“Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir,” the luckless company commander said through clenched teeth. Colonel Florizel would never have used him so; Colonel Florizel was a true northern gentleman. Major Thersites, as far as Ormerod could see, was a first-class son of a bitch. But, with Florizel wounded, he was also the regimental commander, and the company commanders had to put up with him.
“Let’s go,” Thersites said. Off went the regiment, along with several others from the slopes of Sentry Peak. Ormerod wondered if they would have enough men to shift the southrons. He couldn’t do anything about that except wonder. When he wondered out loud, Gremio said, “They’ve been getting plenty of reinforcements. Where are our fresh troops coming out of the east? Or anywhere else, for that matter?”
“Haven’t seen ’em,” Ormerod answered, just as the regiment began to move. He raised his voice: “Come on, men! We can do it! Forward-march!” What a liar I’m turning into, he thought, not having the faintest idea whether they could do it or not.
“We should have come this way weeks ago,” Gremio said. “If we had, we really could have starved the southrons out.”
“What did I tell you before?” Ormerod asked.
“If you want to report me to Thraxton the Braggart, go right ahead,” Gremio said. “He’s sent away better officers than the ones he’s kept, with the possible exception of Leonidas the Priest.”
Ormerod didn’t want to report him to Count Thraxton. For one thing, he’d have to report him through Major Thersites, and Thersites said worse things about Thraxton than Gremio ever had. For another, Ormerod wanted nothing more than to close with the southrons and to drive them out of the north. Here he was, finally getting his chance. He just shook his head and kept marching.
It wasn’t going to be easy. The closer he got to the southrons’ positions, the more obvious that became. Avram’s men were taking advantage of every fence and clump of trees and tiny hillock they could. Whoever was in charge of them plainly knew his business.
And they had unicorn-riders, too, men who galloped out, shot their crossbows at the advancing northerners, and then hurried away before anything very much could happen to them. It was like getting stung by gnats, except that some of the stings from these gnats killed.
“Where’s Ned of the Forest when we really need him?” Lieutenant Gremio said.
“Off to the Great River,” Ormerod answered. Gremio’s expression was eloquent.
As the northern force approached the enemy line, engines opened up on them. The engines opened up a little too soon, as a matter of fact, almost all the stones and bursting firepots falling short. Ormerod felt better to see that: it was nice to know the southrons could make mistakes, too.
In a great voice, Major Thersites shouted, “Form line of battle!”
“Form line of battle!” Ormerod echoed to his men. Veterans, they knew how to go quickly from column into line, where raw troops would have been all too likely to make a hash of the job. And, he saw, they would have a good, solid screen of pikemen in front of them. That would help. If anything helped, that would help.
Someone off to one side winded a horn. Ormerod knew the horn calls, too. “Forward!” he shouted, along with the other officers in the force James of Broadpath had collected. Forward the men went, roaring like lions with the northern battle cry that often seemed worth a couple of regiments all by itself.
But the southrons were not inclined to give up without a fight the positions they’d taken. Some of their engines had started shooting a little too soon. That had let Geoffrey’s men form their battle line without harassment. But as that battle line rolled toward the enemy, more stones and bursting firepots took their toll. A couple of repeating crossbows began scything down soldiers in blue.
When they got here, they brought everything they needed to stay, Ormerod thought. I wish we were able to do that more often.
Wishing, as usual, did him very little good. All he could do was trot forward, roaring at the top of his lungs and urging his men on. The sooner they closed with the southrons, the sooner the engines wouldn’t matter any more. And the enemy didn’t have enough engines to stop the charge cold-he gauged such things with the practiced eye of a man who’d gone toward a good many strongly held positions.
Now he was close enough to see individual southron soldiers-and they were close enough to start shooting at his comrades and him. A few of them had yellow hair under their gray caps. Was one of them Rollant, his runaway serf? I should have killed him, back there near the River of Death.
A few field engines had come along with the northerners’ hastily mustered force. A stone landed among the southrons, and suddenly there was a gap, three men wide, in their line. More soldiers in baggy gray pantaloons strode forward to fill it.
With a buzz like that from the wings of an angry hummingbird, a crossbow quarrel zipped past his head. They started shooting, too, shooting as they advanced. The waiting southrons were bound to be more accurate, but some of the bolts from the advancing northerners struck home, too. A gray-clad soldier threw up his hands and pitched over backwards.
Ormerod yanked his sword from its scabbard. Before long, this work would be hand to hand. “King Geoffrey!” he yelled, and let out another roar.
“King Avram!” the southrons shouted. That only made Ormerod more furious. That they should want to be ruled by someone who would twist the ancient laws and customs of Detina all out of shape was bad enough in and of itself. That they should want to force Avram’s rule on the part of Detina which wanted nothing to do with him was much, much worse, at least to Ormerod’s eyes.
“Provincial prerogative!” he cried.
“Freedom!” the southrons yelled back.
“How is it freedom when you want to take my gods-damned serfs off my gods-damned land?” Ormerod demanded. He didn’t get an answer to that, or at least not a carefully reasoned one. His regiment and the southrons collided, and the argument between them went on at a level much more basic than words.
He stabbed a southron in the shoulder. The fellow howled like a wolf and twisted away, blood darkening his tunic. The men of Ormerod’s regiment and the southrons pounded away at one another with shortswords and with crossbows swung club-fashion. They kicked and bit and punched and wrestled and cursed one another as they grappled.
“Come on, boys!” Ormerod yelled. “We can do it!”
But more southrons, some armed with crossbows, others with pikes, came up to help hold back King Geoffrey’s men. More northerners came forward, too, but not so many: for one thing, the southrons seemed to have more men on the spot, and, for another, their engines did a better job of hindering the advance of the northern reinforcements.
Back and forth the fight swayed. If the northerners could drive their foes back to and over the pontoon bridge, the southrons’ supply route to the east would break once more. If not… Ormerod preferred not to think about if not. All he thought of was the man just ahead of him and, after that son of a bitch fell to his sword, the next closest southron. He stormed past the body of the soldier he’d just slain, shouting, “King Geoffrey! Provincial prerogative forever!”
Then, to his horrified dismay, a new shout rose off to the flank: “Unicorn-riders! Southron unicorn-riders!”
His men and the men close by all howled in alarm. A compact group of soldiers had little trouble holding unicorns at bay, but the beasts and the warriors aboard them could be dangerous to men in loose order, especially when those men were already fighting for their lives. He saw a couple of men in Geoffrey’s blue break off their struggle with the southrons and speed toward the rear.