Marching Through Peachtree

“Yes, sir,” Roast-Beef William said resignedly. “I hope you bear in mind the pounding we took at Jonestown.”

“I do,” Bell said. “All parts of the army suffered heavily around Marthasville, as I’m sure you know.”

And whose fault is that? William wondered. He thought of Joseph the Gamecock, who’d gone into retirement up in Dicon. What was Joseph saying about Geoffrey and Bell and about the way the army had been handled since his own departure? Nothing good-William was sure of that. Of course, considering everything that had happened since, nothing good deserved to be said.

“You will, I presume, perform the duties required of you?” Bell asked, an edge to his voice.

“Yes, sir,” William said. “Of course I will, sir. I hope we don’t need to do a whole lot of fighting, though.”

Bell sneered. “Haven’t got the stomach for it?”

“Haven’t got the men for it,” Roast-Beef William said. “Sir.” He turned on his heel and strode out of the farmhouse Bell was using for his headquarters. By the gods, he thought, for a couple of coppers I’d… He shook his head. Such thoughts about a superior officer would only land him in trouble. I’ve got to get away from this army. Enough is enough. Too much, in fact.

He shook his head again, trying to clear it. As if I’m not in trouble already. As if the whole army isn’t in trouble already. To the hells with me if I know whatBell’s doing. Rear guard? Where are we going? What will we do when we get there? He had no real answers. He didn’t think Bell had real answers, either, except letting Hesmucet chase after him for as long as the southron commander would.

The sun was setting, but enough light remained to let Roast-Beef William take a long look to the north. No sign of Hesmucet’s force at the moment. Maybe the Army of Franklin could keep on outru

“Halt!” an alert sentry called. “Advance and be recognized.”

“I’m Lieutenant General William,” William said, moving slowly to keep from alarming the man and perhaps ending up with a crossbow quarrel between the ribs. “Do you recognize me?”

“Uh, yes, sir,” the sentry said. “Sorry, sir.”

“Don’t be,” Roast-Beef William said. “You should stay alert.”

“Well, yes, sir,” the man said. “But I shouldn’t come close to putting a hole in one of our generals, either. That wouldn’t be so good.”

“If you think I’m going to quarrel with you, soldier, you’d better think again,” William said, and the sentry laughed. William wasn’t so sure it was fu

Roast-Beef William couldn’t drive them out of his head even so. If that wasn’t a telling measure of the state to which the Army of Franklin had fallen, he couldn’t imagine what would be. Maybe I should start writing letters. Anywhere would be better than here.

“Where will we be going now, sir?” the sentry asked.

“South, for the army as a whole,” William answered. “My wing will serve as rear guard.”

“Can the southrons catch up to us?” The sentry sounded interested and curious, not anxious and afraid.

That only shows he doesn’t understand the state we’re in, Roast-Beef William thought. As wing commander, he himself understood it altogether too well. If only King Geoffrey had put me in Joseph the Gamecock’s place once he decided he couldn’t stand leaving Joseph in command. By all the gods and goddesses, I couldn’t have done worse thanBell did.

But Bell looked like the Lion God and fought like a tiger, always hitting the enemy with everything he had. In Geoffrey’s eyes, those attributes counted for more than reliability. And so I kept right on being a wing commander, and so we lost a third of the army, and we lost Marthasville, and we took a couple of long steps toward losing the war.

“We’ll lick ’em, won’t we, sir?” The sentry sounded as if he had no doubt of it.

“We’re doing everything we can,” William answered. “If we can get astride the glideway line and cut it, the southrons may yet come to grief.”

“We’ll do it,” the sentry said.

And, more than a little to Roast-Beef William’s surprise, they did do it a couple of days later. A few miles south of Fat Mama, the Army of Franklin swarmed athwart the glideway line. William formed up his men facing north, to hold off Hesmucet’s southrons while mages disrupted the delicate spells without which glideway carpets would have done just as well in somebody’s parlor.

With no sign of the southrons anywhere close by, Roast-Beef William rode back perhaps a quarter of a mile to watch the wizards at work. The men in blue robes looked as weary as the soldiers guarding them. Almost, Roast-Beef William wished Thraxton the Braggart were back with the army. Almost. It wasn’t so much that Thraxton, like Bell, had led the Army of Franklin into disasters. That Thraxton was so gods-damned disagreeable while doing it counted for more. He’d proved that being a powerful mage wasn’t the same as being a successful one-proved it over and over, in fact.

The wizards chanted and made their passes and danced back and forth across the glideway line. They looked a lot like a holiday gathering at the Sweet One’s shrine. As soon as that thought crossed William’s mind, he wished it hadn’t. He had to fight the giggles for the rest of the incantation.

A line on the ground-presumably, the one tracing the path of the glideway line-began to glow red. The mages chanted harder than ever, and the glow got brighter and brighter. Before long, William was squinting at it through half-shut eyes. Even then, tears ran down his cheeks till at last he turned away.

With a sound as sharp and fierce as a bursting firepot, the spell ended. The assembled wizards cried out in triumph. Roast-Beef William turned back. The glideway line wasn’t glowing any more, but the air still quivered above it, showing the heat the mages had released.

“Well done!” William clapped his hands. “That should hold up the southrons a good long while, wouldn’t you say?”

“I hope so,” one of the mages answered answered. Roast-Beef William coughed. “Uh-I hope so, sir,” the mage amended. “We killed the glideway power dead as shoe leather, sure as hells we did.” His colleagues nodded.

“Well, then, the next time Hesmucet’s men try to use the line, they’ll get a nasty surprise,” William said. “Or am I misunderstanding something?”

“No, sir, you’re right about that,” the wizard said. “Question is, though, how long does it take ’em to repair what we just did?”

“How long would it take you?” Roast-Beef William asked.

Before answering, the man in the blue robe and his comrades put their heads together. At last, he said, “We’d probably be held up for a week, easy. We did a proper job here, we did.”

“That’s not bad,” Roast-Beef William said. It was almost as much as he’d hoped for, which, considering the way the war had been going lately, came close to a miracle straight from the gods.

But now the wizard coughed. “Uh, sir, you’ve got to remember, the southrons are better than we are at this kind of sorcery, same as we’re better than they are at battle magic.”

Roast-Beef William cursed softly. The fellow was bound to be right. Everything William had seen in the war pointed that way. He said, “All right, then, I’ll ask a different question: how long do you think the southrons will need to fix what you just did to the glideway line?”