“We aren’t going to make it,” Rollant said to Smitty as they drew within a hundred yards of the traitors’ works. Men were going down as if scythed. If Hesmucet felt like feeding his whole army into this sausage machine, Joseph the Gamecocks’s defenders might kill every man in it.
Smitty didn’t argue with him, which convinced him he was right-Smitty always thought the regiment could do more than it really could. All the farmer’s son said now was, “Well, we’ve got to keep trying a little longer.”
Echoing that, Lieutenant Griff shouted, “Forward!” again. He was brave. Rollant suspected he was a little bit crazy, too, to push the advance here.
A few feet away, the company standard-bearer took a crossbow quarrel in the chest. He stood there swaying for a moment, then crumpled to the ground. The banner, gold dragon on red, fell, too.
Rollant grabbed the staff before the silk of the flag could touch the ground and be deviled. If that wasn’t madness, and not a little of it, he couldn’t imagine what was. Standard-bearers were always targets. A standard-bearer charging straight at massed crossbows? A blond standard-bearer charging straight at massed crossbows? It’s a good thing I’ve got my name on the back of my uniform, he thought.
But he went forward even so, holding the company banner high. And he shouted a new war cry, one to which he’d never before felt entitled: “Detina!” If he couldn’t shout the kingdom’s name while carrying its flag, when could he?
Crossbow bolts hissed past him, some so close he could feel the breeze of their passage on his cheeks. But he wasn’t afraid. He didn’t know why, but he wasn’t. He felt exalted-not as if they couldn’t hurt him, but as if it wouldn’t matter if they did. And if that wasn’t madness, he couldn’t imagine what would be.
That mood of glorious indifference lasted till he came within perhaps twenty yards of the enemy’s entrenchments. What broke it wasn’t a bolt tearing into his flesh, but rather a hand tugging on his arm and a desperate voice crying, “Back, Rollant! We’re falling back!”
Rollant looked around like a man awakening from a fever. Sure enough, the southrons had done everything flesh and blood could do. They were streaming east down the forward slope of Commissioner Mountain, bringing their wounded with them, leaving their dead behind.
“Come on!” Smitty said urgently. “They’ll kill both of us if you wait around here.”
Exaltation drained out of Rollant like wine from a cracked cup. The dregs left behind were exhaustion and terror. He turned away from the enemy’s trenches and stumbled back toward the encampments from which they’d set out. The only thing he remembered to do was hold up the flag.
By some accident or miracle, no quarrels pierced him or Smitty before they got out of range. But when Rollant reached up to tug at his hat, he discovered one hole through the brim and one through the crown that hadn’t been there before. If I were a couple of inches taller… He didn’t want to finish that thought.
“They aren’t chasing us,” he remarked when he and Smitty had got back among their fellows.
“Why should they chase us?” Smitty answered. “They’ve whipped us. All they want to do is hold us back, and we sure aren’t going forward now.”
That was a self-evident truth. “Gods, I could use something wet,” Rollant said. He noticed the banner he was carrying had several new holes in it, too. None in me, though, he thought. Some god or another was watching out. None in me.
Sergeant Joram handed Rollant a flask. He took a big swig, thinking it held water, and almost choked to death on a mouthful of potent spirits. The stuff seared its way down to his belly. As he wheezed, Joram set a hand on his shoulder, something the sergeant had never done before. “You did good,” Joram said.
With a shrug, Rollant answered, “I hardly even knew what I was doing.”
“You’ve always fought well enough,” Joram said. “But up there on the mountain… up there you fought like-like a Detinan.”
Plainly, he knew no higher praise. Rollant wasn’t delighted with the way he’d put the praise he gave, but didn’t care to quarrel about it. “Thanks,” he said, and took another, smaller, swig from the flask. This time, he was ready for the flames in his throat.
Lieutenant Griff came up to him. “Will you carry the standard again?” he asked.
“A standard-bearer shouldn’t be a common soldier,” Rollant answered. “Will you make me a corporal?”
He waited for Griff to get angry. But the company commander only nodded. “That’s business,” he said. “Doing business is Detinan, too. I’ll go to Colonel Nahath with it. Bargain?”
If Rollant weren’t a blond, Griff would have promoted him on the spot. He was sure of that. But few blonds ever got any chance at all for promotion. He nodded and saluted. “Yes, sir. Bargain.”
Lieutenant General George looked at the reports his brigade commanders had brought him. Turning to his adjutant, he shook his head and said, “We lost a godsawful lot of men up there, and what did it get us? Not bloody much.”
“Bloody is the word, sir,” Colonel Andy agreed. “Close to three thousand soldiers with holes in them, and we didn’t hurt the traitors nearly as much.”
“That’s the rub, gods damn it,” Doubting George said. “We can afford more losses than they can, because our army’s twice the size of theirs. But we can’t afford a lot more losses than theirs, not if we don’t shift ’em an inch. And we didn’t.”
“I know, sir,” Andy said. How could you help knowing? George thought. We’re still where we were when we tried to takeCommissionerMountain, not somewhere on the other side of it. If we’d taken it, Joseph would have had to retreat again, and the northerners would have lost the plain behind it, and Hiltonia andEphesus to boot. Colonel Andy went on, “But General Hesmucet thought it was worth a try.”
There was no answer to that, none that would have kept George properly subordinate. He shifted his ground instead: “Since it didn’t work, we have to figure out what to do next.”
“The rain’s stopped,” Andy said. “That’s something.”
And so it was. Moving men and catapults and victuals when the roads turned into mud-bottomed creeks was just this side of impossible. Doubting George knew that was another reason Hesmucet had struck here: he’d already had men and supplies in place. But, unfortunately, so had Joseph the Gamecock.
“What can we do?” Doubting George wasn’t really asking his adjutant; he was thinking aloud. “Did I hear rightly that we got a foothold on the western bank of Snouts Stream?”
“I believe so, sir,” Andy answered.
“We’ll have to hang on to that,” George said. “We’ll have to hang on to that for dear life, as a matter of fact. If we can do with it, then the attack on Commissioner Mountain may turn out to have been worth something after all.”
“Here’s hoping.” Colonel Andy didn’t sound as if he believed it.
George set a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t fret yourself, Colonel,” he advised. “You’ve got to remember, things could be worse. I’d much rather be here than down on Merkle’s Hill with all the traitors in the world roaring for our blood. That wasn’t so very long ago, you know.” He laughed.
“What’s funny, sir?” his adjutant asked.
“Nothing, not really,” Lieutenant General George answered. Andy sent him a wounded look, but he didn’t explain. He didn’t think anyone else would find it funny, anyhow. How could he tell Andy he’d managed to talk himself out of his own doubts?