Harry Turtledove - Marching Through Peachtree

He did eventually fall asleep, whether in spite of the laudanum or because of it he could not have said. And as he slept, he dreamt. In his dream, he was whole. He had two legs. His arm did everything an arm should do. And, indeed, he did more than a mortal man might expect to do, for he found himself flying up to the mountain beyond the sky where the gods dwelt.

“What is your wish?” the Lion God asked him. The god had a lion’s head on a hero’s body, though his hands and feet were clawed and a tail lashed from the base of his spine.

Even facing the gods, Bell did not hesitate. “Lord, let me lead this host!” he said fervently.

“What will you do with it if you lead it?” the Thunderer asked.

“Go forth and fight the foe wherever I find him,” Bell answered.

The two martial gods looked at each other. “So shall it be,” they said together.

Lieutenant General Bell woke up then, with the sound of the gods’ voices ringing in his ears, ringing in his soul. He knew he remained a cripple. For a moment, for one precious moment, it didn’t matter. “The Army of Franklin shall be mine,” he whispered. He hadn’t asked the gods how well he would do with the army if he got it. He didn’t worry about it now that he was awake, either.

“So this is how we’re going to play the game, eh?”

Doubting George said to Hesmucet as the southron army tramped north towards a hamlet with the unlovely name of Fat Mama.

“That’s how it looks to me,” General Hesmucet answered. “We’ll fight somewhere, Joseph the Gamecock will pull back, and then we’ll have to fight again.”

“He’s not been making things easy for us,” George observed. “Of course, that’s not his job, is it?”

“He won’t stake everything on one throw of the dice, gods damn him,” Hesmucet said. “We flanked him out of Borders, we beat him out of Caesar, but his army’s still intact, and he’s still got it between us and Marthasville.”

“And as he falls back, he concentrates his force. And we have to thin ours out to protect our supply line,” Doubting George said. “That’s not good. If Ned of the Forest got athwart the glideway…”

“I’m doing my best to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Hesmucet said. “I’ve sent a good-sized force of unicorn-riders out from Luxor on the Great River against him. With luck, Sam the Sturgeon will whip Ned. Even without luck, he’ll keep him too busy to bother our supplies.”

“May it be so.” Lieutenant General George pointed ahead. “What are those men doing?”

“They’re digging trenches, that’s what they’re doing,” Hesmucet said.

George had already seen that for himself. “Yes, sir,” he said. “What I should have asked was, why are they doing it? We’re supposed to be on the march, not so? Did you give any order for us to entrench?”

“Lion God claw me if I did,” Hesmucet answered.

“Well, then,” George said, and rode toward the soldiers who were digging in. “What are you men playing at?” he demanded in his most formal tones.

“Making us some trenches, sir, just in case,” one of the southrons replied.

“I see that. What I don’t see is any traitors close by,” George said. “In case of what, then? Since there aren’t any traitors close by, why do you think you need the earthworks?”

“Just in case, sir, like I said,” the soldier answered. He flipped another spadeful of red Peachtree dirt up onto what would be the parapet of the growing trench. “Somebody saw that the northerners had been digging a couple of fields over, so we thought we’d better have some trenches of our own.”

“What kind of preposterous excuse are they giving?” General Hesmucet demanded as he rode up.

“As a matter of fact, sir, it doesn’t sound so preposterous to me,” Doubting George replied, and then explained.

“Gods damn entrenchments!” Hesmucet burst out. “Gods damn them to the seven hells. They take the offensive spirit away from our soldiers altogether.”

“No, sir. I wouldn’t say that.” George shook his head. “The Detinan soldier fights his war the same way he runs his farm or his shop. If he invests in fighting, he expects that investment to pay.”

“Well, these fellows are a pack of idiots for entrenching when there aren’t any traitors in sight,” Hesmucet said, and George couldn’t very well disagree with that. The general commanding raised his voice: “You boys had better get moving and keep moving, or I’m going to have to find out who in the hells you are.”

“Uh, yes, sir,” the soldiers said in a ragged chorus. They abandoned their half-dug trenches and hurried away.

“Disgraceful,” Hesmucet said.

“I still don’t think so, sir,” Doubting George replied. “They fight hard whenever we send them at the foe. Think of that fight by Caesar a few days ago. You can’t ask for more than those men gave.”

“You can always ask for more,” Hesmucet said in a steely voice. That grim determination was thought-provoking. Hesmucet repeated, “You can always ask for more,” and then added, “Sometimes asking for it makes the men give it to you.”

“A point,” George said. “A distinct point.”

“What I want to know is, will we ever get to this Fat Mama place?” Hesmucet grumbled. “In this country, the gods would have to work a miracle for us to get anywhere at all. I rode through it twenty years ago, and it hasn’t changed since-certainly not for the better in any way.”

That was a distinct point, too. Swamps and pine woods and stands of shrubs and thorn bushes and saplings that had sprung up where the pines were cut down dominated the landscape. The roads, when there were roads, were narrow and seemed to wander at random rather than actually going anywhere. Without the sun in the sky, George would have had no idea where north lay.

With cries of alarm, a whole company of soldiers a hundred yards ahead started running away as fast as they could go. “ Now what?” Hesmucet growled.

Before long, one of those cries of alarm developed words, or at least a word: “Hornets!”

“If you’ll excuse me, sir,” Doubting George said, and rode away from trouble as fast as he could. He was not unduly surprised to discover General Hesmucet also retreating as fast as he could persuade his unicorn to go.

“By the power vested in me as commanding general, I hereby declare those wasps traitors against King Avram,” Hesmucet declared.

“That sounds good to me, sir,” George said. “Shall I order the men to arrest them and take them back to Georgetown for trial?” Before Hesmucet could reply, he went on, “Or do you suppose they’re enough of a trial right here?”

Somebody yelled as he was stung. More soldiers broke ranks to escape the hornets. Ruefully, Hesmucet said, “They’re doing more to slow us down than Joseph the Gamecock has so far.”

“You were the one who said it, sir: as long as he holds Marthasville and keeps his army in the field, he’s doing everything false King Geoffrey could ask of him. He’s not the same sort of fighter as Duke Edward, but he knows his business.”

“I can’t argue with you there, much as I wish I could,” Hesmucet answered. “He pulled out of Caesar just as slick as you please-didn’t leave so much as a wagon or an ass that wasn’t too lame for us to use.”

Before too long, the front of the line of march sorted itself out again. But the hornets caused a traffic jam all out of proportion to the amount of harm they could have done and to the number of men they actually stung. When a handful of people stopped and flabbled because of the wasps, everybody else behind them had to stop and wait while the chaos subsided. Delay went through the whole long column of marching southrons, as one could watch a devoured pig going through a big snake.