“We have. We really have.” Yes, Andy sounded dazed.
Having shown the world, Doubting George wanted to see for himself, too. He shouted for his unicorn. When an orderly brought it, he swung up into the saddle and rode north so he could see it for himself.
“What will you do if an enemy attacks you, sir?” Colonel Andy called after him.
“What’ll I do? I’ll kill the bastard,” George answered. His adjutant stared. Doubting George laughed. Didn’t victory make the world seem fine?
Back when Rollant was a serf, he’d had to harvest rice and indigo on Baron Ormerod’s estate in Palmetto Province. Every year, the job looked enormous, far too large for the serfs on the estate to finish in time. Pitching in to do it only strengthened that feeling. But then, one day, you realized it was almost done. Usually, you realized that with something approaching astonishment. Where had all the work gone?
Rollant had something of the same feeling now. Where had all the war gone? No one in his regiment despised the northerners more than he did. No one had better reason to despise them, though some of the other blonds had reasons just as good. But, however much he loathed the traitors, he’d always known them as men who fought hard. Had anyone anywhere ever fought better for a worse cause? He didn’t think so.
Yesterday, Bell’s men had gone right on fighting hard. Yes, the southrons had driven them back, but they hadn’t had an easy time of it. The Army of Franklin had retreated to this second ridge line in good order, and they’d seemed ready enough to offer battle again today.
And the northerners had even fought hard in the early hours of the morning, though they’d had footsoldiers coming at them from the south while Hard-Riding Jimmy’s unicorn-riders pressed them from the north. Before too long, though, they seemed to realize they simply did not have the men to hold off all their foes. Here, being unable to hold off all their foes meant about the same thing as being unable to hold off any of those foes. They seemed to realize that, too. The Army of Franklin’s battle was lost, lost irretrievably.
Once Bell’s men figured that out, once it sank in, they did something Rollant had never seen them do before: they went to pieces. Rollant had northerners surrender to him without even complaining about yielding to a blond. Others, instead of taking a shot they were all too likely to make at a standard-bearer, threw away their crossbows and ran.
That didn’t always do them any good. Rollant and his comrades pursued, and pursued hard. Not only that, Hard-Riding Jimmy’s troopers still lay between the northerners and escape. Some of Bell’s men surrendered to them. Others never got the chance. Troopers with quick-shooting crossbows put a lot of bolts in the air. More than a few of them struck home.
“Keep on! Keep on, gods damn it!” Colonel Nahath shouted, his voice cracking with excitement. “Push ’em hard! Keep pushing! Drive ’em! We’ve got ’em where we want ’em! Now we finish ’em off!”
In all his time in King Avram’s army, Rollant had never heard orders like that. No one on the southron side had ever had an excuse for giving orders like that. Now people did-they had that excuse and made the most of it.
“Come on!” Sergeant Joram bellowed. “They haven’t got much fight left in ’em. Let’s kick ’em while they’re down. The harder we pile on this time, the easier the next battle gets-if there is a next battle.”
If there is a next battle. No, Rollant hadn’t heard anything like that before, either. But he didn’t think Joram was wrong. Waving the company standard, he charged past blue-uniformed northerners crumpled in death, past blue-uniformed northerners writhing in the torment of their wounds, and past blue-uniformed northerners throwing up their hands and hoping they could yield before someone killed them.
Here and there, by ones and twos and small groups, some few of Bell’s soldiers still showed fight. But even when a whole company held together under a stubborn officer, how long could it hold back the southrons? Not long, as Rollant and his comrades proved again and again and again. Even the bravest northern soldiers found that, when attacked from three sides at once, as they were repeatedly, they could fall back or die. Those were the only choices they had. They could not stem the southron tide.
“Keep after ’em!” Sergeant Joram yelled. “Don’t let ’em get away!” One more order whose like Rollant had never heard. He liked it. Joram looked around. “Where’s the company standard?”
“Here, Sergeant!” Rollant waved the banner.
“Good. That’s good.” Joram looked around again. “Come on, you lugs! Don’t get lazy on me now, gods damn it!”
They didn’t. They tasted triumph as surely as the northerners tasted disaster. This was what they’d waited for ever since they’d joined King Avram’s army. Many of them, no doubt, had wondered if it would ever come. Rollant knew he had. Now that it was here at last, they intended to make the most of it.
Waving the standard, Rollant trotted past a pair of repeating crossbows the men of the Army of Franklin had abandoned in their desperate retreat. He eyed the engines with the respect they deserved. How many southrons had they slain? Now his own side would use them against their former owners. He’d never understood the phrase poetic justice. Suddenly, he did.
The soldiers of the Army of Franklin were falling back to the west and then to the north, trying to wriggle out of the trap whose jaws were Doubting George’s footsoldiers and Hard-Riding Jimmy’s unicorn-riders with their quick-shooting crossbows. Some of the traitors got away. More didn’t, or so it seemed to Rollant.
However much the southrons pushed, their officers never seemed satisfied. Colonel Nahath kept right on shouting for the men of his regiment to press the pursuit. Joram, a company commander now but still not an officer, did the same for his soldiers. Rollant, not an officer and certain never to become one, did his share of shouting, too. Why not? The stripes on his sleeve gave him the right.
His regiment, along with the rest of John the Lister’s wing, followed Bell’s men west and north. Although Rollant would never make an officer, he could see what John wanted: to bring the Army of Franklin to battle one last time, to roll over it, and to wipe it off the face of the earth. If they could make the northerners stop and fight, they would wipe them off the face of the earth. Rollant could see that, too.
Much as John wanted it, it didn’t quite happen. There was a time in the middle of the afternoon when Rollant thought it would. One of the southrons’ columns was moving faster than the shattered force of traitors it pursued. If it could swing in, hit Bell’s men from the flank while the rest of the southrons assailed them from the rear…
Rollant always believed the southrons waited a little too long to try. Before they could, a regiment of Ned of the Forest’s unicorn-riders pitched into the head of that flanking column. The unicorn-riders couldn’t hope to beat the southrons. But they could slow them down, and they did. Meanwhile, the remnant of the Army of Franklin got over a bridge across a rain-swollen stream. The southrons, once they drove off Ned’s men, looked for another bridge or, that failing, a ford. They didn’t find one.
Southron soldiers around Rollant cursed furiously when their comrades came up short. No less than he, they understood what a successful attack then would have meant. “War’ll go on a while longer now,” Smitty said in disgust.
“I’m afraid so,” Rollant agreed. “But it’s going our way. By the gods, it really is. How far do you suppose we’ve come today?”
“Hells with me if I know.” Smitty looked back toward Ramblerton. Rollant had no idea what good that did; several rows of ridges hid the town from sight. But maybe it helped Smitty make whatever arcane calculations he required, for he went on, “Has to be six, eight miles, easy.”