Sentry Peak (5 page)

“We really are going to have to leave, sir?” Biffle asked unhappily.

“No doubt about it. Not even a tiny piece of doubt,” Ned said, more unhappily still. “If we stay where we’re at, the southrons’ll run roughshod over us in spite of the great and famous Count Thraxton the Braggart’s mighty sorcery. They’ve got cursed near twice the men we do—of course they’d run roughshod over us. Then they’d bag the whole stinking army, and Rising Rock, too. This way, they just get Rising Rock. Happy day! And once we’re done running, Thraxton’ll make it sound like a victory to King Geoffrey. He always does.” He spat on the ground in disgust.

“What can we do if they run us on into Peachtree Province?” Biffle asked.

“Hit back some kind of way, Colonel. That’s all I can tell you,” Ned replied. “You want to know how, you’ll have to ask Thraxton the Braggart. It’ll be a fine thing, him commanding the Army of Franklin when it’s really the army that got run clean
out
of Franklin.” He spat again.

Colonel Biffle wandered off, shaking his head. Ned of the Forest didn’t wander. He stalked. He’d eaten his fill with Thraxton, but he checked the cookpots from which his riders ate to make sure the cooks were doing their job. Count Thraxton, no doubt, would have turned up his nose at the food—but then, Count Thraxton turned up his nose at just about everything and everyone. This was what Ned ate most of the time. Not least because he ate it most of the time, it wasn’t bad.

His troopers, those of them still awake, tended their unicorns, currying the white, white hair or picking pebbles out from between their hooves and the iron shoes they wore or doctoring small hurts. Ned nodded approval. “Way to go, boys,” he called. “Take care of your animals and they’ll take care of you.”

“That’s right, General,” one of the riders answered. “That’s just right.”

“You bet it is.” Ned nodded again, emphatically this time, and the rider grinned at having his commander agree with him. Ned grinned, too.
What a liar I’m getting to be
, he thought. Oh, he took good care of his unicorns when he wasn’t riding one of them into a fight, too. But when he did take saber in hand . . . He tried to remember how many unicorns he’d had killed out from under him since he went to war for King Geoffrey. Eighteen? Nineteen? Something like that. The generals who were known for their mounts—Duke Edward of Arlington, for instance—didn’t take their beasts into battle.

Ned shrugged. He didn’t care about any one unicorn nearly so much as he cared about licking the southrons. He could always get himself another mount. If King Avram prevailed, he couldn’t very well get himself another kingdom.

There was his pavilion, and there were the serfs who took care of the cavalry’s baggage wagons and the asses and unicorns that hauled them. The big blond men—some of them bigger and stronger than Ned, who was a big, strong man himself—gathered round the general. They were all his retainers—not quite
his
serfs, since he had no patent of nobility, but he looked out for them and they looked out for him.

They all carried knives. Had they wanted to mob him and melt off into the countryside or run away to the southrons afterwards, they could have. They didn’t. By all appearances, it never entered their minds. One reason for that, perhaps, was that Ned never let it seem as if it entered his mind, either.

He ruffled the pale hair of the biggest and strongest serf. “Well, Darry, what do you hear?” Folk with dark hair often ran their mouths as if serfs had no more notion of what was going on than did horses or unicorns. Ned had taken advantage of that a good many times. His drivers and hostlers made pretty fair informal spies.

This time, though, Darry answered, “Is it true we’ve got to skedaddle out of Rising Rock? Don’t want to believe it, but it’s what people say.”

“They say it on account of it’s true, and may the gods fry Thraxton the Braggart for making it true,” Ned answered. His serfs already knew what he thought of his commander. They chuckled and nudged one another, vastly amused to hear one dark-haired lord pour scorn on another.

A sly blond named Arris asked, “How will we keep Franklin if we can’t stay in Rising Rock?”

“That’s a good question,” Ned answered. “Drop me in the seven hells if I know. Drop Thraxton in the seven hells if he knows, either. And drop him past the seven hells if the thought ever got into his tiny little mind before he let Guildenstern flank him out of this place.” That set the serfs nudging and chuckling again.

Arris asked, “But how will we get our farms, boss, if those gods-hated southrons keep pushing us back?”

In the days when the war was young—days that seemed a thousand years gone now—Ned had promised to take the bonds from all the serfs who served him through the fighting, and to set them up as yeomen with land of their own. Free blond farmers weren’t common in the northern provinces of Detina, but they weren’t unknown, either, especially in the wild northeast from which Ned himself had sprung.

Now he shrugged. “One way or another, boys, you’ll get yourselves farms. If I can’t give ’em to you, you’ll have ’em from the southrons. King Avram says so, doesn’t he? And if King Avram says something, it must be so, isn’t that right?”

Just as the serfs might have mobbed him and fled, they might have said yes to that and put their hope in the southron king rather than in Ned. But they didn’t. They cursed Avram as fiercely as any other northern man in indigo pantaloons might have done. Ned laughed to hear them, laughed and ruffled their yellow hair and punched them in the shoulder, as a man will do among other men he likes well.

“If you people haven’t given up on King Geoffrey, I don’t reckon I can, either,” Ned said. He nodded to Darry. “Saddle me a unicorn. I’m going to ride out and see exactly where the southrons are at.” He tossed his head in fine contempt. “It’s not like anybody’ll know unless I go out and see for myself, I’ll tell you that for a fact. Thraxton’s the best stinking wizard in the world, right up to the time somebody really needs his magic. Then he flunks.”

“Yes, Lord Ned,” Darry said. “I’ll get you a beast.” As Ned ducked into his pavilion, Darry and the other serfs spoke in low voices full of awe. Ned chuckled to himself. The blonds, back in the days before the Detinans came from overseas, had worshiped a pack of milksop godlets that couldn’t hold night demons at bay. They still walked in fear after the sun went down. Ned, now, Ned feared no night demons. With the Lion God and the Thunderer and the Hunt Lady and all the rest on his side, any demon that tried clamping its jaws on him would find it had made a bad mistake.

Outside the pavilion, one of the serfs said, “Ned, he could go up against a night demon without any gods behind him, and he’d still rip its guts out.”

“Of course he would,” another serf answered. “He’s
Ned
.”

Ned grinned as he tested the edge of his saber with his thumb. The blade would do. And he wasn’t so sure the blonds were wrong, either. Fortunately, he didn’t have to find out. He knew the strong gods, and they knew him.

When he went out again, the unicorn awaited him. He would have been astonished had it been otherwise. Handing him the reins, Darry said, “You make sure you come back safe now, boss.” Real anxiety filled his voice. If Ned didn’t come back safe, how many northern officers were likely to honor his pledges to the men who served him? Would Count Thraxton, for instance? Ned laughed at the idea, though Darry wouldn’t have found it funny.

None of Ned’s pickets challenged him when he rode east toward the enemy. None of them knew he’d gone by. He didn’t think of himself as a mage. Soldiers who did think of themselves so usually made him bristle—Thraxton sprang to mind. But he was Ned of the Forest. However he got it, he had a knack for pulling shadow and quiet around himself like a mask. Few could penetrate it unless he chose to let them.

Owls hooted. Somewhere off toward Sentry Peak, a wildcat yowled. Mosquitoes buzzed and bit. Ned slapped and cursed. He might cloak himself from the minds of men. Mosquitoes had no minds, not to speak of. They didn’t care who he was. They probably bit Thraxton with just as much abandon.
Or maybe not
, Ned thought scornfully.
Why should they like sour wine any more than people do?
That made him want to laugh and curse at the same time.

The moon, low in the east, came out from behind a pale, puffy cloud and spilled ghostly light over the fields. Forests remained black and impenetrable, even close by the road. Maybe night demons really did den in them. If so, none came forth to try conclusions with Ned. Confident in his own strength, he rode on.

Ahead in the distance, lights twinkled like fireflies: the campfires of Guildenstern’s army, King Avram’s army, the army of invaders. “Why can’t they just leave us alone?” Ned muttered under his breath. “We weren’t doing them any harm. We weren’t about to do them any harm.”

But the southrons were pushing close to Rising Rock, close to driving King Geoffrey’s men out of Franklin altogether. To force them back, to make sure Geoffrey’s kingdom stayed a kingdom, someone would have to strike them a blow. Ned of the Forest shook his head in frustrated fury. Count Thraxton wasn’t going to do it. Count Thraxton was going to tuck his tail between his legs and skedaddle up into Peachtree Province.

“And he’s a great general? He’s a great mage?” Ned of the Forest shook his head again, this time dismissing the idea out of hand. Thraxton bragged a fine brag, but the proof of those lay in living up to them. Had Thraxton done that even once, the southrons could never have come so far.

Ned rode through open woods toward the campfires. The fires lay even closer to Rising Rock than he’d thought they would. He shook his fist at them. He’d grown rich and important hunting down runaway serfs and hauling them back to their liege lords. If Avram broke the feudal bonds that held serfs to their lords’ estates, how would he stay rich? He would he stay important? He saw no way—and so he fought.

He was musing thus—dark thoughts in dark night—when a sudden sharp challenge rang out from ahead: “Halt! Who comes?”

“A friend,” Ned answered, reining in in surprise. He usually came and went as he chose, with no one the wiser. Maybe his dark mood had let his protection falter—or maybe the nervous sentry had a mage close by. Putting an officer’s snap in his voice, Ned asked, “What regiment is this?”

“Twenty-seventh, of the third division.” That came at once, followed a couple of heartbeats later by a grudging, “Sir.”

It told Ned what he needed to know. The southrons, merchants and bookkeepers in their very souls, numbered their regiments. King Geoffrey’s were known by their commanders’ names. The “friend” ahead was an enemy. Ned said, “I am going to ride on down a little ways and find a better crossing for the stream ahead.”

He steered his unicorn into deeper shadows, and then away. The southron sentry didn’t shoot. As Ned headed back to his own encampment, he cursed under his breath. He’d found out what he needed to know, but he didn’t much care for it.

II

“
C
ome on, boys,” General George boomed. “You’ll never catch up with the traitors if you don’t move faster than
that
.”

“Why didn’t
you
turn traitor, the way Duke Edward did?” one of the crossbowmen in gray returned. “You’re from Parthenia, just like him. And if you were fighting on the other side, whoever’d be leading us now wouldn’t march us so stinking hard.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” George said, and all the soldiers who heard him laughed. He knew they called him Doubting George. He didn’t mind. They could have called him plenty worse—one brigadier in King Avram’s army was known, though not to his face, as Old Bowels. George went on, “Any officer worth his pantaloons would push you hard now, because we’re going to run Count Thraxton clean out of this province.”

“You don’t think he’ll fight us, sir?” asked another crossbowman, this one a yellow-haired fellow whose liege lord was probably still looking for him.

“I hope he does, by the gods,” George answered. He’d had some serfs on his own family lands in Parthenia, but holding Detina together under the rightful king came first for him. “If he doesn’t run away himself, we’ll run him out, and we’ll smash up his army while we’re doing it.”

“What about Thraxton’s magic, General?” a soldier asked him: another blond likely to have come out of the north. He sounded a little nervous. Serfs, even escaped serfs, often had reason to be nervous about northern nobles’ magecraft.

But George just laughed—a deep, rolling chortle that made everyone who could hear him look his way. “I doubt you’ve got much to worry about,” he said, which made the crossbowmen and pikemen close by laugh again, too. “If Thraxton’s magic were half as good as he brags it is, those bastards in blue would be down in the Five Lakes country by now, instead of us pushing on them. Besides, it’s not like we haven’t got mages of our own.”

He waved to the gray-robed contingent of scholarly-looking men on assback accompanying the long columns of crossbowmen and the blocks of pikemen and the squadrons of unicorn-riders at the army’s front and wings. Most of the soldiers nodded, relieved and reassured.

George wasn’t so sure he’d reassured himself. The southron mages just didn’t look like men of war. They looked as if they would be more at home as healers or stormstoppers or diviners or fabricators who helped the manufactories in the southwest turn out the crossbows and quarrels and spearheads and catapults without which a modern army couldn’t go about its murderous business. And the wizards had excellent reason for looking that way. Almost all of them
were
healers or stormstoppers or diviners or fabricators. They’d had to learn military magecraft from the ground up after Grand Duke Geoffrey chose to contest Avram’s succession.

Things were different up in the north. The tradition of military magecraft had never died out there, as it had in the south. Instead, northern nobles used the sorceries that had helped their ancestors win the land to help hold down the serfs those ancestors had conquered. In the early days of the war, they’d embarrassed Avram’s armies again and again.

Doubting George knew one reason he’d risen swiftly through the ranks was that, as a Parthenian who’d held serfs, he’d known some of the northern spells and how to block them. He’d never systematically studied sorcery, as Count Thraxton and some of the other northern commanders had, but he’d never panicked when it was used against him, as, for instance, Fighting Joseph had when Duke Edward’s magic cast a cloud of confusion on the southrons and let him win the Battle of Viziersville despite being outnumbered worse than two to one.

A scout on unicornback rode up to General George. Saluting, he said, “Sir, there are stone fences up ahead with northern men behind them. They started shooting at us when we got close.”

“Are there? Did they?” George said, and the scout nodded. The general rapped out the next important questions: “How many of them? Is it Count Thraxton’s whole army?” Eagerness coursed through him. If Thraxton wanted to make a fight of it this side of Rising Rock, he’d gladly oblige the Braggart.

But the rider, to his disappointment, shook his head. “No, sir, doesn’t look that way, nor even close. If I had to guess, I’d say they were just trying to slow us down a bit before we go on into Rising Rock.”

“It could be.” George looked ahead, to Sentry Peak in the northwest and Proselytizers’ Rise due west but farther away. “Maybe they’re buying some time to let their army pull out. All right.” Decision crystallized. “If they want us to shift them, we’ll do the job.” He pointed toward the center, off to his right. “Go tell General Guildenstern what you just told me, and tell him we’re moving against the foe.”

“Yes, sir.” With another salute, the rider pounded off to obey.

Now
, George thought,
how long will it be before Guildenstern sticks his long, pointed nose into my business? Not very long, or I don’t know him—and I know him much too well
. With Thraxton the Braggart in command of Geoffrey’s armies in the east, King Avram’s men should long since have smashed this treason. With General Guildenstern in command of the southrons, George supposed he ought to thank the gods that the traitors hadn’t long since smashed the armies loyal to the rightful king.

Meanwhile, before Guildenstern could get his hands on this fight—which Doubting George duly doubted he would handle well—the army’s second-in-command decided to take charge of it. “Deploy from column into line!” he shouted. Lesser officers echoed his orders; trumpeters spread them farther than men’s voices readily carried. “Pikemen forward! Crossbowmen in ranks behind! Cavalry to the flanks to hold off the enemy’s unicorns.” He didn’t really expect Thraxton’s men to make any sort of mounted attack, but he didn’t believe in taking chances, either.

The soldiers under his command went through their evolutions with precision drilled into them by scores of cursing sergeants on meadows and in city parks and sometimes on city streets all through the southern provinces of Detina. Hardly any of them had been soldiers before King Avram began levying troops from his vassals and from the yeomanry of the countryside and from the free cities and towns that had stayed loyal to him. But they moved like veterans now. Most of them
were
veterans now, and had seen as much hard fighting as professional soldiers often did in a liftetime’s service during quieter days.

And then George shouted another order: “Mages forward! Cavalry screen for the wizards!”

Some of the gray-robed men on assback nodded and urged their small, ill-favored mounts up to the best trot the beasts could give. Others looked startled and apprehensive. George wanted to laugh at them. In many cases, they’d been in the field as long as the footsoldiers, who knew exactly what was expected of
them
. But the mages never stopped acting surprised.

George spurred his own unicorn. With an indignant snort, the beast bounded forward. George always wanted to see for himself; one of the things that had won him his nickname was his reluctance to trust other people’s reports. He’d seen too many things go wrong because scouts brought back mistaken news or because a senior officer, not having examined the situation or the ground for himself, gave the wrong orders.

As George rode up to the top of a low hill and looked ahead, he found that things to the west did look much as the scout had described them. Not a lot of northerners were delaying the army’s advance, but they had stone fences—the likely border markers between two farms—to hide behind. One crossbowman shooting from cover was worth several out in the open.

A moment later, George discovered the enemy didn’t have only crossbowmen slowing up his advance. Trailing smoke, something large and heavy flew through the air toward his forwardmost unicorns. When it hit the ground—farther from the foe than even a crossbowman could shoot—it burst in a ball of fire. That was half artisans’ work, half mages’. The flame caught one unicorn and its rider. They dashed off, both screaming, both burning.

“Catapults forward, Brigadier Brannan!” Doubting George shouted. “If they want to play those games with us, we’ll make ’em think the seven hells start just behind those fences.”

His army had more and better missile-throwers than did the men who followed Grand Duke Geoffrey. The northerners had looked down their noses at the mechanic arts till they discovered they needed them. But serfs and artisans could not match manufactories, no matter how they tried.

Up came the catapults. Brannan was a good officer. Doubting George kicked himself for not having ordered the engines forward with the cavalry. The northerners, surely, would not rush from cover to attack the catapults. They would be asking for massacre if they did. They might be brave—they undoubtedly
were
brave—but they weren’t stupid.

Firepots flew through the air toward the catapults as they deployed. So did large stones: altogether unsorcerous, but highly effective. A stone smashed one machine, and several of the men who served it. Another catapult sent a cloud of dirty black smoke into the sky. The rest of the crews stolidly went about their business. In mere minutes, they were flinging missiles back at the northerners.

Some of their stones smashed against the fences. Some of their firepots burst in front of or against the fences, too. That was spectacular, especially from George’s hilltop view, but accomplished nothing. But most of the missiles made it over the fences and fell among the enemy soldiers beyond. The northerners stirred and boiled, like ants when their hill was disturbed.

“That’s the way to shift them!” George shouted, and ordered a runner to go on down to the catapult crews and tell them so. “Those buggers won’t be able to stand against us for long if we keep dropping things on their heads.”

Other catapults turned the business of pelting the foe with crossbow quarrels into something that might have come straight from a manufactory rather than out of a general’s manual of stratagems. An operator at the right side of each dart-throwing engine worked a windlass connected to the engine’s cocking mechanism by means of flat-link chains each turning on a pair of five-sided gears. Another operator fed sheaf after sheaf of arrows into a hopper above the launching groove. When the devices worked well, each one was worth several squads of crossbowmen. When they didn’t—and they often didn’t—their crews spent inordinate amounts of time attacking them with wrenches and pliers.

Today, they were working as well as Doubting George had ever seen them. Their operators had them angled high so their darts plunged down over the fences and onto the enemy crossbowmen just beyond. George smiled and called for another runner. “Order the pikemen and crossbowmen to advance on the walls there,” he told the youngster. “They’ll be able to get up to them and over without too much trouble, or I miss my guess.”

But before the second runner could carry that command to the footsoldiers, lightning struck from a clear blue sky and smote one of the dart-throwers. The great ball of flame that burst from it made George’s hands involuntarily fly up to protect his eyes. As the roar from the blast thundered by half a heartbeat later, his unicorn snorted and sidestepped in fright. With automatic competence, he fought it back under his control.

Doing that made his wits start working again. “Hold!” he shouted to the second runner. That worthy wasn’t going anywhere anyhow. Like everybody else, he was staring in horrified astonishment at the ruination visited on the catapult. Even as he stared, another flash of lightning wrecked another engine. Doubting George was horrified and astonished, too. But he was also furious. He pointed to the runner. “No, by the gods! Get yourself gone to our so-called mages. You tell them that, for every catapult wrecked after you reach them, one of them will end up shorter by a head.”

The runner sprinted away. George doubted he had the authority to make his threat good. With luck, the mages wouldn’t realize that. If he had to terrify them into doing their job better, he would, and without thinking twice.

Another thunderbolt crashed down among the catapults. When George stopped blinking, he saw that this one had punished bare ground, not one of his engines or its crew. He nodded. Slower than they should have, his mages were casting counterspells. The next bolt didn’t reach the ground at all. Doubting George nodded again. The southron sorcerers
could
do the job, if only they remembered they were supposed to.

And then, when lightning struck
behind
the stone fences from which Geoffrey’s men fought, George did more than nod. He clapped his hands together. “Go it!” he shouted to the mages in gray. They were too far away to hear him, but he didn’t care. He shouted again: “Make the traitors think the seven hells aren’t half a mile off!”

His officers knew what wanted doing. They had a better, more certain idea than the mages. That was plain. As soon as the catapult crews could work their stone- and firepot- and dart-throwers again without fear of being crisped from the innocent air above, his company and regimental commanders sent their footsoldiers forward against the stone fences without waiting for orders from him.

A few of the soldiers fell; neither bombardment nor magecraft had forced all the northerners away from those fences. They were stubborn and brave, sure enough. The war would have ended long since were that not true. Their bravery didn’t help them here, though. Southrons gained the fences and started scrambling over them. Some northerners died where they stood. Some fled. Some came back captive, with upraised hands and glum faces.

“Lieutenant General George!” a rider called, galloping over from the center. “General Guildenstern’s compliments, and do you need help from the rest of the force?”

Doubting George shook his head. “Give him my thanks, but I need not a thing. Only a skirmish here, and we’ve won it.”

Captain Ormerod was not a happy man as he trudged west, back toward Rising Rock. The mages had promised they would do dreadful things to the ragtag and bobtail of gallowsbait from the southern cities and runaway serfs who filled out the ranks of false King Avram’s army. Mages’ promises, though, were all too often written on wind, written on water. What one mage could do, another—or several others—could undo. The southrons didn’t have great mages, but they had a lot of them. Ormerod didn’t think the little delaying action at the stone fences had done enough delaying. It certainly hadn’t done as much as his superiors had hoped.