Sentry Peak (41 page)

“Yes, sir,” Falayette said.

James did his ponderous best to hide a sigh. He heard no eagerness there. “Colonel Simon!” he said.

“Sir?” Simon the mage replied.

“As with Brigadier Alexander’s specialty, the attack on the fort will require all that your mages can give,” James said.

“I understand, sir,” Simon said. “You’ll have it.”

“Good.” James wondered how good it was. Brigadier Falayette had a point. Wouldn’t it be better to hang on to what they had now than to throw it away on an attack that held little hope of success? Earl James sighed again, openly this time. Count Thraxton had given the orders, and he had to obey. And retaking Wesleyton would be important—if they could do it.

He gave the order for the attack with more than the usual worries. Brigadier Alexander’s engines pummeled the earthen walls of Fort WiLi. Stones battered them. Firepots sent flame dripping down them and over the battlements to burn the men inside. James of Broadpath wouldn’t have cared to find himself on the receiving end of that bombardment.

And Simon the mage and his wizardly colleagues did all they could to punish the fort and the southrons inside it. Lightning struck from a clear sky. The ground trembled beneath James’ feet, and presumably did more than tremble inside Fort WiLi. Batwinged demons shrieked like damned souls as they swooped down on the defenders.

Against the blonds in the old days, the days of conquest, the sorcerous assault would have been plenty to win the fight by itself. But the southrons knew all the tricks their northern cousins did, even if they weren’t always quite so handy with them. Their lightnings smote James’ men, too. The tremors died away as the southron mages mastered them. And as for the demons, as soon as they manifested themselves in the real world, they were as vulnerable to weaponry as any other real-world creatures. Once the stream of darts from a repeating crossbow knocked three of them from the sky in quick succession, the rest grew much more cautious.

And the southrons had many more engines to turn on James’ men than Brigadier Alexander had to turn on them. One after another of the catapults brought with such labor from Rising Rock went out of action. Alexander’s artificers shrieked as fire engulfed them.

James beckoned for a runner. “Tell Brigadier Falayette to start his footsoldiers moving right this minute. We’re getting hammered harder than we’re hammering.”

“Yes, sir.” The runner dashed off.

Despite the order, the pikemen and the crossbowmen who would follow them did not go forward. Fuming, James of Broadpath dispatched another runner to his reluctant brigadier, this one with more peremptory orders. After a little while, the second runner came back, saying, “Brigadier Falayette’s compliments, sir, but he believes the enemy has strung wires in front of his position. Have we tinsnips or axes to cut them?”

“Tinsnips?” James clapped a hand to his forehead. “
Tin
snips?” The word might have come from one of the more obscure tongues the blond tribes used. “You tell Brigadier Falayette that if he doesn’t get his men moving this instant—this
instant
, do you hear me?—we’ll find out if we’ve got a pair of tinsnips big enough to fit on his gods-damned neck.”

With a gulp, the runner fled.

And the pikemen and crossbowmen did go forward—straight into everything the southrons’ still undefeated engines could throw at them, straight into the massed shooting of every crossbowman Whiskery Ambrose could put on the walls of Fort WiLi. They went forward roaring, plainly intending to sweep everything before them.

But, as Brigadier Falayette had said, the southrons did have thin wires strung in front of Fort WiLi. They slowed the attackers so that Whiskery Ambrose’s men and engines could pound them without mercy, and the northerners were able to do little to reply.

“Where’s Simon the mage?” James shouted in fury. When the wizard came before him, he growled, “Why didn’t you clever sons of bitches notice those wires ahead of time?”

“I’m very sorry, sir, but we can’t possibly notice everything,” Simon said.

“Sometimes it seems as if you can’t notice
anything
,” James said. The colonel gave him an aggrieved look, which he resolutely ignored. “Is there anything you can do to get rid of the gods-damned wires? Conjure up some demons with sharp teeth and a taste for iron, maybe?”

Simon the mage shook his head. “We would need some considerable, time-consuming research, and we have no time to consume, I fear.”

He was all too obviously right about that. Instead of going forward with roars, James’ men were streaming away from the fort outside Wesleyton. They’d made their attack and seen it fail. They were veterans. They knew what that meant: no point in staying close to the enemy and getting hurt to no purpose.

After a while, Whiskery Ambrose sent out a young captain with a white flag. Northern soldiers led him to James of Broadpath. “The general’s compliments, sir,” the youngster said, “and he would be pleased to grant you two hours’ truce to recover your wounded.”

James bowed. “That is very courteous and gentlemanly of General Ambrose, and I accept with many thanks.” They exchanged a few more compliments before the southron captain went back to Fort WiLi.

Now I’ll have to explain to Captain Thraxton how and why I didn’t break into Wesleyton
, James thought gloomily.
That will be every bit as delightful as going to the dentist
.

A scryer came up to him, as if the thought of having to talk to Thraxton were enough to bring the fellow into being. “What now?” James asked.

The scryer looked worried. James felt his own temper, stretched thin by the repulse, fray even further. Had the illustrious Thraxton decided to sack him even in advance of knowing what had happened here? James didn’t intend to disappear peacefully. But then the scryer said, “Sir, the fighting’s started up by Rising Rock.”

XI

A
nother gray, foggy, misty day. Captain Ormerod was sick of them. “Is this what fall is like in these parts?” he asked, leaning closer to the campfire. “If it is, why in the hells does anyone live here?”

“It really isn’t, sir,” Lieutenant Gremio answered. “I’ve spoken with some men who come from this part of Franklin, and—”

“Looking for evidence, eh?” Ormerod broke in.

“Well, yes, as a matter of fact,” Gremio said. “They tell me they can’t recall seeing such a wretched run of weather. It’s almost as if some mage were holding a blanket of clouds and mist over Rising Rock.”

Ormerod raised an eyebrow. “Do you suppose some mage is? Some southron mage, I mean?”

“I wouldn’t think so, sir,” Gremio said. “Surely Count Thraxton would notice if that were so.”

“Oh, surely.” Ormerod put as much sarcastic venom in that as he could. “Thraxton is just like a god—he notices everything that goes on around him. Haven’t you seen that for yourself?”

“It’s foggy. I can’t see anything much,” Gremio said.

But then Ormerod said, “It is starting to clear out a bit, I suppose.” The more he looked, the more and the farther he could see. If it had been a spell—and he didn’t know about that one way or the other—the wizard who’d been casting it seemed to need it no longer. When he looked up to the top of Sentry Peak, he spied King Geoffrey’s flag, red dragon on gold, floating where his regiment (though Major Thersites would have had something memorable to say had he put it that way in earshot of him) had placed it.

And when he looked east . . . When he looked east, his jaw dropped and his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. Lieutenant Gremio was already looking east. Being a barrister, he’d likely had a tongue hinged at both ends since birth. “By the Lion God’s mane,” he said hoarsely, “if that isn’t every stinking southron in the world out there, it might as well be.”

“Oh, gods be praised,” Ormerod said. “I was afraid I was imagining them.”

“And they’re all heading this way,” Gremio added.

“I know,” Ormerod said. That also made him afraid, but in a way different from, and more concrete than, he’d felt before.

Major Thersites saw the advancing enemy, too. “Stand by to repel boarders!” he called, as if the southrons were so many pirates about to swarm onto a fat, rich merchantman. But General Bart’s men advanced with far better discipline than pirates were in the habit of showing.

“Can we hold them back, sir?” Lieutenant Gremio asked, in the voice of a small child looking for reassurance.

But Ormerod had no reassurance even for himself, let alone to give to anyone else. “To the hells with me if I know,” he answered, while
Not a chance on earth or under it
ran through his mind.

Thersites was right, though: they had to try. Ormerod shouted orders to his men, who found the best cover they could and got ready to fight back. The Franklin River anchored the southern end of their line, the steep slopes of Sentry Peak the northern. Thersites said, “Gods damn it, where’s that louse-ridden Thraxton the Braggart when you really need the son of a bitch? He ought to have a spell ready that’d sweep away these bastards like a blond wench sweeping out your bedroom.”

The more the mist lifted, the more Ormerod saw. The more Ormerod saw, the more he wished he didn’t. “I think Thraxton is liable to be busy somewhere else,” he said unhappily.

From Sentry Peak here in the north to Funnel Hill, the extension of Proselytizers’ Rise in the far southwest, southron troops advanced against the line the Army of Franklin had set up to hold them inside Rising Rock. How many soldiers had General Bart brought into the town? Ormerod didn’t know, not in numbers, but the southrons were sending forth far more men than he’d thought they had.

He couldn’t pay so much attention to the distant vistas of the battlefield as he would have liked. The southrons moving on his part of the line from the east drew closer by the minute. He cursed as he recognized the banners their regimental standard-bearers waved.

“Those are Fighting Joseph’s troopers!” His voice rose to a furious shout. “Those are the sons of bitches we fought when we went west toward Brownsville Ferry. Some of you boys ran away from jackasses on account of you thought they were unicorn-riders. You’re not going to let these bastards shift you now, are you?”

“No!” his men yelled, and he hoped they meant it.

“We haven’t got enough of anything,” Gremio said worriedly. “We haven’t got enough men, we haven’t got enough engines, we haven’t got enough mages. How are we supposed to stop—that?” He pointed toward the gray flood rolling down on them.

“We’ve got to try,” Ormerod said, echoing Thersites. “If you like, Lieutenant, I’ll write you a pass so you can go to the rear.” Gremio bit his lip but shook his head. Ormerod slapped him on the back. “Stout fellow.”

“No, just a fool, ashamed of looking like a coward before my comrades,” Gremio said. “I’d be smarter if I took you up on that, and we both know it.”

“They haven’t killed me yet,” Ormerod told him. “Futter me if I think they can do it this time.”

“I admire your spirit,” Gremio said. “I would admire it even more if I thought Count Thraxton could send us reinforcements from elsewhere on the field.”

“We’ll manage,” Ormerod said; he didn’t think Thraxton the Braggart could send them reinforcements, either. “We have to manage.”

King Geoffrey’s soldiers were doing everything they could. Artificers turned engines away from Rising Rock and toward the east so they would bear on the advancing foe. Stones and firepots began to fly. So did streams of darts from the big repeating crossbows. Southrons in gray started falling.

But the southrons, along with everything else, were bringing their own wheeled engines forward. They started shooting first at the catapults and repeating crossbows that were tormenting them. That spared Ormerod and his fellow footsoldiers for a while, but only for a while. Gremio was right: the southrons had more engines here than did this part of Count Thraxton’s army. Little by little, they battered Thraxton’s engines down to something close to silence, and then turned their attention to his pikemen and crossbowmen.

By that time, Ormerod’s soldiers were shooting at the oncoming enemy footsoldiers. “Avram!” the southrons yelled. “Avram and freedom! One Detina, now and forever!”

Some of the northerners gave their lion-roar of defiance. Others shouted Geoffrey’s name or cried, “Provincial prerogative in perpetuity!” And still others yelled things like, “We don’t want to stay in the same kingdom with you sons of bitches!”

Despite the crossbow quarrels hissing around the battlefield, Ormerod stood tall as he drew his sword. He flourished the blade, screaming, “You’ll never take my blonds away!”

A ditch and an abatis of sharpened tree trunks held the southrons at bay. Ormerod’s men shot a good many of them as they struggled through the obstacles. But the rest of the pikemen, still shouting their hateful battle cry, swarmed forward. One of them came straight at Ormerod, the point of the pike held low so it could tear out his guts.

He hated pikemen. He always had, ever since he first had to face one. Their weapons gave them more reach than his sword gave him. That anyone might kill him without his having so much of a chance to kill the other fellow instead struck him as most unfair.

He slashed at the pikestaff, just below the head. He’d hoped to cut off the head, but an iron strip armored the staff, too—a nasty, low, devious trick the southrons were using more and more these days. Still and all, he did manage to beat the point aside, which meant the fellow in gray tunic and pantaloons didn’t spit him for roasting, as he’d no doubt had in mind.

“King Geoffrey!” Ormerod yelled, and stepped in close for some cut-and-thrust work of his own.

That was what he’d intended, anyhow, but things didn’t work out the way he planned, any more than things for the Army of Franklin looked to be working out as Thraxton the Braggart had planned. Instead of either letting himself get run through or fleeing in terror, the enemy pikeman smartly reversed his weapon and slammed the pikeshaft into Ormerod’s ribs.

“King Geoffr—
oof!
” Ormerod’s battle cry was abruptly transformed into a grunt of pain. He sucked in a breath, wondering if he’d feel the knives that meant something in there had broken. He didn’t, but he had to lurch away from the southron to keep from getting punctured—the fellow was altogether too good with a pike.
Why aren’t you somewhere far away, training other southrons to be nuisances?
Ormerod thought resentfully.

Then a crossbow quarrel caught the pikeman in the face. He screamed and dropped his spear and rolled on the ground and writhed with his hands over the wound, just as Ormerod would have done had he been so unlucky. Another southron pikeman stepped on him so as to be able to get at Ormerod.

Once he got at him, he was quickly sorry. He wasn’t so good with his pike as the unlucky southron had been, and soon lurched away with a wounded shoulder.

“That’s the way to do it!” Major Thersites shouted. Thersites himself was doing his best to imitate a whirlwind full of flail blades: any southron who got near him had cause to regret it, and that in short order. “Drive those sons of bitches back where they came from!”

But the southrons kept pressing forward, no matter how many of them fell to blades and crossbow bolts. Ormerod’s comrades were falling, too, and reserves were thin on the ground in this part of the field. Here and there, men from his company began slipping off toward the west, toward Proselytizers’ Rise.

“Hold your ground!” Lieutenant Gremio shouted.

“Hold, by the gods!” Ormerod echoed. “Don’t let them through. This is for the kingdom’s sake. And besides,” he added pragmatically, “you’re easier to kill if they get you while you’re running.”

That made the men from his company hang on a little longer. Major Thersites’ profane urgings made the whole regiment hang on a little longer. But then a firepot burst at Thersites’ feet. He became a torch, burning, burning, burning. He screamed, but, mercifully, not for long. That left the seniormost captain in the regiment, an earl named Throckmorton, in command.

“Hold fast!” Captain Throckmorton cried. But he sounded as if he were pleading, not as if he would murder the next man who dared take a backward step. And pleading was not enough to hold the soldiers in their places, not in the face of the oncoming southron storm. More and more of them headed for the rear.

“What can we do?” Gremio asked, watching them go.

“Not a gods-damned thing, doesn’t look like,” Ormerod answered grimly. “We aren’t the only ones getting away from the enemy—not even close. That’s the one thing that makes me feel halfway decent. Look at some of those bastards run! You could race ’em against unicorns and clean up.” He spat in disgust.

“If we stay here—if you and I stay here, I mean—much longer, the southrons will kill us,” Lieutenant Gremio said.

He was right, too; Ormerod could see as much. For a moment, rage so choked him that he hardly cared. But, at last, he said, “Well, we’d better skedaddle, too, then. I haven’t killed as many southrons as I want to, not yet, and I won’t get the chance by staying here.”

“I feel the same way, Captain,” Gremio said. Ormerod wondered whether that was true, or whether the barrister simply sought an acceptable excuse to flee. He shrugged. It didn’t really matter. They could fall back, or they could die. Those were the only choices left. They could not hold.

Dying here wouldn’t accomplish anything, not that Ormerod could see. Along with other stubborn northerners, some from their regiment, others men he’d never seen before, they fought a rear-guard action that kept the southrons from overwhelming this wing of Count Thraxton’s army. The soldiers fell back toward the protection of the lines on the height of Proselytizers’ Rise.

“I wonder if those bastards will have cut and run, too,” Ormerod grumbled.

“Doesn’t look like it, sir,” Gremio said, and he was right. He added, “If you ask me, we can hold the crest of the rise forever.”

“Here’s hoping you’re right, because we’d better,” Ormerod answered. Some of his men went into line with the troopers already in place on Proselytizers’ Rise. Others, exhausted by a long day’s fighting and by the retreat they hadn’t wanted to make, sprawled wherever they could.

Ormerod stayed in line till darkness ended the fighting. He was up before sunrise the next day, too, up and cursing. “What’s the matter now?” Lieutenant Gremio asked sleepily.

“That’s what, by the gods.” Ormerod pointed back toward Sentry Peak. Above a thick layer of cloud, King Avram’s gold dragon banner on red—an enormous flag, to be seen at this distance—had replaced Geoffrey’s red dragon on gold. Ormerod knew he shouldn’t have been surprised, but he misliked the omen.

At the same time as Fighting Joseph attacked the forward slopes of Sentry Peak, the northern end of Count Thraxton’s line, Lieutenant General Hesmucet’s soldiers went into action against Funnel Hill, the southwestern part of the unicornshoe Thraxton had thrown partway around Rising Rock. Runners reported that Fighting Joseph was driving the traitors before him. Hesmucet wished he didn’t have to listen to any of those reports. Things were not going nearly so well for him as he would have hoped.

For one thing, Funnel Hill, like the nearby Proselytizers’ Rise, had a steep forward face and a devils of a lot of northerners at the top. For another, Hesmucet rapidly discovered that the maps they were using had led him and General Bart astray. By what the maps said, Funnel Hill wasn’t just near Proselytizers’ Rise, but was the Rise’s southernmost extension. The ground told a different story. Even if his men got to the top, they would have to fight their way down into a deep, unmarked valley and then up another slope to get where they really needed to go.

But, even though they had no hope of doing what he and Bart had thought they might, they had to keep fighting. If they didn’t, the northerners on Funnel Hill would go somewhere else and cause trouble for General Bart’s soldiers there.

A runner came up to Hesmucet and said, “Sir, they’ve got our right pinned down pretty badly.”