Run the northerners did. They ran like rabbits, in fact, before the southrons even got within crossbow range. They scampered over the bridge to jeers from John the Lister’s soldiers: “Cowards!” “Yellow-bellies!” “Come back here and take your whipping, you nasty, naughty little boys!”
That last, shouted out by Smitty, made Rollant laugh so hard he got a stitch in his side and had to slow down. He was still short of the bridge when lightning crashed down on it and set it ablaze. The northerners hadn’t had much luck smiting southron soldiers with thunderbolts. But nothing, no spell, seemed to keep them from calling down lightning on a place where no soldiers stood.
Balked, Rollant and the rest of the southrons stared from the southern branch of the stream at the escaping northern soldiers. A few northerners took shots at them before retreating. Most didn’t bother. They’d had enough.
“Engineers!” Colonel Nahath shouted and waved. “We need pontoons here! By the gods, we need ’em fast, too. The traitors are getting away.”
The engineers did eventually come forward. They did eventually bridge the stream. By then, though, more than an hour of precious daylight on one of the shortest days of the year had been lost. The soldiers who would go after the Army of Franklin understood as much, too. Even though the pursuit would have taken them into new danger, they cursed and fumed at the delay. They knew a shattering victory when they saw one, and they wanted to finish off Bell’s army and crush it altogether.
It didn’t quite happen. Bell and Ned left behind crossbowmen and unicorn-riders who fought a series of stubborn rear-guard actions and kept the southrons from overwhelming what was left of the Army of Franklin. As twilight spread over the land, Rollant realized his comrades and he weren’t-quite-going to destroy the Army of Franklin that day.
A lone unicorn-rider came up to Sergeant Joram’s company. For a moment, Rollant thought the fellow was a messenger. Then he took a longer look and joined the cheers ringing out: it was Doubting George himself.
“Gods damn it to hells, boys,” the commanding general said, waving his hat at the southron soldiers, “didn’t I tell you we’d lick ’em? Didn’t I tell you?”
“Yes, sir!” Rollant roared along with everybody else.
“And we’ll finish the job, too,” George said. “I aim to run the legs right off the traitors. Any of ’em who get away from us’ll be some of the fastest men nobody’s crucified yet. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, sir!” the men cried, even more excitedly than before.
Doubting George rode past them, as if he intended to capture singlehanded not only Bell but also all the men the enemy general still commanded. Rollant turned to Smitty, who stood not far away. “You know something?”
“What’s that, your Corporalship, sir?” Smitty asked.
“George was the rock in the River of Death, but he’s the hammer at Ramblerton.”
“The Hammer.” Smitty paused, tasting the words. “You’re right, by the Thunderer’s lightning bolt.”
“I don’t want to stop here tonight,” Rollant said. “I want to go on, the way Doubting George went on. I want to stomp the traitors into the ground. I want them beaten, gods damn it. How about you, Smitty?”
“Me?” Smitty shrugged. “Right now, what I want is supper.”
Thus reminded of the flesh and blood of which he was made, Rollant realized he wanted supper, too. In fact, he was ravenous. He remembered gulping down a hasty breakfast. Had he had anything after that? He didn’t think so, and he’d come a long way since then.
A cook handed him a hard cracker and a chunk of raw, dripping meat. He roasted the gobbet on a stick over a fire without asking what it was. Beef? Dead donkey? Unicorn? He didn’t much care, not right now. It helped fill the hole in his belly. Next to that, nothing else mattered.
Picking his teeth with a twig, Smitty gave his own opinion of what supper had been: “I don’t know for sure, mind you, but I think I just ate Great-Aunt Hilda.”
“That’s disgusting!” Rollant exclaimed.
“I didn’t know you’d met the old battle-axe,” Smitty answered. Rollant grimaced. Blithely, Smitty continued, “We should’ve turned Great-Aunt Hilda loose against the traitors. She’d’ve nagged ’em back into the kingdom in about five minutes, tops.”
“You’re ridiculous,” Rollant said, “and I’m sure your Great-Aunt Hilda is, too. After all, she’s related to you. But the way things are going, I think we can handle the traitors without her.” Smitty didn’t argue. Evidently he thought so, too.
Marching down to Ramblerton, Captain Gremio had thought of the Army of Franklin as a dead man walking. On the second day of the battle in front of the town, the dead man stopped walking. He fell over.
That was true only in the metaphorical sense. Literally speaking, the Army of Franklin, or those parts of it that managed to escape Doubting George’s men, spent most of that second day in headlong retreat. Only when night fell at last could the survivors begin to take stock and figure out how enormous the disaster truly was.
But that came later. When the second day of fighting started, Gremio, whose regiment remained on the far right of Lieutenant General Bell’s line, again thought the southrons weren’t pushing so hard as they might. Every attack they made, his men and the rest of Colonel Florizel’s wing pushed back without much trouble.
Sergeant Thisbe said, “I don’t much care what Bell thinks, sir. It doesn’t look to me like Doubting George is putting all his weight into the fight here.”
“I’d say you’re right, Sergeant,” Gremio replied. “I wish you were wrong, but I’d say you’re right. Which makes me wonder… If he’s not putting his weight into the fight here, where is he putting it?”
He got his answer within an hour. A horde of northern soldiers came running over from the left, with southrons on their heels and even in their midst. “Surrounded!” the men from the Army of Franklin cried. “Footsoldiers!” some of them yelled. “Unicorn-riders!” others shouted. “Trapped! Outflanked!” They all seemed pretty sure about that.
From behind them came other shouts, the kind Gremio least wanted to hear: “King Avram!” “Freedom!” “Hurrah for Doubting George!”
“What do we do, sir?” Thisbe asked urgently. The underofficer commanding a company didn’t sound afraid. Gremio never remembered hearing Thisbe sound afraid. But Gremio could hardly blame the sergeant for that urgency.
He also wished he had a better response than, “Try to hold them back. What else can we do?”
“Them who?” Thisbe said. “Them the enemy, or them our own men?”
That was another excellent question. Gremio had no idea whether anything could stop the retreat-he didn’t want to think rout — sweeping down on his regiment. “You soldiers!” he shouted, doing his best. “Get into line with us. Face the southrons! Maybe we can stop them.”
A few of the retreating-he didn’t want to think fleeing, either-soldiers obeyed him. He pulled some of his own men out of the south-facing trenches to join them. But more men from the Army of Franklin kept right on going. They’d had all the war they wanted. And the southrons who hadn’t been pushing hard now saw their foes in disarray and stepped things up.
More and more shouts of “Avram! King Avram!” came from what had been the left but was rapidly turning into another front. More and more crossbow quarrels came from that direction, too. The southrons were putting more bolts in the air than Gremio would have imagined possible from their numbers. Then he realized that when people talked about the quick-shooting crossbows the southron unicorn-riders used, they weren’t joking.
He also realized his makeshift line facing east wasn’t going to hold. At almost the same time, he realized what had been the real line, the line facing south, was liable not to hold, either.