Harry Turtledove - Sentry Peak

George spurred his own unicorn. With an indignant snort, the beast bounded forward. George always wanted to see for himself; one of the things that had won him his nickname was his reluctance to trust other people’s reports. He’d seen too many things go wrong because scouts brought back mistaken news or because a senior officer, not having examined the situation or the ground for himself, gave the wrong orders.

As George rode up to the top of a low hill and looked ahead, he found that things to the west did look much as the scout had described them. Not a lot of northerners were delaying the army’s advance, but they had stone fences-the likely border markers between two farms-to hide behind. One crossbowman shooting from cover was worth several out in the open.

A moment later, George discovered the enemy didn’t have only crossbowmen slowing up his advance. Trailing smoke, something large and heavy flew through the air toward his forwardmost unicorns. When it hit the ground-farther from the foe than even a crossbowman could shoot-it burst in a ball of fire. That was half artisans’ work, half mages’. The flame caught one unicorn and its rider. They dashed off, both screaming, both burning.

“Catapults forward, Brigadier Brannan!” Doubting George shouted. “If they want to play those games with us, we’ll make ’em think the seven hells start just behind those fences.”

His army had more and better missile-throwers than did the men who followed Grand Duke Geoffrey. The northerners had looked down their noses at the mechanic arts till they discovered they needed them. But serfs and artisans could not match manufactories, no matter how they tried.

Up came the catapults. Brannan was a good officer. Doubting George kicked himself for not having ordered the engines forward with the cavalry. The northerners, surely, would not rush from cover to attack the catapults. They would be asking for massacre if they did. They might be brave-they undoubtedly were brave-but they weren’t stupid.

Firepots flew through the air toward the catapults as they deployed. So did large stones: altogether unsorcerous, but highly effective. A stone smashed one machine, and several of the men who served it. Another catapult sent a cloud of dirty black smoke into the sky. The rest of the crews stolidly went about their business. In mere minutes, they were flinging missiles back at the northerners.

Some of their stones smashed against the fences. Some of their firepots burst in front of or against the fences, too. That was spectacular, especially from George’s hilltop view, but accomplished nothing. But most of the missiles made it over the fences and fell among the enemy soldiers beyond. The northerners stirred and boiled, like ants when their hill was disturbed.

“That’s the way to shift them!” George shouted, and ordered a runner to go on down to the catapult crews and tell them so. “Those buggers won’t be able to stand against us for long if we keep dropping things on their heads.”

Other catapults turned the business of pelting the foe with crossbow quarrels into something that might have come straight from a manufactory rather than out of a general’s manual of stratagems. An operator at the right side of each dart-throwing engine worked a windlass connected to the engine’s cocking mechanism by means of flat-link chains each turning on a pair of five-sided gears. Another operator fed sheaf after sheaf of arrows into a hopper above the launching groove. When the devices worked well, each one was worth several squads of crossbowmen. When they didn’t-and they often didn’t-their crews spent inordinate amounts of time attacking them with wrenches and pliers.

Today, they were working as well as Doubting George had ever seen them. Their operators had them angled high so their darts plunged down over the fences and onto the enemy crossbowmen just beyond. George smiled and called for another runner. “Order the pikemen and crossbowmen to advance on the walls there,” he told the youngster. “They’ll be able to get up to them and over without too much trouble, or I miss my guess.”

But before the second runner could carry that command to the footsoldiers, lightning struck from a clear blue sky and smote one of the dart-throwers. The great ball of flame that burst from it made George’s hands involuntarily fly up to protect his eyes. As the roar from the blast thundered by half a heartbeat later, his unicorn snorted and sidestepped in fright. With automatic competence, he fought it back under his control.

Doing that made his wits start working again. “Hold!” he shouted to the second runner. That worthy wasn’t going anywhere anyhow. Like everybody else, he was staring in horrified astonishment at the ruination visited on the catapult. Even as he stared, another flash of lightning wrecked another engine. Doubting George was horrified and astonished, too. But he was also furious. He pointed to the runner. “No, by the gods! Get yourself gone to our so-called mages. You tell them that, for every catapult wrecked after you reach them, one of them will end up shorter by a head.”

The runner sprinted away. George doubted he had the authority to make his threat good. With luck, the mages wouldn’t realize that. If he had to terrify them into doing their job better, he would, and without thinking twice.

Another thunderbolt crashed down among the catapults. When George stopped blinking, he saw that this one had punished bare ground, not one of his engines or its crew. He nodded. Slower than they should have, his mages were casting counterspells. The next bolt didn’t reach the ground at all. Doubting George nodded again. The southron sorcerers could do the job, if only they remembered they were supposed to.

And then, when lightning struck behind the stone fences from which Geoffrey’s men fought, George did more than nod. He clapped his hands together. “Go it!” he shouted to the mages in gray. They were too far away to hear him, but he didn’t care. He shouted again: “Make the traitors think the seven hells aren’t half a mile off!”

His officers knew what wanted doing. They had a better, more certain idea than the mages. That was plain. As soon as the catapult crews could work their stone- and firepot- and dart-throwers again without fear of being crisped from the innocent air above, his company and regimental commanders sent their footsoldiers forward against the stone fences without waiting for orders from him.

A few of the soldiers fell; neither bombardment nor magecraft had forced all the northerners away from those fences. They were stubborn and brave, sure enough. The war would have ended long since were that not true. Their bravery didn’t help them here, though. Southrons gained the fences and started scrambling over them. Some northerners died where they stood. Some fled. Some came back captive, with upraised hands and glum faces.

“Lieutenant General George!” a rider called, galloping over from the center. “General Guildenstern’s compliments, and do you need help from the rest of the force?”

Doubting George shook his head. “Give him my thanks, but I need not a thing. Only a skirmish here, and we’ve won it.”

Captain Ormerod was not a happy man as he trudged west, back toward Rising Rock. The mages had promised they would do dreadful things to the ragtag and bobtail of gallowsbait from the southern cities and runaway serfs who filled out the ranks of false King Avram’s army. Mages’ promises, though, were all too often written on wind, written on water. What one mage could do, another-or several others-could undo. The southrons didn’t have great mages, but they had a lot of them. Ormerod didn’t think the little delaying action at the stone fences had done enough delaying. It certainly hadn’t done as much as his superiors had hoped.