Harry Turtledove - Marching Through Peachtree

“Time to get our men bedded down for the night,” Thisbe observed.

“See to it, Sergeant,” Gremio said. Thisbe nodded. Gremio knew Thisbe would make sure everything was as it needed to be. He did give one additional order: “Put plenty of pickets well forward. After that spell the southrons used at Caesar, no telling what sort of sneaky things they might try. We haven’t seen many night attacks, but I don’t want to be taken by surprise.”

“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Thisbe said. “I’ll see to it, sir.” Off he went, brisk as if he’d just drunk four cups of tea.

Gremio wished he had that kind of energy himself. He yawned wide enough to split his head in two. Here and there in the trenches, men were getting cookfires going. The stews the cooks would serve weren’t that good, but they did keep belly and backbone from gaining too intimate an acquaintance.

After patrolling the front his company had to cover, Captain Gremio lay down on his blanket and tried to go to sleep. The night was as muggy and almost as hot as the day had been, so he certainly needed no covers to hold the cold at bay. But mosquitoes buzzed in invisible but hungry clouds. They looked on Gremio the same way he looked on the cooks’ stewpots. He ended up wrapping himself in the blanket just to keep himself from being devoured.

He slept through the night undisturbed. Because of the good luck the southrons had had with their sorcerously aided attack on Caesar, he’d wondered if they might try something similar here by Fat Mama. The confusion of night would, or could, have aided them, too. But everything stayed quiet.

When he woke, dawn was painting the eastern sky behind the southrons pink. Clouds floated through the air, looking thicker and darker off to the west. He wondered if it would rain. With all the moisture in the air, it seemed likely. The idea of staying in the trenches as they turned to mud didn’t much appeal to him, but the idea of fighting outside them against that vast host of southrons seemed even less delightful. He’d heard Lieutenant General Bell was angry that Joseph the Gamecock wouldn’t storm out to assail the enemy, but he couldn’t see why. Joseph’s plan made perfectly good sense to him.

Besides, he thought, if it does rain, everyone’s bowstring will be wet, and that will put a better damper on the fighting than anything this side of a peace treaty . He snorted. As if Avram would grant terms the north could stand, or as if King Geoffrey could accept any the south was likely to offer. No, this fight would have to be settled on the field.

That thought had hardly crossed his mind before Sergeant Thisbe came over to him and said, “Sir, it looks like the southrons are doing something funny in their encampment.”

“Funny how?” Gremio asked, his hand sliding of itself toward the hilt of his sword. “Are they deploying for an attack?” If they were, if Thisbe could see they were, then they weren’t using the masking spell they’d tried in Caesar.

The sergeant shook his head. “I don’t think so, sir. What it looks like is that some of them are going away.”

“What?” Gremio said. “I’d better come have a look for myself.”

But when he got to a good vantage point, he discovered that, as usual, Sergeant Thisbe had it right. A good many southrons did look to be breaking camp and heading north.

Excitement flowed through him. “They’re trying to pull the same stunt they did down at Borders and Caesar,” he breathed. “They’ll leave some of their men behind to keep us busy here, while they use the rest to try to outflank us.”

“I wonder if we can attack them, now that they’ve cut down the size of the host right in front of us,” Thisbe said.

Attacking the whole southron army, Gremio was convinced, was madness. Attacking part of it… “So do I,” he said. “It just might work.”

Lieutenant General Bell liked very little about Fat Mama. He’d made his headquarters in a fancy manor house not far outside the town, and that proved a mistake. The baron who’d built the place had not only put in marble floors but also kept them polished to a brilliant gloss. They were so very slick, Bell’s crutches didn’t want to keep their grip. They kept trying to fly out from under him, in which case he would have gone flying, too.

If I break my neck along with wrecking an army and losing a leg, I won’t be of much use to the kingdom or to myself, he thought after one such narrow escape. A man does need a few working parts .

The wing he commanded at Fat Mama was stationed farther north than any of the other soldiers in the Army of Franklin. Bell wondered whether Joseph the Gamecock had posted them there just to make him ride-and suffer-for an extra mile or two. He had no intention of asking Joseph, for the army commander was liable to tell him yes. They had enough trouble getting along without that.

Someone pounded on the door to the manor house. One of Major Zibeon’s assistants went to see who it was. He came back to Bell and reported: “A messenger from Count Joseph, sir.”

“I shall receive him, of course,” Bell said, wondering what Joseph the Gamecock wanted to bother him about now.

When the messenger came in, he almost tripped on the smooth, smooth marble floor, and had to flail his arms wildly for balance. Oddly, that made Bell feel better. If a whole man could come close to breaking his neck here, he had no reason to know shame for having trouble getting around.

“What can I do for you?” he asked, more warmth than usual in his voice.

“Count Joseph’s compliments, sir, and he requests the boon of your company just as fast as you can get to him,” the runner replied.

That meant travel, and travel meant more torment. Bell sipped from his little bottle of laudanum. “Why?” he asked, and warmth was only a memory.

“Sir, he says he is contemplating an attack, and desires your views along with those of his other wing commanders,” the messenger told him.

“Contemplating… an attack?” Bell said, as if the young man before him had suddenly started speaking a foreign language. “Joseph the Gamecock is contemplating an attack ? My ears must be tricking me.” He dug a finger into one, as if to clear out whatever was blocking them.

All the runner said was, “Yes, sir. He is, sir. Truly.”

“I can hardly believe it,” Bell said. Curiosity was enough to outweigh pain, at least for the moment. “You may go back and tell him I shall attend him directly.” The runner saluted and left.

Bell went to the commanding general’s headquarters in a buggy, not on unicornback. It took him a little longer, but gave him time to think. He kept stroking his long, curly beard as the carriage bounced toward the home where Joseph the Gamecock had set up shop. What sort of ulterior motive did Joseph have for ordering an attack now, of all times? Is he trying to discredit me? Bell wondered. Has someone let him know about my letters to King Geoffrey? That could be sticky.

He had trouble getting very excited about it. Without the laudanum, he knew he would have been all in a swivet. Of course, without the laudanum, he would also have been in agony. As things were, he was merely in pain-and the drug laid a soft, muffling cloud over whatever else he might have felt.

When he got to Joseph’s headquarters, he discovered Leonidas the Priest and Roast-Beef William there ahead of him. They both towered over Joseph the Gamecock, who was gesturing animatedly as they talked outside. Bell descended from the buggy and hitched his way over to the other generals.

“Good day,” Joseph the Gamecock said with a courtly bow.

“Good day, sir,” Bell answered. “What is this I hear of attack? Do we still recall the word?”