Harry Turtledove - Advance and Retreat

“Forward!” Rollant echoed, and waved the company standard. And forward the company went. Sooner or later, Ned of the Forest’s troopers would try to slow them down again. Even if the northerners managed to do it, they wouldn’t delay King Avram’s men for long.

If something happens to Joram-not that I want it to, but if-will they make me a lieutenant? Rollant wondered. It wasn’t quite impossible; there were a handful of blond officers, though most of them were healers. But it also wasn’t even close to likely, and he had enough sense to understand as much. He’d been lucky to get two stripes on his sleeve, amazingly lucky to get three.

For that matter, considering the fighting he’d seen, he’d been amazingly lucky to come through alive, and with no serious wounds. He wanted that luck to go on, especially with the war all but won. Next to staying in one piece, what was rank? If they’d offered to make him a lieutenant general like Bell, but with Bell’s missing leg and ruined arm, would he have taken them up on it? Of course not.

The war couldn’t last too much longer… could it? He wanted to live through it and go home to Norina. Getting killed-even getting hurt-now would be doubly unfair. He’d done everything any man could do to win the fight. Didn’t he deserve to enjoy the fruits of victory?

He snorted. He was a standard-bearer. He had no guarantee of staying alive for the next five minutes. “Forward!” he shouted again. If anything did happen to him, he would be facing the foe when it did. And if that wasn’t a quintessentially Detinan thought, when would he ever have one?

Lieutenant General Bell sat in a carriage as the Army of Franklin tramped over a wood bridge to the northern bank of the Smew River. The Smew ran through rough, heavily wooded country in northern Franklin. Bell wished he were on a unicorn, but days of riding had left his stump too sore for him to stay in the saddle. If he didn’t travel by carriage, he would have been unable to travel at all. No matter how obvious that truth, it was also humiliating. He felt like a civilian. He might have been going to a temple on a feast day, like any prosperous merchant.

To his relief, the men didn’t seem bothered about how he got from one place to another. They waved to him as they trudged past. Some of them lifted their hats in lieu of a more formal salute. Bell waved back with his good arm.

“We’ll lick ’em yet, General!” a soldier called.

“By the gods, we will !” Bell answered. “Let’s see them try to drive us off the line of the Smew!”

He wanted to make a stand while he still remained here in Franklin. Even if the Ramblerton campaign had accomplished less than he would have liked-that was how he looked at it, through the most rose-colored of mental spectacles-he didn’t want to have to fall back into Dothan or Great River Province. Staying in Franklin would show the doubters (he didn’t pause to think about Doubting George) both in his own army and in King Geoffrey’s court back at Nonesuch that he was still in charge of things, that these battered regiments still responded to his will.

Boots thudded on the planks of the bridge. More men, though, had none. Their feet, bare as those of any blond savage, made next to no sound. Some of them left bloody marks on those gray and faded planks. The weather was not far above freezing, and the road up from the south an ocean of mud. How many of the surviving soldiers had frostbitten feet? More than a few, surely. More than Bell cared to think about, even more surely.

Here came Ned of the Forest’s unicorn-riders and the rest of the rear guard. The unicorns’ hooves drummed as they rode over to the north bank of the Smew. “Come on, sir!” Ned yelled to Bell. “Nobody left between you and Avram’s bastards.”

I wish I could fight them all singlehanded , Bell thought. Had he been whole, he would have, and gladly. Things being as they were, though… Things being as they were, Bell muttered to his driver. The man flicked the reins. The unicorn started forward. Each jolt as the wheels rattled across the bridge hurt. Bell wondered when he would get used to pain. He’d lived in so much for so long, but it still hurt. He suspected it always would.

As soon as he’d crossed, wizards called down lightning. This time, the cursed southron sorcerers didn’t interfere with the spells. The lightnings smote. The bridge crashed in ruins into the Smew.

Bell hoped to find a farmhouse in which to make his headquarters. He had no luck. Most of the country was woodland and scrub, with farms few and far between-so far that none of them made a convenient place from which to lead the Army of Franklin. Up went the pavilion. Even with three braziers burning inside it, it made a cold and cheerless place to spend a night.

After a meager supper, Bell summoned his wing commanders and Ned of the Forest. When they arrived, he said, “We have to hold this line. We have to keep the southrons out of Dothan and Great River Province.”

Stephen the Pickle looked as steeped in vinegar as his namesakes. “How do you propose to do that, sir?” he said. “We haven’t got the men for it, not any more we haven’t.” He looked as if he wanted to say more, but checked himself at the last minute.

What Stephen didn’t say, Benjamin the Heated Ham did: “We’ve thrown away more men than we’ve got left. If we can make it to Great River Province or Dothan with the pieces of this army we’ve got left, that’d be the gods’ own miracle all by itself. Anything more? Forget it.” He shook his head.

“Where is your fighting spirit?” Bell cried.

“Dead,” Colonel Florizel said.

“Murdered,” Ned of the Forest added.

Glaring from one of them to the next, the commanding general said, “We need a great stroke of sorcery to remind the southrons they can’t afford to take us for granted, and to show them we are not yet beaten.” Stephen, Benjamin, Florizel, and Ned all stirred at that. Bell ignored them. “I aim to fight by every means I have at my disposal till I can fight no more. I expect every man who follows me to do the same.”

“Trouble is, sir, we don’t have enough men left to fight,” Benjamin the Heated Ham said. “We don’t have enough wizards, either.” The other wing commanders and the commander of unicorn-riders all nodded at last.

“Gods damn it, we have to do something !” Bell burst out. “Do you want to keep running till we run out of land and go swimming in the Gulf?”

“No, sir,” Benjamin said stolidly. “But I don’t want to get massacred trying to do what I can’t, either.”

Ned of the Forest said, “Sir, while we’re trying to hold this stretch of the Smew, what’s to keep the southrons from crossing the river east or west of us and flanking us out of our position or surrounding us?”

“Patrols from your troopers, among other things,” Lieutenant General Bell replied, acid in his voice.

“I can watch,” Ned said. “I can slow the southrons down-some. Stop ’em? No way in hells.”

“If you fight here, sir, you doom us,” Stephen the Pickle said.

“I don’t want to fight here. I want to form some kind of line we can defend,” Bell said.

No one seemed to believe he could do it. Silent resentment rose in waves from his subordinate commanders. They had no hope, none at all. Bell waved with his good arm. Stephen, Benjamin, Florizel, and Ned filed out of the pavilion.

I could use their heads in a rock garden , Bell thought, never once imagining they might feel the same way about him-or that they might have reason to feel that way. He called for a runner. What went through his mind was, Half the men in this army are runners. They’ve proved that . The young soldier who reported, though, was still doing his duty. Bell said, “Fetch me our mages. I want to see what we can expect from them.”