Harry Turtledove - Marching Through Peachtree

“If the southrons turn up behind us, we’ve probably lost somewhere,” Thisbe said.

“Yes, probably, but not necessarily.” Gremio could still split hairs like a barrister, and still enjoyed doing it, too. “It could just mean they’d found a track through the bushes that we didn’t happen to be guarding.”

“You’re right,” Thisbe said after a brief pause for thought. “That wouldn’t have occurred to me, I don’t believe. But you, sir, seems like you think of everything.” Admiration filled his light tenor.

Gremio’s cheeks heated. “Thanks again, Sergeant. Praise from the praiseworthy is praise indeed. So people say, and I see it’s true.” More southrons broke from the woods just then, and the soldiers stayed too busy to talk for quite a while.

Rollant’s hand strayed to the leg of his pantaloons as he sprawled on the ground during a break. Smitty saw the motion and shook his head. “Don’t scratch,” he said. “You’ll be sorry if you scratch.”

“I’m sorry now,” Rollant said from between clenched teeth. “These gods-damned chiggers are itching me to death.”

“I’ve got ’em, too,” his comrade said mournfully. “They’re worse after you scratch. I found out the hard way.”

“I know it,” the escaped serf said. “They have them in Palmetto Province, too. I didn’t miss ’em a bit after I came up to New Eborac, I’ll tell you that. But I itch so much now, I don’t hardly care what happens later.”

“You will,” Smitty said. He was right, too; Rollant knew as much. In his head, he knew as much. But his leg still itched and his hands still wanted to scratch, and none of that seemed to have very much to do with his head.

Sergeant Joram came up. If chiggers dared afflict the exalted personage of an underofficer, he gave no sign of it. “Get moving, you lugs,” he said. “We have to keep heading toward the Thunderer’s shrine over there to the west.” He pointed.

Smitty snickered loud enough for Rollant to hear, but not loud enough for his mirth to reach Joram’s ears. He said, “That’s south, Sergeant.”

“It is not,” Joram growled. But then he looked at the shadows tree branches were casting. He coughed a couple of times. “Well, it might be a little southwest.”

Smitty didn’t say anything. Neither did Rollant. For a couple of common soldiers, silence seemed the better course. The two men heaved themselves to their feet. Harder to scratch if I’m marching, Rollant thought. What he wanted to do was scratch and scratch till blood ran down his leg. Maybe then he would feel better.

Crows and vultures rose in flapping clouds from bodies already bloating under the hot northern sun. Rollant couldn’t see whether the corpses wore Avram’s uniform or Geoffrey’s. They were just as dead either way.

“Just what’s so important about this New Bolt Shrine?” Smitty grumbled as the men tramped along. “Why aren’t the traitors welcome to the miserable place?”

“Crossroads, I suppose.” Rollant wrinkled his nose, trying without much luck to clear the stench of death from his nostrils.

Sergeant Joram shook his head. “No, that’s not what it is,” he said. “Fort Worthless, now, Fort Worthless is a crossroads. We get our hands on that place, the northerners will have to go around three sides of a big square to get to any place they need to be. But New Bolt Shrine is different-I hear some runaway serfs told our officers about the place.”

“Different how, Sergeant?” Smitty asked. Rollant was glad his companion had put the question to Joram. The sergeant wasn’t out-and-out unjust to him very often because he was a blond, but Joram did talk to an ordinary Detinan more readily than he did to an ex-serf.

“It’s supposed to be one of those places where the blonds worked their magic back in the old days,” Joram said. “It’s an even stronger place for sorcery now that it’s been reconsecrated to the Thunderer, of course.”

“And our magecraft can use all the help it can get. Uh- huh .” Smitty nodded. “All right, fair enough. That makes pretty good sense.”

Sergeant Joram gave him a mocking bow. “Thank you so much, Marshal Smitty. I’m sure General Hesmucet’ll be so glad you approve.”

Rollant would have fumed under a taunt like that. Rollant, in fact, had fumed under a good many taunts like that. Smitty only bowed back. “Thank you so much, Sergeant. I do want the general to be aware of what’s going on.” Joram snorted and went off to bother a couple of other men in the squad.

“Nicely done,” Rollant said.

“Thank you very much, Marshal Rollant,” Smitty replied grandly. He wouldn’t be serious, not when he had any other choice.

Heading toward a place of old magic made Rollant serious. He had no idea what the blonds in this part of Detina had done in the way of sorcery before the Detinans came conquering across the Western Ocean. The lands around Karlsburg, where he’d grown up, had been part of one little kingdom, this place here another. For all he knew, his ancestors and the local blonds had fought all the time.

He was sure Joram was right about one thing: since New Bolt Shrine had been reconsecrated to the Thunderer, the sorcerous focus there would be stronger now than it had been before. Iron weapons, unicorns, and more powerful wizardry-those were the keys to the Detinans’ conquest of the blonds they’d tied to the land.

“I wonder if the traitors know what kind of a place this is,” he said.

“It’d be nice if they didn’t,” Smitty answered. “Then we could just march right in and take the place away from ’em. I’m always in favor of getting what I want without having to fight for it, especially if the other bastards are likely to fight back.”

“Right,” Rollant said-half agreement, half irony.

But Geoffrey’s men-Joseph the Gamecock’s men-did know what they were defending. Rollant got a glimpse of the New Bolt Shrine, the Thunderer’s lightning bolt done up in gold over the roof, but a glimpse was all he got. Strong northern forces lay between the southrons and the shrine, and they were not inclined to let themselves be dislodged.

General Hesmucet hurled his men at them again and again. The southrons ground forward, but paid a dreadful price for every yard they advanced. Rollant hoped the traitors paid even more, but knew he couldn’t rely on that.

“How can we tell when we’ve won one of these fights?” Smitty asked. “We don’t shift the bastards more than a couple of furlongs even when we do drive ’em out of their trenches. And when we do push ’em that far, they just find some other little knoll or overgrown patch and dig some more trenches, and then they’re ready for us again.”

“Half the time, they don’t even need to dig,” Rollant said. “Like as not, their officers have already got serfs digging trenches they can just move into. It’s only when the traitors go someplace where there are no trenches that they have to do any digging of their own.”

Not far away from them, their comrades were busy entrenching. And Sergeant Joram called out, “Come on, you lazy lugs. You know what to do with a pick and shovel as well as anybody else. Get busy and do it.”

He had, at least, included Smitty in that lazy tag. A lot of Detinans reckoned all blonds lazy-an irony, considering how the nobles in the north piled work on their serfs. Rollant took his short-handled shovel out of his pack and made the dirt fly. Smitty did, too, but he was slower about it. Which of them was the lazy one, then? Rollant had his own opinion, but who cared what a blond thought?

Two days later, Colonel Nahath’s regiment fought its way up to the very outskirts of the sacred precinct of which New Bolt Shrine formed the heart. In the face of stubborn northern resistance, their attack stalled there. In short order, the very reason for the attack became meaningless, for stones and firepots from southron siege engines reduced the shrine to smoking rubble.