“Yes, sir,” Biffle said. “But what can we do about it? Us unicorn-riders, I mean.”
“Not much,” Ned said morosely. “Still and all, I’m going to hash it out with Lieutenant General Bell. Maybe he knows something I don’t. Or maybe he’ll give me some laudanum. Then I won’t care any more, either.”
“Lieutenant General Bell’s doing the best he can,” Biffle said. “If he didn’t have something to hold back the pain, he’d be hard up.”
“Oh, I know that, Biff,” Ned answered. “I really do. He’s not like Thraxton the Braggart, that cowardly, conniving, shriveled-up little unicorn turd of a man. Bell does try hard, and he’s a good fighter himself-or he was, before he got ruined. I don’t reckon it was his fault this army didn’t lay into the southrons at Summer Mountain. By the way he carried on, he gave the right orders, but the fellows under him didn’t do what he told ’em to.”
“By the way they carried on, his orders weren’t as good as he said they were,” Colonel Biffle replied.
That was also true, and worried Ned of the Forest. It reminded him much too much of how things had been during the unhappy command of Thraxton the Braggart. Ned tugged on the reins, jerking his unicorn’s head around. He gave Biffle a few orders, then got the beast moving with the pressure of his knees and rode off toward the north, toward the main encampment of the Army of Franklin.
Lieutenant General Bell’s pavilion was at least twice the size of any other officer’s tent there, and dwarfed the miserable little shelters under which some of Bell’s soldiers slept. The rest of Bell’s men had no shelter at all. True, Bell was the commander of the army. True, his wound might have made him need more space-or be happy with more space-than a whole officer required. Even so…
Trying to hold in his unease, Ned announced himself to the sentries in front of the commanding general’s pavilion. One of them ducked inside. He returned a moment later, saying, “Lieutenant General Bell will see you, sir.”
“He’d better,” Ned rumbled; the idea that Bell might not see him filled him with fury. He ducked through the tent flap and into the pavilion.
His eyes needed a moment to adjust to the gloom inside. Bell sat in a folding chair. As Ned came in, the general commanding put a small bottle back into a leather pouch at his belt. “Good day, Lieutenant General,” Bell said, licking his lips. “And what can I do for you?”
Ned peered at him before answering. Once upon a time, people had spoken of Bell as the reincarnation of the Lion God on earth. These days, those leonine features might have been carved in cold butter that was then set in front of a fire. His face sagged. He had great dark bags under his eyes. His cheeks drooped. Even through Bell’s thick beard, Ned could see how jowly he’d become. The commander of unicorn-riders shivered. Pain and forced inactivity did dreadful things to a man.
Bell had asked him a question. He needed a moment to remember that, and then to answer: “I want to know where we’re going, sir, and what we’re going to do about the southrons now that they’ve holed up in Poor Richard.”
No matter how bad Bell looked, he hadn’t lost the urge to fight. “We’re going to hit them, that’s what,” he said. “We’re going to hit them, and we’re going to rout them, and then we’re going on to take Ramblerton. It must be done, and so it will be done.”
“Yes, sir,” Ned said. Bell was right-taking Ramblerton was something the northern cause desperately needed. Ned went on, “I’ve ordered Colonel Biffle, one of my regimental commanders, to lead the unicorn-riders across the Trumpeteth so we’ll be ready to hit the southrons that good hard lick you want just as soon as we can.”
“Have you?” Bell raised an eyebrow in surprise, like a lion thinking it might have scented prey. “Without waiting for orders or permission from me?”
“Yes, sir,” Ned of the Forest said again. His voice warned that he was another lion, not a lumbering buffalo. “They’re my men. I reckon I can tell ’em what to do without a by-your-leave from anybody, especially when it comes to putting them closer to the enemy.”
He waited to see how Lieutenant General Bell would take that. Bell started to cloud up, then checked himself and nodded. “All right. I will not complain of any man who wants to close with the southrons. That compares well with the miserable cowards commanding my crossbowmen and pikemen. They had a golden chance, a chance sent by the gods, to strike John the Lister a deadly blow, and did they take it? Did they? No! They sat inert, the spineless wretches, and let this magnificent opportunity dribble through their palsied fingers.”
Carefully, Ned said, “Sir, there’s a difference between things going wrong because somebody’s a coward and things going wrong just on account of they go wrong, if you know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean, which doesn’t mean I think you’re right,” Bell replied. “Wouldn’t you have attacked the gods-damned southrons if they were marching across your front? Of course you would have-you make a proper man. Those fools, poltroons, brigadiers… But I repeat myself.”
“When we get to Poor Richard, sir, it won’t be that bad,” Ned predicted.
“By the Thunderer’s holy foreskin, it had better not be.” Bell sounded very much like an angry lion.
“You’ll see.” Ned of the Forest spoke with all the confidence he could muster. He would, in due course, be proved right, if not in precisely the way he meant when speaking to Lieutenant General Bell.
Bell waved the words aside with a motion of his good hand. “Anything further to report, Lieutenant General? The southrons continue to flee before us, having even less spirit than my own brigade and wing commanders, and your men are crossing the Trumpeteth, which is actually not bad news.” By his scowl, he never expected to hear anything but bad news ever again. “Nothing more? Very well, then. You may rejoin your riders, and my congratulations for the spirit they-and you-have shown.”
“Thank you, sir.” Ned saluted and left the pavilion. His strides were lithe, pantherlike. He didn’t care to think about the crutches leaning close by Bell’s chair. Bell would never advance at anything but a caterpillar’s hitching crawl. No, Ned didn’t want to think about that. He’d already suffered several wounds. One instant of bad luck and he’d be no better off than the commanding general.
If everybody thought about those things, who’d go and mix it up? he wondered. How would you, how could you, fight a war?
He saw no answer, not at first. But as he swung up onto his unicorn-one more thing Bell would never do unless someone tied him to the saddle-he realized the answer was that most men didn’t think about such things. He didn’t want to think about them himself, as he’d just proved, and he was as far from a coward as any man breathing. He shrugged and scowled and went on riding.
When he got down to the Trumpeteth, he found only a rear guard of his unicorn-riders still on the northern bank. The rest had crossed over with their animals on a motley little fleet of rowboats and rafts. Ned piled into a boat with the ordinary riders he commanded. They chivvied his unicorn aboard a raft, although the great white shining beast didn’t like the journey at all. Once on the southern bank of the Trumpeteth, Ned had to gentle the unicorn down again before it would deign to bear his weight.
“You know how to handle ’em, Lord Ned,” a trooper said admiringly.
“I ought to.” Ned of the Forest was not sentimental about unicorns, or about anything else that had to do with battle. “I’ve had enough of them killed out from under me.”