Harry Turtledove - Marching Through Peachtree

“I am sorry, sir,” Bell said. “I truly am, but I do not see how we can hold our position east of Fat Mama if the southrons bring up their siege engines to bear on our works, as they are now in the process of doing.”

“I must agree,” Leonidas the Priest said, a lugubrious frown on his face.

“ Must you?” Joseph snapped. Leonidas’ nod was lugubrious, too. Joseph rounded on Roast-Beef William. “And what about you? Are you also of the opinion that we need to take flight?”

“No, sir,” Roast-Beef William replied. “If the southrons come at us, I expect we can beat them back.”

“Well, gods be praised!” Joseph exclaimed. He did a couple of mincing, mocking steps of a triumphal dance. “Someone who hasn’t got his headquarters in his hindquarters, as that fool of a southron said he did a couple of years ago back in the province of Parthenia.”

“Sir, I resent the imputation,” Bell said.

Resent it? You don’t even know what the hells it means, Joseph the Gamecock thought sourly. “You were all for attack before, Lieutenant General,” he said. “You were for it when I was against it. It gave you something to complain about, in that I wasn’t doing what you wanted. But when I asked you for an attack, what did I get? Excuses, nothing else but.”

“Did you want me to send my brave men forward to be slaughtered?” Bell demanded. “The enemy’s siege engines on our flank would have wrecked my entire wing. Anyone on the spot would have seen the same.”

“By all I’ve heard, Lieutenant General, you were the only one who had even the slightest hint of the presence of these perhaps mythical catapults,” Joseph said. “No matter what damage you may have feared, the actual damage you suffered from them was nil.”

“I fear nothing,” Bell rumbled. From most men, that would have been a brag or a lie. From him, Joseph the Gamecock believed it. It did not, however, necessarily make things better rather than worse.

“We’ve already yielded the southrons too much land,” Roast-Beef William said. “If we have to leave Fat Mama, they hold most of the southern half of Peachtree Province.”

“If we hold our ground here and are overwhelmed, what then?” Leonidas the Priest returned. “In that case, not only is the southern half of the province lost, but also the army that could defend the rest.”

Joseph the Gamecock felt like tearing his thinning hair. “How, pray tell, is the enemy going to overwhelm us here?” he said. “These works are as strong as a swarm of serfs could make them.”

“Not strong enough,” Bell insisted. “If the southrons move forward and put their catapults on our flanks, they’ll make us sorry we ever chose to fight here.”

“We’ll be sorrier if we leave,” Joseph said. Roast-Beef William nodded, his ruddy face even redder than usual. But both Bell and Leonidas the Priest solemnly shook their heads. Joseph felt like kicking them. “What am I supposed to do?” he cried. “I want to stand my ground, but how can I possibly when two of my wing commanders think I would be courting disaster if I tried?”

“I was not the one who ordered us here to Fat Mama,” Bell said.

“No, but you and this half-witted hierophant were also the ones who told me I didn’t dare attack the southrons, and by all the signs you were wrong about that,” Joseph the Gamecock growled.

“I am not half-witted!” Leonidas cried, turning almost as red as Roast-Beef William usually was.

“Quarter-witted, then,” Joseph said with mock graciousness. Leonidas took it for the real thing for a moment, which went a long way toward proving Joseph’s point. Then the hierophant of the Lion God bellowed in fresh outrage.

“Sir, you did not pick a good site to defend,” Lieutenant General Bell said.

“You would have liked it a lot better had you picked it yourself,” Joseph said.

Instead of answering, Bell drew from his pocket the little bottle of laudanum he always carried with him. He pulled the cork with his teeth, drank, and put the bottle away again. That’s where he gets his brains, Joseph the Gamecock thought. At the start of the campaign, he’d admired Bell for his courage in staying in the field even with his dreadful wounds. Nowadays…

“If you feel the rigors of service in the Army of Franklin are excessive, Lieutenant General, you may be sure I would be of the opinion that your retirement would in no way affect your honor,” he said in hopeful tones.

“I have not the slightest intention of retiring,” Bell replied peevishly. “I aim to go forth and conquer the foe.”

“Do you?” Joseph couldn’t resist the gibe. “There he was, right in front of you, just waiting to be struck. You advanced a mile against no opposition, discovered catapults where no one else suspected them, and retired forthwith to your works. A less than heroic encounter, if I may say so.”

“We can hold here,” Roast-Beef William said, “providing we have the will to do so.”

“Provided,” Joseph corrected. William stiffened. Joseph realized he might have done better than to engage in literary criticism; William was on his side, even if imperfectly grammatical.

The wing commander had also accurately summed things up-if they had the will, they could hold their ground here. Joseph the Gamecock looked from one of his subordinates to another. Roast-Beef William had that will, or at least willingness. Leonidas the Priest? What was left of Bell? Joseph shook his head. Despair threatened to choke him.

“If we leave Fat Mama, where will we go?” he asked plaintively.

Bell glowered at him. “Where would you have gone, sir,” — he turned the title of respect into one of reproach-“after the southrons flanked us out of here?”

Joseph the Gamecock glared back. It was, unfortunately, a sharp question. And, however much Joseph hated to admit it, it was a question with an answer, for he’d contemplated it himself. “We would have to move up to Whole Mackerel. With the hills around that place, it makes another good spot to try to slow the southrons and to hurt them.”

“Well, then,” Leonidas the Priest said, as if that settled everything.

It didn’t, not so far as Joseph the Gamecock was concerned. “Don’t you see?” he said, something that felt much too much like desperation in his voice. “By all the gods, don’t you see ? Shifting our position because the enemy forces us to do it is one thing. Shifting our position because some of our officers have a case of the collywobbles is something else again.”

“Sound strategy dictates that we pull out of Fat Mama before disaster befalls us here,” Leonidas intoned, as if chanting a prayer to the Lion God.

The god might have heard him with favor. He infuriated Joseph. “Sound strategy?” the general commanding the Army of Franklin exclaimed, his voice breaking like a youth’s. “Sound strategy? What in the seven hells do you know about sound strategy, sirrah? You wouldn’t recognize a sound strategy if it danced up and pissed on your boot.”

That was the opinion of practically every officer who’d ever tried to command Leonidas the Priest. It was a matter on which Joseph the Gamecock and the now-departed Count Thraxton the Braggart actually agreed-one of the very few matters on which they actually agreed, as neither was much in the habit of agreeing with anyone else. Joseph was glad to have the men Leonidas had led into his army. He would have been even gladder to have them had they come without the general at their head.

“I shall pray to the Lion God for your enlightenment, sir,” Leonidas said now. “Either he will give it or he will rend you for your presumption.”