Harry Turtledove - Marching Through Peachtree

“I got stuck in the mud, gods damn it,” the prisoner answered. He wiped at his forehead with a forearm. That dislodged the wig he was wearing. He didn’t realize it had gone awry, and looked even more absurd and bedraggled than he had a moment before.

“Would you say you’re representative of the soldiers going into Geoffrey’s militia these days?” George asked.

“Why shouldn’t I be?” the northern returned. “You see anything wrong with me? You saying there’s something wrong with me?” He looked comically indignant.

“No, not at all,” Doubting George said soothingly. Eyeing the young, strong guards, he contrasted them to their captive. King Avram’s dominions still had plentiful reserves of men. False King Geoffrey, on the other hand, was trying to wring a few last drops of water from a dry fleece.

“What are you southron bastards going to do with me?” the prisoner asked.

“Not much,” George told him. “We’ll feed you a meal-gods know you look like you could use one-and then we’ll ship you south to a prisoners’ camp. You’ll wait there till you’re properly exchanged for a southron your side has captured or till the war ends, whichever comes first.”

“Can’t be over too soon,” the prisoner declared mushily. “I want to get back to my life, is what I want to do.”

“Don’t we all?” Doubting George said. “If Geoffrey hadn’t let Palmetto Province start calling him king-”

“Gods damn Geoffrey! Devils fry him for breakfast and roast him for supper,” the prisoner said, and he was off again on another wild string of curses.

George decided he didn’t need to hear any more. He hadn’t really learned anything from the prisoner, save that the man had a remarkably foul mouth. Or so he thought till he went outside and considered the matter for a little while. True, the fellow with the broken false teeth and the wig askew hadn’t told him anything about where the northern armies were, how many men they had, or what they intended to do. But did that mean he’d told him nothing?

After a little more thought, Doubting George shook his head. That a scrawny old man had been hauled into the militia at all said something about the straits the north was in. That he hated the man who called himself his king and the commanders set over him said something, too. And if Grand Duke Geoffrey could have heard what it said, he would have shivered, no matter how oppressively hot the weather in Nonesuch was at this season of the year.

“He will hear,” George murmured to himself. “We’ll make him hear, and I doubt it will take very long.”

Roast-Beef William was not a happy man. His wing had fought its heart out, trying to push the southrons back into Goober Creek. Then the weary men had marched all night before trying to dislodge Hesmucet’s left from the glideway line leading to Julia. They hadn’t quite managed either feat, but the number of dead and wounded they’d left on the field told how hard they’d tried.

It told Roast-Beef William, at any rate. He couldn’t see that the soldiers’ effort and suffering meant that much to Lieutenant General Bell, who was glaring at him like the angry lion he resembled. “I don’t care how hard they tried,” Bell said furiously. “I care that they failed.”

“Sir, if you set out to do the impossible, you shouldn’t be surprised when you fall short,” William said.

“Impossible? No such thing,” Bell declared. “If only your men had pressed their second attack, they would have rolled up the stinking southrons and thrown them back in disorder.”

“Sir…” Roast-Beef William resisted the impulse to pick up his chair and break it over the commanding general’s head. “Sir, we’d fought a battle the day before. We’d marched fifteen miles at night with bad guides to get to where we could deliver that second attack. And then, after the way we fought, you complain because we didn’t do enough? For shame, sir! For shame!”

“The plan was good. If the plan was good but didn’t succeed, that must be the fault of the men who went to carry it out,” Bell said.

Sighing, William said, “Sir, the plan was less good than you think. If you attack soldiers in entrenchments when yours are not, you had better have more men than they do, not fewer. They waited for us to get close, and then they shot us down like partridges. You cannot blame our defeats on the brave soldiers who serve us.”

“You’re wiser in hindsight than you were in foresight,” Bell said, “for you didn’t protest these orders when I gave them.”

That held some truth, more than Roast-Beef William cared to think about. He hadn’t opposed Bell’s first attack, the one that had failed to push the southrons back over Goober Creek. Casting about for some means to defend himself, he said, “I did warn you the men you sent to attack James the Bird’s Eye would be too weary to give their best.”

“Oh, what a hero you are!” Bell jeered. In defeat, he was proving as bad-tempered and sarcastic as Joseph the Gamecock or Thraxton the Braggart ever had. Criticizing, it seemed, had proved easier than commanding. Camp rumor said Joseph, before departing, had warned that that would be so. However prickly Joseph was, he’d always known a hawk from a handsaw. Bell… Roast-Beef William wasn’t so sure about Bell.

He wasn’t so sure about himself, either. Maybe I should have protested harder-protested at least some-whenBell sent us south just after he took command, he thought mournfully. No: certainly I should have protested . He knew why he hadn’t. Joseph the Gamecock had been sacked because he wouldn’t attack. Bell had been installed because he would. King Geoffrey had wanted attacks against the southrons. How could an officer mindful of that oppose them?

Well, the Army of Franklin, or what was left of it, had found the answer to that. Opposing attacks that failed, that might well have been foredoomed, looked like great wisdom in hindsight. With so many men lost, with the southrons not driven away despite those dreadful losses to the northern force, how were they going to hold on to Marthasville? Roast-Beef William had been a soldier and a teacher of soldiers for a long time. That notwithstanding, he had no idea.

Before he could find a way to put any of that into words, a runner came into the house Bell was using as army headquarters-the house Joseph had used before being sacked. “Sir-” he began, and then, catching sight of William along with the general commanding, fell silent.

“Say on,” Bell told him. “Say your say. Roast-Beef William may be a fool, but he is no traitor to the northern cause.”

“Sir…” That wasn’t the messenger; it was Roast-Beef William himself. But he shook his head. What point in quarreling further? When Bell called him a fool, what he meant was, He disagrees with me .

“Yes, sir,” the messenger said to Bell. “The news is that the gods-damned southrons are moving against the glideway line running north out of Marthasville, the line to Dicon and the rest of the north of this province. They’ve already overrun the line to Dothan. They’re marching on Jonestown, about fifteen miles north of the city, sir, moving on that line in a long loop from out of the east.”

“That’s the last line into Marthasville we still hold, sir,” Roast-Beef William said. “If the southrons seize it, we’re as near surrounded as makes no difference.”

“I know that.” Bell spoke in an abstracted voice, as if from far away. The pupils of his eyes were very small. William had seen that before, when heroic doses of laudanum had had their way with the commanding general.

Another runner dashed in. He stood on no ceremony whatever, saying, “Lieutenant General Bell, sir, the southrons are starting to fling firepots and stones into Marthasville, sir! What are we going to do?”