“What are your plans for tomorrow?” Hesmucet asked.
“Sir, unless you order me to do something else, I’m going to push on toward Marthasville,” George replied. “The deeper into Joseph the Gamecock’s rear I get, the harder the time he’ll have doing anything about me.”
“That’s good,” Hesmucet said. “That’s very good. It’s just what I’d do in your spot.” He grinned. It made him look surprisingly boyish. “And if that doesn’t prove it’s good, I don’t know what would. Anything else?”
“No, sir,” Doubting George said.
“All right, then.” General Hesmucet nodded to someone George couldn’t see: his scryer, for the crystal ball suddenly became just a ball of glass. George got up, stretched, and nodded. He knew what he was supposed to do, he knew what he had to do, and he thought he could do it. For a soldier, that was a good feeling.
But George didn’t have such a good feeling the next morning. The northerners still had no footsoldiers on this side of the Hoocheecoochee to oppose his army’s progress, but enough unicorn-riders were in the neighborhood to make real nuisances of themselves. They swarmed round the southron footsoldiers like the blond nomads on the steppes far to the east of the Great River, now and then darting in to shoot flurries of crossbow quarrels at them.
Disciplined volleys from his men knocked a good many traitors out of the saddle, and knocked over a good many unicorns as well. The white beasts were beautiful; seeing them fall and hearing them scream as they were wounded made George wince, hardened veteran though he was. But the northerners knew they had to slow his men, and they did.
By that time, a scryer with a crystal ball or a swift-riding messenger had surely got word back to Joseph the Gamecock that the southrons were over the Hoocheecoochee and threatening, as they’d threatened so many times farther south, to finish the job of outflanking him, cutting him off from Marthasville, and destroying him. It hadn’t happened yet. This time, though… Doubting George thought. This time, we just may manage it.
“Keep pelting those unicorn-riders with your bolts,” he called to his men. “If we can get ahead of the traitors…”
But Brigadier Spinner’s unicorn-riders understood what he wanted as well as he did himself. Spinner wasn’t Ned of the Forest. A man fighting him didn’t always have to look out for an unexpected stroke from a startling direction. What false King Geoffrey’s commander of unicorn-riders did here was unsubtle and obvious. That didn’t make it ineffective.
Every time George’s men had to stop and fight made him fume and curse. “Gods damn it,” he growled, “they’re liable to get away again.”
Joseph the Gamecock couldn’t have been more disgusted if he’d been pickled in bile. He’d known the southrons would sooner or later find a way around his position on the east bank of the Hoocheecoochee. But the report that Doubting George had crossed the river still infuriated him, for he hadn’t expected it to happen nearly as soon as this.
For a couple of hours after the first word came in that his right flank had been turned, he’d done his best to believe it was a mistake, a scout seeing what he feared he would see regardless of whether or not it was really there. But no such luck. Men in gray really had crossed the river, and he would have to respond or see the Army of Franklin smashed between hammer and anvil.
Men in blue fell back to the western bank of the river, marching over the foot bridges his miles of field fortifications had protected. Glideway carpets transported siege engines and other essentials over yet another bridge. The retreat went as smoothly as such things could. Why not? Joseph thought bitterly. We’ve had practice falling back.
When the last man and the last glideway carpet had come over the river, Joseph turned to his mages and spoke in harsh tones: “All right, gods damn it, now make sure the southrons can’t follow hard on our heels.”
“Yes, sir,” the mages chorused, and began to incant. The bridge over which the glideway carpets had passed was the first to feel their sorcery. Flames licked along the timbers supporting it. With a rending crash, it fell into the Hoocheecoochee. The spell made the timbers keep burning till they were altogether consumed, even though they were wet.
The foot bridges went next. Their timbers burned as thoroughly as had those of the glideway bridge. Those timbers rested on stone piers. The magic shook the piers back to their constituent stones and scattered those along the bottom of the river.
“That seems to have worked well enough,” Joseph said grudgingly.
“Yes, sir,” one of the mages replied. “The enemy won’t be able to use the bridges, and he’ll be hard pressed to get across the river at all.”
“He’s already across the river, gods damn him,” Joseph the Gamecock snapped. “Do you think we’d be doing this if he weren’t?”
“What I meant, sir, was-”
Joseph cut off the mage (if he’d had sword in hand, he might have used that, too). “I don’t care what you meant. Why didn’t any of you wonderful wizards warn me this was about to happen?”
“We aren’t infallible, sir,” the sorcerer said stiffly.
“Really? I never would have noticed,” Joseph the Gamecock said. The wizard winced and turned away.
Mounting his unicorn, Joseph rode up toward the head of the Army of Franklin. A few men snarled at him as he went by. He didn’t blame them. They were free Detinans speaking their mind. Had he been in their place, he would have snarled at the commanding general, too.
Another unicorn came up alongside of his after he reached the front of the column. He made himself turn his head. When he saw who’d joined him, he breathed a silent sigh of relief: it was Roast-Beef William, not Lieutenant General Bell. Instead of carping at him for retreating again, William only asked, “What are we going to do now, sir?”
“What we’ve been doing all along: try to hold the southrons out of Marthasville,” Joseph answered. “What hasn’t change. Why hasn’t changed. How…” He cursed under his breath. “How just got harder.”
“Yes, sir,” Roast-Beef William said. “The Hoocheecoochee was the last real line we had defending the city.”
“I haven’t given up hope,” Joseph said stubbornly. “I don’t intend to, either. Marthasville has a solid set of forts around it, and there’s high ground north of Goober Creek. The southrons will have to cross the creek before they attack the city. When they do, I intend to hit them in the flank. It’ll be the first decent chance I’ve had to attack since Fat Mama, and I don’t intend to let Bell take this one away from me.”
Roast-Beef William stroked his beard. “A bold plan, sir-no doubt of that. But have we got enough men to put garrisons into the forts around Marthasville and to attack the southrons at the same time? They outnumber us badly as things are.”
“You needn’t remind me of that,” Joseph the Gamecock said bitterly. “I think the southrons sow dragons’ teeth and reap soldiers, the way the Mad Cuss did in the legend. But I don’t intend to use the Army of Franklin to hold the forts.”
“What then, sir?” William asked, raising bushy eyebrows. “Shall we sow dragons’ teeth of our own, or make unicorn-riders of ghosts and shadows?”
“Satrap Brown commands a militia,” Joseph said. “The son of a bitch doesn’t like me any too bloody well, and I mislike him, too, but I still have the power to impress those men directly into King Geoffrey’s service. They’ve spent the whole stinking war looking precious in their pretty uniforms and scratching their backsides. Now it’s time to find out if they can fight even a little bit.”