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.”
“I don’t envy his fate,” Hesmucet said.
“Who would?” George replied. “Going out to the steppes to fight the blond savages is hard duty any time, but it’s ten times as hard when we’ve got ourselves a real war here.”
When the real war here was over, a lot of men with brevet ranks of brigadier and even lieutenant general would go back to being captains. They’d go back to chasing flea-bitten blond savages, too. Most of the time, that was what the Detinan army did. George’s own permanent rank was brigadier. He wouldn’t have to spend endless years trotting across the steppe on unicornback. He’d done plenty of that before this war. He wouldn’t be sorry not to do it again, though sitting behind a desk in Georgetown and drafting reports no one would ever read also struck him as imperfectly attractive.
Hesmucet’s thoughts had gone along a different glideway. “If you ask me,” he said, “we’re going to have to kill off all the blond nomads on the steppe. We’re stronger than they are, we can’t do anything useful with them, and they’re too stupid and too stubborn to know when they’re beaten. Once we empty the steppe of them, we can fill the land with good Detinan farmers who’ll do something useful with it.”
With a smile, Doubting George said, “You’re solving all the kingdom’s problems this morning, aren’t you, sir?”
“Gods damn it, that’s what a commanding general is for,” Hesmucet declared. To George’s relief, he was also smiling. A commanding general who took such boasts seriously was a disaster waiting to happen, as the unhappy Guildenstern could attest. Hesmucet went on, “I’ll want you to move your wing north and east, Lieutenant General, to put it in position to harry the glideway lines leading east.”
“Yes, sir,” George said. “Shall I set them in motion right away, or do I have some time to prepare first?”
“You have a few days,” Hesmucet replied. “I’m still getting all my ducks in a row now that everybody’s on this side of the Hoocheecoochee. I don’t want anything to go wrong on account of my carelessness.”
General Guildenstern would never have said anything like that. “If you worry about it, sir, it’s not likely to happen,” Doubting George said. “Tell me when you need me to be ready to move, and I will be.”
“I know,” Hesmucet said. “I can rely on you.” He nodded, touched a forefinger to the front brim of his gray felt hat in what wasn’t quite a salute, and walked away.
Doubting George stared after him. It wasn’t that the commanding general was wrong: George knew he would try to do exactly what Hesmucet required of him. But, in a lot of armies on both sides in this war, that would have been a very strange thing. Plenty of wing commanders were at their superiors’ throats, wanting to lead armies themselves. Some of them went so far as to disobey and undercut army commanders, regardless of what that did to campaigns.
Fighting Joseph would undercut Hesmucet in a heartbeat, George thought. In half a heartbeat. So why not me? The answer to that was obvious: because we’re winning by doing what we’re doing with Hesmucet in command. Fighting Joseph wouldn’t care about that. I do.
He called Colonel Andy and said, “We’re going to be moving north and east before long, to cut the glideway links with the eastern part of what Geoffrey calls his kingdom. Draft the necessary orders for the move for my approval.”
“Yes, sir,” his adjutant said. “So there’s not going to be any direct attack on Marthasville, then?”
“Not right away, anyhow,” George answered. “General Hesmucet feels we can do the traitors about as much harm by cutting these links as we could by taking the city. I think he’s right; Parthenia draws men and food from the east, and Duke Edward’s army will suffer because those supplies can’t come through.”
“I hope that’s so, sir,” Andy said. “It still seems strange to me, though, to have come all this way to Marthasville and then not to try to take the place.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt that we will try to take it,” Doubting George said. “But we can do this more easily-and, once we’ve done it, Joseph the Gamecock will have to respond in one way or another. Maybe we’ll be able to meet his army outside of its entrenchments. That would give us a better chance of licking it once for all.”
“Yes, sir,” his adjutant said again. “What shall I make the effective date of these orders? When will we be moving out?”
“I don’t know precisely, because General Hesmucet didn’t know precisely,” George replied. “Do you think we can be ready to move in three days’ time?”