Harry Turtledove - Marching Through Peachtree

A few minutes later, trumpets blew advance! “Forward!” Gremio shouted. “We’ll lick them!” He didn’t know if they could. He was sure they would give it a hells of a try.

“Out of the trenches!” one of his men said cheerfully as they swarmed up the sandbagged steps that led to the open country between the lines outside Marthasville and Goober Creek. Gremio waved his sword again, urging his soldiers on. He wasn’t so happy to have left the fieldworks himself, but he had his orders and he had to obey them.

Looking to the right, he saw the assembled warriors from Brigadier Alexander’s wing and that of Roast-Beef William all advancing together. So many men in blue tunics and pantaloons storming toward the enemy at the same time did go a long way towards inspiriting him. How could King Avram’s men hope to throw them back?

When he looked ahead, he got a piece of his answer. The southrons were already well over Goober Creek and coming north toward Marthasville. Through the dust their advance raised, he saw rank on rank of soldiers in gray. His comrades might have the spirits. The southrons, as usual, had the numbers.

But those numbers might not do them so much good this time. Several rills ran south from Marthasville into Goober Creek. The valleys they’d carved in the red land wouldn’t be easy to cross. If one group of southrons got in trouble, their comrades to the right and left wouldn’t easily be able to reinforce them. Maybe Lieutenant General Bell hadn’t picked too bad a time to advance after all.

“Let’s let them hear us!” Gremio shouted. His men loosed the roaring northern battle cry that might have come straight from the throat of the Lion God himself. That cry was often worth brigades in battle. The southrons owned no real answer for it, nor had they ever.

“King Avram!” the enemy yelled. “Freedom!” Some few of the southron soldiers had yellow hair and beards: escaped serfs, most of them. Gremio hated to see blonds in gray uniforms-hated it not only because it argued against everything the north held dear but also because those escaped serfs fought with special ferocity, knowing they were likelier to die on the field than be taken prisoner.

Men from both sides raised crossbows to their shoulders and started shooting. As so often happened, they opened the exchange of missiles before coming into range. Bolts thudded into the ground in front of Gremio and his company. But then the first northern man howled when a quarrel pierced him, and the first southron crumpled as if all his bones had turned to water.

Before long, men on both sides fell like autumn leaves as southrons and northerners volleyed away at one another. Men reloaded as fast as they could, as if one more bolt in the air would slay the last enemy in front of them and let their side storm forward. But, for every southron who toppled, another strode forward to take his place and start shooting at Gremio and his comrades.

Lightning smashed down out of a clear sky. He hoped it would clear the southrons in front of him. But the bolts hit ground where no enemy soldiers stood, or else smote Goober Creek and raised clouds of muddy steam. Gremio cursed. After more than three years of war, the southrons were at last becoming able to match the mages on his own side.

“Onward!” Colonel Florizel yelled, brandishing his own blade. He looked around to see what his captains-and, most especially, Captain Gremio-were doing.

“Onward!” Gremio cried, louder still. He ran toward the southrons. This is a good way to get killed, he thought. But his men came after him. This is a good way to get all of us killed .

A quarrel hummed past his ear and struck a man behind him with an unmistakable meaty thunk. The fellow didn’t even cry out. He must have died while hardly knowing what had happened to him. There were worse ways to go. Gremio had seen too many of them.

And then, quite suddenly, it wasn’t a fight of crossbow quarrels any more. It was pikes and shortswords and men cursing and shouting-and screaming as they were hurt, too. Gremio beat aside the gleaming iron head of a pike. Before the fellow who carried the heavy spear could draw back for a second thrust, Gremio leaped forward and lunged. His point pierced flesh.

The pikeman howled, staring down and seeing steel inside him stabbing, stabbing. Gremio yanked back the blade. The point was bloody. That wound, he knew, was likely deep enough to kill, if not by making the southron bleed out then from the festering sure to follow. But the fellow wasn’t dead yet, and wouldn’t die right away. He managed another thrust at Gremio, who had to skip back smartly to keep from being spitted. Only then did the southron’s knees slowly buckle.

“Forward!” Gremio shouted. “We’ll push the bastards into Goober Creek!” He did his best to roar as if the Lion God were speaking through his body.

Ferocity-perhaps desperation wasn’t too strong a word-propelled the northerners into and then through their foes. Some southrons fell back toward the creek. Others simply fell, and would not rise again. For a few heady minutes, Gremio thought his comrades might indeed throw the enemy back into the stream and work a great slaughter on him there.

But the southrons had too many men. Those who ran away rallied when they met fresh, unpanicked troopers coming up from the south. And the reinforcements poured a couple of withering volleys of bolts into the oncoming northerners. A good many of King Geoffrey’s men had slung or thrown aside their crossbows to fight with shortswords instead. They couldn’t match the southrons quarrel for quarrel, as they had before.

“Forward!” Gremio cried yet again, and rushed toward the new and dreadfully steady southron line. The enemy might-likely would-kill him, but Colonel Florizel couldn’t complain he was a coward. The things we do for pride, he thought sourly, brandishing blood-bedaubed blade.

He looked back over his shoulder. His men kept on following, such of them as remained on their feet. Sergeant Thisbe trotted along only a few paces behind him. Gremio didn’t know whether to be proud about that or sad. You’re not just getting yourself killed for no purpose, but all the best men in the company .

“Shoot!” a southron officer yelled. Another volley tore into the men in blue. Gremio heard the shrieks behind him. He looked back again. What seemed like half the men who had still been on their feet were down.

Sergeant Thisbe waved urgently. “Sir, we can’t do it,” he called.

“We’ve got to try,” Gremio answered, which meant, I’m going to die before I retreat without orders . That was very likely a kind of madness of its own, but it was a madness most men on a battlefield shared. Without such a madness, anyone put in danger of his life would simply run away, and how could kings and generals hope to fight their wars like that?

But, before shouting, “Forward!” again, Gremio looked around for Colonel Florizel. If the regimental commander had already fallen, Gremio got some of his discretion back. He knew what he would do with it, too, for Thisbe was right: the attackers lacked the numbers to go any farther forward.

Florizel waved a sword bloodier than Gremio’s. Whatever the earl’s flaws, cowardice was not among them. “Good fighting!” he bawled.

“If you say so, your Excellency,” Gremio answered.

Then Florizel scowled, not at him but at the southrons. “Gods damn it, I don’t think we can shift them,” the regimental commander said.

The attack had jolted the southrons, but no more. “What are your orders, sir?” he called to Florizel.

A man of sense, seeing no hope the attack could succeed, would have ordered his men back. Earl Florizel said, “Let’s give it one more try, on the off chance I might be wrong.” He waved his sword again. “I hate to pull back from such a fine fray.”