Advance and Retreat wotp-3 Read online

  “Well, my choice’d be to have the traitors throw in the sponge and surrender, but they’re as much a bunch of stubborn Detinans as we are, so I don’t expect that’ll happen tomorrow, or even the day after,” John the Lister replied. “We’re just going to have to lick ’em. If we do have to lick ’em, I’d sooner do it up in northern Franklin than down around Ramblerton.”

  “There’d be a great gnashing of teeth if they got so far,” his adjutant agreed.

  The rain kept right on falling. It soaked the roads. It soaked the soldiers. It soaked the woods that covered so much of Franklin. Woods that had been gorgeous with the gold and crimson and maroon leaves of autumn only days before went brown and bare. The leaves lay underfoot, losing their color and smelling musty and turning dreadfully slimy and slippery in the rain.

  When evening came-as it did earlier every day-the army made camp. Tents sprouted like toadstools in the rain. Considering the number of toadstools also sprouting, John found himself in an excellent position to make the comparison. More of his men carried tent halves than held true among the traitors. More supply wagons accompanied his army, too. He might not be able to move quite so fast as Lieutenant General Bell’s lean, hungry troopers, but he thought his men could hit harder when they got where they were going.

  And there’s not a thing wrong with taking whatever comforts you can into the field, he told himself. The traitors boasted of how scrawny they were, and did their best to turn their quartermasters’ weakness and sometimes incompetence into a virtue. John preferred having his men go into a fight well fed and as well rested as they could be. Thanks to the manufactories and glideways of the south, he got his wish.

  Hat still jammed down low on his head, he prowled through the camp, making sure everything ran to his satisfaction. Not everyone recognized him as the commanding general; like Marshal Bart, who led all of King Avram’s armies, he wore a common soldier’s blouse with stars of rank on the shoulders. But here and there, a man would call out, “How’s it going, Ducky?”

  Whenever that happened, John would wave back. He’d had the nickname a long time. When he was a younger man, he’d combed his hair so that it stuck up at the nape of his neck, putting people in mind of the southern end of a northbound duck. A lot of young men had worn their hair in that style twenty years before. He wasn’t the only one who’d ended up getting called Ducky or the Duck on account of it, either.

  He took out a mess tin and stood in line with ordinary soldiers to see what their cooks were dishing out. Once, a cook had been so surprised, he’d dumped a ladleful of stew on his own shoes. John had got the helping after that, and it had been pretty good. What he got this time was hard bread and cheese and sausage-nothing very exciting, but decent enough of its kind. He ate with real enjoyment.

  “Halt! Who goes there?” sentries called as he approached his own pavilion. They were alert, but not alert enough to have noticed he wasn’t in there to begin with.

  “I’m John the Lister,” he said dryly.

  The sentries muttered among themselves. At last, one of them said, “Advance and be recognized, sir.”

  Advance John did. Recognize him the sentries did. They came to attention so stiff, they might almost have come to rigor mortis. “Am I who I say I am?” the general asked.

  “Yes, sir!” the sentries chorused. One of them held the tent flap wide for him.

  “You don’t need to bother with such foolishness,” John said as he stooped and went into the pavilion. “Just make sure you keep any traitors from sneaking in after me, all right?”

  “Yes, sir!” the sentries chorused once more. They would do what he told them-unless they did something else, in which case the force he commanded would have a new leader shortly thereafter. John suspected it would do about as well under a fair number of other officers. He contrived to keep this suspicion well hidden. As far as his superiors knew, he was convinced he was indispensable.

  His superiors… John the Lister let his broad-shouldered bulk sag into a folding chair, which creaked under his weight. Depending on how you looked at things, he had either a mere handful of superiors or a whole great list of them. In King Avram’s volunteers, he was a brigadier. As long as the war against false King Geoffrey lasted, he could command a wing or even a small independent army, as he was doing now.

  That was true as long as the war lasted. The minute it ended, he was a brigadier no more. In King Avram’s regular army, the army that persisted in peacetime, John was only a captain, with a captain’s pay and a captain’s prospects. The best he could hope for as a captain would be to end up at a fortress on the eastern steppes, commanding a company against the blond nomads who preyed on the great herds of aurochs there-and on Detinan settlers.

  Doubting George was a lieutenant general of volunteers. But Doubting George was also a brigadier among the regulars. If the war ended tomorrow, he would still be a person to reckon with. John knew only one thing could get him the permanent rank he so craved: a smashing victory over the southrons. Knowing what he needed was all very well. Knowing how to get it was something else again.

  John gave Doubting George reluctant credit. George could have commanded this move up from Ramblerton himself. He could have, but he hadn’t. He already owned as much permanent rank as he needed. John didn’t. He had the chance to earn more here, if he could.

  And if Lieutenant General Bell was really coming. John the Lister still found that hard to believe. If he’d commanded the force Bell had, he wouldn’t have tried doing anything too risky with it. He would have held back, waited to see what the southrons opposing him had in mind, and hoped they’d make a mistake.

  Waiting and seeing, of course, had never been one of Bell’s strong points. If the situation called for him to charge, he would. If the situation called for him to wait and see, odds were he would charge anyway.

  Besides, who could say if he was really so foolish? The way things looked, the north needed something not far from a miracle to beat King Avram’s armies. Hanging back and waiting wouldn’t yield one. Striking for the enemy’s throat might.

  John had a flask on his belt. He liberated it, yanked out the stopper, and took a swig. Sweet fire ran down his throat: brandy made from the most famous product of Peachtree Province. After that one swig, John corked the flask and put it back on his belt. One nip was fine. More? More and he would have been like General Guildenstern, who, reports said, had been the worse for wear during the battle by the River of Death. Maybe Guildenstern would have lost sober, too. No one would ever know now.

  After pulling off his boots, John the Lister lay down on his iron-framed cot. He had a brigadier’s privileges; a captain would have slept wrapped in a blanket or on bare ground, like a common soldier. The cot wasn’t very comfortable, either, but it was better than bare ground.

  As usual, John woke before dawn. He got out of bed and put his boots back on. That done, he scratched. Back in Ramblerton, he’d been able to bathe as often as he wanted to-even a couple of times a week if he was so inclined. He usually wasn’t that fussy, though some of the more fastidious officers were. Out in the field, though, and especially when the weather wasn’t warm… He shook his head. Some things were more trouble than they were worth.

  When he came out of the pavilion, a couple of blond servants carried its light furnishings to a wagon, then took down the big tent itself and packed it on top of the cot and chair and folding table. “Thanks, boys,” John said. They both nodded. John had to remind himself they weren’t serfs. They worked for wages, just as a proper Detinan might find himself doing.

  They probably think they are proper Detinans. John the Lister muttered under his breath. He didn’t necessarily share that opinion. But he was sure Grand Duke Geoffrey had no business tearing the kingdom to pieces. That put him on King Avram’s side, no matter what he thought about blonds and whether or not they were as good as Detinans whose ancestors had crossed the Western Ocean.

  John watched the encampment come to life ar
ound him. Here and there, blonds cooked for soldiers and helped them knock down their tents. Most of those men and women were runaway serfs. They got wages these days, too. That they had fled their liege lords said they wanted to be free, even if they didn’t always quite know how.

  As John went over to get in line for breakfast, he plucked thoughtfully at his long, square-cut beard. Wanting to be free was what marked Detinans. Maybe some of those blonds had what it took after all.

  “Here’s Ducky!” Again, the nickname ran ahead of the general commanding. John pretended he didn’t hear. He took his place in a line, got a bowl of mush with bits of salt beef chopped into it, and had a blond cook’s assistant pour boiling water into the tin mug he held out. Like a lot of soldiers, he doubted he was a human being till he’d had his first mug of tea, or sometimes his second.

  When he came back from breakfast, Major Strabo saluted, saying, “Greetings and salutations, sir.”

  “Hello.” John politely returned the salute. Unlike his adjutant-perhaps in reaction to his adjutant-he kept his own speech simple.

  Walleyed Strabo looked past him to the left and right. “Now we fare forth to find and flummox the fearsome foe.”

  “You should have been born a bard, Major,” John said. “There are times when you sound like the singers who told the tale of our ancestors and how they conquered the blonds’ kingdoms they found in this new land.”

  “You do me honor by the comparison, sir.” Again, Strabo looked around John rather than at him.

  Mounts gleaming whitely, unicorn-riders went north ahead of John’s main force. General Guildenstern’s disaster had taught southron officers one lesson, anyhow: to make sure they didn’t get taken by surprise the way he had. John the Lister didn’t expect trouble from Lieutenant General Bell. He didn’t expect it, but he wanted to be ready for it if it happened. Better to take precautions without need than to need them without taking them.

  These days, General Guildenstern fought blond savages out on the steppe. His ignominious departure from the scene of the important action was no doubt intended as a warning to others who made mistakes in battle against the traitors. John the Lister’s shiver had nothing to do with the chilly weather. He knew any man could make mistakes-even the gods made mistakes.

  On the other hand, things might have gone worse for Guildenstern. John considered the fate of Brinton the Bold, who’d led King Avram’s army in the west for most of the first two years of the war. Brinton was handsome and brave, and had won a couple of small victories not long after the fighting started. But he moved with the speed of a tortoise, and his nickname soon seemed an ironic joke. Avram had asked, not altogether in jest, if he could borrow the army himself, since Brinton didn’t seem to be using it. These days, Brinton was a soldier no more. He went around the south making speeches that fell just short of treasonous, declaring that he would do a better job with a crown on his head than Avram could. If Detina hadn’t had a long tradition of letting any freeman say whatever he pleased as long as he didn’t harm anybody, Brinton’s body probably would have hung from a cross near the Black Palace as a warning to others.

  As things were, the former general was merely an embarrassment to the army he’d left and to most of the people who listened to him. He had a hard core of supporters, but John doubted they’d ever come to much.

  In any case, a soldier who remained a soldier had no business worrying about politics. John listened to the tramp of thousands of booted feet. That sound filled up the background of his days in the saddle. It got mixed in with the sound of his own blood flowing through his veins, so that it almost seemed a part of him. When the men fell out for a rest break, as they did every so often, he missed it.

  At sunset, he chose a low swell of ground to make camp. “What’s the name of this place?” he asked Major Strabo.

  “This, sir, is Summer Mountain,” his adjutant said after checking a map.

  John the Lister snorted. “Mountain?” he said. “This isn’t even a pimple next to the Stonies, out past the steppes to the east. Even here, it’s hardly a hill.”

  “It’s anything but insurmountable,” Strabo agreed. “But Summer Mountain the map calls it, and Summer Mountain it shall be forevermore.”

  “Miserable excuse for a mountain,” John grumbled. “It’s not summer any more, either.”

  * * *

  The unicorn-rider came galloping back toward Ned of the Forest. “Lord Ned!” he shouted. “Lord Ned!”

  Ned was no lord, but he didn’t mind being called one. No, he didn’t mind at all. “What did you see, Ben?” he asked. “You must’ve seen something, to be yelling like that.”

  “Sure did, Lord Ned,” the rider named Ben said. “The stinking southrons are camped on Summer Mountain, only a couple of hours’ ride from where we’re at.”

  “Are they?” A sudden feral glow kindled in Ned’s eyes. “How many of ’em? Doubting George’s whole army?”

  “No, sir,” Ben answered. “I don’t even reckon they’ve got as many men as we do.”

  “Is that a fact?” Ned murmured. The unicorn-rider nodded. “Well, well,” Ned said. “In that case, something ought to happen to ’em. You’re sure about what you saw, now?”

  “Sure as I’m on my unicorn’s back,” Ben said. “I’d take oath by the Lion God’s mane.”

  “They aren’t trying to set up an ambush, or anything like that?”

  “No, sir. Nothing like that at all,” Ben said. “They were just making camp, like they’d gone as far as they figured on going today and they were setting up for the night.”

  “Something really ought to happen to them, then,” Ned said. “You come along with me, Ben. We’re going to have us a little talk with Lieutenant General Bell.”

  “You reckon he’ll pay attention to the likes of me?” the unicorn-rider asked.

  “He’ll pay attention, by the gods,” Ned said softly. “If he doesn’t pay attention to you, he’ll have to pay attention to me.” He smiled a thoroughly grim smile. He’d met few men who cared to stand up under the full storm of his anger.

  He and Ben rode back toward Bell, who traveled with the pikemen and crossbowmen of the Army of Franklin. When he saw Bell on a unicorn, he sighed. The commanding general hadn’t had an easy time of it. Ned had often wondered about Bell’s common sense. No one could doubt the leonine officer’s courage. Bell’s adjutant had had to tie him into the saddle. The stump of his left leg was too short to give him a proper grip on the unicorn’s barrel.

  Ned looked down at himself. He’d been wounded several times, and still had the tip of a crossbow quarrel lodged somewhere near his spine. It had broken off; the surgeon had dug out most of the bolt, but not all. Men often died from a wound like his. He’d confounded the healers-he’d got well instead. He still had the use of all his parts, even if some of them had been punctured. Nothing on earth would have made him trade places with Lieutenant General Bell.

  What was it like, to be a wreck of your former self? What was it like, to know you were the wreck of your former self? Bell knew those answers. Ned was glad he didn’t.

  Respecting Bell’s bravery, he saluted the other officer. The commanding general cautiously returned the salute. With only one good hand, he had to be cautious about taking it off the reins. “What can I do for you, Lieutenant General?” Bell asked. As it often did, laudanum dulled his voice. His sagging, pain-racked features told the story of his suffering.

  At Ned’s prompting, Ben repeated his news for Lieutenant General Bell. Ned added, “Sounds to me like if we move smart, we can hit the southrons a devils of a lick.”

  “I don’t want to go straight at them,” Bell said. “We just use up our army that way, and we haven’t got enough men to be able to afford it. But if we can flank the southrons out of their position, if we can get around behind them and make them retreat past us… If we can do that, we’ll really make them pay.”

  “Yes, sir. I like that.” Ned of the Forest liked hitting the enemy-he
was one of the hardest hitters the north had. Hitting the enemy head-on was a different story. He saw that plainly, and wondered why more of King Geoffrey’s generals didn’t. Nodding with pleasure, he asked, “What do you want me to do?”

  “Hold the gods-damned southrons in place with your men,” Bell answered. “Don’t let them come any farther north, and don’t let them get wind of how many men we have or what we’re doing with them.”

  “I’ll try my best, General,” Ned said. “Can’t promise to hold off a whole army with just my unicorn-riders, though.”

  “Yes, I understand that,” Bell said. “You can slow it down, though, and screen away the enemy’s riders, eh?”

  “I expect I can manage that much, yes, sir,” Ned allowed. “Wouldn’t be much point to having unicorn-riders if we couldn’t do that sort of thing, would there?”

  “I wouldn’t think so,” the commanding general said. “Well, go on down and take care of it, then. The men on foot will follow and outflank the southrons while you keep them in play. And when they realize we’ve got behind them and they have to retreat, they’re ours. I wish I could ride with you.”

  “So do I, sir,” Ned said, more or less truthfully. Bell was no unicorn-rider by trade, but everyone said he’d been a fierce fighter before he started leaving pieces of himself on the battlefield.

  Bell paused now to swig from the bottle of laudanum he always carried with him. “Ahh!” he said, and quivered with an ecstasy that almost matched a priest’s when he had a vision of his chosen god. For a moment, Bell’s eyes lost their focus. Whatever he was looking at, it wasn’t the muddy road and the trees shedding the last of their leaves. But then, quite visibly, he came back to himself. “You there, trooper!” He nodded at Ben.

  “Yes, sir?” the unicorn-rider asked.

  “You’re a corporal now,” Bell said. “You took chances to get your news, and you deserve to be rewarded. Lieutenant General Ned, see that the promotion goes into your records, so his pay at the new rank starts from today.”