“What kind of preposterous excuse are they giving?” General Hesmucet demanded as he rode up.
“As a matter of fact, sir, it doesn’t sound so preposterous to me,” Doubting George replied, and then explained.
“Gods damn entrenchments!” Hesmucet burst out. “Gods damn them to the seven hells. They take the offensive spirit away from our soldiers altogether.”
“No, sir. I wouldn’t say that.” George shook his head. “The Detinan soldier fights his war the same way he runs his farm or his shop. If he invests in fighting, he expects that investment to pay.”
“Well, these fellows are a pack of idiots for entrenching when there aren’t any traitors in sight,” Hesmucet said, and George couldn’t very well disagree with that. The general commanding raised his voice: “You boys had better get moving and keep moving, or I’m going to have to find out who in the hells you are.”
“Uh, yes, sir,” the soldiers said in a ragged chorus. They abandoned their half-dug trenches and hurried away.
“Disgraceful,” Hesmucet said.
“I still don’t think so, sir,” Doubting George replied. “They fight hard whenever we send them at the foe. Think of that fight by Caesar a few days ago. You can’t ask for more than those men gave.”
“You can always ask for more,” Hesmucet said in a steely voice. That grim determination was thought-provoking. Hesmucet repeated, “You can always ask for more,” and then added, “Sometimes asking for it makes the men give it to you.”
“A point,” George said. “A distinct point.”
“What I want to know is, will we ever get to this Fat Mama place?” Hesmucet grumbled. “In this country, the gods would have to work a miracle for us to get anywhere at all. I rode through it twenty years ago, and it hasn’t changed since-certainly not for the better in any way.”
That was a distinct point, too. Swamps and pine woods and stands of shrubs and thorn bushes and saplings that had sprung up where the pines were cut down dominated the landscape. The roads, when there were roads, were narrow and seemed to wander at random rather than actually going anywhere. Without the sun in the sky, George would have had no idea where north lay.
With cries of alarm, a whole company of soldiers a hundred yards ahead started running away as fast as they could go. “Now what?” Hesmucet growled.
Before long, one of those cries of alarm developed words, or at least a word: “Hornets!”
“If you’ll excuse me, sir,” Doubting George said, and rode away from trouble as fast as he could. He was not unduly surprised to discover General Hesmucet also retreating as fast as he could persuade his unicorn to go.
“By the power vested in me as commanding general, I hereby declare those wasps traitors against King Avram,” Hesmucet declared.
“That sounds good to me, sir,” George said. “Shall I order the men to arrest them and take them back to Georgetown for trial?” Before Hesmucet could reply, he went on, “Or do you suppose they’re enough of a trial right here?”
Somebody yelled as he was stung. More soldiers broke ranks to escape the hornets. Ruefully, Hesmucet said, “They’re doing more to slow us down than Joseph the Gamecock has so far.”
“You were the one who said it, sir: as long as he holds Marthasville and keeps his army in the field, he’s doing everything false King Geoffrey could ask of him. He’s not the same sort of fighter as Duke Edward, but he knows his business.”
“I can’t argue with you there, much as I wish I could,” Hesmucet answered. “He pulled out of Caesar just as slick as you please-didn’t leave so much as a wagon or an ass that wasn’t too lame for us to use.”
Before too long, the front of the line of march sorted itself out again. But the hornets caused a traffic jam all out of proportion to the amount of harm they could have done and to the number of men they actually stung. When a handful of people stopped and flabbled because of the wasps, everybody else behind them had to stop and wait while the chaos subsided. Delay went through the whole long column of marching southrons, as one could watch a devoured pig going through a big snake.
And then, just when things finally seemed to have got back to normal, the roads opened out on a little northern town-one that wouldn’t have existed if it weren’t for a crossroads-called Dareton. Joseph the Gamecock had left a brigade of men behind there to skirmish with the southrons.
Colonel Andy, Doubting George’s adjutant, was indignant. “What can he hope to accomplish with that?” he demanded rhetorically. “He can’t possibly hope to hold us back.”
“To hold us? No, not when his whole army couldn’t at Borders or Caesar,” Doubting George said. “To delay us? To give him more time to settle in at Fat Mama farther north and make it tougher to crack? That’s what he’s got in mind, sure as I’m looking at those works ahead.”
“Not chivalrous,” Andy sniffed. “Not sporting, either.”
Peering at the fieldworks in front of Dareton, Lieutenant General George was inclined to agree. Red earth ramparts sheltered soldiers and made catapults and repeating crossbows harder for the southrons’ engines to reach. “He’ll try to do us as much harm as he can and then pull back,” George predicted.
“Let’s just mask his position and then go on,” Andy said.
But it wouldn’t be that easy or that cheap. By the way Joseph the Gamecock’s artificers had sited their wards, they’d made sure the southrons couldn’t pass on the open ground between Dareton and the forest to the east without coming in range of their weapons.
“Do you know what I am going to do?” Doubting George said, a certain bleak amusement in his voice.
“No, sir.” Andy didn’t sound amused at all. He sounded thoroughly indignant at Joseph the Gamecock.
“I am going to get rid of a cockroach by dropping an anvil on it.”
“Sir?” Andy didn’t get it. When the gods were passing out imagination, he’d been in line for a second helping of diligence. That made him an excellent adjutant, and would surely have made him a disaster as a commander.
“Never mind, Colonel,” George said soothingly. “I’ll show you.” He began giving orders.
The southrons’ siege engines rumbled forward on their wheeled carts. They started heaving stones and darts and firepots at the entrenchments in front of Dareton. The catapults in the fieldworks answered back as best they could, but Doubting George had ordered far more engines into action than Joseph the Gamecock had left with the defenders.
And George threw more men at Dareton than Joseph had left behind to hold the place-many, many more. The whole Army of Franklin might have held his assaulting force out of the town. Then again, it might not have. A single lonely brigade, however feisty, had not a chance.
Its commander soon realized as much. He left one regiment in the field to hold up the southron army for as long as it could, but got the rest of his men out of the trenches and marching through Dareton and on to the north. Here and there along the line, columns of smoke rising into the sky marked burning siege engines the traitors couldn’t take away with them.
All in all, it was a minor triumph of delay. Glum prisoners came trudging back through the southrons’ lines. They cursed the men who’d caught them, they doubly cursed every blond they saw in a gray tunic, and they cursed Doubting George when they saw him.
“Freeze in the seven hells!” some shouted, at the same time as others were yelling, “Fry in the seven hells!”
George turned to Colonel Andy. “If half of me freezes while the other half fries, on average I ought to be pretty comfortable.”
“Er, yes,” his adjutant replied, and George stifled a sigh. He’d long since realized Andy had not a dram of whimsy concealed anywhere about his person. That being so, why was he disappointed now? Because nobody likes to make a joke and have it fall flat, he thought.