Marching Through Peachtree wotp-2 Page 11

  “Gods grant it be so,” George said.

  “Don’t talk that way around Major Alva,” Hesmucet told him. “He’ll give you plenty of reasons to think the gods don’t much care one way or the other. Sort of makes you understand why they used to burn wizards every now and again.” He walked off, whistling.

  Doubting George had no intention of talking to Major Alva. Clever young mages were useful creatures. But, because they had a lot of the answers, they often thought and behaved as if they had them all. George was a profoundly conservative man. He’d been too conservative to leave Detina with his province and with Grand Duke Geoffrey: to his way of thinking, that there had always been one kingdom was the best argument that there should always be one kingdom. His belief in the gods and their potency was likewise deep and sincere. He didn’t care to listen to a whippersnapper who would try to unsettle that belief.

  If he were to try too hard, he would probably end up short a couple of teeth, George thought. I’d kick him when he was down, too. He didn’t worry for a moment what a mage might do to him.

  He called to Colonel Andy, who’d discreetly stepped out of earshot while he conferred with General Hesmucet. “Be ready to move forward at my orders or at the commanding general’s,” he said. “I don’t think the traitors will trouble us much more with attacks of their own, not hereabouts.”

  “Yes, sir,” his adjutant said.

  “And move some of our engines forward, too,” George added. “If we do have to assault the enemy’s works, we’ll want to make this, that, and the other thing come down on his head.”

  “Yes, sir,” Andy repeated, rather more enthusiastically this time.

  “Don’t worry, Colonel,” Doubting George said. “As long as we keep hammering at the enemy, we’ll break him sooner or later.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s what General Guildenstern said, too, sir, as you pointed out not so long ago.”

  Lieutenant General George winced. It wasn’t quite what he’d pointed out, but it was pretty close. I’ve been skewered, he thought. Which of us is supposed to be the one who doubts things? I was under the impression it was me, but I’ll start wondering if Andy keeps that up.

  * * *

  Joseph the Gamecock put his hands on his hips and glared from Lieutenant General Bell to Leonidas the Priest and back again. “Which of us,” he asked Bell, “is supposed to be the one who wants to slug it out with the enemy, and which the one who would sooner fight positionally? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I had thought you owned the former role and I the latter. I will start wondering if you keep this up, though.”

  “I am sorry, sir,” Bell said. “I truly am, but I do not see how we can hold our position east of Fat Mama if the southrons bring up their siege engines to bear on our works, as they are now in the process of doing.”

  “I must agree,” Leonidas the Priest said, a lugubrious frown on his face.

  “Must you?” Joseph snapped. Leonidas’ nod was lugubrious, too. Joseph rounded on Roast-Beef William. “And what about you? Are you also of the opinion that we need to take flight?”

  “No, sir,” Roast-Beef William replied. “If the southrons come at us, I expect we can beat them back.”

  “Well, gods be praised!” Joseph exclaimed. He did a couple of mincing, mocking steps of a triumphal dance. “Someone who hasn’t got his headquarters in his hindquarters, as that fool of a southron said he did a couple of years ago back in the province of Parthenia.”

  “Sir, I resent the imputation,” Bell said.

  Resent it? You don’t even know what the hells it means, Joseph the Gamecock thought sourly. “You were all for attack before, Lieutenant General,” he said. “You were for it when I was against it. It gave you something to complain about, in that I wasn’t doing what you wanted. But when I asked you for an attack, what did I get? Excuses, nothing else but.”

  “Did you want me to send my brave men forward to be slaughtered?” Bell demanded. “The enemy’s siege engines on our flank would have wrecked my entire wing. Anyone on the spot would have seen the same.”

  “By all I’ve heard, Lieutenant General, you were the only one who had even the slightest hint of the presence of these perhaps mythical catapults,” Joseph said. “No matter what damage you may have feared, the actual damage you suffered from them was nil.”

  “I fear nothing,” Bell rumbled. From most men, that would have been a brag or a lie. From him, Joseph the Gamecock believed it. It did not, however, necessarily make things better rather than worse.

  “We’ve already yielded the southrons too much land,” Roast-Beef William said. “If we have to leave Fat Mama, they hold most of the southern half of Peachtree Province.”

  “If we hold our ground here and are overwhelmed, what then?” Leonidas the Priest returned. “In that case, not only is the southern half of the province lost, but also the army that could defend the rest.”

  Joseph the Gamecock felt like tearing his thinning hair. “How, pray tell, is the enemy going to overwhelm us here?” he said. “These works are as strong as a swarm of serfs could make them.”

  “Not strong enough,” Bell insisted. “If the southrons move forward and put their catapults on our flanks, they’ll make us sorry we ever chose to fight here.”

  “We’ll be sorrier if we leave,” Joseph said. Roast-Beef William nodded, his ruddy face even redder than usual. But both Bell and Leonidas the Priest solemnly shook their heads. Joseph felt like kicking them. “What am I supposed to do?” he cried. “I want to stand my ground, but how can I possibly when two of my wing commanders think I would be courting disaster if I tried?”

  “I was not the one who ordered us here to Fat Mama,” Bell said.

  “No, but you and this half-witted hierophant were also the ones who told me I didn’t dare attack the southrons, and by all the signs you were wrong about that,” Joseph the Gamecock growled.

  “I am not half-witted!” Leonidas cried, turning almost as red as Roast-Beef William usually was.

  “Quarter-witted, then,” Joseph said with mock graciousness. Leonidas took it for the real thing for a moment, which went a long way toward proving Joseph’s point. Then the hierophant of the Lion God bellowed in fresh outrage.

  “Sir, you did not pick a good site to defend,” Lieutenant General Bell said.

  “You would have liked it a lot better had you picked it yourself,” Joseph said.

  Instead of answering, Bell drew from his pocket the little bottle of laudanum he always carried with him. He pulled the cork with his teeth, drank, and put the bottle away again. That’s where he gets his brains, Joseph the Gamecock thought. At the start of the campaign, he’d admired Bell for his courage in staying in the field even with his dreadful wounds. Nowadays…

  “If you feel the rigors of service in the Army of Franklin are excessive, Lieutenant General, you may be sure I would be of the opinion that your retirement would in no way affect your honor,” he said in hopeful tones.

  “I have not the slightest intention of retiring,” Bell replied peevishly. “I aim to go forth and conquer the foe.”

  “Do you?” Joseph couldn’t resist the gibe. “There he was, right in front of you, just waiting to be struck. You advanced a mile against no opposition, discovered catapults where no one else suspected them, and retired forthwith to your works. A less than heroic encounter, if I may say so.”

  “We can hold here,” Roast-Beef William said, “providing we have the will to do so.”

  “Provided,” Joseph corrected. William stiffened. Joseph realized he might have done better than to engage in literary criticism; William was on his side, even if imperfectly grammatical.

  The wing commander had also accurately summed things up-if they had the will, they could hold their ground here. Joseph the Gamecock looked from one of his subordinates to another. Roast-Beef William had that will, or at least willingness. Leonidas the Priest? What was left of Bell? Joseph shook his head. Despair threatened to choke him.

&n
bsp; “If we leave Fat Mama, where will we go?” he asked plaintively.

  Bell glowered at him. “Where would you have gone, sir,” — he turned the title of respect into one of reproach-“after the southrons flanked us out of here?”

  Joseph the Gamecock glared back. It was, unfortunately, a sharp question. And, however much Joseph hated to admit it, it was a question with an answer, for he’d contemplated it himself. “We would have to move up to Whole Mackerel. With the hills around that place, it makes another good spot to try to slow the southrons and to hurt them.”

  “Well, then,” Leonidas the Priest said, as if that settled everything.

  It didn’t, not so far as Joseph the Gamecock was concerned. “Don’t you see?” he said, something that felt much too much like desperation in his voice. “By all the gods, don’t you see? Shifting our position because the enemy forces us to do it is one thing. Shifting our position because some of our officers have a case of the collywobbles is something else again.”

  “Sound strategy dictates that we pull out of Fat Mama before disaster befalls us here,” Leonidas intoned, as if chanting a prayer to the Lion God.

  The god might have heard him with favor. He infuriated Joseph. “Sound strategy?” the general commanding the Army of Franklin exclaimed, his voice breaking like a youth’s. “Sound strategy? What in the seven hells do you know about sound strategy, sirrah? You wouldn’t recognize a sound strategy if it danced up and pissed on your boot.”

  That was the opinion of practically every officer who’d ever tried to command Leonidas the Priest. It was a matter on which Joseph the Gamecock and the now-departed Count Thraxton the Braggart actually agreed-one of the very few matters on which they actually agreed, as neither was much in the habit of agreeing with anyone else. Joseph was glad to have the men Leonidas had led into his army. He would have been even gladder to have them had they come without the general at their head.

  “I shall pray to the Lion God for your enlightenment, sir,” Leonidas said now. “Either he will give it or he will rend you for your presumption.”

  “I’m using my head, or trying to,” Joseph snapped. He felt as if he were using it to pound it against a stone wall. “If thinking be impiety, it’s no wonder you have a reputation as a pillar of the gods.”

  Leonidas bowed and strode off, his scarlet vestments flapping around his ankles. I hope you trip and break your neck, Joseph the Gamecock thought. But his prayer went unanswered. Of course it goes unanswered. I’m impious. Leonidas just said so. That must make it true.

  Lieutenant General Bell said, “Stay in Fat Mama, sir. If you want to see your army destroyed without the slightest chance of striking back, by all means stay.” And he hitched away, too.

  “What can I do?” Joseph demanded of Roast-Beef William. “I think we can hold here. You think we can hold here.”

  “But we can’t hold here if those two don’t think we can,” his remaining wing commander said, which was all too likely to be true. With a resigned shrug, Roast-Beef William went on, “Maybe they’ll like things better up at Whole Mackerel.”

  “Not likely,” Joseph the Gamecock said. But he tasted defeat. “My own wing commanders have beaten me worse than the southrons ever managed. Let it be as you say, William. We’ll pack up shop and shift to Whole Mackerel. Maybe things will go better there.” He didn’t believe it, not for a moment.

  And he hated drafting the orders that moved the Army of Franklin from as yet unchallenged works and sent it farther north yet. He hated even more watching the men in blue abandon those field fortifications. Some of them marched off to the north. Others boarded glideway carpets for the trip up to Whole Mackerel. Sorcerers had dreamt for ages of making carpets that would fly anywhere at the wave of a hand and a word of command. Glideways were as close as they’d come: carpets that would travel a few inches above the ground along very specific routes. They could carry men and goods as fast as a horse galloped, and they never tired.

  Joseph wished he could say the same. He was very weary indeed as he rode out of Fat Mama for Whole Mackerel. It wasn’t so much a weariness of the body as a weariness of the spirit. He’d done everything he knew how to do to keep the southrons from turning or overrunning his position at Fat Mama, and everything he’d done had gone for nothing.

  And King Geoffrey will hear of this latest retreat, and whom will he blame? Me, of course, Joseph thought gloomily. If there is ever any chance to blame me for anything, his Majesty is not the man to waste it.

  He left behind a screen of unicorn-riders to destroy what the Army of Franklin couldn’t take away with it and to hold off the southrons till his abandonment of Fat Mama was complete. Brigadier Spinner, who commanded the unicorn-riders, was competent but uninspired. He was plenty good enough for the task Joseph had set him. Even so, his presence on the field left Joseph unhappy.

  I wish Ned of theForest were here, instead of over by theGreatRiver, Joseph thought unhappily. I wish he were harrying Hesmucet’s supply line. A glideway Ned attacks isn’t any good to anyone for a long time to come.

  One of the reasons Ned was in virtual exile, Joseph had heard, was that he’d all but challenged Thraxton the Braggart to a duel after the battle by the River of Death. A good many northern men had felt like killing Thraxton at one time or another. Few of them found the nerve to come right out and say so. Ned of the Forest might not be a gentleman, but he’d never lacked for nerve.

  Joseph the Gamecock looked back over his shoulder. Sure enough, there was the buggy carrying Lieutenant General Bell. Joseph muttered something uncomplimentary. Bell had come with the same reputation for vigorous fighting as Ned, even if no one ever claimed he made much of a tactician. But he wouldn’t attack when Joseph really needed aggression from him. And he didn’t think the Army of Franklin could have held Fat Mama. What did that say about him?

  He’s been wounded too many times, Joseph thought, as charitably as he could. He takes too much laudanum. It clouds his judgment. Of course, Leonidas the Priest hadn’t thought the northern army could hold at Fat Mama, either. But what did that prove? Joseph the Gamecock let out a bitter snort of laughter. Nothing much, and everyone knows it. If Leonidas thinks something can’t be done, that usually proves it can.

  Too late now, though. Fat Mama lay behind the Army of Franklin, as did Caesar, as did Borders. Ahead, Whole Mackerel. After that, what? The Army of Franklin was tied to Marthasville, and Joseph knew it painfully well. Hesmucet could maneuver as he would. Joseph couldn’t. He had to shield the town from the southron host. Hesmucet had to know that as well as he did, too.

  He had to, but could he? I don’t know. He was honest enough to admit as much to himself. However honest it was, the admission did nothing to reassure him. Did King Geoffrey send me here to watch me fail? he wondered. Did he send me here in hope of finding an excuse to put me back on the shelf for good? To the hells with him. Gods damn me if I intend to give him one.

  IV

  General Hesmucet eyed the pass leading through the hills northwest to Whole Mackerel. The pass would have been a nasty place to try to force a crossing even if the traitors and their serfs hadn’t had weeks to fortify it. As things were… As things were, Hesmucet shook his head and spoke two words to his wing commanders: “No, thanks.”

  “Can’t say I’m sorry, sir,” Doubting George said. “Tackling that position would be as bad as going head-on at the Vulture’s Nest and the Dog’s Path. We could use up a lot of soldiers without getting much.”

  “Another flanking maneuver?” James the Bird’s Eye asked eagerly. Of course the young brigadier was eager: if Hesmucet did try a flanking maneuver, he hoped his men would again be the ones to make it.

  Fighting Joseph coughed a significant cough. “My warriors,” he observed, “have not yet won their fair share of glory on this campaign.”

  “Haven’t done their fair share of dying, do you mean?” George muttered. Hesmucet heard the gibe; he didn’t think Fighting Joseph did.

  H
e said, “Yes, I intend to flank the northerners out of this position. But I intend to use the whole army to do it.” James the Bird’s Eye’s face fell. Hesmucet pretended not to notice. He went on, “Twenty years ago, when I was a subaltern, I rode from Karlsburg in Palmetto Province to Hiltonia here in Peachtree, and then on to Bellfoundry in the province of Dothan. As a young soldier is supposed to do, I noted the lay of the land hereabouts, and I think I still recollect it tolerably well. There is a place to the north of Whole Mackerel called Fort Worthless-”

  “Cheerful name,” Brigadier James said with a grin.

  “Believe me, the place deserves it,” Hesmucet answered. “They say the mosquitoes there spring from dragons on their mothers’ side, and that they’re big enough to carry off a man. I don’t know about the second, but, having been bitten by more than a few of them, I would say the first is surely true. Now, if we can take this place, we interpose ourselves between Joseph the Gamecock and Marthasville. That is what I’m going to try to do.”

  “That’s what you’ve been trying to do all along,” Doubting George said.

  “My own view is, we ought to just hammer the traitors,” Fighting Joseph said.

  “Nothing would please me better,” Hesmucet said, “but Joseph the Gamecock declines to send his men out of their earthworks to be hammered. As long as he keeps his army intact and holds us away from Marthasville, he accomplishes his purpose. I don’t aim to let him.”

  “How do we get to this Fort Worthless place, sir?” James the Bird’s Eye asked. “How do we do it without going through Whole Mackerel, I mean?”

  Hesmucet pointed not northwest but northeast. “Over there is a road junction called Konigsburg. I intend to move the army there first, and then shift west over Calabash Creek toward Fort Worthless. I have maps, which I can show you at your leisure, if you’re so inclined.”

  “Thank you, sir,” James replied. He was eager. In a war where so many had grown weary, that alone made him stand out. “I’d be pleased to see them.”