Marching Through Peachtree

VIII

Colonel Florizel was almost beside himself with excitement. “Now we get to hit back!” the regimental commander burbled. “Now we get to drive the gods-damned southrons out of our kingdom once for all!”

“Well, your Excellency, we certainly get to try,” Captain Gremio answered.

“Bell is a man who knows what fighting’s all about,” Florizel said. “We’ll hit the southrons a lick the likes of which the world has never seen the likes of.” He was fond of that phrase; Gremio had heard it before from him. He’d never figured out what, if anything, it meant.

He did know he was worried. “They still have more men than we do, sir. We hurt them more when we made them come at us. It won’t be so easy when we go at them, I’m afraid.”

“If you’re afraid, Captain, you may stay behind,” Florizel snapped. “I’ll send you back to Karlsburg, if you like, the way King Geoffrey sent Joseph the Gamecock down to Dicon. Joseph was afraid to face the southrons-that’s as plain as the nose on my face.”

Gremio’s ears felt on fire. “Sir, you ought to know I’m not afraid to advance. I’ve always gone forward as boldly as anyone, and who can say that I haven’t?”

“Very well,” Earl Florizel said. “I cannot deny that.” By the way he sounded, he wished he could. “But I am going to keep my eye on you, young fellow, you may rest assured of that. A man who grumbles too much is not likely to have his heart in the fighting.”

“You’ll see, sir,” Gremio said grimly. If Florizel was going to watch everything he did, he would have to fight as if his life didn’t matter at all to him. And, fighting that way, he was much more likely to lose it. He knew that too well.

“We-our regiment, and Brigadier Alexander’s whole wing-have the honor of holding the left,” Florizel said. “As the southrons come north over Goober Creek, we’re going to drive them back into the stream. You’ll have the chance to make good on what you say, Captain. Dismissed.”

Fuming, Gremio saluted and walked off. He sat down on a boulder, took out a whetstone, and began honing his sword. He wanted the edge as sharp as he could make it. Every little bit helped.

“Is the attack on, sir?” Sergeant Thisbe asked.

That made Gremio look up. “Oh, yes. It’s on,” he answered. “We get to swarm out of our trenches and drive the southrons back. So says Colonel Florizel, which means it should be easy, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Thisbe said. “We’d better try something, though, don’t you suppose, before the southrons surround Marthasville altogether?”

That had no good answer. Gremio wished it did. He said, “We’ll do the best we can, that’s all. Let’s get the men formed up, shall we? I want this company to make everyone who watches it proud.”

“We’ll do that, sir,” Thisbe promised. “How can we help it, when we’ve got you leading us?”

Gremio’s ears got as hot as they had when Florizel scorned him, but for an altogether different reason. Before he could find anything to say, the regimental trumpeters blew assembly. He knew what he had to say then, and so did Sergeant Thisbe. They had the company in place before any of the others had formed ranks.

Colonel Florizel didn’t look impressed. Florizel, Gremio was convinced, wouldn’t look impressed at anything this side of his heroic death. His hand dropped to the hilt of that newly sharpened sword. He might have to oblige the colonel. When the rest of the regiment had assembled, Florizel struck a pose and said, “Boys, with Bell leading us, we’re going to chase the gods-damned southrons all the way back to Franklin. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes!” The deep, fierce roar stunned Gremio’s ears. The men were ready to go forward; that was plain. Whether they could… Everyone would find out soon enough.

“We’re going to catch the bastards crossing Goober Creek,” Florizel went on. “Old Straight’s wing-that’s ours-and Roast-Beef William’s wing’ll hit ’em together. And, by the gods, we’re going to break ’em! Wait for the brigade’s trumpeters to blow, then go forward and don’t slow down for anything. Have you got that?”

“Yes!” the men roared again.

“That’s all I’ve got to say, then,” Florizel said, and stood down. It wasn’t a speech that would have done much in the lawcourts. In the field, it was first-rate. The soldiers cheered and waved their crossbows in the air. Gremio dutifully cheered, too. He drew his sword and waved it. Sunlight glittered off the edge.

A few minutes later, trumpets blew advance! “Forward!” Gremio shouted. “We’ll lick them!” He didn’t know if they could. He was sure they would give it a hells of a try.

“Out of the trenches!” one of his men said cheerfully as they swarmed up the sandbagged steps that led to the open country between the lines outside Marthasville and Goober Creek. Gremio waved his sword again, urging his soldiers on. He wasn’t so happy to have left the fieldworks himself, but he had his orders and he had to obey them.

Looking to the right, he saw the assembled warriors from Brigadier Alexander’s wing and that of Roast-Beef William all advancing together. So many men in blue tunics and pantaloons storming toward the enemy at the same time did go a long way towards inspiriting him. How could King Avram’s men hope to throw them back?

When he looked ahead, he got a piece of his answer. The southrons were already well over Goober Creek and coming north toward Marthasville. Through the dust their advance raised, he saw rank on rank of soldiers in gray. His comrades might have the spirits. The southrons, as usual, had the numbers.

But those numbers might not do them so much good this time. Several rills ran south from Marthasville into Goober Creek. The valleys they’d carved in the red land wouldn’t be easy to cross. If one group of southrons got in trouble, their comrades to the right and left wouldn’t easily be able to reinforce them. Maybe Lieutenant General Bell hadn’t picked too bad a time to advance after all.

“Let’s let them hear us!” Gremio shouted. His men loosed the roaring northern battle cry that might have come straight from the throat of the Lion God himself. That cry was often worth brigades in battle. The southrons owned no real answer for it, nor had they ever.

“King Avram!” the enemy yelled. “Freedom!” Some few of the southron soldiers had yellow hair and beards: escaped serfs, most of them. Gremio hated to see blonds in gray uniforms-hated it not only because it argued against everything the north held dear but also because those escaped serfs fought with special ferocity, knowing they were likelier to die on the field than be taken prisoner.

Men from both sides raised crossbows to their shoulders and started shooting. As so often happened, they opened the exchange of missiles before coming into range. Bolts thudded into the ground in front of Gremio and his company. But then the first northern man howled when a quarrel pierced him, and the first southron crumpled as if all his bones had turned to water.

Before long, men on both sides fell like autumn leaves as southrons and northerners volleyed away at one another. Men reloaded as fast as they could, as if one more bolt in the air would slay the last enemy in front of them and let their side storm forward. But, for every southron who toppled, another strode forward to take his place and start shooting at Gremio and his comrades.

Lightning smashed down out of a clear sky. He hoped it would clear the southrons in front of him. But the bolts hit ground where no enemy soldiers stood, or else smote Goober Creek and raised clouds of muddy steam. Gremio cursed. After more than three years of war, the southrons were at last becoming able to match the mages on his own side.

“Onward!” Colonel Florizel yelled, brandishing his own blade. He looked around to see what his captains-and, most especially, Captain Gremio-were doing.

“Onward!” Gremio cried, louder still. He ran toward the southrons. This is a good way to get killed, he thought. But his men came after him. This is a good way to get all of us killed.

A quarrel hummed past his ear and struck a man behind him with an unmistakable meaty thunk. The fellow didn’t even cry out. He must have died while hardly knowing what had happened to him. There were worse ways to go. Gremio had seen too many of them.

And then, quite suddenly, it wasn’t a fight of crossbow quarrels any more. It was pikes and shortswords and men cursing and shouting-and screaming as they were hurt, too. Gremio beat aside the gleaming iron head of a pike. Before the fellow who carried the heavy spear could draw back for a second thrust, Gremio leaped forward and lunged. His point pierced flesh.

The pikeman howled, staring down and seeing steel inside him stabbing, stabbing. Gremio yanked back the blade. The point was bloody. That wound, he knew, was likely deep enough to kill, if not by making the southron bleed out then from the festering sure to follow. But the fellow wasn’t dead yet, and wouldn’t die right away. He managed another thrust at Gremio, who had to skip back smartly to keep from being spitted. Only then did the southron’s knees slowly buckle.

“Forward!” Gremio shouted. “We’ll push the bastards into Goober Creek!” He did his best to roar as if the Lion God were speaking through his body.

Ferocity-perhaps desperation wasn’t too strong a word-propelled the northerners into and then through their foes. Some southrons fell back toward the creek. Others simply fell, and would not rise again. For a few heady minutes, Gremio thought his comrades might indeed throw the enemy back into the stream and work a great slaughter on him there.

But the southrons had too many men. Those who ran away rallied when they met fresh, unpanicked troopers coming up from the south. And the reinforcements poured a couple of withering volleys of bolts into the oncoming northerners. A good many of King Geoffrey’s men had slung or thrown aside their crossbows to fight with shortswords instead. They couldn’t match the southrons quarrel for quarrel, as they had before.

“Forward!” Gremio cried yet again, and rushed toward the new and dreadfully steady southron line. The enemy might-likely would-kill him, but Colonel Florizel couldn’t complain he was a coward. The things we do for pride, he thought sourly, brandishing blood-bedaubed blade.

He looked back over his shoulder. His men kept on following, such of them as remained on their feet. Sergeant Thisbe trotted along only a few paces behind him. Gremio didn’t know whether to be proud about that or sad. You’re not just getting yourself killed for no purpose, but all the best men in the company.

“Shoot!” a southron officer yelled. Another volley tore into the men in blue. Gremio heard the shrieks behind him. He looked back again. What seemed like half the men who had still been on their feet were down.

Sergeant Thisbe waved urgently. “Sir, we can’t do it,” he called.

“We’ve got to try,” Gremio answered, which meant, I’m going to die before I retreat without orders. That was very likely a kind of madness of its own, but it was a madness most men on a battlefield shared. Without such a madness, anyone put in danger of his life would simply run away, and how could kings and generals hope to fight their wars like that?

But, before shouting, “Forward!” again, Gremio looked around for Colonel Florizel. If the regimental commander had already fallen, Gremio got some of his discretion back. He knew what he would do with it, too, for Thisbe was right: the attackers lacked the numbers to go any farther forward.

Florizel waved a sword bloodier than Gremio’s. Whatever the earl’s flaws, cowardice was not among them. “Good fighting!” he bawled.

“If you say so, your Excellency,” Gremio answered.

Then Florizel scowled, not at him but at the southrons. “Gods damn it, I don’t think we can shift them,” the regimental commander said.

The attack had jolted the southrons, but no more. “What are your orders, sir?” he called to Florizel.

A man of sense, seeing no hope the attack could succeed, would have ordered his men back. Earl Florizel said, “Let’s give it one more try, on the off chance I might be wrong.” He waved his sword again. “I hate to pull back from such a fine fray.”

That stuck Gremio as madness, but what point to saying so? What he did say was the only thing that would have satisfied the colonel: “Forward!” Forward he went, with such men as were still able to go with him.

Two more deadly volleys from the southrons broke the charge before it came to hand to hand. Gremio looked for Florizel, wondering if one of those crossbow quarrels had stretched him dead in the dirt. Somehow, the regimental commander still stood, but only a forlorn corporal’s guard stood with him.

“Sir, they won’t leave a one of us alive if we stay here much longer,” Sergeant Thisbe said urgently.

“If Florizel orders me to die here, then die here I shall,” Gremio answered. Thisbe was more practical than that, as sergeants had a way of being. If he stayed, it was only because Gremio did: another species of madness, without a doubt.

At last, even Florizel saw it was hopeless. He ordered the men back toward the works from which they’d erupted. Those who could, obeyed.

Lieutenant General Bell scowled at his wing commanders. Roast-Beef William and Alexander the Steward gave back the exhausted stares of men who had seen too much fighting that day. Bell didn’t care how battle-weary they looked. He cared about nothing except the results of that fight.

“You failed me,” he growled. “Your men failed me.”

“Sir, we did everything we could,” Brigadier Alexander said.

“That’s the truth-the whole truth and nothing but,” Roast-Beef William agreed. “The southrons were there in numbers too great for us to move them. We tried. We did everything we could, everything we knew how to do.”

“You failed me,” Bell repeated. “Your men have turned craven, on account of cowering too long in trenches. They didn’t, they wouldn’t, push the attack with the spirit required to destroy the enemy.”

“Sir, that is not true,” William said. “They fought as bravely as any men could fight-look how many dead and wounded we left on the field.”

“If they had fought bravely enough, we would have won,” Bell said. “We should have won. We didn’t win. What have you got to say for yourselves?”

“Sir, if you’re going to attack an army that’s bigger than your own, you’ve got to know the odds aren’t on your side,” Old Straight said.

“But I had to attack. King Geoffrey insisted on it. That’s why Joseph the Gamecock isn’t commanding any more,” Bell said. The misfortune that had befallen his army couldn’t possibly have been his fault. “The soldiers just didn’t put enough into it. Otherwise, they would have won.”

“Do you want to throw away the whole army, then?” William asked.

“No! I want to drive back the southrons. We have to drive back the southrons,” Bell said. “If we don’t, they can cut the glideways to Marthasville one by one till they hold the town in the palm of their hand.”

“They’re already doing it,” Brigadier Alexander said. “That move to extend their left flank means they’re sitting on the glideway path to Julia. We’ll get no more supplies from the west.”

“Then we have to drive them back,” Bell declared. “It’s as simple as that.”

“Saying it’s as simple as that,” Roast-Beef William remarked. “Doing something about it won’t be so easy, I’m afraid. When you sent us south against Doubting George, you didn’t leave Benjamin the Heated Ham very many men. He may be able to hold back James the Bird’s Eye-but, on the other hand, he may not. He surely hasn’t got the numbers he needs to attack.”

Bell took the laudanum bottle from his tunic pocket and raised it to his lips. Maybe the drug would shield him from things he didn’t care to contemplate. Resentment in his voice, he said, “Hesmucet has no trouble attacking wherever he pleases.”

Patiently, William answered, “Hesmucet has more men than we do, sir. It’s in the nature of things that he can do a good deal we can’t.”

Brigadier Alexander added, “The one thing wrong with attacks is that they’re expensive even when they succeed-and a lot more expensive when they fail.”

“Gods damn it, I didn’t send you out there to fail,” Bell said. He studied the map. “We have to strike a blow against their left. We have to. That will free up the glideway line, and we’re holding Marthasville on account of those lines.”

“An attack would be splendid, if we had the men to do it,” Roast-Beef William said. “But whence will you conjure them up, sir?”

“If we can’t do what we’d like to do, we’ll do what we have to do,” Bell replied. “You pull your men out of the fieldworks south of town, Lieutenant General. March them north and west through Marthasville till they outflank the end of the southrons’ line, which is-which has to be-unguarded, up in the air. Attack at dawn, roll them up, and send them back in the direction from which they came.”

“As easy as that, sir?” William said tonelessly.

“As easy as that,” Bell agreed, taking no notice of the way the wing commander sounded. “It will be a famous victory.”

“Sir,” William said, “my men fought their hearts out today. The ones who aren’t hurt are weary to the bone. Send them marching all through the night and you won’t get the best from them come morning.”

“I certainly will, because I have to,” Bell replied. “The kingdom requires it. Are you telling me it can’t be done? Do you want me to have to tell King Geoffrey it couldn’t be done?”

“No-o-o,” Roast-Beef William said, drawing the word out as long as he could. “I don’t say it can’t be done. But I do say the odds are steep against it.”

“It must be done,” Bell said. “I order you to try it. Once we hit the southrons in the flank, they’re bound to fold up. And Brigadier Benjamin will give you all the support he possibly can.”

“What am I supposed to be doing during all this?” Alexander the Steward asked.

“Hold the southrons away from Marthasville if Doubting George tries to come up from the south,” Bell answered. “In those trenches, you can do that.”

“I hope I can do that,” Old Straight replied. “I don’t have a whole lot of men left myself, you know, what with one thing and another.”

“We all have to do everything we can.” Bell’s gaze swung back toward Roast-Beef William. “Sunrise. Hit them hard. Roll them up. The kingdom is counting on it.”

The veteran wing commander let out a long, sad sigh. At last, after waiting much too long for proper subordination, he nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said, somehow contriving to make obedience sound like reproof.

“We’ll beat them,” Bell said. “We’ve got to.”

“We’ll do our best,” Roast-Beef William said. “And now, sir, if you’ll excuse me…” He sketched a salute to Bell and left the headquarters.

Alexander the Steward said, “If I’m going to hold the south-facing fortifications with the men of my wing alone, sir, I’d better get back there and spread them out as best I can.” He too gave Bell a salute and departed.

And that left the new commanding general for the Army of Franklin alone in the farmhouse with nothing but the haze of laudanum between him and the knowledge that his first attack had failed. He’d hoped to throw the southrons back into Goober Creek. Instead, his own men were back in the fieldworks from which they’d set out so boldly that morning-those who could come back to the works, at any rate. The knowledge of his failure hurt even more than his ruined arm and his missing leg, and the drug did less to ease that pain.

“We have to beat them,” Bell repeated. No one was there to hear him now, or to contradict him. It felt as if saying it were plenty to make it so. He laughed bitterly. If only battles were so easy!

He drank more laudanum to help him sleep. Even so, he woke up in the middle of the night. At first, he thought the noise he heard was rain pounding on the roof. He wouldn’t have minded that; it would have made moving harder for Hesmucet and the southrons. But what he heard wasn’t the patter of rain. It was the patter of feet: Roast-Beef William’s men tramping past by moonlight, to take their positions for the morning’s attack against James the Bird’s Eye and the southrons’ left.

Good old William, Bell thought drowsily. He may not think I’m right-he doesn’t think I’m right-but he’ll follow orders anyway, and follow them as well as he knows how. I wish all my officers were so reliable. He fell back to sleep with a smile on his face.

Even before sunrise, the distant racket of battle woke him: bowstrings snapping, firepots bursting, men screaming and cursing for all they were worth. That racket was the sweetest music Bell knew. When he cursed, it was in frustration because his wounds no longer let him take the field. He’d never felt more like a man than when risking his life and taking those of his foes. His injuries had robbed him of that forever.

Those injuries clamored for his notice, too. He reached out with his good hand and grabbed the laudanum bottle, which sat on a table next to his bed. Yanking the cork with his teeth, he swigged. Before long, the fire in his shoulder and in his stump would ease.

Even before it did, though, someone pounded on the farmhouse door. “Just a minute,” Bell shouted. Getting out of bed wasn’t easy. He had to position his crutches and then lever himself upright. He didn’t bother putting on his one boot, but hitched across the dirt floor on the crutches and his bare foot. He unlatched the door and eyed the runner waiting there. “Well?” he demanded.

“We’re driving ’em, sir,” the runner told him. “We’re driving ’em like hells, pushing ’em back like nobody’s business.”

“Ah,” Bell said. That felt as good as the laudanum now beginning to glide through his veins. “Give me the details.”

“Haven’t got a whole lot of ’em, sir,” the soldier answered. “I expect you’ll hear more later on. But I know for a fact there’s places where we’re shooting at the gods-damned southrons from the front and the back at the same time.”

“That’s good,” Bell said, which would do for an understatement till a bigger one came along. “That’s very good. If we can drive them to destruction, the entire campaign looks different.”

“Hope so, sir,” the runner said. “Plenty of good fighting-I’ll tell you that.” He saluted and hurried away.

Bell wished he were at the head of the wing attacking the southrons, not Roast-Beef William. Nothing made him feel more truly alive than roaring like a lion and flinging himself at the enemy. When his sword bit… Feeling steel pierce foe’s flesh had a satisfaction even feeling his own lance pierce a woman’s flesh couldn’t match. He muttered a curse under his breath. With all the laudanum he drank, his lance didn’t stand and charge the way it had before he got hurt, either.

That made him remember that attackers as well as defenders could get hurt. He forgot that whenever he could. Attacks went in. If they went in properly, they carried everything before them. So he’d made himself believe. It had always-well, almost always-worked for Duke Edward of Arlington and the Army of Southern Parthenia. It had worked for Earl James of Broadpath here in the east at the River of Death. It had worked there even if that fight cost Bell his leg.

That it had worked in those places and for those commanders because the said generals picked their spots and timing with care never entered Bell’s mind. To him, such things were of scant importance. Coming to grips with the southrons and hammering them-that was what really mattered.

His hand fell to the hilt of his sword. He cursed again. For him nowadays, it was-it had to be-a purely ceremonial weapon. He still wanted to kill southrons, but anything that moved faster than a tortoise was safe from him. He couldn’t even duel if his honor was affronted. Who would fight a cripple?

Another messenger galloped up on unicornback. The man dismounted and hurried to the farmhouse. “We’re still pushing ’em hard, sir,” he said when Bell opened the door for him. “Gods-damned sons of bitches are digging like moles, though. Every time we drive ’em another furlong or two, bastards run up another set of earthworks and make us charge ’em. They’re usually good for a couple volleys before we reach ’em and clear ’em out, too. Makes the job expensive, but we’re doing it.”

“Of course we are,” Bell said heartily. “We’ll lick them right out of their boots. Once we do that, we can count the cost.”

Joseph the Gamecock, that old cheeseparer, had counted the cost before he tried to buy his battles, and so he’d never spent the men winning them would have taken. Bell didn’t care if he bankrupted himself winning the first. Everything after that would just have to take care of itself.

“Keep hitting them,” he told the messenger. “That’s the order. We’ve got to keep hitting them, no matter what.”

“Yes, sir,” the fellow said, and went back to his unicorn at the run. Clods of rust-colored dirt flew up from under the white beast’s hooves as it galloped away.

All Lieutenant General Bell could do was wait for messengers to bring him news of what was happening to the northwest. If Roast-Beef William didn’t throw the southrons back from the glideway leading to Julia… Bell shook his head. He wouldn’t think about that. He refused to think about that.

As morning wore away and afternoon came on, the news the messengers brought was less and less anything Bell wanted to hear. The southrons had stiffened. “We’re hitting ’em with everything we got, sir,” one man said, “but we ain’t got enough. Maybe if we wasn’t so worn from marching all night to get to where we needed to be at so as we could hit ’em at all… But there’s a lot of them bastards, and they don’t want to move.”

“But they have to!” Bell exclaimed, as if he could push the southrons off the glideway with his one good arm.

With a mournful shrug, the messenger went his way. Bell stared off to the northwest. Men marching and countermarching had raised a great cloud of dust, by which he could tell where the fighting was taking place, but not, try as he would, how it was going. He drummed the fingers of his good hand against his crutch and waited for another messenger to bring more news.

Before long, one did. Even as he rode up, he shouted in excitement: “Lieutenant General Bell! Lieutenant General Bell!”

“What is it?” Bell barked. “What’s the word?”

“We’ve killed James the Bird’s Eye, sir,” the messenger exclaimed. “The southrons’ wing commander’s dead as shoe leather, gods damn the son of a bitch to the seven hells!”

“What?” General Hesmucet stared at the messenger in dismay. “James the Bird’s Eye dead? I don’t believe it!”

“I’m afraid it’s true, sir,” the southron unicorn-rider said. “Gods damn those traitor sons of bitches to the seven hells, but they shot him right off his unicorn while he was riding toward the thick of the fighting.”

“That sounds like him. That sounds just like him, in fact.” Hesmucet shook his head in dull wonder. “But dead? That’s dreadful! He can’t even be thirty-five. He’s… he was… strong and brave and handsome, and everybody likes-liked-him. He was a noble man, and I’m sure King Avram would have made him a nobleman had he lived. What are the gods thinking of, to let him die so young?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know how to answer that, sir,” the messenger replied.

Hesmucet didn’t know how to answer it, either. He knew what Major Alva would have said: that the gods paid much less attention to earthly affairs than people were in the habit of thinking. Hesmucet didn’t like to hear such things. But when an officer who had everything to live for stopped a crossbow quarrel, he couldn’t help wondering whether Alva had a point.

The rider pointed back towards a unicorn-drawn ambulance coming down from the northwest. “Sir, I don’t know for a fact, but I believe that’s his body in there.”

Seeing the ambulance made hope rise in Hesmucet. “Maybe he’s not dead. Maybe he’s only wounded,” the commanding general said. The messenger shook his head, but Hesmucet shouted for a healer.

As soon as the ambulance stopped, a couple of men removed James the Bird’s Eye’s body from it. One look told Hesmucet the young wing commander would never rise again. Hesmucet had seen enough corpses the past three years and more to have no doubt when he saw another. The healer stooped beside James, then looked up at the general commanding. “Through the heart, sir, I’m afraid,” he said. “It would have been over very fast, if that’s any consolation.”

“Not fornicating much,” Hesmucet snapped. And then, as he had to, he thought about the battle still unfolding. “Who’s in command now on the left?” he demanded of the messenger.

“Baron Logan the Black, sir,” the man replied. “We’re holding pretty well-you don’t need to worry about that.”

Hesmucet only grunted. Baron Logan had turned out to make a pretty good soldier, but Hesmucet didn’t like the idea of having him as a wing commander. He wasn’t a professional warrior, but a noble from King Avram’s home province who’d got himself a brigadiership in exchange for loudly and publicly backing the king and recruiting soldiers. The southron army, in Hesmucet’s view, had too many officers like that. He couldn’t do anything about it right this minute, but he intended to when he could.

Another messenger came galloping up. “Baron Logan’s compliments, sir, and he wants you to know the traitors are stopped. He expects to start driving them back any time now.”

“That’s good news,” Hesmucet said, and meant it. “Give him my compliments in return, and tell him the northerners deserve every single thing that happens to them.”

“Yes, sir.” The messenger didn’t even waste time saluting. He set spurs to his unicorn. The beast snorted angrily as he forced its head around and urged it back to a full gallop to deliver Hesmucet’s reply.

The commanding general called for a messenger of his own. When the man came up to him, he said, “Give my regards to Lieutenant General George and ask him if it’s possible, with the traitors so heavily engaged in the northwest, for him to go straight through their defenses to the south of Marthasville and into the city. Give me that back, so I’m sure you have it straight.”

After repeating the message, the runner hurried away. When he returned, he said, “Lieutenant General George says he’s already probed the line south of Marthasville, sir. He says it’s too strong to break through like that.”

“All right.” Hesmucet wondered if it was really all right, and how hard Doubting George really had poked at Bell’s line there. George was as stalwart a warrior as the gods had made when fighting on the defensive, but, to Hesmucet’s way of thinking, lacked the push, the drive, of a good attacker.

That’s why Marshal Bart made me commander here in the east, he thought. I’ve come this far. Another few miles and I’ll have done a big part of what he wanted of me. He scowled in the direction of Marthasville. The traitors had hung on to the place altogether too long, as far as he was concerned.

It didn’t fall that day. By the time the sun set, James the Bird’s Eye’s men-no, Logan the Black’s now-had indeed driven Bell’s blue-clad warriors back into the lines from which they’d started their attack. A messenger said, “The enemy must have lost twice as many men as we did, too.”

“He threw away a lot of soldiers, then,” Hesmucet said musingly. “Add those in with all the men he lost yesterday, and with his having fewer than we do to begin with, and how many has he got left?”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I couldn’t begin to tell you,” the messenger replied.

“Never mind,” the general commanding told him. “I didn’t expect you to know. But I wonder if my wing commanders do.”

With the fighting having died down, he summoned Doubting George, Logan the Black, and (with a mental sigh) Fighting Joseph to his headquarters to talk things over. Logan proved to be younger than he’d remembered-hardly older than James the Bird’s Eye, in fact-with a ruddy face, fierce eyes, and a piratical black mustache.

“Yes, sir. They hurt us,” he said frankly. “We didn’t really expect another strong sally, not when they were thrown back with loss yesterday. It was worrisome out there for a while, when they came close to turning our flank. But we were steady, and we made them pay for coming out of their works.”

“So you’ve already reported, your Excellency,” Hesmucet replied. “I’m glad to learn you did so well.”

Doubting George said, “Taking it all in all, they must have left a third of their men on the field the last two days. And they didn’t have that many to begin with.”

He might not have been aggressive enough to suit Hesmucet, but he’d done sums in his head, too. And the answer he reached wasn’t far different from the one that had formed in the commanding general’s mind. Hesmucet said, “It’s only a matter of time now.”

“I think you’re right, sir,” George said, nodding. “Now we can push to the east of Marthasville or to the west, go up north of the place on either side just as we choose, and Bell won’t be able to stop us. The most he can do with what he has left, as I see it, is sit tight and stand siege.”

“If he does that, he’s mine, and so is his whole fornicating army,” Hesmucet said. “I’ll take it clean off the board, the same as Marshal Bart took Camphorville on the Great River and its defending host last year.”

“I don’t believe Bell will do that,” Logan the Black said. “He’s a swinger, a puncher. He’ll keep trying to hit us for as long as he can.”

“Good,” Hesmucet said. “The more he wastes his force, the sooner he won’t be able to strike with it at all. I always worried about Joseph the Gamecock. He held his men in. If I’d made a mistake against him, he kept the wherewithal to make me pay for it. But Bell? Bell’s thrown away as many good men the past two days as Joseph did during the whole campaign from Borders all the way up to here.”

His subordinates nodded. Not even Fighting Joseph could disagree with that. George said, “Bell’s a first-rate man to command a brigade. Point him at the foe, turn him loose, and he’ll hit hard. But put him in command of an army? Of an army trying to hold off a bigger army? I don’t know what false King Geoffrey was drinking when he thought of that, but I hope they serve him more of it.”

Logan the Black nodded. “Well said. Our foes’ mistakes go a long way toward making this an easy fight for us.”

“They can’t afford to make mistakes, not any more,” Doubting George agreed. “We have the luxury of greater strength, which lets us make our errors good.” He dipped his head to Hesmucet. “Not that we’ve made many on this campaign.”

“For which I thank you,” Hesmucet replied. If George said a thing like that, he had to mean it, which made the compliment doubly pleasing. Hesmucet went on, “Now there is one other bit of business that wants doing. Brigadier Logan, I am grateful for how well you fought James’ wing, but I do not intend that you keep command of it.”

“And why not, if I fought it well?” Logan demanded. He was a proud man, and he had done his duty and more than his duty. Hesmucet would have to handle him carefully.

He said, “My main reason, Brigadier, is that you are not a professional. Meaning you no disrespect, but I find it easier to deal with men who have been through Annasville, as I have.”

“Plenty of them, on both sides of this war, have proved themselves to be idiots,” Logan said tartly.

“True enough, your Excellency, but you could also say the same for officers who haven’t been through the military collegium,” Hesmucet replied. “I am pleased to have you as a brigade or division commander. As a wing commander… I’m sorry, Brigadier, but no, not permanently.”

However proud he was, Logan took it like a man. “It’s your army, General. You will have your way here. If you think I’m going to tell you I’m happy about it, you’re mistaken. And now, sir, if you’ll excuse me…” Saluting, he spun on his heel and strode out of the headquarters.

“You did the right thing, sir,” Fighting Joseph said. Approval from him was the last thing Hesmucet wanted. Striking a pose, Fighting Joseph went on, “Now you can consolidate your forces. An army of only two wings-led by your two senior commanders-would surely be more efficient than one of three.”

And it would double the size of the force you command, which is what you’ve got in mind, Hesmucet thought. Aloud, he said, “I find myself reasonably satisfied with the command arrangements as they exist at present.”

“Do you indeed, sir? Do you indeed?” From Fighting Joseph’s tone, Hesmucet might have expressed a fondness for scratching his backside in public or eating with his fingers. More scornfully still, Fighting Joseph said, “And who could possibly replace James the Bird’s Eye?” Who but me? he all but shouted.

“If you must know, I had in mind Brigadier Oliver,” Hesmucet replied.

Now Fighting Joseph frankly stared. “Oliver? You must be joking… sir. I hope you’re joking. Oliver the blond-lover? Oliver the gods-drunk? Oliver with his right arm gone? Lion God’s twitching tail, it’d be like putting a cross between Bell and Leonidas the Priest in charge of a wing.”

“No.” Hesmucet shook his head. “Oliver’s pious, but he knows soldiering as well as he knows the gods. And he’s not brash and rash, the way Bell is. He thinks before he moves.”

“I agree,” Doubting George said. “Before the war, I thought Oliver was a horrible windbag, and I wished he would quit blathering on about loosing the blonds from the soil. But that is King Avram’s policy now, so we all needs must follow it. And Brigadier Oliver is a more than capable soldier, as the commanding general said.”

“Giving that wing to such an untried man-and a junior untried man-is an outrage when senior officers are available,” Fighting Joseph insisted. “Not only an outrage, but also a gross injustice.”

“I’m sorry, General, but I don’t agree,” Hesmucet said. “Brigadier Oliver will have that wing.”

“Disgraceful.” Fighting Joseph drew himself up to his full height, which was perhaps an inch less than Hesmucet’s. In a voice like thunder, he said, “If that is your final decision, I cannot abide the insult, and must offer my resignation from King Avram’s service and from this, his host.”

Without a doubt, he thought Hesmucet would find him indispensable and would knuckle under to that threat. Without a doubt, he had never so badly misjudged a situation-which, with Viziersville on his record, was saying a great deal. Hesmucet had all he could do not to chortle with glee. “Lieutenant General George, you are my witness,” he said. “Fighting Joseph has tendered his resignation.”

“Yes, sir,” Doubting George agreed. “I heard him do it.”

“And you shall also be my witness that I accept the said resignation, effective immediately,” Hesmucet went on.

“Yes, sir,” George repeated. “I will so testify, at need.”

Fighting Joseph first looked as if he didn’t believe his ears, then as if he didn’t want to. “How-how dare you?” he spluttered. “How do you think you can manage this army without me?”

“I expect I’ll manage,” Hesmucet answered. “And, since you’ve resigned, it’s not your concern anyway. A good evening to you, General. I trust you will make a splendid success of yourself in civilian life.”

Still looking as if he’d been hit in the head with a rock, Fighting Joseph, having fought for the last time, stumbled out of Hesmucet’s headquarters. Hesmucet found a jar of spirits and poured a mug for himself and one for Doubting George. Though he’d lost James the Bird’s Eye, his men had held Bell’s, and he was rid of Fighting Joseph. He wondered which of those would prove the bigger victory.

“Bell had his chance,” Lieutenant General George told his brigadiers. “He had it, and he couldn’t do anything with it. Now it’s our turn, by the gods, and we’ll see how well he likes that.”

“That’s right,” Absalom the Bear rumbled. The big man went on, “The traitors have played games with us for too long. I don’t believe they’ve got the men to play games any more.”

“We’ve got Brigadier Oliver pushing up to our left,” George said. “Now Hesmucet is going to stretch this wing up toward the right, toward the glideway link with Dothan Province and the one with northern Peachtree Province. Once we’ve got those in our hands, too, how’s Lieutenant General Bell going to feed Marthasville?”

“That’s simple, sir,” Brigadier Brannan said. Doubting George’s commander of siege engines paid close attention to logistics. His handsome face twisted into a thoroughly nasty grin. “He won’t. Those bastards will starve, and then we’ll clean ’em out.”

Absalom shook his head. “No, I don’t think that’s how it’ll happen. When we move against the glideway lines to Dothan and to the north of Peachtree Province, Bell will have to come out against us, to try to knock us away. Then we’ll lick him, and what can he do after that? Not fornicating much.”

“I think you may be right,” Doubting George said. “Bell isn’t the sort of man who’s going to let himself be shut up in a place and stand siege. What he wants to do is get out there and attack.”

“Look how much good it did him these past couple of days,” Brannan said. “Of course he’ll want to go out and try it again.”

George shrugged. “He’ll just think he had bad luck, or that his soldiers let him down. Attacking is what he knows how to do. It’s all he knows how to do. If you send a carpenter out to try fixing something, of course he’s going to hammer nails into it, even if it’s a blanket with a rip and not a board at all.”

“Let Bell come,” Absalom said. “Let him come, and we’ll pound nails into him.”

“We’ll pound nails into the boards of his funeral pyre,” Doubting George said. “The beauty of our position now is, we don’t have to try to break into Marthasville. We can do the traitors every bit as much harm by stretching out past them. And when we do, they have to come out against us and attack our fieldworks. We don’t have to try to break through theirs.”

“I like that,” Absalom the Bear said. “We’ve had to go up against too many of their earthworks. It might as well be their turn for a while. And I’ll tell you something else: the men will like it, too.”

“That’s a fact,” Brannan agreed. “If you’re trying to fix wool or rock or water, a hammer’s not the right tool for the job.”

“We’re the ones with the tools for the job now,” George said. “Let’s get moving and do it. Some of Brigadier John the Lister’s men will fill in on our left as we shift.”

Brannan smiled. “Good old Ducky. He’s reliable, by the Thunderer’s prong.”

“That he is.” Doubting George didn’t doubt it in the slightest. When Fighting Joseph resigned because Hesmucet had named Brigadier Oliver commander of James the Bird’s Eye’s wing rather than giving it to him, that had given the general commanding one more slot to fill. John the Lister-often called by the nickname Brannan had given him-was a thoroughly capable officer, one who did what needed doing without demanding praise before, during, and afterwards. With him on his flank, George felt much happier than he would have with Fighting Joseph there.

George’s wing started sliding around to the right, to the east of Marthasville, the next morning. He’d wondered if Bell would try to strike him a blow at once, but the northern soldiers stayed in their entrenchments. Only a few unicorn-riders in blue dogged the southron troops. Doubting George sent his own unicorn-riders forward and drove them away.

“They’re only trying to see what we’re up to,” Absalom the Bear said. “They can’t stop us.”

“I know that,” Doubting George replied. “I don’t care. I don’t want them seeing anything, either. It might cause us trouble later on.”

As his wing advanced, though, he wondered whether anything would cause the southrons in Peachtree Province trouble ever again. Hesmucet had had the right of it: but for Joseph the Gamecock’s army and Duke Edward’s over in Parthenia, King Geoffrey had little left with which to hold his kingdom together. And, now that Bell had taken the army once Joseph’s and smashed it up, little remained to hold back the men in gray as they advanced.

Oh, every now and then squadrons of unicorn-riders or Peachtree Province militiamen would skirmish with George’s vanguard. Sometimes the northerners would have the numbers to slow down George’s men for a little while. But all he had to do was send reinforcements forward and the traitors would melt away. They’d spent a couple of months skillfully contesting every inch of ground from Borders all the way up to Marthasville. This ground to the east of Marthasville was as important as any in all of Peachtree Province, but King Geoffrey had not the men to keep Hesmucet from taking it.

Seeing as much amused Absalom the Bear-as much as anything could amuse Lieutenant General George’s grim brigadier. “Geoffrey wanted Bell to get out there and fight,” Absalom said. “He got out there and he did it-and now, by the gods, Geoffrey has to wish he’d left Joseph the Gamecock in command.”

“I doubt that,” George said, which made Absalom chuckle. The wing commander went on, “I don’t think false King Geoffrey wants Joseph to have anything to do with anything. The only reason he gave him this command in the first place was that he didn’t have anybody else to fix the mess Thraxton the Braggart left behind.”

“No doubt you’re right, sir,” Absalom said. “Now who’s going to fix the mess Bell’s left behind?”

“I don’t think anyone can,” George replied. “If he stays in the city, we’ll flank him out or starve him out. And if he comes forth again, we’ll give him another set of lumps and drive him back. He hasn’t got the men to push us, not after he’s gone and thrown so many of them away.”

“There’s always magic,” Absalom said.

Doubting George wished the brigadier hadn’t said that. Sorcery was the one place where the traitors still enjoyed some advantage over King Avram’s forces. But even that edge was shrinking. George said, “By what the northerners have shown on this campaign, we can stand up to whatever they throw at us.”

“Here’s hoping you’re right,” Absalom the Bear answered. George nodded.

A unicorn-rider came back from the vanguard, reined in, and waited to be recognized. When Doubting George nodded again, this time toward him, he said, “Sir, we’ve taken some prisoners. Do you want to help question them?”

“Don’t mind if I do,” the wing commander replied. “Lead the way.”

“Yes, sir.” The messenger rode to what looked like the farm of a prosperous yeoman or a small baron. Even before George walked into the farmhouse, he could hear cursing-at the same time highly fluent and slightly mushy. At his raised eyebrows, the messenger explained: “One of the fellows we caught is this militiaman, must be fifty-five, sixty years old. He’s got false choppers-or he did, on account of he just broke ’em. That’s how come he sounds the way he does.”

“I… see,” George said. “He sounds like the fellow I ought to question, don’t you think?”

“Whatever you say, sir,” the messenger replied. “If if was up to me, I’d knock him over the head and shut him up for good.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Doubting George replied. “He sounds like he might be fun to listen to for a while.”

He walked into the farmhouse. The northern prisoner gave him a baleful stare and demanded, “Who in the hells”-because of his broken false teeth, it came out as hellsh — “are you?”

“I am Lieutenant General George, commander of this wing of King Avram’s army,” George said gravely. “Do I understand you to be a mite discouraged with the northern cause?”

“Discouraged?” the prisoner shouted. “Discouraged?” He spat on the rammed-earth floor. “That for the fornicating northern cause. I curse the northern cause, every fornicating piece of it. I curse King Geoffrey and his ministers and his satraps and public men, clean down to the lowest pothouse politico who advocates his cause. I curse the whole fornicating Army of Franklin, from Joseph the Gamecock and Bell the Bloody Butcher down to the mangiest, most miserable jackass. I curse its downsittings and its uprisings. I curse its movements, marches, battles, and sieges. I curse all its paraphernalia, its catapults and its crossbows. I curse its banners, bugles, and drums. And I curse the whole gods-damned institution of serfdom, which brought about this miserable, fornicating war.”

By then, the fellow’s guards had tears of laughter running down their cheeks. Doubting George held his face straight, which was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. “You are a man of strong opinions, sir,” he remarked.

“I know what’s what. I know eggs is eggs. I know pigs is pigs,” the prisoner said. “And I know we’ve got pigs in charge of us. Curse ’em all. Curse ’em, and make bacon of ’em, too.”

“Dare I ask your view of my side in this conflict?” George inquired.

“Futter you southrons, too,” the northern man said at once. “You bastards are winning the war by magic, and where’s the fair fight in that?”

“By magic?” George said in surprise. “Your side is the one credited with the stronger sorcerers.”

“Unicorn dung!” the prisoner exclaimed. “Stinks like it, too. Our wizards brag. You ever hear tell of Thraxton the Braggart? We brag, but your buggers really do things. We aren’t the ones who keep miles and miles of glideway tunnel in our back pantaloon pockets, way you bastards do.”

“Glideway tunnel?” Doubting George had never imagined that as something a wizard might keep handy in a pocket.

But it made perfect sense to the prisoner. “We go after your glideways, how else can you fix ’em so gods-damned fast, without you having tunnel right there ready to go and stick it through a hill? Ought to stick it up Bell’s backside, is where it ought to go.”

He went back to cursing, this time aiming his venom at the new commander of the Army of Franklin. But he’d been dead serious about the tunnels; Doubting George could tell as much. If only such a thing were possible, it would have been a good idea. When the latest string of blasphemies slowed, George asked, “How did you happen to get caught?”

“I got stuck in the mud, gods damn it,” the prisoner answered. He wiped at his forehead with a forearm. That dislodged the wig he was wearing. He didn’t realize it had gone awry, and looked even more absurd and bedraggled than he had a moment before.

“Would you say you’re representative of the soldiers going into Geoffrey’s militia these days?” George asked.

“Why shouldn’t I be?” the northern returned. “You see anything wrong with me? You saying there’s something wrong with me?” He looked comically indignant.

“No, not at all,” Doubting George said soothingly. Eyeing the young, strong guards, he contrasted them to their captive. King Avram’s dominions still had plentiful reserves of men. False King Geoffrey, on the other hand, was trying to wring a few last drops of water from a dry fleece.

“What are you southron bastards going to do with me?” the prisoner asked.

“Not much,” George told him. “We’ll feed you a meal-gods know you look like you could use one-and then we’ll ship you south to a prisoners’ camp. You’ll wait there till you’re properly exchanged for a southron your side has captured or till the war ends, whichever comes first.”

“Can’t be over too soon,” the prisoner declared mushily. “I want to get back to my life, is what I want to do.”

“Don’t we all?” Doubting George said. “If Geoffrey hadn’t let Palmetto Province start calling him king-”

“Gods damn Geoffrey! Devils fry him for breakfast and roast him for supper,” the prisoner said, and he was off again on another wild string of curses.

George decided he didn’t need to hear any more. He hadn’t really learned anything from the prisoner, save that the man had a remarkably foul mouth. Or so he thought till he went outside and considered the matter for a little while. True, the fellow with the broken false teeth and the wig askew hadn’t told him anything about where the northern armies were, how many men they had, or what they intended to do. But did that mean he’d told him nothing?

After a little more thought, Doubting George shook his head. That a scrawny old man had been hauled into the militia at all said something about the straits the north was in. That he hated the man who called himself his king and the commanders set over him said something, too. And if Grand Duke Geoffrey could have heard what it said, he would have shivered, no matter how oppressively hot the weather in Nonesuch was at this season of the year.

“He will hear,” George murmured to himself. “We’ll make him hear, and I doubt it will take very long.”

Roast-Beef William was not a happy man. His wing had fought its heart out, trying to push the southrons back into Goober Creek. Then the weary men had marched all night before trying to dislodge Hesmucet’s left from the glideway line leading to Julia. They hadn’t quite managed either feat, but the number of dead and wounded they’d left on the field told how hard they’d tried.

It told Roast-Beef William, at any rate. He couldn’t see that the soldiers’ effort and suffering meant that much to Lieutenant General Bell, who was glaring at him like the angry lion he resembled. “I don’t care how hard they tried,” Bell said furiously. “I care that they failed.”

“Sir, if you set out to do the impossible, you shouldn’t be surprised when you fall short,” William said.

“Impossible? No such thing,” Bell declared. “If only your men had pressed their second attack, they would have rolled up the stinking southrons and thrown them back in disorder.”

“Sir…” Roast-Beef William resisted the impulse to pick up his chair and break it over the commanding general’s head. “Sir, we’d fought a battle the day before. We’d marched fifteen miles at night with bad guides to get to where we could deliver that second attack. And then, after the way we fought, you complain because we didn’t do enough? For shame, sir! For shame!”

“The plan was good. If the plan was good but didn’t succeed, that must be the fault of the men who went to carry it out,” Bell said.

Sighing, William said, “Sir, the plan was less good than you think. If you attack soldiers in entrenchments when yours are not, you had better have more men than they do, not fewer. They waited for us to get close, and then they shot us down like partridges. You cannot blame our defeats on the brave soldiers who serve us.”

“You’re wiser in hindsight than you were in foresight,” Bell said, “for you didn’t protest these orders when I gave them.”

That held some truth, more than Roast-Beef William cared to think about. He hadn’t opposed Bell’s first attack, the one that had failed to push the southrons back over Goober Creek. Casting about for some means to defend himself, he said, “I did warn you the men you sent to attack James the Bird’s Eye would be too weary to give their best.”

“Oh, what a hero you are!” Bell jeered. In defeat, he was proving as bad-tempered and sarcastic as Joseph the Gamecock or Thraxton the Braggart ever had. Criticizing, it seemed, had proved easier than commanding. Camp rumor said Joseph, before departing, had warned that that would be so. However prickly Joseph was, he’d always known a hawk from a handsaw. Bell… Roast-Beef William wasn’t so sure about Bell.

He wasn’t so sure about himself, either. Maybe I should have protested harder-protested at least some-whenBell sent us south just after he took command, he thought mournfully. No: certainly I should have protested. He knew why he hadn’t. Joseph the Gamecock had been sacked because he wouldn’t attack. Bell had been installed because he would. King Geoffrey had wanted attacks against the southrons. How could an officer mindful of that oppose them?

Well, the Army of Franklin, or what was left of it, had found the answer to that. Opposing attacks that failed, that might well have been foredoomed, looked like great wisdom in hindsight. With so many men lost, with the southrons not driven away despite those dreadful losses to the northern force, how were they going to hold on to Marthasville? Roast-Beef William had been a soldier and a teacher of soldiers for a long time. That notwithstanding, he had no idea.

Before he could find a way to put any of that into words, a runner came into the house Bell was using as army headquarters-the house Joseph had used before being sacked. “Sir-” he began, and then, catching sight of William along with the general commanding, fell silent.

“Say on,” Bell told him. “Say your say. Roast-Beef William may be a fool, but he is no traitor to the northern cause.”

“Sir…” That wasn’t the messenger; it was Roast-Beef William himself. But he shook his head. What point in quarreling further? When Bell called him a fool, what he meant was, He disagrees with me.

“Yes, sir,” the messenger said to Bell. “The news is that the gods-damned southrons are moving against the glideway line running north out of Marthasville, the line to Dicon and the rest of the north of this province. They’ve already overrun the line to Dothan. They’re marching on Jonestown, about fifteen miles north of the city, sir, moving on that line in a long loop from out of the east.”

“That’s the last line into Marthasville we still hold, sir,” Roast-Beef William said. “If the southrons seize it, we’re as near surrounded as makes no difference.”

“I know that.” Bell spoke in an abstracted voice, as if from far away. The pupils of his eyes were very small. William had seen that before, when heroic doses of laudanum had had their way with the commanding general.

Another runner dashed in. He stood on no ceremony whatever, saying, “Lieutenant General Bell, sir, the southrons are starting to fling firepots and stones into Marthasville, sir! What are we going to do?”

“They’ve moved their engines up close enough to reach the town, have they?” Roast-Beef William said. The second runner nodded.

“One thing at a time,” Bell said, more to himself than to anyone else. After a moment, he gathered himself and turned to William. “You go with your wing and massacre the southrons by Jonestown. If they’re bombarding Marthasville, they can’t have sent that many men north. Crush them, hold on to the glideway line leading north, and, as opportunity offers, push east toward the one to Dothan.”

“Yes, sir.” William saluted. The order struck him as reasonable-more than reasonable, in fact. Holding the glideway lines coming out of Marthasville was the main reason for holding the city itself. Of course, it would have done more good had the Army of Franklin still controlled the lines leading toward Julia and toward Nonesuch. But those were gone, cut by the southrons. No reinforcements or supplies would go to Parthenia along them.

Without the line to Dothan and the one to northern Peachtree Province, though, no reinforcements or-more vital-supplies would get into Marthasville. Hesmucet could sit down and starve the city into submission… if he didn’t prefer to knock it flat instead.

Bell had the same thought at the same time. “Hesmucet uses us barbarously, to throw stones and fire into a city still full of noncombatants,” he said.

“Sir, I would agree,” Roast-Beef William replied. “But if he will do it, it may work to his advantage, and I see no way for us to make him stop it.”

“Barbarous,” Bell repeated. “Shameless and barbarous.” His eyes hardly seemed to have any pupils at all. “I shall drive them away from Marthasville if I see even the smallest chance of doing so.”

“Yes, sir,” Roast-Beef William said, and then, because he couldn’t help himself, “Sir, please do be careful. We’ve already lost a lot of men. How many more can we afford to throw away?”

“If we triumph, the men are not thrown away.” No matter how much laudanum Bell had taken, he still sounded angry. “Joseph the Gamecock would not see that, which is why I command.”

“If we triumph, yes, sir,” William said. “We’ve hit the southrons two hard blows, and haven’t triumphed yet. We need to be able to defend ourselves, too, against the cursed numbers they enjoy.”

“This time, we cannot fail. We must not fail,” Bell said. “We have to win by the city, and we have to win up by Jonestown. You tend to the second, and I will take care of the first. You may rely on it.”

“I do, sir,” Roast-Beef William said. “I have to.” He strode out of Bell’s headquarters before the general commanding could respond to that. Getting out of there also kept him from thinking about how he meant it, which was probably just as well.

Go north to Jonestown. Drive the southrons away from it. Don’t let them seize the glideway line to Dicon. Reclaim the one to Dothan. Put like that, it sounded easy. Bell put it no other way. Turning those broad commands into reality was up to Roast-Beef William. So were all the myriad details of putting his wing of the Army of Franklin into motion. Details mattered little-hardly mattered at all-to Bell.

Roast-Beef William found himself unhappier than ever that Joseph the Gamecock was gone. Joseph had cared about details. Joseph had cared so much about leaves and branches and bark, in fact, that he sometimes had trouble remembering there were trees, let alone a forest. To William’s way of thinking, that was a lesser failing than barely noticing the forest because one was gazing at the kingdom of which it formed a part.

But no one cared about his way of thinking. King Geoffrey had proved that. If he decided he had to sack Joseph, why didn’t he put me in charge? William feared he knew the answer. It’s not just that I have no breeding-neither does Bell. But he’s a hero-his missing pieces prove it. All I am is a man who can get the job done. And now I have to-again.

Work with pen and paper saved him a lot of trouble. By the time he called in his brigade commanders, he had at his fingertips the details Lieutenant General Bell hadn’t bothered with. He gave them out, crisply and cleanly.

“How many men have the southrons got?” somebody asked.

“That I don’t know,” Roast-Beef William admitted unhappily. “But I must be of the opinion that their force is not overlarge. How could it be, when they’re operating fifteen miles north of Marthasville at the same time as they’re keeping the assault against the city in progress?”

No one argued with him. Had the southrons not had a large host, they wouldn’t have been able to operate in two such widely separated places at the same time at all. As far as William was concerned, Marthasville itself remained the most important target. This business of Jonestown was bound to be a distraction, a harassment, nothing more. Once he’d dealt with it, he could bring his wing back up to the city, to aid in the defense.

“Any more questions?” he asked. Hearing none, he nodded. “Very well, gentlemen. You know what’s required of you. I expect you will all do your duty, and all do it handsomely. Dismissed. We move in the morning.”

Some of the soldiers boarded carpets and went north up the glideway. Others moved by road; not enough carpets remained in Marthasville to transport his entire wing. He sent the men who would have to march up to Jonestown off ahead of those who would ride on the carpets: they would travel more slowly, and he wanted his entire force, such as it was, to get there at the same time.

Bell wouldn’t think of such a thing, went through his mind as he mounted his own unicorn and rode off at the head of a column of marchers. If some got there before the rest, he would throw in an attack with what he had and hope the latecomers could support it. No wonder we’re in the state we’re in.

Again, he wished the whole army might have been his. The only answer to that was a shrug of his broad shoulders. What he wished didn’t matter. What King Geoffrey wished did. So the gods had made it. That was what the priests said, at any rate. Roast-Beef William couldn’t help thinking the gods had made some extraordinarily sloppy arrangements for the north.

He peered. He saw no great clouds of smoke rising into the hot, muggy air. Either the southrons hadn’t yet got to Jonestown or no one was in the way to slow them down. He hoped for the former and feared the latter.

When he reached Jonestown, he found with some considerable relief that his hope was fulfilled: the southrons weren’t there yet. But when he sent scouts eastward, probing toward the glideway that led to Dothan and away toward the Great River, those scouts promptly came back, bloodied. “A whole great plenty of them bastards in gray,” was how one of them put it.

Roast-Beef William thought about pushing on regardless. Lieutenant General Bell would have; he was sure of that. To the hells with Lieutenant General Bell, he thought. My orders don’t require me to push on this instant, and I don’t intend to. If Hesmucet and his wing commanders want me, let them come here and try to get me.

“Dig in, men,” he called. “Let’s make sure we have a safe place before we go gallivanting around the landscape.”

By the way his soldiers fell to with spade and pick, they were relieved to get an order like that. They knew the value of earthworks, even if the general commanding the Army of Franklin had yet to figure it out. A trooper with several scars said, “Now we got a nest. If we see our chance, we can fly out. Or we can make those other bastards try and break in.”

“That’s right,” Roast-Beef William said. “That’s just exactly right. As long as the numbers are anywhere close to even, we can keep the southrons off the glideway line and out of Jonestown.”

A tiny alarm bell rang inside his mind. He knew only too well how many men his wing had lost during the fighting south and then west of Marthasville. He didn’t know how many the southrons had lost, only that they hadn’t suffered proportionately. And he knew they’d had more men to begin with, and enjoyed a steady stream of reinforcements. I wish I had the wherewithal General Hesmucet does, he thought enviously. People would reckon me a great soldier, too.

But he couldn’t have that sort of wherewithal, which he also knew only too well. He had to make a few tired men into the equivalent of a host of fresh ones. Earthworks helped. And, if he saw the chance, he would strike out from them, strike toward the glideway line leading east to Dothan and beyond.

Maybe we’ll get it back, he thought. Maybe things will go just right. They have before, every once in a while. But when a man had to count on it… Roast-Beef William grimaced. When a man had to count on it, his kingdom was in trouble.