Marching Through Peachtree wotp-2

by Harry Turtledove

  “I wish this country would open out a bit,” Lieutenant Griff said. “That would help us figure out just where we are. Unless I’m altogether daft, we can’t be too far from the Hoocheecoochee.”

  “If it does open out, somebody will see us,” Rollant said. “I don’t think I want that.”

  “A point,” Griff allowed. “A distinct point. I do wish we had better maps, though. They would tell us a good deal about where we are, too.”

  Now Rollant nodded without reservation. He tremendously admired maps. There was something sorcerous about the way they made paper correspond to landscape. By what he’d overheard army mages saying, there was something sorcerous about them: many were made by using the law of similarity, and sorcery between map and landscape could also help guide soldiers.

  Something crackled in the undergrowth to the side of the road. Lieutenant Griff snatched out his sword. “What in the hells was that?” he said, his voice breaking like a youth’s.

  “An animal-I hope.” Rollant took a couple of sidling steps away from the company commander. Griff carried a sword, but he wasn’t practiced with it. Southron officers, unlike their counterparts in the traitors’ armies, for the most part weren’t nobles who’d learned swordplay from birth. They carried their weapons as much for show as for fighting-some (though not Griff) also bore crossbows, with which they were actually dangerous.

  “It had better be an animal,” Griff said, still brandishing the blade in a way that made Rollant nervous. “If it’s a gods-damned northern son of a bitch, he’ll bring every traitor in the world down on us.”

  Rollant wished he could have argued with that, but the lieutenant was obviously right. The standard-bearer’s head swiveled this way and that. An ambush could do gruesome things to the company, to the whole regiment. And I don’t even need a SHOOT ME! sign, Rollant thought. I’m carrying the flag. Of course they’ll try to shoot me.

  He wondered whether getting promoted in exchange for making himself such a prominent target was as good a bargain as he’d thought at the time. Yes, becoming a corporal was a great honor for a blond. But could he enjoy the honor with a crossbow quarrel through his brisket? Not likely.

  No yells of alarm rang out from the company ahead, nor roaring cries from northern soldiers. No bowstrings thrummed, no triggers clicked. No one yelled false King Geoffrey’s name or shouted, “Provincial prerogative forever!” Except for chirping birds and scolding squirrels, the woods remained quiet. The only sounds of men were those of footfalls on dirt.

  Lieutenant Griff sheathed his sword once more. “Must have been a beast after all,” he said with no small relief.

  “Yes, sir.” Rollant sounded relieved, too, not least because he no longer ran the risk of being spitted on that long, sharp blade. A crossbowman’s shortsword hung on his own left hip. He was no swordsman, either. He’d fought a real swordsman-fought his own liege lord, Baron Ormerod, in fact-in the skirmishes before the battle by the River of Death. He counted himself lucky to have escaped with his life.

  A commotion came from up ahead, and a confused babble of voices. It didn’t sound like trouble, but Griff got out his sword again. The sense of the cry tore back through the regiment. What people were yelling was, “The river! The river!”

  “The river!” Rollant took up the cry, too. “The river!” He surged north. He wanted to see the Hoocheecoochee with his own eyes.

  There it was: slow-flowing, brown, perhaps a furlong wide, or a little more. Was it too far south to have crocodiles in it? Rollant didn’t know. He also didn’t stick a foot into the water, not wanting to find out the hard way.

  “How do we get across?” Smitty asked; he’d pushed up with Rollant. “Some of us could swim it, I suppose-if there’s nothing in there waiting to get fed, I mean.”

  “I was just thinking the same thing,” Rollant answered. “I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I don’t know for certain.”

  “Wouldn’t want to find out by getting munched,” Smitty said.

  Colonel Nahath had some very definite ideas on what to do now that they’d got down to the Hoocheecoochee. He sent a runner off to the southeast to let Doubting George know he’d done it, and then issued a series of crisp commands: “Form a defensive perimeter, men. We’re at the river. We’re going to hold the crossing. Dig in. Set up your trenches and breastworks. If the traitors want us, they’ll have to pay for us.”

  “Shouldn’t we try to cross the river, sir?” somebody asked.

  “We will-as soon as the artificers throw a bridge over it,” the regimental commander said. “That’s what they’re for. And when they do”-he rubbed his hands together in anticipation-“when they do, boys, it’s my considered opinion that we’ve got Joseph the Gamecock and the Army of Franklin good and cornholed. What do you think of that?”

  Rollant whooped and cheered and held the company standard in the crook of his elbow so he could clap his hands. The soldiers were making enough noise to draw every traitor for half a mile around, but no northerners seemed close enough to hear. Nahath sent off another messenger, in case something happened to the first.

  Dirt flew as Rollant dug and dug. Inside of an hour, a formidable defensive position took shape all around him. “Let ’em come now,” somebody said. Rollant shook his head. He wanted reinforcements to get here first. He wasn’t afraid of fighting, but he wanted to do it on his army’s best terms if he possibly could.

  * * *

  Hammers thudded on planks. Piledrivers drove treetrunks into the muddy bottom of the Hoocheecoochee River. Doubting George watched the bridge snake toward the northern bank. Only a few yards to go now… and the northerners still didn’t seem to realize the southron army was about to cross.

  Turning to Colonel Nahath, George said, “Your regiment’s just taken a long step toward winning this war for us.”

  “Good,” the man from New Eborac said. “Anybody wants to know what I think, this gods-damned war’s already gone on too long and cost too much. The sooner we get it over and done with, the better off everybody will be.”

  “Can’t argue with a single word of that, Colonel, and I don’t intend to try,” George said. He peered toward the north bank of the river. “I wish those engineers would hurry. How long can our luck hold?” Back at General Hesmucet’s headquarters, clever Major Alva was probably gnashing his teeth right now. The southrons had found a way to go over the Hoocheecoochee even without his masking spell.

  No sooner were the words out of George’s mouth than an artificer came pelting back across the bridge and said, “Sir, it’s finished. Would you like to be the first man to cross to the far bank?”

  Doubting George would have liked nothing better. But the northern courtesy with which he’d been raised made him shake his head. “Colonel Nahath deserves the honor,” he replied. “Without him, it wouldn’t be possible.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Nahath said. “You’re a gentleman.”

  “Go on,” George said with a smile more or less sincere. “Go on, and be quick, before I change my mind.”

  “I wouldn’t blame you if you did,” Colonel Nahath said, but that didn’t stop him from hurrying across the bridge, his bootheels thudding on the planks. As soon as he got to the end of the timbers, he leaped high in the air and came down with both feet on the ground on the north bank of the Hoocheecoochee. He turned and waved to Doubting George.

  After waving back, the lieutenant general hurried across the bridge himself. He’d given Nahath the privilege of going first, but that didn’t mean he despised going second. The ground under his feet on the far bank of the river felt no different from that on the side he’d just left. It felt no different, but it was, and he knew it.

  So did Nahath. “Let’s push on toward Marthasville, sir,” he said.

  “We will.” With a grin, George added, “Or did you mean just the two of us?”

  “I’m ready.” Nahath grinned, too. By the way his narrow face had to twist to accommodate the expression, it didn’t al
ight there very often. He waved toward the city. “Doesn’t look like there’s anybody in the way right now to stop us.”

  He was right about that, but only for a little while. “Some of those sons of bitches in blue would turn up-they always do. So we’ll have to bring some company along, that’s all.” Doubting George waved once more, this time back toward the southern bank of the Hoocheecoochee. Colonel Nahath’s regiment of men from New Eborac had earned the right to cross first, but a great many other regiments were lined up behind them now. Once this force got over the river, Joseph the Gamecock would have a hells of a time throwing it back.

  On came the New Eborac regiment, each company with its standard fluttering at its head. One of the standard-bearers made George blink. He turned to Nahath. “Excuse me, Colonel, but did I just see a blond carrying a flag?”

  “Yes, sir, you did,” Nahath answered. “That’s Corporal Rollant, who earned the spot for himself on Commissioner Mountain. You may remember, I brought the question of promoting him to you before I went ahead with it. You said he deserved the chance to fail, but he hasn’t failed yet.”

  With his memory jogged, Doubting George nodded. “I do recall now, thanks. He still makes a strange sight, though.”

  “This war has shown us a great many strange sights, sir,” Colonel Nahath said. “I think we’d better get used to it, because the kingdom won’t get any less strange in the peace that’s coming.”

  “You’re likely right, Colonel.” George shook his head. “No, as a matter of fact, you’re certainly right. But I’m a northern man myself, you know, and I have to tell you that some things strike me as very strange the first time I see them.”

  “You asked if Rollant was a good fighting man, a good soldier,” Nahath replied. “I told you he was, and I meant it. He hasn’t had much trouble since he got promoted-less than I expected. If he were an ordinary Detinan instead of a blond, he’d surely be a sergeant by now, and he might well be an officer.”

  Contemplating the blond corporal was quite enough for Doubting George at the moment. Being a conservative had led him to radicalism, a step he hadn’t planned on taking. Blonds freed from the land, blonds promoted to underofficer, blonds who might eventually get promoted further still…

  As he did whenever such notions disturbed him, he thought, I’d sooner have that than theKingdom ofDetina torn to pieces. It was true. Were it anything but true, he would have been fighting for Geoffrey, not Avram. But sometimes, as now, it was also cold, cold comfort.

  He left a solid garrison to protect the bridge, then ordered the rest of his force forward toward Marthasville. As long as he was doing, he didn’t have to brood. And the chief city of Peachtree Province lay only a few miles away. George knew the northerners had a ring of forts around Marthasville, and entrenchments between those forts, but how many men did they have to put into the entrenchments? As long as the Army of Franklin remained on the east bank of the curving Hoocheecoochee, not many.

  His army didn’t meet its first traitors in arms till it had been marching for most of an hour. Then a couple of unicorn-riders rode right up to the head of his column-and were promptly captured. They were indignant about it. When their captors brought them before Doubting George, one of them demanded, “What are you sons of bitches doing here? You’re supposed to be on the other side of the river.”

  “Life is full of surprises,” George said.

  “It isn’t fair,” the second unicorn-rider said. “We wouldn’t’ve come right on up to you gods-damned bastards if we’d known you were southrons. You ought to let us go.”

  “I’m sure you’d do the same for a couple of our men,” George said. The northern unicorn-riders didn’t have the crust to claim they would and to make that convincing. George gestured to the men in charge of them. “Take them away and send them south.”

  “Yes, sir,” the grinning guards said. They led their glum prisoners back toward the new bridge across the Hoocheecoochee.

  An hour or so after that, real fighting began. Geoffrey’s men turned out to have more than a couple of unicorn-riders in the neighborhood. A squadron galloped through the fields that ran by the road on which the southrons were marching. They shot at the men in gray and then galloped off out of range. Some of Doubting George’s men shot back. One enemy rider tumbled off his mount, while a couple of footsoldiers in gray howled when quarrels struck them.

  Another couple of squadrons of blue-clad men on unicorns got in front of the marching column and tried to stop it by sheer brute force. They had a battery of engines with them, and flung darts at the southrons from a range longer than that from which George’s men could shoot back at them. They were very brave-a lot of northern soldiers were-but it didn’t do them much good. George ordered his leading regiments to shift from column into line. They swept forward. The ends of their line lapped around the unicorn-riders on either side. The northerners had to retreat in a hurry to keep from being surrounded. They tried to set up for another stand half a mile farther north, but the southrons made them fall back again before they’d shot more than a couple of darts.

  By the time the sun set, George’s force was almost halfway to Marthasville. He had a solidly garrisoned supply line leading back to the bridge over the Hoocheecoochee, and ordered his men to entrench around the camp they made. Once that was done, he told his scryer, “Now put me through to General Hesmucet.”

  “Yes, sir,” the scryer said, and got out his crystal ball. George had already sent a runner back to the commanding general, but hadn’t spoken with him till now.

  Before long, Hesmucet’s face appeared in the crystal ball. “Congratulations, Lieutenant General!” he said heartily. “You’ve stolen a march on Joseph the Gamecock-and you’ve stolen one on Major Alva, too.”

  “That did occur to me, yes,” George said with a smile. “How’s he taking it?”

  “He’s disappointed,” Hesmucet answered. “He was shaping what would have been a really magnificent masking spell, and now we don’t need it. He’ll just have to learn to live with it-part of growing up, you might say.”

  “Yes, sir.” Doubting George hadn’t thought Hesmucet would be angry with him for moving before the planned moment, but was glad to be proved right. Hesmucet put success above method, as any good soldier did. George said, “We’re over the last barrier in front of Marthasville now.”

  “So we are,” the general commanding agreed. “And it will be interesting to see what Joseph the Gamecock does about it.”

  “He can’t very well stay on that side of the river,” George said. “If he does, we take the city and we smash up his army.”

  “We’re liable to do all that even if he pulls back,” Hesmucet replied. “You’ve put him in a very nasty position, very nasty indeed. Congratulations, Lieutenant General.”

  “Thank you, sir,” George said. “I was wondering what in the hells I would do if I were Joseph the Gamecock. By all the gods, I’ve got no good answers. I’d sure rather be where I am than where he is.”

  “Don’t blame you a bit,” Hesmucet said. “But he’s kept his force in being. He can still hurt you-he can still hurt all of us-if he gets the chance. We can’t afford to be careless, not now.”

  “Not ever,” Doubting George said.

  “No, not ever.” Hesmucet leaned forward, so that he seemed about to step out of the crystal ball and sit down beside George. “Can I tell you a little secret?”

  “Sir, you’re the one who’s in charge here,” George answered. “Only you know whether you can or not-or maybe I ought to say, whether you should or not.”

  “Well, I’m going to, gods damn it.” Hesmucet bared his teeth in a fierce grin. “I’m glad you’re the one who found the way over the Hoocheecoochee, and not, say, Fighting Joseph.”

  “I can’t imagine why, sir,” George said, deadpan. Both officers laughed. Doubting George had no trouble imagining how puffed-up and full of himself Fighting Joseph would have been had he got across the river ahead of every other s
outhron officer. He would have started agitating for command over the whole force, and would have slandered General Hesmucet, Lieutenant General George, and Brigadier James the Bird’s Eye to anyone who would listen. To make sure people listened, Fighting Joseph would have pounded a drum and played a trumpet, too.

  “What are your plans for tomorrow?” Hesmucet asked.

  “Sir, unless you order me to do something else, I’m going to push on toward Marthasville,” George replied. “The deeper into Joseph the Gamecock’s rear I get, the harder the time he’ll have doing anything about me.”

  “That’s good,” Hesmucet said. “That’s very good. It’s just what I’d do in your spot.” He grinned. It made him look surprisingly boyish. “And if that doesn’t prove it’s good, I don’t know what would. Anything else?”

  “No, sir,” Doubting George said.

  “All right, then.” General Hesmucet nodded to someone George couldn’t see: his scryer, for the crystal ball suddenly became just a ball of glass. George got up, stretched, and nodded. He knew what he was supposed to do, he knew what he had to do, and he thought he could do it. For a soldier, that was a good feeling.

  But George didn’t have such a good feeling the next morning. The northerners still had no footsoldiers on this side of the Hoocheecoochee to oppose his army’s progress, but enough unicorn-riders were in the neighborhood to make real nuisances of themselves. They swarmed round the southron footsoldiers like the blond nomads on the steppes far to the east of the Great River, now and then darting in to shoot flurries of crossbow quarrels at them.

  Disciplined volleys from his men knocked a good many traitors out of the saddle, and knocked over a good many unicorns as well. The white beasts were beautiful; seeing them fall and hearing them scream as they were wounded made George wince, hardened veteran though he was. But the northerners knew they had to slow his men, and they did.

  By that time, a scryer with a crystal ball or a swift-riding messenger had surely got word back to Joseph the Gamecock that the southrons were over the Hoocheecoochee and threatening, as they’d threatened so many times farther south, to finish the job of outflanking him, cutting him off from Marthasville, and destroying him. It hadn’t happened yet. This time, though… Doubting George thought. This time, we just may manage it.