Doubting George’s men didn’t quite manage to bag all the traitors. The rear guard fought skillfully and stubbornly, and managed to withdraw south toward Marthasville in good order. They did know their business, no doubt of that. The war would have been much easier were they ignorant.
Somehow, even the partial failure seemed not to matter so much. “We’ve got the glideway,” Rollant said as the sun set in blood ahead of him.
“We didn’t finish the traitors’ army.” That was Smitty, sounding as indignant as if he were Marshal Bart.
“Do you know what?” Rollant said.
Smitty shook his head. “No. What, your Corporalship with all the answers, sir?”
Rollant snorted. “You’re impossible. But I’ll tell you what anyhow: we’re getting to where it doesn’t matter whether we did or not. We’ve got the glideway line-the lines, I should say. The rest will take care of itself.”
Behind Captain Gremio, more firepots crashed into Marthasville. He could hear their hateful bursts. The breeze was out of the west, too, so he could smell the smoke from the burning city. He would have thought that, by this time, nothing much inside Marthasville would burn. He would have thought that, but he would have been wrong. Every day, the southrons started fresh fires.
They weren’t just heaving firepots into the city, either. A rending crash told of a great stone striking home. A soldier from his company said, “There goes somebody’s house to hells and gone.”
The fellow was bound to be right. When one of those heavy stones came down on something, whatever it hit broke. And if you don’t believe me, ask what’s left of Leonidas the Priest, Gremio thought with funeral-pyre humor.
He was tempted to use the joke out loud. Before he could, Colonel Florizel called, “Come on, men. Move up. The attack will go in in a few minutes.” He chuckled to himself. “ `Go in’ is right, isn’t it, when we’re trying to take the Sweet One’s shrine away from the southrons? May she give them all a dose of the clap.” He extended the middle finger of his right hand in the usual Detinan invocation of the goddess of love. A lot of troopers imitated the gesture. So did Gremio.
“Be ready. We have to be strong and fierce in the field.” Sergeant Thisbe spoke as if Florizel hadn’t. “If we don’t lick the southrons here, this army is in a lot of trouble. We can do it.”
“That’s right,” Gremio said. “We can-and we’ve got to. If we can take away the Sweet One’s shrine and the high ground around it, we cut off the wing that’s grabbed our glideway lines east to Dothan and up to the northern part of this province. Then we can break the stranglehold they’re putting on us and on Marthasville.”
His sword was loose in its sheath. He went forward toward the shrine as if sure of victory. In his heart, he was anything but. The Army of Franklin had lost south of Marthasville. It had lost west of Marthasville. What was left of Roast-Beef William’s wing had come scurrying back to Marthasville from Jonestown in the north with its tail between its legs. And now Lieutenant General Bell was ordering this attack east of the city.
Why not? Gremio thought acidulously. We’ve failed in the other three directions. I supposeBell’s trying for a clean sweep. That wasn’t fair. Gremio knew as much. He was past caring. He wished Bell had remained a wing commander. He was up to that job. Army commander? On the face of things, that seemed beyond him-as far beyond him as Mount Panamgam, home of the gods, was beyond the sky.
Colonel Florizel still thought the sun god shone on Bell day and night. As far as Florizel was concerned, fighting was all that mattered. Whether you won or lost seemed much less important to him. Gremio had seen too much combat in the lawcourts and on the field to have much sympathy for that point of view.
Pikemen formed up in front of the northern crossbowmen. Horns blared. Along with the rest of the officers in the attack, Gremio shouted, “Forward!” He waved his sword. He wouldn’t lead his men anywhere he wouldn’t go himself.
“That’s the spirit!” Colonel Florizel said, and he brandished his own blade. A moment later, he turned to bawl something at another of his captains. He wasn’t keeping a special eye on Gremio any more. I did my best to get myself killed when we fought by Goober Creek, Gremio thought. I didn’t quite manage it, but I did persuade Florizel I’m no coward-for a while, anyhow.
No one had spoken about exactly where in front of the Sweet One’s temple the southrons had their lines. Gremio concluded that was because no one knew. He wasn’t surprised. The whole war, on both sides, had gone like that, with armies blundering past each other and into each other as if their commanders were blind men. Maybe they are. It would explain some of the madness I’ve seen better than anything else I can think of.
Old Straight’s wing didn’t blunder past the southrons. It blundered straight into them, discovering where they were by having a volley of crossbow quarrels tear into it at close range. Screams rose from the northerners. But so did their roaring war cry. “Forward!” Gremio shouted. “Now we’ve found the sons of bitches, so let’s go get ’em!”
And, for what seemed like the first time in this campaign, the northerners had magecraft working for them. Thunderbolts crashed down on the southrons’ entrenchments. Dragons and other phantasms appeared in the sky. Gremio was a modern, well-educated man. He knew they couldn’t hurt him, and so they couldn’t. But if an ignorant farmer’s son believed the beasts could devour him or flame him, his superstitious belief gave them the power to do just that.
Roaring their throats raw, the northerners swarmed down into the enemy’s trenches. A lot of southrons there were already dead or hurt from the magecraft. Some of the ones who remained threw away their crossbows and shortswords and surrendered. But others, stubborn as if they were good northern men, fought on despite long odds.
A crossbow bolt hissed past Gremio’s ear as he jumped into the forwardmost trench. His sword spitted the southron who’d shot at him. The man in gray howled and reeled back.
“Keep moving, gods damn you!” Gremio called to his men. “This isn’t the fight we need. We’ve got to get through these trenches and seize the shrine and the high ground around it. If we can’t manage that, whatever we do here doesn’t matter.”
Sometimes the soldiers did need reminding of such things. To a lot of them, as to Florizel, fighting was an end in itself, not a means. That struck Gremio as madness, but he knew it to be true even so.
“Onward!” he yelled again, and looked along the trench to make sure the troopers could go on. Not far away, Sergeant Thisbe battled a southron who had a better idea than most of his fellows about what to do with a shortsword. Gremio ran to Thisbe’s aid. The southron cared no more than any other soldier for the notion of fighting two foes at once. He turned and fled.
“Thank you, Captain,” Thisbe said.
“You’re welcome. I know you’d do the same for me,” Gremio answered. “Now we’ve got to get moving. If we can drive them back from the shrine, we’ve really done something.”
Out of the trenches and east once more pushed the northerners. But they ran into another line of entrenchments only a furlong or so past the one they’d just cleared. Crossing the open ground cost them a lot of good men killed and wounded. This time, too, the lightnings mostly missed when they struck at the southrons’ fieldworks. Little by little, the enemy’s magic was coming up close to the level of that of King Geoffrey’s wizards.
Colonel Florizel pointed with his sword at the trenches ahead. “Charge!” he cried.
If sorcery wouldn’t do the job, crossbow quarrels and shortswords and pikes would have to. Still roaring like lions, the northern men surged toward the second line of trenches. They’d enjoyed the defenders’ advantage through most of the fights from Borders up to Marthasville. No more. Now the southrons waited for them to come, waited and took a heavy toll while they were in the open.