Resignedly, Gremio nodded. “Yes, we’re out of it.”

“All right,” the southron said. “Throw down your crossbows, then, and your quarrels. You can keep the shortswords. They don’t matter. Go into town. Swear the oath of allegiance to King Avram. Take off the epaulets and the stripes. Go on about your business. No one will bother you if you don’t bother anyone.”

Thunk. Thunk. The crossbows, so long carried, so much used, went into the roadway. The sheaves of bolts followed. They rattled as they fell. Gremio strode on toward his home town without looking back. Thisbe followed. Nodding, the southron captain and his troopers resumed their patrol. To them, it was nothing but routine.

Coming into Karlsburg wasn’t routine, not for Gremio. His home town hadn’t burned. That was something, anyhow. But southron soldiers clogged the streets. And most of the soldiers in gray in Karlsburg were blonds. They grinned and swaggered as they marched. Ordinary Detinans stayed out of their way. How many old scores had the blonds already settled? Maybe better not to know.

A businesslike lieutenant-a Detinan, not a blond-accepted Gremio and Thisbe’s oaths of allegiance to King Avram. The promises and the punishments in the oath were both milder than Gremio had expected. The lieutenant offered a scissors. “Cut off your emblems of rank,” he said. “They don’t matter any more. You’re civilians again.”

Once the job was done, Gremio returned the scissors to him. “Thank you,” he managed.

“You’re welcome,” the brisk Detinan answered. “Good luck to you.”

Out in the street, Gremio took Thisbe’s hands. “This is the time,” Gremio declared. “I’ve waited too… long already. I won’t wait another minute, confound it. Will you marry me, Sergeant?”

Thisbe smiled. “I’ve waited a long time, too,” she said, “but you can’t ask me that.”

“What?” Gremio didn’t know whether he’d burst with fury or with mortification. “Why the hells not?”

“Because I’m not a sergeant any more, that’s why.” Thisbe touched the spot on her tunic sleeve where the stripes had stayed for so long. “The lieutenant said so, remember?”

“Oh.” Gremio felt foolish. “You’re right, of course. Well, in that case… Will you marry me-darling?”

“You bet I will,” Thisbe said, and if anybody found anything odd about two soldiers kissing on the streets of Karlsburg, he kept quiet about it.

A Long Time Ago, In A Republic Far, Far Away…

Advance and Retreat is a work of fiction. Not one of the characters depicted herein bears any resemblance to any real person, living or dead. A good thing, too, says I; some of the characters depicted herein aren’t the sort you would want in your drawing room, even if you weren’t in there drawing at the time. Nonetheless, I have been browbeaten into prevailed upon by my editors to offer up a note of sorts for that handful of stubborn skeptics who don’t believe in disclaimers (and to say shame on you, too).

After losing Atlanta-and, with it, most of the Civil War that mattered-John Bell Hood skirmished with Sherman’s men throughout northern Georgia before withdrawing into Alabama to refit what was left of the Army of Tennessee. Sherman went east, toward Savannah and the Atlantic. Hood, in due course, went north, hoping to get up into Kentucky and, at the very least, create large amounts of chaos for the Union.

In Nashville, Tennessee, with what Sherman hadn’t taken east on the march across Georgia, sat George Thomas. To oppose Hood, he needed to gather up garrisons in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri, and to mold them into a cohesive force. To gain time to do this, he sent John Schofield south with a detachment from his army to delay Hood’s northward progress.

Hood forced Schofield to withdraw from his position at Columbia, Tennessee, and got on his flank and in his rear as he retreated past Spring Hill. Something went wrong with the attack he planned, though. His subordinates said his orders weren’t clear. He said they didn’t obey properly. Schofield escaped and reached Franklin, on the south bank of the Harpeth River. (Yes, I know the geography in the American Civil War differs slightly from that of War Between the Provinces in the Kingdom of Detina. See, I told you you were reading fiction.) Hood, frustrated at the failure farther south, ordered an attack, at least as much from that frustration as for any real military reason, especially since Schofield intended to retreat anyhow.

Hood’s generals wanted to show how brave they were, since his reaction to Spring Hill left them feeling insulted. They paid for their bravery with their lives; H.B. Granbury, O.F. Strahl, States Rights Gist, John Adams, and Patrick Cleburne died on the field, while John C. Carter was mortally wounded. Confederate soldiers got into Schofield’s position, but could not break it. He did pull out that night, leaving his wounded in Hood’s hands. It was, technically, a victory, but a victory that wrecked the Army of Tennessee.

That army moved up to just in front of Nashville anyhow, and there could go no farther. Thomas had too many men for even Hood to try to outflank him and get up into Kentucky. Hood sat before the city, hoping to make Thomas attack him and to defeat him once he came out of his works, which were the most formidable west of the Appalachians.

Thomas, meanwhile, waited to get all his scattered command into place, and then had to wait further because of a nasty ice storm. The delay did not sit well with U.S. Grant. He kept ordering Thomas to attack at once, and Thomas kept saying he would as soon as he was ready. Grant, for once more jittery than imperturbable, finally sent John Logan to the west to take command if Thomas hadn’t attacked by the time he got there, and then set out to follow Logan himself.

Logan had got to Louisville and Grant to Washington when Thomas did bestir himself. Hood got his wish, and doubtless then wished he hadn’t. In the first day’s fighting in front of Nashville, Thomas drove Hood’s army back to the ridge line farther south. In the second day’s fighting, Union cavalry general James Wilson’s men got behind the Army of Tennessee and attacked it from the rear while Thomas’ infantry hit it from the front. Hood’s men broke and fled. Only a brilliant rear-guard action commanded by Nathan Bedford Forrest kept Thomas from entirely destroying the Army of Tennessee; as things were, its fragments reassembled in Tupelo, Mississippi, for all practical purposes out of the war-not that there was much war left between the Appalachians and the Mississippi after that crushing defeat.

Hood tendered his resignation, which Jefferson Davis accepted. Richard Taylor, son of former President Zachary Taylor, took over what was left of the Confederate forces. Some men were sent east to help Joseph Johnston try to slow Sherman in his march through the Carolinas. He had little luck. Grant, still dissatisfied with Thomas, detached various elements of his commands and put them to other uses. Schofield was sent to North Carolina to join up with General Sherman, who was storming north to join the Army of the Potomac. Wilson, that spring, smashed Forrest’s cavalry and destroyed Selma and other industrial towns in northern Alabama. The Civil War was all but over.

Some of you may note that John Bell Hood’s memoirs are also entitled Advance and Retreat. Well, so what? That is, of course, just another coincidence.