“If it does open out, somebody will see us,” Rollant said. “I don’t think I want that.”
“A point,” Griff allowed. “A distinct point. I do wish we had better maps, though. They would tell us a good deal about where we are, too.”
Now Rollant nodded without reservation. He tremendously admired maps. There was something sorcerous about the way they made paper correspond to landscape. By what he’d overheard army mages saying, there was something sorcerous about them: many were made by using the law of similarity, and sorcery between map and landscape could also help guide soldiers.
Something crackled in the undergrowth to the side of the road. Lieutenant Griff snatched out his sword. “What in the hells was that?” he said, his voice breaking like a youth’s.
“An animal-I hope.” Rollant took a couple of sidling steps away from the company commander. Griff carried a sword, but he wasn’t practiced with it. Southron officers, unlike their counterparts in the traitors’ armies, for the most part weren’t nobles who’d learned swordplay from birth. They carried their weapons as much for show as for fighting-some (though not Griff) also bore crossbows, with which they were actually dangerous.
“It had better be an animal,” Griff said, still brandishing the blade in a way that made Rollant nervous. “If it’s a gods-damned northern son of a bitch, he’ll bring every traitor in the world down on us.”
Rollant wished he could have argued with that, but the lieutenant was obviously right. The standard-bearer’s head swiveled this way and that. An ambush could do gruesome things to the company, to the whole regiment. And I don’t even need a SHOOT ME! sign, Rollant thought. I’m carrying the flag. Of course they’ll try to shoot me.
He wondered whether getting promoted in exchange for making himself such a prominent target was as good a bargain as he’d thought at the time. Yes, becoming a corporal was a great honor for a blond. But could he enjoy the honor with a crossbow quarrel through his brisket? Not likely.
No yells of alarm rang out from the company ahead, nor roaring cries from northern soldiers. No bowstrings thrummed, no triggers clicked. No one yelled false King Geoffrey’s name or shouted, “Provincial prerogative forever!” Except for chirping birds and scolding squirrels, the woods remained quiet. The only sounds of men were those of footfalls on dirt.
Lieutenant Griff sheathed his sword once more. “Must have been a beast after all,” he said with no small relief.
“Yes, sir.” Rollant sounded relieved, too, not least because he no longer ran the risk of being spitted on that long, sharp blade. A crossbowman’s shortsword hung on his own left hip. He was no swordsman, either. He’d fought a real swordsman-fought his own liege lord, Baron Ormerod, in fact-in the skirmishes before the battle by the River of Death. He counted himself lucky to have escaped with his life.
A commotion came from up ahead, and a confused babble of voices. It didn’t sound like trouble, but Griff got out his sword again. The sense of the cry tore back through the regiment. What people were yelling was, “The river! The river!”
“The river!” Rollant took up the cry, too. “The river!” He surged north. He wanted to see the Hoocheecoochee with his own eyes.
There it was: slow-flowing, brown, perhaps a furlong wide, or a little more. Was it too far south to have crocodiles in it? Rollant didn’t know. He also didn’t stick a foot into the water, not wanting to find out the hard way.
“How do we get across?” Smitty asked; he’d pushed up with Rollant. “Some of us could swim it, I suppose-if there’s nothing in there waiting to get fed, I mean.”
“I was just thinking the same thing,” Rollant answered. “I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I don’t know for certain.”
“Wouldn’t want to find out by getting munched,” Smitty said.
Colonel Nahath had some very definite ideas on what to do now that they’d got down to the Hoocheecoochee. He sent a runner off to the southeast to let Doubting George know he’d done it, and then issued a series of crisp commands: “Form a defensive perimeter, men. We’re at the river. We’re going to hold the crossing. Dig in. Set up your trenches and breastworks. If the traitors want us, they’ll have to pay for us.”
“Shouldn’t we try to cross the river, sir?” somebody asked.
“We will-as soon as the artificers throw a bridge over it,” the regimental commander said. “That’s what they’re for. And when they do”-he rubbed his hands together in anticipation-“when they do, boys, it’s my considered opinion that we’ve got Joseph the Gamecock and the Army of Franklin good and cornholed. What do you think of that?”
Rollant whooped and cheered and held the company standard in the crook of his elbow so he could clap his hands. The soldiers were making enough noise to draw every traitor for half a mile around, but no northerners seemed close enough to hear. Nahath sent off another messenger, in case something happened to the first.
Dirt flew as Rollant dug and dug. Inside of an hour, a formidable defensive position took shape all around him. “Let ’em come now,” somebody said. Rollant shook his head. He wanted reinforcements to get here first. He wasn’t afraid of fighting, but he wanted to do it on his army’s best terms if he possibly could.
Hammers thudded on planks. Piledrivers drove treetrunks into the muddy bottom of the Hoocheecoochee River. Doubting George watched the bridge snake toward the northern bank. Only a few yards to go now… and the northerners still didn’t seem to realize the southron army was about to cross.
Turning to Colonel Nahath, George said, “Your regiment’s just taken a long step toward winning this war for us.”
“Good,” the man from New Eborac said. “Anybody wants to know what I think, this gods-damned war’s already gone on too long and cost too much. The sooner we get it over and done with, the better off everybody will be.”
“Can’t argue with a single word of that, Colonel, and I don’t intend to try,” George said. He peered toward the north bank of the river. “I wish those engineers would hurry. How long can our luck hold?” Back at General Hesmucet’s headquarters, clever Major Alva was probably gnashing his teeth right now. The southrons had found a way to go over the Hoocheecoochee even without his masking spell.
No sooner were the words out of George’s mouth than an artificer came pelting back across the bridge and said, “Sir, it’s finished. Would you like to be the first man to cross to the far bank?”
Doubting George would have liked nothing better. But the northern courtesy with which he’d been raised made him shake his head. “Colonel Nahath deserves the honor,” he replied. “Without him, it wouldn’t be possible.”
“Thank you, sir,” Nahath said. “You’re a gentleman.”
“Go on,” George said with a smile more or less sincere. “Go on, and be quick, before I change my mind.”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you did,” Colonel Nahath said, but that didn’t stop him from hurrying across the bridge, his bootheels thudding on the planks. As soon as he got to the end of the timbers, he leaped high in the air and came down with both feet on the ground on the north bank of the Hoocheecoochee. He turned and waved to Doubting George.
After waving back, the lieutenant general hurried across the bridge himself. He’d given Nahath the privilege of going first, but that didn’t mean he despised going second. The ground under his feet on the far bank of the river felt no different from that on the side he’d just left. It felt no different, but it was, and he knew it.
So did Nahath. “Let’s push on toward Marthasville, sir,” he said.
“We will.” With a grin, George added, “Or did you mean just the two of us?”
“I’m ready.” Nahath grinned, too. By the way his narrow face had to twist to accommodate the expression, it didn’t alight there very often. He waved toward the city. “Doesn’t look like there’s anybody in the way right now to stop us.”