Harry Turtledove - Advance and Retreat

“Yes, sir.” Saluting, the runner hurried away.

In due course, the wizards came. They looked worn and miserable. Bell wondered why-it wasn’t as if they’d done anything useful. He said, “I propose holding the line of the Smew. I know I’ll need magical help to do it. What can you give me?”

The magicians looked at one another. Their expressions grew even more unhappy. At last, one of them said, “Sir, I don’t see how we can promise you much, not when the southrons have handled us so roughly all through this campaign.”

“But we need everything you can give us now,” Bell said, and then brightened. He pointed from one wizard to the next. “I know what we need! By the gods, gentlemen, I do. Give us a dragon!”

“Illusion?” a mage said doubtfully. “I think we’re too far gone for illusion to do us much good.”

“Not illusion.” Bell shook his big, leonine head. “I know that won’t serve us. They’ll penetrate it and disperse it. Conjure up a real dragon and loose it on the gods-damned southrons.”

The wizards stared at one another again, this time in something approaching horror. “Sir,” one of them said, “there are no dragons any more, not west of the Great River. Not west of the Stony Mountains, come to that. You know there aren’t. Everybody knows there aren’t.”

“Then conjure one here from the Stony Mountains,” Bell said impatiently. “I don’t care how you do it. Just do it. Let’s see Doubting George and his pet mage handle a real, live, fire-breathing dragon.”

“Do you expect us to seize one out of the air in the Stonies, bring it here, and turn it loose?” a mage demanded.

“Yes, that’s exactly what I expect, by the Lion God’s mane,” the general commanding said. “That’s what we need, that’s what we have to have, and that’s what we’d better get.”

“But how ?” The sorcerers made a ragged chorus.

“ How is your worry,” Lieutenant General Bell said grandly. “I want it done, and it shall be done, or I’ll know the reason why-and you’ll be sorry. Have you got that? A dragon-a real dragon, not one of the stupid illusions the southrons threw at us a few times in front of Ramblerton-by day after tomorrow. Any more questions?” He didn’t gave them time to answer, but gestured peremptorily. “Dismissed.”

Out went the wizards. If anything, they looked even more put-upon than Bell’s subordinate commanders had a little while earlier. Bell didn’t care. He’d given them an order. All they had to do was obey.

Bell stretched himself out on his iron-framed cot. He didn’t sleep long, though. When his eyes first came open, there in the darkness inside the pavilion, he couldn’t imagine what had roused him. It wasn’t a noise; no bright lights blazed outside the big tent; he didn’t need to ease himself. What was the trouble, then?

Sentries in front of the pavilion murmured to one another. A single word dominated those murmurs: “Magic.”

Grunting with effort, Bell sat up, pushing himself up with his good arm. Then he used his crutches and surviving leg to get to his foot. He made his slow way into the chilly night. The sentries exclaimed in surprise. Bell ignored them. Now he knew why he was awake. Like the sentries, he’d felt the power of the wizardry the sorcerers were brewing.

He couldn’t see it. He couldn’t hear it. But it was there. He could feel it, feel it in his fingertips, feel it in his beard, feel it in his belly and the roots of his teeth. The power was strong enough to distract him both from his constant pain and from the laudanum haze he used as a shield against it.

He stood there in the darkness, his breath smoking, and waited to see what that power would bring when it was finally unleashed. Something great, surely. What he wanted? It had better be , he thought.

The marvel didn’t wear off. More and more soldiers came out of their tents to stare at the wizards’ pavilion. Like Bell, they stood there and stood there, careless of sleep, careless of anything, waiting, waiting, waiting.

Dawn had begun painting the eastern horizon with pink and gold when the building bubble of power finally burst. High overhead, the sky opened, or so it seemed to a yawning, half-freezing Bell. The sky opened, and a dragon burst forth out of thin air, a great winged worm where nothing had been before. Had it stooped on the Army of Franklin… But it didn’t. The wizards held it under so much control, at least. Roaring with fury, it flew off toward the Smew River, off toward the southrons.

Doubting George had a habit of rising early so he could prowl about his army and see what was what. Major Alva had a habit of staying up very late on nights when he wasn’t likely to be needed the next day. Every so often, the two of them would run into each other a little before sunrise.

So it chanced this particular morning. The commanding general nodded to the wizard. Alva remembered to salute. Doubting George beamed. Alva would never make a proper soldier, but he was doing a better and better impersonation of one.

“How are things?” George asked. He expected nothing much from the wizard’s reply. As far as he could see, things were fine. Bell’s army was on the run. He hadn’t managed to crush it altogether, and realized he probably wouldn’t, but he was driving it out of the province from which it drew its name, driving it to the point where it would do false King Geoffrey no good.

Waving to the north, Alva answered, “The mages over there are up to something, sir.” He was a beat slow using the title, but he did.

“What is it this time?” Doubting George was amazed at how scornful he sounded. Before finding Alva, he would have been worried. Northern magecraft had plagued the southron cause all through the war. Now? Now, in this weedy young wizard, he had its measure.

Or so he thought, till Alva’s head came up sharply, like that of a deer all at once taking a scent. “It’s… something big,” the sorcerer said slowly. “Something very big.”

“Can you stop it?” George asked. “Whatever it is, you can keep it from hitting us, right?”

“It’s not aimed at us,” Alva answered. “It’s aimed… somewhere far away.”

“Then why worry about it?” the commanding general asked.

Alva didn’t answer him this time, not right away. The wizard stared north, his face tense and drawn. Much more to himself than to Doubting George, he said, “I didn’t think they could still manage anything like that.” He sounded both astonished and admiring.

“Can you stop it?” George asked again, his voice sharp this time.

“I… don’t know.” Alva didn’t look at him; the mage’s attention still aimed toward the north, as a compass needle did toward the south. “Maybe I could…” He raised his hands, as if about to make a string of passes, but then let them fall to his sides once more. “Too late… sir. Whatever they were trying to do, they’ve just gone and done it. Can’t you feel that?”

Doubting George shook his head. “You know how Marshal Bart is tone-deaf and doesn’t know one tune from another? I’m like that with wizardry. A lot of soldiers are. Most of the time, it’s an advantage. Unless magic bumps right up against me, I don’t have to worry about it.”

Shouts from the pickets and the forwardmost encampments said somebody was alarmed about something. Soldiers in gray tunics and pantaloons pointed up into the sky. “A dragon!” they shouted. “A gods-damned dragon!”

“A gods-damned dragon?” Doubting George threw back his head and laughed. “Is that all the traitors could cook up? An illusion? It’s a stale illusion at that, because we aimed the seemings of dragons at them in the fights in front of Ramblerton. Good for little scares, maybe, but not for big ones.”