Harry Turtledove - Marching Through Peachtree

“I’m afraid I don’t know how to answer that, sir,” the messenger replied.

Hesmucet didn’t know how to answer it, either. He knew what Major Alva would have said: that the gods paid much less attention to earthly affairs than people were in the habit of thinking. Hesmucet didn’t like to hear such things. But when an officer who had everything to live for stopped a crossbow quarrel, he couldn’t help wondering whether Alva had a point.

The rider pointed back towards a unicorn-drawn ambulance coming down from the northwest. “Sir, I don’t know for a fact, but I believe that’s his body in there.”

Seeing the ambulance made hope rise in Hesmucet. “Maybe he’s not dead. Maybe he’s only wounded,” the commanding general said. The messenger shook his head, but Hesmucet shouted for a healer.

As soon as the ambulance stopped, a couple of men removed James the Bird’s Eye’s body from it. One look told Hesmucet the young wing commander would never rise again. Hesmucet had seen enough corpses the past three years and more to have no doubt when he saw another. The healer stooped beside James, then looked up at the general commanding. “Through the heart, sir, I’m afraid,” he said. “It would have been over very fast, if that’s any consolation.”

“Not fornicating much,” Hesmucet snapped. And then, as he had to, he thought about the battle still unfolding. “Who’s in command now on the left?” he demanded of the messenger.

“Baron Logan the Black, sir,” the man replied. “We’re holding pretty well-you don’t need to worry about that.”

Hesmucet only grunted. Baron Logan had turned out to make a pretty good soldier, but Hesmucet didn’t like the idea of having him as a wing commander. He wasn’t a professional warrior, but a noble from King Avram’s home province who’d got himself a brigadiership in exchange for loudly and publicly backing the king and recruiting soldiers. The southron army, in Hesmucet’s view, had too many officers like that. He couldn’t do anything about it right this minute, but he intended to when he could.

Another messenger came galloping up. “Baron Logan’s compliments, sir, and he wants you to know the traitors are stopped. He expects to start driving them back any time now.”

“That’s good news,” Hesmucet said, and meant it. “Give him my compliments in return, and tell him the northerners deserve every single thing that happens to them.”

“Yes, sir.” The messenger didn’t even waste time saluting. He set spurs to his unicorn. The beast snorted angrily as he forced its head around and urged it back to a full gallop to deliver Hesmucet’s reply.

The commanding general called for a messenger of his own. When the man came up to him, he said, “Give my regards to Lieutenant General George and ask him if it’s possible, with the traitors so heavily engaged in the northwest, for him to go straight through their defenses to the south of Marthasville and into the city. Give me that back, so I’m sure you have it straight.”

After repeating the message, the runner hurried away. When he returned, he said, “Lieutenant General George says he’s already probed the line south of Marthasville, sir. He says it’s too strong to break through like that.”

“All right.” Hesmucet wondered if it was really all right, and how hard Doubting George really had poked at Bell’s line there. George was as stalwart a warrior as the gods had made when fighting on the defensive, but, to Hesmucet’s way of thinking, lacked the push, the drive, of a good attacker.

That’s why Marshal Bart made me commander here in the east, he thought. I’ve come this far. Another few miles and I’ll have done a big part of what he wanted of me . He scowled in the direction of Marthasville. The traitors had hung on to the place altogether too long, as far as he was concerned.

It didn’t fall that day. By the time the sun set, James the Bird’s Eye’s men-no, Logan the Black’s now-had indeed driven Bell’s blue-clad warriors back into the lines from which they’d started their attack. A messenger said, “The enemy must have lost twice as many men as we did, too.”

“He threw away a lot of soldiers, then,” Hesmucet said musingly. “Add those in with all the men he lost yesterday, and with his having fewer than we do to begin with, and how many has he got left?”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I couldn’t begin to tell you,” the messenger replied.

“Never mind,” the general commanding told him. “I didn’t expect you to know. But I wonder if my wing commanders do.”

With the fighting having died down, he summoned Doubting George, Logan the Black, and (with a mental sigh) Fighting Joseph to his headquarters to talk things over. Logan proved to be younger than he’d remembered-hardly older than James the Bird’s Eye, in fact-with a ruddy face, fierce eyes, and a piratical black mustache.

“Yes, sir. They hurt us,” he said frankly. “We didn’t really expect another strong sally, not when they were thrown back with loss yesterday. It was worrisome out there for a while, when they came close to turning our flank. But we were steady, and we made them pay for coming out of their works.”

“So you’ve already reported, your Excellency,” Hesmucet replied. “I’m glad to learn you did so well.”

Doubting George said, “Taking it all in all, they must have left a third of their men on the field the last two days. And they didn’t have that many to begin with.”

He might not have been aggressive enough to suit Hesmucet, but he’d done sums in his head, too. And the answer he reached wasn’t far different from the one that had formed in the commanding general’s mind. Hesmucet said, “It’s only a matter of time now.”

“I think you’re right, sir,” George said, nodding. “Now we can push to the east of Marthasville or to the west, go up north of the place on either side just as we choose, and Bell won’t be able to stop us. The most he can do with what he has left, as I see it, is sit tight and stand siege.”

“If he does that, he’s mine, and so is his whole fornicating army,” Hesmucet said. “I’ll take it clean off the board, the same as Marshal Bart took Camphorville on the Great River and its defending host last year.”

“I don’t believe Bell will do that,” Logan the Black said. “He’s a swinger, a puncher. He’ll keep trying to hit us for as long as he can.”

“Good,” Hesmucet said. “The more he wastes his force, the sooner he won’t be able to strike with it at all. I always worried about Joseph the Gamecock. He held his men in. If I’d made a mistake against him, he kept the wherewithal to make me pay for it. But Bell? Bell’s thrown away as many good men the past two days as Joseph did during the whole campaign from Borders all the way up to here.”

His subordinates nodded. Not even Fighting Joseph could disagree with that. George said, “Bell’s a first-rate man to command a brigade. Point him at the foe, turn him loose, and he’ll hit hard. But put him in command of an army? Of an army trying to hold off a bigger army? I don’t know what false King Geoffrey was drinking when he thought of that, but I hope they serve him more of it.”

Logan the Black nodded. “Well said. Our foes’ mistakes go a long way toward making this an easy fight for us.”

“They can’t afford to make mistakes, not any more,” Doubting George agreed. “We have the luxury of greater strength, which lets us make our errors good.” He dipped his head to Hesmucet. “Not that we’ve made many on this campaign.”

“For which I thank you,” Hesmucet replied. If George said a thing like that, he had to mean it, which made the compliment doubly pleasing. Hesmucet went on, “Now there is one other bit of business that wants doing. Brigadier Logan, I am grateful for how well you fought James’ wing, but I do not intend that you keep command of it.”