Harry Turtledove - Advance and Retreat

“Yes, sir,” Gremio said. “But I’d sooner live on my feet, if I possibly can.”

Florizel considered that. By the startled look on his face, it hadn’t occurred to him up till now. After more than a little thought, he nodded. “Yes, that would be best, wouldn’t it? It would if we could manage it, I mean. I don’t know how we’re going to.”

“We have to get away from the southrons.” Gremio preferred not to mention that only a little while before he’d almost surrendered to Doubting George’s men. Florizel didn’t need to know that. It hadn’t happened, and now-maybe-it wouldn’t. Gremio dared hope, anyhow.

But even if they did get back up to Dothan or Great River Province, what could they do then? Precious little, not after the losses they’d taken. For years, the Army of Franklin had been the heart of King Geoffrey’s power here in the east. Now it was broken, and so was that power. How could it be revived? Could it be revived? Gremio didn’t know. He shook his head. No, that wasn’t true. He did know. He just didn’t care to think about what he knew.

For as long as Lieutenant General Bell could, he looked on the second day’s fighting in front of Ramblerton much as he had on the first day’s: the southrons had pushed his men hard, but he’d held his lines together even if he had had to give some ground.

The night before, though, his wing commanders and Ned of the Forest had agreed with him, or at least not disagreed too loudly. None of them had quarreled with his intention of inviting the second day of battle. None of them had seen any better choices available to the Army of Franklin. Tonight, though… tonight, the wing commanders and Ned didn’t wait to be summoned. They sought Bell out in the pavilion he’d run up when he couldn’t find a farmhouse as night fell.

One word came from all the officers: disaster . “Sir, my wing was attacked from front, rear, and flank all at the same time,” Stephen the Pickle said. “Those gods-damned southron unicorn-riders with their quick-shooting crossbows…” He shuddered. “We didn’t break, not in any ordinary sense of the word. They tore us to shreds. Not much of what was the left is left.”

“Or of the center,” Benjamin the Heated Ham said. “The southrons tore us to pieces, too, from the front and then from the flank when the left retreated.” He nodded to Stephen. “Seeing what happened to it, I don’t know how it could have done anything but retreat.”

Bell turned to Florizel. “And you, Colonel? What have you got to say?” He’d expected the least from Florizel. He’d got the most. A fair part of Florizel’s wing remained in good fighting trim-or as good as any in the Army of Franklin.

“Well, sir,” Florizel answered, “we thought the hardest blows would fall on us, and I’d say we got the softest. That’s why we’re not in such dreadful shape-compared to the other wings, I mean.”

Even there, a knife. He’d expected to take the hardest blows because Bell had said they would fall on the right. But Bell had been mistaken. Did Florizel also think he’d been mistaken elsewhere in the campaign? The general commanding bristled. He didn’t believe that, regardless of whether anyone else did.

“Question now is, how do we pick up the pieces? If we can, I mean,” Ned of the Forest said.

“What have we got to pick up?” Stephen the Pickle asked sourly. “We left most of the pieces on the field.”

“That is not so,” Bell declared. “The Army of Franklin remains in being. It remains a fighting force.”

No one contradicted him. He found himself wishing somebody would have. The chilling silence from Ned of the Forest and the wing commanders hurt worse than any argument could have done. The officers just stood in poses of weary dismay. They didn’t bother quarreling with him. It was as if they were beyond quarreling, as if the catastrophe was too obvious to need any more quarrels.

In what was, for him, an unwontedly small voice, Lieutenant General Bell asked, “What do we do tomorrow?”

“Fall back.” Two wing commanders and Ned said the same thing at the same time. Ned added, “The southrons will be coming after us with everything they’ve got. With all those unicorn-riders and their quick-shooting crossbows and with their swarm of footsoldiers, they’ve got a lot. They’re going to want to finish us off. Unless we scoot, they’ll do it, too.”

“Can’t we stop them?” Bell said in dismay. “If we take a strong defensive position and force them to come at us-”

“They’ll roll right over us,” Benjamin the Heated Ham broke in. All the other officers nodded somber agreement.

Ned added, “That ‘pick a good place and make ’em come at us’-that’ll do for rear-guard actions. We’ll have to fight a lot of ’em, I reckon, to keep the southrons off our main body. If we can.”

More nods from the wing commanders. Stephen the Pickle said, “If we can get away, that’s a victory. That’s about as much as we can hope for, too.”

“If you men abandon the idea of victory, you condemn this army to irrelevance,” Bell said, horrified.

Benjamin the Heated Ham replied, “If you try to win a victory now, sir, you condemn this army to extinction.”

Once more, the rest of the officers in the pavilion solemnly nodded. Bell started to ask what they would do if he ordered them to attack, or even to stand and fight. He started to, but he didn’t. The answer was entirely too obvious: they would disobey him. Even he could see he was better off not giving some orders. With a long sigh, he said, “You are dismissed, gentlemen. In the morning, we will… see what we can do.”

They ducked out of the pavilion, one after another. Left all alone again, Bell eased himself down into a folding chair, then leaned his crutches against the chair’s wooden arm. “Gods damn it,” he said softly. “Gods damn it to all seven hells.”

He wished he were whole. A whole man had choices a cripple didn’t. Had he been whole, he could have hurled himself into the fighting when things went wrong. He could have killed several of Doubting George’s men on his own. He could have made them kill him. He wouldn’t have had to live through the disastrous battle, wouldn’t have had to suffer this humiliation. And, once dead, he could have looked the Thunderer and the Lion God in the eye and assured them he’d been as gallant as it was given to a mortal man to be.

Instead… here he sat, with the Army of Franklin as mutilated as he was.

He pulled out the little bottle of laudanum and stared at it. Then he pulled the stopper off with his teeth. If he gulped the whole bottle instead of his usual swig, maybe that would be enough to stop his heart. On the other hand, maybe it wouldn’t. He’d got used to ever bigger doses of the drug. He’d had to, to come even close to holding his unending pain at bay.

A small gulp sufficed him. He put the bottle back into the pouch on his belt. In a little while, some of the pain from his wounds would ease. In a little while, some of the pain from the lost battle would recede, too. Yes, laudanum was marvelous stuff.

Relief had just started to sparkle along his veins when a scryer came into the pavilion and said, “Sir, King Geoffrey would speak to you by crystal ball.”

“Would he?” Bell said grandly. “And what if I would not speak to him?”

Instead of answering that, the scryer stood there with his mouth hanging open in surprise. Maybe that was lucky for Bell. He reached for his crutches. Unfreezing, the scryer said, “I’ll tell him you’re on the way.”

“Yes, do that,” Bell said. But, as the scryer turned to go, he added, “Wait. What does the king want to talk about?”