Harry Turtledove - Marching Through Peachtree

“We’d better,” his comrade answered. “If we don’t, Doubting George’ll eat every one of us, and without salt, too.”

“You’re right,” Rollant said, and forced a smile. The Detinans dimly recalled the days when their ancestors had been maneaters. Those days were long gone now, and had been for centuries even before the dark-haired men crossed the Western Ocean and set foot in this land, but the memory lingered in jokes like that. So far as Rollant knew, none of his own forebears had ever done anything so barbaric.

Other small things reminded Rollant he wasn’t quite an ordinary Detinan, even if he fought alongside thousands of them. Pointing ahead again, he said, “Who or what’s a Caesar?” He had no idea.

To his surprise, Smitty only shrugged. “Beats me. Probably just a made-up name.”

“Suppose you’re right.” Rollant seized the moment to plunge his sword into the nearly blood-red dirt of southeastern Peachtree Province-very different from the black mud he’d grown up with in the swamp country of Palmetto Province-to clean it. He said, “Our magecraft did work, at least pretty much.”

“So it did.” Smitty nodded. “That’s something. I bet the traitors are mad enough to spit nails like a repeating crossbow, too.”

“Probably.” Rollant cocked his own hand-held crossbow, fit a bolt to the groove, and took a shot at motion in the trenches the northerners still held. As often happened, he couldn’t tell whether he hit or missed.

That one shot seemed to be a signal to resume the fight. A thirty-pound stone ball from a northern catapult thudded down only a few paces away. Some of that blood-red dirt splashed up and hit Rollant in the face. A southron soldier the stone struck screamed, but not for long. More southrons started shooting at the enemy. Before long, the battle blazed at full fury once more.

And at full fury it remained for the rest of the day. Try as they would, the southrons didn’t manage to break into Caesar. But Rollant was sure the enemy spent men like coppers holding them out. “They can’t go on doing that,” he said as the sun sank behind the town. “They won’t have an army left if they do.”

“That’s always been one thing we could do,” Smitty said. “If all else fails, we can grind the bastards down till they’ve got nothing left. Only trouble with that is, it grinds down an awful lot of us, too.”

“I know,” Rollant said dolefully. “But it’s pretty plain we aren’t any smarter than they are, even with General Hesmucet in charge instead of General Guildenstern. So we’d better be tougher, wouldn’t you say?”

“We’d better be something, anyhow,” Smitty answered. “The something I am right now is gods-damned tired.” He took his blanket from his knapsack, cocooned himself in it, and started to snore.

Rollant stayed awake a good deal longer. Maybe that meant he’d had more sleep the night before. Maybe-and more likely-it just meant he was too keyed up after the day’s hard fighting to wind down in a hurry.

The traitors seemed very much awake, too. Their campfires burned brightly all the way back to Caesar. Every once in a while, a bolt or a stone or a firepot would land among the southrons. By all the signs, they needed to be ready to fight again in the morning, or perhaps in the middle of the night.

Rollant had just dozed off when Sergeant Joram shook him awake for sentry-go. Rubbing sleep out of his eyes, he stared off to the west. “What’s going on there?” he asked, pointing to two new blazes beyond the profusion of northern campfires.

“Gods damn me if I know,” Joram answered. “Maybe they’re burning what they can’t use.”

But what Joseph the Gamecock’s men were burning, dawn revealed, was the pair of wooden bridges over the Rubicon, the river that ran west of Caesar. They’d kept campfires going close to the southrons, but they’d had only a handful of men around them. Now their whole army had crossed the Rubicon, and was retreating toward Marthasville as fast as it could go.

Lieutenant General Bell could not have been more revolted if he’d faced the prospect of losing his other leg and having his other arm crippled. His men tramped glumly north, along with the rest of the Army of Franklin. The only man in the whole army who seemed satisfied with what they’d done at Viper River Gap was Joseph the Gamecock.

“We hurt them,” he said when Bell, strapped onto his unicorn, rode up to remonstrate. “We hurt them badly.”

“But they hold the field… sir,” Bell growled.

“But the field is not important,” Joseph answered. “No field this side of Marthasville is important. We’ll find another miserable little place to defend in a few days and let them squander more lives attacking it.”

“When do we attack them?” Bell asked.

“If we see a chance, we can do that,” Joseph said. “More likely, though, we’ll go on defending.”

That made Bell take a swig from his jar of laudanum. But not even the potent drug eased the turmoil in his mind. As soon as the army stopped for the evening, he began a new letter to King Geoffrey. May it please your Majesty , he began with malice aforethought, knowing that what he had to say would not please the king at all, I have just witnessed and been compelled by circumstances to take part in the most disgraceful and disgusting withdrawal ever recorded in the annals of warfare .

“Is that too strong?” Bell wondered aloud. He shook his big, leonine head. It wasn’t. He would have taken oath to any and all gods that it wasn’t.

Joseph the Gamecock ordered this army out of its works and into retreat, abandoning all parts ofPeachtreeProvince from Caesar northward to the provincial border to the foe. The Army of Franklin-the Thunderer grant that it see once more the province for which it was named-was not defeated in the fieldworks it was trying to defend. Caesar was not on the point of falling when the general commanding abandoned it to an evil fate .

He paused to ink his pen once more and to look up at the ceiling of his pavilion, seeking inspiration from the gods or wherever he might find it. A moment later, the pen was racing across the paper again. However well the Army ofFranklin fought in the fieldworks, I have seen no sign that it can fight outside of them. Entrenching does indeed kill soldiers’ spirits. The sorcery is slow and exceedingly subtle, but no less sure for that .

“What to do?” he muttered. “What to do?”

So long as the general commanding has and is knownto have your confidence, your Majesty, we can but obey his orders and hope they will serve, however unlikely that may seem. But it would be disastrous and unfortunate to see this campaign come to an ignominious conclusion when you have officers who would gladly serve you for the sake of the glory they might win in the said service.

I have, sir, the honor to remain your most humble and obedient servant… Bell signed his name, sanded the letter dry, sealed it, and sent it out in the same clandestine way he had with his earlier missive. He didn’t know what results that one had had-none he could see yet. He hoped this one would do more.

“Cowardice,” he muttered. “If it’s not cowardice, it must be treason. They are there. How can we drive them away without hitting them?”

It all seemed obvious to him. It seemed so obvious, he started to hitch his painful way over to Joseph the Gamecock’s pavilion and confront him. After heaving himself to his feet- no, to my foot , he thought-he checked himself. Even he could see that that would do him no good.

He took the bottle of laudanum from his pocket, pulled the cork with his teeth, and swigged. As always, it tasted vile. As always, he didn’t care. “Ahhh,” he said, the soft, sated sigh of a man returning to the bosom of his beloved. He waited for the potent mix of spirits and poppy juice to work its will on him. He had not long to wait.