Harry Turtledove - Marching Through Peachtree

“It can’t be helped,” George said. Andy looked at him as if he’d just turned traitor. He still wasn’t happy-he was anything but happy-but he went on, “Hesmucet’s right: the job needs doing. He chose me to do it, that’s all. Someone has to. I’ve just got to make the best of it.”

“For that job, he could have chosen any general,” his adjutant declared. “Why did he have to pick you?” He answered his own question: “To keep you from going along with him, that’s why.”

“I thought that, too,” George said. “It made me furious, let me tell you: so furious, I almost drew blade on him. But then I asked him for John the Lister as my second-in-command, and I began to understand.”

“Which is, sir, more than I can say I do,” Colonel Andy sniffed.

“Think on it,” Doubting George told him. “I wanted at least one good, solid officer to help me, because I can’t be everywhere at once. If he’d left me Absalom, I wouldn’t have asked for John, and I wouldn’t have made a fuss till I gods-damned well got him.”

“I still don’t understand a word you’re saying,” Andy replied.

“Hesmucet did the same thing I did,” George explained. “I want John the Lister to back me up. Hesmucet wants someone he’s sure he can trust to back him up-and I happen to be the man. It’s a compliment, of sorts.”

“Of sorts,” Andy echoed bitterly. “He marches off toward Veldt, and if that goes well the bards will sing of it for the next hundred years and more. And you go back to Ramblerton, and when has anybody ever won glory by going back instead of forward? For all you know, for all Hesmucet knows, Bell won’t try to come south at all. You can march your garrison back and forth, back and forth, through the mud. Happy day!”

That had also occurred to Doubting George. He wished his adjutant hadn’t spelled it out quite so plainly. “It’s the chance I take. I have to make the best of it. And if Bell doesn’t come south, maybe I’ll be able to move north after the Army of Franklin myself. Who knows?”

They hashed over possibilities for a while. Little by little, both George and Andy grew resigned, perhaps even mollified. As Andy said, “You kept the Army of Franklin from wrecking us altogether by the River of Death, more than a year ago now. Maybe it’s fitting that you be the one to finish it off.”

“If I can.” Doubting George started to say something more, then pointed. “Someone’s riding this way in a hells of a hurry. Wonder who that could be.”

“Looks like John the Lister,” Andy replied after a brief pause.

“Why so it does,” said George, who was anything but surprised. As John reined in, George raised his voice: “Hello, John. What brings you here?”

“You do, you-” With visible effort, John the Lister restrained himself… to a degree. “You’re the reason I can’t go west, gods damn it.” He was red with fury all the way to the top of his bald head.

“I am sorry about that, Brigadier. I truly am.” George meant it. He spent the next quarter of an hour calming the irate John and explaining exactly why he’d chosen him.

John the Lister was a capable-and, even more to the point, a sensible-man. As George had before him, he listened and, a bit at a time, calmed down. At last, he said, “Well, I still don’t love you for it, but I can see why you did it. If Bell does bring his men south-and what other move has he got left? — we’d better be able to stop him. He won’t get through us, eh?”

“I doubt he will,” Doubting George replied. “By all the gods, John, I doubt it very much.”