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.”
Hesmucet managed a smile of sorts. “Well, it was our left a little while ago. If that’s not progress, I don’t know what is.” He knew perfectly well it wasn’t progress, or anything like progress. But if he didn’t admit that to anyone else, he didn’t have to admit it to himself, either.
Lightning bolts smashed down out of the clear sky. They didn’t strike the men in gray struggling to advance, but they came too close to make Hesmucet happ
y. The runner said, “Where the hells are our wizards-uh, sir?”
“That’s a good question.” Hesmucet raised his voice to a shout: “Alva! Where have you gone and got to, Alva?”
“Here, sir!” The young mage came running up. “What do you require, sir?”
“Are you good for anything besides fogs and mists?” Hesmucet asked. “These northern whoresons are giving our boys a hard time. I want you to do something about that, gods damn it. Show me what you can manage.”
“I’ll do my best,” Alva said. “I wish I could have had a little more notice so I could have prepared more effects, but-”
“But nothing,” Hesmucet said. “You’re a mage who knew he was going to be in the middle of a battle. How much fornicating preparation do you need?”
“I don’t need any fornicating preparation, sir,” Alva answered with a grin. “All I need there is a friendly girl.”
That stopped Hesmucet in his tracks, as surely as Doubting George’s men had stopped the traitors on Merkle’s Hill. Before Hesmucet could start up again, Alva began to incant. Hesmucet stared as the Lion God appeared in the sky over the battlefield. The god roared anger down at the northerners. Then, walking on air, his great tail lashing across a quarter of the sky, he stalked toward the place where the northern mages on Funnel Hill were likeliest to be standing.
“You don’t do things by halves, do you?” Hesmucet knew he sounded shaken, but couldn’t help it.
“I try not to, sir,” Alva answered calmly. “Anything worth doing is worth overdoing, or that’s what people say.”
“Is it? Do they?” Hesmucet rallied. “Leonidas the Priest would not approve of you at all, young fellow.” Alva laughed the clear, boyish laugh of someone feeling his full power for the first time. It occurred to Hesmucet to wonder just how great that power was. “Ah… Alva… That isn’t really the Lion God up there, is it?”
“Just a simulacrum,” the young mage said. “Nothing to worry about-and the real Lion God probably won’t even notice. From everything I’ve been able to find out, the gods pay a lot less attention to what goes on down here on earth than most people think. You almost wonder if it’s worth your while believing in them.”
“No, I don’t,” Hesmucet said. “What I wonder is what the younger generation is coming to. If we don’t believe in the gods, our magic will fail, and then where would we be?”
“We’d manage.” Alva sounded perfectly confident. “I think we could get along just fine with nothing but mechanical devices.”
“Not bloody likely!” Hesmucet exclaimed. “How would you replace a firepot or a glideway, for instance?”
“I don’t know, not off the top of my head,” Alva admitted, “but I’d bet we could do it if we set our minds to trying.”
“Easy enough for you to say when you haven’t got anything riding on it,” Hesmucet told him. “Next thing you know, you’ll say you could make light without fire or magic, or else that you could capture sounds out of the air without a crystal ball.”
“It might be interesting to try,” Alva said in thoughtful tones.
Hesmucet cursed under his breath. He’d succeeded in distracting the mage, which was the last thing he needed. The image of the Lion God above the enemy was fading, fraying. “You might want to fix that up,” he suggested.
“No, no point to it,” Alva said. “They’ve figured out it’s not real. I’ll let their mages tear at it for a while. As long as they’re doing that, they won’t make any mischief of their own. I’ll come up with something else in the meantime.”
Make them respond-don’t respond to what they’re up to, Hesmucet thought. General Bart had said the same thing.
“You might make a general one day,” Hesmucet told Alva.
“Not likely.” The young mage didn’t try to hide his annoyance. “The north treats its wizards much better than we do.”
“You were the one who pointed out there are reasons for that,” Hesmucet said. “Maybe you would have done better to stay with the mechanic arts.”
“Maybe I would have,” Alva said. “But it’s rather too late to worry about that now, wouldn’t you say? I’ve got work to do, even if it’s work that won’t ever get me fancy epaulets.”
What sort of work he had in mind became evident in short order, for lightning bolts crashed down onto King Geoffrey’s men on Funnel Hill from out of the clear sky. Unlike the manifestation of the Lion God that had appeared a few minutes before, the lightnings were unquestionably real.
When Hesmucet remarked on that, Alva nodded and smiled as if he were a clever child. “That’s the idea, sir. You mix the real and the illusions together till nobody on the other side is sure which is which. Then the enemy has to test everything, and you can give him some nasty surprises.”
“You’re a menace, do you know that?” Hesmucet said. “All I can tell you is, I’m gods-damned glad you’re on our side. You’d be worth as much to the traitors as Count Thraxton, I think.”
He meant it as a compliment. Alva took it as an insult. “That old foof? He’s not so much of a much.”
“He’s very strong,” Hesmucet said. “If you don’t believe me, go ask General Guildenstern. But you’ll have to go a long way to ask him, because he’ll be sent off to fight the wild blonds out on the steppes if he’s lucky enough to stay in the army. Thraxton wrecked his career, and the bastard came within an eyelash of wrecking his whole army. If Doubting George hadn’t held on, there at Merkle’s Hill…”
When Alva answered, Hesmucet doubted his words had anything to do with anything: “Sir, have you ever seen a rhinoceros?”
“Yes, a time or two, in zoological parks,” Hesmucet said, too surprised not to give back the truth. “So what?”
“A rhinoceros is a great big strong beast with a pointed horn, right?” Alva said, and Hesmucet had to nod. The young mage went on, “And most of the time, it isn’t dangerous at all, because it can’t see past its own ears. No matter how strong it is, it hasn’t got any brains to speak of, either. Most of the time, it’ll charge in the wrong direction. Every once in a while, it’ll squash something flat, but not very often. That’s Thraxton, sir. That isn’t me.”
“No, I can see that,” Hesmucet said, doing his best not to laugh out loud. “You’re practicing to be a viper.”
“That I like,” Alva said. “That suits me fine. I’ll stay by the edge of the trail and bite from ambush-and what I bite will die.”
“Splendid.” Hesmucet pointed toward the top of Funnel Hill. “What do you say to biting some more of those traitors? We may take the hill yet.” By now, though, the sun was sinking toward the western horizon. Even if his men did take Funnel Hill-which struck him as unlikely, despite his bold words-they wouldn’t be able to turn and move on Proselytizers’ Rise from the flank, which had been the point of the attack in the first place.
Maybe Alva saw the same thing. Maybe not-he wasn’t a general, only a kid with more brains than he knew what to do with. He said, “I’ll try my best, sir.”
His best proved hair-raisingly good, even for Lieutenant General Hesmucet, who was, as he’d said, on the same side. Flames suddenly sprang into being all along the northerners’ lines, as if one of the hotter hells had decided to take up residence on earth for a while. They can’t be real… can they? Hesmucet thought.
He had to nerve himself before asking Alva. Partly, that was not wanting to distract the sorcerer. Partly, it was… Hesmucet would have hesitated to call it fear, but he would have hesitated to call it anything else, either.
When at last he did put the question to the mage, Alva smiled an unpleasant smile. “If you have trouble telling, sir, think how much more trouble the traitors must have. Often enough, an illusion you can’t tell from the real thing is as good as the real thing.”
Hesmucet nodded. He’d heard the like from other sorcerers, too. But he said, “I want a straight answer, if you don’t mind.”
“And if I do?” But Alva seemed to think twice about the
wisdom of twitting a fierce-faced lieutenant general. “Well, sir, to tell you the truth, most of it’s illusion. Most, but not quite all. Some of the traitors up there on the hillside are really roasting, and that makes them all thoughtful.”
“I can see how it would,” Hesmucet said. “It’d make me thoughtful, that’s for gods-damned sure. Now-what can they do about it?”
“Cook,” Alva said happily. Hesmucet laughed.
But Thraxton the Braggart wasn’t the only mage the northerners had. Before long, the flames faded. Hesmucet wondered how many men they’d seared. Not enough for his purposes: he saw that quite soon. Shouting King Avram’s name, his own men charged the enemy’s trenches on Funnel Hill. They charged-and, not for the first time that day, they were driven off with heavy loss.
Now Alva sounded indignant: “Why can’t the traitors just panic and flee?”
“Because they’re Detinans, same as we are,” Hesmucet answered, “and because they’re a pack of stubborn bastards, too, maybe even more than we are. Would you like to try to stand up to the might of most of the kingdom when all you had to help you was the north?”
“I never thought about it like that, sir,” Alva said. “As far as I’m concerned, they’re traitors, and that’s all there is to it.”
“Oh, they’re traitors, all right,” Hesmucet said. “But that doesn’t mean they’re not brave men. I don’t think I’ve ever seen braver.”
“Or fighting for a worse cause,” Alva remarked.
“Splitting the kingdom, you mean? Of course,” Hesmucet said. Alva stirred beside him. Before the mage could speak, Hesmucet went on, “If you aim to talk about the blonds, I’m going to tell you something first. What I’m going to tell you is, I don’t much care about them one way or the other. If you want to think they’ll make good Detinans, go ahead. I have my doubts. But I obey my king, and my king is King Avram. I haven’t got any doubts at all about that.”
Alva eyed him as if he’d never seen him before. “You are a very… peculiar man, aren’t you, sir?”
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