Harry Turtledove - Marching Through Peachtree

Finally, you came into our country with your army, avowedly for the purpose of subjugating free Detinan men, women, and children, and not only intend to rule over them, but you make blonds your allies, and desire to place over us an inferior race, which we have raised from barbarism to its present position, which is the highest ever attained by that race, in all time. You say, “Let us fight it out like men.” To this my reply is-for myself, and I believe for all the true men, aye, and women and children, in my kingdom-we will fight you to the death! Better to die a thousand deaths than submit to live under you or your king or his blond allies! Respectfully, your obedient servant, Bell, Lieutenant General .

Hesmucet read through that again, and then chuckled grimly. “Well, I struck a nerve there, all right, gods damn me if I didn’t,” he said, and set Bell’s letter aside. The northern commander could complain all he chose, but he couldn’t stop the southrons from doing what needed doing, and that was what counted.

The commanding general called for a runner. “What do you need sir?” the messenger asked.

“I want you to send an alert to the scryers for the soldiers in the forwardmost entrenchments,” Hesmucet answered. “Warn them that the traitors are liable to try to sally against them today. Bell may have lost his temper.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll pass it along directly,” the runner said. “Uh, sir… How do you know that, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Why, Lieutenant General Bell told me so, of course,” Hesmucet answered, deadpan.

The runner started to accept that, then turned and stared. Hesmucet waved him on. He went away shaking his head. Hesmucet laughed softly. The things I do to keep my air of mystery, he thought.

What he did next was summon Major Alva. “What can I do for you?” the young mage asked. Hesmucet folded his arms across his chest and waited. Belatedly, Alva turned red. “Uh, sir,” he added.

He still didn’t remember to salute. Hesmucet would have been merciless with most men who stayed so ignorant of military courtesy. The license he allowed Major Alva measured how much the mage impressed him. “I want you to do your best to learn if the traitors are planning any great magical stroke against us,” Hesmucet said.

“Well, I’ll try,” Alva answered. Hesmucet’s arms remained across his chest. He drummed his fingers on his sleeves. “I’ll try, sir,” Alva said. “You do understand, though, that their spells may cloak whatever they’re up to?”

“Won’t that cloaking tell you something in and of itself?” Hesmucet asked.

“It may… sir.” Little by little, Alva got the idea. “It may, but it may not, too. One of the things wizards do is, they make cloaking spells that don’t cloak anything. People who run into those spells have to probe them, because they may be hiding something important.”

“I am familiar with the idea of deception, yes,” Hesmucet said.

“Oh, good.” Major Alva’s tone plainly implied that a lot of the officers he dealt with weren’t. “When do you want this magecraft performed, sir?”

“Immediately,” Hesmucet told him. “Sooner would be nice.”

“How could I perform it sooner than immediately?” Alva blinked, then sent Hesmucet an accusing stare. Officers who weren’t perfectly literal-minded seemed outside his ken, too.

“Be thankful you’re not working for Doubting George,” Hesmucet said. “He’d drive you straight around the bend, he would.”

“Why is that, sir?” Alva asked.

“Never mind,” Hesmucet answered. “If I’m standing here explaining, you can’t go to work immediately, and that’s what I want you to do.”

“Yes, sir,” Alva said resignedly. “I can’t perform the spells immediately, you know. They will take some time.”

“Yes, yes,” Hesmucet said. “I do understand that. If it weren’t for time, everything would happen at once, and we’d all be very confused.”

Major Alva gave him a curious look. But the wizard decided not to ask any questions, which was a wise decision. He did salute on leaving. That was wise, too. And he hurried away, which was also a good idea. When he came back-not quite immediately, but close enough to keep Hesmucet from complaining-he wore a troubled expression. “The masking spells are extraordinarily deep, extraordinarily thick,” he complained. “I’m not sure I got through all of them.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Hesmucet said. “What are they hiding?”

“I’m not sure,” Alva answered. “I’m not sure they’re hiding anything. But I’m not sure they’re not, either.”

“What are we supposed to be doing about that?” Hesmucet asked.

“I don’t know, sir,” Alva replied. “You’re the commanding general.”

Hesmucet grunted. After some thought, he said, “All we can do is go on. If they throw sorcery at us, we’ll do our best to throw it back. And we’ll lick them any which way. By the gods, we will .”

Firepots kept bursting inside Marthasville, spreading destruction farther with each passing day. North of the city, southron soldiers began moving toward the west and south, aiming at completing the ring around it. With all the glideways leading into the place in southron hands, only wagons could bring in victuals through the narrowing gap in the enemy’s lines. Roast-Beef William knew all too well that wagons could not keep the Army of Franklin fed, no matter how badly its numbers had shrunk because of the recent string of lost battles.

When he said as much to Bell, the general commanding gave him a cold stare. “If your men had held at Jonestown, Lieutenant General, we would still hold a glideway with which to bring in necessities,” Bell said.

“I am sorry, sir.” Roast-Beef William did his best to hold on to his temper. “With my little force, I was a boy trying to do a man’s job. We must have been outnumbered three or four to one. No one could have held against those odds.”

“So you say now,” Bell snapped. “What it looks like to me is that your soldiers were too afraid to come out of their entrenchments and give the southrons a proper fight.”

That did it. “You may criticize me all you please,” William said, “but, sooner than criticizing the courage of my men-who are, I remind you, also your men-you would do better to look in the mirror. You were the one who sent me north to Jonestown, sure the southrons would have only a small force in the neighborhood. Your judgment there proved as wrong as most of your other judgments since taking command of this army. Sir.”

Lieutenant General Bell flushed. “You are insubordinate.”

And you are incompetent . But if Roast-Beef William said that, he would be insubordinate. A dogged sense of duty kept him from doing anything likely to get him removed from command of his wing, though escape from the Army of Franklin looked more inviting with every passing day. Without false modesty, he was sure whoever replaced him would do worse. He didn’t know how much he could help the army in its present agony, but he didn’t want to hurt it.

He said, “I told you several days ago that I did not think we could hold Marthasville. Nothing has happened since to make me change my mind. Did your correspondence with General Hesmucet bear any fruit?”

Bell flushed again. “None whatsoever,” he growled. “He does not fear the gods. He is blind to shame. He has proved himself a liar of the purest ray serene.”

He will not do what I wanted him to do: that was what Bell had to mean. Roast-Beef William had no great trouble making the translation. “That being so, sir, what’s now to be done?” he asked.