Harry Turtledove - Advance and Retreat

“I… see,” George said slowly. “Isn’t there anything more useful I could be doing than sitting around in Wesleyton impersonating a cork?”

“I don’t believe so,” Bart answered. “It’s a useful thing to do, and the other pieces of your army are off doing different useful things in other places. This seems a good enough thing for the men you still have with you to do.”

“A good enough thing,” Doubting George echoed. “Gods damn it, Bart, we were more than ‘good enough’ not so long ago.”

“Finally, yes. But you could have whipped Bell sooner. You should have whipped Bell sooner. Instead, you had King Avram and me half out of our minds with worry that the Army of Franklin would get around you and head for the Highlow River.”

“Well, Marshal, if his Majesty thought that-and especially if you thought that, you were out of your minds, and not just halfway, either,” George said. “Bell wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was his army. He’d come as far as he could. If you’d had a look at his men, you could have seen that for yourself. I did. And I knew what I saw, too,” George said.

Did something glint in Marshal Bart’s eyes? George wasn’t sure. The marshal had perhaps the deadest pan in Detina, too. Bart said, “You are entitled to your opinion, Lieutenant General. I am also entitled to mine. My opinion is that sending you to Wesleyton is the best thing I can do right now, given the way the war is going. Carry out your orders.”

“Yes, sir,” Doubting George said woodenly.

Bart turned to his scryer. His image vanished from the crystal ball. George refrained from picking up the ball and chucking it into the Franklin River. He couldn’t have said why he refrained from chucking it into the river, but refrain he did. Afterwards, he decided it had to prove he was a more tolerant man than even he would have imagined.

“Carry out your orders.” In his mouth, the commonplace soldierly phrase somehow turned into a curse. Bart had the right to tell him to do it-had the right and used it. And I reserve the right to reckon Bart is a first-class son of a bitch , Doubting George thought.

That didn’t eliminate the need to do as Bart said, worse luck. The general commanding-not that George had so very much left to command any more-turned and strode out of the scryers’ tent. None of the mages in there said a word to him. In fact, they all seemed to be pretending they were somewhere else. Scryers, like other sorcerers, often missed emotions they should have seen. What Doubting George felt was too raw, too obvious, for even a scryer to miss.

Colonel Andy bustled up to George before he’d gone very far from the pavilion. Someone must have told the adjutant George had been summoned. “Well?” Andy asked expectantly. “What did he have to say for himself now?”

“Wesleyton is lovely this time of year, don’t you think?” George answered.

“Wesleyton?” His adjutant gaped. “What the hells has Wesleyton got to do with anything? Who in his right mind would want to go to Wesleyton? It’s not even a good place to die, let alone to live.”

“No doubt you’re right, Colonel.” Doubting George couldn’t help smiling, no matter how miserable he was. “Miserable or not, though, that’s where we’re going: you and I and as much of my army as Marshal Bart has graciously let me keep.”

“Are we?” Colonel Andy said, and the commanding general nodded. Andy asked, “And why , pray tell, are we going to Wesleyton? I understand why Whiskery Ambrose went there last year: to take it away from the traitors. But we’ve held it ever since. What’s the point of sending a whole lot more men there now?” Doubting George explained Marshal Bart’s reasoning. His adjutant looked like a chipmunk who’d just bitten down on a cast-iron acorn. “That’s one of the strangest things I’ve ever heard, sir. How likely is it that the Army of Southern Parthenia’s going to come running in our direction?”

“Not very, not as far as I can see,” George answered. “But Bart’s right-it could happen. Now he’ll have somebody in place to make sure Duke Edward doesn’t get far if he tries it.”

“Yes, sir. So he will.” Andy didn’t seem delighted at the prospect. “And isn’t that a wonderful use for the army that broke the traitors’ backs out here? Just a wonderful fornicating use.”

“He is the Marshal of Detina. He can give the orders. He has given them, as a matter of fact. We need to obey them. You’ll want to draw up plans to shift us to the western part of the province-glideway lines, supply dumps, and such.”

“Oh, I have them,” Andy said. “You don’t need to worry about that.”

Doubting George stared. “You… have them? Even to Wesleyton?”

“Yes, sir.” Andy nodded. “That’s what an adjutant is for: making plans, I mean. Most of them end up in the trash. That’s how things work, too. But one will come in handy every now and again. Excuse me, please-I’ll start things gliding.” He saluted and hurried off.

Behind him, Doubting George started to laugh. Now I know what an adjutant does, he thought. And if only someone would tell me what a commanding general is for…

Here in the west, the war looked and felt different. That was John the Lister’s first thought when his wing moved through Georgetown on the way to the coast of Croatoan and a rendezvous with General Hesmucet’s hard-driving army. Things seemed cramped here, without the room to maneuver that had marked the fighting in the east.

Georgetown itself appeared confident the war was won. Engineers had been fortifying the capital of Detina ever since the War Between the Provinces broke out. Castles and earthworks and trenches littered the landscape for miles around the heart of the city. If the Army of Southern Parthenia had ever come this far, it would have had to fight its way through all of them to get to the Black Palace.

When that thought crossed John’s mind, he suddenly remembered that a detachment from the Army of Southern Parthenia had tapped at those fortifications only the summer before, till forces detached from Marshal Bart’s army pushed them back. What a difference a bit more than half a year made! Now Jubal the Late’s detachment was smashed, the valley he’d guarded so long a smoking ruin that could no longer feed Duke Edward’s men, and the Army of Southern Parthenia penned up and hungry in Pierreville. That army would see southern Parthenia no more, nor Georgetown, either.

John the Lister’s eye went to the Black Palace. The home of Detina’s kings-of Detina’s rightful kings, anyhow-towered over the city. Looking out from the battlements of the Black Palace, King Avram could see a long way. He could look on Parthenia to the north and on the loyal provinces to the south (even if crossbowmen and pikemen had been required at the start of the war to keep Peterpaulandia loyal).

Now everything looked likely to turn out for the best. A couple of years earlier, John wouldn’t have bet on that. Twice Duke Edward of Arlington had invaded the south; once Count Thraxton the Braggart had pushed an army down into Cloviston, too. Even men of the stoutest loyalty to King Avram could hardly be blamed for fearing that Geoffrey might yet forge a kingdom of his own.

It hadn’t happened, though. It hadn’t, and now it wouldn’t. The end was visibly at hand. Geoffrey, Duke Edward, and Count Joseph the Gamecock were all stubborn men. They hadn’t given up yet. That’s why my wing’s come west , John thought: to make them give up .

He’d found his way back to his hostel while hardly even noticing in which direction his feet were going. Anyone who was anyone-anyone who had pretensions of being anyone-stayed at the House of the Rat when he came to Georgetown. For one thing, it had the softest beds and finest kitchen of any establishment in the city. For another, it lay right at the edge of the joyhouse quarter, with brothels to suit every purse and every taste within easy walking distance.