“We’ll lick ’em, won’t we, sir?” The sentry sounded as if he had no doubt of it.
“We’re doing everything we can,” William answered. “If we can get astride the glideway line and cut it, the southrons may yet come to grief.”
“We’ll do it,” the sentry said.
And, more than a little to Roast-Beef William’s surprise, they did do it a couple of days later. A few miles south of Fat Mama, the Army of Franklin swarmed athwart the glideway line. William formed up his men facing north, to hold off Hesmucet’s southrons while mages disrupted the delicate spells without which glideway carpets would have done just as well in somebody’s parlor.
With no sign of the southrons anywhere close by, Roast-Beef William rode back perhaps a quarter of a mile to watch the wizards at work. The men in blue robes looked as weary as the soldiers guarding them. Almost, Roast-Beef William wished Thraxton the Braggart were back with the army. Almost. It wasn’t so much that Thraxton, like Bell, had led the Army of Franklin into disasters. That Thraxton was so gods-damned disagreeable while doing it counted for more. He’d proved that being a powerful mage wasn’t the same as being a successful one-proved it over and over, in fact.
The wizards chanted and made their passes and danced back and forth across the glideway line. They looked a lot like a holiday gathering at the Sweet One’s shrine. As soon as that thought crossed William’s mind, he wished it hadn’t. He had to fight the giggles for the rest of the incantation.
A line on the ground-presumably, the one tracing the path of the glideway line-began to glow red. The mages chanted harder than ever, and the glow got brighter and brighter. Before long, William was squinting at it through half-shut eyes. Even then, tears ran down his cheeks till at last he turned away.
With a sound as sharp and fierce as a bursting firepot, the spell ended. The assembled wizards cried out in triumph. Roast-Beef William turned back. The glideway line wasn’t glowing any more, but the air still quivered above it, showing the heat the mages had released.
“Well done!” William clapped his hands. “That should hold up the southrons a good long while, wouldn’t you say?”
“I hope so,” one of the mages answered answered. Roast-Beef William coughed. “Uh-I hope so, sir,” the mage amended. “We killed the glideway power dead as shoe leather, sure as hells we did.” His colleagues nodded.
“Well, then, the next time Hesmucet’s men try to use the line, they’ll get a nasty surprise,” William said. “Or am I misunderstanding something?”
“No, sir, you’re right about that,” the wizard said. “Question is, though, how long does it take ’em to repair what we just did?”
“How long would it take you?” Roast-Beef William asked.
Before answering, the man in the blue robe and his comrades put their heads together. At last, he said, “We’d probably be held up for a week, easy. We did a proper job here, we did.”
“That’s not bad,” Roast-Beef William said. It was almost as much as he’d hoped for, which, considering the way the war had been going lately, came close to a miracle straight from the gods.
But now the wizard coughed. “Uh, sir, you’ve got to remember, the southrons are better than we are at this kind of sorcery, same as we’re better than they are at battle magic.”
Roast-Beef William cursed softly. The fellow was bound to be right. Everything William had seen in the war pointed that way. He said, “All right, then, I’ll ask a different question: how long do you think the southrons will need to fix what you just did to the glideway line?”
The sorcerers huddled again. When they broke apart, the fellow who did the talking said, “A couple of days, if we’re lucky. A couple of hours, if we’re not.”
“A couple of days? A couple of hours?” Roast-Beef William clapped a hand to his forehead in astonished dismay and disbelief. “And it would stop you for a week? I knew we were behind them in that sort of sorcery. Thunderer’s prong, though-I never imagined we were so far behind.”
“Sorry, sir,” the wizard said. “That’s how it is.”
“In that case…” William plucked at his beard. “In that case, let’s see what we can do about it.”
Being the commander of the rear guard, he was supposed to hang back and resist the southrons anyhow. He posted a regiment in the pine woods near the glideway line with some very specific orders. He stayed behind himself, too; he wasn’t willing to order the men to try anything he wouldn’t do himself. He told the colonel, “If this doesn’t work out the way we want it to, we’ll just pull back. I’m not out for us to get stuck with an attack that hasn’t got a chance of working.”
“No, eh?” the colonel said. “You’d better not tell Bell that, or else he’ll throw you out of this gods-damned army.”
Roast-Beef William cleared his throat. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”
“Go ahead,” the colonel told him. “Won’t make any difference one way or the other. You can hear or not. Bell won’t.” As William had with the mage, he cleared his throat again. The colonel refused to be cowed. He said, “I’m a free Detinan, sir, and I’ll gods-damned well say what I please. Somebody ought to, don’t you think?”
“You can say it, Colonel,” William answered. “You can say it, but that won’t do you any good. Lieutenant General Bell will command this army, and we’ve had enough dissension already, don’t you think?”
“Oh, hells, yes,” the regimental commander said. “We’ve had all the dissension anybody could need. What we haven’t had, though, is a general who knows what the devils he’s doing.” He shook his head. “No, I take that back. We did have one, but King Geoffrey gave him the sack.”
He liked Joseph the Gamecock, did he? William thought. Only proves he didn’t know him very well. Hardly anybody who knew Joseph very well liked him. But that was neither here nor there. Aloud, Roast-Beef William said, “Let’s worry about the southrons, shall we, and not about who did what in our own army?”
“Yes, sir,” the colonel said. “If everybody thought the way you do, we’d have a lot better chance of whipping those bastards, and that’s a fact.”
He didn’t think that way himself. He’d proved as much, with his own factionalism. He didn’t even notice. Roast-Beef William didn’t waste time trying to correct him, either. He just made sure the northerners were as well positioned as they could be. After that, he had nothing to do but wait.
The southrons didn’t show up till close to noon the next day. By then, the northern officers were having all they could do holding their men in place. The soldiers of the Army of Franklin would fight like wildcats. Sometimes, though, they showed little more discipline than wildcats.
Southron mages wore gray robes. Other than that, by looks there was little to choose between them and their northern opposite numbers. They rode asses, as the northern wizards did. Even at a distance, they had the air of men who weren’t always sure what was going on around them. That put Roast-Beef William in mind of northern wizards, too.
They didn’t need long to discover where the northerners had wreaked sorcerous havoc on the glideway line. As soon as they found it, they set to work repairing the damage. Watching them, Roast-Beef William believed they wouldn’t take long to set it right. They showed a matter-of-fact competence often missing in battle.
They did, that is, till the bad-tempered colonel sent his men roaring forward. Roar they did, as if the Lion God had emerged from those pine woods. The southrons hadn’t been such fools as to let their wizards go to work alone-William thought wizards had no business doing anything alone-but they’d detailed only a couple of platoons of soldiers to guard them. And a couple of platoons weren’t nearly enough.
Volleys of crossbow quarrels knocked over some of the southron defenders and some of the mages. Even from the woods, Roast-Beef William heard the other wizards cry out in alarm and despair. Some turned to flee, which resulted in a couple of them being shot in the back. One, with more presence of mind tha
n his friends, managed to call down two lightning bolts on the northerners before he too fell.
In a few minutes, it was all over. Neither William nor the colonel wanted to linger and face the full wrath of Hesmucet’s army. They pulled back to the north with a small, neat victory in hand. The troops were in high spirits. Victories, even small ones, were hard to come by lately.
Roast-Beef William wished he shared their delight. Part of him did, but only a small part. The rest… The rest wanted nothing so much as escape from an army where even small victories were hard to come by.
* * *
Doubting George shrugged. “Well, sir, what happened was, they snookered us. Nobody expected they’d be laying for our wizards, but they were, and they made us pay.”
“Pay too much,” General Hesmucet told him. “Much too much.”
“We can’t bring these things off perfectly all the time.” But George knew Hesmucet was right. “I won’t let it happen again, sir.”
“All right. I can’t ask for more than that from you, and I know you mean a promise like that when you make it,” the commanding general said. “The next question is, what’s Bell got in mind with his peregrinations all over southern Peachtree?”
“Making us go hungry, I’d say,” Doubting George replied. “He’s been after the glideway like a hungry hound after a beefsteak.”
“But he’s doing well enough without anything you’d call a supply line,” Hesmucet burst out. “Is he really so stupid as to think we can’t do likewise? By the gods, Lieutenant General, I could march my whole army across Peachtree Province to Veldt by the Western Ocean, and I wouldn’t go hungry, and the gods-damned traitors couldn’t even slow me down if I set out to do it.”
For a moment, George thought he was exaggerating for effect. Then he took another, longer, mental look at the question. Slowly, he nodded. “I do believe you’re right, sir.”
“I’m sure as can be that I’m right, gods damn it,” Hesmucet said with an arrogance that would either land him in serious trouble-as it had General Guildenstern-or make him a great soldier. Either way, it was an arrogance George knew he lacked himself. Hesmucet went on, “As a matter of fact, I’ve started talking by crystal ball with Marshal Bart and King Avram about doing exactly that.”
Doubting George’s bushy eyebrows flew up. “Have you?” Hesmucet had managed to do it without starting rumors flying all through the army-no mean feat. George wondered what sort of dire threats he’d used to keep the scryers quiet. Whatever they were, they’d worked.
“I have indeed,” Hesmucet said. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to bring Bell to battle. Doesn’t look that way, anyhow. He’s willing enough to raid and to strike at the glideway line, but he hasn’t got the stomach-or the men-for a standup fight any more. We’ve finally persuaded him of that.”
“He never was much of a scholar at Annasville, so I’m not surprised he took too long to learn,” George said. “He went a long way toward losing the traitors the war before he finally got the idea.”
“That breaks my heart,” Hesmucet said.
“I doubt it,” George said, and they both laughed.
But Hesmucet soon sobered. “Besides, the only other thing I might do is keep chasing Bell over this ground, and I don’t see much point to that, not when we fought over it earlier in the year-and not when I’m unlikely to catch up with him, as I said before.”
“I see your point, sir, but I have a question of my own,” George said. Hesmucet waved a hand, inviting him to ask it. He did: “If you go marching through Peachtree to the Western Ocean, what will the Army of Franklin do?”
“You mean, without our dogging its tracks?” Hesmucet said, and Doubting George nodded. The commanding general gave a splendid shrug. “Do you know what, Lieutenant General? Frankly, I don’t give a damn. I don’t think it can hurt King Avram’s cause enough to be worth worrying about.”
“Suppose it strikes down into Franklin,” George said. “Suppose it attacks Ramblerton or goes past the provincial capital down into Cloviston or even as far as the Highlow River.”
General Hesmucet shrugged again. “Bell’s welcome to try. My opinion-my strong opinion-is that he can’t pull it off.”
“What’s Bart’s opinion, sir? Or the king’s?”
“They aren’t so sure I can pull it off,” Hesmucet answered. “To the hells with me if I know why not, though. Lion God’s fangs, George, except for the Army of Franklin, what do the northerners have in the way of fighting men hereabouts? None to speak of, and you know it as well as I do. But Bart and King Avram aren’t out here in the field. They can’t see it for themselves, not with their mind’s eyes.”
He had a point. When Satrap Brown called out the Peachtree militia, he hadn’t been able to put very many men in false King Geoffrey’s service. Even so… “If you do head toward Veldt and the Western Ocean, you’re cutting yourself loose from your supply line. No glideway back to Rising Rock any more.”
“So what?” Hesmucet retorted. “I keep telling anyone who’ll listen, Bell’s already living off the countryside. Do you really think we’ll starve to death if we march to the Western Ocean?”
“Starve? No sir,” George answered. “I just think… I think I’d come up with a different plan, sir, is what I think.”
“You’re a more cautious man than I am,” Hesmucet observed. To George’s surprise and relief, it seemed only an observation, nothing more-not a slur on his courage, which it easily might have been. The commanding general continued, “Nobody can top you when it comes to making a stand and fighting on the defensive. I’ve seen that, and I’ve seen why they call you the Rock in the River of Death. You deserve all the praise you got there. But for going after the enemy and sticking your claws in him… There, Lieutenant General, I think I have the edge on you.”
“You’re probably right, sir,” George said in the same dispassionate tones Hesmucet had used. “Between the two of us, we make a pretty fair general, don’t we?”
Hesmucet laughed out loud. “Not too bad, by the gods. Not too bad.” He scratched his chin. His short, bristly beard rasped under his fingernails. “If I do get leave to strike out for the Western Ocean, I may leave you behind.”
Now Doubting George didn’t try to hold back his disappointment. “What have I done to deserve something like that?” he demanded.
“I told you: you’re a good defensive fighter,” Hesmucet replied. “If I go west, I may send you back into Franklin to make sure Bell doesn’t run wild down there.”
“That’s your privilege, of course, as the general commanding,” George said woodenly. “I will serve the kingdom as best I can wherever you place me.”
“I know you will,” Hesmucet said. “That’s why I’m thinking of doing it.”
“But, gods damn it, I want to be in at the death!” George burst out.
“I know. I know. I do understand that, believe me.” Hesmucet sounded sympathetic. But he also sounded unlikely to change his mind. “If I go west, I’ll need to leave someone behind I can rely on absolutely. From where I’m sitting now, that’s you. It is, if you look at it the right way, a compliment.”
“That’s what the priest of the Lion God told the courtesan after he shot his seed too soon,” Doubting George replied. “He may have thought so, but she surely didn’t.”
Chuckling, Hesmucet said, “You’ve always got a story, don’t you?”
“Every now and again, anyhow.” If he trotted out the wry jokes, George didn’t have to show how sorely he was hurt. He’d never been badly wounded; if he were, he suspected he would use his wit the same way. He wondered how much good it would do. It did less than he wanted here.
“This may all be moonshine, remember,” Hesmucet said. “Marshal Bart and the king are less happy about the notion than I am. They may just order me to keep after Bell with my whole army, no matter how useless that looks to me.”
“I told you, sir: I will do as you require,” George said. “I’m not Fighting J
oseph, to stomp off in a huff because I don’t get my own way. He reminds me of a three-year-old throwing a fit because his mother took away his toy.”
“A lot of truth in that, by the gods.” Easy and friendly, Hesmucet came over and patted him on the shoulder. “You’re a good man, George. You’ve had some nasty jobs, and not the ones you would have taken if you’d had your druthers, and you’ve done fine with every gods-damned one of them. And now here’s one more, and I’m perfectly confident you’ll do fine with it, too.” He walked out of George’s pavilion, proud and cocky and in command.
Go ahead, George. Here’s some more garbage. You’re so good at cleaning it up, I know you’ll do fine cleaning up this lot, too. That was what Hesmucet meant, and he could say it and Doubting George had to take it, for he was a lordly, exalted general and George only a lowly lieutenant general.
Bart could have picked me to command this army. Knowing that gnawed at George. He could have, but he didn’t. And so Hesmucet gets to march to glory-if he doesn’t make a mess of things and let the traitors win glory instead. And what do I get? I get to stay behind and clean up another mess. If there is a mess. Maybe I get to stay behind at Ramblerton and twiddle my thumbs. Wouldn’t that be exciting?
He left the pavilion himself and stared south. Somewhere up ahead there, Bell was flitting ahead like a will o’ the wisp, drawing King Avram’s army after him, keeping it from doing what it should be doing. Hesmucet was right about that, sure as sure he was. But his being right took away none of the hurt. I want the glory. I want the people cheering me.
Over in King Geoffrey’s army, people called Roast-Beef William Old Reliable. He hadn’t got the job he wanted, either, not when Geoffrey fired Joseph the Gamecock. The Rock in the River of Death? It sounded fancier than Old Reliable, but what did it mean? The same gods-damned thing.
Colonel Andy came up to him. “Sir-” he began.
“What the hells d’you want?” Doubting George snarled, taking out his frustrations on his adjutant.
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