Harry Turtledove: Advance and Retreat

Bell knew perfectly well how much he needed such a man. He said, “With your help and the help of the gods, Lieutenant General, I look forward to doing just that.”

“Good,” Ned said. “A pleasure to have a man I can work with in charge of the Army of Franklin.”

“Yes.” Bell nodded. “I was wounded, I think, when you had your… disagreement with Thraxton the Braggart.”

“Disagreement, hells. I was going to kill the son of a bitch,” Ned said matter-of-factly. “He had it coming, too. But did you ever run across a miserable cur dog not worth wasting a crossbow bolt on? By the Thunderer’s beard, that’s Thraxton. So I let him live, and I daresay the kingdom’s been regretting it ever since.”

“Er-yes,” Bell said. Count Thraxton’s patronage, along with that of King Geoffrey, had got him the command of this army when Geoffrey sacked Joseph the Gamecock outside of Marthasville. Joseph hadn’t fought the oncoming southrons; he’d stalled for time instead, hoping to make King Avram and his folk weary of the war. Bell had fought-and Marthasville had fallen. Bell remained convinced that wasn’t his fault. Coughing a couple of times, he added, “You are… very frank.”

“What’s the point of talking if you don’t say what you mean?” Ned returned. He leaned forward. “Now, then-what do you mean to do about the southrons down in Franklin?”

“General Hesmucet has marched west-he’s off the map,” Bell said, and Ned of the Forest nodded to show he followed. Bell went on, “Not only has he marched west, he’s taken all his best soldiers with him. That leaves nothing but odds and sods to hold Franklin and Cloviston. All we’ve got to do is win once, maybe twice, and we can get all the way to the Highlow River. What could stop us?”

Ned’s eyes gleamed ferally as he thought about that. “You’re right. And wouldn’t Avram look pretty with egg all over his ugly mug? Thinks we’re licked, does he? Thinks we’re flat? Well, he’d better think again.”

“That’s right. That’s exactly right. I think we’re going to get along just fine together, Ned,” Bell said.

“You tell me what to do. If I can, I will. If I can’t, you’ll hear all about the reasons why, I promise you,” Ned said.

Bell was his superior. Bell was also, or had also been, a ferocious fighting man in his own right. He’d never been one to encourage insubordination. Even so, he didn’t demand immediate, unquestioning obedience of Ned of the Forest, as he would have from anyone else. He just nodded and said, “Yes, we’ll get on fine.”

“Good.” Ned gave him a sloppy salute he found himself gladder to have than many neat ones from lesser officers. The commander of unicorn-riders ducked his way out of General Bell’s pavilion. Bell wasn’t sorry to see him go. The commander of the Army of Franklin looked like a suffering god because he suffered-on account of both the ruined arm he still had and the ruined leg he no longer owned. The leg might be gone, but its ghost of sensation lingered, and that ghost was in constant, unending torment.

Working awkwardly with his one good hand, Bell opened the leather pouch he wore on the belt that held up his dark blue pantaloons (one leg, of course, pinned up short). He pulled out a little bottle of laudanum and yanked the cork with his teeth. Then, tilting his head back, he took a long pull from the bottle.

Odd-tasting fire ran down his throat. Laudanum was a mixture of brandy and poppy juice. If it wouldn’t kill pain, nothing would. Only two things were wrong with that. One was, sometimes even laudanum wouldn’t kill the pain Bell knew. The other was, he’d been taking the stuff ever since his arm was ruined at Essoville. After close to a year and a half, he needed much bigger doses to quell his agony than he had at first. By now, the amount of laudanum he took every day would have been plenty to kill two or three men who hadn’t become habituated to the drug, or to leave six or eight such men woozy.

After he put the laudanum bottle away, Bell waited. He remembered the strange, almost floating sensation he’d got from laudanum when he first started taking it: as if he were drifting away from the body that still suffered. No more. Now laudanum was as much a part of his life as ale was part of a farmer’s.

Little by little, the anguish receded in the dead arm and the missing leg, the leg that didn’t seem to know it was missing. Bell sighed with relief. Laudanum didn’t fuzz his wits any more, or make him sleepy. He was sure of that. He was just as sure he would have had trouble thinking without it. The few times the healers had run short of the drug-the north didn’t have enough of anything it needed, except men who despised King Avram-he’d suffered not only from his dreadful wounds but from the even more dreadful effects of giving up laudanum.

He shuddered. He didn’t like to think about that. As long as he had the drug, he was still… at least the shadow of a fighting man. So what if he couldn’t bear a shield? So what if his stump was too short to let him sit a unicorn unless he was tied to the saddle? He was still a general, and a general who’d kept the surviving chunks of the Army of Franklin intact despite everything Hesmucet’s superior force had done to destroy them. He still had bold soldiers, and he could still strike a savage blow. He could-and he intended to.

That sentry stuck his head into the pavilion. “I beg your pardon, sir, but Brigadier Patrick would like a moment of your time, if you have it to spare.”

“Of course,” Bell said expansively. As the laudanum made him feel better about the world, how could he refuse?

In strode Patrick the Cleaver. “Top o’ the day to you, General,” he said, saluting. The young brigadier’s voice held the lilt of the Sapphire Isle, where he’d been born. After a career as a soldier of fortune, he’d crossed the Western Ocean to fight for King Geoffrey. He’d risen swiftly. Bell reckoned him among the finest wing commanders in northern service.

“What can I do for you now, Brigadier?” Bell asked, returning the salute. Yes, Patrick the Cleaver was one of the finest wing commanders in northern service. Bell doubted he would ever rise above the rank of brigadier, though. Even by Detinan standards, Patrick was devastatingly frank. Earlier in the year, he’d suggested that Geoffrey arm blond serfs and use them against King Avram’s armies. Geoffrey had not been amused. No one else had had the nerve to make that suggestion since.

“What can your honor do for me?” Patrick repeated. “Why, sir, you can be after telling me when we set ourselves in motion against the gods-damned southrons.”

“Soon,” Bell said soothingly. “Very soon.”

“And when exactly might ‘soon’ be?” Brigadier Patrick inquired. “Sure and we shouldn’t be letting ’em set themselves to meet us, now should we?”

“I don’t intend to do anything of the sort,” Lieutenant General Bell said. He also didn’t intend to order the Army of Franklin into motion right this minute. Laudanum filled him with a pleasant lassitude, almost as if he’d just bedded a woman. Since the drug made it harder for him actually to bed a woman, that was just as well.

“Well, if you won’t let those southron spalpeens set themselves, when are we to move?” Patrick the Cleaver demanded. “For would it not be a fine thing to be having the Army of Franklin in the province of Franklin once more? Better that nor hanging about down here in Dothan, I’m thinking.”

“Yes, and yes, and yes,” Bell said. “Yes, but how can we move till we gather supplies? Harvest time is long past. We can’t live off the country. Whatever we eat, we’ll have to take with us. The mages won’t be able to conjure it up-that’s certain. And we need more than food, too. Too many men in this army have no shoes on their feet. They’re wearing pantaloons and tunics they’ve taken off of dead southrons-either that or they’re wearing rags. We have to be ready before we march. Winter isn’t far off, and it can get cold down in Franklin.”