Harry Turtledove - Marching Through Peachtree

“Of course we can,” Smitty agreed. “We wouldn’t be up here in Peachtree Province if we couldn’t. But saying the enemy is going to make another mistake and make things easy for us is just a piece of gods-damned foolishness.”

“Quiet in the ranks,” Sergeant Joram growled. He knew what his job was, and he did it.

Nahath spoke again: “We’re going to advance a little slower than usual, because the mages have something special in mind to help us.”

“Gods help us,” Rollant muttered, and Smitty nodded. The northerners were stronger mages than the southrons. Even the botch from Thraxton the Braggart that had panicked his own men on Proselytizers’ Rise was a botch on a scale the southrons wouldn’t have tried to imitate.

More horns screeched. Along with countless other men from Doubting George’s army, Rollant and his comrades advanced on the traitors’ trenches in front of Caesar. Those trenches looked like formidable works-and so, no doubt, they were. Why shouldn’t they be? Rollant thought. Plenty of serfs have spent plenty of sweat on them. Liege lords won’t dig when they’ve got blonds to do it for them .

Men in blue caps and tunics peered out of the trenches at the advancing southrons. Rollant waited for shouts of alarm to ring out. He also waited for firepots and stones to start flying from engines, and for repeating crossbows to start hosing the southrons’ ranks with death.

As he tramped forward, he yanked the bowstring on his crossbow back to the locked position and set a bolt in the groove. All he had to do now was raise the weapon to his shoulder and pull the trigger. Loading without orders went against regulations, too. He didn’t care. Neither did most of the other veterans. Sergeant Joram stalked by. He had a quarrel in the groove of his crossbow, too.

Closer and closer to the enemy lines came the southrons. “Why aren’t they shooting at us?” Smitty demanded. “We’re in range, gods know.”

“Maybe they don’t see us,” Rollant said. “Maybe… maybe our magic really is working.”

Smitty shook his head. “There’s got to be some kind of explanation that makes better sense than that .”

But the northerners kept right on not shooting even after the southrons’ crossbow bolts started landing among them, even after men started falling and crying out in pain from wounds. “What the hells is going on?” Rollant heard a man in blue yell, nothing but confusion in his voice.

And then, either because some traitor mage defeated the southrons’ spell or because the two armies drew too close together for it to hold any more, the northern men in the trenches realized there were indeed foes in front of them. They cried out again, this time in rage and fear. Those whose crossbows were loaded started shooting, but they weren’t so ready as they might have been.

A northerner stuck his head up above the rampart in front of the trench so he could see to aim. Before the enemy soldier could shoot, Rollant did. He missed; his quarrel dug into the rampart and kicked up dirt into the traitor’s face. He came close enough to killing the fellow, though, to make him duck down in a hurry instead of doing any shooting of his own.

Frantically reloading, Rollant yanked back the bowstring and set a new bolt in the groove. All around him, other southrons were doing the same. Somebody right in front of him dropped a quarrel in his haste to reload. Instead of snatching another one from the sheaf, the soldier stopped and stooped to pick up the one he’d dropped. “Clumsy fool!” Rollant shouted, doing his best not to trample the man.

“Futter you, blondie,” the soldier said.

Rage ripped through Rollant. Worst of it was that he couldn’t fall on the fellow and give-or try to give-him the thrashing he deserved. Maybe after the battle was over, if they both came out alive, they would have something more to say to each other, with words or with fists. Now… now the northerners were awake to their peril. The real fight was with them, not with the man who also fought for King Avram.

But how are they and he different? Rollant wondered.

One obvious answer was that the trooper in a gray uniform like his own wasn’t trying to kill him at the moment, and the traitors were. A southron only a couple of feet from Rollant went down with a groan, clutching at the quarrel that had sprouted in his belly. “Litter!” Rollant shouted. “Litter over here!” He doubted if the healers would be able to save the man; wounds that pierced the gut usually killed by fever if they didn’t kill by bleeding.

He had no more time to think about that than he did about the southron who didn’t love blonds. He shot at the northerners again, reloaded, and shot once more. He didn’t know if any of the quarrels struck home. What he did know was that his comrades were scrambling over the rampart and starting to drop down into the trenches Joseph the Gamecock’s soldiers manned. He slung his crossbow, yanked out his shortsword, and swarmed over the ramparts himself.

He’d fought in the trenches before. The only good thing he could say about it was that he could hit back at the foe. Charging the enemy when he was entrenched… that was worse. But this was quite bad enough. Men screamed and groaned and slashed at one another and shot one another and swung clubbed crossbows and wrestled and punched and kicked and bit.

Reinforcements in blue came rushing up from the direction of Caesar to try to hold the southrons back. But more men in gray from Doubting George’s army dropped down into the trenches. A crossbow bolt scored a bleeding line across the back of Rollant’s hand. Half an inch lower and it might have left the hand crippled forever.

“Forward!” Lieutenant Griff shouted shrilly.

Forward they went-for a little while. After that, the enemy got as many reinforcements as they did. That made the fighting even more desperate than it had been. Rollant was no great swordsman. He’d never used a sword before the war: only a woodworker’s tools. And the shortsword was a clumsy weapon anyhow. But his blade soon had blood on it.

“King Geoffrey!” the traitors shouted, and “Provincial prerogative forever!” and “To the seven hells with King Avram!” and “To the seven hells with the blonds!” Here and there, when they surged east again in a counterattack, they would capture some of Avram’s soldiers and manhandle them back to the rear. They had camps for southron prisoners, just as there were camps for northern prisoners in the south. But they didn’t manhandle any blonds back to the rear. Ex-serfs who’d taken service against their liege lords almost always ended up dead on the field when things went wrong for their side.

I can’t be captured . Rollant knew that. In the early days of the fighting, a few blonds had been forcibly returned to serfdom. That didn’t happen any more. The northerners hadn’t needed long to realize a man who’d taken up arms against them once was liable, even likely, to do it again as soon as he saw the chance.

Some time in the middle of the day, a lull fell over the field, with both sides equally exhausted. Rollant had a moment to snatch a few breaths and look around. He discovered Smitty only a few feet away, also panting and looking around to see what the attack had gained.

“Well, this isn’t like going at that Vulture’s Nest place,” Rollant said. “We could’ve kept fighting there till the last war of the gods and never broken through.”

“We’ve got a chance here, sure enough,” Smitty agreed. “More room to wiggle here. That other gap, we almost had to go in there single file to get at the fornicating traitors.”

Rollant pointed ahead. “You think we’ll take that Caesar?”