Harry Turtledove - War Of The Provinces 2 - Marching Through Peachtree

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Marching Through Peachtree

FREE THE BLONDES!

(America's Civil War Turned Upside Down)

A terrible civil war was tearing apart the kingdom of Detina, a land which

could no longer be half serf and half free. When the new ruler, King Avram,

announced his intent to liberate the blond serfs upon which the northern

provinces depended, Detina was torn in two, and the rebellious north took

Avram's cousin, Grand Duke Geoffrey, as their king.

Neither side could expect an easy victory. The south was larger and

wealthier, but the north had better soldiers and more powerful wizards. Led by

officers riding unicorns, supplied by flying carpets, both sides had been clashing

for three years when Count Thraxton, a conceited wizardgeneral whose opinions

of his spell-casting ability far outstripped the reality, bungled a spell which

backfired disastrously against his own side, giving the Unionists a decisive

victory.

But the war was far from over: Thraxton the idiot had been relieved of

command; which meant that the south faced a far more competent general:

Joseph the Gamecock. And Joseph and his troops were determined to hold

Peachtree Province against the loyalist troops. They had occupied Rockface

Rise, which offered only two narrow places where the Unionists could come at

them, and had further fortified it with trenches and catapults. When the southern

army attacked, they would face formidable obstacles both natural and manmade,

as well as the repeating crossbows of the troops and the deadly sorcerous storm

and lightning wielded by the northern wizards.

Still, the very survival of Detina as one united realm was at stake, and King

Avram's forces had no choice but to attack, no matter what the odds, no matter

how desperate the situation ....

Cover art by David Mattingly

Hardcover

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are

fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

First printing, November 2001

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 0-671-31843-8

in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

http://www.baen.com

Production by Windhaven Press

Auburn, NH

Electronic version by WebWrights

http://www.webwrights.com

BAEN BOOKS by HARRY TURTLEDOVE

The War Between the Provinces series:

Sentry Peak

Marching Through Peachtree

The Fox novels:

Wisdom of the Fox

Tale of the Fox

The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

Thessalonica

Alternate Generals (editor)

Down in the Bottomlands (with L. Sprague de Camp)

Contents

III

VII

VIII

XII

Count Joseph, called the Gamecock, was not a happy man. Joseph was seldom a

happy man; he would have been of more service to King Geoffrey had he been. But then,

he most cordially loathed his sovereign, a feeling that was mutual. Still and all, when

Avram, the new King of Detina, had made it plain he intended to free the blond serfs in

the northern provinces, Joseph couldn't stomach that, either. Sooner than accepting it, he

and the rest of the north had followed Avram's cousin, Grand Duke—now King—

Geoffrey, into rebellion.

A sour expression on his face, Joseph—a dapper, erect little man with neat graying

chin whiskers on his long, thin, clever face—left his pavilion and stared south toward the

province of Franklin, from which the foe would come . . . probably before too long. The

air of southern Peachtree Province was warm and moist with spring. It would have been

sweet with spring, too, but for the presence of Joseph's army and its encampment by the

little town of Borders. Not even the sweetest spring air could outdo thousands of slit

trenches and tens of thousands of unwashed soldiers.

One of Joseph's wing commanders came up to him. Some said Roast-Beef William

had got his nickname from his red, red face, others from his favorite dish. Saluting, he

said, "Good morning, your Grace."

"Is it?" Joseph the Gamecock asked sardonically.

"Well, yes, sir, I think it is," William replied. Unlike a lot of officers who followed

King Geoffrey, he was not a man of breeding. He was a skilled tactician, and had written

the tactical manual both Geoffrey's soldiers and the southrons used. Also unlike a lot of

Geoffrey's officers, Joseph emphatically included, he was not a prickly man, always

sensitive of his honor. He'd even got on pretty well—as well as anyone could—with

Joseph's luckless predecessor in command of the Army of Franklin, Count Thraxton the

Braggart.

"By the Lion God's mane, what makes you think so?" Joseph inquired with real if

dyspeptic curiosity. He pointed south. "Every southron in the world—well, every

southron east of the Green Ridge Mountains—who can carry a crossbow or a pike is

gathering there with nothing on his mind but stomping us into the mud. Gods damn me to

the seven hells if I'm sure we can stop them, either."

"Things could be worse, sir," Roast-Beef William said stolidly. "Things bloody well

were worse when the southrons chased us up here last fall after they drove us off Sentry

Peak and Proselytizers' Rise. I was afraid this whole army would just up and fall to pieces

then, Thunderer smite me if I wasn't."

"I know precisely how bad things were then, Lieutenant General," Joseph the

Gamecock said. "Precisely." He pronounced the word with acerbic gusto.

"How could you, sir?" William inquired, confusion on his face. "You weren't here

then."

"How could I? I'll tell you how. Things were so bad, King Geoffrey felt compelled to

lift me from the shelf where he stowed me, dust me off, and put me back in the service of

his kingdom. Things had to be pretty desperate, wouldn't you say, for his bad-tempered

Majesty to chew his cud of pride and judge a soldier only by his soldierly virtues and not

by whose hindquarters he kisses?"

Earnest and honest, Roast-Beef William coughed and looked embarrassed. "Sir, I

wouldn't know anything about that."

"Lucky you." Joseph's scorn was withering as drought in high summer. "Three years

of war now, and I've been on the king's shelf for half that time, near enough."

"You were wounded, sir," William reminded him.

"Well, what if I was? I shed my blood for this kingdom in Parthenia Province,

protecting Geoffrey in Nonesuch, and what thanks did I get? I was shoved aside, given an

impossible assignment by the Great River, blamed when it turned out I couldn't do the

impossible, and put out to pasture till Thraxton so totally buggered up this campaign,

even Geoffrey couldn't help but notice."

"Er, yes, sir." Roast-Beef William nervously coughed a couple of times, then asked,

"Sir, when the southrons move on Marthasville, can we hold them out of it?"

"We have to," Joseph said. "It's the biggest glideway junction we have left. If we

lose it, how do we move men and goods between Parthenia and the east? So we have to

make the best fight we can, Lieutenant General. That's all there is to it. We have to hold

the foe away from Marthasville." He brightened as much as a man of his temperament

could. "And here comes a man who will help us do it. Good day to you, Lieutenant

General Bell!" He bowed to the approaching wing commander.

"Good day, sir." Bell's voice was deep and slow. His approach was even slower. He

stayed upright only with the aid of two crutches and endless determination. He'd lost a

leg leading soldiers forward in the fight by the River of Death, and he'd had his left arm

crippled in the northern invasion of the south only a couple of months before that. Using

the crutches was torment, but staying flat on his back was worse for him.

"How are you feeling today, Lieutenant General?" Joseph asked solicitously.

"It hurts," Bell replied. "Everything hurts."

Joseph the Gamecock nodded. He recalled Bell from the days before he'd got hurt,

when the dashing young officer had made girls sigh all through the north. Some called

Bell the Lion God come to earth. With his long, full, dark beard and his fiercely

handsome features, he'd lived up to the name. He'd also lived up to it with his style of

fighting. He'd thrown himself and his men at the southrons and broken them time and

again.

Now he'd broken himself doing it. His features still showed traces of their old good

looks, but ravaged by pain and blurred by the heroic doses of laudanum he guzzled to try

to dull it. "Does the medicine do you any good?" Joseph inquired.

Bell shrugged with his right shoulder only; his left arm would not answer. "Some,"

he said. "Without it, I should be quite mad. As things are, I think I am only . . . somewhat

mad." His chuckle was wintry. "I have to take ever more of it to win some small relief.

But my mind is clear."

"I am glad to hear it," Joseph said. He didn't fully believe it. Laudanum blurred

thought as well as pain. But it did so more in some men than in others. Though he carried

scars of his own, he didn't like to think about what Lieutenant General Bell had become.

To hide his own unease, he went on, "Roast-Beef William and I were just talking about

our chances of holding the southrons away from Marthasville this campaigning season."

"We had better do it," Bell said in his dragging tones. Laudanum was probably to

blame for that, too, but he'd reached the right answer here. Joseph was in no doubt of it

whatsoever. His wing commander continued, "The southrons humiliated us at Sentry

Peak and Proselytizers' Rise. We have to keep them out of Marthasville or we become a

laughingstock."

That wasn't the reason Joseph the Gamecock wanted to keep General Hesmucet's

army out of Marthasville, or Roast-Beef William, either, but Bell wasn't necessarily

wrong. Joseph said, "By what I hear, we humiliated ourselves at Proselytizers' Rise."

"I wouldn't know, sir, not firsthand," Bell replied. "I was, ah, trying to get used to

being lopsided, you might say." Joseph nodded, trying not to stare at the pinned-up leg of

Bell's blue pantaloons.

"I believe you're correct, sir," Roast-Beef William said. "Count Thraxton's spell did

not work as he'd hoped it might."

"No, eh?" Joseph the Gamecock's voice dripped sarcasm. "I never would have

noticed. Why, I thought we'd be moving from Rising Rock on to Ramblerton next week.

That is our plan, isn't it?"

"Sir?" Lieutenant General Bell said, face blank from more than laudanum. He

wouldn't have recognized irony had it pierced him like iron.

"All right, sir," Roast-Beef William said—he, at least, got the point Joseph was

making. "Count Thraxton's magic flat-out failed. It beat us. Without it, why would our

men have run from the top of Proselytizers' Rise when they could have held off every

southron in the world if only they'd stood their ground?"

"Still no excuse for that skedaddle," Bell said. "No excuse at all. You go forward and

you fight like a man. That's what the gods love."

You go forward and you fight like a man. Bell had lived by that, and he'd nearly died

by it, too. Now I'm in command here, and we'll try things my way, Joseph thought. If we

can make the southrons pay and pay and pay for every foot of ground they take, maybe

all their mechanics and artisans and farmers will get sick of fighting us and let us have

our own kingdom. It's the best hope we have, anyhow—we're not going to drive them

away by force of arms.

"I intend to make the enemy come forward and fight like men," he said. "I intend to

make them die like men, too, in the largest numbers I can arrange. Let's see if they go on

backing Avram's plan to crush us into the dust and free all our blonds from the land after

they've spent a while bleeding."

"Not chivalrous," Bell said.

"I don't care," Joseph the Gamecock replied. That brought shock to Lieutenant

General Bell's face despite the laudanum he poured down. Joseph repeated it: "I don't

care—and by all the gods, my friends, that is the truth. I am here to keep the southrons

from snuffing out this kingdom. Whether I do that or not matters. How I do it . . . Who

cares?"

"Don't you want the bards singing songs about you hundreds of years after you're

dead?" Bell asked. "Don't you want them treating you the same way they treated the

heroes of the first conquest, the men who crossed the Western Ocean and threw down the

blonds' kingdoms?"

"I couldn't care less," Joseph said, and shocked Bell all over again. "King Geoffrey

gave me this job to do. He thought I was the right man for it, and I aim to show him he

was right." I aim to show him he was a perfect jackass for not giving me more to do a

long time ago.

Roast-Beef William said, "A defensive campaign on our part will be the most

expensive for the southrons and the least expensive for us. Since General Hesmucet has

far more men than we do, we need every advantage we can find."

"Where is the valor in letting the enemy dictate the terms of the campaign?" Bell

asked.

"Where is the sense in attacking the enemy when you are weaker than he?" Joseph

the Gamecock returned.

"We attacked the southrons at the River of Death and prevailed," Bell said.

"Yes, and you outnumbered them when you did it, too," Joseph pointed out. "King

Geoffrey detached James of Broadpath's force—and you with it, Lieutenant General—

from Duke Edward of Arlington's Army of Southern Parthenia and sent it here by

glideway to add its weight to the fight. Without it, Count Thraxton would have been

badly outnumbered, and wouldn't have attacked."

Slowly, Bell shook his head. "You make war most coldbloodedly, your Grace."

"King Geoffrey says the same thing," Joseph replied. "As you may have gathered,

the king and I have a good many differing opinions. My opinion is that one makes war

for the purpose of defeating the enemy by whatever means are available. If that involves

wearing him out to the point where he chooses not to fight any more, so be it. I see no

better hope. Do you?" He looked from Bell to Roast-Beef William.

"No, your Grace, though I wish I did," William said.

"My own view is that the purpose of war is to fight, to smash the foe," Lieutenant

General Bell said.

"If we could do that, nothing would make me happier," Joseph the Gamecock said.

"Do you see us doing it against General Hesmucet and the host he has assembled by

Rising Rock?"

Had Bell nodded to that, Joseph would have lost his temper. But the cripple who still

wanted to be a soldier shook his big, leonine head. "It is as my comrade says," he

answered. "I wish I did, but I do not."

"All right, then," Joseph told him. "We are in accord." He had his doubts about that,

but, for once, did not state them. He made more allowances for Bell than for most men—

certainly more than he made for King Geoffrey. "That being so, I intend to make my fight

in the way I mentioned. I have sent orders to the north and west to have estate-holders get

their serfs out to start building fieldworks for us."

"Already, sir? So soon?" Roast-Beef William asked in surprise.

"Already. So soon," Joseph the Gamecock said grimly. "You're our master tactician,

Lieutenant General, so think tactically here. If we are going to make this kind of fight,

shouldn't we get ready for it ahead of time? Otherwise, our soldiers would have to do the

digging themselves, as the southrons do."

"Here I agree with you completely," Bell said. "Not fitting for Detinans to do such

labor when we can call on the subjected blonds."

"Just so," Joseph said; he was, for once, as well pleased to have escaped argument.

"Unless this campaign very much surprises me, we shall need those works."

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摘要：

MarchingThroughPeachtreeFREETHEBLONDES!(America'sCivilWarTurnedUpsideDown)AterriblecivilwarwastearingapartthekingdomofDetina,alandwhichcouldnolongerbehalfserfandhalffree.Whenthenewruler,KingAvram,announcedhisintenttoliberatetheblondserfsuponwhichthenorthernprovincesdepended,Detinawastornintwo,andthe...

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