It didn’t win him this one. Another shouting southron galloped up to help the man he’d assailed. By the time he drove that second fellow off with a wounded unicorn, the sergeant had ridden away.
Lightning smashed down out of a clear sky. “About time, gods damn it!” Ned roared. He’d wondered if all of Bell’s wizards had died of old age, or maybe just of accumulated uselessness. At least they were trying.
But they weren’t succeeding. No southron troopers rode anyplace near where the lightning struck. It smote once more-again in a place where there were no southrons. Ned cursed. He’d seen that Doubting George had wizards who knew what they were doing. Men said Bell might have prevailed at Poor Richard if a southron wizard hadn’t thwarted the northerners’ sorcerous assaults.
Now it looked to be happening again. What did that say? Probably that Bell’s wizards hadn’t learned anything new since the fight at Poor Richard, which surprised Ned not a bit. Bell hadn’t learned anything much since then, so why should his mages prove any different?
Again the futile lightnings crashed. Ned of the Forest forgot about them. They wouldn’t change anything, and he had to stay alive. He traded swordstrokes with a southron who knew what he was doing with a blade in his hand. Battle swept them apart before either could wound the other.
Colonel Biffle’s shout resounded in his ears: “Lord Ned, we’ve got to pull back!”
“Hells with that,” Ned ground out. “We’re still giving ’em a hard time.”
“But they’re giving us worse,” Biffle said, “and besides, sir, the footsoldiers are falling back.”
“What’s that?” Engrossed in his own fight, Ned of the Forest had paid scant attention to what was going on off to his right. But the regimental commander had told the truth. Pressed by swarms of pikemen and crossbowmen in gray, Bell’s left wing was pulling back toward the rise a mile or two north of the position in which it had started the day.
The retreat was orderly, the men in blue giving a good account of themselves as they withdrew. No signs of panic showed. But a retreat it unquestionably was.
And Biffle had also told the truth about Ned’s charge. Not many of his unicorn-riders remained on their mounts. Like the footsoldiers, they’d done all they could. But they’d come up against too many men and too many quick-shooting crossbows. They’d slowed the southrons, yes. The price they’d paid for slowing them…
“All right. All right, gods damn it,” Ned said. “Now we can pull back without everything going to hells and gone. And we can anchor our new line on the one the footsoldiers are setting up.”
That sounded good. But the farther north from Ramblerton they fell back, the wider the loop of the Cumbersome River became. Ned knew he could keep Hard-Riding Jimmy off the footsoldiers’ flank. But who was going to keep the southrons from getting around his flank and into the Army of Franklin’s rear?
Nobody. Nobody at all. That was the only answer he could see. He glanced toward the west, where the sun had slid far down the sky. Things hadn’t gone too badly today. Darkness would force the fighting to stop before long. If the southrons had enough left to push again tomorrow, though…
“They’d better not, gods damn it,” Ned muttered.
His men, the survivors, broke off their hand-to-hand struggle with Jimmy’s unicorn-riders. Another volley of crossbow quarrels helped speed them back toward their comrades. But the riders in gray didn’t try to close with them. That charge might not have done-hells, hadn’t done-everything Ned wanted, but it had knocked the southrons back on their heels. Better than nothing.
And better than nothing was about as much as the north could hope for these days. Ned knew that all too well. His own years of campaigning in Dothan and Great River Province, in Franklin and even down in Cloviston, had driven it home. He’d needed one desperate makeshift after another to keep his unicorn-riders in the field. Had he had any lingering doubts, Bell’s all but hopeless lunge down into Franklin would have murdered the last of them.
“One more day, and we’re still here fighting,” Colonel Biffle said.
“That’s right. That’s just right, gods damn it,” Ned said. “And we gave the southrons all they wanted, and then a little more, too.” He spoke loudly, to make sure his men listened. He wanted their spirits as high as possible. He feared they would need to do more hard fighting when the sun came up tomorrow.
He’d succeeded in heartening Biffle, anyhow. The regimental commander nodded. “After the botch the footsoldiers made of the fight at Poor Richard, I was afraid they’d fold up and run when the southrons hit ’em. But they didn’t. They fought like mad bastards, and no mistake.”
“Like mad bastards, yes.” Ned of the Forest didn’t echo that and no mistake. Too many people had already made too many mistakes in this campaign. Far too many of those people wore northern generals’ uniforms. Some of them were now dead. Some… weren’t.
With the darkness, quiet settled over the battlefield, quiet punctuated by occasional challenges and flurries of fighting, and by the groans of the wounded. What were Hard-Riding Jimmy’s men doing in the darkness? Ned sent out scouts, but they couldn’t learn much. The southrons’ patrols were very aggressive, very alert. We’ll find out tomorrow, Ned thought, and tried to fight down worry.
VIII
Lieutenant General Bell hadn’t just listened to the moans of wounded men on the battlefield. At Essoville in the west and at the River of Death, he’d added his own moans to the mix. Better than most of his subordinates, he knew what the wounded were going through, for he’d gone through it himself. He’d given up trying to escape the laudanum bottle. It was as much a part of him now as his ruined left arm.
All things considered, though, he was more pleased than not with the day’s fighting. He wished the Army of Franklin could have held its original line, but it hadn’t had to fall back too far. The army remained in good order. It hadn’t been routed. It had hurt Doubting George’s men as they came forth to attack. If things hadn’t gone exactly as Bell hoped, they hadn’t missed by much, either.
He levered himself off a stool and made his slow way across the pine boards flooring the shack that was, for the moment, Army of Franklin headquarters. Runners waited on the front porch, shivering against the chill of evening. They came to attention and saluted when he stuck his head out.
“Fetch me my wing commanders and my commander of unicorn-riders,” he told them. “We have to plan tomorrow’s fighting.”
“Yes, sir,” they said as one. After briefly putting their heads together to see who went to get which officer, they hurried away.
Benjamin the Heated Ham reached the farmhouse first. That didn’t surprise Bell. Benjamin commanded the center, and Bell’s headquarters lay in his part of the field. He saluted. “Good evening, sir,” he said. “We’ve weathered the first day. That’s something, anyhow.”
“That’s not all we’ll do, either,” the commanding general declared. “Let them throw themselves at our works again tomorrow. Let them bleed to death charging field fortifications.”
“Yes, sir,” Brigadier Benjamin replied. “I hope they do. It’s a pity you didn’t feel that way when we assaulted John the Lister at Poor Richard, sir.”
Before Bell could do anything more than glare, Colonel Florizel limped into the farmhouse. “Reporting as ordered, sir,” he said.
“Hello, Colonel,” Bell said discontentedly. He still wanted to replace Florizel, but surviving brigadiers were so thin on the ground in the Army of Franklin, he hadn’t been able to do it. He couldn’t complain about the way the colonel’s wing had fought today. “I congratulate you, your Excellency, for withstanding the southrons’ hardest thrusts.”
“I’m no wench, sir. They’d better not go thrusting at me,” Florizel said. Bell had seldom laughed since the wounds that mutilated him, but he did then. Benjamin the Heated Ham threw back his head and let out a long, high, shrill guffaw. Colonel Florizel went on, “Sir, I’m not sure the gods-damned southrons did strike us harder than they did anywhere else.”