Harry Turtledove - Marching Through Peachtree

“Major Alva!” he called. “Where in the damnation has Major Alva gone and got himself off to?”

“Here I am, sir.” In a mage’s best style, Alva seemed to appear out of nowhere.

Hesmucet was less impressed than he might have been. In the rain, he couldn’t see very far anyway. He came straight to the point: “Can you make the sun come out again and dry up some of this mud?”

“Sorry, sir, but I don’t think so,” Major Alva replied.

“Why not?” Hesmucet said irritably. “Last fall, you were able to keep things foggy and misty down around Rising Rock, and that served us well.”

“Yes, sir, but it would have been pretty foggy and misty regardless of what I did,” the bright young mage said. “Here, I would be changing things, and changing them a lot, because it’s usually pretty rainy here this time of year. It’s a lot easier to ride the unicorn in the direction he’s already going, if you know what I mean.”

Hesmucet snarled-wetly. He did see what Major Alva meant, but seeing it wasn’t the same as liking it. “All right, then,” he said. “What can we do to make the traitors’ lives miserable?”

“Everyone’s life has been miserable lately, seems to me,” Alva observed.

That held more truth than Hesmucet cared to admit. “The idea is to make the enemy’s lives miserable,” he said. “That and to keep him from doing it to us.”

“Yes, sir,” Major Alva agreed. “I have to tell you, though, sir, fooling with the weather will not get you what you want. This time of year in this part of the kingdom, it is going to rain, and any wizard who tells you anything different is either lying on purpose or else a gods-damned fool.”

“All right,” Hesmucet said. One reason he was glad to have Alva around was that the mage wasn’t shy about telling him what was on his mind. Eventually, he supposed, Alva would learn tact, but it wouldn’t happen soon. “If you can’t dry things out, see if you can come up with some other way to make Joseph the Gamecock sorry we’re in the neighborhood.”

“Yes, sir.” Alva saluted and went away.

Hesmucet started to duck back into his tent. Before he could, a scryer called his name. He turned. “What is it?”

“There’s a report from Luxor, sir, on the Great River,” the scryer replied. “Sam the Sturgeon has met Ned of the Forest in a battle.”

“I’ll come,” Hesmucet said at once, and hurried to the scryers’ tent.

The face looking out of the crystal ball at him belonged to Brigadier Andrew the Smith, not to Brigadier Sam (who’d got his nickname from a pair of protruding eyes and a long, long nose). If Sam the Sturgeon wasn’t there to tell the tale in person, Hesmucet judged the news unlikely to be good. And, sure enough, the commander of the garrison at Luxor said, “Things didn’t work out as you hoped they would, sir.”

“You’d better tell me,” Hesmucet said.

“Yes, sir.” Andrew the Smith was a solid officer. “Brigadier Sam set out moving west through the southern part of Great River Province, sir, and he let his unicorn-riders get out in front of his footsoldiers. Ned of the Forest hit him near a little place called Three Dee Crossroads and defeated him in detail-smashed his army to hells and gone, if you want to know the truth.”

“Gods damn it!” Hesmucet burst out. “Sam the Sturgeon must have had three times as many men as Ned.”

“Yes, sir,” Brigadier Andrew said again. “But he didn’t get ’em into the fight, and Ned did. What’s left of Sam’s army-and it’s only bits and pieces-just came stumbling back into Luxor this morning. He was afraid Ned was hot on his heels, too.”

“To the hells with what he was afraid of,” Hesmucet growled. “I sent him out to keep Ned too busy to strike our supply line. Fat lot of good Sam does, holed up in Luxor. Ned can collect men at his leisure and strike the glideway path whenever he pleases.”

“I’m afraid you’re right, sir,” Andrew said mournfully.

“That man Ned is a demon,” Hesmucet said. “There can’t be peace by the Great River till Ned of the Forest is dead.”

“As may be, sir,” the commandant at Luxor replied. “But the son of a bitch is still here now, and in a position to make a lot of trouble.”

“We have to keep him too busy to hit the supply line,” Hesmucet said. “If Sam the Sturgeon couldn’t do the job, someone else will have to. Right this minute, Brigadier, looks like that someone else is you.”

“Yes, sir,” Andrew the Smith said-he didn’t shrink from the idea, which made Hesmucet happy. “I’ll do my best, sir. Ned will probably think he could take on anybody this side of the gods right about now, and that may make him careless. But whether it does or whether it doesn’t, you’re right-we have to keep him away from your glideway line.”

“Good man,” Hesmucet told him. “If we had more like you, we’d be in better shape.”

“Thank you kindly, sir,” Brigadier Andrew replied. “What we could really use is a couple of officers like Ned of the Forest.”

Few southrons would have said that. It was true-Hesmucet felt down in his belly how true it was-but few would have had the nerve to say it. “When the gods made Ned, they shattered the mold afterwards,” Hesmucet said, which unfortunately also seemed to be true. “I’m glad we have you on our side, Brigadier. I know you’ll give the son of a bitch all he wants, and then some more besides.”

“I told you once, I’ll do my best. I meant it,” Andrew said.

“Good.” Hesmucet turned and nodded to his scryer. The man broke the mystical attunement between the two crystal balls. The one in front of Hesmucet became no more than an inert sphere of glass; Andrew the Smith’s image vanished from it. Hesmucet gave himself the luxury of cursing for a minute or so, but then got up to leave the scryers’ tent.

“What will you do now, sir?” the scryer asked him.

It wasn’t really any of the man’s business. Still, Hesmucet judged him unlikely to go over to the traitors with the answer. He probably wouldn’t even gossip; by the nature of their work, scryers had to be discreet. And the truth wasn’t all that complicated, anyhow. “I’m going to keep right on hammering away at Joseph the Gamecock, that’s what,” Hesmucet said. “As long as Andrew or somebody keeps Ned of the Forest busy, Joseph hasn’t got enough unicorn-riders attached to his own army to harm the glideway coming up here from Rising Rock, especially when I keep squeezing and prodding his army. So that’s what I’m going to do. You hit something long enough and hard enough and sooner or later it’ll break.”

“All right, sir. That sounds like it makes sense.” The scryer was a lieutenant by courtesy, as most mages were officers by courtesy. Having officer’s rank let him order common soldiers around, which was often convenient. What he knew about sound strategy, however, would likely have fit inside a thimble without straining things. But he was a freeborn Detinan, and reckoned his opinion as good as anyone else’s, including that of the general commanding.

“I’m so glad you approve.” Hesmucet intended it for sarcasm. The scryer took it as a compliment. He beamed at Hesmucet as the commanding general left the tent.

Once back in his own pavilion, Hesmucet summoned Doubting George, Fighting Joseph, and James the Bird’s Eye. He told his wing commanders what had happened to the luckless Sam the Sturgeon. “He had Ned outnumbered three to one, and he lost the fornicating battle?” Fighting Joseph burst out, his always ruddy face darkening further with anger. “That’s disgraceful, nothing else but.”

“It certainly is, and who would know better?” Doubting George murmured.