Advance and Retreat

V

Rollant watched the Army of Franklin form its ranks.

He watched it advance over the flat, gently rising ground that led to the earthworks John the Lister’s army had thrown up outside of Poor Richard. As the northerners began to move, Smitty spoke with reluctant admiration: “They’ve got guts, don’t they?”

“That they do,” Rollant allowed. “And I want to see those guts scattered all over the landscape for the ravens and crows before the gods-damned sons of bitches get close enough to do me any harm.”

He made Smitty laugh. “You’re a funny fellow, your Corporalship, sir. Anybody who can tell a joke when the battle’s about to start has to be a funny fellow.”

Staring, Rollant asked, “What the hells makes you think I’m joking?”

He knew what the trouble was. Smitty didn’t take any of this quite so seriously as he did himself. Smitty was a Detinan, and fought to reunite his kingdom. Rollant was a blond. He knew why he fought, too. He wanted to see every northern liege lord and would-be liege lord dead or maimed. He had no doubt the northerners felt the same way about him, too.

Here came Bell’s men, proud banners flying before them. They were lean and fierce and terribly in earnest. If they hadn’t been in earnest, would they have marched down from Dothan, close to two hundred miles, when so many of them had no shoes? That he respected them made him want to kill them no less. If anything, it made him want to kill them more. He understood how dangerous they were.

Standing on the shooting step, he listened to the traitors roar as they came on. They thought the Lion God favored them. Rollant had a different opinion.

Not far behind him, catapults began to buck and creak. Stone balls and firepots whistled over his head. The first few fell short. But, as the northerners kept coming, the engines began clawing holes in their line. Rollant whooped and cheered when a stone took out a whole file of traitors.

“How would you like to be on the receiving end of that?” Smitty asked.

“Wouldn’t like it one gods-damned bit,” Rollant answered without hesitation. “But I like giving it to the traitors just fine. You bet I do. I hope the engines wipe them all out. Then we won’t have to do any fighting of our own.”

“That’d be good,” Smitty said. “I’m not what you’d call pleased when people try and kill me, either.”

John the Lister’s pickets shot a thin volley of their own at Bell’s men, who kept on coming despite what the engines did to them. They were brave, think what you would of them. Repeating crossbows behind Rollant started clattering. More northerners fell. The ones who weren’t hit leaned forward, as if into a heavy wind. Rollant had seen that before. He’d done it himself, when advancing into the teeth of a storm of bolts and stones and firepots.

“Be ready, men!” Lieutenant Griff called. “They’ll come into range of our crossbows soon.”

Rollant wished he had one of the quick-shooting weapons Hard-Riding Jimmy’s unicorn-riders used. He wanted to be able to knock down as many Detinan liege lords as he could. He laughed. He was already living every northern blond’s dream. Not only was he shooting at liege lords, he was getting paid to do it. If that wasn’t right up there with living alongside the gods, he didn’t know what was.

Only trouble was, the liege lords shot back.

They hadn’t shot till the southron pickets pulled back. They’d just kept coming, taking whatever punishment they got for the sake of striking back when they jumped down into their foes’ trenches. Rollant didn’t want them jumping in there with him. He made sure his shortsword was loose in its scabbard.

“Looks like they’re bunching toward the center,” Smitty said.

“It does, doesn’t it?” Rollant agreed. Their regiment was off to the left.

Not all of Bell’s men moved toward the center, though. Only a few paces from Rollant and Smitty, a soldier in gray tunic and pantaloons fell dead, a quarrel in his forehead. He’d been looking out from the shooting step, exposing no more than the top of his head. That was all some traitor’d needed.

“Be ready!” Griff called again. “Take aim!” Rollant nestled the stock of the crossbow against his shoulder as the company commander cried, “Shoot!”

He pulled the trigger. The crossbow kicked. The bolt he shot was one of scores flying toward the northerners. Several of them crumpled. He had no idea whether his bolt scored. The only way to improve his chances was to shoot again and again and again. Frenziedly, he loaded, cocked, aimed, and shot.

Northerners kept falling. But the ones who didn’t fall didn’t run, either. They called false King Geoffrey’s name and their fighting slogans. They roared as if the Lion God dwelt in all their hearts. They came closer and closer to the entrenchment where Rollant shot yet again.

This time, he was pretty sure he saw the bolt go home. The black-bearded Detinan clutched at his midsection and slowly fell to the ground in front of the trenches. Rollant nodded to himself. A wound like that was mortal. If it didn’t kill quickly, from loss of blood, it would in its own sweet time, from fever. Hardly anyone lived after getting shot in the belly. People said Ned of the Forest had, but people said all sorts of uncanny things about Ned. Thinking about Ned paralyzed Rollant, the way seeing a snake was supposed to paralyze a bird. A serfcatcher who’d turned into a first-rate general, and whose men had massacred blond soldiers? Yes, that was plenty to frighten him. He wasn’t ashamed to admit it.

He shot again when the northerners were only fifty yards or so from the parapet. One of their bolts dug into the rampart and kicked dirt up into his face. As he rubbed his eyes, a repeating crossbow opened up behind him, hosing death into the men from the Army of Franklin at close range. They crumpled, one after another after another.

That was too much for flesh and blood to bear. Instead of swarming forward into the trenches, the men in blue in front of Rollant broke and ran. He couldn’t imagine how they’d come as far as they had. John the Lister’s soldiers and engineers had hit the traitors with everything they had as soon as they came into range. How many northerners were already down, dead or dying or-luckily-only wounded? Hundreds? No, surely thousands.

Beside Rollant, Smitty shouted, “See how much the Lion God loves you now, you bastards!” He shot a running man in the back, then turned to Rollant in surprise. “Why aren’t you filling ’em full of holes, too?”

“I don’t know,” the blond answered. “Sometimes enough is enough, I guess.” As he watched, the repeating crossbow cut down more men from behind. Even his blood lust was sated.

“Be ready to go after them if we get the order to pursue,” Lieutenant Griff said.

“Pursue?” That startled Smitty and Rollant, who both echoed it. Rollant added, “I don’t think we’ve got the men to chase them.”

Colonel Nahath said, “Anyone who ordered us to pursue, given what we have and what Bell and the traitors have…” The regimental commander shook his gray-haired head. “He’d have to be crazy.”

That hadn’t always stopped officers on either side. Rollant knew as much. If someone wearing a brigadier’s star on each epaulet saw the northerners fleeing and decided they needed a clout in the backside, he’d order a pursuit. And if it got the regiment slaughtered, how much would he care?

But the order didn’t come. The din of battle got louder over to the right. “The sons of bitches are in the trenches there,” Smitty said.

“They can go in, but let’s see how many come out,” Rollant said savagely. He’d already done his duty and more. He would have been perfectly content to stay right where he was. If Bell’s men nerved themselves for another charge at this part of the line, he’d fight them off again. If they didn’t…

If they didn’t, as things turned out, he and his comrades would go to them. Colonel Nahath said, “Men, we’re shifting to the right, to make sure the traitors don’t break our line and cut us in half.”

Rollant had plunged the butt end of the company standard’s staff into the soft, damp dirt at the bottom of the trench. He snatched up the flag and carried it through the trenches toward the thicker fighting at the center of the southrons’ line. As long as he carried it, he wouldn’t be able to shoot at the traitors. He’d have to do his fighting with his shortsword. Sometimes, that meant he didn’t do any fighting. He didn’t think that would happen today.

Outside the parapet, a northern officer shouted, “For gods’ sake, men, rally! We can whip them yet. For gods’ sake, we can. All you have to do is fight hard, for-”

Smitty raised his crossbow to his shoulder and shot. No standard hampered him. The officer’s exhortation ended in a shriek. “Got the preachy son of a bitch!” Smitty said exultantly.

The traitors cried out in dismay. “For Gods’ Sake John is down!” one of them exclaimed.

“I think you just shot a brigadier,” Rollant told Smitty.

His friend set another bolt in the groove of his crossbow and grunted with effort as he yanked back the bowstring. “Too bad the bastard wasn’t a full general,” he said. Detinans were seldom satisfied with anything, no matter how fine it was. Not for the first time, Rollant wondered whether that was their greatest strength or greatest weakness. Most blonds lacked that restless urge to change things. The lack made them have a harder time keeping up with their swarthy neighbors.

A southron officer still on his feet despite a bloody bandage on his head and another wrapped around his left arm waved a sword with his good hand. “Go on in there, boys, and give ’em hells!”

“Avram!” Rollant shouted. “Avram and freedom!” It was getting dark. Before long, nobody would be able to see anybody else, to see his gray uniform or his blond hair or which standard he bore. His own side would be almost as likely as the enemy to shoot him unless he kept yelling. “Avram and freedom!” he cried once more, louder than ever.

Some of the soldiers battling around the farmhouse shouted the same thing. Others called Geoffrey’s name and cried out for provincial prerogative. Rollant’s comrades poured a volley of crossbow quarrels into those men, then rushed at them, drawing shortswords as they charged. Pikemen came up with the crossbowmen in Colonel Nahath’s regiment. They too stormed toward the northerners.

But more soldiers yelling for false King Geoffrey burst out of the trench line they’d overrun and reinforced their comrades already in the farmyard. If the southrons wanted to drive them back-indeed, if the southrons wanted to keep them from breaking through-they would have their work cut out for them.

“Avram!” Rollant shouted again. He shifted the company standard to his left hand and yanked out his shortsword. “Avram and freedom! Avram and victory!”

“Bugger Avram with a pine cone, you stinking southron son of a bitch!” a man in blue cried furiously. He too had a shortsword. He and Rollant hacked at each other. Rollant’s sword bit flesh. The northerner groaned. Rollant slashed him again, this time across the face. He reeled back, hands clutched to the spurting wound.

Lightning smashed down out of a clear though quickly darkening sky. Southrons near Rollant screamed, their cries almost drowned in a thunderclap like the end of the world. The stink of charred flesh made the blond want to gag. A couple of minutes later, another lightning bolt smote Colonel Nahath’s men. This one struck close enough to make every hair on Rollant’s body stand erect. The sensation was extraordinarily distinct and extraordinarily unpleasant.

“Where are our wizards?” That cry had risen from southron armies ever since the war was new. Southron mages usually managed to do just enough to keep the traitors’ wizards from destroying southron soldiers altogether. That was enough to have brought King Avram’s armies to the edge of victory. It wasn’t enough to keep a lot of men in gray tunics and pantaloons from dying unnecessarily. Rollant didn’t want to be one of those unnecessarily dead men. He didn’t even want to be a necessarily dead man. He wanted to live. How could he gloat at the beaten traitors if he didn’t?

Yet another bolt of sorcerous lightning smashed into the battlefield, this one striking the two-story farmhouse where dozens of southrons sheltered and from which they shot at their foes. When nothing much seemed to happen, one more thunderbolt hit the farmhouse. Its roof caught fire. Some of the southrons inside fled. Others must have thought a burning farmhouse safer than the hellsish battle all around, for they stayed where they were.

Rollant did his best to ignore the northerners’ magics. If they slew him, they slew him, and he couldn’t do much about it (he knew the protective amulet he wore around his neck was not proof against sorceries of that magnitude). And if he stood around gaping at them, some resolutely unsorcerous traitor would shoot him or spear him or run him through. All he could do was fight his own fight and hope John the Lister’s wizards eventually realized they had something important to do here.

“Geoffrey!” someone nearby yelled. Without even thinking about it, Rollant lunged with his shortsword. His blade cleaved flesh. The traitor howled.

“Well done, Corporal!” Lieutenant Griff called. A crossbow quarrel or swordstroke had carried away the lobe of his left ear. Rollant wondered if he even knew it. Then he shrugged. With the sort of fight this was turning out to be, Griff was lucky to have got away so lightly-and he himself, so far, luckier still.

John the Lister had known he would have a fight on his hands at Poor Richard. Even he hadn’t guessed the Army of Franklin would be able to make it as savage a fight as it was. A year and a half before, at Essoville down in the south, Duke Edward of Arlington had ordered the Army of Southern Parthenia to charge across open country against a fortified position. Most of the northern soldiers had given way under southron bombardment, and never reached the southrons’ lines at all. The few who did were quickly killed or captured.

Here… Bell’s men had to cross far more open ground than the Army of Southern Parthenia had. They had only a handful of engines of their own, where Duke Edward’s catapults had pounded and pummeled the southron line before the charge. But they held part of John’s position, refused to be dislodged, and still threatened to break through and cut his army in half. He had to admire them.

He also had to keep them from doing what they wanted. If he didn’t, his whole army was liable to perish. He knew how badly his men had hurt them as they advanced into the fight. Now that they were in it, they were striking back with a fury at least half compounded of the lust for revenge. John ordered more men to move from the flanks, where the northerners hadn’t been able to break into his entrenchments, to the center, where they had.

When lightning began striking in the center, John cursed and shouted, “Major Alva! Where in the hells is Major Alva?”

“I’m right here, sir,” Alva said from beside him: from, in fact, almost inside the breast pocket of his tunic.

John the Lister glowered at him, and not because he hadn’t noticed him, either. “What in the damnation are the traitors doing pounding us like that? Aren’t you here to stop them from working this kind of wizardry?”

“No, sir,” Alva answered. John glowered even more, but the mage ignored him, continuing, “I’m here to stop them from working any really big spells, and I’ve done that.” John suddenly noticed how weary he sounded. After a sigh and a shrug, Alva went on, “If you knew what they wanted to do, and what they almost did… Well, they didn’t manage it, and they gods-damned well won’t now. This other stuff… This is fumbling in your pocket and and pulling out copper when you went looking for gold.”

“Oh.” John felt foolish. Not knowing exactly what to say, he tried, “I suppose I ought to thank you.”

“That would be nice. Not a hells of a lot of people ever bother,” Alva said. “But don’t worry about it. I won’t turn you into a red eft or anything like that if you don’t.”

“What in the name of the Lion God’s tail tuft is a red eft?” John the Lister demanded.

“It’s what you call a mostly water salamander-a newt-during the time it lives on land,” Major Alva answered. Somehow, John was sure he would remember that utterly useless bit of information the rest of his life.

At the moment, though, he had more things to worry about than red efts. Pointing toward the center of his line, he said, “Look. That farmhouse is burning. It’s a strongpoint for our men. If we get forced away from there, Bell’s army will break thought and split us in half. If that happens, we’ll all end up dead or captured. Stopping their lightning would make that a lot less likely, even if you don’t think much of it as far as magic goes.”

Alva very visibly paused to think it over. “Well, yes, I suppose you have a point,” he said at last, as if it was one he hadn’t thought of himself. Maybe he hadn’t, for he went on, “We really do need to win this battle, don’t we?”

“That would be nice, if you plan on living long enough to show how clever you are after this gods-damned war finally ends,” John the Lister said dryly.

“I do.” Now Alva sounded very determined. “Oh, yes. I certainly do.” He pointed at the farmhouse, as imperiously as a king. He said one word, in a language John did not know and never wanted to learn. The fire ceased to be. It might have been a candle flame he’d blown out; the disappearance was as sudden and abrupt as that. “Now,” the mage murmured, reminding himself, “the lightnings.”

They struck again only moments after he spoke. He muttered something under his breath. Then he spoke aloud, again only one word. When the lightnings came down once more from the clear night sky, they struck off to one side of where they had been hitting.

“Is that still our position, or are they coming down on the traitors’ heads now?” Alva asked. “Their mages are a little stronger than I thought. I wanted to stop that bolt, but all I could do was shift it.”

John the Lister goggled. Alva was taking on several northern wizards at once… and winning? That sort of thing hadn’t happened all through the war. John wasn’t sorry to see it-he was anything but sorry to see it-but it took him by surprise. He needed a moment to remember the question Alva had asked. “I’ll need to send a runner and find out,” he said, several heartbeats slower than he should have.

“All right.” Alva stretched and yawned. He still looked like an unmade bed. But John the Lister saw why Doubting George, a man who had confidence in no one, relied on Major Alva.

On John’s command, a runner dashed toward the fighting. John hoped he wouldn’t get killed up there. More lightning struck, in about the same place as the last bolt. Which side was it punishing? They would-John hoped they would-know soon.

He turned to Alva. “If you can do this now, what will you do in peacetime, when you get a little older and you come into your full power?”

“Do you think it will be greater than this?” Alva asked interestedly. “I’ve wondered about that myself. I suppose I’ll just have to find out.”

Back came the runner, going flat out, his face streaked with sweat in spite of the chilly night. “Sir,” he panted, “those are still hitting our men, but not in such a bad spot.”

“Thank you,” John said, and turned to Alva. “What can you do about that, Major?”

“We’ll see,” the mage answered. “They’re rallying against me, but they haven’t got any one fellow who’s really strong. A bunch of bricks doesn’t make one rock, because they’ll fall apart if the rock hits them the right way. Now I have to find it.”

The northern wizards loosed another thunderbolt a couple of minutes later, in that same spot, while Alva stood there thinking hard. John the Lister wondered if the wizard’s arrogance-which he unquestionably had, despite his shambling manner-had got the better of him.

Then Alva laughed out loud, a sound childish in its sheer glee. He snapped his fingers and hopped up into the air. “That’s what I’ll do, by the Thunderer. Let’s see how they like it.”

This time, the charm he used wasn’t just one word. He brought it out in a way that made it sound almost like one of the work chants blond serfs used. John found himself tapping his foot to the rollicking rhythm. Alva was tapping his foot, too. With a last little hop and a skip-and a pass as intricate as any John had ever seen-he sent the spell on its way.

“What will it do?” John the Lister asked when he judged it safe to jog the wizard’s metaphorical elbow.

“Deflect the strike a little more,” Alva answered absently. “We’ll find out how they like that, and what they can do about it.” By his manner, he didn’t think they could do much. Yes, he had arrogance, all right. John waited to see if he deserved what he had.

When the lightnings didn’t return for some little while, the commanding general began to wonder whether Alva had altogether stifled the northern wizards despite saying he couldn’t. But then the thunderbolt crashed down once more. “Shall I send a runner to find out where that hit?” John asked. Later, he paused to wonder about the propriety of a brigadier’s asking a major-and a major by courtesy, at that-what he required. That was later. At the time, it seemed the most natural thing in the world.

And Alva nodded as if it was the most natural thing in the world, too. “Yes, sir, thanks very much,” he said. “I think I’ve done it, but I want to make sure.”

Off dashed another runner. He came back panting even harder than his predecessor had, but with an enormous grin stretched across his face. “Sir, that came down on the traitors who were moving up to reinforce their position near the farmhouse, and it tore the hells out them.”

At that news, John the Lister whooped and reached up to smack the taller wizard on the back. He almost knocked Alva over, and had to steady him to keep him from falling. “Well done, Major!” he exclaimed. “We’re holding them everywhere else, so they’re really stopped if we can stop them there.”

“Good. That’s good, uh, sir,” Alva answered. “They’ll try to break free of what I’ve done to them, you know. I don’t think they can, but there is the off chance that I’m wrong.”

“What then?” John asked. “Can they beat down your magic?”

“I don’t think so, sir,” the mage said. “But they might make me do some more work. You never can tell.”

Even as he spoke, another thunderbolt smote the battlefield. Blinking against the greenish-purple afterimages, John the Lister said, “I think that came down on the same part of the field as the last one. If it did, it came down on the northerners’ heads again, didn’t it?”

“I think so, sir. I hope so, sir,” Alva said. “We’d better find out, though, because I can’t say for certain.”

“All right.” John sent forth yet another runner.

This one didn’t even need to speak when he came sprinting back. The expression on his face said everything that needed saying. But he announced the news even so: “They dropped another one on their own men!”

John the Lister whooped and Major Alva hastily moved out of the way so he wouldn’t get walloped again. “I’ve got the deflection where I want it, sure enough,” he said once he was out of range of John’s strong right arm. “Now the only question is, how stubborn are they? Will they keep pounding their own people, or will they give it up as a bad job?”

“Bell commands them,” John said.

“Which means?” Alva asked. At John’s expression, he explained, “I don’t pay much heed to soldiers.”

“Yes, I’d noticed that,” John said, even more dryly than before. After a moment, he added, “You really should, you know. They’re the opponents you’re facing.”

“I suppose so. I hadn’t really looked at it that way. All a wizard usually worries about is other wizards.” With the air of a man making a large concession, Alva went on, “Tell me about Bell, then.”

“If he weren’t a man who charges like a unicorn in heat and kicks like an ass, would he have attacked us here?” John asked.

“Hmm. Maybe not. We have hit him hard, haven’t we?” Alva might have been noticing for the first time the carnage around him as carnage rather than as a problem-and not much more than an elementary problem, at that-in sorcery.

“If we hit him any harder…” John the Lister shook his head. “I don’t see how we could have hit him any harder. He must have lost three or four times as many men as we have. We’ve had reports of several northern brigadiers falling when they fought right up at the front like common soldiers.”

“That’s brave of them,” Alva said. “Isn’t it kind of stupid, too?”

“Soldiers fight. If they didn’t fight, they wouldn’t be soldiers any more,” John said, his voice clotted with disapproval.

“Sometimes, evidently, they aren’t soldiers any more even if they do fight,” Alva replied.

Before John had to worry about how to respond to that, lightning smashed down yet again in the same spot it had already struck twice. John didn’t need to send a runner. What had happened was very obvious. “Do you see?” he asked Alva. “Do you see, by the gods?”

“Yes, sir. I see.” The wizard sounded more respectful than he had up till now. “You were right, sir.”

That’s the key to it, John the Lister realized. I was right. He takes people who are right seriously. If you happen to be wrong… gods help you if you’re wrong around him. Maybe he’ll be a little less heartless when he gets older. Maybe not, too.

As if to prove how very right John was, one more bolt of lightning smote that same place. “He is a stubborn fool, isn’t he?” Major Alva said. “His wizards are pretty stupid, too, to keep banging their heads against a wall they can’t knock over. Well, that’s their worry.”

“Yes. It is.” John allowed himself the luxury of a long sigh of relief. The northerners wouldn’t break through in the middle now, and they’d never come close to breaking through on the wings. His army would live. Sooner or later, Bell’s men would give up the attack and pull back. Then he could get his own force on the road south, get back into the works at Ramblerton.

I hope Doubting George thinks I’ve slowed Bell down enough, John the Lister thought. He’d better, by the gods. No matter what happened to the Army of Franklin here, we’ve paid a heavy price, too.

“I’m sorry, sir. I’m very sorry,” one of the blue-robed mages told Lieutenant General Bell. “We’ve done everything we know how to do, but that gods-damned southron won’t let us loose. It’s like… like wrestling, sir. Sometimes you’re pinned, and that’s all there is to it.”

“Sometimes you’re useless, is what you mean,” Bell snarled. “If you’d gone on pounding them there, we would have finished smashing them by now.”

“Sir, they’ve got a stronger wizard than we do,” the sorcerer replied. “I hate like hells to say that, since the son of a bitch is a southron. We ought to eat up southron mages the way we eat fried fish. We ought to, but we can’t, not with this one.”

“We were in amongst them,” Bell said. “We are in amongst them. But how can we break through if this mage of theirs stifles your spells?”

“Well, sir,” — the wizard picked his words with care- “if magic won’t do it for us, pikes and swords and crossbows will have to.”

“I told Patrick the Cleaver he dared not fail. I told him,” Bell muttered. He shouted for a runner. “Go up to the front and tell Brigadier Patrick we require a breakthrough at all costs. At all costs, do you hear me?”

“Yes, sir. A breakthrough at all costs.” The messenger hurried away. Bell might have sentenced him to death, sending him up to the part of the front where the fighting was hottest. The young man had to know that. So did Bell, though he didn’t give it a second thought; he’d gone into plenty of hot fighting himself. Had the runner hesitated, he would have had something to say. This way, he took a pull at his little bottle of laudanum and waited.

He was just starting to feel the drug, just starting to feel the fire recede from his shoulder and his missing leg, when the runner returned, which meant something close to half an hour had gone by. “Well?” Bell barked.

“Sir, we haven’t got the men in the center to break through,” the runner said.

Laudanum or no laudanum, Bell’s temper didn’t merely kindle-it ignited. “Haven’t got the men?” he shouted. “Who the hells told you that? Patrick the Cleaver? Patrick the coward? I’ll cashier the white-livered son of a bitch, so help me gods I will.”

But the messenger shook his head. “No, sir. Patrick’s down. He’s dead,” he added, to make himself perfectly plain.

“Oh.” Bell could hardly accuse a dead man of dereliction of duty. “Who’s in command there, then? Otho the Troll? Otho knows what we’re supposed to do-what we have to do.”

“No, sir. Brigadier Otho’s shot, too-shot dead.” Again, the runner didn’t seem to want to leave Bell in any doubt.

“Oh,” the general commanding repeated, this time on even more of a falling note. “Well, by the Lion God’s fangs, who is in command in the center?”

“A colonel from Palmetto Province, sir-a man named Florizel,” the runner answered. Florizel? Bell scratched his head. He’d heard the name-he was sure of that, but he could barely put a face to the man. He had no idea what sort of officer Florizel was. A live one, he thought. The runner, meanwhile, went on, “He says everything’s all smashed to hells and gone up there. From what I saw, sir, he’s right.”

The news couldn’t be good, not if a colonel was trying to command a wing. “Can we get help from the right or left, put the men where they’ll do the most good?”

“For Gods’ Sake John’s been shot dead, too, over on our right,” the runner said. “Florizel talked with men who saw him die.”

“Oh.” Bell was getting tired of saying that, but he didn’t know what else he could say. “What about Benjamin the Heated Ham, then, over on our left?” That was the only straw he had left to grasp.

“I don’t know, sir,” the runner replied. “I wasn’t over in that part of the field, and I can’t tell you what happened there.”

Bell didn’t know, either, not in detail. He did know the men on the left wing hadn’t broken into the southrons’ trenches, which wasn’t the best news in the world, or even anything close to it. With a sigh, he said, “I’d better find out, then.”

“Will you send me again, sir?”

“No.” Bell shook his head. “You’ve gone into danger once already.” The runner didn’t seem to know whether to look indignant or grateful. After two or three heartbeats, gratitude won. Lieutenant General Bell called for another runner.

“Yes, sir? What can I do for you?” This one sounded as eager as the last. The general commanding explained what he required. The runner saluted and hurried off toward the left wing.

Bell cocked his head, listening to the fighting ebb. He growled something his thick mustache and beard fortunately muffled. By the sound of things, his men had given everything they had in them. Even if the left had soldiers to shift to the center, could they revive the fight?

All he could do was wait till the runner came back. It seemed like forever, but this young man didn’t take much longer than the other one had. “Well?” Bell demanded when the fellow reappeared. “Is Benjamin breathing?”

“Yes, sir,” the messenger answered, “but John of Barsoom and Hiram the Cranberry are both dead, sir, so he’s got two brigades commanded by colonels. And that whole wing’s been shot to pieces.”

Oh seemed inadequate: that was more bad news than it could bear. Instead, Bell said, “What the hells happened?”

“The way Benjamin tells it, sir, the southrons’ right gradually sticks out. As the wing went forward, heading in toward the center, John the Lister’s men enfiladed them. That put them in trouble even before the enemy started shooting at them from the front.”

“Why didn’t Benjamin suppress the enfilading shots before he went through with the rest of the right?” Bell asked.

“I can’t tell you that, sir, not for sure. You’d have to ask him,” the runner replied. “But I did see that part of the field, and I saw the bodies lying on it. I’d say he tried, but found out he couldn’t.”

He tried, but found out he couldn’t. It sounded like something a priest would say before lighting a funeral pyre. And how great would the pyres be after this fight? For once, even Bell, who seldom counted the cost in a battle, shied away from thinking about that.

“Anything else for me, sir?” the runner asked.

“Eh?” Bell had to call himself back to the here-and-now. “No, never mind. You’re dismissed.”

“Thank you, sir.” The youngster saluted again and left.

Bell stared after him like a man suddenly realizing he was trapped in nightmare. The commanding general shook his head, as if trying to wake. He opened his mouth, starting to say, “No!” but checked himself at the last instant.

Seeing the motion, the nearest runner asked, “What are your orders, sir?”

What are your orders? It was a good question. Bell wished he had a good answer for it, or any answer at all. With his right and left wings smashed, with his center thwarted, what could he do? What could the Army of Franklin do?

“Sir?” the runner asked when he didn’t say anything.

He had to respond. The youngster was starting to stare. But all that came out was, “I have none.”

“Oh,” the runner said, in the same sort of tone Bell had used on hearing of disaster.

“I’ll wait for more news to come in.” Bell tried to put the best face on things he could. “Then I’ll decide what we need to do next.”

“Yes, sir.” The runner sounded relieved, perhaps hoping the situation wasn’t so black as he’d believed a moment before.

Maybe it wasn’t. On the other hand, maybe it was. Lieutenant General Bell reached for the laudanum bottle again, longing for the haze the drug could put between him and the pain of reality.

Messengers from the front came back to him, some on foot, others on unicornback. Their news was all the same: the northerners were pulling back from the forwardmost positions they’d won, back to lines they might hold if John the Lister’s men counterattacked. One of the runners said, “Some of the men on our left wing, sir, they’ll building breastworks out of bodies.”

“Are they?” Bell said tonelessly, and the soldier nodded. Bell muttered, then bestirred himself and waved to his own corps of runners. “Order my wing commanders here,” he told them. “We will confer, and decide how to take up the attack in the morning.” That the Army of Franklin would take up the attack in the morning he had no doubt.

Colonel Florizel was the first wing commander to arrive. He slid down off a unicorn and limped up to Bell. Saluting, he said, “Reporting as ordered, sir. We have done everything flesh and blood can do. You may rely on that.”

“Very well, Colonel,” Bell said. “Are you badly hurt there?”

“This is an old wound, sir,” Florizel answered. “I went through everything today without a scratch, though I lost a mount. I aim to offer up a lamb to the Lion God for thanksgiving. I can’t tell you how I got through-seemed like the crossbow bolts were thick enough to walk on.”

“Can you go forward at sunrise?” Bell asked.

Florizel shrugged. “I don’t have much to go forward with, sir. If you give the order, we’ll try.”

Before Bell could reply, Benjamin the Heated Ham came riding up from the left. Bell asked him the same question. Benjamin shook his head. “Go forward? Not a chance, sir. If the southrons strike us, I’m not sure we can hold our ground. We’ve been shot to pieces. I don’t know how else to say it.”

Last of all, Brigadier Stephen the Pickle, a sour-faced man not far from Bell’s age, rode up from the right. He looked even more sour when Bell asked him if he could attack in the morning. But he answered, “I have a couple of brigades that haven’t gone into the meat-grinder yet, sir. If you want to throw them at the southrons, they’ll advance. But I don’t know how many of them will come back again. Those lines are solid.”

“Muster your men,” Bell said. His wave encompassed the three wing commanders. “Muster your men, all of you. Care for the wounded. Pile up the dead and make them ready for the fires. We will go forward.”

“Care for the wounded?” Benjamin the Heated Ham exclaimed. “Half the time, we can’t even drag them back out of range. The southrons are too gods-damned alert and up too close for that. They shoot anybody who tries to save a comrade or a friend.”

“They fight war as if it were nothing but murder,” Bell said angrily. “They have been fighting that way ever since the Marthasville campaign. General Hesmucet’s conduct during the siege was disgraceful.”

“Yes, sir,” Benjamin said.

“Yes, sir,” Stephen the Pickle echoed. “But if that’s the way they choose to fight, we have to fight the same way, or we’ll go under.”

“I know,” Bell said. “That is one of the reasons I ordered this attack. We have to show the enemy we still have the spirit to fight it out with him man to man.”

Colonel Florizel said, “But how much good does that do us, sir, if he stays in his entrenchments and shoots us down by the thousands before we can close with him? Wouldn’t we be better served making him attack us and pay the bigger butcher’s bill?”

Lieutenant General Bell glared at him. “That is what Joseph the Gamecock was doing in the Marthasville campaign before King Geoffrey relieved him and appointed me in his place. Geoffrey wants men who can fight, not soldiers who skulk in trenches.”

“We fought, sir,” Florizel said. “We fought as hard as flesh and blood can fight. I already told you that. When you’re trying to carry a position like this one, it doesn’t matter how hard you fight, though. You’ll get chewed up any which way.”

“I do not wish a defeatist to command a wing, Colonel,” Bell said coldly. “Your tenure will be temporary.”

“That suits me fine… sir,” Florizel answered. “I’m not what you’d call eager to tell my men to go forward and get cut to pieces attacking a position they haven’t got a chance in hells of taking.”

“We will attack at first light tomorrow,” Bell declared. “We will attack, and we will drive the southrons out of Poor Richard. Do you understand me? Do all of you understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” the wing commanders chorused unhappily.

“Very well, then,” Bell snapped. “You are dismissed. Go back to your men and ready them for the assault to come.”

“Ready them to get their bums shot off,” somebody muttered. Bell glowered at each wing commander in turn. All three of them glowered back. He gestured peremptorily. They turned to go. By then, it was well past midnight, the moon sinking low.

A runner dashed back toward the officers, shouting, “Lieutenant General Bell! Lieutenant General Bell!”

“What is it?” Bell braced for another disaster.

One of the wing commanders, braced for the same thing, growled, “Oh, gods, what now?”

“Sir, the southrons have pulled out of Poor Richard,” the runner said. “Their fires are burning, but nobody’s around ’em. They’ve gone. They’ve left.”

“By the gods!” Bell said softly. “The field… the field is ours.” He turned to the wing commanders. “Don’t you see, men? This… this is victory!”

Colonel Andy pointed north to the outer defenses of Ramblerton. “Here they come, sir. Do you see them?”

“I can’t very well not see them, now can I?” Doubting George asked, more than a little irritably. “There are enough of them out there, wouldn’t you say?”

Hard-Riding Jimmy’s troopers served as escorts and outriders for the rest of John the Lister’s army. They would have held off Ned of the Forest’s unicorn-riders had Ned tried to harry John’s footsoldiers during the withdrawal from Poor Richard to Ramblerton. But, just as John had managed to knock Bell’s footsoldiers back on their heels, so Hard-Riding Jimmy’s men had warned Ned that hitting them again wouldn’t be a good idea. No one had contested the withdrawal into Ramblerton.

George spurred his unicorn forward. Andy rode alongside him and yet not quite perfectly level with him: the perfect place for an adjutant. George saw John the Lister at the head of the long column of men in dirty, often bloodstained gray tunics and pantaloons. John saw him, too, and saluted.

Returning the salute, Doubting George made it into a courtesy not only for John but also for the soldiers he commanded. “Well done!” George shouted in a great voice. “Well done! You have given us time to prepare the defenses of Ramblerton, and to gather men from several provinces to hold those defenses. Now, when the time is ripe, we will drive the traitors far away!”

A few of John the Lister’s soldiers raised a ragged cheer. Most of them just kept on marching. John pulled off the road and sat his unicorn in a field, watching them pass by. George-and Andy-rode over beside him. George saw what he knew he’d see: men who’d been through the mill; men with blank, stunned faces; men with bandages from wounds too minor to require them to take to the ambulance wagons. They’d seen too much, done too much, to be of much use yet.

“I had to leave a lot of the wounded behind,” John said unhappily. “We didn’t have room in the wagons for all of them. They’re in Bell’s hands now. So are our dead.”

“He’ll treat them with respect. I give him that much,” George said. “We do the same for the northerners. This has been a pretty clean war, except now and again when it bumps up against the question of the blonds.”

No sooner had he spoken than a blond corporal carrying a company standard tramped past. The fellow was as grimy and battered-looking as any of the Detinans around him. By his hollow-cheeked face, he’d seen as much hard fighting as they had, too. Looking at that face, George could wonder why there’d ever been a question about whether blonds were worth anything in war.

“I suppose he’ll come after me now,” John said. “I don’t see what else he can do. It’s less than twenty miles from Poor Richard down here to Ramblerton. He’s not about to go around the city and strike for the Highlow, not now, not after the lick I gave him. Before he goes any farther south, he has to take Ramblerton.”

“He’s welcome to try.” George’s wave encompassed the works John’s men were entering. “I can’t promise him a very hospitable reception, though.”

John the Lister seemed to take a good long look at the fortifications for the first time. “You haven’t been idle, I will say that. If Bell tries to storm these works, he won’t take a man back to Dothan alive.”

“That’s the idea,” George said. “And now I’ve got the men to fill them up, too, counting your soldiers and the ones I’ve scraped up from garrisons all over Franklin and Cloviston.”

“Fill them up, hells,” John said. “When Bell gets here, we ought to go out and trample the son of a bitch.”

“We will,” George replied. “Don’t you doubt it for a minute. When the time is ripe, we will.” He set a hand on John’s shoulder. “Other thing is, I’ll want you to get me the reports for your actions just as soon as you can. I’ll send them on to Marshal Bart and to King Avram. If you don’t get the rank amongst the regulars you deserve, there’s even less justice in the world than I always thought.”

“You’ll have ’em, just as soon as I can write ’em up,” John said. “A little real rank’d be welcome, and I won’t tell you anything different. Right now, all I’ve got is a captain’s prospects once the war is over… and if you look hard, you can see the end of the war from here.”

“You can, and I can,” Doubting George said. “I don’t think Bell can yet. Well, we’ll show him when the time comes, never you fear.”

“Shouldn’t be that tough, sir,” John the Lister said. “I left him holding the ground at Poor Richard, but may the Lion God’s claws rip out my guts if I didn’t tear the heart from his army. He had to be mad, attacking me across a couple of miles of open country-mad, I tell you. Why didn’t he just cut his own throat and save us the trouble?”

“He’s not very smart. He proved that in the Marthasville campaign,” George said. “Count Joseph the Gamecock didn’t fight nearly so often, but he gave us a much harder time. Can you imagine Joseph charging you at Poor Richard?”

“Not a chance,” John the Lister said positively. “Not a chance in the world. You’re right-Count Joseph knows what he’s doing.”

“Come on into Ramblerton,” Doubting George said. “Look at the works from the inside, not just the outside. You’ll see we have some little suspicion about what we’re doing, too.”

“Let my men go in first,” John said. “They bore the brunt of it. Lieutenant General Bell may be-hells, he is — a gods-damned idiot, but his soldiers still fight like sons of bitches. Next sign of quit I see in ’em’ll be the first. No matter how stupid he was to attack us there, they almost carried the position.”

“They’re Detinans, too. They’re as stubborn as we are,” George said. “Sometimes even the stubbornest fellows get licked, though, and we’ll lick ’em.”

“Yes, sir.” John nodded. He had heavy dark circles under his eyes. How much sleep had he had the night before? The night before that? Any at all? George had his doubts.

“We’ll pour you a good, full mug of spirits,” he said. “And we’ll give you a nice, soft bed, and, by the gods, I don’t care if Bell invests this place five minutes after you lie down-we won’t wake you till you get up on your own. I expect we’ll manage to keep Ramblerton out of that bastard’s hands till then.”

“I thank you very m…” John’s voice trailed off into an enormous yawn. When at last he managed to close his mouth, he laughed ruefully. “I suppose I just proved I could use a long winter’s nap, didn’t I?”

“Let’s say you gave me a pretty good hint.” Doubting George might have added more to that, but he noticed Major Alva riding by on an ass that looked almost as weary as John the Lister. Alva waved, but then remembered to salute. After returning the courtesy, George turned back to John. “How did that young whippersnapper serve you?”

“Whippersnapper’s the word for him, all right. He kept going on and on about the gods-damned Inward Hypothesis till I wanted to kick him,” John replied.

“I know. Makes me seasick just thinking about it,” George said. “But he’s a pretty fair mage, or I thought he was when I sent him to you.”

John the Lister nodded. “He is. He is indeed. I wouldn’t try to deny it. Last night, the traitors’ wizards were punishing us in the center. Bell’s men might’ve broken through. If they had, I wouldn’t” — he yawned again- “be here now. But Alva stopped ’em. All by his lonesome, he stopped ’em cold. We held in the center, and we ended up giving Bell a thrashing.”

“That’s what I was hoping you would do,” Doubting George said. John’s wagons rattled past. The general commanding wished he didn’t have to hear the groans from the wounded men inside them. He turned to John. “Shall we go in now?” Regardless of what he wished, he would listen to them all the way into Ramblerton.

“Yes, sir,” John the Lister said.

He proved too worn to look very hard at the fortifications from the inside. George took him back to his headquarters, gave him the promised glass of spirits, and led him to a comfortable bed. John lay down without bothering to take off his boots. He fell asleep before George left the room.

A couple of hours later, after listening to preliminary reports from some of John’s officers, George got in touch with Marshal Bart by scryer. “Good day, Lieutenant General,” Bart said, peering out of the crystal ball at George. He was a stubby man, not very tall and not very wide, with a close-trimmed dark beard. “Haven’t heard from you for a while. What’s on your mind?”

“As of now, Marshal, John the Lister’s a regular captain. After what he just did to Bell and the Army of Franklin, I believe he deserves better.” George summed up what had happened at Poor Richard.

“Bell was fool enough to charge at him over open ground?” Bart said when he finished. George nodded. Marshal Bart shrugged. “Even so, you’re right. That was well done, and no mistake. A disaster there would have hurt us badly. Tell John I’ll recommend his promotion to brigadier of the regulars to King Avram.”

What Marshal Bart recommended, King Avram would approve. Doubting George whistled softly. It wasn’t that John the Lister didn’t deserve to be a brigadier in Detina’s regular army. He did; not even George could doubt that. But raising him to brigadier from captain in one fell swoop… George had expected Bart to make him a colonel, and then to promote him to brigadier’s rank later if he continued to give good service.

“I’ll tell him tomorrow, I think,” George said.

Bart frowned. Most of the time, he looked like the most ordinary Detinan in the kingdom. Anybody who thought he was ordinary, though, did so at his peril. “Why not tell him now?” the marshal asked, in tones suggesting George had better have a good reason.

And George did: “Because he’s liable to sleep till tomorrow, sir. He just got in to Ramblerton, and I don’t think he’s shut his eyes the last two days.”

“Oh.” Bart nodded. “All right. Yes, when you’re that worn down, you don’t care about anything. He’d probably strangle you if you woke him, and he might not remember anything you told him.”

“True enough. And if he did strangle me, I couldn’t very well tell him again.”

“Er, right.” Marshal Bart-the first marshal Detina had had in a long lifetime, the grandest soldier in the land-had no more idea what to do with Doubting George’s foolishness than did Colonel Andy. Unlike Andy, Bart had the privilege of changing the subject: “Do you expect Bell to follow John up toward Ramblerton?”

“Yes, sir.” George got down to business again. “I don’t know what else he can do, sir. About the only other thing would be to turn around and march back up to Dothan, and I can’t imagine Bell doing that. As long as he’s got soldiers who will follow his orders, he’ll take them into battle. If he attacked around Marthasville, if he attacked at Poor Richard, he’ll attack anywhere.”

Bart nodded again. “I think you’re right. As soon as he gets up there, Lieutenant General, I want you to hit him with everything you’ve got.”

“I will hit him, sir. You don’t need to worry about that,” George answered. “As soon as I’m ready, I will hit him a lick the likes of which he has never known before.”

“Don’t waste time,” Bart told him. “Hit him just as soon as you can. Do not give him the chance to slip around you. Smash him. Send him back to Dothan with his tail between his legs. Send him back there whether he wants to go or not.”

“Sir, I will strike him when I am ready. I will not let him get away,” George promised. “The Army of Franklin will not slip by me. It will not get down into Cloviston. You may rely on that.”

“Bell has the last northern army in the field that can still maneuver and cause us trouble,” Bart said worriedly. “I do not want us embarrassed, not when the war looks like being won.”

He commanded all the southron armies. He had the right to say what he said. That made it no less galling to Doubting George. “Sir, when he comes here and I am ready, I will strike him,” he repeated.

“I want him smashed like a bug under a boot,” Marshal Bart said. “I want him… I want him suppressed, by the Thunderer’s pizzle.”

A couple of years earlier, Duke Edward of Arlington had used that contemptuous word in ordering the Army of Southern Parthenia forward to smash King Avram’s soldiers at the second Battle of Cow Jog. John the Hierophant, who’d commanded Avram’s men then, was off in the east these days with the equally luckless General Guildenstern, chasing blond savages. Bart took more than a little pleasure in applying the term to false King Geoffrey’s Army of Franklin.

“Sir, when the time is ripe, I will suppress him,” Doubting George said. “He won’t beat me, and he won’t get away.”

“He’d better not.” Bart still sounded fretful. George sighed. He feared the marshal would go right on nagging him even though a province and a half lay between them. Gods damn crystal balls, anyhow, George thought unhappily.

More times than Captain Gremio cared to remember, he’d seen a soldier hit square in the chest with a crossbow quarrel. Very often, the man would stagger on for a few paces and perhaps even fight a little before realizing he was dead and falling over.

Never, till now, had Gremio seen an army take a similar blow. But if, after the battle in front of Poor Richard, the Army of Franklin wasn’t a dead man walking, then Gremio had never seen any such thing. He wished he hadn’t. He wished he weren’t seeing such a thing now. But he wasn’t blind, and couldn’t make himself so. He knew what his eyes told him.

Somehow, like one of those men shot in the chest, the Army of Franklin kept lurching forward. Gremio trudged south down a muddy road, south toward Ramblerton. Since the Battle of Poor Richard, he commanded not just his company but the whole regiment. That wasn’t from any enormous virtue on his part. He was the senior captain left alive and not badly wounded, and Colonel Florizel, as the senior colonel alive and not badly wounded, was for the moment still leading the whole wing.

Commanding the regiment felt like a smaller promotion than it would have before the fight by Poor Richard, anyhow. Only a couple of companies’ worth of men were still fit for duty.

Sergeant Thisbe led Gremio’s old company. Thisbe wasn’t the only sergeant in charge of a company in the Army of Franklin, either-far from it.

“Ask you something, sir?” Thisbe said now, coming up alongside of Gremio.

“If you’re rash enough to think I know answers, go ahead,” he replied.

“If you don’t, sir, who does?” Thisbe asked. The answer to that, all too probably, was no one. Before Gremio could say as much, the underofficer went on, “Once we get down to Ramblerton, Captain, what are we going to do there?”

“Why, capture the town, of course. Storm the fortifications. Slay the southrons, and drive away the ones we don’t slay. Go sweeping south into Cloviston. We’ll see the Highlow River in a couple of weeks, don’t you think?”

That was what Lieutenant General Bell had had in mind when he left Dothan for Franklin. Maybe, if he’d crushed John the Lister at Summer Mountain instead of letting him get away, his dream might have come true. Now? It wasn’t even a bitter joke, not any more.

Sergeant Thisbe sent Gremio a reproachful look. “That isn’t even a little bit funny, sir. The way things turned out-” The underofficer stopped.

“Yes. The way things turned out.” Gremio liked that. It let them talk about what they’d just been through without really talking about it. If Thisbe had called it the catastrophe, that would have been just as true and more descriptive, but they both would have had to remember the dreadful fighting in the trenches and their failure to dislodge the southrons from around that farmhouse. Even their mages had failed. If that wasn’t catastrophe for the north, what was? But Gremio had to mention some of what had happened there, some of what had left him in charge of a regiment and Thisbe a company: “Half a dozen brigadiers dead, Sergeant. More wounded. Gods only know how many colonels and majors and captains and lieutenants.”

“And soldiers, sir. Don’t forget soldiers,” Thisbe said.

“I’m not likely to,” Gremio answered. “We lost one man in four in the fight by the River of Death. That’s what kept Thraxton the Braggart from properly besieging Rising Rock-we’d got shot to pieces. Here we’ve lost a bigger portion than that. We must have. But Lieutenant General Bell is going on.”

“Thraxton should have gone on,” Thisbe pointed out.

“Yes. We had the enemy licked, and he held back,” Gremio agreed. “Did we lick John the Lister? Bell says we did, but I doubt it. And speaking of doubting, how many more men has Doubting George got in Ramblerton? They aren’t licked. Most of them haven’t fought at all. They’re just waiting for us.”

Thisbe muttered something. It sounded like licking their chops. Gremio thought about asking, then changed his mind. He didn’t really want to know. Licking their chops seemed much too apt for comfort.

But then Thisbe spoke aloud: “Everything you said is true, sir, every word of it. So what can we do when we get to Ramblerton?”

“I don’t know, Sergeant. I just don’t know,” Gremio replied. “I don’t see anything. Lieutenant General Bell must, or we wouldn’t be going forward.”

Up till now, Gremio had always been a man who wanted to know answers. He’d wanted to learn what would happen next before it did. That way, he could try to wring the most advantage from whatever it was. Now… now he didn’t want to know. All he wanted to do was go on putting one weary foot in front of the other. As long as he did that, he was doing his duty. No one could possibly complain about him. And whatever was going to happen-would happen.

Every so often, he marched past a wrecked wagon or a twisted corpse in gray: proof the Army of Franklin had hit hard as well as being hit hard. He needed the reminders. Whenever he thought back to the Battle of Poor Richard, he remembered nothing but northerners falling all around him.

Cold, clammy mud came in between the sole and upper of both shoes now. Still, he remained luckier than a lot of his men. Some of them had managed to take shoes from the bodies of southrons during the fight. Many more, though, were barefoot.

And I’m ever so much luckier than the ones who didn’t come out of the fight. Gods damn Lieutenant General Bell. He yawned. He didn’t really want to keep marching. He wanted to sleep, with luck for weeks. As happened so often in war, what he wanted and what he got weren’t going to match.

One of those bodies by the side of the road was neither southron nor, Gremio realized, dead. It was a northern soldier who’d fallen out of the column and fallen asleep because he couldn’t take another step. Exhausted as Gremio was, he had a harder time blaming the soldier than he would have otherwise.

“Come on, men!” Thisbe’s voice and demeanor didn’t seem to have changed at all. “We can do it. We get where we’re going, we’ll rest then.”

Where are we going? Gremio wondered. Oh, toward Ramblerton-he knew that full well. But what would the Army of Franklin do when it got there? What could it do when it got there? Gremio had had no answers for Sergeant Thisbe, and he had no answers for himself, either.

Here came Colonel Florizel, now mounted on yet another new unicorn. Since his sudden promotion from regimental to wing commander, maybe he knew more of what, if anything, was in Lieutenant General Bell’s mind. Gremio waved to him and called out, “Colonel! Ask you something, sir?” I sound the way Thisbe did asking me, he thought.

“Oh, hello, Captain Gremio. Yes? What is it?” Florizel remained the picture of a northern gentleman.

“Sir, will we make Ramblerton today?”

“I don’t think so, Captain,” Florizel replied. “We are weary-I know how weary I am-and we have many walking wounded, and we got off to a late start this morning. I expect us to camp on the road when the sun goes down, and then reach the provincial capital tomorrow.”

“Thank you, sir.” Gremio supposed he really should have thanked Bell, not that he felt like it. He’d figured the commanding general would push on through the night regardless of the condition of his men. Why not? Bell had pushed ahead at Poor Richard, regardless of how many soldiers fell.

But Colonel Florizel hadn’t finished yet. “There is something I want you to attend to most particularly tonight, Captain, you and all regimental commanders in my wing.” He grimaced at that; had things gone better, neither his status nor Gremio’s would have been so exalted.

“What is it, sir?” Gremio had rarely seen Florizel so serious.

“Post plenty of pickets. Post them well south of wherever we do encamp. If the southrons sally from Ramblerton, they must not-they must not-take us unawares. They will destroy us if they do. Destroy us, do you hear me?”

“Yes, sir. I agree completely. I’ll attend to it,” Gremio promised. He eyed his longtime superior, his new wing commander, with more than a little curiosity. Impelled by it, he risked a more abstract question: “What do you think our chances are, sir?”

Florizel had been hardly less eager to charge ahead than Bell himself. Bell hadn’t learned much about restraint since taking command of the Army of Franklin. Had Florizel? Gremio waited to see.

The baron from Palmetto Province plucked at his white beard. “I think our chances are…” he began, and then rode away without finishing the sentence. That answered Gremio’s question, too.

They did camp by the side of the road, about two thirds of the way down from Poor Richard to Ramblerton. Mindful of Colonel Florizel’s orders, Gremio set an unusual number of pickets south of his regiment. That done, he wondered what he needed to take care of next. He’d commanded the regiment for less than two days now. As Florizel had, he went from one company to the next, making sure everything was in as good an order as it could be. He was sure Florizel had more to do than that: the colonel had surely kept records and talked with other regimental commanders. But no one was there to tell Gremio just what those other duties were. No one who knew was left alive and unwounded except for Florizel himself, and he was busy somewhere else.

Sergeant Thisbe had the same sort of trouble figuring out everything a company commander was supposed to do. The underofficer, though, could at least ask Gremio. After Gremio had answered the third or fourth question, he said, “You see, Sergeant? You should have let me make you a lieutenant after all. You would have known more about what you’re doing now.”

“I never wanted to be a lieutenant, and you know it… sir,” Thisbe answered. “I don’t want to do the job I’m doing, either, but I don’t see that I’ve got much choice right now.”

“I don’t see that you do, either,” Gremio said. “I’m proud to command the regiment, but this isn’t how I wanted to do it. Too many men dead. Feels as though our hopes have been shot dead, too, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, sir. I wouldn’t have said that, but it’s in my mind, too,” Thisbe replied. The underofficer looked around to make sure nobody but Gremio was in earshot. “I wish we were marching back to Dothan, not down towards Ramblerton.”

“Can’t be helped, Sergeant,” Gremio said, and Thisbe nodded. Gremio yawned. He went on, “The other thing is, we’re both bone weary. This whole army is bone weary. Things may look brighter once we get a little rest.”

“Maybe. I hope so, sir.” Thisbe still sounded dubious. “Other question is, when will we ever get a little rest? We’ll sleep tonight-we’ll sleep tonight like so many dead men-but then we’ll march again. And after that… after that, it’s Ramblerton.”

“I know. There’s no help for it, not unless we’d want to go back toward Dothan without orders or give up to the southrons the first chance we get.”

“I’m no quitter, sir,” Thisbe said. “I aim to stick as long as anybody else does, and then half an hour longer. But I wish I saw some kind of way of getting a happy ending to the story.”

“After the war-” Gremio began.

“No, sir.” The sergeant gave a shake of the head. “After the war is after the war. That’s not what I’m talking about now. I’m talking about a happy ending to this campaign and to the whole fight.”

“Oh.” Gremio shrugged. “In that case, I don’t know what to tell you.”

He did sleep like a dead man that night, and woke the next morning still feeling like one. The nasty tea the cooks brewed up pried his eyelids apart and lent him a mournful interest in life.

“Come on, men!” Thisbe called when the soldiers moved out after a meager breakfast. “We’ll go on to Ramblerton, and we’ll whip the southrons there.”

“That’s right,” Gremio said. “We’ll chase the southrons all the way down to the Highlow River. We walloped ’em at Poor Richard. By the gods, we’ll wallop ’em again.” He did a barrister’s best to mask his pessimism.

After every other fight in which he’d taken part, the men of his company-the men of the whole regiment-had always been ready for more, no matter how roughly the southrons had handled them. He’d expected them to raise a cheer now. They didn’t. They got to their feet and they marched. They didn’t complain. But something had gone out of them. Maybe it was hope.

Whatever it was, Gremio wished he could put it back into the soldiers. To be able to do that, though, he would have had to find hope, or something like it, within himself as well. Try as he would, he couldn’t.

Hope or no hope, the Army of Franklin reached Ramblerton about noon the next day. The wan sun of late autumn, low in the north behind Lieutenant General Bell’s men, sent their long shadows toward the capital of Franklin. At Bell’s orders, relayed by trumpeters and runners, his blue-clad soldiers formed a line along a ridge not far north of the city.

As soon as Gremio’s men reached their assigned place, they started digging trenches and throwing up breastworks in front of them. Bell, Gremio knew, looked down his nose at fieldworks. Gremio didn’t care. He’d seen how many lives they saved, and urged the diggers on.

While they worked, he got his own first good look at Ramblerton’s fortifications. Had he had much hope left, it would have died then.