“Gods damn it, you’re supposed to be better than those southron mages!” Bell burst out.
“Once upon a time, we were,” the wizard said. “But the southrons have had three and a half years of war to learn what we knew going in. And Doubting George has at least one very fine mage under his command.” He shivered. “We found that out at Poor Richard, if you’ll recall.”
“I found you that failed me there,” Bell snarled. “Now I find you failing me again. What are you good for except telling me what you can’t do?”
“Sir,” the wizard said stiffly, “if we weren’t holding off a lot of what the southrons have tried to do to us, things would be worse yet.”
“How?” Bell asked. “How could they be?”
“Would you like to have gone up in flames?” the wizard asked. “Would you like to have seen a pit open under our left? One nearly did.”
“All that is easy enough for you to claim,” Bell said. “It makes you sound impressive. It even makes you sound useful, by the Thunderer’s prong. But such claims are all the better for proof.”
“Oh, you can have your proof, sir. You can have it as easily as you please,” the mage told him.
“Eh? And how do you propose to give it to me?” Bell asked.
The wizard bowed like a courtier. “Nothing easier, sir. All you have to do is send us away. Then, when the fighting starts again and the southron mages start flinging their spells, you’ll see if we’ve done your army any good.”
For a moment-for more than a moment, in fact-Lieutenant General Bell was tempted to call his bluff. He started to fling up his arms and order all the mages to be gone, to head straight for the hottest of the seven hells. He started to… but he didn’t. He growled, “You haven’t got the right attitude.”
“Generals always say such things,” the wizard replied imperturbably. “They say them until they remember they need us after all.”
“You are dismissed. You are all dismissed,” Bell said. “You are not discharged from your service to King Geoffrey. I intend to fight to the end. I intend for every man in the Army of Franklin to do the same. And if I had any women in this army, I would expect nothing different of them.”
The wizards stirred. One of them began, “As a matter of-” Another one poked him in the ribs. He subsided. The wizards saluted in ragged unison. Bell sneered. Out went the wizards, noses in the air.
“Good riddance,” Bell muttered. “Gods-damned good riddance. They can’t help me. They don’t think anybody can help me. Well, to hells with what they think. We’ll lick the southrons yet, wizards or no wizards.”
He took a large, blissful swig from the laudanum bottle. Already well drugged, he felt no particular pain except pain of the spirit. After a while, thanks to the potent medicament, he stopped caring about that. He stopped caring about anything. No matter what, tomorrow would come. Doubting George would attack, or else he wouldn’t. If he did, the Army of Franklin would fight. They would win. Or they would lose. Whatever would happen, would happen.
Oh, by the gods, laudanum was marvelous stuff!
Slowly, ever so slowly, so very slowly as to seem to be tormenting Doubting George, the sun rose over the battlefield. Black faded to gray; gray took on colors. It all happened an inch at a time, though, so that from one glance across the field to the next nothing seemed to have changed.
George was less happy than he wished he would have been after the first day’s fighting. He’d driven Bell’s men back, yes, but he hadn’t routed them as he’d hoped to do. They remained in front of him, still ready to fight some more. He hadn’t wanted that to happen. He hadn’t expected it to happen.
Yawning, Colonel Andy came up beside him. “What do we do now, sir?” George’s adjutant asked. “Do we renew the attack, or…?”
“Well, Colonel, I’ll tell you,” Doubting George began. Before he could say more, though, Hard-Riding Jimmy rode up on a hard-ridden unicorn. George waved to show just where he was. Jimmy brought his unicorn-his indubitably hard-ridden unicorn-to a halt. George nodded to him. “Hello, there. Lovely day, isn’t it?”
“For a coot, maybe,” the commander of unicorn-riders answered. Sure enough, it could have been better. No sooner had the sun risen than gray clouds rolled towards it. Along with the stinks of the battlefield, the wet-dust smell of impending rain filled George’s nostrils. Hard-Riding Jimmy went on, “Sir, have you got a spyglass?”
“On my person? No,” Doubting George replied. “Can I rustle one up if I need to? I expect I can.”
“Would you please, sir?” Hard-Riding Jimmy quivered with urgency. George hadn’t seen the like since the last time he’d watched Major Alva incanting.
More than anything else, that excited quiver convinced him not to tease Hard-Riding Jimmy-too much. He shouted for a spyglass, and got one in short order. Raising it to his eye, he said, “And where shall I train this little toy?”
“North, sir,” Jimmy said. “North past the traitors’ line.”
“They’re bent back into a kind of fishhook on their left here, I see,” George remarked. “Trying to keep us from outflanking them, no doubt. Clever.”
“No doubt.” Hard-Riding Jimmy quivered even more. “They’ve tried, but they haven’t done it. Do you see, sir? Do you see?”
Doubting George scanned with the spyglass. “I see… I see standards with the gold dragon on red.”
“Yes!” Jimmy said. “Yes! Those are my men, sir, and we’re square in the enemy’s rear. If you don’t take advantage of that, sir, it’d be… it’d be criminal, that’s what it’d be. Order us to the attack! Order your footsoldiers to the attack! We’ve got the gods-damned traitors in a vise. All we have to do is close it on them.”
“Well…” George scanned some more. He opened his other eye. Hard-Riding Jimmy looked about ready to jump out of his skin, or perhaps to throttle the commanding general. Letting him do that would have been bad for discipline. It wouldn’t have been very good for Doubting George himself, either. He lowered the spyglass and beckoned for a runner.
“Yes, sir?” the young man said.
Regretfully, George decided he’d pushed Hard-Riding Jimmy as far as he could. “Order a general attack, all along the line,” he said. The messenger saluted and dashed off. Doubting George turned to the commander of unicorn-riders. “And your men may attack, too.”
“Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir!” Hard-Riding Jimmy said. For an awkward moment, George thought Jimmy was going to kiss him. The young brigadier didn’t. He dashed back to his unicorn, adding over his shoulder, “You won’t regret this, sir. You won’t, but the traitors will.”
“That’s the idea,” George answered. He wasn’t sure his commander of unicorn-riders heard him. Jimmy roweled the unicorn with his spurs. George, a fine rider himself, wouldn’t have treated a mount so harshly. But the unicorn sprang away as if it had wings on its heels. That was the point of the exercise. George signaled for another runner. When the soldier came up, George said, “Tell John the Lister to press the enemy especially hard. Between him and Jimmy, I want Bell’s left broken. Broken — have you got that?”
“Yes, sir. Broken.” By the way the messenger dashed off, he might have had Hard-Riding Jimmy on his heels.
“What do you think happens now, sir?” Colonel Andy asked.
Doubting George eyed his adjutant. “Now, Colonel,” he replied, “I think we’re going to break those traitorous sons of bitches.”
Things didn’t go quite so smoothly as he’d hoped. He’d thought John the Lister, whose force greatly outnumbered the northerners facing it, would lap around the end of their line and eat them up. But the spur their wing commander had dropped back from the end of his line to the north hampered John, so that, instead of outflanking the foe, his advancing southrons met them face to face. It was a pretty piece of tactics. George would have admired it much more if it hadn’t been aimed at him.