Harry Turtledove - Sentry Peak

“That will be very good,” Roast-Beef William said.

“If you can do it,” Duke Cabell added.

He got another glare from Thraxton, who spoke in icy tones: “I can do it, and I shall do it. Draft your orders, both of you, so that your men may exploit the southrons’ terror and disarray.”

“Yes, sir,” William said dutifully. Cabell just gave a curt nod.

You still don’t believe me , Thraxton thought. I’ll show you. I’ll show everyone. Everyone who ever doubted me for any reason will know my might by the time this fight is done . Aloud, he said, “Gentlemen, I dismiss you. I am sure that, when the morning comes, your men will continue to fight as gallantly as they already have. Now you must leave me to my sorcerous preparations.”

Roast-Beef William left his headquarters in a hurry, as if he didn’t want anything to do with magecraft. By the way Cabell of Broken Ridge departed, he didn’t want anything to do with Count Thraxton. Thraxton could tell the difference. Treat me as if I were a blond, will you? You’ll be sneering out of the other side of your overbred mouth by this time tomorrow .

He went to his sorcerous tomes with a grim intensity that would have alarmed friends as well as foes-had he had any friends nearer than King Geoffrey in Nonesuch. And he found the spells he wanted. The men who’d prepared them hadn’t imagined that they could be aimed at a whole army rather than at a man or two, but that was their failure of imagination, not Count Thraxton’s.

He forgot about sleep. He forgot about everything except the wizardry he was shaping. He didn’t even notice it was growing light outside. He didn’t notice anything except the pages in front of him till one of the sentries in front of his farmhouse headquarters exclaimed, “Lion God’s claws, looks like every gods-damned southron in the world’s lined up down there!”

That penetrated Thraxton’s fog of concentration. His joints creaked as he rose from his chair. When he looked down on the enemy, he laughed. “So they think they can storm Proselytizers’ Rise, do they? They might as well try to storm the gods’ mystic mountain as ours. Let them come!” He laughed again.

Tiny and perfect in the distance, looking like so many toy soldiers, the southrons advanced toward the trench line at the base of Proselytizers’ Rise. They’d come that far in the previous day’s fighting, though they’d had to fall back. If they tried to come farther now… If they tried to come farther and then fear smote them…

Imagining thousands, tens of thousands, of panic-stricken men trying to tumble down the front slope of Proselytizers’ Rise, Thraxton laughed yet again. That would be sweet, sweet enough to make up for all the embarrassment and bickering he’d had to put up with since the fight by the River of Death. “Let them come,” he whispered. “Aye, let them come.”

Come they did. The southrons might be-as far as Thraxton was concerned, they were-savages, ruffians, uncivilized brigands doing their best to pull down their betters. But they weren’t cowards. If only they’d run from Merkle’s Hill instead of standing fast… But they had a good northern man-no, a bad northern man, for he chose the wrong side-leading them , Count Thraxton thought. He wasted a moment sending a curse Doubting George’s way.

Into the trenches at the base of Proselytizers’ Rise swarmed the southrons. Before long, they had overrun them. And then, to Thraxton’s delight, they did start storming up the side of Proselytizers’ Rise, toward his men who were shooting down at them from above. Who could have given such a mad order? Whoever he was, Thraxton wanted to clasp his hand and thank him for aiding King Geoffrey’s cause.

Thraxton peered down at the southrons scrambling toward him. General Bart’s whole army seemed to be trying to pull itself up the steep slope of the Rise. Thraxton waited a few minutes more, then began his spell. Confidence flowed through his narrow chest as he incanted. No, nothing would go wrong this time. Nothing could go wrong this time. He’d been wrong before, perhaps, but not now. He laughed. Surely not now…

“Forward!” Captain Cephas shouted, waving his sword. His command was almost lost in the roar that came from the throats of hundreds of officers and the throats of hundreds of horns. And forward the men of Doubting George’s army went.

“King Avram!” Rollant yelled. “King Avram and freedom!” He wasn’t thrilled about moving once more against the base of Proselytizers’ Rise, but nobody cared whether he was thrilled or not.

“We can do it!” Cephas said. Rollant didn’t know whether they could do it or not. He wasn’t going to worry about it very much, either. He would go forward as long and as hard as he could. If his comrades started going back instead of forward, he would go back, too-a little more slowly than most, so as not to let ordinary Detinans get any nasty ideas about blonds.

Beside him, Smitty said, “I hope the traitors up there at the top of the Rise are pissing in their pantaloons, watching us come at ’em.”

“And the bastards in the trenches down below, too,” Rollant added. “That’d be good.”

“It sure would,” Smitty agreed. Then he stared up toward the forbidding crest line of Proselytizers’ Rise and grimaced. “Likelier, though, they’re just sitting up there getting drunk and laughing their arses off at us.”

Rollant thought that was pretty likely, too. All through the campaign, nobody in Rising Rock had said anything about driving the traitors from Proselytizers’ Rise. The closer Rollant came to the base of the Rise, the more sense that made to him. It looked to him as if men who held the top could stay there forever.

The men in the trenches at the bottom of the Rise started shooting at the advancing southrons. They had a few engines with them, too, which hurled stones and firepots at Rollant and his comrades. A stone smashed two men to shrieking ruin only a few feet to his left. Something hot and wet splashed his wrist-somebody’s drop of blood. With a soft, disgusted curse, he wiped the back of his hand on his pantaloons.

Then the southrons broke through the ditches and downed trees in front of the trench line. As it had been the day before, the fighting was fierce, but it didn’t last long. The southrons had more men here today, and overwhelmed their foes. A few of the traitors got away, but only a few.

Having gained the trenches, what did the southrons have? Rollant had wondered that the day before, and still wondered now. The northerners on top of Proselytizers’ Rise were free to shoot down at them to their hearts’ content. And they galled the southrons, too, with their bolts and with the stones and firepots the engines up there hurled down.

“What do we do about this?” Rollant shouted to anyone who would listen. He hoped Smitty would have an answer, or Sergeant Joram, or Captain Cephas. If they didn’t, he hoped the generals who’d sent the army forward-and who mostly hadn’t come themselves-would. But no one said a word. A plunging crossbow bolt struck a soldier not far from him between the neck and the left shoulder and sank down through his flesh to pierce his heart. A surprised look on his face, the man fell dead. “What do we do?” Rollant repeated.

Afterwards, he would have taken oath that he heard someone with a great voice shouting, “Forward!” A few other men said the same thing, so he didn’t think he’d imagined it. But he was never quite sure, for neither Smitty nor Joram nor a good many others recalled hearing anything of the sort.

What was plain was, the army couldn’t stay there. It couldn’t go back, not when it was only being stung, not unless it wanted to humiliate itself forevermore before General Bart and Doubting George-and humiliate George in the process. That left only one thing to do.