“There’s a proper job of licking them,” Watson said, beaming.
Colonel Biffle remained gloomy. “They’ll be back, the stinking sons of bitches.”
“Oh, yes. They’ll be back,” Ned of the Forest agreed. “But they won’t be back for a while. The time they spend figuring out how they stuck their peckers in the meat grinder, our footsoldiers can use to get away. That’s what the game we’re playing is all about right now.”
“They won’t be so easy to trick next time,” Biffle said.
That was also true, without a doubt. Hard-Riding Jimmy had shown himself to be no fool. But Ned said, “Other side of the copper is, from now on they’ll look before they leap. That’ll slow them down. We want them slow. We don’t want ’em charging all over the landscape.”
Captain Watson nodded. He understood. Colonel Biffle had a harder time. He still wanted to beat the southrons here, even if he knew how unlikely that was to change the course of the war. Ned had stopped worrying about beating them, at least in the sense he would have used for the word before setting out on this campaign. Delaying them counted as a victory, for it let the battered fragments of the Army of Franklin put more distance between themselves and Doubting George’s disgustingly numerous, revoltingly well-fed, and alarmingly well-armed soldiers.
It isn’t fair, Ned thought. It isn’t even close to fair. If we had that many men and could give them the food and gear they need…
He laughed, though it wasn’t really funny. If the north could have raised and supported armies like that, of course it would have broken away from King Avram’s rule. But it couldn’t. It couldn’t come close. And nobody had ever said war was the least bit fair, Ned included. He’d used every trick he knew, and invented several fresh tricks on the spur of the moment. Expecting the southrons not to use their advantages of wealth and manpower was like wishing for the moon. You could do it, but that didn’t mean you’d get what you wished for.
A rider came up and pointed to the northeast. “The southrons are trying to slip around our flank again, Lord Ned,” he said.
“Well, we’d better try and stop the bastards, then, eh?” Ned said.
“Yes, sir,” the messenger said, and then, “Er-how, sir?”
“You leave that to me.” Ned handled the problem with unfussy competence. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t dealt with such situations before. Detaching men from the right, he shifted them around behind the center to extend the left. General Hesmucet had made the same sort of flanking maneuver again and again for King Avram’s army in Peachtree Province the year before as Hard-Riding Jimmy was using now, and Count Joseph the Gamecock had matched it time after time.
Joseph had traded space for time, again and again. Not Bell, not after he took command of the Army of Franklin. He’d gone right out and slugged toe to toe with Hesmucet’s bigger army… which went a long way toward putting the Army of Franklin in its present unhappy predicament.
Ned shifted Captain Watson’s engines along with the men from the right. They were the only things that could give his riders a decent chance against the quick-shooting crossbows Hard-Riding Jimmy’s men used. By the shouts of dismay from the southrons when the repeating crossbows clattered into action, Jimmy’s troopers knew it, too.
Of course, had Ned’s unicorn-riders already been under attack on the right when Hard-Riding Jimmy’s men hit them on the left, he wouldn’t have been able to shift troopers and engines like that. All through the war, the southrons had had a certain trouble coordinating their blows. A good thing, too, Ned thought. They’d’ve whipped us a long time ago if they really knew what they were doing.
Northern magecraft had also helped hold King Avram’s armies at bay. That made it all the more disconcerting when lightning crashed down from a clear sky and wrecked one of Captain Watson’s precious, newly reskeined catapults. A few minutes later, another deadly accurate thunderbolt set a second siege engine afire.
“Major Marmaduke!” Ned of the Forest roared furiously. “Where in the godsdamnation are you, you worthless excuse for a mage?”
The wizard in the blue robe came over at a fast trot. “I’m… sorry, sir,” he quavered. “I’ll do my best, but he’s too quick and strong for me.”
“He’d better not be,” Ned ground out. “Without those engines, my troopers are dead men. If they lose them, Major, you’re a dead man.”
Marmaduke went even paler than he was already. He did not make the mistake of thinking Ned was joking. When the commander of unicorn-riders spoke in such tones, joking was the furthest thing from his mind.
And, perhaps more inspired by fear than he’d ever been by patriotism, Major Marmaduke succeeded in deflecting the next strokes from the southron sorcerer. The lightnings smote, yes, but not where the engines were. The invaluable repeating crossbows survived, and kept spitting death at Hard-Riding Jimmy’s men. Eventually, the southron unicorn-riders drew back in discouragement.
Made it through another day, Ned of the Forest thought. How many more?
Rollant wasn’t much with needle and thread. His wife would have laughed if she’d seen the clumsy botches he’d made of some repairs to his uniform. But Norina was back in New Eborac City, so he had to do what he could for himself. And sewing a third stripe on his sleeve wasn’t a duty. It was a pleasure.
He’d never expected to make sergeant’s rank. Come to that, he’d never expected to make corporal’s rank, either. If the south hadn’t needed bodies to throw at false King Geoffrey’s men, he might never have got into the army at all.
Bodies… His mouth twisted at that. If two Detinan soldiers hadn’t suddenly become no more than bodies, he wouldn’t have been promoted once, let alone twice, and he knew it. Snatching up the company standard when the standard-bearer went down won him his corporal’s stripes-that, of course, and staying alive once he did it. And now Lieutenant Griff was dead, too, Sergeant Joram was Lieutenant Joram… and Corporal Rollant became Sergeant Rollant.
Ordinary Detinans could get promoted without having someone die to open a slot for them. Blonds? It didn’t look that way. But ordinary Detinans could also get promoted when someone did die. Sitting crosslegged in front of the fire by Rollant was Smitty, who was making heavy weather of sewing a corporal’s two stripes onto the sleeve of his gray tunic.
He pricked himself, yelped, and looked up from what he was doing. “This whole business of being an underofficer seems like more trouble than it’s worth,” he said.
“No.” Rollant shook his head. “Oh, no. Not even a little bit. This is as good as it gets-it says the army likes what you’re doing, what kind of a man you are.”
To him, that meant a great deal-meant everything, in fact. Respect always came grudgingly to blonds… when it came at all. But Smitty, a Detinan born, took his status for granted. “I know what kind of man I am, gods damn it. I’m a man who’s sick of getting shot at, who’s sick of sleeping on the ground, and who’s ready to pack this whole stinking war in and go home.”
“Can’t do that. Not yet. Not till it’s over,” Rollant said.
“Don’t remind me,” Smitty said mournfully. He raised his voice to call out to a couple of common soldiers to gather up water bottles and fill them at a nearby creek.
“See what happens?” one of them said: a Detinan speaking his mind, as Detinans did. “You haven’t even got the stripes on your sleeve yet, and already you’re treating people like you were a liege lord.” Off he went, still grumbling.
Smitty turned to Rollant. “Thunderer’s ballocks, Sergeant, but we’re getting a poor sort of common soldier these days.” His voice brimmed with righteous indignation.