General Guildenstern shouted and cursed and waved his sword. “Rally, boys!” he cried, again and again. “Rally! We can lick these sons of bitches!”
Men around him cheered and waved their gray hats. Here and there, a few of them would rally, for a little while. As soon as he rode out of earshot and tried to encourage other soldiers, they would resume their retreat. He might as well have been trying to hold back the waters of the Franklin River. The army kept slipping through his fingers.
“We are ruined,” he said to General Alexander. “Ruined, I tell you. Do you hear me? Ruined!”
Had Alexander been a proper courtier, he would have reassured Guildenstern and tried to make him believe everything would turn out all right. In the midst of the present disaster, that would have taken some doing, but he would have tried. He was just a soldier, though, and all he said was, “Yes, sir.”
Baron Guildenstern? Count Guildenstern? Duke Guildenstern, who’d ended the traitors’ rebellion? All that had seemed possible. Now he had to hope he wouldn’t end up Colonel Guildenstern, or perhaps even Sergeant Guildenstern.
Brigadier Alexander pointed over to the west. “Look, sir,” he said. “There’s Brigadier Thom.”
“Wonderful,” Guildenstern said sourly. “Now I know everything’s gone to the devils.”
Alexander waved. The first thing Brigadier Thom did on seeing him was grab for his sword. Then he must have realized Alexander and Guildenstern weren’t enemies, for he waved back and rode his unicorn toward them. A look of stunned astonishment was on his face. “By the Lion God’s claws, what happened, sir?” he asked Guildenstern.
While the general commanding wrestled with that question, Brigadier Alexander answered, “Thraxton the Braggart’s magecraft broke through our sorcerers’ screen and fuddled General Guildenstern’s wits for a moment. He pulled some men out of the line to send them on to Doubting George, and the gods-cursed traitors swarmed into the gap.”
“Didn’t they just!” Thom exclaimed.
Guildenstern wondered how well that explanation would sit with King Avram. It was, as best he could piece things together, the absolute truth. Colonel Phineas would testify to it. The failure hadn’t been his fault; Thraxton’s spell had left him less than himself, ripe to make a mistake at the worst possible time.
All true. So what? Guildenstern wondered. In the war against King Geoffrey and the northerners who followed him, the only thing that really mattered to Avram was whether the battle was won or lost. This one was lost, lost beyond hope of repair. And who had been in command when it was lost? Guildenstern knew the answer to that. King Avram would know it, too.
“What do we do now, sir?” Thom asked.
“Pull the pieces together as best we can,” Guildenstern replied. “Then we either find somewhere hereabouts to make a stand against the traitors or, that failing, we fall back on Rising Rock. I don’t see what other choices we’ve got. If you have a better notion, I’d be glad to hear it.”
“No, sir. Sorry, sir. Wish I did, sir.” Thom pointed east. “What’s happening over at Doubting George’s end of the line?”
“Nothing good,” Guildenstern said. “I got a request for more men from him just as things were going to the seven hells around here.”
“If he gives way, too, I don’t know how this army is going to make it back to Rising Rock,” Thom said.
“We will,” Guildenstern said. “We have to.” But he didn’t know how they would do it, either. He shouted, “Rally!” to the soldiers all around him. They gave him a cheer, those who still wore hats waved them-and they went right on retreating.
“They’ve given everything they have to give, these past couple of days,” Brigadier Thom said. “I don’t think we’ll get any more, not today, not when-” He broke off, not quite soon enough.
Not when you made a hash of the battle. That was what he’d started to say, that or something close enough to it to make no difference. He didn’t care that Thraxton the Braggart’s sorcery had made Guildenstern blunder. All he cared about was what had happened. If that was an omen for Guildenstern’s career, it wasn’t a good one.
Behind Guildenstern, the northerners kept roaring out their triumph. Around him and ahead of him, the men from his own army tramped back toward the southeast. They might fight to try to save their own lives. They weren’t going to fight to try to save the army.
“My gods!” Guildenstern exclaimed when he and Alexander and Thom rode into a little town. “This is Rossburgh! They’ve driven us back a good five miles.”
Some few of his men had formed a line in front of Rossburgh, but General Guildenstern didn’t think it would hold, not if Thraxton’s army hit it hard-and they would, before long. He was only too glumly certain of that.
“General Guildenstern!” somebody called.
Automatically, Guildenstern waved. “Here I am.”
As the officer who’d recognized him rode toward him on the crowded, narrow, dusty streets of Rossburgh, Brigadier Thom and Brigadier Alexander let out soft exclamations of dismay. “By the Lion God, that’s Brigadier Negley,” Thom said.
And so it was. “What’s he doing here?” Guildenstern demanded, as if either Thom or Alexander could have told him that. Guildenstern pointed to Negley. “Why aren’t you with Lieutenant General George?”
“I wish I were, sir, but my soldiers got swept away, along with what looks like everything else farther west,” Negley answered, which held an unpleasant amount of truth. He went on, “I could have retreated up onto Merkle’s Hill, but I went with them instead, to try to get them to rally.” He grimaced and waved his hand. “You see how much luck I had.”
“What of Doubting George?” Guildenstern asked. “You say he was still making a stand on Merkle’s Hill? Do you think he can hold?” He found himself tensing as he waited for Negley’s reply.
The brigadier of volunteers-the ex-horticulturalist-shrugged. “Sir, I hope he can, but I have no great faith in it. With the rest of the army broken, the traitors will surely rain their hardest blows on him now.”
He made altogether too much sense. Guildenstern sighed. “The gods damn Thraxton the Braggart to the seven hells for what he’s done to this kingdom today. What can we do now?”
“I see only one thing, sir,” Brigadier Negley said. “We have to do all we can to hold Rising Rock. Without it, Thraxton cannot be said to have truly gained anything from this campaign, despite our piteous overthrow.”
Guildenstern looked from one of his brigadiers to the next. “Does anyone think we can hold this side of Rising Rock?” They eyed one another and then, one by one, shook their heads. Guildenstern didn’t think so, either. He’d hoped his brigadiers would convince him he was wrong. No such luck. He sighed and scowled and cursed. None of that did any good at all. Having done it, he said, “Do you think we have any choice, then, but retreating to Rising Rock and doing our best to hold off the traitors there?”
Again, the three brigadiers looked at one another. Again, they shook their heads. Brigadier Negley said, “Getting our hands on Rising Rock was the main reason we took on this campaign. If we can hold it, we’ve still accomplished a good deal.”
“That’s true, by the gods,” Guildenstern said. It made him feel, if not good, then better than he had. He shouted for a trumpeter. After a while, one came up and saluted. “Sound retreat,” Guildenstern told him. “We’re going back to Rising Rock.” As the mournful notes rang out, he and Brigadiers Negley, Alexander, and Thom turned their unicorns to the southeast and rode off, leaving the field in the hands of Thraxton the Braggart and the northerners.
“Can we hold on, sir?” Colonel Andy asked Doubting George. George’s aide-de-camp was not a man to give in to panic, but, with the way things looked on Merkle’s Hill, George could hardly blame him for worrying.