And then, quite suddenly, it wasn’t a fight of crossbow quarrels any more. It was pikes and shortswords and men cursing and shouting-and screaming as they were hurt, too. Gremio beat aside the gleaming iron head of a pike. Before the fellow who carried the heavy spear could draw back for a second thrust, Gremio leaped forward and lunged. His point pierced flesh.
The pikeman howled, staring down and seeing steel inside him stabbing, stabbing. Gremio yanked back the blade. The point was bloody. That wound, he knew, was likely deep enough to kill, if not by making the southron bleed out then from the festering sure to follow. But the fellow wasn’t dead yet, and wouldn’t die right away. He managed another thrust at Gremio, who had to skip back smartly to keep from being spitted. Only then did the southron’s knees slowly buckle.
“Forward!” Gremio shouted. “We’ll push the bastards into Goober Creek!” He did his best to roar as if the Lion God were speaking through his body.
Ferocity-perhaps desperation wasn’t too strong a word-propelled the northerners into and then through their foes. Some southrons fell back toward the creek. Others simply fell, and would not rise again. For a few heady minutes, Gremio thought his comrades might indeed throw the enemy back into the stream and work a great slaughter on him there.
But the southrons had too many men. Those who ran away rallied when they met fresh, unpanicked troopers coming up from the south. And the reinforcements poured a couple of withering volleys of bolts into the oncoming northerners. A good many of King Geoffrey’s men had slung or thrown aside their crossbows to fight with shortswords instead. They couldn’t match the southrons quarrel for quarrel, as they had before.
“Forward!” Gremio cried yet again, and rushed toward the new and dreadfully steady southron line. The enemy might-likely would-kill him, but Colonel Florizel couldn’t complain he was a coward. The things we do for pride, he thought sourly, brandishing blood-bedaubed blade.
He looked back over his shoulder. His men kept on following, such of them as remained on their feet. Sergeant Thisbe trotted along only a few paces behind him. Gremio didn’t know whether to be proud about that or sad. You’re not just getting yourself killed for no purpose, but all the best men in the company.
“Shoot!” a southron officer yelled. Another volley tore into the men in blue. Gremio heard the shrieks behind him. He looked back again. What seemed like half the men who had still been on their feet were down.
Sergeant Thisbe waved urgently. “Sir, we can’t do it,” he called.
“We’ve got to try,” Gremio answered, which meant, I’m going to die before I retreat without orders. That was very likely a kind of madness of its own, but it was a madness most men on a battlefield shared. Without such a madness, anyone put in danger of his life would simply run away, and how could kings and generals hope to fight their wars like that?
But, before shouting, “Forward!” again, Gremio looked around for Colonel Florizel. If the regimental commander had already fallen, Gremio got some of his discretion back. He knew what he would do with it, too, for Thisbe was right: the attackers lacked the numbers to go any farther forward.
Florizel waved a sword bloodier than Gremio’s. Whatever the earl’s flaws, cowardice was not among them. “Good fighting!” he bawled.
“If you say so, your Excellency,” Gremio answered.
Then Florizel scowled, not at him but at the southrons. “Gods damn it, I don’t think we can shift them,” the regimental commander said.
The attack had jolted the southrons, but no more. “What are your orders, sir?” he called to Florizel.
A man of sense, seeing no hope the attack could succeed, would have ordered his men back. Earl Florizel said, “Let’s give it one more try, on the off chance I might be wrong.” He waved his sword again. “I hate to pull back from such a fine fray.”
That stuck Gremio as madness, but what point to saying so? What he did say was the only thing that would have satisfied the coloneclass="underline" “Forward!” Forward he went, with such men as were still able to go with him.
Two more deadly volleys from the southrons broke the charge before it came to hand to hand. Gremio looked for Florizel, wondering if one of those crossbow quarrels had stretched him dead in the dirt. Somehow, the regimental commander still stood, but only a forlorn corporal’s guard stood with him.
“Sir, they won’t leave a one of us alive if we stay here much longer,” Sergeant Thisbe said urgently.
“If Florizel orders me to die here, then die here I shall,” Gremio answered. Thisbe was more practical than that, as sergeants had a way of being. If he stayed, it was only because Gremio did: another species of madness, without a doubt.
At last, even Florizel saw it was hopeless. He ordered the men back toward the works from which they’d erupted. Those who could, obeyed.
Lieutenant General Bell scowled at his wing commanders. Roast-Beef William and Alexander the Steward gave back the exhausted stares of men who had seen too much fighting that day. Bell didn’t care how battle-weary they looked. He cared about nothing except the results of that fight.
“You failed me,” he growled. “Your men failed me.”
“Sir, we did everything we could,” Brigadier Alexander said.
“That’s the truth-the whole truth and nothing but,” Roast-Beef William agreed. “The southrons were there in numbers too great for us to move them. We tried. We did everything we could, everything we knew how to do.”
“You failed me,” Bell repeated. “Your men have turned craven, on account of cowering too long in trenches. They didn’t, they wouldn’t, push the attack with the spirit required to destroy the enemy.”
“Sir, that is not true,” William said. “They fought as bravely as any men could fight-look how many dead and wounded we left on the field.”
“If they had fought bravely enough, we would have won,” Bell said. “We should have won. We didn’t win. What have you got to say for yourselves?”
“Sir, if you’re going to attack an army that’s bigger than your own, you’ve got to know the odds aren’t on your side,” Old Straight said.
“But I had to attack. King Geoffrey insisted on it. That’s why Joseph the Gamecock isn’t commanding any more,” Bell said. The misfortune that had befallen his army couldn’t possibly have been his fault. “The soldiers just didn’t put enough into it. Otherwise, they would have won.”
“Do you want to throw away the whole army, then?” William asked.
“No! I want to drive back the southrons. We have to drive back the southrons,” Bell said. “If we don’t, they can cut the glideways to Marthasville one by one till they hold the town in the palm of their hand.”
“They’re already doing it,” Brigadier Alexander said. “That move to extend their left flank means they’re sitting on the glideway path to Julia. We’ll get no more supplies from the west.”
“Then we have to drive them back,” Bell declared. “It’s as simple as that.”
“Saying it’s as simple as that,” Roast-Beef William remarked. “Doing something about it won’t be so easy, I’m afraid. When you sent us south against Doubting George, you didn’t leave Benjamin the Heated Ham very many men. He may be able to hold back James the Bird’s Eye-but, on the other hand, he may not. He surely hasn’t got the numbers he needs to attack.”
Bell took the laudanum bottle from his tunic pocket and raised it to his lips. Maybe the drug would shield him from things he didn’t care to contemplate. Resentment in his voice, he said, “Hesmucet has no trouble attacking wherever he pleases.”
Patiently, William answered, “Hesmucet has more men than we do, sir. It’s in the nature of things that he can do a good deal we can’t.”
Brigadier Alexander added, “The one thing wrong with attacks is that they’re expensive even when they succeed-and a lot more expensive when they fail.”