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blood lust was sated.
"Be ready to go after them if we get the order to pursue," Lieutenant Griff
said.
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"Pursue?" That startled Smitty and Rollant, who both echoed it. Rollant added,
"I don't think we've got the men to chase them."
Colonel Nahath said, "Anyone who ordered us to pursue, given what we have and
what Bell and the traitors have . . ." The regimental commander shook his
gray-haired head. "He'd have to be crazy."
That hadn't always stopped officers on either side. Rollant knew as much. If
someone wearing a brigadier's star on each epaulet saw the northerners fleeing
and decided they needed a clout in the backside, he'd order a pursuit. And if
it got the regiment slaughtered, how much would he care?
But the order didn't come. The din of battle got louder over to the right.
"The sons of bitches are in the trenches there," Smitty said.
"They can go in, but let's see how many come out," Rollant said savagely. He'd
already done his duty and more. He would have been perfectly content to stay
right where he was. If Bell's men nerved themselves for another charge at this
part of the line, he'd fight them off again. If they didn't . . .
If they didn't, as things turned out, he and his comrades would go to them.
Colonel Nahath said, "Men, we're shifting to the right, to make sure the
traitors don't break our line and cut us in half."
Rollant had plunged the butt end of the company standard's staff into the
soft, damp dirt at the bottom of the trench. He snatched up the flag and
carried it through the trenches toward the thicker fighting at the center of
the southrons' line. As long as he carried it, he wouldn't be able to shoot at
the traitors. He'd have to do his fighting with his shortsword. Sometimes,
that meant he didn't do any fighting. He didn't think that would happen today.
Outside the parapet, a northern officer shouted, "For gods' sake, men, rally!
We can whip them yet. For gods' sake, we can. All you have to do is fight
hard, for "
Smitty raised his crossbow to his shoulder and shot. No standard hampered him
. The officer's exhortation ended in a shriek. "
Got the preachy son of a bitch!" Smitty said exultantly.
The traitors cried out in dismay. "For Gods' Sake John is down!" one of them
exclaimed.
"I think you just shot a brigadier," Rollant told Smitty.
His friend set another bolt in the groove of his crossbow and grunted with
effort as he yanked back the bowstring. "Too bad the bastard wasn't a full
general," he said. Detinans were seldom satisfied with anything, no matter how
fine it was. Not for the first time, Rollant wondered whether that was their
greatest strength or greatest weakness. Most blonds lacked that restless urge
to change things. The lack made them have a harder time keeping up with their
swarthy neighbors.
A southron officer still on his feet despite a bloody bandage on his head and
another wrapped around his left arm waved a sword with his good hand. "Go on
in there, boys, and give 'em hells!"
"Avram!" Rollant shouted. "Avram and freedom!" It was getting dark. Before
long, nobody would be able to see anybody else, to see his gray uniform or his
blond hair or which standard he bore. His own side would be almost as likely
as the enemy to shoot him unless he kept yelling. "Avram and freedom!"
he cried once more, louder than ever.
Some of the soldiers battling around the farmhouse shouted the same thing.
Others called Geoffrey's name and cried out for provincial prerogative.
Rollant's comrades poured a volley of crossbow quarrels into those men, then
rushed at them, drawing shortswords as they charged. Pikemen came up with the
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crossbowmen in Colonel Nahath's regiment. They too stormed toward the
northerners.
But more soldiers yelling for false King Geoffrey burst out of the trench line
they'd overrun and
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reinforced their comrades already in the farmyard. If the southrons wanted to
drive them back indeed, if the southrons wanted to keep them from breaking
through they would have their work cut out for them.
"Avram!" Rollant shouted again. He shifted the company standard to his left
hand and yanked out his shortsword. "Avram and freedom! Avram and victory!"
"Bugger Avram with a pine cone, you stinking southron son of a bitch!" a man
in blue cried furiously.
He too had a shortsword. He and Rollant hacked at each other. Rollant's sword
bit flesh. The northerner groaned. Rollant slashed him again, this time across
the face. He reeled back, hands clutched to the spurting wound.
Lightning smashed down out of a clear though quickly darkening sky. Southrons
near Rollant screamed, their cries almost drowned in a thunderclap like the
end of the world. The stink of charred flesh made the blond want to gag. A
couple of minutes later, another lightning bolt smote Colonel Nahath's men.
This one struck close enough to make every hair on Rollant's body stand erect.
The sensation was extraordinarily distinct and extraordinarily unpleasant.
"Where are our wizards?" That cry had risen from southron armies ever since
the war was new.
Southron mages usually managed to do just enough to keep the traitors' wizards
from destroying southron soldiers altogether. That was enough to have brought
King Avram's armies to the edge of victory. It wasn't enough to keep a lot of
men in gray tunics and pantaloons from dying unnecessarily.
Rollant didn't want to be one of those unnecessarily dead men. He didn't even
want to be a necessarily
dead man. He wanted to live. How could he gloat at the beaten traitors if he
didn't?
Yet another bolt of sorcerous lightning smashed into the battlefield, this one
striking the two-story farmhouse where dozens of southrons sheltered and from
which they shot at their foes. When nothing much seemed to happen, one more
thunderbolt hit the farmhouse. Its roof caught fire. Some of the southrons
inside fled. Others must have thought a burning farmhouse safer than the
hellsish battle all around, for they stayed where they were.
Rollant did his best to ignore the northerners' magics. If they slew him, they
slew him, and he couldn't do much about it (he knew the protective amulet he
wore around his neck was not proof against sorceries of that magnitude). And
if he stood around gaping at them, some resolutely unsorcerous traitor would
shoot him or spear him or run him through. All he could do was fight his own
fight and hope John the Lister's wizards eventually realized they had
something important to do here.
"Geoffrey!" someone nearby yelled. Without even thinking about it, Rollant
lunged with his shortsword.
His blade cleaved flesh. The traitor howled.
"Well done, Corporal!" Lieutenant Griff called. A crossbow quarrel or
swordstroke had carried away the lobe of his left ear. Rollant wondered if he
even knew it. Then he shrugged. With the sort of fight this was turning out to
be, Griff was lucky to have got away so lightly and he himself, so far,
luckier still.
* * *
John the Lister had known he would have a fight on his hands at Poor Richard.
Even he hadn't guessed the Army of Franklin would be able to make it as savage
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a fight as it was. A year and a half before, at
Essoville down in the south, Duke Edward of Arlington had ordered the Army of
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