Harry Turtledove - Advance and Retreat

“I don’t want service. I want to kill some of those southron bastards. Are your men up to it?”

Such straightforward bloodthirstiness appealed to Gremio. “Tell us what to do, sir. If we can, we will. If we can’t, we’ll try anyway.”

That won him a thin smile from the commander of the rear guard. “All right, Captain. That’ll do. Can’t ask for anything more, in fact. Here’s what I’ve got in mind…”

An hour or so later, Gremio found himself behind a tree trunk, waiting as Ned of the Forest’s unicorn-riders galloped past to the north. It looked as if even the rear guard of the Army of Franklin were breaking up in ruin, as so much of the rest of the army already had. It looked that way, but it wasn’t true. Gremio hoped it wasn’t, anyhow.

After a brief pause, riders in King Avram’s gray pounded after Ned’s troopers. The southrons weren’t worried about their flanks. They weren’t worried about anything. Why should they worry? Bell’s men were on the run.

Gremio remembered Ned of the Forest’s instructions. Don’t shoot too soon , the commander of unicorn-riders had said. I’ll rip the head off any fool who starts shooting too soon . Gremio didn’t think he’d meant it metaphorically. He didn’t think Ned would have known a metaphor if it walked up and tried to buy him a brandy (and, for that matter, he probably would have turned it down if it did-he was famous for his abstemiousness with spirits).

And so Gremio and his crossbowmen waited till the southrons were well into the trap. They were veterans. They could all figure out when that was. And they all raised their crossbows to their shoulders and started shooting at almost exactly the same moment.

Unicorns screamed like women in anguish. Unicorn-riders screamed, too, some in pain, others in fury. Unicorns crashed to the ground. Unicorn-riders crouched behind them. Those who could started shooting back.

Frantically reloading and shooting, Gremio discovered how many bolts the enemy put into the air with their quick-shooting crossbows. It was as if each of them had five or six pairs of arms, each pair busy with its own crossbow. Without the advantage of surprise, Gremio’s regiment would have been mad to attack them.

But it had that advantage, and made the most of it. And Ned’s unicorn-riders came hurrying back-on foot, as dragoons-as soon as the trap was sprung. Not only that, but Ned’s commander of engines, a captain named Watson who seemed improbably young, got a couple of repeating crossbows placed in the roadway where they bore on the southrons. Those weapons put out even more quarrels, and quarrels that flew farther, than the southrons could manage with their quick-shooters.

Beset from front and flanks, the southrons did just what Gremio would have done in their boots: they fell back. And as they fell back, hungry, barefoot northerners dashed forward-not to push them back farther still, but to plunder the corpses they’d had to leave behind.

Gremio was no slower than anybody else. He pulled a pair of shoes-solid, well-made shoes, shoes that would last a while-about his size off the feet of a southron trooper who wouldn’t need them any more. He stole the trooper’s tea and hard biscuits and smoked meat, too. If he could have got his hands on some indigo dye, he would have also taken the man’s tunic; it was thick wool, better suited to this cold, nasty weather than his own. But he didn’t, and didn’t want to get shot for wearing gray. Even after knocking the southrons back on their heels, he knew he was all too likely to get shot for wearing blue.

Ned of the Forest was as happy as he could be in his present circumstances, which is to say, not very. Everything had gone perfectly when the rear guard he led taught Hard-Riding Jimmy’s troopers a sharp lesson: no matter how good they were, they couldn’t have everything their own way. Everything had gone perfectly, and what had it accomplished? It made the Army of Franklin’s retreat a little more secure, and that was all.

“Huzzah,” Ned said sourly. That meant Bell’s force might make it back to Dothan or Great River Province, and not be altogether destroyed in northern Franklin. An improvement, without a doubt, but how large an improvement? Not large enough, and Ned knew it.

Colonel Biffle rode up to him in the dismal winter woods. “We’ve driven them back, sir.” He sounded pleased and excited.

“Well, so we have, Biff.” Ned sounded anything but. “Next question is, how much good will that do us?”

Biffle’s long face corrugated into a frown. After a moment’s thought, he said, “It’ll do us a lot more good than if they’d busted through.”

Ned of the Forest had to laugh at that. “I can’t even tell you you’re wrong,” he admitted. “But are we going to win the war because we gave Hard-Riding Jimmy a black eye? Are we going to win anything that’s worth having?”

He watched Colonel Biffle’s eyes cross as the regimental commander worked on that. Biffle wasn’t used to thinking in such terms. He was a man you pointed at the enemy and loosed, as if he were a crossbow quarrel. Again, he paused before answering. At last, he said, “Well, we’re still here to try again.”

“I can’t say you’re wrong about that, either.” Ned looked south. “And, unless I miss my guess, we’re going to have to if we hang around here much longer. Jimmy won’t like getting poked. He’ll send more men forward, and we won’t have such an easy time suckering them into an ambush. I’d say it’s about time to leave. We’ve bought the army a few hours, anyways. That’s the most we can hope for these days.”

“Yes, sir.” Colonel Biffle suddenly blinked several times. He frowned again, though this time for a different reason. “Gods damn it! It’s starting to rain. Got me right in the eye.”

He was right. It was starting to rain and, with scarcely any warning, to rain hard. “Good thing this held off till we drove the southrons back,” Ned said. “We’d have looked a proper set of fools, wouldn’t we, if we’d tried shooting at those bastards with wet bowstrings? Good thing we didn’t.”

Before he’d got out of the woods, his unicorn was squelching through mud. Big, fat, heavy raindrops poured down. With all the trees bare in winter, nothing slowed down the drops. Ned pulled his broad-brimmed felt hat down low on this face to keep the rain out of his eyes. That helped, a little.

The regiment of footsoldiers who’d helped in the ambush came out of their cover and retreated along with his unicorn-riders. Ned waved to their commander, who nodded back. The fellow was only a captain, but he’d done his job well, and without fuss or feathers. “Get your boys moving,” Ned called to him. “We’ll keep the southrons off your back.” He had the more mobile troops, and owed the footsoldiers that much.

“Thank you kindly.” The captain touched the brim of his own hat, which was also pulled down low. He handled the withdrawal with the same unfussy precision he’d used against the southrons. One of his company commanders, a sergeant who’d managed to shave amazingly well considering the sorry state the Army of Franklin was in, also proved very competent. By the way the captain and the sergeant sassed each other without heat, they’d served together a long time. They might almost have been married. Ned hid his amusement. He’d seen such things before.

At the moment, he had business of his own to attend to. “Captain Watson!” he called. “Come here, if you please.”

“What do you need, sir?” the young man in charge of his engines asked.

“I need you to trundle your repeating crossbows south down the road a little ways and give Hard-Riding Jimmy’s men a proper hello when they start coming after us again,” Ned answered.