Harry Turtledove - Marching Through Peachtree

“Maybe.” Rollant hid a grimace. His blond ancestors hadn’t known about iron; they’d used the softer bronze instead. Detinan swords and armor and iron-headed quarrels, along with Detinan unicorns and Detinan magecraft, had cast down the blond kingdoms of the north. Even now, some blonds had a superstitious reverence for iron. Rollant didn’t, not in the top part of his mind, but he still knew what the strong metal had done to his folk.

Just then, lightning smote from a clear blue sky, striking the head of the column. Distant screams came back to Rollant’s ears. Lieutenant Griff cursed. “They’re playing the Thunderer’s game,” he growled. “And where were our mages? Asleep, or else with their thumbs up their arses.”

Northern wizards still had the edge on their southron counterparts, although King Avram’s sorcerers were at last gaining. The northerners had always had a need for man-killing magic: they had to hold their serfs in subjection. Southron mages helped manufactories make more. That didn’t prepare them to meet lightnings.

Another crash of thunder, as if the Detinan god were indeed pounding mortals here below. More screams rose from the southrons, these louder and closer. If the traitors strike us again , Rollant thought nervously, the next bolt would hit right about… here . He looked up toward the heavens, but saw only sun and sky. Mages made lightning from nothing.

Just putting one foot in front of the other and marching on wasn’t easy. Rollant made himself do it, and made himself hold the standard extra high. “Well done, Corporal!” Lieutenant Griff called. “They can’t make us afraid if we don’t let them.”

Rollant was afraid. If Griff wasn’t, Rollant thought something had to be wrong with him. I’m not showing it , he thought. Maybe he’s just not showing it, either . Men lived behind masks. No one wanted to admit he was a coward, even to himself. And so soldiers who would sooner have run away went into battle without a murmur.

When the next lightning bolt crashed down, Rollant did flinch. He couldn’t help himself. He noticed Lieutenant Griff drawing into himself, too, which helped make him feel better. This bolt didn’t land in the roadway and on the southron soldiers; it came down wide to the right, and raised a great cloud of dust and fountain of earth in a roadside field.

“Well, well,” Griff said with a certain sardonic glee. “The mages on our side really aren’t all asleep. Who would have thought it?”

More thunderbolts smote the advancing column. Almost all of them, after the first pair, missed. But one or two more did strike home. The southrons who weren’t killed outright cried their misery to the uncaring sky. Healers ran over to them to do what they could. The trouble, as Rollant knew only too well, was that healers couldn’t do very much. A wounded man was only a little more likely to die without treatment as he was after the healers got their hands on him.

Rollant wished he hadn’t thought of that. He wished he hadn’t had to think of that. Then he marched past some of the men one of those first two levinbolts had struck. The smell of charred meat was thick in the air. Had that been meat of a different sort, his mouth might have watered. As things were, his stomach heaved. He had to fight a lonely battle to keep from puking.

Not all the men the sorcerous lightning had struck were dead. A healer gave a dreadfully burned fellow laudanum. Killing pain healers could do, even if they also often killed patients.

Not far ahead lay Marthasville. Rollant couldn’t see it now, not with all the dust in the air, but he had seen it, and it remained distinct in his mind’s eye even if invisible to those of his body. He knew what it meant: a real victory over the traitors, a burning brand tossed onto the funeral pyre of their hopes. Let us into Marthasville , he thought, and how can the north call itself a kingdom?

But the southrons weren’t there yet. They’d crossed the Hoocheecoochee, the last great natural barrier before the city. Still, Joseph the Gamecock’s army remained in front of them and, as Rollant had seen, remained full of fight. Nothing in this war had come easy up till now. Rollant didn’t suppose anything would be easy from here on out, either.

Lieutenant General George said, “Well, sir, things may be starting to run our way at last.” He spoke with some bemusement; there had been more than a few times when he’d wondered if he would ever be able to say such a thing.

Hesmucet nodded. “The lovely thing about finally being over the Hoocheecoochee is that we don’t even have to attack Marthasville to make King Geoffrey pitch a fit.”

“I hadn’t thought about that when we set out on this campaign, but it’s true,” Doubting George admitted.

“Well, nobody could see just how things would go when we set out,” Hesmucet said generously. “But here we are, and we can cause the northerners almost as much trouble by cutting off their glideway traffic toward the east as we can by taking Marthasville away from them. And if they shift men to try to stop us, how can they keep on covering the city?”

“To the hells with me if I know.” Doubting George clapped his hands. “Congratulations, sir. You’ve wrapped up the whole campaign and tied a fancy ribbon around it.”

Hesmucet laughed. “Wouldn’t it be fine if things were as easy in the field as they are when we talk about them? I could wish that were so, but I know well enough that it isn’t.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” George said, and meant every word. “Generals who build castles in the air commonly have them knocked down around their ears. That’s what happened to Guildenstern by the River of Death: he was so sure the northerners were running away from us, he didn’t take the precautions he should have on the off chance he was wrong.”

“I don’t envy his fate,” Hesmucet said.

“Who would?” George replied. “Going out to the steppes to fight the blond savages is hard duty any time, but it’s ten times as hard when we’ve got ourselves a real war here.”

When the real war here was over, a lot of men with brevet ranks of brigadier and even lieutenant general would go back to being captains. They’d go back to chasing flea-bitten blond savages, too. Most of the time, that was what the Detinan army did. George’s own permanent rank was brigadier. He wouldn’t have to spend endless years trotting across the steppe on unicornback. He’d done plenty of that before this war. He wouldn’t be sorry not to do it again, though sitting behind a desk in Georgetown and drafting reports no one would ever read also struck him as imperfectly attractive.

Hesmucet’s thoughts had gone along a different glideway. “If you ask me,” he said, “we’re going to have to kill off all the blond nomads on the steppe. We’re stronger than they are, we can’t do anything useful with them, and they’re too stupid and too stubborn to know when they’re beaten. Once we empty the steppe of them, we can fill the land with good Detinan farmers who’ll do something useful with it.”

With a smile, Doubting George said, “You’re solving all the kingdom’s problems this morning, aren’t you, sir?”

“Gods damn it, that’s what a commanding general is for ,” Hesmucet declared. To George’s relief, he was also smiling. A commanding general who took such boasts seriously was a disaster waiting to happen, as the unhappy Guildenstern could attest. Hesmucet went on, “I’ll want you to move your wing north and east, Lieutenant General, to put it in position to harry the glideway lines leading east.”

“Yes, sir,” George said. “Shall I set them in motion right away, or do I have some time to prepare first?”