Rollant thought it over, then nodded. “Yes, that feels about right. My feet are that tired, I’d say.”
“Not just my gods-damned feet-all of me. What I wouldn’t give for a nice, soft featherbed and a nice, soft… girl to keep me company there.”
He’d probably been on the point of saying blond girl when he remembered Rollant was a blond himself. Blond women had a reputation for being easy even among southrons who’d never seen a blond, woman or man, in all their lives. Rollant knew why his people had that reputation: Detinans in the north, especially but not only nobles, took blond women whenever they wanted to. If the women already had husbands… well, so what? Either they could keep their mouths shut or they could end up dead-and so could those husbands. Blonds died easily in the north. No one asked a lot of questions when they did.
“I’ll take the featherbed. You can have the girl,” Rollant said. “If this miserable war really is somewhere close to getting done, I’ll go home to my wife before too long. I hope so, by the gods. I miss her.”
“You could grab whatever you find, the way most married men do out in the field,” Smitty said. “She’d never know.”
“I would,” Rollant answered. Smitty shrugged and scratched his head. Rollant’s fidelity to Norina never failed to bemuse him.
“Forward!” Sergeant Joram yelled. His voice was raw and hoarse from all the shouting he’d done the past couple of days. He pointed to the bridge Bell’s men had used to get over the stream. “If we can cross there ourselves, we’ll keep the heat on those northern sons of bitches. They don’t have much in front of the bridge, and they’ve been running all day. They’ll run some more if we push ’em. We can do it. King Avram!”
“Avram!” Rollant shouted. “Avram and freedom!” He didn’t know whether the men from the Army of Franklin would run. He didn’t much care, either. If they tried to make a stand, the southrons would roll over them. Only as he trotted toward the soldiers in blue did he blink. Even yesterday morning, he wouldn’t have assumed victory would come so easy.
Run the northerners did. They ran like rabbits, in fact, before the southrons even got within crossbow range. They scampered over the bridge to jeers from John the Lister’s soldiers: “Cowards!” “Yellow-bellies!” “Come back here and take your whipping, you nasty, naughty little boys!”
That last, shouted out by Smitty, made Rollant laugh so hard he got a stitch in his side and had to slow down. He was still short of the bridge when lightning crashed down on it and set it ablaze. The northerners hadn’t had much luck smiting southron soldiers with thunderbolts. But nothing, no spell, seemed to keep them from calling down lightning on a place where no soldiers stood.
Balked, Rollant and the rest of the southrons stared from the southern branch of the stream at the escaping northern soldiers. A few northerners took shots at them before retreating. Most didn’t bother. They’d had enough.
“Engineers!” Colonel Nahath shouted and waved. “We need pontoons here! By the gods, we need ’em fast, too. The traitors are getting away.”
The engineers did eventually come forward. They did eventually bridge the stream. By then, though, more than an hour of precious daylight on one of the shortest days of the year had been lost. The soldiers who would go after the Army of Franklin understood as much, too. Even though the pursuit would have taken them into new danger, they cursed and fumed at the delay. They knew a shattering victory when they saw one, and they wanted to finish off Bell’s army and crush it altogether.
It didn’t quite happen. Bell and Ned left behind crossbowmen and unicorn-riders who fought a series of stubborn rear-guard actions and kept the southrons from overwhelming what was left of the Army of Franklin. As twilight spread over the land, Rollant realized his comrades and he weren’t-quite-going to destroy the Army of Franklin that day.
A lone unicorn-rider came up to Sergeant Joram’s company. For a moment, Rollant thought the fellow was a messenger. Then he took a longer look and joined the cheers ringing out: it was Doubting George himself.
“Gods damn it to hells, boys,” the commanding general said, waving his hat at the southron soldiers, “didn’t I tell you we’d lick ’em? Didn’t I tell you?”
“Yes, sir!” Rollant roared along with everybody else.
“And we’ll finish the job, too,” George said. “I aim to run the legs right off the traitors. Any of ’em who get away from us’ll be some of the fastest men nobody’s crucified yet. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, sir!” the men cried, even more excitedly than before.
Doubting George rode past them, as if he intended to capture singlehanded not only Bell but also all the men the enemy general still commanded. Rollant turned to Smitty, who stood not far away. “You know something?”
“What’s that, your Corporalship, sir?” Smitty asked.
“George was the rock in the River of Death, but he’s the hammer at Ramblerton.”
“The Hammer.” Smitty paused, tasting the words. “You’re right, by the Thunderer’s lightning bolt.”
“I don’t want to stop here tonight,” Rollant said. “I want to go on, the way Doubting George went on. I want to stomp the traitors into the ground. I want them beaten, gods damn it. How about you, Smitty?”
“Me?” Smitty shrugged. “Right now, what I want is supper.”
Thus reminded of the flesh and blood of which he was made, Rollant realized he wanted supper, too. In fact, he was ravenous. He remembered gulping down a hasty breakfast. Had he had anything after that? He didn’t think so, and he’d come a long way since then.
A cook handed him a hard cracker and a chunk of raw, dripping meat. He roasted the gobbet on a stick over a fire without asking what it was. Beef? Dead donkey? Unicorn? He didn’t much care, not right now. It helped fill the hole in his belly. Next to that, nothing else mattered.
Picking his teeth with a twig, Smitty gave his own opinion of what supper had been: “I don’t know for sure, mind you, but I think I just ate Great-Aunt Hilda.”
“That’s disgusting!” Rollant exclaimed.
“I didn’t know you’d met the old battle-axe,” Smitty answered. Rollant grimaced. Blithely, Smitty continued, “We should’ve turned Great-Aunt Hilda loose against the traitors. She’d’ve nagged ’em back into the kingdom in about five minutes, tops.”
“You’re ridiculous,” Rollant said, “and I’m sure your Great-Aunt Hilda is, too. After all, she’s related to you. But the way things are going, I think we can handle the traitors without her.” Smitty didn’t argue. Evidently he thought so, too.
Marching down to Ramblerton, Captain Gremio had thought of the Army of Franklin as a dead man walking. On the second day of the battle in front of the town, the dead man stopped walking. He fell over.
That was true only in the metaphorical sense. Literally speaking, the Army of Franklin, or those parts of it that managed to escape Doubting George’s men, spent most of that second day in headlong retreat. Only when night fell at last could the survivors begin to take stock and figure out how enormous the disaster truly was.
But that came later. When the second day of fighting started, Gremio, whose regiment remained on the far right of Lieutenant General Bell’s line, again thought the southrons weren’t pushing so hard as they might. Every attack they made, his men and the rest of Colonel Florizel’s wing pushed back without much trouble.
Sergeant Thisbe said, “I don’t much care what Bell thinks, sir. It doesn’t look to me like Doubting George is putting all his weight into the fight here.”
“I’d say you’re right, Sergeant,” Gremio replied. “I wish you were wrong, but I’d say you’re right. Which makes me wonder… If he’s not putting his weight into the fight here, where is he putting it?”