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rust-
colored dirt flew up from under the white beast's hooves as it galloped away.
All Lieutenant General Bell could do was wait for messengers to bring him news
of what was happening to the northwest. If Roast-Beef William didn't throw the
southrons back from the glideway leading to Julia . . . Bell shook his head.
He wouldn't think about that. He refused to think about that.
As morning wore away and afternoon came on, the news the messengers brought
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was less and less anything Bell wanted to hear. The southrons had stiffened.
"We're hitting 'em with everything we got, sir," one man said, "but we ain't
got enough. Maybe if we wasn't so worn from marching all night to get to where
we needed to be at so as we could hit 'em at all . . . But there's a lot of
them bastards, and they don't want to move."
"But they have to!" Bell exclaimed, as if he could push the southrons off the
glideway with his one good arm.
With a mournful shrug, the messenger went his way. Bell stared off to the
northwest.
Men marching and countermarching had raised a great cloud of dust, by which he
could tell where the fighting was taking place, but not, try as he would, how
it was going. He drummed the fingers of his good hand against his crutch and
waited for another messenger to bring more news.
Before long, one did. Even as he rode up, he shouted in excitement:
"Lieutenant
General Bell! Lieutenant General Bell!"
"What is it?" Bell barked. "What's the word?"
"We've killed James the Bird's Eye, sir," the messenger exclaimed. "The
southrons'
wing commander's dead as shoe leather, gods damn the son of a bitch to the
seven hells!"
* * *
"What?" General Hesmucet stared at the messenger in dismay. "James the Bird's
Eye dead? I don't believe it!"
"I'm afraid it's true, sir," the southron unicorn-rider said. "Gods damn those
traitor sons of bitches to the seven hells, but they shot him right off his
unicorn while he was riding toward the thick of the fighting."
"That sounds like him. That sounds just like him, in fact." Hesmucet shook his
head in dull wonder. "But dead? That's dreadful! He can't even be thirty-five.
He's . . . he was .
. . strong and brave and handsome, and everybody likes liked him. He was a
noble man, and I'm sure King Avram would have made him a nobleman had he
lived. What are the gods thinking of, to let him die so young?"
"I'm afraid I don't know how to answer that, sir," the messenger replied.
Hesmucet didn't know how to answer it, either. He knew what Major Alva would
have said: that the gods paid much less attention to earthly affairs than
people were in the habit of thinking. Hesmucet didn't like to hear such
things. But when an officer who had everything to live for stopped a crossbow
quarrel, he couldn't help wondering whether
Alva had a point.
The rider pointed back towards a unicorn-drawn ambulance coming down from the
northwest. "Sir, I don't know for a fact, but I believe that's his body in
there."
Seeing the ambulance made hope rise in Hesmucet. "Maybe he's not dead. Maybe
he's only wounded," the commanding general said. The messenger shook his head,
but
Hesmucet shouted for a healer.
As soon as the ambulance stopped, a couple of men removed James the Bird's
Eye's body from it. One look told Hesmucet the young wing commander would
never rise again. Hesmucet had seen enough corpses the past three years and
more to have no doubt when he saw another. The healer stooped beside James,
then looked up at the general commanding. "Through the heart, sir, I'm
afraid," he said. "It would have been over very fast, if that's any
consolation."
"Not fornicating much," Hesmucet snapped. And then, as he had to, he thought
about the battle still unfolding. "Who's in command now on the left?" he
demanded of the messenger.
"Baron Logan the Black, sir," the man replied. "We're holding pretty well you
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don't need to worry about that."
Hesmucet only grunted. Baron Logan had turned out to make a pretty good
soldier, but Hesmucet didn't like the idea of having him as a wing commander.
He wasn't a professional warrior, but a noble from King Avram's home province
who'd got himself a brigadiership in exchange for loudly and publicly backing
the king and recruiting soldiers. The southron army, in Hesmucet's view, had
too many officers like that. He couldn't do anything about it right this
minute, but he intended to when he could.
Another messenger came galloping up. "Baron Logan's compliments, sir, and he
wants you to know the traitors are stopped. He expects to start driving them
back any time now."
"That's good news," Hesmucet said, and meant it. "Give him my compliments in
return, and tell him the northerners deserve every single thing that happens
to them."
"Yes, sir." The messenger didn't even waste time saluting. He set spurs to his
unicorn. The beast snorted angrily as he forced its head around and urged it
back to a full gallop to deliver Hesmucet's reply.
The commanding general called for a messenger of his own. When the man came up
to him, he said, "Give my regards to Lieutenant General George and ask him if
it's possible, with the traitors so heavily engaged in the northwest, for him
to go straight through their defenses to the south of Marthasville and into
the city. Give me that back, so I'm sure you have it straight."
After repeating the message, the runner hurried away. When he returned, he
said, "Lieutenant General George says he's already probed the line south of
Marthasville, sir.
He says it's too strong to break through like that."
"All right." Hesmucet wondered if it was really all right, and how hard
Doubting
George really had poked at Bell's line there. George was as stalwart a warrior
as the gods had made when fighting on the defensive, but, to Hesmucet's way of
thinking, lacked the push, the drive, of a good attacker.
That's why Marshal Bart made me commander here in the east, he thought.
I've come this far. Another few miles and I'll have done a big part of what he
wanted of me
.
He scowled in the direction of Marthasville. The traitors had hung on to the
place altogether too long, as far as he was concerned.
It didn't fall that day. By the time the sun set, James the Bird's Eye's
men no, Logan the Black's now had indeed driven Bell's blue-clad warriors back
into the lines from which they'd started their attack. A messenger said, "The
enemy must have lost twice as many men as we did, too."
"He threw away a lot of soldiers, then," Hesmucet said musingly. "Add those in
with all the men he lost yesterday, and with his having fewer than we do to
begin with, and how many has he got left?"
"I'm sorry, sir, but I couldn't begin to tell you," the messenger replied.
"Never mind," the general commanding told him. "I didn't expect you to know.
But I
wonder if my wing commanders do."
With the fighting having died down, he summoned Doubting George, Logan the
Black, and (with a mental sigh) Fighting Joseph to his headquarters to talk
things over.
Logan proved to be younger than he'd remembered hardly older than James the
Bird's
Eye, in fact with a ruddy face, fierce eyes, and a piratical black mustache.
"Yes, sir. They hurt us," he said frankly. "We didn't really expect another
strong sally, not when they were thrown back with loss yesterday. It was
worrisome out there for a while, when they came close to turning our flank.
But we were steady, and we made them pay for coming out of their works."
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"So you've already reported, your Excellency," Hesmucet replied. "I'm glad to
learn you did so well."
Doubting George said, "Taking it all in all, they must have left a third of
their men on the field the last two days. And they didn't have that many to
begin with."
He might not have been aggressive enough to suit Hesmucet, but he'd done sums [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]