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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."
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"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
suppose Bell'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.
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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.
I can't go back, Gremio thought.
Everyone in the regiment everyone in the army
will reckon me a coward if I do
. And so he went forward, in spite of the bolts that zipped past him and
tugged at the fabric of his baggy pantaloons. All around him, men fell.
When he reached the second line of trenches, he leaped down into it with a
roar that was more than half a cry of despair.
More fierce fighting in the trenches slowed the northerners' advance. By the
time the last southrons were down or fled, Gremio had a cut on his arm and
another above his eye.
Blood made tears run down his face. He blinked constantly, trying to clear his
sight.
When he saw how few men he had left, he wished his vision were blurrier, so
they would seem to be more.
"Well fought, boys!" Colonel Florizel boomed. "They can't hold us back when we
aim to go forward, by the gods."
To Gremio's amazement, the northerners raised a ragged cheer. They were ready
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