Marching Through Peachtree

The sorcerers huddled again. When they broke apart, the fellow who did the talking said, “A couple of days, if we’re lucky. A couple of hours, if we’re not.”

“A couple of days? A couple of hours?” Roast-Beef William clapped a hand to his forehead in astonished dismay and disbelief. “And it would stop you for a week? I knew we were behind them in that sort of sorcery. Thunderer’s prong, though-I never imagined we were so far behind.”

“Sorry, sir,” the wizard said. “That’s how it is.”

“In that case…” William plucked at his beard. “In that case, let’s see what we can do about it.”

Being the commander of the rear guard, he was supposed to hang back and resist the southrons anyhow. He posted a regiment in the pine woods near the glideway line with some very specific orders. He stayed behind himself, too; he wasn’t willing to order the men to try anything he wouldn’t do himself. He told the colonel, “If this doesn’t work out the way we want it to, we’ll just pull back. I’m not out for us to get stuck with an attack that hasn’t got a chance of working.”

“No, eh?” the colonel said. “You’d better not tell Bell that, or else he’ll throw you out of this gods-damned army.”

Roast-Beef William cleared his throat. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”

“Go ahead,” the colonel told him. “Won’t make any difference one way or the other. You can hear or not. Bell won’t.” As William had with the mage, he cleared his throat again. The colonel refused to be cowed. He said, “I’m a free Detinan, sir, and I’ll gods-damned well say what I please. Somebody ought to, don’t you think?”

“You can say it, Colonel,” William answered. “You can say it, but that won’t do you any good. Lieutenant General Bell will command this army, and we’ve had enough dissension already, don’t you think?”

“Oh, hells, yes,” the regimental commander said. “We’ve had all the dissension anybody could need. What we haven’t had, though, is a general who knows what the devils he’s doing.” He shook his head. “No, I take that back. We did have one, but King Geoffrey gave him the sack.”

He liked Joseph the Gamecock, did he? William thought. Only proves he didn’t know him very well. Hardly anybody who knew Joseph very well liked him. But that was neither here nor there. Aloud, Roast-Beef William said, “Let’s worry about the southrons, shall we, and not about who did what in our own army?”

“Yes, sir,” the colonel said. “If everybody thought the way you do, we’d have a lot better chance of whipping those bastards, and that’s a fact.”

He didn’t think that way himself. He’d proved as much, with his own factionalism. He didn’t even notice. Roast-Beef William didn’t waste time trying to correct him, either. He just made sure the northerners were as well positioned as they could be. After that, he had nothing to do but wait.

The southrons didn’t show up till close to noon the next day. By then, the northern officers were having all they could do holding their men in place. The soldiers of the Army of Franklin would fight like wildcats. Sometimes, though, they showed little more discipline than wildcats.

Southron mages wore gray robes. Other than that, by looks there was little to choose between them and their northern opposite numbers. They rode asses, as the northern wizards did. Even at a distance, they had the air of men who weren’t always sure what was going on around them. That put Roast-Beef William in mind of northern wizards, too.

They didn’t need long to discover where the northerners had wreaked sorcerous havoc on the glideway line. As soon as they found it, they set to work repairing the damage. Watching them, Roast-Beef William believed they wouldn’t take long to set it right. They showed a matter-of-fact competence often missing in battle.

They did, that is, till the bad-tempered colonel sent his men roaring forward. Roar they did, as if the Lion God had emerged from those pine woods. The southrons hadn’t been such fools as to let their wizards go to work alone-William thought wizards had no business doing anything alone-but they’d detailed only a couple of platoons of soldiers to guard them. And a couple of platoons weren’t nearly enough.

Volleys of crossbow quarrels knocked over some of the southron defenders and some of the mages. Even from the woods, Roast-Beef William heard the other wizards cry out in alarm and despair. Some turned to flee, which resulted in a couple of them being shot in the back. One, with more presence of mind than his friends, managed to call down two lightning bolts on the northerners before he too fell.

In a few minutes, it was all over. Neither William nor the colonel wanted to linger and face the full wrath of Hesmucet’s army. They pulled back to the north with a small, neat victory in hand. The troops were in high spirits. Victories, even small ones, were hard to come by lately.

Roast-Beef William wished he shared their delight. Part of him did, but only a small part. The rest… The rest wanted nothing so much as escape from an army where even small victories were hard to come by.

Doubting George shrugged. “Well, sir, what happened was, they snookered us. Nobody expected they’d be laying for our wizards, but they were, and they made us pay.”

“Pay too much,” General Hesmucet told him. “Much too much.”

“We can’t bring these things off perfectly all the time.” But George knew Hesmucet was right. “I won’t let it happen again, sir.”

“All right. I can’t ask for more than that from you, and I know you mean a promise like that when you make it,” the commanding general said. “The next question is, what’s Bell got in mind with his peregrinations all over southern Peachtree?”

“Making us go hungry, I’d say,” Doubting George replied. “He’s been after the glideway like a hungry hound after a beefsteak.”

“But he’s doing well enough without anything you’d call a supply line,” Hesmucet burst out. “Is he really so stupid as to think we can’t do likewise? By the gods, Lieutenant General, I could march my whole army across Peachtree Province to Veldt by the Western Ocean, and I wouldn’t go hungry, and the gods-damned traitors couldn’t even slow me down if I set out to do it.”

For a moment, George thought he was exaggerating for effect. Then he took another, longer, mental look at the question. Slowly, he nodded. “I do believe you’re right, sir.”

“I’m sure as can be that I’m right, gods damn it,” Hesmucet said with an arrogance that would either land him in serious trouble-as it had General Guildenstern-or make him a great soldier. Either way, it was an arrogance George knew he lacked himself. Hesmucet went on, “As a matter of fact, I’ve started talking by crystal ball with Marshal Bart and King Avram about doing exactly that.”

Doubting George’s bushy eyebrows flew up. “Have you?” Hesmucet had managed to do it without starting rumors flying all through the army-no mean feat. George wondered what sort of dire threats he’d used to keep the scryers quiet. Whatever they were, they’d worked.

“I have indeed,” Hesmucet said. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to bring Bell to battle. Doesn’t look that way, anyhow. He’s willing enough to raid and to strike at the glideway line, but he hasn’t got the stomach-or the men-for a standup fight any more. We’ve finally persuaded him of that.”

“He never was much of a scholar at A

“That breaks my heart,” Hesmucet said.

“I doubt it,” George said, and they both laughed.

But Hesmucet soon sobered. “Besides, the only other thing I might do is keep chasing Bell over this ground, and I don’t see much point to that, not when we fought over it earlier in the year-and not when I’m unlikely to catch up with him, as I said before.”