Instead, the enemy soldier threw down the crossbow, drew his shortsword, and slashed at Gremio. With his own, longer, officer’s weapon, Gremio had no trouble holding off the southron, but he couldn’t finish him. Then a crossbow quarrel caught the southron in the thigh. As he howled and crumpled and clutched at himself, Gremio lunged forward and stabbed him. The southron’s howl became a bubbling shriek. Gremio wasn’t particularly proud of the victory, but a victory it was.
“Forward!” he yelled again. The southrons were storming forward themselves. On this overgrown battlefield, who had the most men close by was anyone’s guess. Over in Parthenia, there’d been a fight in what people called the Jungle. Gremio had his doubts about what kind of place that really was, and whether it deserved its name. Here, though, here was jungle and no mistake.
Suddenly, without warning, gray-clad pikemen slammed into Colonel Florizel’s regiment. In this overgrowth, where crossbow bolts were much less effective than in open country, the southrons with their long spears were a deadly menace.
“Avram!” one of them shouted, bearing down on Gremio. “Avram and freedom!”
“Geoffrey!” Gremio yelled in return. He chopped at the enemy’s spearshaft just below the head, hoping to cut it off and leave the southron with nothing more than a pole. But a clever southron armorer had nailed a strip of iron to the spearshaft to keep a sword from doing any such thing. Gremio beat the spearshaft aside and kept himself from getting spitted, but that was all he could do.
Then, recklessly brave, Sergeant Thisbe grabbed the spearshaft. Gremio rushed at the southron. Unexpectedly deprived of the use of this weapon, he let go of it and ran away. “Are you all right?” Gremio asked Thisbe.
“Sure am,” Thisbe answered. The sergeant reversed the spear, then shook his head. “I wasn’t trained on one of these boarstickers. If I tried to use it, I’d get myself killed quick. You know what to do with it, Captain?”
Gremio shook his head. “Not me. Back before the war, if I wanted to kill a man, I’d use a writ, not a spear.”
“That’s funny.” Thisbe grinned, then threw the pike on the ground. “Are we winning or losing?”
“Probably,” Gremio answered, which jerked another grin from the sergeant. The company commander went on, “I wonder how many nasty little fights like this one are happening all over this part of Peachtree.”
“Lots, I expect,” Thisbe said. “The southrons and us, we’re like a couple of blindfolded men groping for each other in a locked room.”
Gremio nodded, appreciating the figure of speech, but he said, “Oh, it’s even worse than that. Our left leg has bumped the other fellow, but our right arm doesn’t know it yet.”
He would have gone on with his own figure, but another pikeman burst out of the woods just in front of him. At close quarters, a pike was a demonically nasty weapon; just as Gremio’s blade had more reach than a crossbowman’s shortsword, so the pikeman could thrust at him without being vulnerable in return. As he had with the first attacker, Gremio managed to beat aside the spearhead, but he could do no more.
Then Thisbe picked up the dropped pike and rushed at the southron. When he turned to defend himself against this new assault, Gremio got inside his guard and slashed his arm to the bone. Howling and dripping blood, the soldier in gray tunic and pantaloons fled.
“Thank you kindly,” Gremio said, tipping his forage cap to Thisbe. “Seems you know what to do with a spear after all, Sergeant. That took ballocks.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Thisbe answered.
“I would,” Gremio said. “I’ll repeat myself, in fact. Ballocks is what that took.”
Sergeant Thisbe laughed. “All right, sir. If that’s how you want to put it, I don’t suppose I’d better argue with my superior officer.” Gremio shook his head to show that Thisbe emphatically ought not to argue with him. The sergeant looked around, then said, “I don’t see any more southrons, not on their feet, anyhow. Maybe we’ve driven them off.”
“By the gods, I hope so.” Gremio didn’t see any more southrons, either. He plunged his sword into the soft red dirt several times to scour blood from the blade. “I hope so, but I don’t really think so. They’re pushing west again, and all we can do is try to hold them off.” As if to prove his point, a racket of battle broke out somewhere not too far away. Gremio and Thisbe twisted their heads this way and that, trying to decide from which direction it was coming. Gremio scowled. “No way to tell whether we’re going forward or falling back, even, not in this undergrowth.”
“If the southrons turn up behind us, we’ve probably lost somewhere,” Thisbe said.
“Yes, probably, but not necessarily.” Gremio could still split hairs like a barrister, and still enjoyed doing it, too. “It could just mean they’d found a track through the bushes that we didn’t happen to be guarding.”
“You’re right,” Thisbe said after a brief pause for thought. “That wouldn’t have occurred to me, I don’t believe. But you, sir, seems like you think of everything.” Admiration filled his light tenor.
Gremio’s cheeks heated. “Thanks again, Sergeant. Praise from the praiseworthy is praise indeed. So people say, and I see it’s true.” More southrons broke from the woods just then, and the soldiers stayed too busy to talk for quite a while.
* * *
Rollant’s hand strayed to the leg of his pantaloons as he sprawled on the ground during a break. Smitty saw the motion and shook his head. “Don’t scratch,” he said. “You’ll be sorry if you scratch.”
“I’m sorry now,” Rollant said from between clenched teeth. “These gods-damned chiggers are itching me to death.”
“I’ve got ’em, too,” his comrade said mournfully. “They’re worse after you scratch. I found out the hard way.”
“I know it,” the escaped serf said. “They have them in Palmetto Province, too. I didn’t miss ’em a bit after I came up to New Eborac, I’ll tell you that. But I itch so much now, I don’t hardly care what happens later.”
“You will,” Smitty said. He was right, too; Rollant knew as much. In his head, he knew as much. But his leg still itched and his hands still wanted to scratch, and none of that seemed to have very much to do with his head.
Sergeant Joram came up. If chiggers dared afflict the exalted personage of an underofficer, he gave no sign of it. “Get moving, you lugs,” he said. “We have to keep heading toward the Thunderer’s shrine over there to the west.” He pointed.
Smitty snickered loud enough for Rollant to hear, but not loud enough for his mirth to reach Joram’s ears. He said, “That’s south, Sergeant.”
“It is not,” Joram growled. But then he looked at the shadows tree branches were casting. He coughed a couple of times. “Well, it might be a little southwest.”
Smitty didn’t say anything. Neither did Rollant. For a couple of common soldiers, silence seemed the better course. The two men heaved themselves to their feet. Harder to scratch if I’m marching, Rollant thought. What he wanted to do was scratch and scratch till blood ran down his leg. Maybe then he would feel better.
Crows and vultures rose in flapping clouds from bodies already bloating under the hot northern sun. Rollant couldn’t see whether the corpses wore Avram’s uniform or Geoffrey’s. They were just as dead either way.
“Just what’s so important about this New Bolt Shrine?” Smitty grumbled as the men tramped along. “Why aren’t the traitors welcome to the miserable place?”
“Crossroads, I suppose.” Rollant wrinkled his nose, trying without much luck to clear the stench of death from his nostrils.
Sergeant Joram shook his head. “No, that’s not what it is,” he said. “Fort Worthless, now, Fort Worthless is a crossroads. We get our hands on that place, the northerners will have to go around three sides of a big square to get to any place they need to be. But New Bolt Shrine is different-I hear some runaway serfs told our officers about the place.”
“Different how, Sergeant?” Smitty asked. Rollant was
glad his companion had put the question to Joram. The sergeant wasn’t out-and-out unjust to him very often because he was a blond, but Joram did talk to an ordinary Detinan more readily than he did to an ex-serf.
“It’s supposed to be one of those places where the blonds worked their magic back in the old days,” Joram said. “It’s an even stronger place for sorcery now that it’s been reconsecrated to the Thunderer, of course.”
“And our magecraft can use all the help it can get. Uh-huh.” Smitty nodded. “All right, fair enough. That makes pretty good sense.”
Sergeant Joram gave him a mocking bow. “Thank you so much, Marshal Smitty. I’m sure General Hesmucet’ll be so glad you approve.”
Rollant would have fumed under a taunt like that. Rollant, in fact, had fumed under a good many taunts like that. Smitty only bowed back. “Thank you so much, Sergeant. I do want the general to be aware of what’s going on.” Joram snorted and went off to bother a couple of other men in the squad.
“Nicely done,” Rollant said.
“Thank you very much, Marshal Rollant,” Smitty replied grandly. He wouldn’t be serious, not when he had any other choice.
Heading toward a place of old magic made Rollant serious. He had no idea what the blonds in this part of Detina had done in the way of sorcery before the Detinans came conquering across the Western Ocean. The lands around Karlsburg, where he’d grown up, had been part of one little kingdom, this place here another. For all he knew, his ancestors and the local blonds had fought all the time.
He was sure Joram was right about one thing: since New Bolt Shrine had been reconsecrated to the Thunderer, the sorcerous focus there would be stronger now than it had been before. Iron weapons, unicorns, and more powerful wizardry-those were the keys to the Detinans’ conquest of the blonds they’d tied to the land.
“I wonder if the traitors know what kind of a place this is,” he said.
“It’d be nice if they didn’t,” Smitty answered. “Then we could just march right in and take the place away from ’em. I’m always in favor of getting what I want without having to fight for it, especially if the other bastards are likely to fight back.”
“Right,” Rollant said-half agreement, half irony.
But Geoffrey’s men-Joseph the Gamecock’s men-did know what they were defending. Rollant got a glimpse of the New Bolt Shrine, the Thunderer’s lightning bolt done up in gold over the roof, but a glimpse was all he got. Strong northern forces lay between the southrons and the shrine, and they were not inclined to let themselves be dislodged.
General Hesmucet hurled his men at them again and again. The southrons ground forward, but paid a dreadful price for every yard they advanced. Rollant hoped the traitors paid even more, but knew he couldn’t rely on that.
“How can we tell when we’ve won one of these fights?” Smitty asked. “We don’t shift the bastards more than a couple of furlongs even when we do drive ’em out of their trenches. And when we do push ’em that far, they just find some other little knoll or overgrown patch and dig some more trenches, and then they’re ready for us again.”
“Half the time, they don’t even need to dig,” Rollant said. “Like as not, their officers have already got serfs digging trenches they can just move into. It’s only when the traitors go someplace where there are no trenches that they have to do any digging of their own.”
Not far away from them, their comrades were busy entrenching. And Sergeant Joram called out, “Come on, you lazy lugs. You know what to do with a pick and shovel as well as anybody else. Get busy and do it.”
He had, at least, included Smitty in that lazy tag. A lot of Detinans reckoned all blonds lazy-an irony, considering how the nobles in the north piled work on their serfs. Rollant took his short-handled shovel out of his pack and made the dirt fly. Smitty did, too, but he was slower about it. Which of them was the lazy one, then? Rollant had his own opinion, but who cared what a blond thought?
Two days later, Colonel Nahath’s regiment fought its way up to the very outskirts of the sacred precinct of which New Bolt Shrine formed the heart. In the face of stubborn northern resistance, their attack stalled there. In short order, the very reason for the attack became meaningless, for stones and firepots from southron siege engines reduced the shrine to smoking rubble.
That, of course, did not keep the southrons from attacking the place. They’d got their orders before New Bolt Shrine went up in flames, and the mere fact that it went up in flames didn’t seem to register with the men who composed and gave those orders. They sent the regiment forward again and again.
Joseph the Gamecock’s men defended wreckage just as stoutheartedly as they’d tried to hold the intact New Bolt Shrine, too. At last, though, a fierce assault cleared them from the precinct. Rollant strode over tumbled stones and burnt timbers. “This had better be worth something,” he said, “on account of we sure paid a hells of a price for it.”
“Maybe our wizards could make a gods-damned big magic and give us back some of the poor sons of bitches who died taking it,” Smitty said.
“If they had that kind of magic, they could have found another battlefield to use it on,” Rollant said.
Smitty gave him an impatient look. “I know that, you chowderhead. What I meant was, nothing they do here could be worth it, no matter what. There. Do I have to draw you a picture?”
Sergeant Joram spoke up: “Smitty, why don’t I draw a picture of you going down and finding a creek and coming back with full canteens for everybody?”
“Have a heart, Sergeant!” Smitty moaned. Joram folded massive arms across a wide chest. Not only did he have rank on his side, he could have torn Smitty in two. Rollant held out his water bottle to Smitty. Cursing, the farmer’s son took it.
A young fellow with a major’s epaulets and a mage’s badge prominently pinned to his tunic came up and prowled among the ruins as avidly as a hound looking for a buried bone. After a bit, his eye fell on Rollant. “You, there!” he said.
“Yes, sir?” Rollant came to attention.
“As you were, as you were.” The mage gestured. “Can’t stand that nonsense. Bunch of foolishness-and go ahead, call me a heretic. Where was I?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Rollant said truthfully.
“I know what it was,” the young mage said. He looked frightfully clever, like a child too smart for its own good. “You’d be from around these parts, wouldn’t you?”
“No, sir,” Rollant answered.
“No?” Now he’d surprised the wizard. “Why not?”
Patiently, Rollant said, “Sir, I was born near Karlsburg, and I spent the last ten years before the war in New Eborac City. This is the first time I’ve ever been anywhere near this place. Not all blonds are the same, you know, any more than a Detinan from New Eborac is the same as one from Palmetto Province.”
“Oh,” the sorcerous major said. But then he nodded. “Yes, of course. That does make good sense, now that I think on it. I was going to ask you if you knew whether these ruins had any particular sorcerous focus.”
“You’re the wizard, sir, so you’d know better than I would,” Rollant replied. “People have said there’s one somewhere about, though. Otherwise, why would we have fought so hard over it?”
“Because, as often as not, people are a pack of gods-damned fools,” the major answered. Rollant’s jaw fell. The youngster laughed. “Never underestimate that as a possible reason. People are a pack of gods-damned fools a lot of the time. If the northerners weren’t gods-damned fools, for instance, would they have tried to leave Detina in the first place?” Before Rollant could even try to find an answer for that, the mage went on, “I don’t feel any power here to speak of, either from the old days or from the Thunderer. It’s all just so much moonshine, if you want to know what I think.”
Rollant hadn’t much wanted to know what he thought. But a major didn’t have to worry about a common soldier’s opinion, especially if the common soldier was a blond. Off the mage went, leavi
ng Rollant behind scratching his head. “What was all that about?” Smitty asked. He was festooned with water bottles now.
“Fellow says this New Bolt Shrine wasn’t really any place worth fighting about,” Rollant answered.
“Oh, he does, does he?” Smitty rolled his eyes. “Why am I not surprised, and how many lives have we thrown away going after it?”
“Do you know who that was?” Sergeant Joram asked. Both Rollant and Smitty shook their heads. Joram said, “That was Major Alva, that’s who. He’s supposed to be as hot as any traitor mage ever hatched-he’s the fellow who gave us such good sorcerous cover when we went into Caesar.”
“Then he ought to know what he’s talking about,” Smitty said.
That did make sense. It also made Rollant uncomfortable. Alva said there was no power lingering where the blonds had had a holy place, even after the Thunderer also had a shrine made on the same spot. Shouldn’t the gods of either blonds or Detinans have left more of an impress on the world than that? And if they hadn’t, what did it mean? Rollant wondered if he wanted to know.
Off to the north, smoke was rising from another battlefield where southrons and traitors clashed. Rollant wondered if that fight was as meaningless as the one in which he’d just taken part. How many men were dying for nothing over there?
“It’s not exactly nothing,” Smitty said when he complained aloud. “Whether we can make special sorcery here or not, we still needed to take this place if we’re going to clear the traitors out of Fort Worthless.”
Rollant grunted. “That’s true, I suppose. But still-”
“Keep quiet,” Sergeant Joram said. “If somebody tells us to go forwards, we go forwards, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, Sergeant,” Rollant said resignedly. Up on a northern plantation, Joram would have made a terrific serf-driver. If Rollant told him that, though, he might take it for a compliment.
“Well, then,” Joram said, as if he’d proved something. Maybe he had-he’d proved he could tell Rollant what to do. But Rollant already knew that. Sometimes, though, a sergeant just needed to thump his chest and bellow, as if he were a bull pawing the ground in a field. Rollant couldn’t see the sense there, but he’d seen it was true.
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