Harry Turtledove - Marching Through Peachtree

“They were,” Bell replied. “They were, before they spent weeks scurrying from one set of entrenchments to the next, never daring to face the enemy out in the open. Now, Major, who knows?” Zibeon pondered that, then shrugged. I haven’t convinced him, Bell thought. But he’d convinced himself. That was all that really mattered.

Rollant looked at the traitors’ field works on Commissioner Mountain with all the enthusiasm of a man with a toothache looking at a trip to the puller. “Are they really going to send us up there?” he asked.

“Why not?” Smitty said blithely. “We took Proselytizers’ Rise, so they must think we can do anything.”

They’d both been part of the mad climb to the top of Proselytizers’ Rise. They’d been part of a smashing victory there. For the life of him, Rollant couldn’t figure out how they’d done it. He had trouble seeing how they could hope to do it again, too.

“Remember when all the northerners in the world came at us near the River of Death while we were up on Merkle’s Hill?” he said. “We threw ’em back, and we didn’t have anything like what the traitors have waiting for us.”

Sergeant Joram said, “That will be enough of that. If we’re ordered to advance, we will advance, and that’s all there is to it. You’ve got no business trying to demoralize Smitty here.”

“Don’t worry about it, Sergeant,” Smitty said. “I didn’t have any morals to speak of before Rollant started talking at me.”

“If I want your foolishness, be sure I’ll ask for it,” Joram said. He made a good sergeant: he growled as nastily at Detinans as he did at blonds. And if his superiors gave an order, he would see that everybody he led obeyed it- even if it does get every last one of us killed, Rollant thought.

He asked, “Sergeant, are we going to try and drive them off those hills?”

“ I don’t know,” Joram said irritably. “Nobody’s given me any special orders yet, that’s all I can tell you. And I don’t think Lieutenant Griff knows anything, either… Gods damn it, Smitty, not one single, solitary, fornicating word.”

“I didn’t say anything, Sergeant,” Smitty protested. He looked as innocent as a heavenly messenger. If Rollant hadn’t been marching beside him for a couple of years, the pose might have convinced him. As things were, he let out a snicker that almost turned into a guffaw.

But all the guffawing stopped not long afterwards, when Colonel Nahath assembled the regiment and said, “Men, we are going to go up against Commissioner Mountain tomorrow morning-not just us, mind you, but most of Doubting George’s army. We’re going to go up against it, and we’re going to take it.”

“Lion God’s claws!” somebody shouted. “Has Hesmucet lost his whole mind?”

Had a serf in Palmetto Province yelled anything like that about a Detinan- any Detinan, not just a general-he would have been sorry as long as he lived, which probably wouldn’t have been long. Rollant had escaped from serfdom a long time before, but what Detinans reckoned liberty still looked like license to him a lot of the time.

The regimental commander didn’t even get upset. He just shook his head and said, “No. The idea is, Joseph the Gamecock has to think this stretch of the line is too strong to be taken. He won’t have that many men covering it. And because he won’t, we’ll swarm up the side of the mountain and gods-damned well take it away from him.”

“Maybe we will,” Smitty said out of the side of his mouth. “Maybe a lot of us’ll come down the mountain on our backs, too.”

That also struck Rollant as pretty likely. He had no say in such things, though. All he could do was fight hard and hope the men set over him didn’t make too many idiotic mistakes. So far, at least, General Hesmucet hadn’t. But if he did, Rollant couldn’t even retreat till all his comrades were falling back, too. He wasn’t just fighting as himself. He was fighting as a blond before ordinary Detinans, and couldn’t afford to look like a coward.

He didn’t sleep much that evening. He’d had too long a look at the position Doubting George’s army would assail when the sun came up. He knew he would much sooner have defended that position. But he was going to have to attack it, and could only trust in the gods that things wouldn’t prove so bad as they seemed.

When the regiment assembled the next morning, Smitty handed him a scrap of paper. “Pin this on my back, will you?”

Other pairs of men were going through the same ritual. Rollant grimaced. “You think it’ll be that bad?” he asked.

“Don’t know,” Smitty answered. “But this way, if I fall up there, my name and where I live’ll be on my body. My folks can find out what happened to me and make the offerings to take me on to the next world. If I get real lucky, they may even ship my carcass home so my old man can light the pyre.”

“That’s the kind of luck I could do without,” Rollant said. But then, after a moment’s thought, he added, “Have you got any more paper?”

“Sure do,” Smitty said. Before long, Rollant had his name and street pinned to the back of his gray tunic, too.

“Have faith, men,” Lieutenant Griff said. “Have faith, and victory will be ours.” His voice broke a couple of times, but he was very young. He had some paper pinned to his uniform, too. How much faith has he got? Rollant wondered.

Every catapult under Doubting George’s command started bucking and hurling then. Stones and firepots rained down on the traitors’ field works. Repeating crossbows sent streams of darts at the northerners, making them keep their heads down. Horns blared all along the southrons’ line.

“Forward!” Griff shouted. Brandishing his sword, he went forward himself. He might-he did-sometimes lack for sense, but he’d shown plenty of courage since taking over the company for Captain Cephas.

“Forward!” Sergeant Joram echoed. Rollant wondered if the underofficer had the brains to be afraid. He did himself, and he was.

Up the slopes of Commissioner Mountain ran the men from the wing Lieutenant General George commanded. Rollant shouted, “King Avram and freedom!” as he had in every fight. The words still rang true. Whether they could help him win a victory here was another question.

In spite of the battering the southron engines had given their trenches, the traitors were still full of fight. Heads appeared in the entrenchments. Soldiers in blue started shooting at the advancing southrons. The northerners had catapults of their own on Commissioner Mountain. They started tearing holes in the southrons’ ranks. Had Doubting George really believed the enemy wouldn’t have enough men to defend this part of their line? If he had, he should have done a little more doubting.

“We aren’t going to make it,” Rollant said to Smitty as they drew within a hundred yards of the traitors’ works. Men were going down as if scythed. If Hesmucet felt like feeding his whole army into this sausage machine, Joseph the Gamecocks’s defenders might kill every man in it.

Smitty didn’t argue with him, which convinced him he was right-Smitty always thought the regiment could do more than it really could. All the farmer’s son said now was, “Well, we’ve got to keep trying a little longer.”

Echoing that, Lieutenant Griff shouted, “Forward!” again. He was brave. Rollant suspected he was a little bit crazy, too, to push the advance here.

A few feet away, the company standard-bearer took a crossbow quarrel in the chest. He stood there swaying for a moment, then crumpled to the ground. The banner, gold dragon on red, fell, too.