Marching Through Peachtree

Gremio wasn’t so sure they were right. But now they weren’t pi

It had better have more weaknesses than the southron army did, Gremio thought. If it doesn’t, we won’t be able to hurt it. And if we can’t hurt it, we-and Geoffrey’s kingdom-are in a lot of trouble.

Sergeant Thisbe tramped along beside Gremio, never complaining, always competent. Catching the company commander’s eye on him, he nodded and said, “We’ll give it our best shot, sir.”

“I know we will,” Gremio answered. “That’s what we have to do. Uh, one of the things we have to do,” he amended. Remembering one of the other things the Army of Franklin had to do these days, he raised his voice to a shout: “Foragers out to the flanks! Move, move, move!”

Move the men did, many of them with grins on their faces. The Army of Franklin had no formal supply train, not any more. The southrons had closed all the glideway lines into Marthasville, and east of the city those were few and far between. If the army was to survive, it had to live off the countryside. The men had done that plenty of times in enemy-held territory, less often in land nominally ruled by King Geoffrey. But necessity made a stronger law than any of the ones Gremio had argued in the lawcourts. The soldiers took what they needed, and worried not at all about it.

“A good thing this is rich country,” Thisbe remarked as the foragers went a-scrounging. “We’d be hungry if it weren’t.”

“True enough,” Gremio said. “Good for us-but it’s also good for the southrons. Even if we do cut them off from their base of supply, they may well be able to live off the country, too. I worry about that.”

“Do you really think they can forage as well as we can, sir?” Thisbe asked.

Gremio laughed. “I’d have to doubt that,” he admitted. “We’ve got the best collection of thieves left uncrucified ru

“Where exactly are we headed for?” Thisbe said.

With another laugh-a sardonic one this time-Gremio answered, “What, you think they tell me anything?” He raised his voice again, this time to call to Colonel Florizel: “Sir, where are we going?”

“Back to Whole Mackerel, from what I hear,” Florizel replied from unicornback. “The southrons have a supply base there. If we take it away from them, we live high on the hog for a while, and they don’t.”

“Sounds good to me.” Gremio imagined plundering a southron supply base. His mouth watered at the thought of it. But food wouldn’t be the only thing there. He thought of shoes and pantaloons and medicines and all the other things that kept an army going and that were in sadly short supply in the north.

A farmer wailed as foragers took his livestock. “You bastards are nothing but a pack of brigands!” he wailed. “Might as well have the gods-damned southrons here instead.”

“You will be compensated for your loss,” Gremio said. He pulled a scrap of paper and a pencil from a pantaloon pocket. “Let me have your name and what was taken from you. I will write you a receipt.”

“A receipt? A gods-damned receipt?” the farmer shouted. “Who in the hells is going to pay me for whatever’s wrote on a stinking receipt?” Every use of the word seemed filled with greater scorn.

“King Geoffrey’s government will, sir, after the war is won,” Gremio answered.

Snatching the paper form his hand, the farmer tore it to shreds and flung those shreds to the breeze. “Bugger King Geoffrey’s government with a pine cone!” he cried. “The son-of-a-bitching thing’s go

“Be careful how you speak,” Gremio said coldly. “You tread close to treason.”

“Futter you, too, pal,” the farmer said. “I talk like a free Detinan, on account of I gods-damned well am one. If you don’t like it, too bad. You think we’ve got a chance of wi

Captain Gremio stared after him. He didn’t think he was a crazy man, and he didn’t think it likely King Geoffrey’s men could beat King Avram’s. After more than three years of war, that seemed a very forlorn hope indeed. Why go on fighting, then? he wondered.

He shrugged. The Army of Franklin wasn’t beaten yet. As long as Lieutenant General Bell could still strike the encroaching southrons, the northern cause wasn’t lost. We have to keep trying, Gremio thought. As long as we keep trying, something good may happen. If we give up, it surely won’t.

Was that reason enough? Gremio shrugged again. He didn’t know. He did know some detachments of provost marshals were crucifying deserters. That was another good reason to stay on.

General Hesmucet’s men had unicorn-riders patrolling well east of the glideway line. Gremio got only a glimpse of them as they rode off to the west to let the main body of southrons know they’d spotted the Army of Franklin. He sighed. “I wish we could have taken Whole Mackerel by surprise.”

“When the southrons came at it, they came at it from out of the east, and now we’re doing the same thing,” Sergeant Thisbe said. “That’s strange.”

“I hadn’t thought about it like that, but you’re right,” Gremio said. “One thing: the foraging won’t be so good from here on out. The southrons will have been there before us. We’ll just have to run them out of the place and take away all the food they’ve stored up in town.”

He made it sound very easy. If fighting the southrons were easy, though, Bell would have done better all through this campaign. Of course, Hesmucet had always had the advantage of numbers. He wouldn’t here. Gremio didn’t know how big the garrison at Whole Mackerel was, but it couldn’t hope to match the whole Army of Franklin. The rest of Hesmucet’s army would still be up near Marthasville.

That meant… “We’d better move fast,” Gremio said. “We have to take the town before they can reinforce it.”

“That makes good sense, sir,” Sergeant Thisbe agreed.

It might have made good sense to them. It didn’t seem to have crossed Bell’s mind. He paused to camp for the night about five miles outside of Whole Mackerel. “We ought to keep going,” Gremio said discontentedly.

“I’m pleased to see your spirit,” Colonel Florizel told him. “Still and all, though, we’ll do better going in fresh and well rested.”

“True, sir,” Gremio said. “But the southrons will have all night to get ready for us, and that won’t help our attack.”

“You really are bolder than you were,” Florizel said. “You can’t attack by yourself, though.”

Gremio didn’t think he was any bolder than he’d ever been. He was just quibbling over tactics, as he often did. When he complained because he thought Bell was charging ahead when he shouldn’t, Florizel reckoned him a coward. He’d been right then, but it hadn’t done any good. Now he thought Bell was hanging back when he ought to go on. That made the regimental commander happier, but it also wouldn’t change anything else.

Maybe I ought to keep my mouth shut, Gremio thought. For a Detinan, and especially for a Detinan barrister, that was a very strange notion indeed.

Horns blared before daybreak the next morning, ordering the northern army into line of battle. “We’ll do the best we can, and we’ll strike the enemy a strong blow for King Geoffrey,” Gremio told his men. They raised a cheer.

“And we’ll steal all the good food and the crossbow quarrels the stinking southrons have fetched up here to Whole Mackerel from Rising Rock,” Sergeant Thisbe added. “We’ll eat like nobles, and we’ll shoot like we’ve got repeating crossbows.”