Marching Through Peachtree wotp-2 Read online

  Marching Through Peachtree

  ( War of the Provinces - 2 )

  Harry Turtledove

  After King Avram, new ruler of Detina, frees the blond serfs upon which the northern part of the kingdom relies, civil war erupts, with Avram's cousin, Geoffrey, as commander of the rebels. The armies of the divided country face each other in the embattled province of Peachtree eager to claim the strategically vital city of Marthasville. Turtledove's sequel to Sentry Peak continues his fanciful retelling of the Civil War as a fantasy struggle involving swords and sorcery. American history buffs should enjoy figuring out the real-world parallels in the colorful cast of characters.

  Harry Turtledove

  Marching Through Peachtree

  (War of the Provinces — 2)

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  I

  Count Joseph, called the Gamecock, was not a happy man. Joseph was seldom a happy man; he would have been of more service to King Geoffrey had he been. But then, he most cordially loathed his sovereign, a feeling that was mutual. Still and all, when Avram, the new King of Detina, had made it plain he intended to free the blond serfs in the northern provinces, Joseph couldn’t stomach that, either. Sooner than accepting it, he and the rest of the north had followed Avram’s cousin, Grand Duke-now King-Geoffrey, into rebellion.

  A sour expression on his face, Joseph-a dapper, erect little man with neat graying chin whiskers on his long, thin, clever face-left his pavilion and stared south toward the province of Franklin, from which the foe would come… probably before too long. The air of southern Peachtree Province was warm and moist with spring. It would have been sweet with spring, too, but for the presence of Joseph’s army and its encampment by the little town of Borders. Not even the sweetest spring air could outdo thousands of slit trenches and tens of thousands of unwashed soldiers.

  One of Joseph’s wing commanders came up to him. Some said Roast-Beef William had got his nickname from his red, red face, others from his favorite dish. Saluting, he said, “Good morning, your Grace.”

  “Is it?” Joseph the Gamecock asked sardonically.

  “Well, yes, sir, I think it is,” William replied. Unlike a lot of officers who followed King Geoffrey, he was not a man of breeding. He was a skilled tactician, and had written the tactical manual both Geoffrey’s soldiers and the southrons used. Also unlike a lot of Geoffrey’s officers, Joseph emphatically included, he was not a prickly man, always sensitive of his honor. He’d even got on pretty well-as well as anyone could-with Joseph’s luckless predecessor in command of the Army of Franklin, Count Thraxton the Braggart.

  “By the Lion God’s mane, what makes you think so?” Joseph inquired with real if dyspeptic curiosity. He pointed south. “Every southron in the world-well, every southron east of the Green Ridge Mountains-who can carry a crossbow or a pike is gathering there with nothing on his mind but stomping us into the mud. Gods damn me to the seven hells if I’m sure we can stop them, either.”

  “Things could be worse, sir,” Roast-Beef William said stolidly. “Things bloody well were worse when the southrons chased us up here last fall after they drove us off Sentry Peak and Proselytizers’ Rise. I was afraid this whole army would just up and fall to pieces then, Thunderer smite me if I wasn’t.”

  “I know precisely how bad things were then, Lieutenant General,” Joseph the Gamecock said. “Precisely.” He pronounced the word with acerbic gusto.

  “How could you, sir?” William inquired, confusion on his face. “You weren’t here then.”

  “How could I? I’ll tell you how. Things were so bad, King Geoffrey felt compelled to lift me from the shelf where he stowed me, dust me off, and put me back in the service of his kingdom. Things had to be pretty desperate, wouldn’t you say, for his bad-tempered Majesty to chew his cud of pride and judge a soldier only by his soldierly virtues and not by whose hindquarters he kisses?”

  Earnest and honest, Roast-Beef William coughed and looked embarrassed. “Sir, I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

  “Lucky you.” Joseph’s scorn was withering as drought in high summer. “Three years of war now, and I’ve been on the king’s shelf for half that time, near enough.”

  “You were wounded, sir,” William reminded him.

  “Well, what if I was? I shed my blood for this kingdom in Parthenia Province, protecting Geoffrey in Nonesuch, and what thanks did I get? I was shoved aside, given an impossible assignment by the Great River, blamed when it turned out I couldn’t do the impossible, and put out to pasture till Thraxton so totally buggered up this campaign, even Geoffrey couldn’t help but notice.”

  “Er, yes, sir.” Roast-Beef William nervously coughed a couple of times, then asked, “Sir, when the southrons move on Marthasville, can we hold them out of it?”

  “We have to,” Joseph said. “It’s the biggest glideway junction we have left. If we lose it, how do we move men and goods between Parthenia and the east? So we have to make the best fight we can, Lieutenant General. That’s all there is to it. We have to hold the foe away from Marthasville.” He brightened as much as a man of his temperament could. “And here comes a man who will help us do it. Good day to you, Lieutenant General Bell!” He bowed to the approaching wing commander.

  “Good day, sir.” Bell’s voice was deep and slow. His approach was even slower. He stayed upright only with the aid of two crutches and endless determination. He’d lost a leg leading soldiers forward in the fight by the River of Death, and he’d had his left arm crippled in the northern invasion of the south only a couple of months before that. Using the crutches was torment, but staying flat on his back was worse for him.

  “How are you feeling today, Lieutenant General?” Joseph asked solicitously.

  “It hurts,” Bell replied. “Everything hurts.”

  Joseph the Gamecock nodded. He recalled Bell from the days before he’d got hurt, when the dashing young officer had made girls sigh all through the north. Some called Bell the Lion God come to earth. With his long, full, dark beard and his fiercely handsome features, he’d lived up to the name. He’d also lived up to it with his style of fighting. He’d thrown himself and his men at the southrons and broken them time and again.

  Now he’d broken himself doing it. His features still showed traces of their old good looks, but ravaged by pain and blurred by the heroic doses of laudanum he guzzled to try to dull it. “Does the medicine do you any good?” Joseph inquired.

  Bell shrugged with his right shoulder only; his left arm would not answer. “Some,” he said. “Without it, I should be quite mad. As things are, I think I am only… somewhat mad.” His chuckle was wintry. “I have to take ever more of it to win some small relief. But my mind is clear.”

  “I am glad to hear it,” Joseph said. He didn’t fully believe it. Laudanum blurred thought as well as pain. But it did so more in some men than in others. Though he carried scars of his own, he didn’t like to think about what Lieutenant General Bell had become. To hide his own unease, he went on, “Roast-Beef William and I were just talking about our chances of holding the southrons away from Marthasville this campaigning season.”

  “We had better do it,” Bell said in his dragging tones. Laudanum was probably to blame for that, too, but he’d reached the right answer here. Joseph was in no doubt of it whatsoever. His wing commander continued, “The southrons humiliated us at Sentry Peak and Proselytizers’ Rise. We have to keep them out of Marthasville or we become a laughingstock.”

  That wasn’t the reason Joseph the Gamecock wanted to keep General Hesmucet’s
army out of Marthasville, or Roast-Beef William, either, but Bell wasn’t necessarily wrong. Joseph said, “By what I hear, we humiliated ourselves at Proselytizers’ Rise.”

  “I wouldn’t know, sir, not firsthand,” Bell replied. “I was, ah, trying to get used to being lopsided, you might say.” Joseph nodded, trying not to stare at the pinned-up leg of Bell’s blue pantaloons.

  “I believe you’re correct, sir,” Roast-Beef William said. “Count Thraxton’s spell did not work as he’d hoped it might.”

  “No, eh?” Joseph the Gamecock’s voice dripped sarcasm. “I never would have noticed. Why, I thought we’d be moving from Rising Rock on to Ramblerton next week. That is our plan, isn’t it?”

  “Sir?” Lieutenant General Bell said, face blank from more than laudanum. He wouldn’t have recognized irony had it pierced him like iron.

  “All right, sir,” Roast-Beef William said-he, at least, got the point Joseph was making. “Count Thraxton’s magic flat-out failed. It beat us. Without it, why would our men have run from the top of Proselytizers’ Rise when they could have held off every southron in the world if only they’d stood their ground?”

  “Still no excuse for that skedaddle,” Bell said. “No excuse at all. You go forward and you fight like a man. That’s what the gods love.”

  You go forward and you fight like a man. Bell had lived by that, and he’d nearly died by it, too. Now I’m in command here, and we’ll try things my way, Joseph thought. If we can make the southrons pay and pay and pay for every foot of ground they take, maybe all their mechanics and artisans and farmers will get sick of fighting us and let us have our own kingdom. It’s the best hope we have, anyhow-we’re not going to drive them away by force of arms.

  “I intend to make the enemy come forward and fight like men,” he said. “I intend to make them die like men, too, in the largest numbers I can arrange. Let’s see if they go on backing Avram’s plan to crush us into the dust and free all our blonds from the land after they’ve spent a while bleeding.”

  “Not chivalrous,” Bell said.

  “I don’t care,” Joseph the Gamecock replied. That brought shock to Lieutenant General Bell’s face despite the laudanum he poured down. Joseph repeated it: “I don’t care-and by all the gods, my friends, that is the truth. I am here to keep the southrons from snuffing out this kingdom. Whether I do that or not matters. How I do it… Who cares?”

  “Don’t you want the bards singing songs about you hundreds of years after you’re dead?” Bell asked. “Don’t you want them treating you the same way they treated the heroes of the first conquest, the men who crossed the Western Ocean and threw down the blonds’ kingdoms?”

  “I couldn’t care less,” Joseph said, and shocked Bell all over again. “King Geoffrey gave me this job to do. He thought I was the right man for it, and I aim to show him he was right.” I aim to show him he was a perfect jackass for not giving me more to do a long time ago.

  Roast-Beef William said, “A defensive campaign on our part will be the most expensive for the southrons and the least expensive for us. Since General Hesmucet has far more men than we do, we need every advantage we can find.”

  “Where is the valor in letting the enemy dictate the terms of the campaign?” Bell asked.

  “Where is the sense in attacking the enemy when you are weaker than he?” Joseph the Gamecock returned.

  “We attacked the southrons at the River of Death and prevailed,” Bell said.

  “Yes, and you outnumbered them when you did it, too,” Joseph pointed out. “King Geoffrey detached James of Broadpath’s force-and you with it, Lieutenant General-from Duke Edward of Arlington’s Army of Southern Parthenia and sent it here by glideway to add its weight to the fight. Without it, Count Thraxton would have been badly outnumbered, and wouldn’t have attacked.”

  Slowly, Bell shook his head. “You make war most coldbloodedly, your Grace.”

  “King Geoffrey says the same thing,” Joseph replied. “As you may have gathered, the king and I have a good many differing opinions. My opinion is that one makes war for the purpose of defeating the enemy by whatever means are available. If that involves wearing him out to the point where he chooses not to fight any more, so be it. I see no better hope. Do you?” He looked from Bell to Roast-Beef William.

  “No, your Grace, though I wish I did,” William said.

  “My own view is that the purpose of war is to fight, to smash the foe,” Lieutenant General Bell said.

  “If we could do that, nothing would make me happier,” Joseph the Gamecock said. “Do you see us doing it against General Hesmucet and the host he has assembled by Rising Rock?”

  Had Bell nodded to that, Joseph would have lost his temper. But the cripple who still wanted to be a soldier shook his big, leonine head. “It is as my comrade says,” he answered. “I wish I did, but I do not.”

  “All right, then,” Joseph told him. “We are in accord.” He had his doubts about that, but, for once, did not state them. He made more allowances for Bell than for most men-certainly more than he made for King Geoffrey. “That being so, I intend to make my fight in the way I mentioned. I have sent orders to the north and west to have estate-holders get their serfs out to start building fieldworks for us.”

  “Already, sir? So soon?” Roast-Beef William asked in surprise.

  “Already. So soon,” Joseph the Gamecock said grimly. “You’re our master tactician, Lieutenant General, so think tactically here. If we are going to make this kind of fight, shouldn’t we get ready for it ahead of time? Otherwise, our soldiers would have to do the digging themselves, as the southrons do.”

  “Here I agree with you completely,” Bell said. “Not fitting for Detinans to do such labor when we can call on the subjected blonds.”

  “Just so,” Joseph said; he was, for once, as well pleased to have escaped argument. “Unless this campaign very much surprises me, we shall need those works.”

  “If Hesmucet thinks he and the southrons can storm straight through us, he had better think again,” Bell said. “I have to be strapped onto a unicorn to stay aboard, but I expect I may have one last charge left in me.”

  Joseph the Gamecock was an irascible man, yes, but also a courtly one. He did not care to think about twice-mangled Lieutenant General Bell going at the foe like that, but bowed from respect for his courage. Bell would do it; he didn’t doubt that in the least. Bell would, in fact, surely do it with a song on his lips. That didn’t mean Joseph didn’t reckon him somewhere close to mad for even thinking of such a thing.

  But Joseph didn’t say that, either. What he did say was, “Let us hope, gentlemen, that we never have the need for such desperate measures.” For a wonder, neither Roast-Beef William nor Lieutenant General Bell disagreed with him.

  * * *

  From his unicorn, General Hesmucet looked west to Proselytizers’ Rise, then north to Sentry Peak, the stony knob that towered above the town of Rising Rock. The autumn before, blue-clad men who called Grand Duke Geoffrey the rightful King of Detina had held both strongpoints. The traitors’ flag, red dragon on gold, had flown above them. Even Hesmucet, as grimly aggressive a warrior as any who followed King Avram against the traitors, marveled that the northerners had been driven from those heights, but now Avram’s banner, the proper royal banner, gold dragon on red, waved over the high ground.

  Hesmucet scratched at his chin. He wore a close-cropped, almost stubbly black beard, just beginning to be streaked with gray as he edged into his forties. He was not very tall and not very thick through the shoulders, but had a lithe sort of wrestler’s strength that made him much more dangerous in a melee than he looked. He also had a driving energy that was, at the moment, aimed northwest.

  Beside him, mounted on a unicorn finer than his own, sat Lieutenant General George, his second-in-command. Turning to him, Hesmucet said, “We’re going to smash right through the traitors, by all the gods.”

  “May it be so, sir,” George replied, “but I have my d
oubts.”

  “Of course you do,” Hesmucet answered. “Why else would they call you Doubting George?” They also called George the Rock in the River of Death; if it hadn’t been for the stand his soldiers had made the autumn before, Thraxton the Braggart’s men wouldn’t just have beaten southron General Guildenstern’s army-they would have annihilated it. George had earned all the credit he’d got for himself that day.

  Hesmucet contemplated General Guildenstern’s fate. These days, that worthy was chasing blond savages on the trackless steppes of the east. He was lucky to have been allowed to remain in King Avram’s service: if going off to the steppes to harry savages counted as luck, at any rate.

  That could happen to me if I bungle this campaign, General Hesmucet thought. Unusually for a Detinan, he was named after a blond himself: the chieftain who’d given the kingdom so much trouble in the War of 1218. That did nothing to improve his opinion of blonds, and especially of unsubdued blonds. As far as he was concerned, the only good one was a dead one.

  He brought himself back to the business at hand. “I had a message by scryer this morning from Marshal Bart in the west,” he told Doubting George.

  “Did you indeed?” George said, as if that were a great surprise to him. “And what did the marshal say?”

  “That he is moving north today against Duke Edward of Arlington and the Army of Southern Parthenia,” Hesmucet answered.

  “Thunderer and Lion God bring him all success,” George said. Hesmucet wondered exactly what the lieutenant general was thinking. Like Duke Edward, Doubting George was a Parthenian. Also like Edward, he was a serfholding noble. Unlike Edward, though, he’d stayed loyal to Avram and the idea of a united Detina rather than going into revolt and treason with his province and false King Geoffrey.

  Did George ever stop to count the cost? He’d paid one: Geoffrey had confiscated his lands (as Avram had confiscated Duke Edward’s estate, which lay just across the river from the royal capital at Georgetown). Had George chosen to shout, “Provincial prerogative forever!” he could have kept his holdings-and the north would have gained a dangerous fighting man.