Thinking along with him-as the underofficer so often did-Sergeant Thisbe asked, “What if they’re hammering us at the far end of the line?”
“Then they are,” Captain Gremio replied with a fatalistic shrug. “I don’t know what we can do about it except either send reinforcements or run away.”
Off to the south, something roared. The chill that ran through Gremio had nothing to do with the weather. A roar like that touched him deep in his brain, deep in his belly. A roar like that meant, Whatever is making this noise wants to eat you-and it can. Another roar resounded, and another, and another.
The dragons looked old as time, deadly as murder, and graceful enough to make an eagle blush. Their great bat wings effortlessly propelled them toward the northerners’ trenches. They took no notice of the southrons out in the open below them. It was as if they’d decided to feast on pork, and didn’t care whether mutton was out there waiting for them.
Several northerners didn’t wait to be eaten. They jumped out of the trenches and ran away, as fast as they could go. “Hold!” Gremio shouted, though he wanted nothing more than to run, too.
“Why?” somebody yelled back, fleeing faster than ever.
For a couple of heartbeats, Gremio found himself altogether without an answer. Then the rational part of his mind reasserted itself. “Because they’re magical!” he exclaimed. “They aren’t real. They can’t be real. When was the last time anybody saw a dragon that isn’t on a flag west of the Great River? Over in the Stony Mountains, out past the eastern steppes, yes. But here? Not a chance!”
“They sure look real,” someone else said.
And they did. The fire that burst from their jaws looked real, too. More men, not willing to take the chance, scrambled out of the fieldworks and started running away. The southrons shot several of them when they broke cover.
Colonel Florizel limped past. “Don’t panic, boys!” he shouted. “It’s just the gods-damned southrons telling lies again. What else are they good for?” He nodded to Gremio. “And a fine day to you, Captain. We’re doing pretty well here, aren’t we?”
“We’re holding them, sir, sure enough,” Gremio answered. Florizel had limits-anything requiring imagination was beyond his ken. Within those limits, though, he made a pretty good soldier-exactly how good, Gremio had come to understand more slowly than he should have. The captain asked, “How are we doing off to the left? I can’t tell from here.”
Florizel’s face clouded. “Not so well. They’ve forced back the line there. We may-we likely will-have to fall back here, too, just to keep things straight. I don’t think any counterattack at that end will push the southrons out of our works.”
Gremio looked over his shoulder. Another ridge line stood a mile or two north of the one the Army of Franklin presently held. He jerked a thumb towards it. “I suppose we’ll make another stand there.”
“Yes, I suppose we will, too.” Florizel nodded. “We’ve hurt the southrons. They’ve hurt us, but we’ve hurt them more than a little. If we can hold off the next attack-if they can even manage another attack, tomorrow or the next day-I’d say we’ll have won ourselves a victory… and I don’t mean the kind Bell says we won at Poor Richard, either.” He made a sour face.
“You… may be right, your Excellency.” Gremio still reckoned Florizel an optimist, but he couldn’t say for certain his superior was wrong. Florizel knew more about what was going on than he did. And even an optimist could be right some of the time-Gremio supposed. He said, “Funny how we’ve held them here, where they were supposed to be pushing hardest, but we had to give ground at the other end of the line.”
“Yes, this is a mite strange,” Colonel Florizel agreed. “Still and all, though, battle’s a funny business. What you figure will happen doesn’t, and what you don’t does.”
“That’s true. I wish it weren’t, but it is,” Gremio said.
“Has my regiment fought well, Captain?” Florizel asked.
“Yes, sir,” Gremio answered truthfully.
“Good. It’s a funny business of a different sort, you know-needing to ask about the soldiers I commanded for so long.”
“You still command us, Colonel.”
“Yes, but not that way. How about your old company? That will give you some notion of what I mean.”
“My old company is doing just fine, sir, even if it does have a sergeant in charge of it,” Gremio answered.
“Good. That’s good. You know, if you’d ever wanted to promote that Thisbe to lieutenant’s rank, I’d have done it in a heartbeat. He’s a hells of an underofficer. I saw that right away.”
“Sir, I suggested promotion more than once. Whenever I did, Sergeant Thisbe said no.”
“Ah, well. There are some like that. It’s too bad. I think he would have made a pretty fair officer, and I don’t say that about every sergeant in the regiment.”
“I know, sir. I agree. But” — Gremio shrugged- “Thisbe didn’t. Doesn’t.”
“Nothing to be done about it in that case,” Florizel said. “A pity, though.”
A panting runner came up to him from the left. “Sir, you are ordered to withdraw to the ridge line to the rear,” the messenger said. “We’ve been forced back to it on the left, and we haven’t got the men to stretch from one ridge to the other. We have to keep our line as short as we can.”
“Is that what Lieutenant General Bell says?” Gremio asked. The runner nodded.
“I can’t say he’s wrong,” Florizel observed. Gremio couldn’t say the commanding general was wrong, either. He wasn’t sure Bell was right, but, as with Florizel before, that was a different story. Florizel went on, “Prepare my regiment-I’m sorry, Captain: your regiment-for withdrawal. Make sure it can still fight while pulling back. The rest of the wing will accompany it.”
“Yes, sir,” Gremio said. “Up till now, the southrons haven’t pressed us hard. I don’t suppose they will here, either.” But why haven’t they? he wondered, and found no answer that satisfied him.
Ned of the Forest had gone up against Hard-Riding Jimmy’s unicorn-riders pushing south, trying to flank John the Lister out of Poor Richard. He hadn’t been able to shift them. It was the first time in the whole course of the war that he’d tried to make a move and had the southrons completely thwart him. He hadn’t cared for the experience one bit.
Now Hard-Riding Jimmy’s troopers were the ones moving forward, and Ned had to stop them. He was discovering he liked that even less.
For one thing, he was again operating without his own full force of riders. Bell, in his infinite wisdom, had sent some of them off to raid Reillyburgh. He’d claimed the raid would help draw Doubting George out of Ramblerton and make him attack the Army of Franklin’s entrenched positions. He’d been right, too. Ned wondered how happy Bell was now about being right.
For another, between the fight near Poor Richard and this one, Jimmy had been massively reinforced. Every single one of his unicorn-riders seemed to be using a newfangled, quick-shooting crossbow. He would have badly outnumbered Ned of the Forest even had Ned had all his own riders. This way… this way, it was like trying to hold back an avalanche with his hands.
Every inch of ground between the left end of Lieutenant General Bell’s line and the Cumbersome River seemed to have a southron unicorn-rider galloping forward over it. And all of them were putting so many crossbow quarrels in the air, a man might almost have walked across the battlefield on them.
“What the hells do we do, Lord Ned?” Colonel Biffle wailed after Jimmy’s men made him give up a knoll he’d badly needed to hold. It was either give up the knoll or wait to get flanked out of the position… or wait a little longer and get surrounded and destroyed. “What the hells can we do?”