“Yes, sir. I like that.” Ned of the Forest liked hitting the enemy-he was one of the hardest hitters the north had. Hitting the enemy head-on was a different story. He saw that plainly, and wondered why more of King Geoffrey’s generals didn’t. Nodding with pleasure, he asked, “What do you want me to do?”
“Hold the gods-damned southrons in place with your men,” Bell answered. “Don’t let them come any farther north, and don’t let them get wind of how many men we have or what we’re doing with them.”
“I’ll try my best, General,” Ned said. “Can’t promise to hold off a whole army with just my unicorn-riders, though.”
“Yes, I understand that,” Bell said. “You can slow it down, though, and screen away the enemy’s riders, eh?”
“I expect I can manage that much, yes, sir,” Ned allowed. “Wouldn’t be much point to having unicorn-riders if we couldn’t do that sort of thing, would there?”
“I wouldn’t think so,” the commanding general said. “Well, go on down and take care of it, then. The men on foot will follow and outflank the southrons while you keep them in play. And when they realize we’ve got behind them and they have to retreat, they’re ours. I wish I could ride with you.”
“So do I, sir,” Ned said, more or less truthfully. Bell was no unicorn-rider by trade, but everyone said he’d been a fierce fighter before he started leaving pieces of himself on the battlefield.
Bell paused now to swig from the bottle of laudanum he always carried with him. “Ahh!” he said, and quivered with an ecstasy that almost matched a priest’s when he had a vision of his chosen god. For a moment, Bell’s eyes lost their focus. Whatever he was looking at, it wasn’t the muddy road and the trees shedding the last of their leaves. But then, quite visibly, he came back to himself. “You there, trooper!” He nodded at Ben.
“Yes, sir?” the unicorn-rider asked.
“You’re a corporal now,” Bell said. “You took chances to get your news, and you deserve to be rewarded. Lieutenant General Ned, see that the promotion goes into your records, so his pay at the new rank starts from today.”
“I’ll do that, sir,” Ned promised. “I was going to promote him myself, matter of fact, but better he gets it from the general commanding the whole army.”
Ben-now Corporal Ben-looked from Ned to Bell in delight. “Thank you kindly, both of you!” he exclaimed.
“Don’t you worry about that. You’ll earn those stripes on your shirt, never fear,” Ned said. “Now come on. We’ve got work to do.”
He urged his unicorn forward with knees and reins and voice. Ben followed. Ned felt Lieutenant General Bell’s eyes boring into his back. Bell could ride well enough to stay in the saddle, but he’d never storm forward in a unicorn charge.
Of course, Ned didn’t plan on storming forward in a unicorn charge, either. More often than not, he used his riders as mounted crossbowmen, not as cavaliers slashing away with swords. Unicorns let them get where they needed to go far faster than they could have afoot. Getting there first with the most men was essential. And if you got there first with a few, most of the time you wouldn’t need any more.
Back in the west, Duke Edward’s commander of unicorn-riders, Jeb the Steward, had played at war as if it were a game. His men had fought as much for sport and glory as to do the southrons harm. They’d done quite a lot; not even Ned could deny it. But Jeb the Steward had died the summer before. He’d died a hard, nasty death, with a southron crossbow bolt in his belly. The war in the west had got grimmer since he fell.
Here in the east, the war had been grim from the start. With the southrons holding down Franklin and Cloviston but a lot of men in the two provinces still loyal to the north, brother sometimes faced brother sword in hand. No fight could be more savage than one of that sort. Some of Ned’s own unicorn-riders had kin on the other side.
Ben pointed ahead. “There’s our riders, sir.”
“I see ’em,” Ned answered. He raised his voice to a great bellow: “Blow advance!” The trumpeters obeyed. The men cheered the martial music. Ned went right on roaring, too. “We’ve got the gods-damned southrons ahead of us,” he told the unicorn-riders. “We’ve got ’em ahead of us, and we need to hold their vanguard where it’s at. Reckon we can do that, boys?”
“Hells, yes!” the troopers shouted. If Ned of the Forest wanted them to do something, they would do it, or die trying.
But even reaching the southrons proved harder than Ned had expected. He booted his unicorn up to a trot so he could lead the riders from the front, as he always did. One reason they followed him so well was that they knew he wouldn’t order them to go anywhere he wasn’t going himself.
He knew where Summer Mountain lay and how to get there. He knew the whole province of Franklin. I’d better, he thought. By now, I’ve fought over just about every gods-damned inch of it. He guided the troopers forward with confidence.
Despite that confidence, though, after about an hour Colonel Biffle rode up to him and asked, “Excuse me, Lord Ned, but should we be heading west?”
“West?” Ned stared at him. “What the hells are you talking about, Biff? I’m riding north, and that’s as plain as the horn on a unicorn’s face.” But even as he spoke, he looked around. As he did, he started to swear. He wasn’t usually a blasphemous man; only the prospect of battle brought foul language out in him-battle, and being tricked before battle. For, when he did look around, he saw that he had been riding west, and hadn’t known it. Face hot with fury, he demanded, “Where in the damnation is Major Marmaduke?”
“I’m here, sir.” His chief mage came up on donkeyback; few wizards could be trusted to ride unicorns without killing themselves. Marmaduke was a fussy little man who kept his blue sorcerer’s robe spotlessly clean no matter what. “What do you need?”
“I need a wizard who’s really here, not one who just thinks he is,” Ned snarled. “Why the demon didn’t you notice we’ve been riding west, not north?”
Major Marmaduke looked astonished. “But we’re not riding-” he began, and then broke off. After a moment, he looked even more astonished, to say nothing of horrified. “By the gods, we’ve been diddled,” he said.
“We sure have. I thought we were supposed to be the ones with the good wizards, and the southrons were stuck with the odds and sods.” Ned scornfully tossed his head. “Seems like it’s the other way round.”
“Lord Ned, I am-mortified,” Marmaduke stammered. “To think that I should be taken in-that I should let us all be taken in-by a spell of misdirection… I will say, though, that it was very cunningly laid. I did not think the accursed southrons had such subtlety in them.”
“Well, they gods-damned well do,” Ned growled. “And now we’re going to have to backtrack and hope by the Thunderer’s prong that they haven’t gone and stolen a march on us. If they have, you’ll pay for it, and you’d best believe that.”
Marmaduke licked his lips. “Y-y-yes, sir.”
With icy sarcasm, Ned went on, “You reckon you can see if they try any more magic on us while we’re heading back? You up to that much, anyways?”
“I–I hope so, sir,” the mage replied miserably.
“So do I. And you’d better be.” Scowling, Ned shouted to his men, “They’ve tricked us. When we catch ’em, we’ll make ’em pay. Meanwhile, though, we’ve got to ride like hells to get back to where we were at so we can catch ’em. Come on! We’ll do it right this time!”
They rode hard. Anybody who wanted to fight under Ned of the Forest had to ride hard. As his unicorn trotted back toward the place where they’d gone wrong-Ned hoped it was back toward the place where they’d gone wrong-he kept muttering morosely about Major Marmaduke. The wizard still seemed bewildered at what had happened. Ned wasn’t bewildered. He was furious. As far as he was concerned, the southrons had no business outdoing northern men when it came to sorcery.