He forgot about sleep. He forgot about everything except the wizardry he was shaping. He didn’t even notice it was growing light outside. He didn’t notice anything except the pages in front of him till one of the sentries in front of his farmhouse headquarters exclaimed, “Lion God’s claws, looks like every gods-damned southron in the world’s lined up down there!”
That penetrated Thraxton’s fog of concentration. His joints creaked as he rose from his chair. When he looked down on the enemy, he laughed. “So they think they can storm Proselytizers’ Rise, do they? They might as well try to storm the gods’ mystic mountain as ours. Let them come!” He laughed again.
Tiny and perfect in the distance, looking like so many toy soldiers, the southrons advanced toward the trench line at the base of Proselytizers’ Rise. They’d come that far in the previous day’s fighting, though they’d had to fall back. If they tried to come farther now… If they tried to come farther and then fear smote them…
Imagining thousands, tens of thousands, of panic-stricken men trying to tumble down the front slope of Proselytizers’ Rise, Thraxton laughed yet again. That would be sweet, sweet enough to make up for all the embarrassment and bickering he’d had to put up with since the fight by the River of Death. “Let them come,” he whispered. “Aye, let them come.”
Come they did. The southrons might be-as far as Thraxton was concerned, they were-savages, ruffians, uncivilized brigands doing their best to pull down their betters. But they weren’t cowards. If only they’d run from Merkle’s Hill instead of standing fast… But they had a good northern man-no, a bad northern man, for he chose the wrong side-leading them, Count Thraxton thought. He wasted a moment sending a curse Doubting George’s way.
Into the trenches at the base of Proselytizers’ Rise swarmed the southrons. Before long, they had overrun them. And then, to Thraxton’s delight, they did start storming up the side of Proselytizers’ Rise, toward his men who were shooting down at them from above. Who could have given such a mad order? Whoever he was, Thraxton wanted to clasp his hand and thank him for aiding King Geoffrey’s cause.
Thraxton peered down at the southrons scrambling toward him. General Bart’s whole army seemed to be trying to pull itself up the steep slope of the Rise. Thraxton waited a few minutes more, then began his spell. Confidence flowed through his narrow chest as he incanted. No, nothing would go wrong this time. Nothing could go wrong this time. He’d been wrong before, perhaps, but not now. He laughed. Surely not now…
XII
“Forward!” Captain Cephas shouted, waving his sword. His command was almost lost in the roar that came from the throats of hundreds of officers and the throats of hundreds of horns. And forward the men of Doubting George’s army went.
“King Avram!” Rollant yelled. “King Avram and freedom!” He wasn’t thrilled about moving once more against the base of Proselytizers’ Rise, but nobody cared whether he was thrilled or not.
“We can do it!” Cephas said. Rollant didn’t know whether they could do it or not. He wasn’t going to worry about it very much, either. He would go forward as long and as hard as he could. If his comrades started going back instead of forward, he would go back, too-a little more slowly than most, so as not to let ordinary Detinans get any nasty ideas about blonds.
Beside him, Smitty said, “I hope the traitors up there at the top of the Rise are pissing in their pantaloons, watching us come at ’em.”
“And the bastards in the trenches down below, too,” Rollant added. “That’d be good.”
“It sure would,” Smitty agreed. Then he stared up toward the forbidding crest line of Proselytizers’ Rise and grimaced. “Likelier, though, they’re just sitting up there getting drunk and laughing their arses off at us.”
Rollant thought that was pretty likely, too. All through the campaign, nobody in Rising Rock had said anything about driving the traitors from Proselytizers’ Rise. The closer Rollant came to the base of the Rise, the more sense that made to him. It looked to him as if men who held the top could stay there forever.
The men in the trenches at the bottom of the Rise started shooting at the advancing southrons. They had a few engines with them, too, which hurled stones and firepots at Rollant and his comrades. A stone smashed two men to shrieking ruin only a few feet to his left. Something hot and wet splashed his wrist-somebody’s drop of blood. With a soft, disgusted curse, he wiped the back of his hand on his pantaloons.
Then the southrons broke through the ditches and downed trees in front of the trench line. As it had been the day before, the fighting was fierce, but it didn’t last long. The southrons had more men here today, and overwhelmed their foes. A few of the traitors got away, but only a few.
Having gained the trenches, what did the southrons have? Rollant had wondered that the day before, and still wondered now. The northerners on top of Proselytizers’ Rise were free to shoot down at them to their hearts’ content. And they galled the southrons, too, with their bolts and with the stones and firepots the engines up there hurled down.
“What do we do about this?” Rollant shouted to anyone who would listen. He hoped Smitty would have an answer, or Sergeant Joram, or Captain Cephas. If they didn’t, he hoped the generals who’d sent the army forward-and who mostly hadn’t come themselves-would. But no one said a word. A plunging crossbow bolt struck a soldier not far from him between the neck and the left shoulder and sank down through his flesh to pierce his heart. A surprised look on his face, the man fell dead. “What do we do?” Rollant repeated.
Afterwards, he would have taken oath that he heard someone with a great voice shouting, “Forward!” A few other men said the same thing, so he didn’t think he’d imagined it. But he was never quite sure, for neither Smitty nor Joram nor a good many others recalled hearing anything of the sort.
What was plain was, the army couldn’t stay there. It couldn’t go back, not when it was only being stung, not unless it wanted to humiliate itself forevermore before General Bart and Doubting George-and humiliate George in the process. That left only one thing to do.
Rollant wasn’t among the very first who started scrambling up the steep, rocky slope of Proselytizers’ Rise toward the traitors at the crest line. He wasn’t among the very first, but he wasn’t far behind them, either. Anything seemed better than getting shot at when his crossbow lacked the range to shoot back.
“We’re out of our minds,” Smitty said as the two of them scrabbled for hand- and footholds. “They’ll fornicating massacre us.”
“Maybe they will,” Rollant answered. “Maybe they won’t, gods damn ’em. But we’ll get close enough to hurt ’em before they do.” A quarrel struck sparks from a stone a couple of feet in front of his face and harmlessly bounded away. Maybe we’ll get close enough to hurt the traitors, he thought. Maybe.
More and more southrons were on the slope now. When Rollant looked back over his shoulder, the whole surface of the Rise below him was gray with soldiers taking the one way they could to come to grips with the foe. Even as he watched, a couple of them were hit and went rolling back down toward the trenches.
The spectacle of the southrons scrambling up the front face of Proselytizers’ Rise was awe-inspiring enough from where he saw it. What did it look like from the crest, where the northerners watched a whole army heaving itself up the mountainside straight at them? Rollant didn’t, couldn’t, know. He just hoped he would make it to the top.
When he got about halfway up, he paused to shoot at the traitors peering down at him, and to reload once he had shot. He didn’t know whether he hit anyone, but he’d come far enough to try. Another bolt spanged off a rock in front of him. Lucky twice now, went through his mind. How much longer can I stay lucky?