“Stand!” “Hold!” “Shoot back, gods damn you!” the traitors’ officers howled. They might as well have told the Hoocheecoochee River to quit flowing. They could give all the orders they liked, but the men in blue paid them no attention. Having decided they couldn’t win the fight against the southrons, they seemed to have decided all hope was lost, and stampeded back toward Jonestown.
Whooping with glee, the southrons pursued. Rollant ran right past a lieutenant from the Army of Franklin who was still shouting curses after his departed soldiers. Afterwards, the blond wondered whether his comrades had captured the traitor or simply slain him. He never found out.
So great was the northerners’ fear, they made no serious stand in the trench lines their serfs had dug. A few of them paused, turned, and shot and the oncoming southrons, but most simply kept going. Escape was all they had in mind as they pelted back toward the hamlet of Jonestown.
“By the Lion God’s sacred eyeteeth,” Lieutenant Griff said in dazed tones, “I do believe we may bag them all.”
“May it be so, sir,” Rollant said. He waved the standard again and again. Cheers answered him. The southrons had no war cry to match the northern roar. That cry put fear in the heart of any man who heard it. But the shouts that burst from the throats of Doubting George’s men as they watched the enemy flee before them were ferocious enough for all ordinary use.
When the traitors reached the outskirts of Jonestown, they did manage a rally of sorts. Rollant soon saw why: they were fighting to hold the southrons away from the glideway carpets that were even then carrying men in blue south out of the battle and back toward Marthasville.
“Where are our catapults?” Rollant shouted. Most of the heavy engines, of course, were back by Marthasville, too, knocking the city down around the ears of its inhabitants and defenders. But some lighter ones had come north with the crossbowmen and pikemen. Now they had a target about which the men who served them could usually but dream. Land a few firepots on those fleeing carpets and no small part of the Army of Franklin’s strength would go up in smoke.
Those would be men roasting on the carpets, of course. Rollant did his best not to think about that. As long as they were only targets in his mind, he wouldn’t have to dwell on what their torment meant. By reckoning him and his kind only serfs, they’d played the identical game for centuries.
When the catapults did arrive, though, they pelted the rear guard in Jonestown, not the departing carpets, most of which were out of range by then. The traitors had engines of their own in the town, and showed no hesitation about bombarding the southrons. After Rollant saw a soldier from his regiment turned to a running, burning, shrieking torch, he stopped worrying about the rights and wrongs of war. He was in it, and beating down the enemy came before everything else.
Doubting George’s men didn’t quite manage to bag all the traitors. The rear guard fought skillfully and stubbornly, and managed to withdraw south toward Marthasville in good order. They did know their business, no doubt of that. The war would have been much easier were they ignorant.
Somehow, even the partial failure seemed not to matter so much. “We’ve got the glideway,” Rollant said as the sun set in blood ahead of him.
“We didn’t finish the traitors’ army.” That was Smitty, sounding as indignant as if he were Marshal Bart.
“Do you know what?” Rollant said.
Smitty shook his head. “No. What, your Corporalship with all the answers, sir?”
Rollant snorted. “You’re impossible. But I’ll tell you what anyhow: we’re getting to where it doesn’t matter whether we did or not. We’ve got the glideway line-the lines, I should say. The rest will take care of itself.”
Behind Captain Gremio, more firepots crashed into Marthasville. He could hear their hateful bursts. The breeze was out of the west, too, so he could smell the smoke from the burning city. He would have thought that, by this time, nothing much inside Marthasville would burn. He would have thought that, but he would have been wrong. Every day, the southrons started fresh fires.
They weren’t just heaving firepots into the city, either. A rending crash told of a great stone striking home. A soldier from his company said, “There goes somebody’s house to hells and gone.”
The fellow was bound to be right. When one of those heavy stones came down on something, whatever it hit broke. And if you don’t believe me, ask what’s left of Leonidas the Priest, Gremio thought with funeral-pyre humor.
He was tempted to use the joke out loud. Before he could, Colonel Florizel called, “Come on, men. Move up. The attack will go in in a few minutes.” He chuckled to himself. “ `Go in’ is right, isn’t it, when we’re trying to take the Sweet One’s shrine away from the southrons? May she give them all a dose of the clap.” He extended the middle finger of his right hand in the usual Detinan invocation of the goddess of love. A lot of troopers imitated the gesture. So did Gremio.
“Be ready. We have to be strong and fierce in the field.” Sergeant Thisbe spoke as if Florizel hadn’t. “If we don’t lick the southrons here, this army is in a lot of trouble. We can do it.”
“That’s right,” Gremio said. “We can-and we’ve got to. If we can take away the Sweet One’s shrine and the high ground around it, we cut off the wing that’s grabbed our glideway lines east to Dothan and up to the northern part of this province. Then we can break the stranglehold they’re putting on us and on Marthasville.”
His sword was loose in its sheath. He went forward toward the shrine as if sure of victory. In his heart, he was anything but. The Army of Franklin had lost south of Marthasville. It had lost west of Marthasville. What was left of Roast-Beef William’s wing had come scurrying back to Marthasville from Jonestown in the north with its tail between its legs. And now Lieutenant General Bell was ordering this attack east of the city.
Why not? Gremio thought acidulously. We’ve failed in the other three directions. I supposeBell’s trying for a clean sweep. That wasn’t fair. Gremio knew as much. He was past caring. He wished Bell had remained a wing commander. He was up to that job. Army commander? On the face of things, that seemed beyond him-as far beyond him as Mount Panamgam, home of the gods, was beyond the sky.
Colonel Florizel still thought the sun god shone on Bell day and night. As far as Florizel was concerned, fighting was all that mattered. Whether you won or lost seemed much less important to him. Gremio had seen too much combat in the lawcourts and on the field to have much sympathy for that point of view.
Pikemen formed up in front of the northern crossbowmen. Horns blared. Along with the rest of the officers in the attack, Gremio shouted, “Forward!” He waved his sword. He wouldn’t lead his men anywhere he wouldn’t go himself.
“That’s the spirit!” Colonel Florizel said, and he brandished his own blade. A moment later, he turned to bawl something at another of his captains. He wasn’t keeping a special eye on Gremio any more. I did my best to get myself killed when we fought by Goober Creek, Gremio thought. I didn’t quite manage it, but I did persuade Florizel I’m no coward-for a while, anyhow.
No one had spoken about exactly where in front of the Sweet One’s temple the southrons had their lines. Gremio concluded that was because no one knew. He wasn’t surprised. The whole war, on both sides, had gone like that, with armies blundering past each other and into each other as if their commanders were blind men. Maybe they are. It would explain some of the madness I’ve seen better than anything else I can think of.