Rollant knew that was so, but couldn’t have proved it himself. He couldn’t see the front of the column or the rear, and he couldn’t see very far off to the sides. That was partly because Nahath’s regiment was in the middle of the long file of men in gray and partly because of the choking clouds of red dust the men in front of him had already kicked up. The dust got in his eyes. It got in his nose and made him sneeze. It got in his mouth, leaving his teeth and tongue coated in grit. It turned his tunic and pantaloons a color halfway between rust and blood. It turned his skin the same shade, except where rills of sweat ran through and showed what color he was supposed to be.
Lieutenant Griff looked as much like a man made of red dust as did Rollant. When he spat, his spittle was brick-red. He was sweating even harder than Rollant, but was pretty red under the sweat, too. “Lion God’s tail tuft, it’s hot,” he said. “How does anybody stand this horrible weather year after year?”
“Sir, when I first came down to New Eborac from Palmetto Province, I thought I’d freeze to death every winter,” Rollant answered. “It’s all what you’re used to, I expect.” He’d done harder work than marching in hotter, stickier weather than this; Karlsburg took a back seat to nobody for dreadful summers.
“Gods-damned bugs.” Griff slapped at himself, but did nothing except raise a puff of dust from his tunic. “This is a horrible place.”
“Looks like pretty good farming country to me, sir, you don’t mind my saying so.” Rollant had had to learn how to contradict Detinans. As a serf in Palmetto Province, he never would have dared do any such thing. As a carpenter in New Eborac City, he had to. If he didn’t, everyone would have cheated him unmercifully.
Even in the army, a good many Detinans didn’t want to hear a blond telling them they were wrong. Griff took it pretty well. He said, “You’d have to have a leather hide and iron muscles to do a proper job of working it.”
“Maybe.” Rollant hid a grimace. His blond ancestors hadn’t known about iron; they’d used the softer bronze instead. Detinan swords and armor and iron-headed quarrels, along with Detinan unicorns and Detinan magecraft, had cast down the blond kingdoms of the north. Even now, some blonds had a superstitious reverence for iron. Rollant didn’t, not in the top part of his mind, but he still knew what the strong metal had done to his folk.
Just then, lightning smote from a clear blue sky, striking the head of the column. Distant screams came back to Rollant’s ears. Lieutenant Griff cursed. “They’re playing the Thunderer’s game,” he growled. “And where were our mages? Asleep, or else with their thumbs up their arses.”
Northern wizards still had the edge on their southron counterparts, although King Avram’s sorcerers were at last gaining. The northerners had always had a need for man-killing magic: they had to hold their serfs in subjection. Southron mages helped manufactories make more. That didn’t prepare them to meet lightnings.
Another crash of thunder, as if the Detinan god were indeed pounding mortals here below. More screams rose from the southrons, these louder and closer. If the traitors strike us again, Rollant thought nervously, the next bolt would hit right about… here. He looked up toward the heavens, but saw only sun and sky. Mages made lightning from nothing.
Just putting one foot in front of the other and marching on wasn’t easy. Rollant made himself do it, and made himself hold the standard extra high. “Well done, Corporal!” Lieutenant Griff called. “They can’t make us afraid if we don’t let them.”
Rollant was afraid. If Griff wasn’t, Rollant thought something had to be wrong with him. I’m not showing it, he thought. Maybe he’s just not showing it, either. Men lived behind masks. No one wanted to admit he was a coward, even to himself. And so soldiers who would sooner have run away went into battle without a murmur.
When the next lightning bolt crashed down, Rollant did flinch. He couldn’t help himself. He noticed Lieutenant Griff drawing into himself, too, which helped make him feel better. This bolt didn’t land in the roadway and on the southron soldiers; it came down wide to the right, and raised a great cloud of dust and fountain of earth in a roadside field.
“Well, well,” Griff said with a certain sardonic glee. “The mages on our side really aren’t all asleep. Who would have thought it?”
More thunderbolts smote the advancing column. Almost all of them, after the first pair, missed. But one or two more did strike home. The southrons who weren’t killed outright cried their misery to the uncaring sky. Healers ran over to them to do what they could. The trouble, as Rollant knew only too well, was that healers couldn’t do very much. A wounded man was only a little more likely to die without treatment as he was after the healers got their hands on him.
Rollant wished he hadn’t thought of that. He wished he hadn’t had to think of that. Then he marched past some of the men one of those first two levinbolts had struck. The smell of charred meat was thick in the air. Had that been meat of a different sort, his mouth might have watered. As things were, his stomach heaved. He had to fight a lonely battle to keep from puking.
Not all the men the sorcerous lightning had struck were dead. A healer gave a dreadfully burned fellow laudanum. Killing pain healers could do, even if they also often killed patients.
Not far ahead lay Marthasville. Rollant couldn’t see it now, not with all the dust in the air, but he had seen it, and it remained distinct in his mind’s eye even if invisible to those of his body. He knew what it meant: a real victory over the traitors, a burning brand tossed onto the funeral pyre of their hopes. Let us into Marthasville, he thought, and how can the north call itself a kingdom?
But the southrons weren’t there yet. They’d crossed the Hoocheecoochee, the last great natural barrier before the city. Still, Joseph the Gamecock’s army remained in front of them and, as Rollant had seen, remained full of fight. Nothing in this war had come easy up till now. Rollant didn’t suppose anything would be easy from here on out, either.
Lieutenant General George said, “Well, sir, things may be starting to run our way at last.” He spoke with some bemusement; there had been more than a few times when he’d wondered if he would ever be able to say such a thing.
Hesmucet nodded. “The lovely thing about finally being over the Hoocheecoochee is that we don’t even have to attack Marthasville to make King Geoffrey pitch a fit.”
“I hadn’t thought about that when we set out on this campaign, but it’s true,” Doubting George admitted.
“Well, nobody could see just how things would go when we set out,” Hesmucet said generously. “But here we are, and we can cause the northerners almost as much trouble by cutting off their glideway traffic toward the east as we can by taking Marthasville away from them. And if they shift men to try to stop us, how can they keep on covering the city?”
“To the hells with me if I know.” Doubting George clapped his hands. “Congratulations, sir. You’ve wrapped up the whole campaign and tied a fancy ribbon around it.”
Hesmucet laughed. “Wouldn’t it be fine if things were as easy in the field as they are when we talk about them? I could wish that were so, but I know well enough that it isn’t.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” George said, and meant every word. “Generals who build castles in the air commonly have them knocked down around their ears. That’s what happened to Guildenstern by the River of Death: he was so sure the northerners were running away from us, he didn’t take the precautions he should have on the off chance he was wrong.”