn’t want to get shot for wearing gray. Even after knocking the southrons back on their heels, he knew he was all too likely to get shot for wearing blue.
* * *
Ned of the Forest was as happy as he could be in his present circumstances, which is to say, not very. Everything had gone perfectly when the rear guard he led taught Hard-Riding Jimmy’s troopers a sharp lesson: no matter how good they were, they couldn’t have everything their own way. Everything had gone perfectly, and what had it accomplished? It made the Army of Franklin’s retreat a little more secure, and that was all.
“Huzzah,” Ned said sourly. That meant Bell’s force might make it back to Dothan or Great River Province, and not be altogether destroyed in northern Franklin. An improvement, without a doubt, but how large an improvement? Not large enough, and Ned knew it.
Colonel Biffle rode up to him in the dismal winter woods. “We’ve driven them back, sir.” He sounded pleased and excited.
“Well, so we have, Biff.” Ned sounded anything but. “Next question is, how much good will that do us?”
Biffle’s long face corrugated into a frown. After a moment’s thought, he said, “It’ll do us a lot more good than if they’d busted through.”
Ned of the Forest had to laugh at that. “I can’t even tell you you’re wrong,” he admitted. “But are we going to win the war because we gave Hard-Riding Jimmy a black eye? Are we going to win anything that’s worth having?”
He watched Colonel Biffle’s eyes cross as the regimental commander worked on that. Biffle wasn’t used to thinking in such terms. He was a man you pointed at the enemy and loosed, as if he were a crossbow quarrel. Again, he paused before answering. At last, he said, “Well, we’re still here to try again.”
“I can’t say you’re wrong about that, either.” Ned looked south. “And, unless I miss my guess, we’re going to have to if we hang around here much longer. Jimmy won’t like getting poked. He’ll send more men forward, and we won’t have such an easy time suckering them into an ambush. I’d say it’s about time to leave. We’ve bought the army a few hours, anyways. That’s the most we can hope for these days.”
“Yes, sir.” Colonel Biffle suddenly blinked several times. He frowned again, though this time for a different reason. “Gods damn it! It’s starting to rain. Got me right in the eye.”
He was right. It was starting to rain and, with scarcely any warning, to rain hard. “Good thing this held off till we drove the southrons back,” Ned said. “We’d have looked a proper set of fools, wouldn’t we, if we’d tried shooting at those bastards with wet bowstrings? Good thing we didn’t.”
Before he’d got out of the woods, his unicorn was squelching through mud. Big, fat, heavy raindrops poured down. With all the trees bare in winter, nothing slowed down the drops. Ned pulled his broad-brimmed felt hat down low on this face to keep the rain out of his eyes. That helped, a little.
The regiment of footsoldiers who’d helped in the ambush came out of their cover and retreated along with his unicorn-riders. Ned waved to their commander, who nodded back. The fellow was only a captain, but he’d done his job well, and without fuss or feathers. “Get your boys moving,” Ned called to him. “We’ll keep the southrons off your back.” He had the more mobile troops, and owed the footsoldiers that much.
“Thank you kindly.” The captain touched the brim of his own hat, which was also pulled down low. He handled the withdrawal with the same unfussy precision he’d used against the southrons. One of his company commanders, a sergeant who’d managed to shave amazingly well considering the sorry state the Army of Franklin was in, also proved very competent. By the way the captain and the sergeant sassed each other without heat, they’d served together a long time. They might almost have been married. Ned hid his amusement. He’d seen such things before.
At the moment, he had business of his own to attend to. “Captain Watson!” he called. “Come here, if you please.”
“What do you need, sir?” the young man in charge of his engines asked.
“I need you to trundle your repeating crossbows south down the road a little ways and give Hard-Riding Jimmy’s men a proper hello when they start coming after us again,” Ned answered.
Watson frowned. “I would, sir, but…”
“But what?” Ned of the Forest asked ominously. He wasn’t used to having Captain Watson tell him no. Watson was the fellow who did whatever needed doing. But then Ned thumped himself in the head with the heel of his hand, a gesture of absolute disgust. “Oh. The rain.”
“Yes, sir. The gods-damned rain,” Watson agreed. “It’s not as hard on the skeins of a repeating crossbow as it is on an ordinary bowstring, but they do lose their… their pop, you might say, when they get wet.”
“I knew that. I know that. I just wasn’t thinking straight.” Ned still sounded-still was — angry at himself for forgetting. “Never mind moving ’em, then. It won’t work. Have to try something else instead.” He thought for a little while, then nodded to himself. “That might do it, by the Lion God’s tail tuft.”
“You’ve got something, sir. I can see it in your eyes,” Watson said, a certain gleam coming into his own.
“Trip lines,” Ned said. “We string a few of them between the trees on either side of the road, the southrons come swarming up to get their revenge on us, and then they go flying. Unicorns break their legs, maybe some riders break their necks. And a good driving rain makes trip lines work better, not worse, on account of they’re harder to spot.”
“Yes, sir!” The gleam in Captain Watson’s eyes grew brighter. “I’ll take care of it, sir.”
“You don’t need to do that,” Ned said. “It’s got nothing to do with engines.”
“Oh, sir, it’ll be my pleasure,” Watson said with a jaunty grin. “And you know I’ve got plenty of ropes. I need ’em to pull the engines and wagons. I can set up the trip lines, and I’ll enjoy doing it, too.”
“All right. See to it, then.” Ned of the Forest nodded decisively.
He himself rode north, leaving Watson to do what he’d said he would. At the edge of the woods, he waited. Before too long, Watson came out with the last of the engines, unicorn teams straining to haul them up the increasingly soupy road. Catching sight of Ned, Watson waved and nodded. Ned waved back.
The long retreat went on. After trying and failing to make a stand at the Smew River, Lieutenant General Bell seemed to have abandoned all hope of holding the southrons. All he could think to do was fall back as fast as he could and stay ahead of Doubting George’s men. Ned of the Forest would have reckoned that more contemptible if he’d had more hope himself. Since he didn’t, he found it harder to quarrel with the commanding general.
Hard-Riding Jimmy’s men didn’t come bursting out of the woods to harry the retreating northerners. Ned didn’t run into them at all for the next couple of days,
in fact. He concluded that Captain Watson had not only enjoyed putting down trip lines, he’d also done a good job of it. Watson might be a puppy, but he was a puppy who’d grown some sharp teeth.
Bell’s army stumbled through the town of Warsaw on the way up to the Franklin River. Ned of the Forest remembered crossing the river heading south a couple of months before. He’d still had hope then, hope and the confidence that, whatever happened, he would figure out some way to whip the southrons. That wasn’t going to happen now. All he could hope to do was figure out some way to keep the southrons from destroying the Army of Franklin.
In Warsaw, the townsfolk stared glumly at the retreating northerners. “What are we going to do now?” one of them called to Ned of the Forest, as if all too well aware the town would see King Geoffrey’s soldiers no more, and would have to make what peace it could with King Avram.
“Do the best you can,” Ned told him, unable to find any better answer. By the look the local sent him, that wasn’t what the fellow had wanted to hear. It wasn’t what Ned had wanted to say, either. But he had a very clear sense of what was real and what wasn’t. He hoped the other man did, too.
North of Warsaw, Ned loaded a lot of the men in the rear guard who were barefoot into unicorn-drawn wagons. That kept them from getting their feet frostbitten. If they had to fight, they could deploy from the wagons. “Pretty sneaky, Lord Ned,” Colonel Biffle said admiringly.
“Oh, yes, I’m clever as next week,” Ned said. “Think how smart I’d be if I only had something to work with.”
They went up into the province of Dothan just before they came back to the Franklin River. The weather was no better there than it had been in the province of Franklin. The river, swollen by the cold, hard rain, ran almost out of its banks. No one would find an easy way to ford it, as Doubting George had at the Smew.
Bell’s engineers and wizards didn’t have an easy time creating a pontoon bridge across the Franklin. For one thing, pontoons were hard to come by. For another, the river kept doing its best to carry them away before the engineers and mages could secure them one to another. And, for a third, precious few engineers and wizards were left to do the work; they’d suffered no less than the rest of Bell’s army.
At last, though, the job was done. Bell’s weary, footsore soldiers began crossing to the northern bank of the river. By then, the southrons were very close behind Ned of the Forest’s rear guard. Ned told his troopers, and the footsoldiers with them, “Well, boys, we’re going to have to wallop the sons of bitches one more time. Reckon you’re up to it?”
“Yes, sir!” they shouted, and “Hells, yes!” and, “You bet, Lord Ned!”
And they did. Roaring as if the Lion God had taken possession of them body and soul, they hit the advancing southrons a savage blow that sent them reeling back toward Warsaw in surprise, dismay, and no little disorder. Ned of the Forest didn’t think he’d ever been prouder of men he led than he was on that frozen field. They had to know they weren’t going to win the war with this fight. They couldn’t even turn the campaign into anything but a disaster. They struck like an avalanche all the same.
Captain Gremio came up to Ned. Saluting, he said, “Sir, I beg leave to report that my men have captured one of the southrons’ siege engines. Doesn’t begin to make up for all the army lost, of course, but now that we’ve got it, what should we do with it?”
“Well done!” Ned said, and then, “Captain Watson will take charge of it, Captain.”
“He’s welcome to it, then,” Gremio said. “I’ll have my men drag it over to him. I expect he’ll have unicorns to haul it off toward the north?”
“I expect he will,” Ned agreed. “And once you’ve done that, Captain, order your regiment ready to get moving again. You know we can’t stay around here and enjoy the victory we’ve won.”
“I understand, sir,” the other man said. “I sure as hells wish we could, though, because this is the only victory we’ve won in this whole gods-damned campaign, and the only one we’re likely to.” Bitterness came off him in waves.
“Can’t be helped,” Ned said. Captain Gremio nodded, sketched a salute, and then went off to carry out Ned’s orders.
The footsoldiers went off toward the Franklin first, with Ned’s unicorn-riders screening them. Again, the southrons held off on their pursuit for some little while; the ferocious attack Ned had put in persuaded them they would do better to wait. That being so, Ned retired as slowly as he could.
To his surprise, though, a courier came riding down from the north, from Lieutenant General Bell’s main force, urging him to move faster. “By the Thunderer’s iron fist, what’s the trouble now?” he growled.
“The southrons have galleys carrying catapults in the Franklin River, sir,” the rider answered. “They’re heading toward the bridge. If they land a couple of firepots on it before you get across, you’ll be stuck on this side of the river.”
Ned of the Forest had never yet reckoned himself stuck. He was confident he could handle whatever trouble the southrons gave him, if he had to by ordering his men to disperse and to reassemble somewhere else. He said, “Doesn’t Bell have his own engines up near the bridge to keep it safe?”
“Yes, sir,” the courier told him. “But you never can tell.”
That was altogether too true. You never could tell. And, where Bell was concerned, you might worry not just about whether things could go wrong, but about how they could go wrong. With an angry mutter, Ned said, “All right, then. Don’t fret yourself, sonny boy. We’ll step lively.”
He came to the southern bank of the Franklin a day and a half later, making better time than even he’d expected. Looking up the river, he saw no sign of southron war galleys. He did see, on the far bank, engines lined up wheel to wheel. Here, Bell hadn’t blundered.
“Get moving!” he called to the men under his command. “Let’s put the river between us and the bastards on our heels.”
Those bastards were starting to nip close again-but not close enough. Ned was sure they wouldn’t catch him. Gremio’s footsoldiers crossed over to the north bank of the Franklin. Wheels rumbling on the planks laid over the pontoons to pave the bridge, Watson’s engines and the supply wagons followed. Last came Lieutenant General Ned’s troopers, and last of all came Ned of the Forest himself.
As soon as he reached the northern bank of the river, a couple of Bell’s men set a firepot on the bridge. The pot began to burn. A moment later, so did the bridge. The Army of Franklin, or what remained of it, wended its way north and east, into Great River Province.
* * *
John the Lister saw the great column of black smoke rising into the sky from a couple of miles away. He knew what it had to mean. Cursing, he spurred his unicorn forward, toward the Franklin River.
He got to the river too late. He’d known he would be too late even as he set spurs to the flanks of his mount. He would have been too late even if he hadn’t had to delay because columns of footsoldiers and unicorn-riders and prisoners wouldn’t get out of his way as fast as he wanted them to. Having to squeeze through them did nothing to make his curses any less sulfurous, though.
Sure enough, the pontoon bridge by which the Army of Franklin had crossed was engulfed in flames, far beyond the hope of any man’s quenching it. Not even an opportune storm would save it now. And the Franklin was a formidable river, wide and swift and, now, swollen like so many other streams by the winter rains. On the far bank, most of the northerners had gone their way, but a few, tiny in the distance, still moved about on foot and on unicornback. One of them, a mounted officer, waved mockingly to the southrons on the opposite side of the river.
Fury made John the Lister grab for the hilt of his sword. Half a heartbeat later, he checked the motion, knowing he’d been foolish. Even the bolt from a repeating crossbow right on the riverbank would have splashed harmlessly into the Franklin, less than halfway on the journey to that northern unicorn-rider.
Hard-Riding Jimmy came up beside John.
On his face was the same frustration as John felt. “We’ll be a while bridging this stream, and longer if their troopers give us a hard time while we’re working at it,” Jimmy said.
“I know,” John answered unhappily. He shook his head toward the traitors on the far bank. “They’re going to get away, gods damn them.”
Jimmy tempered that as best he could: “Some of them will get away. But an awful lot of them gods-damned well won’t.”
“Well, I can’t tell you you’re wrong,” John the Lister said. “Still, I wanted more. I wanted this whole army destroyed, not just wrecked. So did Doubting George.”
The southrons’ commander of unicorn-riders laughed. “If all our officers were so bloodthirsty, we’d’ve won this war two years ago.”
“We’re supposed to be bloodthirsty,” John said. “We’ve spent too much time putting up with men who aren’t. And d’you think Bell and Ned of the Forest didn’t want to drink our gore? They knew what they wanted to do to us, all right; they just couldn’t bring it off.”
“I admire Ned. I hate to admit it, but I do,” Jimmy said. “Wasn’t that a lovely spoiling attack his men put in a couple of days ago? As pretty as anything I’ve ever seen, especially considering how worn they had to be.”
“Yes. They’re still bastards, though,” John said. “He’s a bastard, too, but he’s a bastard who’s monstrous good at war.”
“That he is,” Jimmy said. “And now, sir, if you’ll excuse me…” He rode off.
Out in the Franklin River, a galley flying King Avram’s flag drew near. John scowled at it. Why couldn’t it have come sooner, to attack the now burning pontoon bridge before Bell’s soldiers crossed it? A moment later, he got his answer to that. Cunningly hidden catapults on the northern side of the river opened up on the galley. Stones and firepots splashed into the Franklin all around it. It hastily pulled back out of range.
Advance and Retreat wotp-3 Page 35
