When the lightnings didn’t return for some little while, the commanding general began to wonder whether Alva had altogether stifled the northern wizards despite saying he couldn’t. But then the thunderbolt crashed down once more. “Shall I send a runner to find out where that hit?” John asked. Later, he paused to wonder about the propriety of a brigadier’s asking a major-and a major by courtesy, at that-what he required. That was later. At the time, it seemed the most natural thing in the world.
And Alva nodded as if it was the most natural thing in the world, too. “Yes, sir, thanks very much,” he said. “I think I’ve done it, but I want to make sure.”
Off dashed another runner. He came back panting even harder than his predecessor had, but with an enormous grin stretched across his face. “Sir, that came down on the traitors who were moving up to reinforce their position near the farmhouse, and it tore the hells out them.”
At that news, John the Lister whooped and reached up to smack the taller wizard on the back. He almost knocked Alva over, and had to steady him to keep him from falling. “Well done, Major!” he exclaimed. “We’re holding them everywhere else, so they’re really stopped if we can stop them there.”
“Good. That’s good, uh, sir,” Alva answered. “They’ll try to break free of what I’ve done to them, you know. I don’t think they can, but there is the off chance that I’m wrong.”
“What then?” John asked. “Can they beat down your magic?”
“I don’t think so, sir,” the mage said. “But they might make me do some more work. You never can tell.”
Even as he spoke, another thunderbolt smote the battlefield. Blinking against the greenish-purple afterimages, John the Lister said, “I think that came down on the same part of the field as the last one. If it did, it came down on the northerners’ heads again, didn’t it?”
“I think so, sir. I hope so, sir,” Alva said. “We’d better find out, though, because I can’t say for certain.”
“All right.” John sent forth yet another runner.
This one didn’t even need to speak when he came sprinting back. The expression on his face said everything that needed saying. But he announced the news even so: “They dropped another one on their own men!”
John the Lister whooped and Major Alva hastily moved out of the way so he wouldn’t get walloped again. “I’ve got the deflection where I want it, sure enough,” he said once he was out of range of John’s strong right arm. “Now the only question is, how stubborn are they? Will they keep pounding their own people, or will they give it up as a bad job?”
“Bell commands them,” John said.
“Which means?” Alva asked. At John’s expression, he explained, “I don’t pay much heed to soldiers.”
“Yes, I’d noticed that,” John said, even more dryly than before. After a moment, he added, “You really should, you know. They’re the opponents you’re facing.”
“I suppose so. I hadn’t really looked at it that way. All a wizard usually worries about is other wizards.” With the air of a man making a large concession, Alva went on, “Tell me about Bell, then.”
“If he weren’t a man who charges like a unicorn in heat and kicks like an ass, would he have attacked us here?” John asked.
“Hmm. Maybe not. We have hit him hard, haven’t we?” Alva might have been noticing for the first time the carnage around him as carnage rather than as a problem-and not much more than an elementary problem, at that-in sorcery.
“If we hit him any harder…” John the Lister shook his head. “I don’t see how we could have hit him any harder. He must have lost three or four times as many men as we have. We’ve had reports of several northern brigadiers falling when they fought right up at the front like common soldiers.”
“That’s brave of them,” Alva said. “Isn’t it kind of stupid, too?”
“Soldiers fight. If they didn’t fight, they wouldn’t be soldiers any more,” John said, his voice clotted with disapproval.
“Sometimes, evidently, they aren’t soldiers any more even if they do fight,” Alva replied.
Before John had to worry about how to respond to that, lightning smashed down yet again in the same spot it had already struck twice. John didn’t need to send a runner. What had happened was very obvious. “Do you see?” he asked Alva. “Do you see, by the gods?”
“Yes, sir. I see.” The wizard sounded more respectful than he had up till now. “You were right, sir.”
That’s the key to it, John the Lister realized. I was right. He takes people who are right seriously. If you happen to be wrong… gods help you if you’re wrong around him. Maybe he’ll be a little less heartless when he gets older. Maybe not, too.
As if to prove how very right John was, one more bolt of lightning smote that same place. “He is a stubborn fool, isn’t he?” Major Alva said. “His wizards are pretty stupid, too, to keep banging their heads against a wall they can’t knock over. Well, that’s their worry.”
“Yes. It is.” John allowed himself the luxury of a long sigh of relief. The northerners wouldn’t break through in the middle now, and they’d never come close to breaking through on the wings. His army would live. Sooner or later, Bell’s men would give up the attack and pull back. Then he could get his own force on the road south, get back into the works at Ramblerton.
I hope Doubting George thinks I’ve slowed Bell down enough, John the Lister thought. He’d better, by the gods. No matter what happened to the Army of Franklin here, we’ve paid a heavy price, too.
“I’m sorry, sir. I’m very sorry,” one of the blue-robed mages told Lieutenant General Bell. “We’ve done everything we know how to do, but that gods-damned southron won’t let us loose. It’s like… like wrestling, sir. Sometimes you’re pinned, and that’s all there is to it.”
“Sometimes you’re useless, is what you mean,” Bell snarled. “If you’d gone on pounding them there, we would have finished smashing them by now.”
“Sir, they’ve got a stronger wizard than we do,” the sorcerer replied. “I hate like hells to say that, since the son of a bitch is a southron. We ought to eat up southron mages the way we eat fried fish. We ought to, but we can’t, not with this one.”
“We were in amongst them,” Bell said. “We are in amongst them. But how can we break through if this mage of theirs stifles your spells?”
“Well, sir,” — the wizard picked his words with care- “if magic won’t do it for us, pikes and swords and crossbows will have to.”
“I told Patrick the Cleaver he dared not fail. I told him,” Bell muttered. He shouted for a runner. “Go up to the front and tell Brigadier Patrick we require a breakthrough at all costs. At all costs, do you hear me?”
“Yes, sir. A breakthrough at all costs.” The messenger hurried away. Bell might have sentenced him to death, sending him up to the part of the front where the fighting was hottest. The young man had to know that. So did Bell, though he didn’t give it a second thought; he’d gone into plenty of hot fighting himself. Had the runner hesitated, he would have had something to say. This way, he took a pull at his little bottle of laudanum and waited.
He was just starting to feel the drug, just starting to feel the fire recede from his shoulder and his missing leg, when the runner returned, which meant something close to half an hour had gone by. “Well?” Bell barked.
“Sir, we haven’t got the men in the center to break through,” the runner said.
Laudanum or no laudanum, Bell’s temper didn’t merely kindle-it ignited. “Haven’t got the men?” he shouted. “Who the hells told you that? Patrick the Cleaver? Patrick the coward? I’ll cashier the white-livered son of a bitch, so help me gods I will.”
But the messenger shook his head. “No, sir. Patrick’s down. He’s dead,” he added, to make himself perfectly plain.
“Oh.” Bell could hardly accuse a dead man of dereliction of duty. “Who’s in command there, then? Otho the Troll? Otho knows what we’re supposed to do-what we have to do.”