Harry Turtledove - Marching Through Peachtree

Andy sniffed again. “He’s pretty stupid.”

This time, George nodded. “He is pretty stupid. Brave and deadly-and stupid. He’s like a hawk on somebody’s wrist. Point it at prey and it will go out and kill. But ask it to figure things out for itself? No.”

“Only Geoffrey did,” Andy said.

“Only Geoffrey did,” Doubting George agreed. “Of course, Geoffrey is pretty stupid, too, if anyone wants to know what I think. He had a perfectly good general in charge of his army here, and sacked him for no good reason.”

“He wanted a general who would go out there and fight,” Colonel Andy said.

“Be careful what you want-you may get it,” George said. “Before he put his fighting general in there, he still had Marthasville, and the Army of Franklin was still a real army. Now Bell’s running around trying to make a pest of himself with what he has left, and there isn’t enough left of Marthasville to talk about. Brilliant change of command, wasn’t it? Just fornicating brilliant.”

Andy smiled. “Somehow, I don’t think you’re too sorry about that.”

“Who, me?” Doubting George said.

Rain poured down out of a leaden sky: surprisingly cold rain that soaked Rollant and the standard he bore and turned the red clay of southern Peachtree Province into red glue. He slogged on, one step after another, pulling each foot out of the mud in turn and then setting it down again. Every so often, he stepped off the road to scrape muck off his boots with some grass or a shrub.

The southron army’s asses and unicorns couldn’t do that. Not only did they struggle more than the footsoldiers, they also chewed up the road worse. One stretch was almost like soup. “I wish they wouldn’t send the beasts and wagons down the same road we use, not in this weather,” Rollant grumbled.

“Wish for the moon, while you’re at it,” Smitty said.

“Thanks, friend. You always know how to make me feel better.”

Smitty grinned. Water dripped off the brim of his hat-and off the end of his beaky nose. “Your wish is my command, your Corporalship, sir. As a matter of fact, your command is my command.”

“I’d command you to stop your nonsense, but I know better than to waste my breath,” Rollant said.

“Only proves you’re married, I’d say.”

“You know I am.” Rollant pointed at Smitty. “And I know you’re not. So what do you know about it?”

“Just watching my ma and pa,” Smitty answered. “But they’ve been together thirty years now without killing each other, so I expect they’re doing something right.”

Rollant had trouble arguing with that. A few minutes later, traffic on the road didn’t merely slow; it stalled altogether. “What the hells is going on here?” Rollant demanded irately, and he was far from the only one. As he stood there, the mud tried to suck him down into its cold, wet, slimy maw. Lieutenant Griff sent a man forward to see if he could discover what had gone wrong. The fellow sensibly trotted along on the grass by the side of the road, not in the roadway itself.

He came back by the same route. “There’s wagons up ahead stuck in what looks like a bog, sir,” he reported to Griff. “It’s so deep, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were crocodiles in it.”

“Well, why aren’t people going around?” Griff asked.

“A lot of ’em are trying to haul out the wagons,” the soldier replied. “They aren’t having much luck, though.”

“What are we supposed to do in the meantime?” Sergeant Joram asked. “Stand here in the mud and drown?” It must have been doing its best to pull him under, too.

Before long, a southron captain who was so muddy he might have been dipped in rust-colored paint ordered Griff’s company forward. “You men can lend a hand on the ropes,” he said.

That was when Rollant found out what underofficer’s rank was really worth. As corporal and standard-bearer, he stood around with Lieutenant Griff and Sergeant Joram and the other men with stripes on their sleeves. The common soldiers sloshed down into the bog-and the messenger had described it accurately-seized the long ropes fastened to the front end of the lead wagon, and pulled like men possessed.

I’ve still got just as much chance of getting killed as anybody else, he thought. More chance than most, because I bear the standard. But the rest of a corporal’s job looks a lot better than a common soldier’s .

Try as they would, the mud-streaked men in gray couldn’t shift the wagon. Then a mage on an ass muddy all the way to the belly rode up. The captain who’d summoned Griff’s company recognized him. “That’s Colonel Albertus!” he said. “He’s called the Great, thought gods know why.” He raised his voice: “Colonel Albertus, can you help us, sir?”

Albertus reined in. Most of the time, Rollant judged, he would have been an impressive man, with a long, pointed gray beard; a long, pointed nose; and piercing black eyes. At the moment, he resembled nothing so much as a drowned billy goat. His voice was deep and resonant: “I shall do what I can.”

“Sounds more like a circus mountebank than a proper wizard,” Sergeant Joram said behind his hand.

“Well, let’s see what he can do,” Rollant answered, and the sergeant nodded.

Colonel Albertus fixed the lead wagon with those piercing eyes and began to chant. He made pass after pass, his fingers writhing like so many serpents. The wagon began to twitch and shake. After a moment, it tried to rise, but was held in place by the sucking power of the mud. Albertus paused for a moment to curse, then incanted harder than ever.

“By the gods, maybe the old bastard can bring it off after all,” Joram said.

“I hope so,” Rollant said.

With a horrible squelching noise, the wagon did pull itself free of the encumbering mud. The weary soldiers who’d been trying to get it out raised a cheer-which cut off abruptly when, instead of stopping just above the bog, the wagon continued to rise till its dripping, mucky wheels were a good ten feet off the ground.

The men on the ropes who’d been closest to the wagon started to rise into the air, too, till they let go and fell back into the mud. Some of them squawked. Some cursed. Some did both at once. Rollant didn’t blame those last. Albertus the so-called Great had produced a sorcery more successful than it might have been. And, as with a lot of sorceries, this one, proving more successful than it might have been, was at best useless and at worst a help to the enemy.

“Well, Colonel, what in the hells are you going to do now?” demanded the captain who’d summoned Albertus. So much for respecting a superior officer, Rollant thought. But wizards were officers by courtesy, to let them order common soldiers around. Real fighting men, as he’d seen before, disdained them.

Albertus gave the wagon a distinctly wall-eyed stare. The stare he sent the contemptuous captain was something else again. Rollant was glad it wasn’t aimed his way; a poisonous snake might have aimed that sort of look at its prey the instant before it struck. “I shall endeavor to repair matters,” the mage said in a voice as coldblooded as a serpent.

If he put the captain in fear, that worthy hid it very well. “You can endeavor all you gods-damned well please,” he snarled. “You wouldn’t have to if you’d done it right the first time.”

“And if you splendid soldiers had done everything right the first time, this cursed war would have been over year before last,” Colonel Albertus retorted. The captain sputtered and fumed, but he kept quiet, because the wizard had spoken self-evident truth. Albertus’ smile didn’t show fangs, but it might as well have.