Harry Turtledove: Advance and Retreat

“Do you understand?” Florizel repeated.

“Yes, sir!” the captains chorused. Gremio made sure his voice was loud among theirs. He knew he would have to carry out the order. He also knew a lot of the men he led would laugh at him when he did. They hadn’t given up hoping they would win, but more than a few had given up expecting it. He’d given up expecting it himself.

“Very well, gentlemen. Dismissed,” Florizel said. “And remember, I want no more desertions from this regiment.”

“Yes, sir,” the company commanders said again. Again, Gremio made sure his voice rang out. He also wanted no more desertions. He knew better than to expect or even hope for that, though.

John the Lister looked over his shoulder from unicornback. He knew more than a little pride in the gray-clad army he led north from Ramblerton, the army that, from this hilltop, resembled nothing so much as a long, muscular snake. Turning to his adjutant, he said, “By the gods, I hope Lieutenant General Bell is coming south. I’ll be very happy to meet him. We’ll have a lot to talk about, don’t you think?”

“Yes, sir,” Major Strabo said. “And a sharp conversation it will be.” Strabo was a walleyed man with a taste for bad puns, but a good officer despite that.

“Er-yes.” John’s eyes pointed as they were supposed to. He had, however, gone bald as a young man, and wore a hat at any excuse or none. He had a good excuse now: the rain that dripped from a sky the color of a dirty sheep’s belly.

“Can we flagellate them all by ourselves, do you think?” Strabo asked. He never used a simple word if he could find a long, obscure one that meant the same thing, either.

After a brief pause to figure out what the other officer was talking about, the southron commander nodded. “I expect we can manage that,” he said. “Unless he’s managed to scrape together more men than I think he has, we’ll be all right. And even if he has, well, we can still hurt him.”

“Here’s hoping we get the chance,” Major Strabo said.

“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.