Advance and Retreat wotp-3

by Harry Turtledove

  Colonel Andy bustled up to George before he’d gone very far from the pavilion. Someone must have told the adjutant George had been summoned. “Well?” Andy asked expectantly. “What did he have to say for himself now?”

  “Wesleyton is lovely this time of year, don’t you think?” George answered.

  “Wesleyton?” His adjutant gaped. “What the hells has Wesleyton got to do with anything? Who in his right mind would want to go to Wesleyton? It’s not even a good place to die, let alone to live.”

  “No doubt you’re right, Colonel.” Doubting George couldn’t help smiling, no matter how miserable he was. “Miserable or not, though, that’s where we’re going: you and I and as much of my army as Marshal Bart has graciously let me keep.”

  “Are we?” Colonel Andy said, and the commanding general nodded. Andy asked, “And why, pray tell, are we going to Wesleyton? I understand why Whiskery Ambrose went there last year: to take it away from the traitors. But we’ve held it ever since. What’s the point of sending a whole lot more men there now?” Doubting George explained Marshal Bart’s reasoning. His adjutant looked like a chipmunk who’d just bitten down on a cast-iron acorn. “That’s one of the strangest things I’ve ever heard, sir. How likely is it that the Army of Southern Parthenia’s going to come running in our direction?”

  “Not very, not as far as I can see,” George answered. “But Bart’s right-it could happen. Now he’ll have somebody in place to make sure Duke Edward doesn’t get far if he tries it.”

  “Yes, sir. So he will.” Andy didn’t seem delighted at the prospect. “And isn’t that a wonderful use for the army that broke the traitors’ backs out here? Just a wonderful fornicating use.”

  “He is the Marshal of Detina. He can give the orders. He has given them, as a matter of fact. We need to obey them. You’ll want to draw up plans to shift us to the western part of the province-glideway lines, supply dumps, and such.”

  “Oh, I have them,” Andy said. “You don’t need to worry about that.”

  Doubting George stared. “You… have them? Even to Wesleyton?”

  “Yes, sir.” Andy nodded. “That’s what an adjutant is for: making plans, I mean. Most of them end up in the trash. That’s how things work, too. But one will come in handy every now and again. Excuse me, please-I’ll start things gliding.” He saluted and hurried off.

  Behind him, Doubting George started to laugh. Now I know what an adjutant does, he thought. And if only someone would tell me what a commanding general is for…

  * * *

  Here in the west, the war looked and felt different. That was John the Lister’s first thought when his wing moved through Georgetown on the way to the coast of Croatoan and a rendezvous with General Hesmucet’s hard-driving army. Things seemed cramped here, without the room to maneuver that had marked the fighting in the east.

  Georgetown itself appeared confident the war was won. Engineers had been fortifying the capital of Detina ever since the War Between the Provinces broke out. Castles and earthworks and trenches littered the landscape for miles around the heart of the city. If the Army of Southern Parthenia had ever come this far, it would have had to fight its way through all of them to get to the Black Palace.

  When that thought crossed John’s mind, he suddenly remembered that a detachment from the Army of Southern Parthenia had tapped at those fortifications only the summer before, till forces detached from Marshal Bart’s army pushed them back. What a difference a bit more than half a year made! Now Jubal the Late’s detachment was smashed, the valley he’d guarded so long a smoking ruin that could no longer feed Duke Edward’s men, and the Army of Southern Parthenia penned up and hungry in Pierreville. That army would see southern Parthenia no more, nor Georgetown, either.

  John the Lister’s eye went to the Black Palace. The home of Detina’s kings-of Detina’s rightful kings, anyhow-towered over the city. Looking out from the battlements of the Black Palace, King Avram could see a long way. He could look on Parthenia to the north and on the loyal provinces to the south (even if crossbowmen and pikemen had been required at the start of the war to keep Peterpaulandia loyal).

  Now everything looked likely to turn out for the best. A couple of years earlier, John wouldn’t have bet on that. Twice Duke Edward of Arlington had invaded the south; once Count Thraxton the Braggart had pushed an army down into Cloviston, too. Even men of the stoutest loyalty to King Avram could hardly be blamed for fearing that Geoffrey might yet forge a kingdom of his own.

  It hadn’t happened, though. It hadn’t, and now it wouldn’t. The end was visibly at hand. Geoffrey, Duke Edward, and Count Joseph the Gamecock were all stubborn men. They hadn’t given up yet. That’s why my wing’s come west, John thought: to make them give up.

  He’d found his way back to his hostel while hardly even noticing in which direction his feet were going. Anyone who was anyone-anyone who had pretensions of being anyone-stayed at the House of the Rat when he came to Georgetown. For one thing, it had the softest beds and finest kitchen of any establishment in the city. For another, it lay right at the edge of the joyhouse quarter, with brothels to suit every purse and every taste within easy walking distance.

  Fighting Joseph had stayed at the House of the Rat. Rumor said he’d enjoyed the nearby attractions, too. Knowing Fighting Joseph, John the Lister suspected rumor was true. And Marshal Bart had stayed at the House of the Rat. Rumor said he’d almost got a dreadful upstairs room because no one recognized him till he signed the guestbook. Knowing Bart, John suspected rumor there was also true.

  Bart was supposed to be coming down from Pierreville to confer with him. The Marshal of Detina had already delayed the meeting once. John took the delay in stride. He was sleeping and eating in fancy style at King Avram’s expense. He would have to spend his own money in the joyhouses, but every man had to sacrifice a little now and then. There was a war on, after all.

  At the desk, John asked, “Any messages for me?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” the clerk there replied, fixing John with a fishy stare. “Who are you, anyway?”

  “John the Lister, brigadier of the regulars,” John answered proudly.

  He’d hoped that would impress the desk clerk. He rapidly discovered nothing impressed the clerk. With a yawn, the fellow said, “I’ve seen plenty of those before you. You can’t expect me to recognize everybody.” But he did condescend to look and see if John had any messages. With a grudging grunt, he passed the officer from the east a scrap of paper. “Here you are.”

  “Thank you so much,” John said. The desk clerk proved immune to sarcasm, too. I might have known, John thought. When he unfolded the scrap of paper, he brightened. “Oh, good. It’s from Marshal Bart.”

  That at least kept the scrawny little man behind the desk awake enough to ask, “What has he got to say?”

  “We’re going to have supper here tonight,” John answered before he realized he didn’t have to tell this annoying creature anything. Gathering himself, he added, “You’d better inform the kitchens so they can fix up something extra fine for the Marshal of Detina.”

  But the desk clerk only sneered. “Shows how much you know. Whatever he orders, Marshal Bart’ll want it with all the juices cooked out of it. He always does. Cooking fancy for him is just a waste of time.”

  Defeated, John the Lister went off to his room. He emerged at sunset, to meet Bart in the lobby. If he hadn’t worked with the Marshal of Detina in Rising Rock, he wouldn’t have recognized him. As things were, he almost didn’t. Bart wore a common soldier’s plain gray tunic with epaulets fasted on very much as an afterthought: no fancy uniform for him. His boots were old and muddy. His face? He could have been a teamster as readily as the most eminent soldier Detina had produced in the past three generations.

  “Good to see you, Brigadier,” Bart said, an eastern twang in his voice. “Your men have done some fine work, and I know they’ll do more once they get to Croatoan and link up with General Hesmucet.”
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br />   “Thank you very much, sir,” John replied. “Shall we go into the dining room?”

  “I suppose so,” Marshal Bart said. “Have to eat, I reckon.” He sounded completely indifferent. That nasty, nosy little desk clerk, gods damn him, had had it right.

  In the dining room, the blond waiter fawned on Bart-and, incidentally, on John the Lister as well. Basking in reflected glory, John chose a fancy seafood stew and a bottle of wine. Bart ordered a beefsteak.

  “Don’t you care for anything finer, sir?” John asked.

  “Not me.” Bart turned back to the waiter. “Make sure the cook does it up gray all the way through. No pink, or I’ll send it back.” The blond nodded, and hurried away. To John, Bart said, “I can’t abide the sight of blood. I never have been able to.”

  “Uh, yes, sir,” John said, reflecting that that was an odd quirk for a man who’d commanded most of the bloodiest fights in Detinan history.

  As if thinking along with him, Bart remarked, “I’ve seen too much blood already. I don’t need to look at more on my plate.”

  “Yes, sir,” John said again. The waiter brought the wine and filled his goblet, then set the bottle on the table between the two officers. John reached for it. “Shall I pour you some?”

  “No, thanks,” Marshal Bart answered. “I will take a drink every now and again, but only every now and again. I used to like it too well-I daresay you’ll have heard about that-so now I’m very careful about how much I pour down.”

  John felt self-conscious about drinking when the Marshal of Detina wouldn’t, but Bart waved for him to go on. His first taste of the wine removed his lingering hesitation. The House of the Rat had an excellent cellar. The cooks worked fast, too. The waiter fetched John’s stew and a beefsteak that looked as if it had just come from a long stay in the hottest of the seven hells.

  Bart attacked the beefsteak with gusto, though it was so thoroughly cooked, he had to do some serious work with his knife to hack through it. He said, “You’ll know Joseph the Gamecock is operating against General Hesmucet in Palmetto Province. Operating as best he can, I should say, because Hesmucet outnumbers him at least three to one. Your job will be to go up to Croatoan by sea, hit Joseph in the rear or in the flank as opportunity arises, and join forces with Hesmucet. Then, if the war has not ended before you get there, you will come up to Pierreville and help me finish off Duke Edward of Arlington.”

  That made John take another big sip of wine. “Finish off Duke Edward of Arlington,” he echoed, awe in his voice. “That hardly seems real.”

  “Oh, it is real, all right,” Bart said. “Real as horseradish. We are going to whip the traitors, and we are going to do it pretty quick. I have no doubts about that, none at all.”

  He’d never had any doubts about that, which made him unique among King Avram’s officers. And he’d been right. Time and time again, he’d been right. He didn’t look like much. He didn’t sound like much. But he won. That was why Avram had made him Marshal of Detina. And he’d kept hammering till even Duke Edward and the Army of Southern Parthenia were visibly coming to the end of their tether.

  Doubts, John thought. Then he heard himself saying, “Doubting George isn’t very happy with you, you know.”

  “Yes, I do know that.” Bart paused to take another bite of his leathery beefsteak. Once he’d choked it down, he went on, “I am sorry about it, too. George is a good man, a sound man. When it comes to holding off the foe, there is not a better man in all of Detina. But when it comes to going after him… When it comes to going after him, George is too gods-damned slow. That is the truth. I am sad to say it, but it is the truth. There at Ramblerton, he should have struck Bell two weeks before he did. He would have won.”

  Since John the Lister thought the same, he could only nod. That sufficed, anyhow. If he said unkind things about Doubting George, Bart would see it as backbiting. Instead, he spooned up a plump, juicy oyster. Better this than burnt meat, he thought.

  At a table not far away, a good-looking young man began cursing King Avram, careless of the many gray-clad soldiers in the dining room. John the Lister scowled. “Who is that noisy fool?” he asked.

  To his surprise, Bart seemed unconcerned. “That is Barre the actor,” he answered. “He is Handsome Edwin’s younger brother. He loves lost causes, so naturally he adores false King Geoffrey.”

  “Does he?” John the Lister said in a voice as neutral as he could make it. “How serious is he about adoring Geoffrey? Should he be doing it inside a cell somewhere instead of in the dining room of the House of the Rat?”

  “Folks who know him better than I do say he is nothing but wind and air, and that he would not harm a fly,” Bart answered. “Putting him in prison would stir up more trouble than he is likely to cause, so he stays loose.”

  “I see,” said John, who liked none of what he saw or heard.

  Barre went on ranting. He didn’t sound like an actor. He sounded like a crazy man. “Thus always to tyrants!” he shouted, and thumped his fist down on the table in front of him.

  “Maybe they could lock him up for being a lunatic,” John said hopefully.

  Marshal Bart shook his head with just the hint of a smile. “You have been in the east a long time, John. Things are… different here in Georgetown. It took me a while to get used to it, too. A lot of men here favor Geoffrey. King Avram does not get upset about it as long as they keep it to talk, and they mostly do. There were serfs on the estates hereabouts till the war started, you know. In a lot of ways, this is more a northern town than one full of southrons.”

  John had heard that. He hadn’t wanted to believe it. Evidently, it was true no matter what he wanted. He said, “They ought to clean out all those traitors, and crucify the worst of ’em.”

  Now Marshal Bart gave him an odd look. “I said something not much different from that when I first got here, too, Brigadier. But King Avram would not-will not-hear of it. He says victory will cure what ails them. After we whip false King Geoffrey, we will all be Detinans together again, and we will have to live with one another. When you look at it that way, it is hard to say he is wrong.”

  “Maybe.” But John the Lister cocked his head to one side and listened to young Barre a little longer. “To the hells with me, though, if I think that mouthy son of a bitch has any business running loose.”

  “Well, I would be harder than Avram is myself,” Bart allowed. “But he is the King of Detina. We have fought this whole war to show the northerners that that is what he is. If he gives an order to let people like that alone, what can we do but leave them alone? Without turning into traitors ourselves, I mean?”

  John thought that over. With a scowl, he said, “You know what, sir? I’m gods-damned glad I’m just a soldier. I don’t have to worry about things like that.”

  “Some soldiers do,” Bart said. “When Fighting Joseph was head general here, he talked about seizing the throne after he won some victories.”

  “It’s a wonder Avram didn’t take his head,” John said.

  “Avram heard about it, but he only laughed,” Bart replied. “He said that if Fighting Joseph gave him the victories, he would take his chances with the usurpation. Then Duke Edward whipped the stuffing out of Joseph at Viziersville, and that was the end of that kind of talk. Our job is to make sure the traitors do not pull off any more little stunts like Viziersville, and we are strong enough to do it. That is why I brought your wing west. We will manage.”

  We will manage. It wasn’t a flashy motto, nothing for soldiers to cry as they charged into battle. But it was a belief that Marshal Bart had turned into a truth, and a truth none of King Avram’s other generals had ever been able to find. John the Lister nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  * * *

  However much Lieutenant General Bell didn’t want to admit it even to himself-perhaps especially to himself-General Peegeetee had been right about how things were in Nonesuch. Like most Detinans (and all the more because he was a healer’s son), Bell had
spent time in sickrooms that held people who were going to die. Walk into such a room and you could see death brooding there, sometimes even before the bedridden patient knew the end drew near. Nonesuch was like that now.

  King Geoffrey still made bold speeches. To listen to him, victory lay right around the corner. To look around in Nonesuch was to know Geoffrey was whistling in the dark. Everyone’s eyes fearfully went to the north, where Duke Edward and the Army of Southern Parthenia had ever more trouble holding Marshal Bart and his men in gray away from the last couple of glideway lines that fed the city-and, not so incidentally, the army. If Bart seized those glideways, Nonesuch-and Duke Edward-would commence to starve.

  And even if Bart didn’t seize the glideways, how much would it matter in the end? Everything was scarce. Everything was expensive. Prices had been bad in Great River Province. They were worse here, much worse. Almost everything cost ten or twenty times what it had before the war began. Bell understood why, too, for the coins Geoffrey put out these days, though called silver, were copper thinly washed with the more precious metal. Bell didn’t like using them, either.

  If a man had King Avram’s silver money, he could buy whatever he pleased, and at a civilized price. That also said too much about how the war was going.

  For the time being, King Geoffrey was still feeding and housing Bell. Even if Bell had renounced command of the Army of Franklin, he remained a lieutenant general in his chosen sovereign’s service. How much Geoffrey welcomed that service at the moment was an open question. He did not publicly renounce it, though.

  Not publicly renouncing Bell’s service and feeding and housing him were as far as Geoffrey went. Time after time, Bell tried to secure an audience with the king. Time after time, he found himself rebuffed. At length, his temper fraying, he growled to a flunky, “I don’t believe his Majesty wants to talk to me.”