Marching Through Peachtree wotp-2 Page 5

  “Put that way, I don’t see how I can do anything but agree.” Doubting George plucked at his long, thick beard, which was just beginning to be frosted with gray. “You plan an ambitious campaign.”

  “Marshal Bart aims at the traitor realm’s head in his move against Nonesuch,” Hesmucet replied. “Me, I intend to tear out its heart. A kingdom can’t live without a head, and no more can it live without a heart. If we take both of them away from false King Geoffrey, what has he got left? Wind and air, Lieutenant General, wind and air and nothing else but. And not even a windbag like Geoffrey can make a kingdom from wind and air alone.”

  “I do not for a moment disagree with you, sir. It’s only that…” Doubting George had to pause and marshal his thoughts before he could continue. “It’s only that, the first three summers of this war, we were fighting battles. One of our armies would collide with an enemy force, we’d fight, and then we would see what happened next. Here”-he paused to think again-“here the battles are just incidents, parts of something bigger that you and Marshal Bart have in mind.”

  “And King Avram,” Hesmucet said. “Never forget King Avram.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” George said. “If it weren’t for King Avram, we wouldn’t have a war right now.”

  “Not right now,” Hesmucet said. “But we would have fought a war over serfdom sooner or later. We almost did ten years ago, till Daniel the Weaver, Henry Feet of Clay, and John the Typhoon worked out the compromise that satisfied King Zachary and the northern nobles both. But it didn’t satisfy anyone for long. This fight was coming. Now that it’s here, we have to win it.”

  “Fair enough,” George said.

  He went off to confer with his own subordinates. His wing commander, Brigadier Absalom the Bear, wore a long face. “We can do what you want, sir,” he rumbled in the bass growl that helped give him his sobriquet. “We can do it, sure enough, but we won’t get through and we will get mangled.”

  “We have to try it,” George replied, “for the sake of the army as a whole.” He turned to Brigadier Brannan, who commanded all his siege engines and dart throwers. “What can you do to make our job easier?”

  “Easier? Not fornicating much, sir.” Brannan was a man who spoke his mind. “Absalom has it right: we’re going to get mangled. The most I can hope to do is mangle a few more traitors than we would otherwise.”

  “All right. Do that,” Doubting George said. “We commence this afternoon. Give us the best chance you can.”

  At the appointed hour, horns blared. All of Brigadier Brannan’s engines, brought forward to bear on the trenches protecting the northerners, began to shoot at once. Stones and firepots flew through the air. So did streams of darts from repeating crossbows. Columns of smoke marked where firepots struck home. George’s wizards, in long gray robes to match the southron soldiers’ uniform tunics and pantaloons, sent bolts of lightning down from a clear sky onto the enemy’s heads.

  Had Joseph the Gamecock’s troopers just taken their positions, the bombardment and the sorcerous assault might have driven them off. But they’d had days-weeks-in which to ready themselves for the assault they must have thought likely. Darts and firepots and levinbolts no doubt slew some of the northerners, but had not a prayer of dislodging them from their field fortifications.

  Doubting George sighed. He’d expected nothing different. General Hesmucet had expected nothing different, either. If he was going to keep Joseph the Gamecock from looking north and west toward James the Bird’s Eye’s column advancing on Caesar, he would have to make a convincing assault on the Vulture’s Nest and the Dog’s Path. A convincing assault would also be an expensive assault.

  With another sigh, Lieutenant General George nodded to the trumpeters standing close by him. “Forward,” he said. Their martial music blared out. Obedient to his will, the southrons hurled themselves at the two gaps in Rockface Rise.

  “King Avram!” the soldiers shouted, and, “Freedom!” and, “One Detina, now and forever!” Doubting George believed in all those things, especially the last. If he hadn’t believed in a united Detina with all his soul, he would have gone with King Geoffrey, gone with the province of Parthenia. Instead…

  Instead, in the name of a united Detina, I’m sending hundreds, thousands, of young men forward in an attack I know and they probably also know has no chance of getting through, he thought. I had better be right, that’s all.

  Regardless of whether he was right about the cause he served, he rapidly proved right about the attack’s chances. Joseph and his wing commanders and brigadiers were every bit as capable as the southrons facing them. Exactly as capable, Doubting George thought. How could it be otherwise, when we all studied side by side together at the military collegium?

  The men who wore blue and had followed King Geoffrey away from Detina struck back, and struck back hard, as soon as George’s soldiers came into range at the Vulture’s Nest, where he watched the assault. Neither bombardment nor sorcerous assault had silenced the northerners’ catapults and repeating crossbows. They scythed through the southrons’ ranks, as did the quarrels from the crossbowmen in the trenches across the mouth of the Vulture’s Nest.

  Absalom the Bear came back to him in something of a temper. “Sir, may I withdraw the men now? If I keep sending them forward for long enough, the traitors will kill every last one of them, and then where will we be?”

  “In the front rank, I assume,” George said mildly. His wing commander gaped at him. He went on, “No, you may not withdraw them, Brigadier. As you know, their purpose is not to break through but to distract.”

  “It had better not be to break through.” Absalom’s voice was hot. “We haven’t a prayer of breaking through, any more than we did at-” He hesitated.

  “At Proselytizers’ Rise, you were going to say?” Doubting George smiled.

  Absalom the Bear didn’t. He looked positively bedeviled by bees. “That was Thraxton the Braggart’s magic going wrong. Otherwise, we’d have been battered there, too.”

  As if to prove him right, northern wizards struck at the men in gray trying to get into the Vulture’s Nest. Their lightnings-most of their spells-were more potent than those of the southrons. Their magecraft been honed in keeping their blond serfs afraid and subjected. In the south, spells went into manufactories, and weren’t so readily adaptable to war.

  Runners brought back reports of how the fight was going at the Dog’s Path. As far as Doubting George was concerned, they hardly needed to have come: the southrons had no more luck breaking through Joseph the Gamecock’s defenses there than at the Vulture’s Nest. He hadn’t expected better news, but he had hoped for it. Not all hopes were realized.

  Wounded men came back past him in a steady stream. Some were walking, clutching wounded arms or roughly bandaged about the head. Others lay on litters: some still and silent, others writhing and screaming out their torment to the world at large. The hot iron stink of blood grew stronger as the day wore on, so that the battlefield took on the reek of a vast outdoor butcher’s shop-which, in a manner of speaking, it was.

  The setting sun shone red as blood, too. When at last it touched the western horizon, George spoke again to the trumpeters: “Sound the recall. We’ve done everything we can do today.” As the notes that surely must have relieved his army rang out, he called for a messenger. When the runner trotted up to him, he said, “Go ask General Hesmucet if what we’ve done here today has been worth it.” Saluting, the young man dashed off.

  He returned half an hour later, with twilight deepening. Saluting again, he said, “The commanding general’s compliments, sir, and he says this attack did just what it was supposed to do.”

  “Good,” Doubting George said. “Considering what we paid, I’d hate to see it wasted.”

  Joseph the Gamecock was about as happy as a man of his dour temperament could be. “We held them,” he said to anyone who would listen, as twilight deepened around him. “By all the gods, we held them!” He was as bub
bly as if he’d been drinking sparkling wine.

  His good mood even survived the arrival of a runner who said, “Sir, the scryers need to see you right away.”

  “I’m coming,” Joseph replied. “The way I feel right now, I’d come even if it were King Geoffrey looking at me out of the crystal ball.” Geoffrey was his sovereign. He gave the king all due obedience. That didn’t keep him from thinking his Majesty had not a clue concealed anywhere about his person when it came to running a war.

  But it wasn’t Geoffrey’s face in the crystal ball. It was one of Roast-Beef William’s brigadiers, an officer called Husham Forkbeard, who had charge of the northern garrison up in Caesar. Even in an outstandingly shaggy army, Husham’s whiskers were exceptional. At the moment, so was his alarmed expression. “Sir, you’ve got to help me!” he exclaimed the moment he saw Joseph the Gamecock.

  “What’s wrong?” demanded the commander of the Army of Franklin.

  “I’ll tell you what’s wrong, sir,” Husham replied. “What’s wrong is, we’ve got a whole great swarm of southrons pouring through Viper River Gap and coming straight for Caesar, that’s what.”

  “I am an idiot,” Joseph said softly.

  “Sir?” Husham Forkbeard asked.

  “Never mind,” Joseph told him, which did not stop the commanding general from bitterly reproaching himself. Of course General Hesmucet wasn’t so stupid as to think he could break through at the Vulture’s Nest or by the Dog’s Path. He’d made a big, noisy demonstration there to keep the Army of Franklin in its position, and then swung part of his own enormous force north on a flanking maneuver-and it was liable to work. “You have to hold him,” Joseph said urgently. “You have to. If he takes Caesar, he’s got the glideway line between us and Marthasville. We can’t afford that.”

  The understatement there would do till somebody came up with a bigger one. Joseph the Gamecock suspected that would take a while. If he couldn’t get supplies up from Marthasville, the only question was whether the Army of Franklin ran out of crossbow bolts before or after it started starving. Joseph didn’t care to make the experiment.

  He didn’t intend to make the experiment, either. Husham Forkbeard asked, “What am I going to do, sir?”

  All at once, everything became glassy clear for Joseph. “You are going to hold on till the end of tomorrow afternoon,” he replied. “You are going to hold on at any cost and at any hazard, but you are going to hold on. Do you understand me, Brigadier?”

  “Yes, sir. I understand you fine,” Husham replied. “The only thing is, I don’t know if we can do it.”

  “You will do it,” Joseph said coldly. “It is not a matter of choice. It is obligatory. If you run short of firepots and quarrels, you will receive the enemy with pikes and shortswords. Whatever happens, however, you will not retreat from Caesar and you will not yield the glideway line. You are to fight to the last man. If your soldiers are all slain, their ghosts are to continue the struggle.”

  “Heh,” Husham said nervously. Then he saw that Joseph the Gamecock was not laughing-was, in fact, deadly serious. Husham nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Stout fellow,” Joseph said. “I will get reinforcements to you directly. You hang on till they arrive, that’s all.” He made it sound simple. He wished it were simple. He knew the problems involved in holding off a substantially larger force. He’d had to do it in Parthenia, defending Nonesuch against the massive southron attack up the Henry River.

  And if I hadn’t been wounded there, the Army of Southern Parthenia would still be mine, and no one, very possibly, would ever have heard anything much of Duke Edward of Arlington. Joseph the Gamecock shrugged. He couldn’t do anything about that, not now. No one could do anything about that now, not even the gods. Dealing with the southron attack at Caesar was going to be trouble enough, and that was within the theoretical range of things possible.

  “Hang on,” he told Husham Forkbeard once more. Then he nodded to his scryer. The fellow broke the mystical connection between his crystal ball and the one up in Caesar. Husham’s shaggy face vanished. Joseph the Gamecock hurried out of the tent, shouting for runners.

  He sent one man off to order two brigades north right away. The others summoned his wing commanders to him as fast as they could get there. Roast-Beef William arrived first, and in a jubilant mood. “The way the men fought today goes a long way towards redeeming their sorry performance at Proselytizers’ Rise,” he said.

  Leonidas the Priest came next. “The Lion God favored our arms with victory today,” he declared.

  “I presume he told you afterwards that he’d done it?” Joseph murmured. The hierophant of the Lion God gave him a wounded look, but did not reply.

  Lieutenant General Bell got there last-not surprising, given his wounds. But he was, as always, full of fight. “Now we’ve shown the southrons they can’t come in,” he said. “When the sun rises tomorrow, we ought to charge out through the gaps and drive them away.”

  “No,” Joseph the Gamecock said.

  “I beg your pardon, sir?” Bell said, eyebrows rising at Joseph’s bluntness.

  Count Joseph had never been one to suffer fools, or even disagreement, gladly. “That is a technical term, Lieutenant General, meaning, in essence, no.”

  Bell had a temper of his own. “Why the devils not, sir?” he demanded, waving his good arm. “We can go forth and conquer.”

  “Or we can go forth and be beaten,” Joseph the Gamecock said. “Since General Hesmucet has close to twice as many men as we do, which do you reckon more likely? We can’t afford a beating like that, not when we have Marthasville to protect. If we beat Hesmucet, what happens? He falls back to Rising Rock, at the most. That does us very little good I can see.”

  “But, sir-” Bell tried again.

  “No,” Joseph repeated, and took no small pleasure at interrupting his insubordinate subordinate. “And I will give you one more reason, Lieutenant General: a column of southrons is pushing through Viper River Gap toward Caesar, twenty miles north of here. Don’t you feel we ought to think just a little about that, perhaps even do something about it?”

  “Viper River Gap? Caesar?” Bell brooded for a moment-although, after his pair of dreadful wounds, his expression was always brooding. At last, he said, “Oh. That alters the situation.”

  “Just a bit.” Joseph the Gamecock could no more resist being waspish than Lieutenant General Bell could resist charging forward regardless of whether the situation called for it.

  Roast-Beef William said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if Hesmucet didn’t attack so hard here to keep us busy while he sent that column up to the north.”

  “Exactly what I was thinking,” Joseph replied, as benignly as he could. Even he had a hard time barking at someone who agreed with him.

  “Very clever,” Leonidas the Priest said, by which he no doubt meant he would never have thought of it himself.

  “Very clever indeed,” Bell said. “Sneaky. Perfidious. Underhanded.” By that he no doubt meant he not only would never have thought of it himself, but also reckoned less than chivalrous the enemy who had.

  “The only rule you can’t break in war is that you must win,” Joseph said. Bell looked ready to argue, but Joseph overrode him: “Husham Forkbeard is up at Caesar all by his lonesome. The first thing I have to do is reinforce him, so the southrons can’t seize the glideway. Leonidas!”

  “Sir?” the hierophant of the Lion God replied.

  He wasn’t a great soldier. He never would be. But he was willing, he was brave, and, even more to the point, he led the soldiers farthest north in the main body of the Army of Franklin. Joseph said, “Get your men on the road at once. I want them to reach Caesar as fast as humanly possible, and to give Husham all the help he needs to hold the place.”

  “Yes, sir,” Leonidas said. “Ah… What do I do if I reach Caesar and find it fallen to the southrons?”

  That was a better question than Joseph the Gamecock would have expected from him. After a
moment’s thought, the commanding general answered, “Counterattack. The southrons can’t have enormous numbers there. But I hope-I pray, if you like, holy sir-Husham will hold the town. He’s a solid fighting man, a warrior of the old school.”

  “All right, sir.” Leonidas the Priest saluted. “I just wanted to know what you required of me.” He saluted and strode away, his blood-red vestments bright even in the deepening twilight.

  “What of the rest of the army, sir?” Roast-Beef William asked.

  “We’ll leave enough men behind at the gaps for a little while to make sure the southrons don’t swarm through,” Joseph answered. “As for the rest, we’ll all get down to Caesar as quick as we can. Unless I’m altogether mad, that’s where General Hesmucet is going. If he brings his whole army down there, we ought to give him a proper reception, don’t you think?”

  “I think we ought to attack,” Lieutenant General Bell said.

  Joseph the Gamecock shook his head. “If you ever command this army, you may lead it as you please. While I command, you will obey me. We have trenches waiting all around Caesar. Our men are going into them.”

  Stubbornly, Bell said, “Entrenchments weaken the fighting spirit of the men. They would be bolder, fighting out in the open.”

  “They would take more losses, fighting out in the open,” Joseph said. “We cannot afford to take more losses. Why won’t you listen to me? The idea is to make the southrons take losses, to make them take so many that they get sick of the war, give it up, and leave us alone. Have you got that?”

  “The idea of fighting a war, sir, is to win it.” Bell had no more give in him than did his superior.

  “Go on,” Joseph the Gamecock growled. “Just go on. I promise you, there will be plenty of fighting for everyone before this campaign is through. As for now… just go.” He didn’t quite scream, Get out of my sight! That he didn’t he reckoned a sign of nearly godlike restraint on his part.

  If the southrons break into Caesar, if Husham Forkbeard can’t hold them away from the glideway, we’ll all have more fighting than we want, but not for very long, he thought. The Army of Franklin would break up, and that would be the end of King Geoffrey’s cause here in the east.