Harry Turtledove - Sentry Peak

“Oh, gods be praised,” Ormerod said. “I was afraid I was imagining them.”

“And they’re all heading this way,” Gremio added.

“I know,” Ormerod said. That also made him afraid, but in a way different from, and more concrete than, he’d felt before.

Major Thersites saw the advancing enemy, too. “Stand by to repel boarders!” he called, as if the southrons were so many pirates about to swarm onto a fat, rich merchantman. But General Bart’s men advanced with far better discipline than pirates were in the habit of showing.

“Can we hold them back, sir?” Lieutenant Gremio asked, in the voice of a small child looking for reassurance.

But Ormerod had no reassurance even for himself, let alone to give to anyone else. “To the hells with me if I know,” he answered, while Not a chance on earth or under it ran through his mind.

Thersites was right, though: they had to try. Ormerod shouted orders to his men, who found the best cover they could and got ready to fight back. The Franklin River anchored the southern end of their line, the steep slopes of Sentry Peak the northern. Thersites said, “Gods damn it, where’s that louse-ridden Thraxton the Braggart when you really need the son of a bitch? He ought to have a spell ready that’d sweep away these bastards like a blond wench sweeping out your bedroom.”

The more the mist lifted, the more Ormerod saw. The more Ormerod saw, the more he wished he didn’t. “I think Thraxton is liable to be busy somewhere else,” he said unhappily.

From Sentry Peak here in the north to Funnel Hill, the extension of Proselytizers’ Rise in the far southwest, southron troops advanced against the line the Army of Franklin had set up to hold them inside Rising Rock. How many soldiers had General Bart brought into the town? Ormerod didn’t know, not in numbers, but the southrons were sending forth far more men than he’d thought they had.

He couldn’t pay so much attention to the distant vistas of the battlefield as he would have liked. The southrons moving on his part of the line from the east drew closer by the minute. He cursed as he recognized the banners their regimental standard-bearers waved.

“Those are Fighting Joseph’s troopers!” His voice rose to a furious shout. “Those are the sons of bitches we fought when we went west toward Brownsville Ferry. Some of you boys ran away from jackasses on account of you thought they were unicorn-riders. You’re not going to let these bastards shift you now, are you?”

“No!” his men yelled, and he hoped they meant it.

“We haven’t got enough of anything,” Gremio said worriedly. “We haven’t got enough men, we haven’t got enough engines, we haven’t got enough mages. How are we supposed to stop-that?” He pointed toward the gray flood rolling down on them.

“We’ve got to try,” Ormerod said, echoing Thersites. “If you like, Lieutenant, I’ll write you a pass so you can go to the rear.” Gremio bit his lip but shook his head. Ormerod slapped him on the back. “Stout fellow.”

“No, just a fool, ashamed of looking like a coward before my comrades,” Gremio said. “I’d be smarter if I took you up on that, and we both know it.”

“They haven’t killed me yet,” Ormerod told him. “Futter me if I think they can do it this time.”

“I admire your spirit,” Gremio said. “I would admire it even more if I thought Count Thraxton could send us reinforcements from elsewhere on the field.”

“We’ll manage,” Ormerod said; he didn’t think Thraxton the Braggart could send them reinforcements, either. “We have to manage.”

King Geoffrey’s soldiers were doing everything they could. Artificers turned engines away from Rising Rock and toward the east so they would bear on the advancing foe. Stones and firepots began to fly. So did streams of darts from the big repeating crossbows. Southrons in gray started falling.

But the southrons, along with everything else, were bringing their own wheeled engines forward. They started shooting first at the catapults and repeating crossbows that were tormenting them. That spared Ormerod and his fellow footsoldiers for a while, but only for a while. Gremio was right: the southrons had more engines here than did this part of Count Thraxton’s army. Little by little, they battered Thraxton’s engines down to something close to silence, and then turned their attention to his pikemen and crossbowmen.

By that time, Ormerod’s soldiers were shooting at the oncoming enemy footsoldiers. “Avram!” the southrons yelled. “Avram and freedom! One Detina, now and forever!”

Some of the northerners gave their lion-roar of defiance. Others shouted Geoffrey’s name or cried, “Provincial prerogative in perpetuity!” And still others yelled things like, “We don’t want to stay in the same kingdom with you sons of bitches!”

Despite the crossbow quarrels hissing around the battlefield, Ormerod stood tall as he drew his sword. He flourished the blade, screaming, “You’ll never take my blonds away!”

A ditch and an abatis of sharpened tree trunks held the southrons at bay. Ormerod’s men shot a good many of them as they struggled through the obstacles. But the rest of the pikemen, still shouting their hateful battle cry, swarmed forward. One of them came straight at Ormerod, the point of the pike held low so it could tear out his guts.

He hated pikemen. He always had, ever since he first had to face one. Their weapons gave them more reach than his sword gave him. That anyone might kill him without his having so much of a chance to kill the other fellow instead struck him as most unfair.

He slashed at the pikestaff, just below the head. He’d hoped to cut off the head, but an iron strip armored the staff, too-a nasty, low, devious trick the southrons were using more and more these days. Still and all, he did manage to beat the point aside, which meant the fellow in gray tunic and pantaloons didn’t spit him for roasting, as he’d no doubt had in mind.

“King Geoffrey!” Ormerod yelled, and stepped in close for some cut-and-thrust work of his own.

That was what he’d intended, anyhow, but things didn’t work out the way he planned, any more than things for the Army of Franklin looked to be working out as Thraxton the Braggart had planned. Instead of either letting himself get run through or fleeing in terror, the enemy pikeman smartly reversed his weapon and slammed the pikeshaft into Ormerod’s ribs.

“King Geoffr- oof!” Ormerod’s battle cry was abruptly transformed into a grunt of pain. He sucked in a breath, wondering if he’d feel the knives that meant something in there had broken. He didn’t, but he had to lurch away from the southron to keep from getting punctured-the fellow was altogether too good with a pike. Why aren’t you somewhere far away, training other southrons to be nuisances? Ormerod thought resentfully.

Then a crossbow quarrel caught the pikeman in the face. He screamed and dropped his spear and rolled on the ground and writhed with his hands over the wound, just as Ormerod would have done had he been so unlucky. Another southron pikeman stepped on him so as to be able to get at Ormerod.

Once he got at him, he was quickly sorry. He wasn’t so good with his pike as the unlucky southron had been, and soon lurched away with a wounded shoulder.

“That’s the way to do it!” Major Thersites shouted. Thersites himself was doing his best to imitate a whirlwind full of flail blades: any southron who got near him had cause to regret it, and that in short order. “Drive those sons of bitches back where they came from!”

But the southrons kept pressing forward, no matter how many of them fell to blades and crossbow bolts. Ormerod’s comrades were falling, too, and reserves were thin on the ground in this part of the field. Here and there, men from his company began slipping off toward the west, toward Proselytizers’ Rise.