Harry Turtledove - Advance and Retreat

Later that evening, Gremio and Thisbe sprawled wearily in front of a campfire. Gremio said, “I think even the colonel is losing hope.” He told Thisbe what had passed between Florizel and him.

“What do you think, sir?” Thisbe asked, staring into the yellow flames as if they were a crystal ball. “Is it all over? Shall we go home when we get to Palmetto Province, or do we still have a chance if we still keep fighting?”

“I’ll fight as long as you will, Sergeant.” Gremio had thought that before, but now he amplified it: “If you decide you’ve had enough, I won’t say a word.”

Thisbe swung around to face him. “That’s not fair, sir-putting it all on me, I mean.”

“I’m sorry, Sergeant,” Gremio said. “I just thought-”

“You didn’t think, sir,” Thisbe said with a shake of the head. “You’re the officer, so it’s really up to you. You said so yourself, when we were getting on the glideway carpet at Honey.”

“I do believe I’ve just been hoist with my own petard.” Gremio mimed taking a deadly wound.

Although Thisbe laughed, the underofficer’s face remained serious. “If it is up to you, sir, what will you do?”

“I’ll see how things look when we get into Palmetto Province, and I’ll make up my mind then,” Gremio answered. “What will you do?”

“Follow you,” Thisbe said without hesitation. “I know you’ll come up with the right thing to do. You always have.”

“Thank you. I only wish it were true.”

Before they could say any more, a rider came up from the southwest. “Are you the men coming to the aid of Joseph the Gamecock?” he asked tensely, looking ready to gallop away in a hurry if the answer were no.

But Gremio said, “That’s right. How are things in Palmetto Province these days? A lot of us are from there.”

“Been a lot of rain,” the unicorn-rider answered. “Plenty of what would be roads most of the year are underwater now. That ought to slow down the gods-damned southrons. If it doesn’t, we’re in a hells of a lot of trouble, on account of those fornicating bastards outnumber us about five to one.”

Gremio and Sergeant Thisbe looked at each other. That was what had happened to Lieutenant General Bell. Once you came to a certain point, bravery stopped mattering much. No matter how brave you were, you’d get hammered if you were outnumbered badly enough.

One of Gremio’s soldiers said, “Well, it ain’t so bad any more, on account of now you’ve got us.”

The unicorn-rider managed a nod, but the look on his face was pained. Gremio didn’t, couldn’t, blame him for that. A good many farmers who put on Geoffrey’s blue tunic and pantaloons had hardly more education than blond serfs. The men who’d come from Bell’s shattered army to the one Joseph the Gamecock was trying to build might mean his force was outnumbered only four to one. How much would that help him when he tried to hold back Hesmucet? The answer seemed obvious to Gremio, if not to the common soldier.

“What do we do now, sir?” Thisbe asked.

It wasn’t a question about how they should proceed on the next day’s travel. Gremio knew it wasn’t, and wished it were. It would have been much easier to deal with as that sort of question. He sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know, Sergeant. I just don’t know.”

Sergeant Rollant looked across the Franklin River. On the north bank, Ned of the Forest’s unicorn-riders trotted up and down on endless patrol. Rollant reached for his crossbow, but arrested the motion before it got very far. What was the point? The Franklin was a lot more than a bowshot wide.

Beside Rollant, Smitty-Corporal Smitty-also eyed the unicorn-riders, who were tiny in the distance. Smitty said, “If we could push some men across, we could smash up all those sons of bitches.”

“I know. I’ve been thinking the same thing.” Rollant let out a small noise full of longing, the sort of noise a cat on the ground might make at seeing a plump thrush high in a treetop. “The other thing I’ve been thinking is, it wouldn’t be very hard.”

“That’s right. That’s just exactly right. It wouldn’t be hard at all.” Smitty practically quivered with eagerness. “We could head straight on up to the Gulf, and how could the traitors stop us, or even slow us down?”

“They couldn’t. Not a chance.” Rollant was as sure of it as he was of his own name. “We’d be heroes.”

“We’re already heroes. I’ve had a bellyful of being a hero,” Smitty said. “What I want to do is win the gods-damned war and go home.”

“Home.” Rollant spoke the word with enormous longing. For the first time since he’d taken King Avram’s silver and put on the kingdom’s gray tunic and pantaloons, the idea that he would be going home before too long began to seem real. “ Why doesn’t Doubting George turn us loose on them?”

“Beats me.” Smitty shrugged. “But you know what? I don’t much care one way or the other.” He waved across the river. “I mean, look at those poor sorry sons of bitches. We’ve licked ’em.” His voice held absolute conviction, absolute certainty. In fact, he said it again: “We’ve licked ’em. They aren’t going to come back and give us trouble, the way they did in Peachtree Province. We could all go home tomorrow, and Ramblerton still wouldn’t have a thing to worry about. You going to tell me I’m wrong?” He looked a challenge at Rollant.

“No,” the blond admitted. “No, I don’t suppose you are.”

“Gods-damned right I’m not,” Smitty said. “And since they are licked, what the hells difference does it make whether we go after ’em hard or not?”

What difference did it make? Any at all? Rollant hadn’t looked at things like that. Now he did. Again, he couldn’t say Smitty was wrong. “What do you think we’ll do, then?” he asked. “Wait here by the river till the war ends in the west? Just stay here and make sure Ned of the Forest doesn’t get loose and make trouble?”

Like most blonds, he had a respect and dread for Ned that amounted almost to superstitious awe. A man who was both a serfcatcher and a first-rate-better than first-rate: brilliant-commander of unicorn-riders, and whose men had been known to slaughter blonds fighting for Avram? No wonder he roused such feelings in the soldiers who had the most reason to oppose him.

Smitty, on the other hand, was an ordinary Detinan. If anything impressed him, he wasn’t inclined to admit it, even to himself. He said, “To the hells with Ned of the Forest, too. He tries getting cute, Hard-Riding Jimmy’ll take care of him.” Smitty spoke with the blithe confidence most ordinary Detinans showed, the blithe confidence that baffled Rollant and other blonds. And, as if to say he didn’t think Ned or the rest of the northerners were worth worrying about, he turned his back on the unicorn-riders and the Franklin River and strode off, whistling.

“Licked.” Rollant tasted the word in his mouth. Could it really be true? He’d thought so during the pursuit, but now that seemed over. Was it still true with him standing here in cold blood? “By the gods, maybe it is,” he murmured. Where Smitty had turned his back on the river, Rollant stared avidly across it. “Licked.” What a lovely word!

He was recalled to his side of the Franklin when somebody spoke to him in a tongue he didn’t understand. Several blond laborers, all plainly escaped serfs, stood there gaping at him in open-mouthed admiration. Some wore the undyed wool tunics and pantaloons Avram’s army issued to such men, others the rags in which they’d run away from their liege lords’ estates.

Such things had happened to him before. Blonds in the north had used a swarm of languages before the Detinan conquerors came. Many still survived, if precariously, and a lot of them had added words to the Detinan spoken in the north. But the speech whose fragments Rollant had learned as a child on Baron Ormerod’s estate in Palmetto Province sounded nothing like this one.