“I… see,” George said. “He sounds like the fellow I ought to question, don’t you think?”
“Whatever you say, sir,” the messenger replied. “If if was up to me, I’d knock him over the head and shut him up for good.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Doubting George replied. “He sounds like he might be fun to listen to for a while.”
He walked into the farmhouse. The northern prisoner gave him a baleful stare and demanded, “Who in the hells”-because of his broken false teeth, it came out as hellsh — “are you?”
“I am Lieutenant General George, commander of this wing of King Avram’s army,” George said gravely. “Do I understand you to be a mite discouraged with the northern cause?”
“Discouraged?” the prisoner shouted. “Discouraged?” He spat on the rammed-earth floor. “That for the fornicating northern cause. I curse the northern cause, every fornicating piece of it. I curse King Geoffrey and his ministers and his satraps and public men, clean down to the lowest pothouse politico who advocates his cause. I curse the whole fornicating Army of Franklin, from Joseph the Gamecock and Bell the Bloody Butcher down to the mangiest, most miserable jackass. I curse its downsittings and its uprisings. I curse its movements, marches, battles, and sieges. I curse all its paraphernalia, its catapults and its crossbows. I curse its banners, bugles, and drums. And I curse the whole gods-damned institution of serfdom, which brought about this miserable, fornicating war.”
By then, the fellow’s guards had tears of laughter running down their cheeks. Doubting George held his face straight, which was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. “You are a man of strong opinions, sir,” he remarked.
“I know what’s what. I know eggs is eggs. I know pigs is pigs,” the prisoner said. “And I know we’ve got pigs in charge of us. Curse ’em all. Curse ’em, and make bacon of ’em, too.”
“Dare I ask your view of my side in this conflict?” George inquired.
“Futter you southrons, too,” the northern man said at once. “You bastards are winning the war by magic, and where’s the fair fight in that?”
“By magic?” George said in surprise. “Your side is the one credited with the stronger sorcerers.”
“Unicorn dung!” the prisoner exclaimed. “Stinks like it, too. Our wizards brag. You ever hear tell of Thraxton the Braggart? We brag, but your buggers really do things. We aren’t the ones who keep miles and miles of glideway tunnel in our back pantaloon pockets, way you bastards do.”
“Glideway tunnel?” Doubting George had never imagined that as something a wizard might keep handy in a pocket.
But it made perfect sense to the prisoner. “We go after your glideways, how else can you fix ’em so gods-damned fast, without you having tunnel right there ready to go and stick it through a hill? Ought to stick it up Bell’s backside, is where it ought to go.”
He went back to cursing, this time aiming his venom at the new commander of the Army of Franklin. But he’d been dead serious about the tunnels; Doubting George could tell as much. If only such a thing were possible, it would have been a good idea. When the latest string of blasphemies slowed, George asked, “How did you happen to get caught?”
“I got stuck in the mud, gods damn it,” the prisoner answered. He wiped at his forehead with a forearm. That dislodged the wig he was wearing. He didn’t realize it had gone awry, and looked even more absurd and bedraggled than he had a moment before.
“Would you say you’re representative of the soldiers going into Geoffrey’s militia these days?” George asked.
“Why shouldn’t I be?” the northern returned. “You see anything wrong with me? You saying there’s something wrong with me?” He looked comically indignant.
“No, not at all,” Doubting George said soothingly. Eyeing the young, strong guards, he contrasted them to their captive. King Avram’s dominions still had plentiful reserves of men. False King Geoffrey, on the other hand, was trying to wring a few last drops of water from a dry fleece.
“What are you southron bastards going to do with me?” the prisoner asked.
“Not much,” George told him. “We’ll feed you a meal-gods know you look like you could use one-and then we’ll ship you south to a prisoners’ camp. You’ll wait there till you’re properly exchanged for a southron your side has captured or till the war ends, whichever comes first.”
“Can’t be over too soon,” the prisoner declared mushily. “I want to get back to my life, is what I want to do.”
“Don’t we all?” Doubting George said. “If Geoffrey hadn’t let Palmetto Province start calling him king-”
“Gods damn Geoffrey! Devils fry him for breakfast and roast him for supper,” the prisoner said, and he was off again on another wild string of curses.
George decided he didn’t need to hear any more. He hadn’t really learned anything from the prisoner, save that the man had a remarkably foul mouth. Or so he thought till he went outside and considered the matter for a little while. True, the fellow with the broken false teeth and the wig askew hadn’t told him anything about where the northern armies were, how many men they had, or what they intended to do. But did that mean he’d told him nothing?
After a little more thought, Doubting George shook his head. That a scrawny old man had been hauled into the militia at all said something about the straits the north was in. That he hated the man who called himself his king and the commanders set over him said something, too. And if Grand Duke Geoffrey could have heard what it said, he would have shivered, no matter how oppressively hot the weather in Nonesuch was at this season of the year.
“He will hear,” George murmured to himself. “We’ll make him hear, and I doubt it will take very long.”
* * *
Roast-Beef William was not a happy man. His wing had fought its heart out, trying to push the southrons back into Goober Creek. Then the weary men had marched all night before trying to dislodge Hesmucet’s left from the glideway line leading to Julia. They hadn’t quite managed either feat, but the number of dead and wounded they’d left on the field told how hard they’d tried.
It told Roast-Beef William, at any rate. He couldn’t see that the soldiers’ effort and suffering meant that much to Lieutenant General Bell, who was glaring at him like the angry lion he resembled. “I don’t care how hard they tried,” Bell said furiously. “I care that they failed.”
“Sir, if you set out to do the impossible, you shouldn’t be surprised when you fall short,” William said.
“Impossible? No such thing,” Bell declared. “If only your men had pressed their second attack, they would have rolled up the stinking southrons and thrown them back in disorder.”
“Sir…” Roast-Beef William resisted the impulse to pick up his chair and break it over the commanding general’s head. “Sir, we’d fought a battle the day before. We’d marched fifteen miles at night with bad guides to get to where we could deliver that second attack. And then, after the way we fought, you complain because we didn’t do enough? For shame, sir! For shame!”
“The plan was good. If the plan was good but didn’t succeed, that must be the fault of the men who went to carry it out,” Bell said.
Sighing, William said, “Sir, the plan was less good than you think. If you attack soldiers in entrenchments when yours are not, you had better have more men than they do, not fewer. They waited for us to get close, and then they shot us down like partridges. You cannot blame our defeats on the brave soldiers who serve us.”
“You’re wiser in hindsight than you were in foresight,” Bell said, “for you didn’t protest these orders when I gave them.”
That held some truth, more than Roast-Beef William cared to think about. He hadn’t opposed Bell’s first attack, the one that had failed to push the southrons back over Goober Creek. Casting about for some means to defend himself, he said, “I did warn you the men you sent to attack James the Bird’s Eye would be too weary to give their best.”
“Oh, what
a hero you are!” Bell jeered. In defeat, he was proving as bad-tempered and sarcastic as Joseph the Gamecock or Thraxton the Braggart ever had. Criticizing, it seemed, had proved easier than commanding. Camp rumor said Joseph, before departing, had warned that that would be so. However prickly Joseph was, he’d always known a hawk from a handsaw. Bell… Roast-Beef William wasn’t so sure about Bell.
He wasn’t so sure about himself, either. Maybe I should have protested harder-protested at least some-whenBell sent us south just after he took command, he thought mournfully. No: certainly I should have protested. He knew why he hadn’t. Joseph the Gamecock had been sacked because he wouldn’t attack. Bell had been installed because he would. King Geoffrey had wanted attacks against the southrons. How could an officer mindful of that oppose them?
Well, the Army of Franklin, or what was left of it, had found the answer to that. Opposing attacks that failed, that might well have been foredoomed, looked like great wisdom in hindsight. With so many men lost, with the southrons not driven away despite those dreadful losses to the northern force, how were they going to hold on to Marthasville? Roast-Beef William had been a soldier and a teacher of soldiers for a long time. That notwithstanding, he had no idea.
Before he could find a way to put any of that into words, a runner came into the house Bell was using as army headquarters-the house Joseph had used before being sacked. “Sir-” he began, and then, catching sight of William along with the general commanding, fell silent.
“Say on,” Bell told him. “Say your say. Roast-Beef William may be a fool, but he is no traitor to the northern cause.”
“Sir…” That wasn’t the messenger; it was Roast-Beef William himself. But he shook his head. What point in quarreling further? When Bell called him a fool, what he meant was, He disagrees with me.
“Yes, sir,” the messenger said to Bell. “The news is that the gods-damned southrons are moving against the glideway line running north out of Marthasville, the line to Dicon and the rest of the north of this province. They’ve already overrun the line to Dothan. They’re marching on Jonestown, about fifteen miles north of the city, sir, moving on that line in a long loop from out of the east.”
“That’s the last line into Marthasville we still hold, sir,” Roast-Beef William said. “If the southrons seize it, we’re as near surrounded as makes no difference.”
“I know that.” Bell spoke in an abstracted voice, as if from far away. The pupils of his eyes were very small. William had seen that before, when heroic doses of laudanum had had their way with the commanding general.
Another runner dashed in. He stood on no ceremony whatever, saying, “Lieutenant General Bell, sir, the southrons are starting to fling firepots and stones into Marthasville, sir! What are we going to do?”
“They’ve moved their engines up close enough to reach the town, have they?” Roast-Beef William said. The second runner nodded.
“One thing at a time,” Bell said, more to himself than to anyone else. After a moment, he gathered himself and turned to William. “You go with your wing and massacre the southrons by Jonestown. If they’re bombarding Marthasville, they can’t have sent that many men north. Crush them, hold on to the glideway line leading north, and, as opportunity offers, push east toward the one to Dothan.”
“Yes, sir.” William saluted. The order struck him as reasonable-more than reasonable, in fact. Holding the glideway lines coming out of Marthasville was the main reason for holding the city itself. Of course, it would have done more good had the Army of Franklin still controlled the lines leading toward Julia and toward Nonesuch. But those were gone, cut by the southrons. No reinforcements or supplies would go to Parthenia along them.
Without the line to Dothan and the one to northern Peachtree Province, though, no reinforcements or-more vital-supplies would get into Marthasville. Hesmucet could sit down and starve the city into submission… if he didn’t prefer to knock it flat instead.
Bell had the same thought at the same time. “Hesmucet uses us barbarously, to throw stones and fire into a city still full of noncombatants,” he said.
“Sir, I would agree,” Roast-Beef William replied. “But if he will do it, it may work to his advantage, and I see no way for us to make him stop it.”
“Barbarous,” Bell repeated. “Shameless and barbarous.” His eyes hardly seemed to have any pupils at all. “I shall drive them away from Marthasville if I see even the smallest chance of doing so.”
“Yes, sir,” Roast-Beef William said, and then, because he couldn’t help himself, “Sir, please do be careful. We’ve already lost a lot of men. How many more can we afford to throw away?”
“If we triumph, the men are not thrown away.” No matter how much laudanum Bell had taken, he still sounded angry. “Joseph the Gamecock would not see that, which is why I command.”
“If we triumph, yes, sir,” William said. “We’ve hit the southrons two hard blows, and haven’t triumphed yet. We need to be able to defend ourselves, too, against the cursed numbers they enjoy.”
“This time, we cannot fail. We must not fail,” Bell said. “We have to win by the city, and we have to win up by Jonestown. You tend to the second, and I will take care of the first. You may rely on it.”
“I do, sir,” Roast-Beef William said. “I have to.” He strode out of Bell’s headquarters before the general commanding could respond to that. Getting out of there also kept him from thinking about how he meant it, which was probably just as well.
Go north to Jonestown. Drive the southrons away from it. Don’t let them seize the glideway line to Dicon. Reclaim the one to Dothan. Put like that, it sounded easy. Bell put it no other way. Turning those broad commands into reality was up to Roast-Beef William. So were all the myriad details of putting his wing of the Army of Franklin into motion. Details mattered little-hardly mattered at all-to Bell.
Roast-Beef William found himself unhappier than ever that Joseph the Gamecock was gone. Joseph had cared about details. Joseph had cared so much about leaves and branches and bark, in fact, that he sometimes had trouble remembering there were trees, let alone a forest. To William’s way of thinking, that was a lesser failing than barely noticing the forest because one was gazing at the kingdom of which it formed a part.
But no one cared about his way of thinking. King Geoffrey had proved that. If he decided he had to sack Joseph, why didn’t he put me in charge? William feared he knew the answer. It’s not just that I have no breeding-neither does Bell. But he’s a hero-his missing pieces prove it. All I am is a man who can get the job done. And now I have to-again.
Work with pen and paper saved him a lot of trouble. By the time he called in his brigade commanders, he had at his fingertips the details Lieutenant General Bell hadn’t bothered with. He gave them out, crisply and cleanly.
“How many men have the southrons got?” somebody asked.
“That I don’t know,” Roast-Beef William admitted unhappily. “But I must be of the opinion that their force is not overlarge. How could it be, when they’re operating fifteen miles north of Marthasville at the same time as they’re keeping the assault against the city in progress?”
No one argued with him. Had the southrons not had a large host, they wouldn’t have been able to operate in two such widely separated places at the same time at all. As far as William was concerned, Marthasville itself remained the most important target. This business of Jonestown was bound to be a distraction, a harassment, nothing more. Once he’d dealt with it, he could bring his wing back up to the city, to aid in the defense.
“Any more questions?” he asked. Hearing none, he nodded. “Very well, gentlemen. You know what’s required of you. I expect you will all do your duty, and all do it handsomely. Dismissed. We move in the morning.”
Some of the soldiers boarded carpets and went north up the glideway. Others moved by road; not enough carpets remained in Marthasville to transport his entire wing. He sent the men who would have to march up to Jonestown off ahead of
those who would ride on the carpets: they would travel more slowly, and he wanted his entire force, such as it was, to get there at the same time.
Bell wouldn’t think of such a thing, went through his mind as he mounted his own unicorn and rode off at the head of a column of marchers. If some got there before the rest, he would throw in an attack with what he had and hope the latecomers could support it. No wonder we’re in the state we’re in.
Again, he wished the whole army might have been his. The only answer to that was a shrug of his broad shoulders. What he wished didn’t matter. What King Geoffrey wished did. So the gods had made it. That was what the priests said, at any rate. Roast-Beef William couldn’t help thinking the gods had made some extraordinarily sloppy arrangements for the north.
He peered. He saw no great clouds of smoke rising into the hot, muggy air. Either the southrons hadn’t yet got to Jonestown or no one was in the way to slow them down. He hoped for the former and feared the latter.
When he reached Jonestown, he found with some considerable relief that his hope was fulfilled: the southrons weren’t there yet. But when he sent scouts eastward, probing toward the glideway that led to Dothan and away toward the Great River, those scouts promptly came back, bloodied. “A whole great plenty of them bastards in gray,” was how one of them put it.
Roast-Beef William thought about pushing on regardless. Lieutenant General Bell would have; he was sure of that. To the hells with Lieutenant General Bell, he thought. My orders don’t require me to push on this instant, and I don’t intend to. If Hesmucet and his wing commanders want me, let them come here and try to get me.
“Dig in, men,” he called. “Let’s make sure we have a safe place before we go gallivanting around the landscape.”
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