Harry Turtledove - Marching Through Peachtree

“Some large part of our army, eh?” George said. “Why do I think I have a pretty fair notion of which large part of the army you have in mind?”

“You’ve proved you know how to make a convincing demonstration against strong enemy positions,” Hesmucet said.

“Is that what I’ve proved?” Doubting George wondered. “I thought it was just a knack for banging my head against a stone wall.” And also a knack for being ordered to bang my head against a stone wall, he added to himself.

“Your men were the ones who broke through at Proselytizers’ Rise,” Hesmucet said. “Who knows? Maybe they’ll do it again, and steal the glory from Brigadier James.”

“You’ll send James the Bird’s Eye on the flanking move?” George said.

“I will indeed.” General Hesmucet grinned. “Who better to see the opportunity if it be there?” James had got his nickname at the military collegium at Annasville because of his extraordinarily keen eyesight.

“He’s an able officer,” George allowed. “Why not use him to make the demonstration here and send the larger force up onto Joseph’s flank?”

“I thought about that,” Hesmucet replied. “It seems to me that, were I to do so, Joseph would realize what I had done and shift footsoldiers north to block the move before it could have any hope of success.”

Doubting George considered. He wasn’t sure General Hesmucet was right about that, but he wasn’t sure Hesmucet was wrong, either. “Very well, sir,” he said. “I shall, of course, do whatever you require of me.”

“I knew you would,” Hesmucet said, in tones suggesting he’d known no such thing. “I intend to get James the Bird’s Eye moving this afternoon. Your men will, I hope, keep Joseph the Gamecock too busy to use his own eyes.”

“We’ll do our best, sir,” George said, that being the only thing he could say. No, almost the only thing, for he couldn’t help adding, “I do wish my men would sometimes get the command to do themselves rather than to help their comrades do somewhere else.”

“That day is coming, Lieutenant General,” Hesmucet said. “You may rely on it: that day is coming. It’s a hundred miles, more or less, from here to Marthasville. Only the gods know how many battles we’ll fight before we get there. I’m no god. I’m just a man. But I can tell you we’ll fight a lot of them, and I can tell you your men will have their chance to do great things. They can hardly help it, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Put that way, I don’t see how I can do anything but agree.” Doubting George plucked at his long, thick beard, which was just beginning to be frosted with gray. “You plan an ambitious campaign.”

“Marshal Bart aims at the traitor realm’s head in his move against Nonesuch,” Hesmucet replied. “Me, I intend to tear out its heart. A kingdom can’t live without a head, and no more can it live without a heart. If we take both of them away from false King Geoffrey, what has he got left? Wind and air, Lieutenant General, wind and air and nothing else but. And not even a windbag like Geoffrey can make a kingdom from wind and air alone.”

“I do not for a moment disagree with you, sir. It’s only that…” Doubting George had to pause and marshal his thoughts before he could continue. “It’s only that, the first three summers of this war, we were fighting battles. One of our armies would collide with an enemy force, we’d fight, and then we would see what happened next. Here”-he paused to think again-“here the battles are just incidents, parts of something bigger that you and Marshal Bart have in mind.”

“And King Avram,” Hesmucet said. “Never forget King Avram.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” George said. “If it weren’t for King Avram, we wouldn’t have a war right now.”

“Not right now,” Hesmucet said. “But we would have fought a war over serfdom sooner or later. We almost did ten years ago, till Daniel the Weaver, Henry Feet of Clay, and John the Typhoon worked out the compromise that satisfied King Zachary and the northern nobles both. But it didn’t satisfy anyone for long. This fight was coming. Now that it’s here, we have to win it.”

“Fair enough,” George said.

He went off to confer with his own subordinates. His wing commander, Brigadier Absalom the Bear, wore a long face. “We can do what you want, sir,” he rumbled in the bass growl that helped give him his sobriquet. “We can do it, sure enough, but we won’t get through and we will get mangled.”

“We have to try it,” George replied, “for the sake of the army as a whole.” He turned to Brigadier Brannan, who commanded all his siege engines and dart throwers. “What can you do to make our job easier?”

“Easier? Not fornicating much, sir.” Brannan was a man who spoke his mind. “Absalom has it right: we’re going to get mangled. The most I can hope to do is mangle a few more traitors than we would otherwise.”

“All right. Do that,” Doubting George said. “We commence this afternoon. Give us the best chance you can.”

At the appointed hour, horns blared. All of Brigadier Brannan’s engines, brought forward to bear on the trenches protecting the northerners, began to shoot at once. Stones and firepots flew through the air. So did streams of darts from repeating crossbows. Columns of smoke marked where firepots struck home. George’s wizards, in long gray robes to match the southron soldiers’ uniform tunics and pantaloons, sent bolts of lightning down from a clear sky onto the enemy’s heads.

Had Joseph the Gamecock’s troopers just taken their positions, the bombardment and the sorcerous assault might have driven them off. But they’d had days-weeks-in which to ready themselves for the assault they must have thought likely. Darts and firepots and levinbolts no doubt slew some of the northerners, but had not a prayer of dislodging them from their field fortifications.

Doubting George sighed. He’d expected nothing different. General Hesmucet had expected nothing different, either. If he was going to keep Joseph the Gamecock from looking north and west toward James the Bird’s Eye’s column advancing on Caesar, he would have to make a convincing assault on the Vulture’s Nest and the Dog’s Path. A convincing assault would also be an expensive assault.

With another sigh, Lieutenant General George nodded to the trumpeters standing close by him. “Forward,” he said. Their martial music blared out. Obedient to his will, the southrons hurled themselves at the two gaps in Rockface Rise.

“King Avram!” the soldiers shouted, and, “Freedom!” and, “One Detina, now and forever!” Doubting George believed in all those things, especially the last. If he hadn’t believed in a united Detina with all his soul, he would have gone with King Geoffrey, gone with the province of Parthenia. Instead…

Instead, in the name of a united Detina, I’m sending hundreds, thousands, of young men forward in an attack I know and they probably also know has no chance of getting through , he thought. I had better be right, that’s all .

Regardless of whether he was right about the cause he served, he rapidly proved right about the attack’s chances. Joseph and his wing commanders and brigadiers were every bit as capable as the southrons facing them. Exactly as capable , Doubting George thought. How could it be otherwise, when we all studied side by side together at the military collegium?

The men who wore blue and had followed King Geoffrey away from Detina struck back, and struck back hard, as soon as George’s soldiers came into range at the Vulture’s Nest, where he watched the assault. Neither bombardment nor sorcerous assault had silenced the northerners’ catapults and repeating crossbows. They scythed through the southrons’ ranks, as did the quarrels from the crossbowmen in the trenches across the mouth of the Vulture’s Nest.