“He’ll fight hard,” Florizel said now, and with that Gremio could not disagree. The colonel went on, “As long as we’re still on this side of the Hoocheecoochee, things aren’t too bad. We’ve still got us and the river between the southrons and Marthasville, and we’ve got to keep them out of there.”
“Er-yes.” Gremio did his best to keep from showing how astonished he was. If the ever-hopeful Florizel couldn’t paint any brighter picture than that, the Army of Franklin was in less than the best of shape.
Florizel set a hand on his shoulder. “The gods may yet decide to smile on us, even if the loss of Leonidas was a heavy blow. We should all try to deserve well of them, to show them we deserve to be the ones they choose in this fierce and remorseless struggle. I think we can do that. I pray we can.”
“May it be so.” Gremio hoped the gods would favor the north, too. In his glummer moments, he feared nothing short of that would suffice to save Geoffrey’s kingdom from Avram’s onslaught. The southrons might have been a python, squeezing the life out of the north an inch at a time.
“These are very strong works,” Florizel said. “The enemy will have a hells of a time trying to go through us.”
“Yes, sir,” Gremio agreed. “What worries me, though, is whether he can go around us instead. That would be just as bad.”
“I suppose it might, but I don’t think it will happen,” Florizel said. “Brigadier Spinner’s patrols ride up and down the Hoocheecoochee.”
“I wish we had Ned of the Forest here,” Gremio said, not for the first time.
“He’s a ruffian, a man of no breeding,” Earl Florizel said.
A man of no breeding himself, Gremio replied, “He’s also the best commander of unicorn-riders King Geoffrey has who’s still breathing. Which carries the greater weight?”
Florizel seriously thought that over. At last, reluctantly, he nodded. “Ned is a very fine man on the back of a unicorn-which makes him no less of a ruffian, be it noted.”
“Yes, sir,” Gremio said dutifully. “Still, I’m glad he’s on our side.”
“So am I, although I still wish we didn’t have to resort to such tools,” the regimental commander said.
“It’s a war, sir,” Gremio said. “If it weren’t for the fighting, we’d all be doing something else.” Florizel also nodded at that, but he didn’t look happy about it. To a Detinan noble, war was the normal state of affairs, peace the aberration. The world didn’t really work that way, but nobles were trained to think it did. They have other things wrong with them, too, Gremio thought.
From the hills above the valley of the Hoocheecoochee River, General Hesmucet could look down on Joseph the Gamecock’s army and spy out everything the enemy did even as he did it. Hesmucet relished that. The northerners had looked down on his lines from their position atop Commissioner Mountain, and he was sure that had cost him men.
When Joseph halted the bulk of his army on the eastern bank of the Hoocheecoochee, Hesmucet had been surprised. Only a very bold general or a very foolhardy one was likely to offer battle with his back to a sizable stream. Examining the works the northerners occupied, however, convinced Hesmucet that Joseph was neither the one nor the other. He had sound defenses there.
Earlier in the campaign, Hesmucet might have tried to bull his way past those defenses, in the hope of breaking through and wrecking the traitors’ army. But he’d tried that at Commissioner Mountain, and it hadn’t worked. That made him hesitate now. So did the strength of the entrenchments in which the northerners sheltered.
Joseph’s men held a line about six miles long. Hesmucet began sending detachments of Marble Bill’s unicorn-riders out beyond their lines, in the hope of getting down to the river and forcing a crossing. If my men get over the Hoocheecoochee, Joseph will have to retreat in a hurry, he thought hungrily. Then he’s mine.
But the enemy commander could see that as well as he could. Blue-uniformed unicorn-riders were numerous and fierce. Marble Bill’s men came back again and again without ever reaching the banks of the Hoocheecoochee.
“Anyone would think they had some idea of what we’ve got in mind,” Lieutenant General George said when Hesmucet cursed about the unicorn-riders’ misfortunes.
“D’you think so?” Fighting Joseph asked. Hesmucet winced. Doubting George had been sardonic. Fighting Joseph meant it. Time and again, Hesmucet had seen that courage and brains too often had only a nodding acquaintance.
“It is a possibility, you know,” George said. “Some folk do seek to study what the foe might be up to. That often saves you from nasty surprises, or so they say.”
“Not a bad notion.” By the way Fighting Joseph spoke, the said notion plainly was entering his handsome head for the first time. By his record, that struck Hesmucet as all too likely.
“We’ll keep moving, that’s all,” he said. “As long as we are moving, something good may happen. If we pull into a shell, the way turtles do, we’ll never get anywhere, and that’s as plain as the nose on my face.”
“Even as plain as the nose on mine,” said Doubting George, who owned one of formidable proportions.
“The gods help those who help themselves,” Fighting Joseph agreed. Hesmucet wished he wouldn’t have done so with a cliche, and then wished for all the gold in the Golden Province far to the east while he was at it.
“Maybe,” James the Bird’s Eye said, “we could give ourselves a better chance of reaching the river with magic.” For a southron to rely on wizardry was out of the ordinary in this war, but Major Alva was no ordinary southron mage.
“Not a bad notion,” Hesmucet agreed. “I will take that up with our sorcerers.” By that, he meant he would take it up with Major Alva, and all the wing commanders understood as much. The rest of the mages in the army, from Colonel Phineas on down, came close to matching the youngster only if all their efforts were added together. Looking from one officer to another, Hesmucet asked, “Anything else? Anyone think we have a real chance of going through Joseph the Gamecock’s position instead of around it?”
Nobody said anything, not even Fighting Joseph, who was much given to overcoming obstacles by charging straight at them and smashing them flat with his hard head. Hesmucet didn’t know whether to be relieved at the show of good sense or sorry he didn’t get the chance to squelch his annoying subordinate.
With a small shrug, he said, “Dismissed.” As the generals trooped away, he called for a runner and told him, “Fetch me Major Alva. Don’t just tell him I want him and then leave. Bring him back here yourself.”
“Yes, sir.” The soldier grinned; he’d been one of Hesmucet’s runners for some little while now. “If I don’t bring him, he’s liable to forget to come at all, isn’t he? He’ll just stand there thinking fancy thoughts.”
“He doesn’t know a whole lot about subordination,” Hesmucet agreed wryly. Alva knows even less about subordination than Fighting Joseph does, he thought. Fighting Joseph understands what he’s supposed to do; he just doesn’t do it. To Alva, the whole idea is bizarre. That thought led to another: if he’s not the ultimate free Detinan, who in the seven hells is?
Off went the runner. He returned in due course, Alva in tow. The mage did remember to salute when he came up to Hesmucet, and seemed proud of himself for remembering. “You wanted me, uh, sir?” he said.
“That’s right,” the commanding general answered. He gave Alva more leeway than he did to any other soldier in the army. Alva had earned more than any other soldier had. Hesmucet went on, “Can you work out some sort of masking spell that will let Marble Bill’s unicorn-riders get down to the Hoocheecoochee without the traitors’ finding out about it till too late?”
Major Alva gave him a bright smile. “Funny you should ask me that, sir. Marble Bill asked the very same thing a couple of days ago.”