Lieutenant Griff said, “We are going forward, men, to capture those engines or destroy them or make the northerners pull them back.”
No one grumbled, even though coming out of the trenches was risky. This way, they could hit back. Nothing was harder to bear than staying in place and taking a pounding without being able to repay the damage in kind. Even Rollant, who would carry the company standard and wouldn’t do any actual fighting out in the open till he got close enough to the enemy to chop with his shortsword, only nodded.
Out of the trenches swarmed the men in gray. “Avram!” they shouted. “Avram and freedom! King Avram!”
Crossbow bolts hissed through the air at them. Bell had brought men forward to defend his engines, too. Rollant sighed. He’d known Bell would. “Geoffrey!” the northerners shouted, and, “Provincial prerogative forever!”
Provincial prerogative, as far as Rollant was concerned, meant nothing except the privilege of treating blonds like beasts of burden. He waved his standard, gold dragon on red, high above his head. False King Geoffrey’s partisans flew the same flag with the colors reversed.
Pok! A crossbow bolt tore through the silk. The standard had already taken a number of such wounds. Another bolt hissed past Rollant’s ear, this one not from in front of him but from behind. One of his own comrades was shooting carelessly at the traitors. Rollant hoped the fellow was shooting at them, anyhow.
Bell’s men hadn’t had time to entrench as well as Rollant was sure they would have liked. Some of them crouched behind stumps and rail fences. Others stood or knelt on one knee or lay on their bellies in the open. Seeing the men in blue-some of them in southron gray ineptly dyed blue-roused Rollant to fury, as it always did. These were the men who wanted to tie him to a little plot of land for the rest of his days. He whooped with glee when one of them crumpled to the ground, clutching at himself and kicking.
“Come on!” he shouted to his own comrades, waving the standard again. “Let’s get rid of all these bastards!”
They didn’t get the chance. Perhaps Bell hadn’t expected John the Lister’s men to sally so aggressively against his men. In this part of the field, southrons outnumbered northerners, though Lieutenant General Bell’s army was a lot bigger than John’s. The traitors hitched their catapults to asses and unicorns and hauled them away. The crossbowmen and pikemen protecting them fought a rear-guard action till the valuable engines had escaped. Then they too fell back.
Rollant was all for charging after them. His superiors weren’t. The trumpeters blew withdraw. Reluctantly, he returned to the southrons’ trench line. Litter bearers hauled back the wounded and the dead. Healers and surgeons would do what they could for the wounded. Soldiers and runaway serfs now laboring in Avram’s army would have to chop wood for the pyres of the dead. Rollant likely would have drawn that duty before he got promoted. Not now, not as a corporal.
Both forces had lost a few men, seen a few men hurt. The little fight wouldn’t change how the war turned out, not in the least. He wondered why either side had bothered making it. You could, if you had the right sort of mind, then wonder if even a big battle meant much in the grand scheme of things. Rollant didn’t have that sort of mind. He knew what those battles meant-serfs escaping from bondage who would still labor for their liege lords if southron armies hadn’t won and given them hope and protected them when they fled.
Axes were still thudding into lumber when a messenger came up to the trenches from the direction of the Trumpeteth. Lieutenant Griff called, “Men, we’re to pull back from this line toward the river. The bridges are said to be ready to cross.” By the way he spoke, he had trouble believing it. He was very young, and he’d been callow when he joined the company. He’d seen a lot since then, as had the men he commanded.
Rollant certainly had trouble believing it, too. Turning to Smitty, he said, “What do you want to bet the traitors’ wizards will have sunk these so-called bridges by the time we get there?”
“You’re a corporal. You already make more money than I do,” Smitty said. “If you think I want to give you any of mine, you’re mad.”
“If you think I want to give you any of mine, you’re mad, Corporal,” Sergeant Joram growled. That Rollant was an underofficer counted for more with him than that he was a blond. Not all Detinans, even in the south, felt the same way.
When they got to the river, Smitty started to laugh. “I should have taken you up on that one, your Corporalship,” he said.
“Yes.” Rollant tried to hide his astonishment. The bridges-which, by their faint glow, seemed compounded more of magecraft than of mere material things-did indeed stand. Men were already tramping over them toward the south bank of the Trumpeteth.
A scrawny young mage in a gray robe stood on the north bank of the river. He looked weary unto death. Even as Rollant watched, the mage swayed-he supposed under yet another sorcerous assault from the northern wizards. But, though the mage swayed, the bridges held. They didn’t suddenly vanish and pitch the burdened soldiers on them into the Trumpeteth, where those men would without a doubt have drowned.
Seeing others safely cross the river, Rollant didn’t hesitate when his turn came. He held the company standard high as he set foot on the bridge. It felt solid under his shoes, even if it was mostly magical. How it felt was all that mattered. If he let out a sigh of relief when he got to the far bank of the river-well, if he did, maybe nobody noticed. And if anybody did, he wasn’t the only one.
Ned of the Forest rode his unicorn up to the southern bank of the Trumpeteth River. He actually rode the great white beast into the river; muddy water swirled around its forelegs. Turning to Colonel Biffle, he said, “Well, Biff, they slid through our fingers. They might have been greased, the way they slipped by us.”
“’Fraid you’re right, sir,” Biffle agreed mournfully.
“And look at what’s left of this here bridge.” Ned pointed. Only a few wooden pilings emerged from the Trumpeteth. “Look at it, I tell you.”
“Not much to look at,” his regimental commander said.
“Sure isn’t,” Ned said. “Sure as hells isn’t. And it doesn’t look like the stinking southrons burned their bridges once they’d used ’em, either. They couldn’t have, by the Thunderer’s lightning bolt-we’d’ve seen the flames. No way on earth they could’ve hidden those from us.”
“You’re right again, sir,” Colonel Biffle said.
“And what does that mean? There’s hardly a thing left here, but the southrons didn’t burn what there was.” Ned made a harsh, chopping gesture with his left hand. He couldn’t have been more disgusted if he’d heard Thraxton the Braggart was returning to command in the Army of Franklin. He shook his head. No, on second thought, he could.
Biffle said, “It means they used magic to get over the river. It can’t mean anything else.”
“You’re right. You’re just exactly right. That’s what it means.” Ned of the Forest repeated that chopping gesture. “And how did they get away with using magic to build their miserable bridge when we’re supposed to have the best wizards in Detina? How, Biff? Riddle me that.”
“Either they’ve got themselves some good ones from somewhere, or else ours aren’t as good as they’ve been telling folks they are,” Biffle said. “Maybe both.”
Both hadn’t occurred to Ned. When Colonel Biffle suggested it, though, it made entirely too much sense to him. “Wouldn’t be a bit surprised,” he said. “But it’s purely a shame and a disgrace, that’s what it is. The southrons have got more men than we do. They’ve got more of just about everything than we do, except grit and wizards. If they start licking us when it comes to magecraft… Well, Lion God’s tail tuft, Biff, why keep on fighting in that case? We’re whipped, grit or no grit.”