Rollant had just dozed off when Sergeant Joram shook him awake for sentry-go. Rubbing sleep out of his eyes, he stared off to the west. “What’s going on there?” he asked, pointing to two new blazes beyond the profusion of northern campfires.
“Gods damn me if I know,” Joram answered. “Maybe they’re burning what they can’t use.”
But what Joseph the Gamecock’s men were burning, dawn revealed, was the pair of wooden bridges over the Rubicon, the river that ran west of Caesar. They’d kept campfires going close to the southrons, but they’d had only a handful of men around them. Now their whole army had crossed the Rubicon, and was retreating toward Marthasville as fast as it could go.
Lieutenant General Bell could not have been more revolted if he’d faced the prospect of losing his other leg and having his other arm crippled. His men tramped glumly north, along with the rest of the Army of Franklin. The only man in the whole army who seemed satisfied with what they’d done at Viper River Gap was Joseph the Gamecock.
“We hurt them,” he said when Bell, strapped onto his unicorn, rode up to remonstrate. “We hurt them badly.”
“But they hold the field… sir,” Bell growled.
“But the field is not important,” Joseph answered. “No field this side of Marthasville is important. We’ll find another miserable little place to defend in a few days and let them squander more lives attacking it.”
“When do we attack them?” Bell asked.
“If we see a chance, we can do that,” Joseph said. “More likely, though, we’ll go on defending.”
That made Bell take a swig from his jar of laudanum. But not even the potent drug eased the turmoil in his mind. As soon as the army stopped for the evening, he began a new letter to King Geoffrey. May it please your Majesty, he began with malice aforethought, knowing that what he had to say would not please the king at all, I have just witnessed and been compelled by circumstances to take part in the most disgraceful and disgusting withdrawal ever recorded in the annals of warfare.
“Is that too strong?” Bell wondered aloud. He shook his big, leonine head. It wasn’t. He would have taken oath to any and all gods that it wasn’t.
Joseph the Gamecock ordered this army out of its works and into retreat, abandoning all parts ofPeachtreeProvince from Caesar northward to the provincial border to the foe. The Army of Franklin-the Thunderer grant that it see once more the province for which it was named-was not defeated in the fieldworks it was trying to defend. Caesar was not on the point of falling when the general commanding abandoned it to an evil fate.
He paused to ink his pen once more and to look up at the ceiling of his pavilion, seeking inspiration from the gods or wherever he might find it. A moment later, the pen was racing across the paper again. However well the Army ofFranklin fought in the fieldworks, I have seen no sign that it can fight outside of them. Entrenching does indeed kill soldiers’ spirits. The sorcery is slow and exceedingly subtle, but no less sure for that.
“What to do?” he muttered. “What to do?”
So long as the general commanding has and is knownto have your confidence, your Majesty, we can but obey his orders and hope they will serve, however unlikely that may seem. But it would be disastrous and unfortunate to see this campaign come to an ignominious conclusion when you have officers who would gladly serve you for the sake of the glory they might win in the said service.
I have, sir, the honor to remain your most humble and obedient servant… Bell signed his name, sanded the letter dry, sealed it, and sent it out in the same clandestine way he had with his earlier missive. He didn’t know what results that one had had-none he could see yet. He hoped this one would do more.
“Cowardice,” he muttered. “If it’s not cowardice, it must be treason. They are there. How can we drive them away without hitting them?”
It all seemed obvious to him. It seemed so obvious, he started to hitch his painful way over to Joseph the Gamecock’s pavilion and confront him. After heaving himself to his feet-no, to my foot, he thought-he checked himself. Even he could see that that would do him no good.
He took the bottle of laudanum from his pocket, pulled the cork with his teeth, and swigged. As always, it tasted vile. As always, he didn’t care. “Ahhh,” he said, the soft, sated sigh of a man returning to the bosom of his beloved. He waited for the potent mix of spirits and poppy juice to work its will on him. He had not long to wait.
Calm flowed through him. He no longer wanted to do anything dreadful to Joseph the Gamecock. He recognized that that would not be a good idea: if without leave he assailed the general commanding, had he any hope of afterwards ascending to the command? No. Surely it would go to a plodder like Roast-Beef William. Best to wait, then, and let his letters work… if they would.
As the laudanum took its soft, sure grip on his soul, he floated away from some, at least, of the pain tormenting him. And as the pain receded, so did some of his anger at Joseph the Gamecock. With enough laudanum in him, Bell could look at things more disinterestedly. James was assuredly loyal to the kingdom if not to the king. He was doing what he thought best, what he thought right.
“That doesn’t mean it is right, though,” Bell rumbled. Laudanum might ease his mind, but didn’t change it.
He grabbed his crutches, heaved himself upright, and went out into the hot, muggy, firefly-punctuated night. “Good evening, sir,” Major Zibeon said smoothly, materializing at his side.
“And what, by the gods, is so good about it?” Bell demanded. “Did you see one chance, one single, solitary chance, where we might have struck the enemy today?”
“No, sir,” his aide-de-camp answered. “And I was looking for such a chance, too.”
“So was I,” Bell said. “I didn’t see one, either. If I had, I would have hurled my men against the gods-damned southrons in the open field, and to the seven hells with what Joseph the Gamecock had to say about it.”
“I have no doubt you would have, sir.” Zibeon did not sound approving.
“We’ve got to hit the southrons a blow,” Bell insisted, as he’d been insisting since before the campaign began. “How far north will we go before we dare turn and face them again? All the way to Marthasville?”
“Not so far as that, sir,” Major Zibeon said, sounding as much like a good servant as a soldier. “From what I hear, the general commanding intends to halt at the fieldworks outside Fat Mama.”
“Hells of a name for a town,” Bell muttered; that one penetrated even laudanum. Then, more slowly than he would have done before he was maimed and had to drug himself to hold anguish at bay, he called up a map in his mind. “Fat Mama? That’s bad enough-it’s halfway to Marthasville, by the Lion God’s fangs.”
“Not quite, sir,” his aide-de-camp replied. “And the position is quite strong. With any luck at all, we should be able to hold them there for some time.”
“I doubt it,” Bell said, unconsciously imitating Lieutenant General George. “Joseph will decide we’re too fornicating outnumbered, and he’ll find an excuse to skedaddle again.”
“As Hesmucet comes farther up into Peachtree Province, the glideway path on which he depends for food and crossbow bolts and firepots and such grows longer and longer,” Zibeon said. “He needs more and more men to guard it, which leaves him with fewer and fewer men to put in in the field against us.”
Bell fixed him with a stare so cold and fierce, it might indeed have come from the Lion God. Campfirelight only gave his eyes a cold glitter that made his aide-de-camp involuntarily give back a step. “So what?” Bell said. “Joseph won’t care. You mark my words. He doesn’t want to fight, is what’s wrong with him.”