Harry Turtledove: Advance and Retreat

“Good enough,” George said. “You’re dismissed, Major.”

“See you later,” Alva said cheerfully, and touched the brim of his gray hat as he might have back in civilian life. Doubting George coughed. Major Alva turned red again. Little by little, George kept on persuading him he was a soldier. In even smaller increments, the lessons took. Mumbling, “Sorry,” Alva gave him another salute. He coughed again. Alva’s stare held nothing but indignation. “Now what?”

“’Sorry, sir,’” George said, as if to a four-year-old.

“’Sorry, sir,’” Alva repeated, obviously not sorry in the least. “What the hells difference does it make?”

“Magic has rituals, eh?” George said.

“I should hope so,” the young wizard answered. “What’s that got to do with anything, though?”

“Think of this as a ritual of the army,” George said. “You don’t need to salute me because you like me or because you think I’m wonderful. You need to salute me because you’re a major and I’m a lieutenant general.”

Alva sniffed. “Pretty feeble excuse for a ritual-that’s all I’ve got to say.”

“Maybe. Maybe not, too,” Doubting George said. “But I’ll tell you this-every army in the world has rituals like that. Every single one of ’em. If there ever were armies without those rituals, the ones that do have ’em squashed the others flat. What does that tell you?”

It told Alva more than George had expected it to. The mage’s foxy features shut down in a mask of concentration so intense, he might have forgotten George was there. At last, after a couple of minutes of that ferocious thought, he said, “Well, sir, when you put it that way, you just may be right. It almost puts you in mind of the Inward Hypothesis of Divine Choice, doesn’t it?”

Doubting George gaped at him. “Not that gods-damned daft heretical notion!” he exclaimed. On the far side of the Western Ocean, back in the mother kingdom, the land from which the Detinan colonizers left for their newer world, a mage who called himself Inward had proposed that the gods let beasts compete over time, those better suited to whatever they did surviving and the others failing to leave offspring behind. Every priest in the civilized world immediately started screaming at the top of his lungs, the most common shriek being, With an idea like that, who needs gods at all?

“It makes a lot of sense, if you ask me,” Alva said. George had long known his wizard lacked conventional piety. He hadn’t known Alva followed the Inward Hypothesis. As far as he was concerned, the wizard who’d proposed it had known what he was doing when he chose a false name. Now Alva went on, “You said it yourself, sir. Armies that develop these rituals survive. Those that don’t-don’t.”

He hadn’t even been insubordinate this time. He’d left Doubting George nothing to do but repeat, “Dismissed.”

Major Alva saluted. “A pro-survival ritual,” he said thoughtfully. “I won’t forget.” And out he went.

Doubting George drummed his fingers on his desk. He’d scorned the Inward Hypothesis from the moment he first heard about it. But now, though he hadn’t even known he was doing it, he’d argued in favor of what he’d thought he scorned. What did that say? Nothing good, he was sure.

If I hadn’t tweaked Alva about saluting, he wouldn’t have tossed a firepot at my thoughts . George sighed. Alva hadn’t even meant to be inflammatory. As far as George was concerned, that made the wizard more dangerous, not less. “What am I going to do with him?” he wondered aloud. Asking was easy. Finding an answer wasn’t.

And what am I going to do if the northerners really are up to something? he wondered. That was about as puzzling as what he would do with Major Alva. The problem was, he didn’t have all the men he needed. General Hesmucet had gone traipsing across Peachtree toward the Western Ocean with all the best loyal soldiers in the eastern part of the Kingdom of Detina. He hadn’t expected the northerners to be able to mount much of a challenge here in Franklin. If he was wrong…

“If he was wrong, gods damn it, I’ve got my work cut out for me,” Doubting George muttered.

He scowled. That would do for an understatement till a bigger one came along. Among the men Hesmucet had taken with him were a good many from the wing George had commanded on the campaign that ended up seizing Marthasville. The soldiers Hesmucet hadn’t taken made up the nucleus-the small nucleus-of the force George had here in Franklin.

Along with those men, he had garrison troops scattered through countless fortresses in Cloviston and Franklin. They guarded not only towns but also the glideway line that kept men and supplies moving. That meant they were scattered over the two provinces-one of which had stayed in the Kingdom of Detina but still furnished soldiers to Grand Duke Geoffrey’s army, while the other had tried to leave but was, after a fashion, reconquered-and not in the best position to fight if they had to.

I’d better concentrate them , Doubting George thought gloomily. Then his scowl blackened as he shook his head. If I do, Ned of the Forest’s unicorn-riders will play merry hells with the glideways . Ned of the Forest was no ordinary commander of unicorn-riders, no ordinary raider. When he hit a glideway line, he didn’t just damage it. He wrecked it. His troopers and mages knew their business altogether too well.

Doubting George shrugged. Keeping the glideway lines intact mattered less than it had earlier in the year. Hesmucet’s men weren’t tied to them for food and firepots and crossbow bolts any more. They were living off the country now, living off the country and by all accounts doing well. Raids against the glideways would still be a nuisance. They wouldn’t be a disaster.

That decided Lieutenant General George. He hurried over to the scryers, who had their headquarters next door to his own. When the gray-robed mages looked up from their crystal balls, he said, “Send word to all garrisons of company size and above: they’re to move at once, to concentrate here at Ramblerton.”

“Yes, sir,” the wizards chorused. Unlike Major Alva, they knew how to obey orders. Also unlike him, they were utterly ordinary when it came to sorcery. Doubting George usually thought Alva’s talents outweighed his shortcomings. Sometimes, though, he wondered.

Lieutenant General Bell looked down at himself. The northern officer was a big, strong man, with a bushy beard and a face that for years had put men in mind of the Lion God. These days, he looked like a suffering god. His left arm hung limp and lifeless at his side. He’d been with Duke Edward of Arlington and the Army of Southern Parthenia down at Essoville when he’d taken the crippling wound. And later that same summer, here in the east at the River of Death, a stone flung from a catapult had smashed his right leg, which now ended a few inches below the hip.

He was not a man much given to whimsy, Lieutenant General Bell. Nevertheless, surveying the ruins of what had been a redoubtable body, he nodded to Ned of the Forest with something approaching geniality and said, “Do you know what I am?”

“What’s that, sir?” the commander of unicorn-riders asked.

“I am the abridged edition,” Bell declared.

That brought a smile-a cold, fierce smile-to Lieutenant General Ned’s face. “I reckon we ought to see what we can do about abridging us some o’ those stinking southrons,” he said, a northeastern twang in his voice. Unlike most high-ranking northern officers, he held not a drop of noble blood in his veins. He’d been a serfcatcher before the war, and enlisted as a common soldier when fighting between the two halves of Detina broke out. He’d risen to his present rank for one reason and one reason only: he was overwhelmingly good at what he did.