Harry Turtledove - Sentry Peak

“Hold your ground!” Lieutenant Gremio shouted.

“Hold, by the gods!” Ormerod echoed. “Don’t let them through. This is for the kingdom’s sake. And besides,” he added pragmatically, “you’re easier to kill if they get you while you’re running.”

That made the men from his company hang on a little longer. Major Thersites’ profane urgings made the whole regiment hang on a little longer. But then a firepot burst at Thersites’ feet. He became a torch, burning, burning, burning. He screamed, but, mercifully, not for long. That left the seniormost captain in the regiment, an earl named Throckmorton, in command.

“Hold fast!” Captain Throckmorton cried. But he sounded as if he were pleading, not as if he would murder the next man who dared take a backward step. And pleading was not enough to hold the soldiers in their places, not in the face of the oncoming southron storm. More and more of them headed for the rear.

“What can we do?” Gremio asked, watching them go.

“Not a gods-damned thing, doesn’t look like,” Ormerod answered grimly. “We aren’t the only ones getting away from the enemy-not even close. That’s the one thing that makes me feel halfway decent. Look at some of those bastards run! You could race ’em against unicorns and clean up.” He spat in disgust.

“If we stay here-if you and I stay here, I mean-much longer, the southrons will kill us,” Lieutenant Gremio said.

He was right, too; Ormerod could see as much. For a moment, rage so choked him that he hardly cared. But, at last, he said, “Well, we’d better skedaddle, too, then. I haven’t killed as many southrons as I want to, not yet, and I won’t get the chance by staying here.”

“I feel the same way, Captain,” Gremio said. Ormerod wondered whether that was true, or whether the barrister simply sought an acceptable excuse to flee. He shrugged. It didn’t really matter. They could fall back, or they could die. Those were the only choices left. They could not hold.

Dying here wouldn’t accomplish anything, not that Ormerod could see. Along with other stubborn northerners, some from their regiment, others men he’d never seen before, they fought a rear-guard action that kept the southrons from overwhelming this wing of Count Thraxton’s army. The soldiers fell back toward the protection of the lines on the height of Proselytizers’ Rise.

“I wonder if those bastards will have cut and run, too,” Ormerod grumbled.

“Doesn’t look like it, sir,” Gremio said, and he was right. He added, “If you ask me, we can hold the crest of the rise forever.”

“Here’s hoping you’re right, because we’d better,” Ormerod answered. Some of his men went into line with the troopers already in place on Proselytizers’ Rise. Others, exhausted by a long day’s fighting and by the retreat they hadn’t wanted to make, sprawled wherever they could.

Ormerod stayed in line till darkness ended the fighting. He was up before sunrise the next day, too, up and cursing. “What’s the matter now?” Lieutenant Gremio asked sleepily.

“That’s what, by the gods.” Ormerod pointed back toward Sentry Peak. Above a thick layer of cloud, King Avram’s gold dragon banner on red-an enormous flag, to be seen at this distance-had replaced Geoffrey’s red dragon on gold. Ormerod knew he shouldn’t have been surprised, but he misliked the omen.

At the same time as Fighting Joseph attacked the forward slopes of Sentry Peak, the northern end of Count Thraxton’s line, Lieutenant General Hesmucet’s soldiers went into action against Funnel Hill, the southwestern part of the unicornshoe Thraxton had thrown partway around Rising Rock. Runners reported that Fighting Joseph was driving the traitors before him. Hesmucet wished he didn’t have to listen to any of those reports. Things were not going nearly so well for him as he would have hoped.

For one thing, Funnel Hill, like the nearby Proselytizers’ Rise, had a steep forward face and a devils of a lot of northerners at the top. For another, Hesmucet rapidly discovered that the maps they were using had led him and General Bart astray. By what the maps said, Funnel Hill wasn’t just near Proselytizers’ Rise, but was the Rise’s southernmost extension. The ground told a different story. Even if his men got to the top, they would have to fight their way down into a deep, unmarked valley and then up another slope to get where they really needed to go.

But, even though they had no hope of doing what he and Bart had thought they might, they had to keep fighting. If they didn’t, the northerners on Funnel Hill would go somewhere else and cause trouble for General Bart’s soldiers there.

A runner came up to Hesmucet and said, “Sir, they’ve got our right pinned down pretty badly.”

Hesmucet managed a smile of sorts. “Well, it was our left a little while ago. If that’s not progress, I don’t know what is.” He knew perfectly well it wasn’t progress, or anything like progress. But if he didn’t admit that to anyone else, he didn’t have to admit it to himself, either.

Lightning bolts smashed down out of the clear sky. They didn’t strike the men in gray struggling to advance, but they came too close to make Hesmucet happy. The runner said, “Where the hells are our wizards-uh, sir?”

“That’s a good question.” Hesmucet raised his voice to a shout: “Alva! Where have you gone and got to, Alva?”

“Here, sir!” The young mage came running up. “What do you require, sir?”

“Are you good for anything besides fogs and mists?” Hesmucet asked. “These northern whoresons are giving our boys a hard time. I want you to do something about that, gods damn it. Show me what you can manage.”

“I’ll do my best,” Alva said. “I wish I could have had a little more notice so I could have prepared more effects, but-”

“But nothing,” Hesmucet said. “You’re a mage who knew he was going to be in the middle of a battle. How much fornicating preparation do you need?”

“I don’t need any fornicating preparation, sir,” Alva answered with a grin. “All I need there is a friendly girl.”

That stopped Hesmucet in his tracks, as surely as Doubting George’s men had stopped the traitors on Merkle’s Hill. Before Hesmucet could start up again, Alva began to incant. Hesmucet stared as the Lion God appeared in the sky over the battlefield. The god roared anger down at the northerners. Then, walking on air, his great tail lashing across a quarter of the sky, he stalked toward the place where the northern mages on Funnel Hill were likeliest to be standing.

“You don’t do things by halves, do you?” Hesmucet knew he sounded shaken, but couldn’t help it.

“I try not to, sir,” Alva answered calmly. “Anything worth doing is worth overdoing, or that’s what people say.”

“Is it? Do they?” Hesmucet rallied. “Leonidas the Priest would not approve of you at all, young fellow.” Alva laughed the clear, boyish laugh of someone feeling his full power for the first time. It occurred to Hesmucet to wonder just how great that power was. “Ah… Alva… That isn’t really the Lion God up there, is it?”

“Just a simulacrum,” the young mage said. “Nothing to worry about-and the real Lion God probably won’t even notice. From everything I’ve been able to find out, the gods pay a lot less attention to what goes on down here on earth than most people think. You almost wonder if it’s worth your while believing in them.”

“No, I don’t,” Hesmucet said. “What I wonder is what the younger generation is coming to. If we don’t believe in the gods, our magic will fail, and then where would we be?”

“We’d manage.” Alva sounded perfectly confident. “I think we could get along just fine with nothing but mechanical devices.”