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you're wrong around him. Maybe he'll be a little less heartless when he gets
older. Maybe not, too.
As if to prove how very right John was, one more bolt of lightning smote that
same place. "Heis a stubborn fool, isn't he?" Major Alva said. "His wizards
are pretty stupid, too, to keep banging their heads against a wall they can't
knock over. Well, that's their worry."
"Yes. It is." John allowed himself the luxury of a long sigh of relief. The
northerners wouldn't break through in the middle now, and they'd never come
close to breaking through on the wings. His army would live. Sooner or later,
Bell's men would give up the attack and pull back. Then he could get his own
force on the road south, get back into the works at Ramblerton.
I hope Doubting George thinks I've slowed Bell down enough, John the Lister
thought. He'd better, by the gods. No matter what happened to the Army of
Franklin here, we've paid a heavy price, too.
* * *
"I'm sorry, sir. I'm very sorry," one of the blue-robed mages told Lieutenant
General Bell. "We've done everything we know how to do, but that gods-damned
southron won't let us loose. It's like . . . like wrestling, sir. Sometimes
you're pinned, and that's all there is to it."
"Sometimes you're useless, is what you mean," Bell snarled. "If you'd gone on
pounding them there, we would have finished smashing them by now."
"Sir, they've got a stronger wizard than we do," the sorcerer replied. "I
hate like hells to say that, since the son of a bitch is a southron. We ought
to eat up southron mages the way we eat fried fish. We ought to, but we can't,
not with this one."
"We were in amongst them," Bell said. "Weare in amongst them. But how can we
break through if this mage of theirs stifles your spells?"
"Well, sir,"  the wizard picked his words with care "if magic won't do it
for us, pikes and swords and crossbows will have to."
"I told Patrick the Cleaver he dared not fail. Itold him," Bell muttered. He
shouted for a runner. "Go up to the front and tell Brigadier Patrick we
require a breakthrough at all costs. At all costs, do you hear me?"
"Yes, sir. A breakthrough at all costs." The messenger hurried away. Bell
might have sentenced him to death, sending him up to the part of the front
where the fighting was hottest. The young man had to know that. So did Bell,
though he didn't give it a second thought; he'd gone into plenty of hot
fighting himself. Had the runner hesitated, he would have had something to
say. This way, he took a pull at his little bottle of laudanum and waited.
He was just starting to feel the drug, just starting to feel the fire recede
from his shoulder and his missing leg, when the runner returned, which meant
something close to half an hour had gone by. "Well?" Bell barked.
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"Sir, we haven't got the men in the center to break through," the runner
said.
Laudanum or no laudanum, Bell's temper didn't merely kindle it ignited.
"Haven't got the men?" he shouted. "Who the hells told you that? Patrick the
Cleaver? Patrick the coward? I'll cashier the white-livered son of a bitch, so
help me gods I will."
But the messenger shook his head. "No, sir. Patrick's down. He's dead," he
added, to make himself perfectly plain.
"Oh." Bell could hardly accuse a dead man of dereliction of duty. "Who's in
command there, then? Otho the Troll? Otho knows what we're supposed to do what
we have to do."
"No, sir. Brigadier Otho's shot, too shot dead." Again, the runner didn't
seem to want to leave Bell in any doubt.
"Oh," the general commanding repeated, this time on even more of a falling
note. "Well, by the Lion God's fangs, whois in command in the center?"
"A colonel from Palmetto Province, sir a man named Florizel," the runner
answered.Florizel? Bell scratched his head. He'd heard the name he was sure of
that, but he could barely put a face to the man. He had no idea what sort of
officer Florizel was.A live one , he thought. The runner, meanwhile, went on,
"He says everything's all smashed to hells and gone up there. From what I saw,
sir, he's right."
The news couldn't be good, not if a colonel was trying to command a wing.
"Can we get help from the right or left, put the men where they'll do the most
good?"
"For Gods' Sake John's been shot dead, too, over on our right," the runner
said. "Florizel talked with men who saw him die."
"Oh." Bell was getting tired of saying that, but he didn't know what else
hecould say. "What about Benjamin the Heated Ham, then, over on our left?"
That was the only straw he had left to grasp.
"I don't know, sir," the runner replied. "I wasn't over in that part of the
field, and I can't tell you what happened there."
Bell didn't know, either, not in detail. He did know the men on the left wing
hadn't broken into the southrons' trenches, which wasn't the best news in the
world, or even anything close to it. With a sigh, he said, "I'd better find
out, then."
"Will you send me again, sir?"
"No." Bell shook his head. "You've gone into danger once already." The runner
didn't seem to know whether to look indignant or grateful. After two or three
heartbeats, gratitude won. Lieutenant General Bell called for another runner.
"Yes, sir? What can I do for you?" This one sounded as eager as the last. The
general commanding explained what he required. The runner saluted and hurried
off toward the left wing.
Bell cocked his head, listening to the fighting ebb. He growled something his [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]