Harry Turtledove - Marching Through Peachtree

“How far is it up to Calabash Creek, sir?” Thisbe asked.

“To the seven hells with me if I know, Sergeant,” Gremio said. “I don’t know how far we’ve come-I don’t see how anybody could know how far we’ve come, considering how these roads all seem to bend back on themselves. And I don’t know how far this creek is from where we encamped. For all I do know, that miserable little rill we just crossed was it, and we’re heading straight for the southrons at Konigsburg.”

“We’d better not be,” Thisbe said.

“I don’t know why not,” Gremio said. “One thing I am sure of is that the southrons have to be as confused about all this as we are. If they’re supposed to be at Konigsburg, they’re probably somewhere else.”

“But we’re ordered to take our stand on the west bank of Calabash Creek and not let them advance on Fort Worthless.” Sergeant Thisbe sounded worried. He took orders very seriously, which made him unusual among free Detinan men. You can’t tell me what to do was one of the most common phrases in any Detinan’s mouth.

“Don’t worry about it,” Gremio said. “Sooner or later, we’ll find them, or they’ll find us, and then we’ll see what happens next.”

What he expected would happen next was for both sides to entrench as best they could in this muddy ground and then shoot crossbow quarrels at each other. The landscape didn’t offer room enough for big, sweeping charges. Not only that, both sides were less eager to make them than they had been earlier in the war. Big, sweeping charges left bodies strewn all over a battlefield, but rarely shifted the enemy if he’d already had time to dig in.

Colonel Florizel’s regiment found the foe before finding Calabash Creek. Startled shouts rang out ahead of Gremio’s company: “Southrons!” “Traitors!” Each side seemed equally appalled at stumbling on the other.

A crossbow bolt hissed past Gremio’s head. He had no idea whether his own men or the southrons had shot it. “Forward!” he shouted. “We have to help our friends!” He was an officer, and bore a sword instead of a crossbow. When he drew it, he knew a certain feeling of unreality. As a barrister back in Karlsburg, he hadn’t used a blade. Baron Ormerod, who’d led the company before him, had been a good man with his hands-which hadn’t kept him from stopping a bolt with his chest trying to stem the northern rout behind Proselytizers’ Rise.

“Forward!” Sergeant Thisbe’s clear voice echoed his. Forward the soldiers went. They’d never been shy about fighting-only the southrons’ numbers had kept them in their entrenchments through most of this campaign. Now they had, or might have, a good chance to meet the enemy on even terms. They rushed to take it.

The fight was even more confused than the woodland skirmishes before the battle by the River of Death. The overgrowth was thicker and lusher than it had been farther south; as soon as men took a few steps off the track, they had to navigate as much by ear as by eye. “Geoffrey!” the northerners cried. The southerners yelled, “Avram!” And both sides shouted, “Freedom!”-a good way to land anyone coming to what might be the rescue in trouble.

Gremio almost ran right into a southron. The man in gray shouted something a lot less complimentary than, “Avram!” and let fly with his crossbow. He couldn’t have stood more than five feet from Gremio, but missed anyhow. Gremio had no time even to thank the gods for his good luck. He charged at the southron, expecting the man to flee.

Instead, the enemy soldier threw down the crossbow, drew his shortsword, and slashed at Gremio. With his own, longer, officer’s weapon, Gremio had no trouble holding off the southron, but he couldn’t finish him. Then a crossbow quarrel caught the southron in the thigh. As he howled and crumpled and clutched at himself, Gremio lunged forward and stabbed him. The southron’s howl became a bubbling shriek. Gremio wasn’t particularly proud of the victory, but a victory it was.

“Forward!” he yelled again. The southrons were storming forward themselves. On this overgrown battlefield, who had the most men close by was anyone’s guess. Over in Parthenia, there’d been a fight in what people called the Jungle. Gremio had his doubts about what kind of place that really was, and whether it deserved its name. Here, though, here was jungle and no mistake.

Suddenly, without warning, gray-clad pikemen slammed into Colonel Florizel’s regiment. In this overgrowth, where crossbow bolts were much less effective than in open country, the southrons with their long spears were a deadly menace.

“Avram!” one of them shouted, bearing down on Gremio. “Avram and freedom!”

“Geoffrey!” Gremio yelled in return. He chopped at the enemy’s spearshaft just below the head, hoping to cut it off and leave the southron with nothing more than a pole. But a clever southron armorer had nailed a strip of iron to the spearshaft to keep a sword from doing any such thing. Gremio beat the spearshaft aside and kept himself from getting spitted, but that was all he could do.

Then, recklessly brave, Sergeant Thisbe grabbed the spearshaft. Gremio rushed at the southron. Unexpectedly deprived of the use of this weapon, he let go of it and ran away. “Are you all right?” Gremio asked Thisbe.

“Sure am,” Thisbe answered. The sergeant reversed the spear, then shook his head. “I wasn’t trained on one of these boarstickers. If I tried to use it, I’d get myself killed quick. You know what to do with it, Captain?”

Gremio shook his head. “Not me. Back before the war, if I wanted to kill a man, I’d use a writ, not a spear.”

“That’s funny.” Thisbe grinned, then threw the pike on the ground. “Are we winning or losing?”

“Probably,” Gremio answered, which jerked another grin from the sergeant. The company commander went on, “I wonder how many nasty little fights like this one are happening all over this part of Peachtree.”

“Lots, I expect,” Thisbe said. “The southrons and us, we’re like a couple of blindfolded men groping for each other in a locked room.”

Gremio nodded, appreciating the figure of speech, but he said, “Oh, it’s even worse than that. Our left leg has bumped the other fellow, but our right arm doesn’t know it yet.”

He would have gone on with his own figure, but another pikeman burst out of the woods just in front of him. At close quarters, a pike was a demonically nasty weapon; just as Gremio’s blade had more reach than a crossbowman’s shortsword, so the pikeman could thrust at him without being vulnerable in return. As he had with the first attacker, Gremio managed to beat aside the spearhead, but he could do no more.

Then Thisbe picked up the dropped pike and rushed at the southron. When he turned to defend himself against this new assault, Gremio got inside his guard and slashed his arm to the bone. Howling and dripping blood, the soldier in gray tunic and pantaloons fled.

“Thank you kindly,” Gremio said, tipping his forage cap to Thisbe. “Seems you know what to do with a spear after all, Sergeant. That took ballocks.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Thisbe answered.

“I would,” Gremio said. “I’ll repeat myself, in fact. Ballocks is what that took.”

Sergeant Thisbe laughed. “All right, sir. If that’s how you want to put it, I don’t suppose I’d better argue with my superior officer.” Gremio shook his head to show that Thisbe emphatically ought not to argue with him. The sergeant looked around, then said, “I don’t see any more southrons, not on their feet, anyhow. Maybe we’ve driven them off.”

“By the gods, I hope so.” Gremio didn’t see any more southrons, either. He plunged his sword into the soft red dirt several times to scour blood from the blade. “I hope so, but I don’t really think so. They’re pushing west again, and all we can do is try to hold them off.” As if to prove his point, a racket of battle broke out somewhere not too far away. Gremio and Thisbe twisted their heads this way and that, trying to decide from which direction it was coming. Gremio scowled. “No way to tell whether we’re going forward or falling back, even, not in this undergrowth.”