Harry Turtledove: Marching Through Peachtree

“No, eh?” Joseph the Gamecock’s voice dripped sarcasm. “I never would have noticed. Why, I thought we’d be moving from Rising Rock on to Ramblerton next week. That is our plan, isn’t it?”

“Sir?” Lieutenant General Bell said, face blank from more than laudanum. He wouldn’t have recognized irony had it pierced him like iron.

“All right, sir,” Roast-Beef William said-he, at least, got the point Joseph was making. “Count Thraxton’s magic flat-out failed. It beat us. Without it, why would our men have run from the top of Proselytizers’ Rise when they could have held off every southron in the world if only they’d stood their ground?”

“Still no excuse for that skedaddle,” Bell said. “No excuse at all. You go forward and you fight like a man. That’s what the gods love.”

You go forward and you fight like a man . Bell had lived by that, and he’d nearly died by it, too. Now I’m in command here, and we’ll try things my way , Joseph thought. If we can make the southrons pay and pay and pay for every foot of ground they take, maybe all their mechanics and artisans and farmers will get sick of fighting us and let us have our own kingdom. It’s the best hope we have, anyhow-we’re not going to drive them away by force of arms .

“I intend to make the enemy come forward and fight like men,” he said. “I intend to make them die like men, too, in the largest numbers I can arrange. Let’s see if they go on backing Avram’s plan to crush us into the dust and free all our blonds from the land after they’ve spent a while bleeding.”

“Not chivalrous,” Bell said.

“I don’t care,” Joseph the Gamecock replied. That brought shock to Lieutenant General Bell’s face despite the laudanum he poured down. Joseph repeated it: “I don’t care-and by all the gods, my friends, that is the truth. I am here to keep the southrons from snuffing out this kingdom. Whether I do that or not matters. How I do it… Who cares?”

“Don’t you want the bards singing songs about you hundreds of years after you’re dead?” Bell asked. “Don’t you want them treating you the same way they treated the heroes of the first conquest, the men who crossed the Western Ocean and threw down the blonds’ kingdoms?”

“I couldn’t care less,” Joseph said, and shocked Bell all over again. “King Geoffrey gave me this job to do. He thought I was the right man for it, and I aim to show him he was right.” I aim to show him he was a perfect jackass for not giving me more to do a long time ago .

Roast-Beef William said, “A defensive campaign on our part will be the most expensive for the southrons and the least expensive for us. Since General Hesmucet has far more men than we do, we need every advantage we can find.”

“Where is the valor in letting the enemy dictate the terms of the campaign?” Bell asked.

“Where is the sense in attacking the enemy when you are weaker than he?” Joseph the Gamecock returned.

“We attacked the southrons at the River of Death and prevailed,” Bell said.

“Yes, and you outnumbered them when you did it, too,” Joseph pointed out. “King Geoffrey detached James of Broadpath’s force-and you with it, Lieutenant General-from Duke Edward of Arlington’s Army of Southern Parthenia and sent it here by glideway to add its weight to the fight. Without it, Count Thraxton would have been badly outnumbered, and wouldn’t have attacked.”

Slowly, Bell shook his head. “You make war most coldbloodedly, your Grace.”

“King Geoffrey says the same thing,” Joseph replied. “As you may have gathered, the king and I have a good many differing opinions. My opinion is that one makes war for the purpose of defeating the enemy by whatever means are available. If that involves wearing him out to the point where he chooses not to fight any more, so be it. I see no better hope. Do you?” He looked from Bell to Roast-Beef William.

“No, your Grace, though I wish I did,” William said.

“My own view is that the purpose of war is to fight, to smash the foe,” Lieutenant General Bell said.

“If we could do that, nothing would make me happier,” Joseph the Gamecock said. “Do you see us doing it against General Hesmucet and the host he has assembled by Rising Rock?”

Had Bell nodded to that, Joseph would have lost his temper. But the cripple who still wanted to be a soldier shook his big, leonine head. “It is as my comrade says,” he answered. “I wish I did, but I do not.”

“All right, then,” Joseph told him. “We are in accord.” He had his doubts about that, but, for once, did not state them. He made more allowances for Bell than for most men-certainly more than he made for King Geoffrey. “That being so, I intend to make my fight in the way I mentioned. I have sent orders to the north and west to have estate-holders get their serfs out to start building fieldworks for us.”

“Already, sir? So soon?” Roast-Beef William asked in surprise.

“Already. So soon,” Joseph the Gamecock said grimly. “You’re our master tactician, Lieutenant General, so think tactically here. If we are going to make this kind of fight, shouldn’t we get ready for it ahead of time? Otherwise, our soldiers would have to do the digging themselves, as the southrons do.”

“Here I agree with you completely,” Bell said. “Not fitting for Detinans to do such labor when we can call on the subjected blonds.”

“Just so,” Joseph said; he was, for once, as well pleased to have escaped argument. “Unless this campaign very much surprises me, we shall need those works.”

“If Hesmucet thinks he and the southrons can storm straight through us, he had better think again,” Bell said. “I have to be strapped onto a unicorn to stay aboard, but I expect I may have one last charge left in me.”

Joseph the Gamecock was an irascible man, yes, but also a courtly one. He did not care to think about twice-mangled Lieutenant General Bell going at the foe like that, but bowed from respect for his courage. Bell would do it; he didn’t doubt that in the least. Bell would, in fact, surely do it with a song on his lips. That didn’t mean Joseph didn’t reckon him somewhere close to mad for even thinking of such a thing.

But Joseph didn’t say that, either. What he did say was, “Let us hope, gentlemen, that we never have the need for such desperate measures.” For a wonder, neither Roast-Beef William nor Lieutenant General Bell disagreed with him.

From his unicorn, General Hesmucet looked west to Proselytizers’ Rise, then north to Sentry Peak, the stony knob that towered above the town of Rising Rock. The autumn before, blue-clad men who called Grand Duke Geoffrey the rightful King of Detina had held both strongpoints. The traitors’ flag, red dragon on gold, had flown above them. Even Hesmucet, as grimly aggressive a warrior as any who followed King Avram against the traitors, marveled that the northerners had been driven from those heights, but now Avram’s banner, the proper royal banner, gold dragon on red, waved over the high ground.

Hesmucet scratched at his chin. He wore a close-cropped, almost stubbly black beard, just beginning to be streaked with gray as he edged into his forties. He was not very tall and not very thick through the shoulders, but had a lithe sort of wrestler’s strength that made him much more dangerous in a melee than he looked. He also had a driving energy that was, at the moment, aimed northwest.

Beside him, mounted on a unicorn finer than his own, sat Lieutenant General George, his second-in-command. Turning to him, Hesmucet said, “We’re going to smash right through the traitors, by all the gods.”

“May it be so, sir,” George replied, “but I have my doubts.”