Hesmucet turned to his trumpeters and made a peremptory gesture of his own. They blared out Advance! The handful of southron soldiers Hesmucet had kept behind outside of Whole Mackerel stormed toward the traitors’ works, as if expecting to overrun them with ease.
Major Alva made one last pass, cried out, “Let it be accomplished!” and pointed toward the northerners’ field fortifications. And suddenly, coming through that convenient mist toward the enemy were not a few soldiers but what seemed for all the world like General Hesmucet’s entire army.
To Hesmucet, the sorcerous additions to the force looked ghostly, insubstantial. Alva had assured him that, from the front, they would be indistinguishable from real soldiers except for one unfortunate detaiclass="underline" they weren’t actually there and couldn’t actually fight. But they certainly could cause consternation, and that suited the commanding general just fine.
If we get very, very lucky, they might even make the traitors panic, and then the real soldiers whose numbers Alva is magnifying will drive the enemy out of his trenches, Hesmucet thought. He didn’t really expect that to happen, but a general was entitled to hopes no less than any other man.
For a few heady moments, he thought those hopes would be realized. The northerners were filled with consternation when they saw what looked and sounded like an enormous army bearing down on them. The real soldiers and real catapults and repeating crossbows among the simulacra sent enough missiles toward the traitors’ works to make the whole assault seem convincing, especially to startled soldiers not expecting any such thing.
Inside the northerners’ fieldworks, horns blared and officers and sergeants shouted in alarm. A few men did flee; Hesmucet could see them scrambling out of the entrenchments and running back toward Whole Mackerel. More, though, sent an enormous storm of crossbow bolts and stones and firepots down on the heads of the advancing southron host.
The soldiers who weren’t really there proved their worth against that vicious barrage. Since they didn’t exist, they weren’t likely to be killed by any merely material missiles. They kept right on advancing in the face of everything the traitors could do.
That apparent immortality might have brought even more fear to the foe. Instead, it ended up giving away the game. The northerners realized no mere human beings could possibly have gone through such a pounding without losing a man. And their mages were not to be despised; indeed, till Hesmucet came across Major Alva, northern mages had dominated the field.
“Counterspell!” Alva gasped. “Strong one!” He muttered charms and made desperate passes, but the northerners, once alerted to his magecraft, savagely tore at it. The advancing army of simulacra began to fade, to become one with the mist out of which they were advancing, and at last to disappear.
As soon as Hesmucet saw that begin to happen, he pulled back his real soldiers, lest the traitors swarm forth and overwhelm them. He set a hand-again, he felt grandfatherly-on Alva’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about it,” he told the young mage. “You bought us a big chunk of the morning. That’s as much as I was hoping for, and more than I expected.”
“Gods damn it, I wanted everything to be perfect,” Alva said.
Most southron mages would have been satisfied with coming close to what their commanders wanted. Hesmucet realized he had something very special in the line of sorcerer here. He patted Alva on the shoulder again. “Don’t worry, son,” he said. “Don’t you worry at all. You did just fine.”
“Come on, men,” Captain Gremio called as his company of northerners tramped almost single file along a narrow winding track somewhere north of Whole Mackerel.
“Another position abandoned,” Colonel Florizel grumbled. The regimental commander rode his unicorn. The rest of the regiment, captains included, went on foot.
Gremio didn’t contradict the colonel, not out loud. But he understood Joseph the Gamecock’s reasons for pulling out of Whole Mackerel. Again, Hesmucet was playing the outflanking game.
This country was overgrown, almost jungly. It was full of bugs, all of which, in Gremio’s biased opinion, seemed to be trying to bite him at once. He slapped and scratched and swore. His men were slapping and scratching and swearing, too, so maybe a few of the bugs did have extra time on their hands.
The soldiers splashed through a swampy stream. “Check for leeches,” Sergeant Thisbe said-parasites of a sort Gremio hadn’t thought of.
Coming up onto drier land, men did as the sergeant said. Some of them cursed and made disgusted noises when they found leeches clinging to their legs, too. “No, don’t just tear them off,” Gremio told a blue-clad trooper who was about to do just that. “The mouth stays behind when you do, and the wound will go bad.”
“That’s right, Catling,” Thisbe agreed. “Touch a smoldering twig to the head end of the leech. Then it will really let go.”
“It’ll burn me, too,” the soldier said.
“If you want to take a chance on going around with crutches like Lieutenant General Bell, do it your way,” Gremio said. “If you want to do it right, do what Thisbe and I tell you to do.”
“I’m a free Detinan, and my ideas are just as good as anybody else’s, gods damn it.” Catling yanked the leech off his leg. He poked at the wound. Sure enough, the leech’s mouth remained locked to his flesh. He looked much less happy after that.
“Try a burning twig now,” Sergeant Thisbe said. “Sometimes the mouth will still let go even after you’ve ripped away the rest of the leech.”
“He doesn’t deserve to have the mouth come loose,” Gremio said in considerable anger. “There are some people in this kingdom who think the greatest privilege the gods granted a free Detinan is the privilege of making a gods-damned fool of himself whenever it strikes his fancy. They do this-sometimes they do it over and over-and then, oftentimes, they expect the lawcourts to free them from their folly. To the seven hells with that, as far as I’m concerned. If you insist on being a fool, you bloody well ought to pay for your folly every now and again.”
“Catling’s a brave soldier,” Thisbe said. “I’d rather have him hale so he can shoot at the southrons than laid up with a bad leg.”
“You’re too kind and gentle for your own good,” Gremio said. Thisbe’s clean-shaven cheeks made his flush easy to see. Gremio kicked at the mucky ground. Calling a sergeant gentle was bound to embarrass him before the men he was supposed to lead.
“Where in the seven hells are we?” somebody asked. Considering the weather and the landscape, the question seemed more than usually apt.
Precise as always, Gremio answered, “We’re somewhere between Fort Worthless and Konigsburg. Fort Worthless is one of those places that live up to their names ninety-nine years and eleven months a century, but this is its month to shine. We’ve got to keep the stinking southrons from getting there till the army finishes pulling out of Whole Mackerel.”
“When the southrons find themselves a real wizard, you know the war isn’t what we expected when we started fighting it,” Thisbe said.
“That’s so,” Gremio agreed, “but a real wizard isn’t always just what you want. We had Thraxton the Braggart, for instance, but I’m just as well pleased he’s gone off to Nonesuch. He cost us the battle of Proselytizers’ Rise.”
“He cost us that battle a couple of different ways,” Thisbe said. “It wasn’t just that he botched the spell, though that was bad enough. But he sent James of Broadpath off to the southwest to attack Wesleyton while the southrons in Rising Rock were building up their strength. What sort of fool would do such a thing?”