Papers in Ramblerton could not print everything they
chose. Most of them, had they had a choice, would
have backed the cause of false King Geoffrey. As a southron army had held Ramblerton for more than two and a half years, they didn't have that choice. Doubting George had several officers deciding what the papers could and couldn't say. Editors screamed of tyranny. But they printed what George wanted them to print—or else, as had happened, they abruptly stopped doing business.
The Ramblerton Record was not conspicuously better or worse than any of the other surviving dailies. Because the army kept an eye on them (and, when necessary, a thumb as well), they all tended to sound alike. Doubting George preferred the Record because its type was a little larger than those of its rivals. He could read it without bothering to put on spectacles.
As its chief story this morning, it carried a speech King Avram had made to his council of ministers a few days before. Would it have done that without . . . encouragement from those southron officers? "I doubt it," George murmured, and peered at the paper.
Avram said, The most remarkable feature in the military operations of the year is General Hesmucet's attempted march of three hundred miles, directly through the insurgent region. It tends to show a great increase of our relative strength that our Marshal should feel able to confront and hold in check every active force of the enemy, and yet to detach a well-appointed large army to move on such an expedition.
Doubting George made a sour face. The King of Detina thought—or said he thought—the traitors were stopped all over the map. Why didn't Marshal Bart think the same way? George feared he knew—Bart was trying to drive him out of his mind. The marshal was doing a pretty good job of it, too.
And am I trying to drive Marshal Bart out of his mind? George shook his big head. He wasn't trying to do anything of the sort. He was trying to get rid of the Army of Franklin, and to make sure he didn't get rid of his own army instead. If Bart couldn't see that . . . then, gods damn him, he'd give the army to someone else.
Muttering—he'd distracted himself—Doubting George returned to the Ramblerton Record. King Avram continued, On careful consideration of all the evidence accessible it seems to me that no attempt at negotiation with the insurgent leader could result in any good. He would accept nothing short of severance of the Kingdom—precisely what we will not and cannot give. He does not attempt to deceive us. He affords us no excuse to deceive ourselves. He cannot voluntarily reaccept the unity of Detina; we cannot voluntarily yield it. It is an issue which can only be tried by war, and decided by victory. If we yield, we are beaten; if the northern people fail him, he is beaten.
The more George studied Avram's speeches, the more he became convinced the rightful King of Detina was a very clever man. He hadn't thought so when Avram took the throne. The new king's uncompromising attitude on serfdom had prejudiced him. He saw that now.
He had to open the Record to an inside page to find out the rest of what Avram had told his ministers. What is true, however, of him who heads the insurgent cause, is not necessarily true of those who follow. Although he cannot accept the united Kingdom of Detina, they can. Some of them, we know, already desire peace and reunion. They can, at any moment, have peace simply by laying down their arms and submitting to the royal authority. A year ago general pardon and amnesty, upon specified terms, were offered to all, except certain designated classes; and, it was, at the same time, made known that the excepted classes were still within contemplation of special clemency. During the year many availed themselves of the general provision. During the same time also special pardons have been granted to individuals of the excepted classes, and no voluntary application has been denied.
Doubting George had to read that twice. He hadn't realized King Avram was so reasonable, so merciful. Was the king softening on serfdom, too?
He got his answer right away, for Avram finished, In presenting the abandonment of armed resistance to the royal authority on the part of the insurgents, as the only indispensable condition to ending the war on the part of the Kingdom, I retract nothing heretofore said as to serfdom. In stating a single condition of peace, I mean simply to say that the war will cease on the part of the Kingdom, whenever it shall have ceased on the part of those who began it.
No, Avram hadn't softened. As well as more wit, there was also more iron in the King of Detina than anyone would have suspected when the Thunderer's chief hierophant first set the crown on his head. A few days afterwards, another hierophant of the Thunderer had put a different crown, hastily made for the occasion, on Grand Duke Geoffrey's head up in the north. Not much later, Avram and Geoffrey had stopped talking and started fighting. They'd been fighting ever since.
"Matter of fact, Avram makes a pretty fair King of Detina," Doubting George murmured. He'd sided with Avram when he hadn't believed that at all, out of loyalty to the notion of a united Detina rather than from any particular loyalty to or admiration of the sovereign. A lot of people, in the north and even in the south, had expected Avram to make a dreadful hash of things. But he hadn't, and it didn't look as if he would.
Colonel Andy knocked on George's door, which was open. When George waved for him to come in, he said, "Sir, there's a scryer here who wants to talk with you. Do you want to talk with him?"
Scryers, lately, had brought little but bad news. Even so, George shrugged and nodded. "I'd better, don't you think?"
"Who knows?" Andy turned away and spoke to a man in the antechamber: "Go ahead, but don't you waste the general's time."
"I won't, sir." The scryer, a captain, wore a gray mage's robe, his epaulets of rank, a sorcerer's badge, and a gold—in fact, probably polished brass—crystal ball to show his specialization. He shut the door on Andy after he came inside. Doubting George's adjutant let out a squawk, but the scryer ignored him. To George, he said, "This is for your ears alone."
The commanding general reached up and tugged at one of the organs in question. "Seems to be in tolerable working order," he observed. "Say your say, Captain—?"
"I'm called Bartram, sir. Bartram the Traveler." Bartram was somewhere in his thirties, with a long, lean, mournful face and sad, clever, hound-dog eyes. He gave off a feeling of reliability. Some people did. Some of those people also let you down, as George was painfully well aware. The scryer coughed a couple of times, then said, "My hobby, sir, is looking for ways to read crystal balls that ought to be out of range."
"Some people grow roses. Some people raise snakes. You never can tell," George said.
"Er—well—yes," Captain Bartram said. "But I wouldn't be here now if I did those things."
"I suppose not. You'd probably be happier if you weren't, too," Doubting George said, though he wondered whether Bartram could be happy anywhere. His face denied the possibility. The commanding general went on, "Since you are here, suppose you go ahead and tell me why."
"Yes, sir. I'm here because of some of the things I heard when I was fooling around with my crystal ball late last night. They stretch farther then. I don't know why, but they do."
"And what you heard was—?" George tried to project an air of expectant waiting.
"Sir, what I heard was orders for Baron Logan the Black to hop on a glideway carpet and head east to take command of this army. And what I heard was Marshal Bart saying he'd come east, too, to take charge of Logan."
"Did you, now?" George said slowly, as if he came from the Sapphire Isle. Now he tried not to show the anger he felt. Logan the Black wasn't a regular at all. Hesmucet had declined to let him keep command of a wing when he took it over after James the Bird's Eye was killed outside Marthasville. And now Marshal Bart wanted to hand him command of a whole army? Of this whole army? If that wasn't an insult, Doubting George had never run into one.
"What will you do, sir?" Bartram the Traveler asked. "I thought you ought to know."
"I will do just what I am doing," George replied. "I don't see what else I can do. If Bart wants to show me the door for doing what I think is right, then that's what he will do. I don't intend to lose any sleep over it."
That sounded very pretty. George wished it were true. When he saw Captain Bartram's expression, he wished it were convincing; he would have traded truth for that. Of course, in war, sometimes we can turn what's convincing into what's true, as long as the bastards on the other side don't see behind it.
Since he obviously wasn't being convincing here, though, that didn't apply. Bartram said, "Sir, maybe you really ought to attack now."
"Even you, Bartram?" George said. Then he surprised even himself by starting to laugh.
"What the hells is funny, sir?" the scryer blurted. He started to apologize.
Doubting George held up a hand. "Don't worry about that, Captain. It's one of the most honest things I've heard lately. And I'll even give you the answer. John the Lister is another one who's been nagging me to do what I don't care to do just yet. He has to have wondered if he'd take over this army once Marshal Bart gave me the boot. Now we know—he wouldn't. He can't like the idea of serving under Logan the Black. So I suspect he'll stay loyal as loyal can be for as long as I keep command."
"You've still got two or three days, sir," Bartram the Traveler said. "Maybe even four. Baron Logan will come east to Cloviston, then north from there to here. Marshal Bart will have to sail from Pierreville down to Georgetown, and then he'll hop on the glideway, too. He's a few days behind Logan."
"I see. Thank you for putting everything so precisely," George said. "One more thing I need to ask you: how reliable is all this? When you're playing with your crystal ball there, you're not just imagining you're hearing what you're hearing, are you?"
"No, sir," Bartram replied. "I'm doing the same sorts of things we do when we try to read the northerners' crystal balls, except I'm doing them to our own side. And I have some tricks not every scryer knows. Quite a few tricks not every scryer knows, if I do say so myself." He drew himself up with pride.
Doubting George wondered whether to congratulate him or clap him in the brig. Finding out what you wanted to know regardless of whether you were supposed to know it was a very Detinan thing to do. If the individual was altogether free and untrammeled, the kingdom would surely be free, too, wouldn't it? I don't know. Would it? As usual, George had his doubts. The kingdom might go down the drain instead.
He said, "Since no one has bothered telling me Logan the Black is on the way to steal my command, do me the courtesy of keeping this under your hat till it is official, if you'd be so kind."
"Yes, sir." Bartram touched the brim of that hat with a forefinger in what wasn't quite a salute. "You can count on me."
"Thank you, Captain." George nodded. The scryer left. George sighed. If he'd been Guildenstern, he would have reached for a bottle of brandy. Being who he was, he just sighed again. Before long, the news would get out: if not from Bartram the Traveler, then rushing ahead of Baron Logan. Gods damn his thieving soul, Doubting George thought. That wasn't fair. He didn't care. Bart wasn't being fair to him, either.
He wanted to rush to the scryers' room and find out exactly how far away those two brigades of footsoldiers from the east were. He wanted to, but he didn't. If he showed worry, people would start wondering why. If they started wondering, they would find out before long. And a lot of his authority would fly right out the window if they found out.
He went outside, shaking off Colonel Andy's questions. Maybe I ought to attack the Army of Franklin without those two brigades. George shook his head. He still felt—he strongly felt—he would do better to wait. What happened to his career was one thing. What happened to his men was something else again, something much more important.
If Baron Logan the Black took over this army, of course, he would attack regardless of whether those brigades had come. Doubting George understood that. Logan would be taking over for the purpose of immediate attack. As long as he got a victory out of it, would he care what happened to the army? George shook his head. "Not fornicating likely," he muttered.
"Hey, General!" a soldier called. George's head came up. The man went on, "Do you doubt we can lick those stinking traitors? Turn us loose! We'll do it!" Without waiting for an answer, he tipped his cap and went on his way.
Doubting George laughed in something not far from despair. How many times in the War Between the Provinces had generals from both sides sent their men out to do things flesh and blood simply could not do? More times than anyone could hope to count; George doubted that not at all. But how many times had generals held back from an attack their soldiers actually wanted to make? If this wasn't the first, he would have been astonished.
Does that mean I'm wrong? he wondered. When he shook his head, it was at first with the air of a man bedeviled by bees, or at least by doubts. But then his resolve stiffened. He earned his pay because he allegedly knew more about what he was doing than the men he commanded.
"Allegedly," he said. Much of the soldier's art was obvious. Advancing crossbowmen and pikemen usually had a pretty good notion of whether they would prevail even before bolts started flying. Maybe I am wrong here, George thought. Maybe I am—but I still doubt it.
"Logan the Black?" John the Lister stared as if he'd never heard the name in all his born days. "Baron Logan the Black? Bart's sending him to take over this army? He's not even an Annasville man!"
Colonel Nahath shrugged. "That's what I heard, sir. A couple of blonds who serve the scryers were gossiping about it, and one of my men, a corporal, listened to 'em. They didn't shut up because he's a blond himself. I thought you ought to know."
"Thanks—I think," John told the regimental commander from New Eborac.
"I understand how you must feel, sir," Nahath said sympathetically. "If Doubting George doesn't use this army . . ."
He stopped right there: that was the place where another word would go too far. If George doesn't use this army, you ought to, might get back to Baron Logan if he did oust Doubting George. If Logan ever heard that, he was likely to make both John and Nahath sorry for it.
"Nothing we can do, is there?" Colonel Nahath said, changing course.
"Doesn't seem to be," John answered. "If the enemy gives us a hard time, we can always go out and fight him. I know Doubting George doesn't seem to want to, but we can. But who's going to protect us from the people on the same side as we are? No one ever has. No one ever will."
"I suppose not." Nahath sighed. "Seems a pity, doesn't it? George has done so much good here in the east—and so have you, sir. You ripped the guts out of Bell's army at Poor Richard, same way a tiger will rip the guts out of a sheep with his hind claws. They're a sorry lot now. Have you seen them?"
"Seen them? I've even been up in an observation tower with a spyglass. They're close enough for a man with a decent glass to see how many of 'em are barefoot."
"I know." Colonel Nahath nodded. "But they've still got pikes and crossbows and some engines. And they still don't like us. When we do attack them, they'll fight hard." He sighed again. "I've never yet seen those bastards not fight hard. The first time would be nice. I don't suppose I'd better hold my breath."
"No, I don't think you should, Colonel," John the Lister said. "They'll always fight hard. But if we can beat 'em once more, beat 'em the way they should be beaten, what'll they have left to fight with after that?"
"Teeth. Fingernails. Ghosts," Nahath answered. "That might be enough to scare some blonds—though that corporal I was telling you about would be angry if he heard me say so—but it doesn't frighten me. If we beat 'em once more, sir, I think you're right. I think they fall to pieces." He tipped his hat. "I think we can give 'em that beating, too. If it's not under Doubting George, I also think it's a gods-damned shame you don't get the chance to do it." There. He'd come out and said it.
"That's very kind of you, Colonel. I do appreciate it, believe me."
The regimental commander shrugged. "I'm telling you what I think, sir. I'm just as much a free Detinan as Baron Logan the Black, even if he's got a fancier pedigree than I do. He's a brave man. He's a good soldier, for a man who's not a regular. But we've been through this whole campaign, and he hasn't. A man who has ought to be in charge when it all pays off. That's how I look at things, anyhow." Nahath shrugged again. "Marshal Bart's liable to look at it differently."
"Looks like he does," John said. Nahath nodded, saluted, and went on his way.
John strode down the board sidewalks and muddy streets of Ramblerton. Here was a town unusual in the Kingdom of Detina: a town with plenty of men of fighting age on the streets and going about their ordinary, everyday business. In most places, south and north, a large number of them would have been called to serve the gold dragon or the red. Not here. The southrons who occupied Ramblerton didn't trust the locals to fight on their side, and they'd done their best to keep those men from slipping out of town and fighting for King Geoffrey. And so, in between one side and the other, the Ramblertonians had what neither side enjoyed: peace.
Having it, they refused to enjoy it. One of them jeered at John as he went by: "You southron bastards are scared to fight General Bell. You've never been anything but a pack of stinking cowards."
John smiled his politest smile. "We're winning," he said, and kept walking.
"Blond-lover!" the Ramblertonian shouted.
Smiling still, John answered, "Well, most of the blonds I've thought of loving are a lot prettier than your sister."
The man thought about that for two or three heartbeats. Then, bellowing like an aurochs in the mating season, he lowered his head and charged. No matter how furious he was, though, he'd never really learned anything about fighting. That was what the occupation of Ramblerton had done to the men who lived there: it had deprived them of the chance to become efficient killers.
John the Lister sidestepped and hit the local in the pit of the stomach with his left fist. "Oof!" the man said: a sound more of surprise and outgushing air than of pain. Pain or no, though, he folded up like a concertina. John straightened him with an uppercut to the point of the chin.
His foe was made of solid stuff. He stayed on his feet after that shot to the jaw, though his eyes went glassy. John the Lister's sword hissed from its scabbard. Far more often than not, a brigadier's sword was a parade weapon, nothing more.
High-ranking officers seldom came close enough to enemies in the field to use steel against them. Half a dozen of Bell's brigadiers had died fighting in the front ranks at Poor Richard, but that was as unusual as everything else about the battle there.
But even though John seldom used the blade, he kept it sharp. Its point caressed the Ramblertonian's throat just below the edge of his beard. Wan late-autumn sunshine glittered off the bright blade.
"You were just leaving, weren't you?" John inquired in honeyed tones.
Blinking—and swaying more than a little—the local stood there with his mouth hanging open, trying to make his wits work enough to answer. A small trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth down into his beard. "Yes," he said at last. "I reckon maybe I was."
To make sure he was, his friends grabbed him and hauled him away from John the Lister. "He'd better be careful," John called after them. "He might run into another southron coward and not live through it."
None of them answered, which he thought mean-spirited.
If one southron can whip one northerner, how many southrons do we need to whip all the northerners in the Army of Franklin? John wondered. Fewer than we've already got, I think.
Most of the other southron officers in Ramblerton came up with the same answer. Doubting George had a different one. He was in command, and so his answer was the one that counted.
But how long would he stay in command? What sort of answer would Logan the Black come up with when he got here from the west? John the Lister had no trouble figuring that out. Logan would attack. He would probably win, too. And whatever glory there was would go to him.
If it doesn't go to George, it ought to go to me. John had thought that before. It did him exactly no good. He wasn't the one who got to apportion such things. Marshal Bart was, and Bart had chosen Baron Logan.
He can give out glory, John thought wonderingly. If that doesn't make a man a god on earth, what would?
Then he shook his head. Bart could give out the chance for glory. There was no guarantee Logan the Black could seize it. But after John looked north toward the Army of Franklin's curtailed lines, he let out a long sigh. If Logan couldn't whip Lieutenant General Bell—if anybody couldn't whip Lieutenant General Bell—now, he didn't deserve glory.
A man in a gray robe came out of a building on the far side of the street: a tall, skinny, graceless man who looked as if he would fall over in a strong breeze. John the Lister waved to him. "Major Alva!" he called.
After a moment of blinking and staring and obviously trying to recall who this person wanting his attention was, Alva waved back. "Hello, sir," he said, and trotted across the street toward John. An ass-drawn wagon full of barrels bore down on him. The teamster aboard the wagon jerked the reins hard. Braying resentfully, the asses stopped less than a yard from Alva. The teamster cursed like . . . like a teamster, thought John, who was too horrified at the sight of the best southron wizard east of the Green Ridge Mountains—and very possibly west of them, too—barely escaping destruction to indulge himself with fancy literary figures.
What was even more horrifying was that Alva himself had no idea he'd just escaped destruction. The braying jackasses and cursing teamster? The rattling wagon full of barrels? As far as he was concerned, they might have been in New Eborac City or on the far side of the moon. That meant he was liable to do something else just as idiotic this afternoon or day after tomorrow, and luck and a foul-mouthed teamster might not be enough to keep him safe then.
"Is something wrong, sir?" he asked, which meant that John the Lister's horror must have been even more obvious than he thought.
"You should be more careful when you cross the street, Major," John got out after considerable effort.
"You're right," Alva said gravely. That cheered John till the mage went on, "I almost stepped in a couple of mud puddles there. Only fool luck I didn't, I suppose."
"Mud puddles," John muttered. He shook his head. "The gods must watch over you, because you certainly don't seem to be able to take care of it for yourself."
"What do you mean, sir?" Alva asked. John spread his hands. It wasn't that he couldn't explain. But he could see explaining would be as useless as explaining the facts of life to a bullfrog. Then Alva brightened. "Whatever it is, I hope it can wait. I've been meaning to congratulate you on your promotion, and this is the first chance I've had."
"Er—thank you." John wouldn't have bet that Alva knew the difference between a captain and a brigadier. His attitude toward subordination argued against it.
But the wizard said, "You're welcome. Making brigadier in the regulars will set you up for after the war."
He'd already shown he was thinking about what he would do once the War Between the Provinces finally ended. Maybe he was thinking about what everyone would do once the war ended. John nodded and said, "I hope so, anyhow. Are the traitors up to anything sorcerous that's strange or out of the ordinary?"
"What an interesting question, sir," Major Alva said. "As a matter of fact, I was checking on them yesterday afternoon. You never can tell about those people."
"Well, no," John the Lister said. "We are fighting a war with them, if you recall. What did your check show?"
"Nothing," Alva replied. "Oh, not a great big glow-in-the-dark Nothing, the kind that can only mean somebody's hiding a great big ugly, nasty Something behind it. But as far as I can tell, Bell's mages are just doing the usual kinds of things mages in an army do—healing, scrying, investigating for a what-do-you-call-it. . . ."
He didn't explain. "A what-do-you-call-it?" John asked.
"You know, where they try to find out whether a son of a bitch really is a son of a bitch," Alva said helpfully.
However helpful he meant to be, he wasn't. And then, all of a sudden, a light went on inside John's head. "A court-martial!" he exclaimed.
"Yes, one of those." It was, plainly, all the same to Alva. The wizard went on, "Anyhow, uh, sir, they're doing that kind of thing, but I don't see them doing anything much else: nothing that they're showing, anyhow."
"Could they hide it from you?" John the Lister asked.
Alva looked indignant. No—Alva looked offended. "The bunglers Bell's got with him? They couldn't hide their prongs when they pull up their pantaloons . . . sir," he said scornfully.
John the Lister had never heard a southron wizard talk that way about his northern opposite numbers. Most southron sorcerers viewed the northerners with fearful respect. Most of them needed to. Not Alva, and he didn't.
The thump of drums, the skirl of horns, and the wail of pipes came from the south, from the banks of the Cumbersome. Alva peered. "Look!" he said in childish delight. "A parade!"
And so it was. Their musicians leading the way, flags flying, regiment after regiment of tough-looking southron soldiers in gray tunics and pantaloons marched from the river north toward the encampments by Doubting George's field fortifications. For a little while, John the Lister simply watched them, as Major Alva did. Then, realizing who those soldiers had to be, he muttered, "By the gods!"
"What is it, sir?" Alva asked.
"Curse me if those aren't the two brigades from the far side of the Great River."
"That's nice," the wizard said agreeably. "What about 'em?"
"What about 'em?" John echoed. "This about 'em: they're the men Doubting George has been waiting for the past two weeks. He's said he couldn't attack Bell without 'em. Now they're here. I wonder if he really will attack now that they are."
"Why wouldn't he?" Alva asked. "I mean, if he did say that—"
"People can come up with all sorts of excuses for not doing what they don't want to do," John answered. "I don't know whether George has done that. By the Lion God's fangs, I hope he hasn't. But we're going to find out, because he hasn't got any other excuses left."
Lieutenant Griff looked up and down the trench. His larynx, big as an apple, bobbed up and down in his throat. He called, "Are you men ready to do all you can for good King Avram and for Detina?"
"Yes, sir!" Corporal Rollant shouted. He gripped the staff of the company standard hard enough to whiten his knuckles. His voice wasn't the only one eagerly raised, either. He hoped Bell's men were too far away to hear the southrons yelling. He thought they were, but he wasn't sure. His comrades all along the line were making a lot of noise.
"We've waited a long time for this now," Griff said. "Some people will tell you we've waited too long. There's all sorts of stupid talk going about. You'll have heard it. Some folks say a new commander for us is coming from the west. Some folks say Marshal Bart is on his way here. Some even say a new commander and Bart are heading this way. In a few days, maybe all that would have mattered. But it won't now. And do you know why?"
"Why?" the men called.
Lieutenant Griff, who'd cupped a hand in back of his ear waiting for just that call, grinned at them. "I'll tell you why. Because we're going to lick the hells out of the gods-damned traitors before anybody can get here from the west. That's why!"
A great cheer erupted, as if the southrons had already gone and won their battle. Rollant gripped the flagpole harder than ever. Were they all deaf over there in Bell's lines? Well, it wouldn't matter for long, because the southrons were going to come forth from the line of forts they'd held for the past couple of weeks. When they did, the northerners would no longer have any possible doubt about what they intended.
Rollant's regiment, along with the rest of the wing John the Lister commanded, was stationed on the right of Doubting George's line. John's men were, in fact, the rightmost footsoldiers in the line. Out beyond them were only Hard-Riding Jimmy's unicorn-riders.
Horns screamed, all along the southrons' front. "Forward!" Colonel Nahath shouted in a great voice. "Forward for good King Avram! Forward for freedom! Forward because smashing this army of traitors into the dust at last takes a long step toward winning the war!"
"Forward!" Lieutenant Griff yelled. "Avram and victory!" His voice would never be very deep, but it didn't crack. He was, bit by bit, growing up.
"Forward!" Sergeant Joram boomed. "We'll whip the stinking traitors out of their boots, or I'll know the reason why." Like any sergeant worth his silver, he wanted his men to fear him more than the enemy.
"Forward!" Rollant yelled. He was an underofficer; he wanted to, and had the right to, make his voice heard. "Forward for freedom!" For him, no other war cry mattered. In the north, he wouldn't have been allowed to wear a sword on his hip, let alone a corporal's stripes on his sleeve.
Beside him, Smitty said, "I'm confused, your high and mighty Corporalship, sir. Which direction should we go in?"
Laughing, Rollant answered, "You can go to hells, Smitty—but take some traitors with you before you do. Come on!"
His breath smoked as he scrambled out of the trench. The day was clear but cold, the sun low in the northeast. He waved the company standard back and forth. More and more southrons came out of the works in front of Ramblerton. They formed their lines and advanced.
Off to the right, Hard-Riding Jimmy's troopers swept out on what looked to be a looping path around the far left of the Army of Franklin. Rollant saw that much, and then stopped worrying about the riders. They still had to beat Ned of the Forest. He knew all about Ned—and when had southrons ever come close to matching what he'd done? Rollant knew the answer to that only too well: never.
He looked to the left. The standard he carried was one of scores—hundreds—sweeping forward at the same time. The right was a little in front of the center, where the banners seemed a little farther apart. Off to the left, he thought the standards were tightly bunched once more. He wasn't so sure of that, though, as the left was a long way off.
Here and there, stones and firepots arced through the air toward the oncoming southrons from behind the northerners' lines. The first ones fell short. Then they began clawing holes in the ranks of the men in gray. Repeating crossbows clattered into action, too. Engineers were pushing the southrons' own catapults and repeating crossbows forward as fast as they could. They soon started shooting back.
Lieutenant Griff brandished his sword. He said, "It must be true what they say about Bell's army—they haven't got a whole lot of engines left."
"A good thing, too, sir, if anyone wants to know what I think," Rollant answered. "They'd hack us to pieces if they did."
Bell's men had dug shooting pits in front of their first line of trenches, as John the Lister's army had done in front of Poor Richard. Men in blue popped up out of those pits and started sending crossbow quarrels toward the advancing southrons. One hummed past Rollant's ear. Another—thock!—punched a hole in the standard he carried. It would have punched a hole in him, too, had it happened to fly a few feet lower.
Behind him, crossbowmen began to shoot at Bell's men. Zip! Zip! More bolts flew past, too close for comfort. Every so often, a standard-bearer or an officer got shot in the back "by accident" when someone in the ranks who didn't care for him let fly. As a blond, Rollant knew plenty of people didn't care for him. He couldn't do anything about it now, and tried not to think about it.
Motion ahead and to his right caught his eye. It wasn't, as he'd hoped, Hard-Riding Jimmy's men sweeping down on the traitors' flank. Instead, it was Ned of the Forest's unicorn-riders, red dragon on gold flying from their standards, maneuvering to block Hard-Riding Jimmy and keep him from doing whatever he'd set out to do.
Well, who ever saw a dead unicorn-rider? Rollant thought, not without bitterness. If a footsoldier said that out loud to a unicorn-rider, it was guaranteed to start a fight. That didn't mean Rollant and his comrades didn't think such things, though.
Unicorn-riders lent a touch of style to what would otherwise be vulgar brawls. Past that, on the southron side at least, they'd never been good for much. Maybe Hard-Riding Jimmy could change that. Rollant would believe it when he saw it.
The northerners in the shooting pits ran back toward their own line. "Provincial prerogative!" they shouted, and, "King Geoffrey!"
"Freedom!" Rollant yelled back. "King Avram and freedom!" He took one hand off the flagpole to shake a fist at Bell's men.
Still waving his sword, Lieutenant Griff ran ahead of his men toward the earthen breastwork in front of the northerners' forward trench. "King Avram and one Detina forever!" Griff shouted. Rollant hustled forward to keep up with the company commander. Griff swung the sword again. "Avram and free—"
A crossbow quarrel caught him in the throat. He made a horrible gobbling noise and threw up both hands to clutch at the wound. The sword fell forgotten to the ground. Blood, dreadfully red, fountained out between Griff's fingers. Seeing so much blood, Rollant knew the wound had to be mortal. Griff couldn't have bled much more or much faster if a stone had struck off his head. He staggered on for another couple of steps. Then his knees gave out, and he crumpled to the ground.
Rollant stooped to snatch up the sword he had dropped. An officer's blade, it was half again as long as the stubby weapon the blond carried on his hip. As he bent to take it—shifting the company standard from right hand to left at the same time—another bolt hissed malevolently over his head. If he hadn't bent down, it might have caught him in the face. "Thank you, Thunderer," he muttered. "I'll do something nice for you if you let me live through this fight."
When he straightened, he waved the standard and swung the sword. A standard-bearer, he'd found, had to have some ham in him, or the rest of the men wouldn't follow him the way they should.
And now he had the perfect war cry to make his comrades give all they could. "For Lieutenant Griff!" he shouted, and ran on, past the company commander's body.
"For Lieutenant Griff!" the men behind him roared.
Griff's fall meant Sergeant Joram was in charge of the company for the time being. He ran up alongside of Roland. Joram had his own way of getting the most out of his men. Pointing to Rollant, he bellowed, "Are you sons of bitches going to let this fellow do it all by himself?"
"Sergeant—" Rollant began, and then let it go. He'd already seen that Joram didn't have too much against blonds. The sergeant was also trying to get the men to fight hard. Later might be the time to talk about it. Now wasn't.
"Avraaaam!" Joram yelled as he sprang up onto the parapet. He shot one traitor, threw his crossbow in the face of another, drew his shortsword, and leaped down into the trench.
"Avraaaam!" Rollant echoed. He jumped down into the trench, too, and spitted a northerner before the man in blue could shoot him.
Another northerner rushed forward, grappling with him to wrestle away the company standard. Struggling and cursing, Rollant couldn't get his arm free enough to stab the enemy soldier. He hit him in the face with the pommel of Lieutenant Griff's sword. Something—probably the northerner's nose—flattened under the impact. The man howled but hung on and tried to trip him. Rollant smashed him again with the weighted pommel. The second blow persuaded the traitor he wasn't going to get what he wanted. He lurched down the trench, his face dripping blood.
More and more southrons jumped into the trench. Northern pikemen rushed up to drive them back. That was bad—pikes had far more reach than shortswords. But southron pikemen joined the fight moments later, thrusting and parrying against their foes. Rollant was too busy trying to stay alive to pay much attention to the details. He did know that southron reinforcements eased the pressure on his comrades. The southrons were into the Army of Franklin's trenches, and it didn't look as if Bell's men could throw them out again.
There was Colonel Nahath, scrambling up out of the first trench and pointing to the next one with his sword. "Come on, boys!" he cried. "Are you going to let a pack of dirty, stinking traitors slow us down?"
"No!" the soldiers shouted. They hurried after the regimental commander. The northerners they fought were dirty and stinking. Rollant and his comrades weren't, or not so badly; they'd spent the past couple of weeks in far better quarters than their foes had. A few days in the field, though, and nobody civilized would want to get anywhere near them, either.
"Let's go! Let's go! Let's go!" That was Sergeant Joram, urging his men on. Rollant waved the company standard again. Then he too fought his way up onto the high ground between the trenches. He waved the standard yet again. Joram nodded. "That's the way to do it, Corporal!"
"King Avram!" Rollant yelled, and sprang down into the melee in the second trench. A bolt lifted his hat from his head and carried it away. He didn't even have time to shudder at his narrow escape. He was a standard-bearer, and so a target. He was a blond in a gray uniform, and so a target. He was a blond in a gray uniform who'd had the presumption to fool his superiors into thinking he deserved to be a corporal and bear a standard—so northerners would think of it, anyhow—and so doubly or triply or quadruply a target. He was glad he'd picked up luckless Lieutenant Griff's sword. It gave him more reach than most of his foes had. It wouldn't do anything against crossbow quarrels, of course, but by now the trench was so packed with battling men, hardly anybody could raise a crossbow, let alone aim one.
Again, Bell's men tried to drive the southrons out of the trench. Again, gray-clad reinforcements swamped them. Rollant climbed up over dead bodies—he hoped they were all dead—wearing blue and gained the next stretch of open ground between entrenchments.
"Fancy meeting you here," Smitty said, panting.
Rollant looked him up and down. "You mean they haven't killed you yet?" he demanded.
"I don't think so." The other soldier patted himself, as if looking for bolts or a pike or two that might have pierced him when he was busy with something else. He shook his head. "Nope. I still seem to be more or less alive. How about you?"
"About the same, I think. Come on, let's get back to it," Rollant said. "We've pushed 'em pretty hard so far."
"Haven't broken through yet, though." Smitty spoke with a connoisseur's knowledge of what he wanted. "But who knows? We just might."
"Yes." Rollant nodded. "We just might." That was as much of a breather as he allowed himself. He waved the standard and rushed forward into the fight. If the southrons did break through at last, he wanted to be part of it. After so much hard struggle, he thought he'd earned the right.
Later that day, a crossbow quarrel nicked his left ear. He bled all over his tunic, but it wasn't even close to a serious wound. A healer put a stitch in it and said, "I don't even think you'll have a scar."
"Oh." Rollant almost felt cheated—with the little wound, and with the battle. The northerners gave ground, but they didn't break. He wanted them ruined, not just driven back. He could see that that smashing victory ought to be there. He could see it, but he couldn't—Doubting George didn't seem able to—find a way to reach out and grab hold of it.
Captain Gremio's regiment, along with the rest of what remained Colonel Florizel's wing, was posted at the far right end of the Army of Franklin's line. "Lieutenant General Bell expects the southrons to concentrate their attack against this wing," Gremio told his company commanders—three captains, four lieutenants, and three sergeants. "You've got to let your men know they'd better fight hard. A lot is liable to depend on them when the southrons move. And I think the southrons are going to move today." As if to underscore his words, the sun rose in the northeast and spilled blood-colored light over their lines and over the works in front of Ramblerton to the south.
Sergeant Thisbe raised a hand. When Gremio nodded, Thisbe asked, "How does Bell know this is where Doubting George aims to hit hardest?"
"I can't tell you that, because Colonel Florizel didn't tell me," Gremio answered. "I don't know whether Bell told his wing commanders how he knows—or why he suspects, I should say." As usual, he spoke with a barrister's relentless precision.
One of the other company commanders—Gremio didn't see who—muttered, "I hope Bell's not right the way he was when he sent us at the southrons' trenches by Poor Richard."
"That will be enough of that," Gremio said sharply. He wished the other man hadn't done such a good job of voicing his own fear. He'd lost faith in the commanding general. That did him exactly no good, as Bell was going to keep right on giving orders regardless of whether Gremio had faith in him. The regimental commander continued, "We ought to get the men fed early, too, in case we do have to fight today."
None of the company commanders quarreled with that. They got the cooks working earlier than usual, and grumbling more than usual on account of it. Even so, only about half the men got breakfast before warning cries from the sentries in the shooting pits out in front of the main line announced that the southrons were indeed coming forth. Gremio got nothing to eat himself. His belly growled in disappointed resentment when he rushed out of the breakfast line and up toward the parapets.
When he looked to the south, his jaw dropped. That wasn't hunger. It was shock. He'd known Avram's soldiers would be moving against the Army of Franklin. He'd known, yes, but he'd never dreamt the move would look like . . . this. From one end of the line to the other, miles of southrons swarmed forward under what looked like thousands of company and regimental standards. The attack might not succeed. Whether it did or not, though, it was the most awe-inspiring thing Gremio had ever seen.
"Forward!" he shouted to his own soldiers. "By the Thunderer's lightning bolt, come forward! We have to beat them back!"
Up came the men, some eating, others complaining they'd got no breakfast. Thisbe's light, clear voice put paid to that: "Will you be happy if you get killed with full bellies?"
Gremio half expected some stubborn soldier to answer yes. No one did, or no one he heard. The men filed into the trenches, baggy wool pantaloons flapping as they ran. They loaded their crossbows. Some of them thrust quarrels into the dirt in front of them so they could reload faster.
On came the southrons. It was a couple of miles from their line to the one the Army of Franklin held. We came that far over open country at Poor Richard, Gremio thought, and then they tore hells out of us. Maybe we can do the same to them.
But it wouldn't be easy. Even the part of the southron army that had fought at Poor Richard had had far more engines than the Army of Franklin boasted. Gremio shook his head. How can you boast about something you don't have?
Not only that, unicorns were hauling the southrons' catapults and repeating crossbows right along with the rest of the army. Yes, Gremio's side started shooting first, but Doubting George's men wasted no time replying in kind. A stone thudded into the front of the parapet. It didn't plow through, but dirt flew out and hit Gremio in the face.
Farther down the line, a firepot came down on top of the parapet, sending up a great gout of flame and smoke. Another one landed in the trenches. Burning men shrieked, some not for long. With the sulfurous reek of the firepots came the stink of charred flesh.
A soldier on the shooting step suddenly toppled, shot through the head by a long, thick bolt from a repeating crossbow. The scouts in the shooting pits in front of the main line came out and dashed back toward the entrenchments. More than a few of them fell, shot in the back, before they made it. Some of them were shot by their own comrades in the trenches, too. The southrons had made the same mistake at Poor Richard. Why didn't we learn from them? Gremio wondered.
Southrons were falling, too. A stone knocked down three men before losing its momentum. Repeating crossbows cut down more. And firepots burst among the soldiers in gray.
"Shoot!" Gremio shouted when he judged the southrons were in range of his men's weapons. Up and down the entrenchment, crossbows clacked and snapped. Men reloaded with frantic haste. Someone not far from Gremio cursed horribly when his bowstring broke. He fit a replacement to the crossbow and went back to the business of slaughter.
Gremio didn't need long to see that the southrons assailing his end of the line were veterans. In the face of what the northern soldiers flung at them, they went to the earth and started shooting back from their bellies. Some of them began to dig in; Gremio watched the dirt fly. Raw troops would have charged home in spite of everything, not knowing any better. They would have paid for it, too, paid gruesomely. The Army of Franklin punished the southrons here, but less than Gremio would have hoped.
Sergeant Thisbe said, "They don't have orders to take our trenches no matter what, the way we did a couple of weeks ago with theirs." The underofficer—now the company commander—sounded bitter. Gremio had a hard time blaming Thisbe for that, not when he was bitter himself.
"We're holding 'em here." Gremio peered off toward the left. "Anybody know how we're doing along the rest of the line?"
He didn't, even after peering. A swell of ground just a little to the east kept him from seeing much. All he could do was wonder—and worry. Even here, where the Army of Franklin seemed to be doing fine, a hells of a lot of southrons were attacking. If Lieutenant General Bell happened to be wrong, if this wasn't the stretch where Doubting George's army was pushing hardest, what was happening off to the left, out of Gremio's sight but, with luck, not out of the commanding general's?
Lieutenant General Bell? Wrong? Gremio laughed. How could anyone possibly imagine Bell making a mistake? The idea was absurd, wasn't it? Of course it was. Up till now, Bell had conducted a perfect campaign, hadn't he? Of course he had. The Army of Franklin had smashed John the Lister at Summer Mountain, hadn't it? And then gone on to destroy John's remnants at Poor Richard?
He shook his head. Some of those things could have happened. Some of those things should have happened. But they hadn't. That was at least partly Bell's fault. Could he make another mistake? Gremio knew too well that he could.
Thinking along with him—as the underofficer so often did—Sergeant Thisbe asked, "What if they're hammering us at the far end of the line?"
"Then they are," Captain Gremio replied with a fatalistic shrug. "I don't know what we can do about it except either send reinforcements or run away."
Off to the south, something roared. The chill that ran through Gremio had nothing to do with the weather. A roar like that touched him deep in his brain, deep in his belly. A roar like that meant, Whatever is making this noise wants to eat you—and it can. Another roar resounded, and another, and another.
The dragons looked old as time, deadly as murder, and graceful enough to make an eagle blush. Their great bat wings effortlessly propelled them toward the northerners' trenches. They took no notice of the southrons out in the open below them. It was as if they'd decided to feast on pork, and didn't care whether mutton was out there waiting for them.
Several northerners didn't wait to be eaten. They jumped out of the trenches and ran away, as fast as they could go. "Hold!" Gremio shouted, though he wanted nothing more than to run, too.
"Why?" somebody yelled back, fleeing faster than ever.
For a couple of heartbeats, Gremio found himself altogether without an answer. Then the rational part of his mind reasserted itself. "Because they're magical!" he exclaimed. "They aren't real. They can't be real. When was the last time anybody saw a dragon that isn't on a flag west of the Great River? Over in the Stony Mountains, out past the eastern steppes, yes. But here? Not a chance!"
"They sure look real," someone else said.
And they did. The fire that burst from their jaws looked real, too. More men, not willing to take the chance, scrambled out of the fieldworks and started running away. The southrons shot several of them when they broke cover.
Colonel Florizel limped past. "Don't panic, boys!" he shouted. "It's just the gods-damned southrons telling lies again. What else are they good for?" He nodded to Gremio. "And a fine day to you, Captain. We're doing pretty well here, aren't we?"
"We're holding them, sir, sure enough," Gremio answered. Florizel had limits—anything requiring imagination was beyond his ken. Within those limits, though, he made a pretty good soldier—exactly how good, Gremio had come to understand more slowly than he should have. The captain asked, "How are we doing off to the left? I can't tell from here."
Florizel's face clouded. "Not so well. They've forced back the line there. We may—we likely will—have to fall back here, too, just to keep things straight. I don't think any counterattack at that end will push the southrons out of our works."
Gremio looked over his shoulder. Another ridge line stood a mile or two north of the one the Army of Franklin presently held. He jerked a thumb towards it. "I suppose we'll make another stand there."
"Yes, I suppose we will, too." Florizel nodded. "We've hurt the southrons. They've hurt us, but we've hurt them more than a little. If we can hold off the next attack—if they can even manage another attack, tomorrow or the next day—I'd say we'll have won ourselves a victory . . . and I don't mean the kind Bell says we won at Poor Richard, either." He made a sour face.
"You . . . may be right, your Excellency." Gremio still reckoned Florizel an optimist, but he couldn't say for certain his superior was wrong. Florizel knew more about what was going on than he did. And even an optimist could be right some of the time—Gremio supposed. He said, "Funny how we've held them here, where they were supposed to be pushing hardest, but we had to give ground at the other end of the line."
"Yes, this is a mite strange," Colonel Florizel agreed. "Still and all, though, battle's a funny business. What you figure will happen doesn't, and what you don't does."
"That's true. I wish it weren't, but it is," Gremio said.
"Has my regiment fought well, Captain?" Florizel asked.
"Yes, sir," Gremio answered truthfully.
"Good. It's a funny business of a different sort, you know—needing to ask about the soldiers I commanded for so long."
"You still command us, Colonel."
"Yes, but not that way. How about your old company? That will give you some notion of what I mean."
"My old company is doing just fine, sir, even if it does have a sergeant in charge of it," Gremio answered.
"Good. That's good. You know, if you'd ever wanted to promote that Thisbe to lieutenant's rank, I'd have done it in a heartbeat. He's a hells of an underofficer. I saw that right away."
"Sir, I suggested promotion more than once. Whenever I did, Sergeant Thisbe said no."
"Ah, well. There are some like that. It's too bad. I think he would have made a pretty fair officer, and I don't say that about every sergeant in the regiment."
"I know, sir. I agree. But" —Gremio shrugged— "Thisbe didn't. Doesn't."
"Nothing to be done about it in that case," Florizel said. "A pity, though."
A panting runner came up to him from the left. "Sir, you are ordered to withdraw to the ridge line to the rear," the messenger said. "We've been forced back to it on the left, and we haven't got the men to stretch from one ridge to the other. We have to keep our line as short as we can."
"Is that what Lieutenant General Bell says?" Gremio asked. The runner nodded.
"I can't say he's wrong," Florizel observed. Gremio couldn't say the commanding general was wrong, either. He wasn't sure Bell was right, but, as with Florizel before, that was a different story. Florizel went on, "Prepare my regiment—I'm sorry, Captain: your regiment—for withdrawal. Make sure it can still fight while pulling back. The rest of the wing will accompany it."
"Yes, sir," Gremio said. "Up till now, the southrons haven't pressed us hard. I don't suppose they will here, either." But why haven't they? he wondered, and found no answer that satisfied him.
Ned of the Forest had gone up against Hard-Riding Jimmy's unicorn-riders pushing south, trying to flank John the Lister out of Poor Richard. He hadn't been able to shift them. It was the first time in the whole course of the war that he'd tried to make a move and had the southrons completely thwart him. He hadn't cared for the experience one bit.
Now Hard-Riding Jimmy's troopers were the ones moving forward, and Ned had to stop them. He was discovering he liked that even less.
For one thing, he was again operating without his own full force of riders. Bell, in his infinite wisdom, had sent some of them off to raid Reillyburgh. He'd claimed the raid would help draw Doubting George out of Ramblerton and make him attack the Army of Franklin's entrenched positions. He'd been right, too. Ned wondered how happy Bell was now about being right.
For another, between the fight near Poor Richard and this one, Jimmy had been massively reinforced. Every single one of his unicorn-riders seemed to be using a newfangled, quick-shooting crossbow. He would have badly outnumbered Ned of the Forest even had Ned had all his own riders. This way . . . this way, it was like trying to hold back an avalanche with his hands.
Every inch of ground between the left end of Lieutenant General Bell's line and the Cumbersome River seemed to have a southron unicorn-rider galloping forward over it. And all of them were putting so many crossbow quarrels in the air, a man might almost have walked across the battlefield on them.
"What the hells do we do, Lord Ned?" Colonel Biffle wailed after Jimmy's men made him give up a knoll he'd badly needed to hold. It was either give up the knoll or wait to get flanked out of the position . . . or wait a little longer and get surrounded and destroyed. "What the hells can we do?"
"Fight the bastards," Ned snarled. He'd been living up to his own advice; his saber had blood on it. He laid it across his knees for a moment while he snapped off a shot at a gray-clad southron. He missed, and cursed, and reloaded as fast as he could. A southron could have got off three or four shots with his fancy weapon in the time Ned needed to shoot once.
When he shot again, though, a southron unicorn-rider crumpled in the saddle. "That's the way!" Biffle exclaimed.
But Ned remained gloomy even as he set yet another bolt in the groove of his crossbow and yanked the string back with a jerk of his powerful arms. "They've got four or five times the men we do, and a lot more than that when it comes to shooting power," he said. "How the hells are we supposed to whip 'em with odds like that?"
"If we had all the men we're supposed to—" his regimental commander began.
"It might help a little," Ned broke in. "I hated Bell's guts when he stole 'em from me. I hated his guts, and I hated his empty head. But you know what, Biff? Right this minute, I'm not sure how much difference they'd make."
Colonel Biffle stared at him. "I've never heard you talk this way before, Lord Ned. Sounds like you're giving up."
Before Ned could answer, a crossbow quarrel hummed past between the two men. "I'm not quitting. There's no quit in me. I'll fight till those sons of bitches kill me. Even after I'm dead, I want my ghost to haunt 'em. But by the Lion God's claws, Biff, how am I supposed to win when I've got to fight everything the southrons can throw at me?"
"I don't know, sir. I wish I did. You always have, up till now."
"But up till now I've been operating on my own. If too many southrons came after me, I could always ride off and hit 'em again somewhere else. Here, though, here I'm stuck. I can't pull away from this fight, on account of if I do, Hard-Riding Jimmy gets around the footsoldiers' flank and eats 'em for supper. So I've got to stand here and take it—take it right on the chin."
Another hillock fell, the southrons shooting at the men on it from the front, right, and left at the same time. Ned's troopers barely escaped. If they'd waited much longer, they would have been cut off and surrounded. Watching them fall back, Colonel Biffle said, "That's what happened to me, too."
"I understood you," Ned said. Yet another bolt thrummed past, wickedly close. He went on, "If it's just a shooting match, they're going to whip us. I don't know of anything in the whole wide world plainer'n that." If the southrons did push aside or beat back his unicorn-riders, they would outflank the Army of Franklin's footsoldiers, and then . . . That was all too plain to Ned, too.
Biffle said, "What else can it be but a shooting match?"
"Let's close with 'em," Ned said savagely. This wasn't the kind of fight he usually made, or usually wanted to make. He knew how expensive it would be. But he also knew how disastrous continuing the fight as it was going would be. "They're tough enough with the crossbow, all right. How are they with sabers in their hands?"
"I don't know, sir," Biffle said in wondering tones.
Ned of the Forest wondered, too: he wondered if he'd lost his mind. But when you were desperate, you had to do desperate things. He stood tall in the saddle, brandishing his blood-streaked saber. Pointing it toward the southrons, he roared out a command: "Chaaarge!" He set spurs to his unicorn and thundered at Hard-Riding Jimmy's men.
His troopers followed without hesitation. The southrons were a couple of hundred yards away. Ned hadn't ridden more than half the distance before realizing he'd made a mistake. The enemy didn't want to play his game, and they had the shooting power to make sure his side paid a high price for even attempting it. A storm of crossbow quarrels met his riders. Men pitched from saddles. Unicorns crashed to the ground, screaming like women in anguish. He wondered whether he would have any followers left by the time he got in amongst the southrons. He didn't wonder if he would get in amongst them. He had the good soldier's arrogance to be sure of that.
Sometimes, of course, even good soldiers were wrong. Ned of the Forest shoved that thought deep down out of sight. He had no time for it now. He never had much time for thoughts like those.
His mount lowered its head and charged for the closest enemy unicorn. A young officer with only one epaulet rode the other unicorn: a lieutenant. He shot at Ned, who hunched low on his own beast's back. The southron missed. Cursing, he worked the lever that brought a new bolt up into the groove and cocked the crossbow at the same time. He shot again. He missed again.
Even with a fancy quick-shooting crossbow, he had no time for another shot after that. And, paying so much attention to his crossbow, he hadn't paid enough to his unicorn. Ned's mount gored it in the left shoulder, tearing a red, bleeding line in the perfect whiteness of its coat. The unicorn shrieked and reared. The southron lieutenant had all he could do to stay in the saddle—till left-handed Ned hacked him out of it with a savage saber stroke.
"Come on, you sons of bitches!" Ned shouted, and even he couldn't have told whether he was yelling at his own men or King Avram's. "Let's see how you like it!"
He struck out at another trooper in gray. His sword bit the man's arm. The cry that burst from the southron was as shrill as any a unicorn might have made. Most men—most men on both sides, from what Ned had seen—had little stomach for close combat. They would sooner fight at crossbow range, where they could think of their foes as targets, not as other men like themselves . . . and where they didn't have to meet them face to face.
Ned was different. He might have been a wolf who knew only how to kill with his own jaws. Meeting the enemy face to face didn't bother him—on the contrary. It helped him frighten the foe. And the more fear he spread, the easier that made the rest of his job.
He rode up to a southron sergeant. The enemy unicorn-rider had drawn his saber, but Ned attacked from his left side, which meant he had to reach across his body to defend himself. Ned's smile was wolfish, too. Being left-handed had won him a lot of fights.
It didn't win him this one. Another shouting southron galloped up to help the man he'd assailed. By the time he drove that second fellow off with a wounded unicorn, the sergeant had ridden away.
Lightning smashed down out of a clear sky. "About time, gods damn it!" Ned roared. He'd wondered if all of Bell's wizards had died of old age, or maybe just of accumulated uselessness. At least they were trying.
But they weren't succeeding. No southron troopers rode anyplace near where the lightning struck. It smote once more—again in a place where there were no southrons. Ned cursed. He'd seen that Doubting George had wizards who knew what they were doing. Men said Bell might have prevailed at Poor Richard if a southron wizard hadn't thwarted the northerners' sorcerous assaults.
Now it looked to be happening again. What did that say? Probably that Bell's wizards hadn't learned anything new since the fight at Poor Richard, which surprised Ned not a bit. Bell hadn't learned anything much since then, so why should his mages prove any different?
Again the futile lightnings crashed. Ned of the Forest forgot about them. They wouldn't change anything, and he had to stay alive. He traded swordstrokes with a southron who knew what he was doing with a blade in his hand. Battle swept them apart before either could wound the other.
Colonel Biffle's shout resounded in his ears: "Lord Ned, we've got to pull back!"
"Hells with that," Ned ground out. "We're still giving 'em a hard time."
"But they're giving us worse," Biffle said, "and besides, sir, the footsoldiers are falling back."
"What's that?" Engrossed in his own fight, Ned of the Forest had paid scant attention to what was going on off to his right. But the regimental commander had told the truth. Pressed by swarms of pikemen and crossbowmen in gray, Bell's left wing was pulling back toward the rise a mile or two north of the position in which it had started the day.
The retreat was orderly, the men in blue giving a good account of themselves as they withdrew. No signs of panic showed. But a retreat it unquestionably was.
And Biffle had also told the truth about Ned's charge. Not many of his unicorn-riders remained on their mounts. Like the footsoldiers, they'd done all they could. But they'd come up against too many men and too many quick-shooting crossbows. They'd slowed the southrons, yes. The price they'd paid for slowing them . . .
"All right. All right, gods damn it," Ned said. "Now we can pull back without everything going to hells and gone. And we can anchor our new line on the one the footsoldiers are setting up."
That sounded good. But the farther north from Ramblerton they fell back, the wider the loop of the Cumbersome River became. Ned knew he could keep Hard-Riding Jimmy off the footsoldiers' flank. But who was going to keep the southrons from getting around his flank and into the Army of Franklin's rear?
Nobody. Nobody at all. That was the only answer he could see. He glanced toward the west, where the sun had slid far down the sky. Things hadn't gone too badly today. Darkness would force the fighting to stop before long. If the southrons had enough left to push again tomorrow, though . . .
"They'd better not, gods damn it," Ned muttered.
His men, the survivors, broke off their hand-to-hand struggle with Jimmy's unicorn-riders. Another volley of crossbow quarrels helped speed them back toward their comrades. But the riders in gray didn't try to close with them. That charge might not have done—hells, hadn't done—everything Ned wanted, but it had knocked the southrons back on their heels. Better than nothing.
And better than nothing was about as much as the north could hope for these days. Ned knew that all too well. His own years of campaigning in Dothan and Great River Province, in Franklin and even down in Cloviston, had driven it home. He'd needed one desperate makeshift after another to keep his unicorn-riders in the field. Had he had any lingering doubts, Bell's all but hopeless lunge down into Franklin would have murdered the last of them.
"One more day, and we're still here fighting," Colonel Biffle said.
"That's right. That's just right, gods damn it," Ned said. "And we gave the southrons all they wanted, and then a little more, too." He spoke loudly, to make sure his men listened. He wanted their spirits as high as possible. He feared they would need to do more hard fighting when the sun came up tomorrow.
He'd succeeded in heartening Biffle, anyhow. The regimental commander nodded. "After the botch the footsoldiers made of the fight at Poor Richard, I was afraid they'd fold up and run when the southrons hit 'em. But they didn't. They fought like mad bastards, and no mistake."
"Like mad bastards, yes." Ned of the Forest didn't echo that and no mistake. Too many people had already made too many mistakes in this campaign. Far too many of those people wore northern generals' uniforms. Some of them were now dead. Some . . . weren't.
With the darkness, quiet settled over the battlefield, quiet punctuated by occasional challenges and flurries of fighting, and by the groans of the wounded. What were Hard-Riding Jimmy's men doing in the darkness? Ned sent out scouts, but they couldn't learn much. The southrons' patrols were very aggressive, very alert. We'll find out tomorrow, Ned thought, and tried to fight down worry.