By the time the sun set, George’s force was almost halfway to Marthasville. He had a solidly garrisoned supply line leading back to the bridge over the Hoocheecoochee, and ordered his men to entrench around the camp they made. Once that was done, he told his scryer, “Now put me through to General Hesmucet.”
“Yes, sir,” the scryer said, and got out his crystal ball. George had already sent a runner back to the commanding general, but hadn’t spoken with him till now.
Before long, Hesmucet’s face appeared in the crystal ball. “Congratulations, Lieutenant General!” he said heartily. “You’ve stolen a march on Joseph the Gamecock-and you’ve stolen one on Major Alva, too.”
“That did occur to me, yes,” George said with a smile. “How’s he taking it?”
“He’s disappointed,” Hesmucet answered. “He was shaping what would have been a really magnificent masking spell, and now we don’t need it. He’ll just have to learn to live with it-part of growing up, you might say.”
“Yes, sir.” Doubting George hadn’t thought Hesmucet would be angry with him for moving before the planned moment, but was glad to be proved right. Hesmucet put success above method, as any good soldier did. George said, “We’re over the last barrier in front of Marthasville now.”
“So we are,” the general commanding agreed. “And it will be interesting to see what Joseph the Gamecock does about it.”
“He can’t very well stay on that side of the river,” George said. “If he does, we take the city and we smash up his army.”
“We’re liable to do all that even if he pulls back,” Hesmucet replied. “You’ve put him in a very nasty position, very nasty indeed. Congratulations, Lieutenant General.”
“Thank you, sir,” George said. “I was wondering what in the hells I would do if I were Joseph the Gamecock. By all the gods, I’ve got no good answers. I’d sure rather be where I am than where he is.”
“Don’t blame you a bit,” Hesmucet said. “But he’s kept his force in being. He can still hurt you-he can still hurt all of us-if he gets the chance. We can’t afford to be careless, not now.”
“Not ever,” Doubting George said.
“No, not ever.” Hesmucet leaned forward, so that he seemed about to step out of the crystal ball and sit down beside George. “Can I tell you a little secret?”
“Sir, you’re the one who’s in charge here,” George answered. “Only you know whether you can or not-or maybe I ought to say, whether you should or not.”
“Well, I’m going to, gods damn it.” Hesmucet bared his teeth in a fierce grin. “I’m glad you’re the one who found the way over the Hoocheecoochee, and not, say, Fighting Joseph.”
“I can’t imagine why, sir,” George said, deadpan. Both officers laughed. Doubting George had no trouble imagining how puffed-up and full of himself Fighting Joseph would have been had he got across the river ahead of every other southron officer. He would have started agitating for command over the whole force, and would have slandered General Hesmucet, Lieutenant General George, and Brigadier James the Bird’s Eye to anyone who would listen. To make sure people listened, Fighting Joseph would have pounded a drum and played a trumpet, too.
“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.