“And we’ll steal all the good food and the crossbow quarrels the stinking southrons have fetched up here to Whole Mackerel from Rising Rock,” Sergeant Thisbe added. “We’ll eat like nobles, and we’ll shoot like we’ve got repeating crossbows.”
The soldiers in blue cheered louder for Thisbe than they had for Gremio. “Well said, Sergeant,” Gremio told him. “You got a better rein on what makes them go than I did.”
“Thank you very much, sir,” Thisbe said. “Trying to put in a little extra, that’s all.”
“You did splendidly,” Gremio said. “You should speak up more often.”
Before Thisbe could answer, the horns screamed again, this time ordering the Army of Franklin forward against the southrons’ entrenchments in front of Whole Mackerel. They tried ours and didn’t like them very well, Gremio thought. Why should we have an easier time with theirs?
Some of the entrenchments the northerners would be assailing were the ones their serfs had dug a few months earlier. Now King Avram’s gray-clad soldiers held them. And those men in gray seemed no more inclined to give them up than the Army of Franklin had been earlier in the year.
“Only a piddly little garrison in front of us, boys,” Colonel Florizel boomed. “They’ll run like rabbits, the gods-damned sons of bitches.”
Roaring as if possessed by the Lion God, the northerners swarmed toward the easternmost trenches. Even before they came into range, firepots and stones flew through the air. Repeating crossbows began their harsh clack-clack-clack. No, the southrons weren’t about to give up and go away.
But Florizel had been right. Yes, the southrons had men in their forward trenches and engines behind them, but they didn’t have very many men or very many engines. Lieutenant General Bell’s men pelted them with bolts and stones and firepots of their own. Before long, the southrons fell back towards Whole Mackerel, the artificers in charge of their engines hitching those to teams of unicorns and hauling them away to keep them from being captured.
“Forward!” Gremio called. “We’ve got to keep pushing them, not let them rally. Keep moving!”
When they came to the southrons’ second line of trenches, another storm of missiles greeted them. Looking ahead, Gremio saw that the enemy’s main lines of defense didn’t guard the town of Whole Mackerel itself, but rather the nearby supply depot. Sure enough, they knew what Bell wanted.
Roaring and shouting, the Army of Franklin bore down on those works. Now the southrons had no room for retreat, not unless they wanted to give up what their foes so desperately needed to take. They had to fight.
They had to-and they did. They had a great many more engines in amongst these fieldworks than they’d used farther forward. Stones and firepots and darts took a heavy toll on the northerners. The southrons whooped and cheered to watch their foes fall.
“Keep moving, men!” Gremio shouted again. “Look, there on that parapet-that’s got to be their commander. If we can kill him, maybe we’ll suck the spirit out of them.”
That wasn’t sporting. It wasn’t chivalrous. A man of noble blood probably never would have said anything so crude. None of that stopped Gremio from thinking he’d had a good idea there. His men did, too. So did the crews of a nearby battery of engines. They started aiming at the black-haired officer waving a sword, too.
A moment later, he clapped a hand to his cheek and tumbled off the parapet. Gremio and everyone close by raised a cheer. “Forward!” he yelled. “Now let’s see how tough those bastards are!”
He soon found out how tough their commander was. The man reappeared inside of a couple of minutes. He was even easier to spot than he had been before-a bloody bandage covered half his face. Gremio could hear his shouts through the din of battle: “We can whip these bastards! Who the hells do they think they are, coming around to bother honest people? Give ’em a good kick in the arse and throw ’em back!”
And the southrons obeyed. They fought with a stubborn, stolid courage different from the incandescent northern variety but no less effective for that. Some of their outer entrenchments fell to the Army of Franklin, but only after they were filled with dead men wearing tunics and pantaloons both blue and gray. And the northerners didn’t come close to overrunning the supply depot, though they fought all day.
Towards evening, Bell ordered a withdrawal. Colonel Florizel put the best face on things he could: “Well, boys, we’ll hit ’em another lick tomorrow, and then we’ll whip ’em for sure.”
“What if the southrons send up reinforcements by then?” Gremio asked.
Florizel started to say something harsh, but checked himself. “No, you were all for forging ahead,” he reminded himself. “In that case, Captain, we don’t have such an easy time of it. Satisfied?” Gremio nodded, though that wasn’t the word he would have used.
XI
Lieutenant General Bell glowered at his scryer. “You’re sure you intercepted the southrons’ message?”
“As sure as I’m standing here before you, sir,” the scryer answered. “They might as well have been talking right into my crystal ball instead of Brigadier Murray the Coarse talking to General Hesmucet. Murray, he said, `I am short of a cheekbone, and one ear, but am able to whip all hells yet.’ And Hesmucet, he answered, `Hold the fort! I am coming!’ He was up near Commissioner Mountain then, sir, so I reckon he could come pretty gods-damned quick.”
“To the hells with him,” Bell said furiously. He could hear the moans of the wounded in his encampment here. He knew he wouldn’t be able to rouse his army to another attack before morning, and also knew morning was all too likely to be too late. Whole Mackerel had held.
Laudanum, he thought, and took a swig. The pain in his ruined arm and missing leg diminished. He could even look at the pain in his spirit with more detachment, which was really why he’d gulped down the drug. But that pain wouldn’t die, not altogether. He’d needed a win over the southrons and, yet again, he hadn’t got it.
“Anything else, sir?” the scryer asked.
“No,” Lieutenant General Bell answered. “Just pick up your crystal ball and get the hells out of here.” The scryer did.
Major Zibeon came into Bell’s tent a moment later. “You put a flea in his ear,” Bell’s dour aide-de-camp remarked. “What did he have to say?”
“That the stinking southrons are on their way here,” Bell answered. “We’ve wounded the commander here at Whole Mackerel, but he thinks he can hold out till Hesmucet arrives.”
“He’s likely right, especially if Hesmucet marches his men through the night,” Zibeon said, which was exactly what Bell didn’t want to hear. His own description of the words that had passed between Murray the Coarse and Hesmucet made them seem bloodless, businesslike. The scryer’s version hadn’t been like that. Both southron officers had sounded more than confident. That worried Bell as nothing else had. Zibeon grimaced, then asked, “Can we face the whole southron army?”
“No,” Bell answered. “No, gods damn it, we can’t.” He hated nothing more than admitting that. King Geoffrey had put him in command of the Army of Franklin to whip the southrons and to hold Marthasville. He hadn’t managed either. He didn’t like having to confront his limits and those of his army.
“What do we do, then, sir?” his aide-de-camp asked.
“We fall back,” Bell answered-strange and unnatural words to find in his mouth. They tasted bad, too, but he saw the need for them. “We fall back, and we try to hit that gods-damned glideway line somewhere else.”
To his surprise, Major Zibeon nodded. “Not bad, sir,” he said judiciously. “Even if we don’t wreck it, how much can Hesmucet do if he’s chasing us over the landscape where we’ve already fought? And he’ll have to chase us, too, on account of this army is still too big to ignore.”
Bell didn’t care for the sound of that still. Zibeon might as well have said, This is what’s left after you went and made a hash of things. But he nodded because, tone aside, his aide-de-camp had the essence of his plan down. “
That’s right, Major. If Hesmucet is such a great hero, let’s see him catch us when we don’t feel like getting caught.”
Zibeon chuckled. “The southrons won’t like that.”
“Futter the southrons!” Bell exclaimed. “If they think I’m going to dry up and blow away because they squeezed me out of Marthasville, they can think again. They’ll have to work to drag us down.”
“I think that’s good, sir. I think that’s very good,” Major Zibeon said. “If the gods favor us, we may even be able to sneak back into Marthasville again.”
“That would be very fine.” Bell started to perk up, but then slumped again. “It would be very fine, I mean, but there’s not much left of Marthasville any more. Place isn’t worth having, not for anybody. And gods damn Hesmucet for that, too, along with everything else.”
“They will. I have no doubt of it.” Zibeon spoke with great conviction. “But we’d better do something to him in this world, too.”
“Draft the order for our move to the south, then,” Lieutenant General Bell said. “If he wants us, he’ll have to pin us down. And do you know what, Major? I don’t think the southrons can do it.”
“Yes, sir,” his aide-de-camp said. “And no, sir, I don’t don’t think they can pin us down, either.”
When morning came, a red-dust haze in the north warned that the southrons were approaching fast. Grunting and cursing and half blind with pain in spite of a new dose of laudanum, Bell clambered aboard his unicorn. Major Zibeon made him fast to the animal like a man lashing a sack of lentils to an ass’ back. And then, just before he was about to lead the army south, he had an idea. Calling the mages together, he asked them, “Can you make the southrons think we’ve gone east instead?”
They looked at each other: sad-faced men in blue robes, some afoot, others riding asses. The next mage Bell saw aboard a unicorn would be the first. He could manage, without one leg and with only one working arm. As for them… He shrugged, which also hurt. They could work magic-when things went well.
At last, one of them said, “I think we can, sir-for a while, anyway. Sooner or later, though, they’ll realize they’ve been following a will o’ the wisp.”
“Buy us as much time as you can,” Bell said. The mages nodded mournfully.
Bell did lead the Army of Franklin south then. He kept looking back over his good shoulder to see how close the southrons were getting. Looking back wasn’t easy, not when the dust of thousands of marching feet obscured his view. After a while, though, he did spy what looked to be just as much dust rising from the east. He hoped the mages would remember to mask the dust his army was actually making. He almost sent a rider back to remind them to be sure of that, but at the last minute checked himself. Mages had their pride, too.
A unicorn-rider from his own rear guard came trotting up to him. Saluting, the man said, “Sir, looks like the stinking southrons have swung off to the east. They aren’t coming right after us, anyways.”
“Good,” Bell said. Something had gone right, then. He made a noise halfway between a sigh and a groan. Not too many things had gone right for the Army of Franklin lately. To be relieved because the enemy’s pursuit had been drawn off was… Pitiful was the word that sprang to mind.
Another rider approached him. He eyed Roast-Beef William with more suspicion than he had the courier. Roast-Beef William hungered for his command, just as he’d hungered for it when Joseph the Gamecock had it. Was William writing letters to King Geoffrey? He’d better not be, Bell thought.
“What now?” he growled, his voice rough and edgy.
“I was going to ask you the same question, sir,” his wing commander replied. “I understand we can’t hope to hold our position with so many southrons coming after us, but where do we go from here?”
“Someplace with good foraging, from which we can strike a blow at the glideway up from Rising Rock, or at a detachment of southrons if they give us the chance,” Bell answered. There had been a time when the Army of Franklin could have stood up to the whole southron host-before it lost four expensive battles in a row outside Marthasville. Bell tried not to dwell on that.
“Sooner or later, the whole southron army will come after us,” William said.
“Later,” Bell told him, and explained what the mages were doing.
Roast-Beef William’s big head bobbed up and down. “That’s good, sir, but it won’t last forever. And the southrons are hard to fool the same way twice.”
“We’ve bought some time now.” Bell had never been a man to look to the far future. It would take care of itself. The problem right at hand always seemed more important. Without solving it, he couldn’t get to the far future, anyhow.
“Do you think the southrons are after us with their whole force?” William asked.
“Seemed that way, gods damn them,” Bell said. “Let them come. They aren’t going to accomplish anything that way.”
“Not unless they crush us,” Roast-Beef William said. But then, almost reluctantly, he nodded again. “We’re lighter and quicker than they are, no doubt.”
“Even so,” Bell said. “Any man who knows me knows I hate retreat to the very marrow of my bones-but there are times when it is needful, and this is one of those times.”
“Yes, sir,” Roast-Beef William said, and then muttered something under his breath.
“What was that?” Lieutenant General Bell asked sharply.
“Nothing, sir,” his wing commander answered. Bell glared at him. William looked back, stolid and innocent. Bell couldn’t press any more. What he thought he’d heard was, That’s what Joseph the Gamecock kept saying.
It wasn’t quite insubordination, but it came close. As far as Bell could see, the two cases were as different as chalk and cheese. Retreat seemed Joseph’s natural state. He fell back because he dared not face the foe, or so Bell was convinced. He himself, on the other hand, moved away from the southrons only because they so dreadfully outnumbered him. They hadn’t outnumbered Joseph to anywhere near the same extent.
Why the southrons now outnumbered the Army of Franklin so much more than they had when Joseph the Gamecock commanded it was something Bell stubbornly refused to contemplate.
As Bell and the Army of Franklin moved south and east, the general commanding had no trouble telling where General Hesmucet’s army had gone earlier in the summer and where the land had not seen the red-hot rake of war. Earthworks and field fortifications scarred the ground where Hesmucet’s men had moved. One wheatfield had entrenchments in three sides of a square dug through the middle of it. What the farmer would be able to do about that, Bell couldn’t imagine.
Farmhouses were burnt, barns and serfs’ huts razed. Of livestock and blonds in the region where Hesmucet’s men had gone, Bell saw next to none. Half a mile away from the southrons’ path, cows and sheep and unicorns grazed, though he still noted hardly any blonds. “Bastards,” he muttered, not knowing himself whether he meant Hesmucet’s men or the serfs who fled to them.
A little before noon, one of his wizards came up to him and said, “I’m sorry, sir, but their sorcerers just penetrated our spell of deception.”
“Well, gods damn them to the seven hells,” Bell said. But it scarcely counted as an outburst; he’d expected that news for a couple of hours. He gave the mage a grudging nod. “You did the best you could.”
“Why, thank you, sir!” The man sounded not only relieved but astonished. He must have looked for a firepot to come down on his head.
Bell condescended to explain: “You bought us more time that I thought you would. We’ve got away clean now.”
“Ah.” The mage nodded, with luck in wisdom. He gave Bell a salute that would have disgusted any sergeant ever born. “Happy to be of service, sir.” He saluted again, even more disreputably than before, and went off to rejoin his comrades in wizardry.
I take it back, Bell thought. I do know one mage who rides a unicorn-Thraxton the Braggart. The lines furrowing his brow, for once, had nothing to do with pa
in. Thraxton was a mighty sorcerer, no doubt about it-and the Army of Franklin would have ended up better off if he’d never cast a single spell, no doubt about that, either. If a man is an ass, who cares whether he rides a unicorn?
What would Thraxton have done with the Army of Franklin, had King Geoffrey given it back to him instead of to Bell? Something unfortunate-Bell was sure of that. Again, what he’d done to the Army of Franklin himself never crossed his mind. The men let me down. He was sure of it.
We’ll smash up the glideway line. We’ll cut Hesmucet off from all his supplies, Bell thought. We’ll see how much the soft southrons like living off the land. We’ll see how well they fight when they’re hungry and short of everything, the way we always are.
He had visions of Hesmucet’s men stumbling across the plains of Peachtree Province with hollow eyes and bony fingers, moaning for a crust of bread. On the other side of the Western Ocean, Great King Kermit’s army had all but come to pieces when it had to retreat from Pahzbull in the middle of a hellsish winter. That was more than fifty years ago now, but people still told stories about it.
Liking the vision in his own mind, Bell offered it to his aide-de-camp. Major Zibeon chewed it over, then said, “That would be very nice, sir-now which gods are going to supply the Sorbian winter here in Peachtree Province?”
Bell’s ears heated. Zibeon had been polite in calling him a fool, but he’d called him a fool nonetheless. “We can still whip them,” Bell growled.
“I hope you’re right. I even think you’re right, sir,” Zibeon said. “But I don’t see southron soldiers starving in the snow, not hereabouts.”
“What precisely do you see, Major?” Bell’s tone was certainly cold enough for a Sorbian winter.
“Right now, I see that we’ve stolen a march on the enemy,” Zibeon replied. “I see that we’d better take advantage of it, too.” And not even Lieutenant General Bell could argue with him there.
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