Marching Through Peachtree

Zibeon chuckled. “The southrons won’t like that.”

“Futter the southrons!” Bell exclaimed. “If they think I’m going to dry up and blow away because they squeezed me out of Marthasville, they can think again. They’ll have to work to drag us down.”

“I think that’s good, sir. I think that’s very good,” Major Zibeon said. “If the gods favor us, we may even be able to sneak back into Marthasville again.”

“That would be very fine.” Bell started to perk up, but then slumped again. “It would be very fine, I mean, but there’s not much left of Marthasville any more. Place isn’t worth having, not for anybody. And gods damn Hesmucet for that, too, along with everything else.”

“They will. I have no doubt of it.” Zibeon spoke with great conviction. “But we’d better do something to him in this world, too.”

“Draft the order for our move to the south, then,” Lieutenant General Bell said. “If he wants us, he’ll have to pin us down. And do you know what, Major? I don’t think the southrons can do it.”

“Yes, sir,” his aide-de-camp said. “And no, sir, I don’t don’t think they can pin us down, either.”

When morning came, a red-dust haze in the north warned that the southrons were approaching fast. Grunting and cursing and half blind with pain in spite of a new dose of laudanum, Bell clambered aboard his unicorn. Major Zibeon made him fast to the animal like a man lashing a sack of lentils to an ass’ back. And then, just before he was about to lead the army south, he had an idea. Calling the mages together, he asked them, “Can you make the southrons think we’ve gone east instead?”

They looked at each other: sad-faced men in blue robes, some afoot, others riding asses. The next mage Bell saw aboard a unicorn would be the first. He could manage, without one leg and with only one working arm. As for them… He shrugged, which also hurt. They could work magic-when things went well.

At last, one of them said, “I think we can, sir-for a while, anyway. Sooner or later, though, they’ll realize they’ve been following a will o’ the wisp.”

“Buy us as much time as you can,” Bell said. The mages nodded mournfully.

Bell did lead the Army of Franklin south then. He kept looking back over his good shoulder to see how close the southrons were getting. Looking back wasn’t easy, not when the dust of thousands of marching feet obscured his view. After a while, though, he did spy what looked to be just as much dust rising from the east. He hoped the mages would remember to mask the dust his army was actually making. He almost sent a rider back to remind them to be sure of that, but at the last minute checked himself. Mages had their pride, too.

A unicorn-rider from his own rear guard came trotting up to him. Saluting, the man said, “Sir, looks like the stinking southrons have swung off to the east. They aren’t coming right after us, anyways.”

“Good,” Bell said. Something had gone right, then. He made a noise halfway between a sigh and a groan. Not too many things had gone right for the Army of Franklin lately. To be relieved because the enemy’s pursuit had been drawn off was… Pitiful was the word that sprang to mind.

Another rider approached him. He eyed Roast-Beef William with more suspicion than he had the courier. Roast-Beef William hungered for his command, just as he’d hungered for it when Joseph the Gamecock had it. Was William writing letters to King Geoffrey? He’d better not be, Bell thought.

“What now?” he growled, his voice rough and edgy.

“I was going to ask you the same question, sir,” his wing commander replied. “I understand we can’t hope to hold our position with so many southrons coming after us, but where do we go from here?”

“Someplace with good foraging, from which we can strike a blow at the glideway up from Rising Rock, or at a detachment of southrons if they give us the chance,” Bell answered. There had been a time when the Army of Franklin could have stood up to the whole southron host-before it lost four expensive battles in a row outside Marthasville. Bell tried not to dwell on that.

“Sooner or later, the whole southron army will come after us,” William said.

“Later,” Bell told him, and explained what the mages were doing.

Roast-Beef William’s big head bobbed up and down. “That’s good, sir, but it won’t last forever. And the southrons are hard to fool the same way twice.”

“We’ve bought some time now.” Bell had never been a man to look to the far future. It would take care of itself. The problem right at hand always seemed more important. Without solving it, he couldn’t get to the far future, anyhow.

“Do you think the southrons are after us with their whole force?” William asked.

“Seemed that way, gods damn them,” Bell said. “Let them come. They aren’t going to accomplish anything that way.”

“Not unless they crush us,” Roast-Beef William said. But then, almost reluctantly, he nodded again. “We’re lighter and quicker than they are, no doubt.”

“Even so,” Bell said. “Any man who knows me knows I hate retreat to the very marrow of my bones-but there are times when it is needful, and this is one of those times.”

“Yes, sir,” Roast-Beef William said, and then muttered something under his breath.

“What was that?” Lieutenant General Bell asked sharply.

“Nothing, sir,” his wing commander answered. Bell glared at him. William looked back, stolid and i

It wasn’t quite insubordination, but it came close. As far as Bell could see, the two cases were as different as chalk and cheese. Retreat seemed Joseph’s natural state. He fell back because he dared not face the foe, or so Bell was convinced. He himself, on the other hand, moved away from the southrons only because they so dreadfully outnumbered him. They hadn’t outnumbered Joseph to anywhere near the same extent.

Why the southrons now outnumbered the Army of Franklin so much more than they had when Joseph the Gamecock commanded it was something Bell stubbornly refused to contemplate.

As Bell and the Army of Franklin moved south and east, the general commanding had no trouble telling where General Hesmucet’s army had gone earlier in the summer and where the land had not seen the red-hot rake of war. Earthworks and field fortifications scarred the ground where Hesmucet’s men had moved. One wheatfield had entrenchments in three sides of a square dug through the middle of it. What the farmer would be able to do about that, Bell couldn’t imagine.

Farmhouses were burnt, barns and serfs’ huts razed. Of livestock and blonds in the region where Hesmucet’s men had gone, Bell saw next to none. Half a mile away from the southrons’ path, cows and sheep and unicorns grazed, though he still noted hardly any blonds. “Bastards,” he muttered, not knowing himself whether he meant Hesmucet’s men or the serfs who fled to them.

A little before noon, one of his wizards came up to him and said, “I’m sorry, sir, but their sorcerers just penetrated our spell of deception.”

“Well, gods damn them to the seven hells,” Bell said. But it scarcely counted as an outburst; he’d expected that news for a couple of hours. He gave the mage a grudging nod. “You did the best you could.”

“Why, thank you, sir!” The man sounded not only relieved but astonished. He must have looked for a firepot to come down on his head.

Bell condescended to explain: “You bought us more time that I thought you would. We’ve got away clean now.”

“Ah.” The mage nodded, with luck in wisdom. He gave Bell a salute that would have disgusted any sergeant ever born. “Happy to be of service, sir.” He saluted again, even more disreputably than before, and went off to rejoin his comrades in wizardry.

I take it back, Bell thought. I do know one mage who rides a unicorn-Thraxton the Braggart. The lines furrowing his brow, for once, had nothing to do with pain. Thraxton was a mighty sorcerer, no doubt about it-and the Army of Franklin would have ended up better off if he’d never cast a single spell, no doubt about that, either. If a man is an ass, who cares whether he rides a unicorn?