Harry Turtledove - Marching Through Peachtree

“You have a few days,” Hesmucet replied. “I’m still getting all my ducks in a row now that everybody’s on this side of the Hoocheecoochee. I don’t want anything to go wrong on account of my carelessness.”

General Guildenstern would never have said anything like that. “If you worry about it, sir, it’s not likely to happen,” Doubting George said. “Tell me when you need me to be ready to move, and I will be.”

“I know,” Hesmucet said. “I can rely on you.” He nodded, touched a forefinger to the front brim of his gray felt hat in what wasn’t quite a salute, and walked away.

Doubting George stared after him. It wasn’t that the commanding general was wrong: George knew he would try to do exactly what Hesmucet required of him. But, in a lot of armies on both sides in this war, that would have been a very strange thing. Plenty of wing commanders were at their superiors’ throats, wanting to lead armies themselves. Some of them went so far as to disobey and undercut army commanders, regardless of what that did to campaigns.

Fighting Joseph would undercut Hesmucet in a heartbeat , George thought. In half a heartbeat. So why not me? The answer to that was obvious: because we’re winning by doing what we’re doing with Hesmucet in command. Fighting Joseph wouldn’t care about that. I do .

He called Colonel Andy and said, “We’re going to be moving north and east before long, to cut the glideway links with the eastern part of what Geoffrey calls his kingdom. Draft the necessary orders for the move for my approval.”

“Yes, sir,” his adjutant said. “So there’s not going to be any direct attack on Marthasville, then?”

“Not right away, anyhow,” George answered. “General Hesmucet feels we can do the traitors about as much harm by cutting these links as we could by taking the city. I think he’s right; Parthenia draws men and food from the east, and Duke Edward’s army will suffer because those supplies can’t come through.”

“I hope that’s so, sir,” Andy said. “It still seems strange to me, though, to have come all this way to Marthasville and then not to try to take the place.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt that we will try to take it,” Doubting George said. “But we can do this more easily-and, once we’ve done it, Joseph the Gamecock will have to respond in one way or another. Maybe we’ll be able to meet his army outside of its entrenchments. That would give us a better chance of licking it once for all.”

“Yes, sir,” his adjutant said again. “What shall I make the effective date of these orders? When will we be moving out?”

“I don’t know precisely, because General Hesmucet didn’t know precisely,” George replied. “Do you think we can be ready to move in three days’ time?”

“I certainly do, sir,” Colonel Andy said.

“All right, then-make that the effective date,” George said. “I’m pretty sure we won’t have to move sooner, and if we aren’t ordered out till later, we can just delay day by day, as necessary.”

“Yes, sir,” Andy repeated. “That makes good sense.”

“I’m sorry, Colonel,” George told him. “I’ll try not to let it happen again.”

Colonel Andy opened his mouth, closed it, and shook his head. He walked off without saying anything. George smiled at his retreating back. He knew his occasional fits of whimsy not only perplexed but also alarmed his adjutant. As befitted an aide, Andy was nothing if not serious. George was serious when he had to be and when he felt like it. There were times when he didn’t-and, being a general, he could get away with indulging himself now and again.

Raiders from the northern forces still operated on this side of Goober Creek. Snipers with powerful crossbows-not the quick-cocking kind most footsoldiers carried, but bigger, heavier weapons that used either a crank or a foot pedal to draw the bow, and that shot correspondingly farther than an ordinary crossbow-took a steady toll on his men. And Brigadier Spinner’s unicorn-riders did their best to disrupt the flow of supplies from Rising Rock up to General Hesmucet’s army.

They didn’t have an easy time of it. Hesmucet had assembled what was without a doubt the best set of military artificers Doubting George had ever seen. When Joseph the Gamecock retreated over the Hoocheecoochee River, he’d naturally knocked down all the bridges spanning the stream, including the one that had carried glideway carpets. Counting its approaches, that one was three hundred yards long, and thirty yards high at its highest point over the Hoocheecoochee. Hesmucet’s artificers-with some help from Colonel Phineas’ sorcerers-had taken four and a half days to re-create the span… and all the timber they used was live trees when they started the job.

Against men of such talents, even the most diligent destroyers had their work cut out for them. And the southrons kept Brigadier Spinner’s unicorn-riders too busy to let them attack the glideway line up to Rising Rock as diligently as they would have liked. Ned of the Forest might have done better; Doubting George, like every other southron general, had developed a fearful respect for the untutored, almost unlettered northern commander of unicorn-riders. But Ned was off by the Great River, and he was too busy to turn his ferocious attention to that lonely glideway line snaking up from the south.

Contemplating that, George said, “Do you know, Colonel, I’m vain enough to think I can stand up against anybody as a tactician.”

“I should hope so, sir,” Andy replied. “You’ve earned the right.”

George nodded. “I expect I have. But I will say this as well: General Hesmucet is the best strategist I’ve ever seen, and I take my hat off to him for it.” Taking himself literally, he doffed his gray chapeau.

His adjutant frowned. “How do you mean, sir?”

“He goes on throwing enough distractions at Ned of the Forest over in the east to keep Ned from coming this way and playing merry hells with our glideway,” George said. “That’s a long reach of thought.”

“Well, what if it is?” Colonel Andy said. “I’m sure it would have come to you, too.”

“I’m not,” Doubting George said, “not by any means.” Maybe that means Marshal Bart did the right thing in making Hesmucet commander here in the east, and not me , he thought, and grimaced. What a depressing notion .

“Sir,” Andy said, “just remember this: if it weren’t for you, this army wouldn’t be here today. This army probably wouldn’t be anywhere at all today, because the traitors would have smashed it to pieces by the River of Death.”

“Oh, I think the men I was in charge of then had a little something to do with that, too,” Doubting George said dryly.

“General Guildenstern was in charge of good men, too, and they ran back towards Rising Rock just as fast as they could go,” Andy said.

That wasn’t fair. Count Thraxton had ensorceled Guildenstern, so that he gave precisely the wrong order at precisely the wrong time. It was one of the very few times in the whole war that Thraxton the Braggart’s sorcery had done what he wanted it to do. Lieutenant General George knew as much. He smiled anyhow. Remembering a colleague’s embarrassment went a long way toward cheering him up.

Andy went on, “And this wing of the army has done more hard fighting since we came north than any of the others.”

“It is the biggest wing, you know.”

“Even so,” his adjutant insisted. “And it’s the biggest wing because you’re the best commander General Hesmucet has.”

Doubting George considered the competition. James the Bird’s Eye was a comer, no doubt about it, but hadn’t had nearly George’s experience leading large numbers of men. Fighting Joseph… George shook his head. He didn’t want to consider Fighting Joseph. All right, maybe I am the best commander General Hesmucet has , he thought. But that doesn’t mean I’m better than Hesmucet himself, and that’s what I want to be .