Had General Guildenstern won a victory, he would
have got drunk to celebrate. John the Lister was
sure of it. He saw Doubting George drunk, too, but drunk on triumph rather than spirits.
"I told you so," George cackled. "Gods damn it, I told you so. I told you, and I told Marshal Bart, too. And do you know what else? I was right, that's what else. We didn't just lick 'em. We fornicating wrecked 'em."
"Yes, sir," John said dutifully.
He would rather have won a victory under Doubting George than under Baron Logan the Black, who would have been promoted over his head. The more George carried on, though, the more John wondered if listening to the general commanding was worth the triumph.
It was. Of course it was. He couldn't remember ever making such an astounding, amazing, fantastic advance against the traitors, and wondered if it had an analog anywhere in the War Between the Provinces. Prisoners by the thousands, their war over at last, shambling off into captivity. More northerners dead on the field, and in the long retreat north from the field. More captured catapults and repeating crossbows than he'd ever seen before.
"Wrecked 'em," Doubting George repeated, and John the Lister could only nod. The commanding general went on, "I'm going off to the scryers' tent. Marshal Bart and Baron Logan need to know what we've done today, and so does King Avram. Yes, sir, so does King Avram." Away he went, a procession of one.
John the Lister nodded again. No one doubted Doubting George now. He'd said he needed to wait, and would win once he was done waiting. And what he'd said, he'd done. Could he have won without waiting? John still thought so, but it didn't matter any more.
And John, still a new brigadier of the regulars, knew this victory was better for his career than any Baron Logan the Black could have won. He was George's reliable second-in-command. He would have been Logan's second-in-command, too, but he would have been passed over for the main prize. Now nobody could say that about him. And a good thing, too, he thought.
Colonel Nahath came up to him. After the salutes and the congratulations, Nahath said, "I've got a little problem I'd like to talk over with you, sir."
"Go ahead," John said expansively. "Nobody has big problems, not after today. What's your little one?"
"Well, sir, one of my company commanders, Lieutenant Griff, got killed in yesterday's fighting," Nahath said. "Sergeant Joram took over the company and did well with it. I'd like to promote him to lieutenant."
"Go ahead," John repeated. "That's your problem? We should all have such little worries."
But Colonel Nahath shook his head. "No, sir. That's not my problem. The problem is, I'd like to promote my standard-bearer, a corporal, into the sergeant's slot Joram's leaving open. He's carried the banner well and he's fought bravely. He should get another stripe."
"If he's as good as all that, go ahead and promote him, by the gods," John the Lister said. "Why are you flabbling about it, anyway?"
"Because the corporal's a blond, sir."
"Oh." Sure enough, that got John's attention. He snapped his fingers. "I remember. This is the fellow who grabbed the flagstaff when your standard-bearer got killed over in Peachtree, isn't it? The one you said deserved a chance to fail as a corporal."
"Yes, sir. His name is Rollant. And he hasn't failed as a corporal. He's had to win a fight or two to hold the rank, which an ordinary Detinan wouldn't have, but he's done it. From what poor Griff told me, Rollant told him he didn't dare lose," the colonel from New Eborac said. "If he can do a corporal's job, why not a sergeant's? He's earned the chance to fail again, but this time I don't think he will."
"A blond sergeant," John the Lister said musingly. "Who would have imagined that when the war started?"
"King Avram would have, I think," Nahath answered.
John pursed his lips. When Avram announced his intention of freeing the blond serfs from the land and from their ancient ties to their liege lords, who had taken him seriously? (Well, Grand Duke Geoffrey and the northern nobles had, but that was a different story.) People in the south hadn't dreamt blonds could ever amount to much even if they did have the right to leave the land. From a southron point of view, the war, at first, had been much more about holding Detina together than it had been about removing the serfs from bondage to the land.
But maybe Avram really had seen something in the blonds that almost everyone else missed. "You may be right, Colonel," John said solemnly. "Yes, you may be right."
"You don't object if I promote this fellow, then?" Nahath asked. "I wanted to make sure before I went and did it."
"If he's been a good corporal, odds are he'll make a good sergeant," John said. "Go ahead and do it. The other thing to remember is, it likely won't matter as much as it would have a year ago. I don't see how the war can last a whole lot longer, not after what we've done the past couple of days."
"I hope you're right, sir. I'd like to go home, get back to the life I left when the fighting started," Nahath said. He was a colonel of volunteers, not a regular at all. When the war ended, he would take off his gray uniform and go back to running his farm or putting up manufactories or practicing law or whatever he did.
John didn't know what that was. He'd never asked. He would be glad to go on soldiering, even if he'd never again lead another army the size of the one he'd commanded here. He didn't see how he could; the only enemies in his lifetime who'd truly challenged Detina were other Detinans.
He said, "I've seen regular officers who didn't do their jobs as well as you do, Colonel." He spoke the truth; Nahath was everything anyone could want as a regimental commander, though he might have been out of his depth trying to lead a brigade or a division.
Nahath touched the brim of his gray felt hat now. "I thank you very much, sir. I've done my best, but this isn't my proper trade." He looked north, toward what was left of the Army of Franklin. "What will we do tomorrow?"
"I don't know, not for a fact. I spoke with Doubting George a little while ago, but he didn't say," John the Lister replied. "Still, my guess would be that we'll go on driving them as hard as we can. I don't think the general commanding will be content to let the traitors' remnant get away. If we can take that army off the board altogether . . ."
"Yes, sir. That would be a heavy blow to whatever hopes the north has left." Nahath nodded. "Good. I hoped you'd say something along those lines." Saluting, he did a smart about-face and marched off.
Whatever he does back in New Eborac, I'll bet he's a success at it, John thought. Then he started to laugh. It wasn't necessarily so. Marshal Bart, the one southron officer who'd won victory after victory even in the dark days when few others did, had failed at everything he tried away from the army. Only after he redonned his gray tunic and pantaloons did he show what he could do.
Shouts and cheers rang out not far away. John hurried over to find out what was going on. Picking his way past the campfires came Hard-Riding Jimmy. Every man who saw the young commander of unicorn-riders tried to clasp his hand or pound his back or give him a flask. By the way he swayed, he'd already swigged from quite a few flasks.
John came forward to congratulate Jimmy, too. "Well done!" he said. "Without you, we couldn't have broken them the way we did."
Jimmy's answering grin was wide and foolish; yes, he'd done some celebrating before he got this far. "Thank you kindly, sir," he said. "You didn't do too bad yourself, by the Lion God's holy fangs."
"Every day another step," John said. On a night where Hard-Riding Jimmy and even Doubting George were sounding like the great Detinan conquerors of days gone by, the men who'd subjected the blonds, he could afford to be, or at least to sound like, the voice of reason. He added, "We took a big step today."
"None bigger," Hard-Riding Jimmy said. "No, sir, none bigger. I've never seen the traitors go to pieces like this before." He flashed that grin again. "I hope I see it some more."
"Do you expect anything different from now on?" John asked.
Jimmy shook his head. "Not me. They're ruined. It'd take a miracle—no, by the Thunderer's balls, it'd take a miracle and a half—for them to rally after this. Bell's got to be fit to be tied from what we did to him."
"He's still got Ned of the Forest," John remarked, curious to see what the mention of one leading commander of unicorn-riders would do to the other.
"Ned's a fine officer," Hard-Riding Jimmy said with the owlish sincerity of a man who'd had a little too much to drink. "A fine officer, don't get me wrong. But we whipped his men, and we'll whip 'em again next time we bump into 'em, too. They're plenty brave. Never braver—don't get me wrong." If he hadn't had too much to drink, he wouldn't have repeated the phrase. "But he hasn't got enough troopers and he hasn't got enough proper weapons to give us a real fight."
"Those quick-shooting crossbows make that much difference?" John asked.
"Hells, yes! I should say so!" Hard-Riding Jimmy exclaimed. "Sir, inside of five years the ordinary crossbow will be gone from the Detinan army. Gone, I tell you! It makes a decent hunting weapon, but that's all. With quick-shooters, we'll sweep the blond savages off the eastern steppe like that." He snapped his fingers, but without a sound. He tried again. This time, it worked. "That, gods damn it."
"Well, after what you've done the past two days, I can't very well tell you you don't know your business," John the Lister said. He clapped Hard-Riding Jimmy on the back again. Grinning still, the commander of unicorn-riders lurched off.
"Brigadier John!" a runner called. John turned and waved to show he'd heard. The messenger hurried over to him. "I'm glad I caught up with you, sir. Doubting George's compliments, and the orders for the morning for your wing are hard pursuit. You are to take an eastern route, as best you can, and try to get ahead of the traitors. That way, with luck, we can surround them and wipe them out."
"Hard pursuit by an eastern route," John repeated. "I'm to get out in front of the Army of Franklin if I can. My compliments to the commanding general in return. I understand the orders, and I'll obey them." With another salute, the runner trotted away.
George had brought engineers forward to put more bridges across the stream that had slowed pursuit the evening before. As soon as they got near the far bank, northern snipers started shooting at them. The southrons pushed repeating crossbows up to the edge of the stream and hosed down the brush on the north bank of the stream with quarrels. They sent men in gray in there after the northerners, too. All that slowed but did not stop the sniping. Slowing it let the bridges reach the north bank and let the southrons cross with ease. After that, the snipers fell back.
Riding at the front of his column of footsoldiers, John the Lister pushed ahead as hard as the tired men would go. Every once in a while, off to the west, he got a glimpse of the remnants of the Army of Franklin, which was also moving north at something close to double time. The traitors had to be even more weary than his own men. How long could they continue that headlong withdrawal? John grinned. Not long enough, or so he hoped.
He was about to order his men to swing in on the fleeing northerners when a crossbow quarrel zipped past his head. If he could see Bell's men, they could see him, too. And even Bell, no great general—as he'd proved again and again—could see what the southrons had in mind.
Bell's rear guard came from Ned of the Forest's troopers. They were, as every southron who'd ever met them had reason to know, a stubborn bunch. Here they were fighting mostly dismounted from a stand of trees that gave them good cover.
John the Lister wanted to roll over them even so. He wanted to, but discovered he couldn't. They knocked his first attack back on its heels. Cursing, he shouted, "Deploy! We'll flank them out, by the Lion God's mane!"
And his men did exactly that, with some help from Hard-Riding Jimmy's unicorn-riders. They did it, yes, but doing it took them an hour and a half. They didn't damage Ned's force very much, either. Instead of waiting to be surrounded and slaughtered, the northern troopers went back to their unicorns and rode off when their position grew difficult. They wouldn't have any trouble catching up with Bell's retreating column of footsoldiers.
They wouldn't—but John the Lister's men would. While the southrons were fighting that rear-guard action, the main body of their foes marched several miles. John did some more cursing. "Step it up, boys!" he called.
The soldiers tried. He'd feared he was asking more of them than flesh and blood could give. Toward evening, they came close to catching up with the northerners again. Again, though, a detachment of Ned's troopers, this time backed up by footsoldiers in blue, delayed them long enough to let Bell's main force get away.
"We'll keep after them," John declared. He wondered if they would be able to make the traitors stand and fight, though.
Ned of the Forest supposed he might have been more disgusted, but he had trouble seeing how. One thing that might have let him show more disgust would have been less to worry about. He was as busy as a one-armed juggler with the itch. The southrons knew they had the Army of Franklin on the run. For once, that didn't satisfy them. They wanted the army dead—no, not just dead; extinct.
They were liable to get what they wanted, too. Bell had given Ned the dubious honor of commanding the rear guard against Doubting George's onrushing army. Ned didn't want the job. The only reason he'd taken it was that he couldn't see anyone else who had even a chance of bringing it off.
"They're going to hound us all the way out of Franklin, Biff," he said at the end of the first day's retreat.
"Yes, sir." Colonel Biffle nodded. "Gods damn me to all the hells if I see how we can stop 'em, either."
"Stop 'em?" Ned started. He didn't know whether he felt more like laughing or crying. Since both would have made Colonel Biffle worry, he contented himself with a growl that could have come from the throat of a tiger in the far northern jungle. "By the Thunderer's belly button, Biff, we're not going to stop those stinking sons of bitches. If we can slow 'em down enough so they don't eat all of Bell's army, King Geoffrey ought to pin a medal on us just for that."
"Yes, sir," Biffle said, and then, after a long, long pause, "If we can't stop 'em, though, Lord Ned, the war's as good as lost."
Ned of the Forest only grunted in response, as he'd tried not to show pain whenever he was wounded. He didn't think his regimental commander was wrong—which only made the words hurt worse.
"What do we do, sir?" Biffle asked. "What do we do if . . . if King Avram's bastards really can lick us?"
"The best we can our ownselves," Ned answered firmly. "They haven't done it yet, and I aim to make it as hard for them as I can. As long as we keep fighting, we've got a chance. If we throw up our hands and quit, we really are licked."
"Yes, sir." Colonel Biffle sounded a little happier—but only a little.
When Ned of the Forest got a good look at his own troopers after their latest encounter with John the Lister's footsoldiers, he understood why. Their heads were down; their shoulders slumped. For the first time, they looked like beaten men. They kept on, yes, but they plainly had no faith in what they were doing.
"Come on, boys," Ned called. "We'll hang a few more bruises on those southron bastards, and after a while they'll give up and go home. We can do it. We always have. What's one more time?"
A few of the unicorn-riders smiled and perked up. Most of them, though, kept that . . . trampled look they'd been wearing. When they compared what they heard to what they saw, they realized the two didn't match. And what they saw, what everyone in the east who followed King Geoffrey couldn't help seeing, was a great tide of disaster rising up to roll over them and drown them.
Captain Watson rode up to Ned. The young officer in charge of his siege engines said, "Sir, the catapults are about played out. We've done so much shooting with 'em, the sinew skeins are stretched to death. Our range is down, and our accuracy is worse. Where can we get more sinew?"
"Hamstring some southrons," Ned answered.
Watson started to chuckle, but then broke off, as if unsure whether Ned was kidding. Ned wasn't sure he was kidding, either. But he didn't contradict when Watson said, "I can't do that, sir."
"Well, to the hells with me if I know where you'll come up with any sinew," Ned said. "Sinners, yes—sinners we've got swarms of. But sinew?" He shook his head. "What else can you use?"
"Next best thing is hair: long, coarse hair," Watson answered.
"Then shave the unicorns," Ned said at once. "Cut off their manes, trim their tails, do whatever you need to do. Start with my beast. Can troopers twist hair into skeins?"
"Uh, yes, sir. I'd think so," Watson said dazedly. "It's not hard to do, once you know how."
"All right. Get started on it, then. Show 'em what they need to do. Don't waste any time," Ned said. "We're going to need those engines—you can bet on that."
Captain Watson nodded. "Oh, yes, sir. I know. I do believe I would have come up with that notion myself, but I know I wouldn't have done it so fast." He laughed. "After all, I didn't do it so fast, did I?"
"Never mind," Ned of the Forest said. "Just get on with it. Where it comes from doesn't matter, long as you can make it work."
"Do you know, sir, there are men—more than a few of them, too—who would want a promotion for coming up with an idea like that," Watson said. "You don't even seem to care."
"I don't, much," Ned said. "Nobody's going to promote me now. I'm already a lieutenant general, and King Geoffrey isn't going to fancy up my epaulets any more. Besides, the mess we're in now, the idea counts more than whoever had it."
Some of his troopers didn't care for the scheme at all. It wasn't that they minded twisting unicorn hair into skeins for the catapults and repeating crossbows; they didn't. But they hated the way the unicorns looked once shorn of shaggy manes and tails. In piteous tones, one of them said, "Lord Ned, those gods-damned southrons're going to laugh at us when they see us riding such sorry beasts."
"Too bad," Ned answered heartlessly. "If they do laugh, Watson'll shoot 'em out of the saddle with the hair he's taken. That counts for more."
Because he was who he was, he bullied them into going along with him with a minimum of fuss and feathers. That Captain Watson had trimmed his unicorn first helped. And the unicorn did look sorry after it was trimmed: more like an overgrown white rat with a horn on its nose than one of the beautiful, noble beasts that added a touch of style and old-time glory to modern battlefields, most of which, taken all in all, were anything but glorious. But if their leader was willing to go into a fight on a unicorn that looked like that, the troopers couldn't very well cavil.
And Ned, for his part, didn't care what his mount looked like. He felt none of what northern officers of higher blood called "the romance of the unicorn." As far as he was concerned, a unicorn was for getting from one place to another faster than he could walk or run. He'd had plenty of mounts killed under him. If this one, shorn or not, lasted to the end of the war, he would be astonished.
Watson's engine crews spent the wee small hours threading the roughly made skeins of unicorn hair into the engines. Their thumping and banging and clattering kept Ned awake. Those weren't the usual noises he heard in the field, and they bothered him on account of that.
He poured honey into a cup of nasty tea the next morning, trying to make it palatable. It stayed nasty, but at least was sweeter. There not ten feet away stood Captain Watson doing the same thing. "Well, Captain?" Ned called.
"Pretty well, sir," Watson answered, sipping from his tin cup and making an unhappy face. "How about you?"
"Hells with me," Ned said. "How are the engines?"
"In working order," Watson said. "Better than they were before we reskeined 'em. Thank you, sir."
"Never mind me," Ned told him. "Long as we can give the southrons grief."
They got a fair amount of grief themselves later that morning, beating back an attack from some of Hard-Riding Jimmy's troopers. The two disastrous days of fighting in front of Ramblerton had made Ned of the Forest despise the southron unicorn-riders. They would have made any normal man fear those troopers, but Ned reserved fear for the gods, and doled it out sparingly even to them.
The southrons had too many men and could put too many bolts in the air to make it any kind of fair fight. That being so, Ned didn't try to make it one, either. Instead, he used a feigned retreat to lead the eager southrons—who did jeer at his men's funny-looking unicorns—straight up to Captain Watson's engines, which sat cunningly concealed at the edge of a thicket.
Watson had been right—the engines worked the way they were supposed to. A barrage of firepots and stones greeted the southrons. So did the nasty, mechanical clack-clack-clack of the repeating crossbows. Southrons tumbled out of the saddle. Unicorns crashed to the ground as if they'd run headlong into a wall. The survivors galloped away from the trap a lot faster than they'd galloped towards it.
"There's a proper job of licking them," Watson said, beaming.
Colonel Biffle remained gloomy. "They'll be back, the stinking sons of bitches."
"Oh, yes. They'll be back," Ned of the Forest agreed. "But they won't be back for a while. The time they spend figuring out how they stuck their peckers in the meat grinder, our footsoldiers can use to get away. That's what the game we're playing is all about right now."
"They won't be so easy to trick next time," Biffle said.
That was also true, without a doubt. Hard-Riding Jimmy had shown himself to be no fool. But Ned said, "Other side of the copper is, from now on they'll look before they leap. That'll slow them down. We want them slow. We don't want 'em charging all over the landscape."
Captain Watson nodded. He understood. Colonel Biffle had a harder time. He still wanted to beat the southrons here, even if he knew how unlikely that was to change the course of the war. Ned had stopped worrying about beating them, at least in the sense he would have used for the word before setting out on this campaign. Delaying them counted as a victory, for it let the battered fragments of the Army of Franklin put more distance between themselves and Doubting George's disgustingly numerous, revoltingly well-fed, and alarmingly well-armed soldiers.
It isn't fair, Ned thought. It isn't even close to fair. If we had that many men and could give them the food and gear they need . . .
He laughed, though it wasn't really funny. If the north could have raised and supported armies like that, of course it would have broken away from King Avram's rule. But it couldn't. It couldn't come close. And nobody had ever said war was the least bit fair, Ned included. He'd used every trick he knew, and invented several fresh tricks on the spur of the moment. Expecting the southrons not to use their advantages of wealth and manpower was like wishing for the moon. You could do it, but that didn't mean you'd get what you wished for.
A rider came up and pointed to the northeast. "The southrons are trying to slip around our flank again, Lord Ned," he said.
"Well, we'd better try and stop the bastards, then, eh?" Ned said.
"Yes, sir," the messenger said, and then, "Er—how, sir?"
"You leave that to me." Ned handled the problem with unfussy competence. It wasn't as if he hadn't dealt with such situations before. Detaching men from the right, he shifted them around behind the center to extend the left. General Hesmucet had made the same sort of flanking maneuver again and again for King Avram's army in Peachtree Province the year before as Hard-Riding Jimmy was using now, and Count Joseph the Gamecock had matched it time after time.
Joseph had traded space for time, again and again. Not Bell, not after he took command of the Army of Franklin. He'd gone right out and slugged toe to toe with Hesmucet's bigger army . . . which went a long way toward putting the Army of Franklin in its present unhappy predicament.
Ned shifted Captain Watson's engines along with the men from the right. They were the only things that could give his riders a decent chance against the quick-shooting crossbows Hard-Riding Jimmy's men used. By the shouts of dismay from the southrons when the repeating crossbows clattered into action, Jimmy's troopers knew it, too.
Of course, had Ned's unicorn-riders already been under attack on the right when Hard-Riding Jimmy's men hit them on the left, he wouldn't have been able to shift troopers and engines like that. All through the war, the southrons had had a certain trouble coordinating their blows. A good thing, too, Ned thought. They'd've whipped us a long time ago if they really knew what they were doing.
Northern magecraft had also helped hold King Avram's armies at bay. That made it all the more disconcerting when lightning crashed down from a clear sky and wrecked one of Captain Watson's precious, newly reskeined catapults. A few minutes later, another deadly accurate thunderbolt set a second siege engine afire.
"Major Marmaduke!" Ned of the Forest roared furiously. "Where in the godsdamnation are you, you worthless excuse for a mage?"
The wizard in the blue robe came over at a fast trot. "I'm . . . sorry, sir," he quavered. "I'll do my best, but he's too quick and strong for me."
"He'd better not be," Ned ground out. "Without those engines, my troopers are dead men. If they lose them, Major, you're a dead man."
Marmaduke went even paler than he was already. He did not make the mistake of thinking Ned was joking. When the commander of unicorn-riders spoke in such tones, joking was the furthest thing from his mind.
And, perhaps more inspired by fear than he'd ever been by patriotism, Major Marmaduke succeeded in deflecting the next strokes from the southron sorcerer. The lightnings smote, yes, but not where the engines were. The invaluable repeating crossbows survived, and kept spitting death at Hard-Riding Jimmy's men. Eventually, the southron unicorn-riders drew back in discouragement.
Made it through another day, Ned of the Forest thought. How many more?
Rollant wasn't much with needle and thread. His wife would have laughed if she'd seen the clumsy botches he'd made of some repairs to his uniform. But Norina was back in New Eborac City, so he had to do what he could for himself. And sewing a third stripe on his sleeve wasn't a duty. It was a pleasure.
He'd never expected to make sergeant's rank. Come to that, he'd never expected to make corporal's rank, either. If the south hadn't needed bodies to throw at false King Geoffrey's men, he might never have got into the army at all.
Bodies . . . His mouth twisted at that. If two Detinan soldiers hadn't suddenly become no more than bodies, he wouldn't have been promoted once, let alone twice, and he knew it. Snatching up the company standard when the standard-bearer went down won him his corporal's stripes—that, of course, and staying alive once he did it. And now Lieutenant Griff was dead, too, Sergeant Joram was Lieutenant Joram . . . and Corporal Rollant became Sergeant Rollant.
Ordinary Detinans could get promoted without having someone die to open a slot for them. Blonds? It didn't look that way. But ordinary Detinans could also get promoted when someone did die. Sitting crosslegged in front of the fire by Rollant was Smitty, who was making heavy weather of sewing a corporal's two stripes onto the sleeve of his gray tunic.
He pricked himself, yelped, and looked up from what he was doing. "This whole business of being an underofficer seems like more trouble than it's worth," he said.
"No." Rollant shook his head. "Oh, no. Not even a little bit. This is as good as it gets—it says the army likes what you're doing, what kind of a man you are."
To him, that meant a great deal—meant everything, in fact. Respect always came grudgingly to blonds . . . when it came at all. But Smitty, a Detinan born, took his status for granted. "I know what kind of man I am, gods damn it. I'm a man who's sick of getting shot at, who's sick of sleeping on the ground, and who's ready to pack this whole stinking war in and go home."
"Can't do that. Not yet. Not till it's over," Rollant said.
"Don't remind me," Smitty said mournfully. He raised his voice to call out to a couple of common soldiers to gather up water bottles and fill them at a nearby creek.
"See what happens?" one of them said: a Detinan speaking his mind, as Detinans did. "You haven't even got the stripes on your sleeve yet, and already you're treating people like you were a liege lord." Off he went, still grumbling.
Smitty turned to Rollant. "Thunderer's ballocks, Sergeant, but we're getting a poor sort of common soldier these days." His voice brimmed with righteous indignation.
Rollant gaped at him, then started to laugh. "When you were a common soldier and I was a corporal, didn't you bray like a whipped ass whenever I asked you to do the least little thing? If that wasn't you, it sure looked a lot like you."
"Oh, but I didn't understand then," Smitty said. "Now I do."
"I know what you understand," Rollant told him. "You understand you'd rather get somebody else to do something for you than do it yourself."
"Well, what else is there to understand?" Smitty said.
Although the blond thought Smitty was joking, he wasn't sure. He answered, "I'll say this, Smitty: the liege lords up here think the same way. It's great for them, but not for their serfs."
"Fine," Smitty said. "You can do as much work as a common soldier and still keep your stripes. Or you could—I don't see you doing it."
"It's different in the army," Rollant insisted.
"How?"
"Because . . ." Rollant grimaced. Spelling out what he meant wasn't so easy. He did his best: "Because the army tells me what I'm supposed to do, and what all sergeants and corporals are supposed to do. And it doesn't have one set of rules for ordinary Detinans and a different set for blonds—now that blonds get paid the same as ordinary Detinans it doesn't, anyway."
"That never was fair," Smitty allowed.
"Gods-damned right it wasn't," Rollant growled. "If they send us out to get killed the same as anybody else, we'd better make the same silver as anybody else, too. And Sergeant Joram—when he was a sergeant, I mean—did the same things as I'm doing. So if you don't like it, take it up with him."
"No, thanks," Smitty said, in a way implying that that subject wasn't open to discussion. Whether he liked the rules or not, he didn't like Joram, regardless of rank.
He went back to sewing the stripes onto his sleeve. Rollant returned to adding the sergeant's stripe. Joram came up to the fire with a shiny new lieutenant's epaulet on the left shoulder of his old, faded gray tunic. The only place the tunic still displayed its original color was where the underofficer's chevrons he'd just cut off had protected the wool from sun and rain.
When Rollant and Smitty jumped to their feet and saluted, Joram grimaced. "As you were," he said, and then, "I'm not used to this—not even close. I never wanted to be an officer."
"I never wanted to be a corporal, either," Smitty muttered.
"Shall I tear those stripes off before you finish putting 'em on, then?" Joram asked. Smitty hastily shook his head. Lieutenant Joram nodded in something approaching satisfaction.
Rollant couldn't say he hadn't wanted his promotion. He hadn't counted on it; he hadn't even particularly expected it. But he'd craved it, just as he'd craved corporal's rank after giving himself the chance to earn it. Rank meant the Detinans had to recognize what he'd done. It would vanish at the end of the war, but what it meant would remain inside him forever.
"Is all well here?" Joram asked, plainly serious about meeting his new responsibilities.
"Yes, sir," Rollant and Smitty chorused.
"Good." The new company commander went off to another campfire.
The troopers Smitty had sent out came back with the water bottles. They started to dump them at the new corporal's feet. Rollant shook his head. "You know that's not how you do it. Take each one to the man it belongs to and give it to him. To begin with, you can give me mine."
He took it from one of the soldiers. He'd delivered plenty of water bottles before he got promoted. Now that was someone else's worry. Rollant didn't miss it, or cutting firewood, or digging latrine trenches, or any of the other duties common soldiers got stuck with because they were so common.
Smitty unrolled his blanket and started wrapping himself in it. "We ought to grab whatever shuteye we can," he said. "Come morning, they'll try and march the legs off us again."
He wasn't wrong, as Rollant knew too well. His own legs were weary, too; he could feel just how much marching he'd done. But he said, "As long as we've got the traitors on the run, I'll keep going. I'd chase that serfcatching son of a bitch of a Ned of the Forest all the way up into Shell Bay if I could."
"He came after you when you ran away?" Smitty asked, a strange blend of sympathy and curiosity in his voice.
"Not him—he's always worked here in the east," Rollant answered. "But there are plenty more like him over by the Western Ocean. I hate 'em all. I know every trick there is for shaking hounds off a trail, and I needed most of them, too."
"And you did all that so you could come down to New Eborac and get yourself three stripes?" Smitty said. "You ask me, it was more trouble than it was worth."
Rollant also spread out his blanket. He knew Smitty was pulling his leg. Some jokes were easier to take than others, though. "Maybe it looks that way to you," the blond said. "To me, though, these three stripes mean a hells of a lot. They mean I can give orders—I don't have to take 'em my whole life long."
Smitty eyed him as he cocooned himself in the thick wool blanket. "You may be a blond, your Sergeantly Magnificence," he said, "but I swear by all the gods you talk more like a Detinan every day."
"It's rubbed off on me—like the itch," Rollant answered, and fell asleep.
"Up! Up! Up!" Lieutenant Joram shouted at some ungodsly hour of the morning. All Rollant knew when his eyes came open was that it was still dark. He groaned and unwrapped himself and relieved his own misery by booting out of their bedrolls the men who'd managed to ignore the racket Joram was making.
After hot, strong tea and oatmeal thick and sweet and sticky with molasses, the soldiers started after the Army of Franklin again. Rollant had had to get used to the idea of eating oatmeal when he came down to New Eborac. In Palmetto Province, oats fed asses and unicorns, not people. Right now, though, he would have eaten anything that didn't eat him. Marching and fighting took fuel, and lots of it.
The northerners had also abandoned their encampments, a few miles north of those of Doubting George's army. But they'd left Ned of the Forest's unicorn-riders and a small force of footsoldiers behind to slow down the retreating southrons. The troopers and crossbowmen would take cover, fight till they were on the point of being outflanked, and then fall back to do it again somewhere else. They weren't fighting to win, only to delay their foes. That, they managed to do.
Even though the rear guard kept the southrons from falling on the Army of Franklin one last time and destroying it, Bell's army kept falling to pieces on its own from the hard pursuit. More and more men in blue tunics and pantaloons gave up, stopped running, and raised their hands when King Avram's soldiers came upon them. Most went off into captivity. A few—those who came out of hiding too suddenly, or those who just ran into southrons with grudges—met unfortunate and untimely ends. Such things weren't supposed to happen. They did, all the time, on both sides.
Even after surrendering, northerners stared at Rollant. "What is this world coming to, when blonds can lord it over Detinans?" one of them exclaimed.
"It's simple," Rollant said. "I wasn't stupid enough to pick the losing side. You were. Now get moving."
The prisoner looked from one ordinary Detinan in gray to the next. "You fellows going to let him talk to me like that?" he demanded indignantly.
"We have to," Smitty answered, his voice grave.
"What do you mean, you have to?" the prisoner said. "He's a blond. You're supposed to tell him what to do."
"Can't," Smitty said. "He's the sergeant. We tell him off, he gives us the nastiest duty he can find, just like a regular Detinan would."
"I think you people have all gone crazy," said the man from the Army of Franklin, setting his hands on his hips.
"Maybe we are crazy," Rollant said. "But we're winning. If we can win while we're crazy, what does that make you traitors?"
"I'm not a traitor." The northerner got irate all over again. "It's you people who let blonds do things the gods didn't mean to have 'em do—you're the traitors, you and that gods-damned son of a bitch of a King Avram."
"If the gods didn't want me to do something, they'd keep me from doing it, wouldn't they?" Rollant said. "If they don't keep me from doing it, that must mean they know I can do it, right? And since you traitors are losing the war, that means the gods don't want you to win it, right?"
His comrades in gray laughed and whooped. "Listen to him!" Smitty said. "He ought to be a priest, not a sergeant."
And Rollant saw he'd troubled the captured northerner. The man said nothing more, but he looked worried. He hadn't before. He'd looked angry that the southrons had taken him prisoner, and at the same time relieved that he wouldn't be killed. Now, his brow furrowed, he seemed to be examining the reasons for which he'd gone to war in the first place.
Rollant jerked a thumb toward the south. "Take him away. I'd like to give him just what I think he deserves, but I have to follow orders, too."
Off went the prisoner, still looking worried. From not far away, Lieutenant Joram boomed out an order Rollant had heard a great many times since joining the army, but one he'd come to enjoy the past few days: "Forward!"
"Forward!" Rollant echoed, and waved the company standard. And forward the company went. Sooner or later, Ned of the Forest's troopers would try to slow them down again. Even if the northerners managed to do it, they wouldn't delay King Avram's men for long.
If something happens to Joram—not that I want it to, but if—will they make me a lieutenant? Rollant wondered. It wasn't quite impossible; there were a handful of blond officers, though most of them were healers. But it also wasn't even close to likely, and he had enough sense to understand as much. He'd been lucky to get two stripes on his sleeve, amazingly lucky to get three.
For that matter, considering the fighting he'd seen, he'd been amazingly lucky to come through alive, and with no serious wounds. He wanted that luck to go on, especially with the war all but won. Next to staying in one piece, what was rank? If they'd offered to make him a lieutenant general like Bell, but with Bell's missing leg and ruined arm, would he have taken them up on it? Of course not.
The war couldn't last too much longer . . . could it? He wanted to live through it and go home to Norina. Getting killed—even getting hurt—now would be doubly unfair. He'd done everything any man could do to win the fight. Didn't he deserve to enjoy the fruits of victory?
He snorted. He was a standard-bearer. He had no guarantee of staying alive for the next five minutes. "Forward!" he shouted again. If anything did happen to him, he would be facing the foe when it did. And if that wasn't a quintessentially Detinan thought, when would he ever have one?
Lieutenant General Bell sat in a carriage as the Army of Franklin tramped over a wood bridge to the northern bank of the Smew River. The Smew ran through rough, heavily wooded country in northern Franklin. Bell wished he were on a unicorn, but days of riding had left his stump too sore for him to stay in the saddle. If he didn't travel by carriage, he would have been unable to travel at all. No matter how obvious that truth, it was also humiliating. He felt like a civilian. He might have been going to a temple on a feast day, like any prosperous merchant.
To his relief, the men didn't seem bothered about how he got from one place to another. They waved to him as they trudged past. Some of them lifted their hats in lieu of a more formal salute. Bell waved back with his good arm.
"We'll lick 'em yet, General!" a soldier called.
"By the gods, we will!" Bell answered. "Let's see them try to drive us off the line of the Smew!"
He wanted to make a stand while he still remained here in Franklin. Even if the Ramblerton campaign had accomplished less than he would have liked—that was how he looked at it, through the most rose-colored of mental spectacles—he didn't want to have to fall back into Dothan or Great River Province. Staying in Franklin would show the doubters (he didn't pause to think about Doubting George) both in his own army and in King Geoffrey's court back at Nonesuch that he was still in charge of things, that these battered regiments still responded to his will.
Boots thudded on the planks of the bridge. More men, though, had none. Their feet, bare as those of any blond savage, made next to no sound. Some of them left bloody marks on those gray and faded planks. The weather was not far above freezing, and the road up from the south an ocean of mud. How many of the surviving soldiers had frostbitten feet? More than a few, surely. More than Bell cared to think about, even more surely.
Here came Ned of the Forest's unicorn-riders and the rest of the rear guard. The unicorns' hooves drummed as they rode over to the north bank of the Smew. "Come on, sir!" Ned yelled to Bell. "Nobody left between you and Avram's bastards."
I wish I could fight them all singlehanded, Bell thought. Had he been whole, he would have, and gladly. Things being as they were, though . . . Things being as they were, Bell muttered to his driver. The man flicked the reins. The unicorn started forward. Each jolt as the wheels rattled across the bridge hurt. Bell wondered when he would get used to pain. He'd lived in so much for so long, but it still hurt. He suspected it always would.
As soon as he'd crossed, wizards called down lightning. This time, the cursed southron sorcerers didn't interfere with the spells. The lightnings smote. The bridge crashed in ruins into the Smew.
Bell hoped to find a farmhouse in which to make his headquarters. He had no luck. Most of the country was woodland and scrub, with farms few and far between—so far that none of them made a convenient place from which to lead the Army of Franklin. Up went the pavilion. Even with three braziers burning inside it, it made a cold and cheerless place to spend a night.
After a meager supper, Bell summoned his wing commanders and Ned of the Forest. When they arrived, he said, "We have to hold this line. We have to keep the southrons out of Dothan and Great River Province."
Stephen the Pickle looked as steeped in vinegar as his namesakes. "How do you propose to do that, sir?" he said. "We haven't got the men for it, not any more we haven't." He looked as if he wanted to say more, but checked himself at the last minute.
What Stephen didn't say, Benjamin the Heated Ham did: "We've thrown away more men than we've got left. If we can make it to Great River Province or Dothan with the pieces of this army we've got left, that'd be the gods' own miracle all by itself. Anything more? Forget it." He shook his head.
"Where is your fighting spirit?" Bell cried.
"Dead," Colonel Florizel said.
"Murdered," Ned of the Forest added.
Glaring from one of them to the next, the commanding general said, "We need a great stroke of sorcery to remind the southrons they can't afford to take us for granted, and to show them we are not yet beaten." Stephen, Benjamin, Florizel, and Ned all stirred at that. Bell ignored them. "I aim to fight by every means I have at my disposal till I can fight no more. I expect every man who follows me to do the same."
"Trouble is, sir, we don't have enough men left to fight," Benjamin the Heated Ham said. "We don't have enough wizards, either." The other wing commanders and the commander of unicorn-riders all nodded at last.
"Gods damn it, we have to do something!" Bell burst out. "Do you want to keep running till we run out of land and go swimming in the Gulf?"
"No, sir," Benjamin said stolidly. "But I don't want to get massacred trying to do what I can't, either."
Ned of the Forest said, "Sir, while we're trying to hold this stretch of the Smew, what's to keep the southrons from crossing the river east or west of us and flanking us out of our position or surrounding us?"
"Patrols from your troopers, among other things," Lieutenant General Bell replied, acid in his voice.
"I can watch," Ned said. "I can slow the southrons down—some. Stop 'em? No way in hells."
"If you fight here, sir, you doom us," Stephen the Pickle said.
"I don't want to fight here. I want to form some kind of line we can defend," Bell said.
No one seemed to believe he could do it. Silent resentment rose in waves from his subordinate commanders. They had no hope, none at all. Bell waved with his good arm. Stephen, Benjamin, Florizel, and Ned filed out of the pavilion.
I could use their heads in a rock garden, Bell thought, never once imagining they might feel the same way about him—or that they might have reason to feel that way. He called for a runner. What went through his mind was, Half the men in this army are runners. They've proved that. The young soldier who reported, though, was still doing his duty. Bell said, "Fetch me our mages. I want to see what we can expect from them."
"Yes, sir." Saluting, the runner hurried away.
In due course, the wizards came. They looked worn and miserable. Bell wondered why—it wasn't as if they'd done anything useful. He said, "I propose holding the line of the Smew. I know I'll need magical help to do it. What can you give me?"
The magicians looked at one another. Their expressions grew even more unhappy. At last, one of them said, "Sir, I don't see how we can promise you much, not when the southrons have handled us so roughly all through this campaign."
"But we need everything you can give us now," Bell said, and then brightened. He pointed from one wizard to the next. "I know what we need! By the gods, gentlemen, I do. Give us a dragon!"
"Illusion?" a mage said doubtfully. "I think we're too far gone for illusion to do us much good."
"Not illusion." Bell shook his big, leonine head. "I know that won't serve us. They'll penetrate it and disperse it. Conjure up a real dragon and loose it on the gods-damned southrons."
The wizards stared at one another again, this time in something approaching horror. "Sir," one of them said, "there are no dragons any more, not west of the Great River. Not west of the Stony Mountains, come to that. You know there aren't. Everybody knows there aren't."
"Then conjure one here from the Stony Mountains," Bell said impatiently. "I don't care how you do it. Just do it. Let's see Doubting George and his pet mage handle a real, live, fire-breathing dragon."
"Do you expect us to seize one out of the air in the Stonies, bring it here, and turn it loose?" a mage demanded.
"Yes, that's exactly what I expect, by the Lion God's mane," the general commanding said. "That's what we need, that's what we have to have, and that's what we'd better get."
"But how?" The sorcerers made a ragged chorus.
"How is your worry," Lieutenant General Bell said grandly. "I want it done, and it shall be done, or I'll know the reason why—and you'll be sorry. Have you got that? A dragon—a real dragon, not one of the stupid illusions the southrons threw at us a few times in front of Ramblerton—by day after tomorrow. Any more questions?" He didn't gave them time to answer, but gestured peremptorily. "Dismissed."
Out went the wizards. If anything, they looked even more put-upon than Bell's subordinate commanders had a little while earlier. Bell didn't care. He'd given them an order. All they had to do was obey.
Bell stretched himself out on his iron-framed cot. He didn't sleep long, though. When his eyes first came open, there in the darkness inside the pavilion, he couldn't imagine what had roused him. It wasn't a noise; no bright lights blazed outside the big tent; he didn't need to ease himself. What was the trouble, then?
Sentries in front of the pavilion murmured to one another. A single word dominated those murmurs: "Magic."
Grunting with effort, Bell sat up, pushing himself up with his good arm. Then he used his crutches and surviving leg to get to his foot. He made his slow way into the chilly night. The sentries exclaimed in surprise. Bell ignored them. Now he knew why he was awake. Like the sentries, he'd felt the power of the wizardry the sorcerers were brewing.
He couldn't see it. He couldn't hear it. But it was there. He could feel it, feel it in his fingertips, feel it in his beard, feel it in his belly and the roots of his teeth. The power was strong enough to distract him both from his constant pain and from the laudanum haze he used as a shield against it.
He stood there in the darkness, his breath smoking, and waited to see what that power would bring when it was finally unleashed. Something great, surely. What he wanted? It had better be, he thought.
The marvel didn't wear off. More and more soldiers came out of their tents to stare at the wizards' pavilion. Like Bell, they stood there and stood there, careless of sleep, careless of anything, waiting, waiting, waiting.
Dawn had begun painting the eastern horizon with pink and gold when the building bubble of power finally burst. High overhead, the sky opened, or so it seemed to a yawning, half-freezing Bell. The sky opened, and a dragon burst forth out of thin air, a great winged worm where nothing had been before. Had it stooped on the Army of Franklin . . . But it didn't. The wizards held it under so much control, at least. Roaring with fury, it flew off toward the Smew River, off toward the southrons.
Doubting George had a habit of rising early so he could prowl about his army and see what was what. Major Alva had a habit of staying up very late on nights when he wasn't likely to be needed the next day. Every so often, the two of them would run into each other a little before sunrise.
So it chanced this particular morning. The commanding general nodded to the wizard. Alva remembered to salute. Doubting George beamed. Alva would never make a proper soldier, but he was doing a better and better impersonation of one.
"How are things?" George asked. He expected nothing much from the wizard's reply. As far as he could see, things were fine. Bell's army was on the run. He hadn't managed to crush it altogether, and realized he probably wouldn't, but he was driving it out of the province from which it drew its name, driving it to the point where it would do false King Geoffrey no good.
Waving to the north, Alva answered, "The mages over there are up to something, sir." He was a beat slow using the title, but he did.
"What is it this time?" Doubting George was amazed at how scornful he sounded. Before finding Alva, he would have been worried. Northern magecraft had plagued the southron cause all through the war. Now? Now, in this weedy young wizard, he had its measure.
Or so he thought, till Alva's head came up sharply, like that of a deer all at once taking a scent. "It's . . . something big," the sorcerer said slowly. "Something very big."
"Can you stop it?" George asked. "Whatever it is, you can keep it from hitting us, right?"
"It's not aimed at us," Alva answered. "It's aimed . . . somewhere far away."
"Then why worry about it?" the commanding general asked.
Alva didn't answer him this time, not right away. The wizard stared north, his face tense and drawn. Much more to himself than to Doubting George, he said, "I didn't think they could still manage anything like that." He sounded both astonished and admiring.
"Can you stop it?" George asked again, his voice sharp this time.
"I . . . don't know." Alva didn't look at him; the mage's attention still aimed toward the north, as a compass needle did toward the south. "Maybe I could . . ." He raised his hands, as if about to make a string of passes, but then let them fall to his sides once more. "Too late . . . sir. Whatever they were trying to do, they've just gone and done it. Can't you feel that?"
Doubting George shook his head. "You know how Marshal Bart is tone-deaf and doesn't know one tune from another? I'm like that with wizardry. A lot of soldiers are. Most of the time, it's an advantage. Unless magic bumps right up against me, I don't have to worry about it."
Shouts from the pickets and the forwardmost encampments said somebody was alarmed about something. Soldiers in gray tunics and pantaloons pointed up into the sky. "A dragon!" they shouted. "A gods-damned dragon!"
"A gods-damned dragon?" Doubting George threw back his head and laughed. "Is that all the traitors could cook up? An illusion? It's a stale illusion at that, because we aimed the seemings of dragons at them in the fights in front of Ramblerton. Good for little scares, maybe, but not for big ones."
Quietly, Major Alva said, "Sir, that is not the illusion of a dragon. That is . . . a dragon, conjured here from wherever it lives. My hat is off to Bell's sorcerers." He suited action to word. "No matter how desperate I was, I would not have cared to try the spell that brought it here."
"A real dragon?" George, who'd served in the east, had seen them before, flying among the peaks of the Stony Mountains. "What can your magic do against a real dragon, now that the beast is here?"
"I don't know, sir," Alva answered. "Not much, I don't think. Magic isn't what drove dragons out to the steppe and then to the mountains. Hunting is."
Stooping like an outsized hawk, the dragon dove towards a knot of tents. Flame burst from its great jaws. The southron soldiers hadn't panicked till that moment, thinking it an illusion similar to those Alva and their other wizards had also used. Then the tents—and several soldiers—burst into flame. Some of the screams that rang out were anguish. More were terror, as the men realized the beast was real—real, angry, and hungry.
They were good soldiers. As soon as they realized that, they started shooting at the dragon. Ordinary crossbow bolts, though, slowed it about as much as mosquitoes slowed a man.
The dragon roared, a noise like the end of the world. It didn't like ordinary crossbow quarrels, any more than a man liked mosquitoes. As a man will pause to swat, the dragon paused to flame. As mosquitoes will get smashed, so a couple of squads of soldiers suddenly went up in smoke.
"Do something, gods damn it!" Doubting George shook Major Alva. He didn't even realize he was doing it till he noticed the wizard's teeth clicking together. Then, not without a certain regret, he stopped.
Once Alva had stopped clicking, he said, "I'm sorry, sir. I still don't know what to do. Dragons aren't a wizard's worry."
"This one is," George snapped.
Before Alva could either protest or start working magic, the repeating crossbows opened up on the dragon along with the ordinary footsoldiers' weapons. Those big crossbows shot longer, thicker quarrels and flung them faster and farther than a bow that a man might carry could manage.
This time, the dragon's roars were louder yet, louder and more sincere. Now it might have had wasps tormenting it, not mosquitoes. But however annoying they are, wasps rarely kill. The dragon remained determined to lash out at everything that was bothering it and everything it saw that it could eat. As far as Doubting George could tell, between them those two categories encompassed his whole army.
Thuk! Thuk! Thuk! Crossbow bolts tearing through the membrane of the dragon's wings sounded like knitting needles thrust through taut cotton cloth. Cotton, though, didn't bleed. The dragon did. Drops of its blood smoked when they hit the ground. Soldiers that blood touched cried out in pain. But even if the dragon did bleed, that made it no less fierce, no less furious. On the contrary.
It flew towards a battery of repeating crossbows that hosed darts at it. Again, the fang-filled jaws spread wide. Again, fire shot from them. The flames engulfed the repeating crossbows. Some of the crews managed to flee. Others kept working the windlasses till the very last moment, and went up in flames with the engines they served.
The dragon landed then. Its tremendous tail lashed about, obliterating repeating crossbows its fire had spared. Doubting George cursed. Those engines would have been useful against the Army of Franklin. Now . . . now they might as well never have been built.
But, with the dragon on the ground, the soldiers serving catapults started flinging firepots at it. Some of them had already let fly while the dragon was still in the air. That was not the smartest thing they could have done. Their missiles missed, and came down on the heads of southron soldiers still in their tents or in the trenches or rushing about.
They aimed better with the beast on the ground. When a firepot burst on its armored back, the dragon remained grounded no more. It sprang into the air with a scream like all damnation boiled down into a pint. No mosquitoes here, and no wasps, either. Not even a dragon could ignore a bursting firepot.
Screaming again, the terrible beast flew off . . . toward the west. That set Doubting George to cursing once more. He'd hoped the dragon would visit vengeance on the northern sorcerers who'd summoned it, but no such luck. Have to take care of that ourselves, he thought.
Major Alva was staring in the direction the dragon had gone. "How much harm will it do before people finally manage to kill it?" he wondered.
"I don't know. Probably quite a bit." Even Doubting George was surprised at how heartless he sounded.
Alva looked more appalled than surprised. "Don't you care?"
Shrugging, the commanding general said, "Not a whole hells of a lot. For one thing, the dragon won't be doing it to us. For another, most of the people it will harm would rather see Geoffrey over them than Avram. Since Geoffrey's wizards summoned it here, you could say they're getting what they deserve."
"Oh." The wizard considered. "You make a nasty sort of sense."
"We're fighting a war, Major. There's not much room for any other kind." George stabbed a finger at the mage. "What are the odds the traitors will try flinging another dragon at us?"
"Thunderer smite me with boils if I know . . . sir," Alva answered. "I'll tell you this, though: I wouldn't have tried bringing one, let alone two. Anybody who works that kind of spell has to be as close to crazy as makes no difference."
"You say that?" George asked in amazement. "After the great sorceries you've brought off, you say that?"
"Hells, yes, I say that," the wizard told him. "What I do is dangerous to the enemy. It's not particularly dangerous to me. If something goes wrong with one of my spells, well, then, it doesn't work, that's all. If something went wrong with the spells those northern wizards cast to snare that dragon, it would have eaten them or flamed them or something even worse, if there is anything worse. Anybody who risks bringing that down on his own head has got to be a few bolts short of a full sheaf, don't you think?"
"When you put it that way, I suppose so," George said. "But you're the one who knows about magecraft. I don't, and I don't pretend to."
Alva let out a barely audible sniff, as if to say that anybody who didn't know much about wizardry had no business commanding an army. In this day and age, he might well have been right. But George was the fellow with the fancy epaulets on his shoulders. He had the responsibility. He had to live up to it.
Part of that responsibility, at the moment, involved finishing the destruction of the Army of Franklin. He pointed to Alva. "Can you make it seem to the traitors that the dragon hurt us worse than it really did?"
"I suppose so, sir. But why?" Puzzlement filled Alva's voice.
Doubting George let out a more than barely audible sniff, as if to say that anybody who didn't know much about soldiering had no business putting on a uniform, or even a gray robe. Then he condescended to explain: "If they see us here in dreadful shape, maybe they won't be looking for us to outflank them and cut them off."
"Oh!" Alva wasn't stupid. He could see things once you pointed them out to him. "Deception! Now I understand!"
"Good," George said. "Now that you understand, can you do it?"
"I don't see why not," the sorcerer replied. "It's an elementary problem, thaumaturgically speaking."
"You'll be able to fool the traitors and their mages?"
"I think so," Alva answered. "I don't see why I wouldn't be. The wizards on the other side of the Screw—"
"It's called the Smew," Doubting George said diplomatically.
Alva waved the correction away. "Whatever it's called, those fellows aren't very bright," he said. "Like I told you, they have to be pretty stupid, in fact, if they go and yank a real dragon out of the air. So, yes, I ought to be able to fool them."
That the northern wizards had succeeded in yanking the dragon out of the air impressed Alva not at all, not in this context. He didn't waste time talking more about what he was going to do. He set about doing it instead. As far as Doubting George was concerned, taking care of what needed doing was one of Alva's best traits.
Apologetically, the wizard warned, "You won't be able to see the full effects of the spell, sir. You'd need to be looking from the other side of the river to do that, because it's directional. So don't worry about it. To the traitors, it'll look just the way it's supposed to."
"All right," the commanding general said. "Thanks for letting me know."
He wasn't even sure Alva heard him. The wizard had dropped back into his incantation. His skinny face showed how intensely he was concentrating. He muttered spells in Detinan and in a language George had never heard before. His bony, long-fingered hands thrashed through passes as if they had separate lives of their own. Sooner than George had expected him to, he finished the enchantment, shouting, "Transform! Transform! Transform!"
Transform things did. The wizard had been right to warn Doubting George about the directional nature of the spell. George saw the result, but as if it were made from fog: everything seemed half transparent, and ragged around the edges. He might almost have been watching the memory of a dream. Smoke, or the wraithlike semblance of smoke, poured up from the encampment. The ghosts of flames sprang from tents that weren't really burning. Shadowy figures that might have been men ran in all directions, as if in terror.
"Bell's wizards are seeing this sharply?" George asked.
"Not just the wizards, sir," Alva told him. "Anybody peering across the, uh, Smew will think the dragon has wrecked everything in sight."
"All right, then," the general commanding said. "Hold the illusion for as long as you can, and I'll get Hard-Riding Jimmy's troopers and some engineers moving. If they can cross the river and hit Bell in the flank when he thinks I'm all messed up here . . ."
"Deception," Major Alva said happily. "Yes, sir. I get it."
"Good." Doubting George shouted for a messenger. When the young man appeared, came to attention, and saluted, George gave him his orders. The youngster saluted again. He trotted off.
Before long, the unicorn-riders and the engineers hurried up the Smew. Ghostly smoke between them and the river should conceal them from prying eyes on the other side, assuming it seemed as solid as it was supposed to from the north. Doubting George had no cause to doubt that; another reason he approved of Alva as a mage was that the man delivered.
A messenger came back and reported, "We're over the Smew, sir."
"Good," George said. "Can I send a column of footsoldiers after you? Have you got a ford or a bridge safe and ready to use?"
"Yes, sir," the messenger answered. "But Brigadier Jimmy says to warn you that if you're looking to surprise the traitors, you're going to be disappointed. They already know we're moving against them."
"Gods damn it!" George exclaimed in disgust. "What went wrong?"
"We hadn't been on the north bank of the river more than a couple of minutes before Ned of the Forest's unicorn-riders found us," the messenger replied.
"Well, to hells with Ned of the Forest, too," the commanding general said. "All right—we're discovered. Can Jimmy's riders get in front of Bell's men and hold them until the rest of us come north and finish them off?"
"Sir, I don't think so," the young man on unicornback said. "Bell's men are scooting north as fast as they can go, and Ned's unicorn-riders are slowing our troopers down so we can't reach Bell's main force. I'm sorry, sir."
"So am I," Doubting George said wearily. "We did everything right here—after that gods-damned dragon, anyhow—but it didn't quite work. Well, we'll go after them anyhow. Maybe Bell will make a mistake. It wouldn't be the first one he's made on this campaign, by the Lion God's tail tuft."
He said that, but he didn't really believe it. It wasn't that he didn't believe Bell could make more mistakes; he was sure Bell could. But prisoners had told him Ned of the Forest commanded the northern rear guard. Doubting George had seen that Ned made a very solid soldier. George wished he had more officers of Ned's ability. He was just glad the war looked nearly won. Even Ned didn't matter—too much—any more.