“What do we do about this?” Rollant shouted to anyone who would listen. He hoped Smitty would have an answer, or Sergeant Joram, or Captain Cephas. If they didn’t, he hoped the generals who’d sent the army forward-and who mostly hadn’t come themselves-would. But no one said a word. A plunging crossbow bolt struck a soldier not far from him between the neck and the left shoulder and sank down through his flesh to pierce his heart. A surprised look on his face, the man fell dead. “What do we do?” Rollant repeated.
Afterwards, he would have taken oath that he heard someone with a great voice shouting, “Forward!” A few other men said the same thing, so he didn’t think he’d imagined it. But he was never quite sure, for neither Smitty nor Joram nor a good many others recalled hearing anything of the sort.
What was plain was, the army couldn’t stay there. It couldn’t go back, not when it was only being stung, not unless it wanted to humiliate itself forevermore before General Bart and Doubting George-and humiliate George in the process. That left only one thing to do.
Rollant wasn’t among the very first who started scrambling up the steep, rocky slope of Proselytizers’ Rise toward the traitors at the crest line. He wasn’t among the very first, but he wasn’t far behind them, either. Anything seemed better than getting shot at when his crossbow lacked the range to shoot back.
“We’re out of our minds,” Smitty said as the two of them scrabbled for hand- and footholds. “They’ll fornicating massacre us.”
“Maybe they will,” Rollant answered. “Maybe they won’t, gods damn ’em. But we’ll get close enough to hurt ’em before they do.” A quarrel struck sparks from a stone a couple of feet in front of his face and harmlessly bounded away. Maybe we’ll get close enough to hurt the traitors, he thought. Maybe.
More and more southrons were on the slope now. When Rollant looked back over his shoulder, the whole surface of the Rise below him was gray with soldiers taking the one way they could to come to grips with the foe. Even as he watched, a couple of them were hit and went rolling back down toward the trenches.
The spectacle of the southrons scrambling up the front face of Proselytizers’ Rise was awe-inspiring enough from where he saw it. What did it look like from the crest, where the northerners watched a whole army heaving itself up the mountainside straight at them? Rollant didn’t, couldn’t, know. He just hoped he would make it to the top.
When he got about halfway up, he paused to shoot at the traitors peering down at him, and to reload once he had shot. He didn’t know whether he hit anyone, but he’d come far enough to try. Another bolt spanged off a rock in front of him. Lucky twice now, went through his mind. How much longer can I stay lucky?
“They can’t hit anybody,” Smitty said, as obvious a lie as Rollant had ever heard.
Before he could answer, the sun seemed to dim for a moment, though no cloud was near. A breath of cold air went straight down the back of his neck. Under his cap, all his butter-yellow hair tried to stand on end. He’d had those feelings before, back in his serf hut on Baron Ormerod’s estate. “Magecraft,” he whispered, putting all a serf’s dread into the word. “That’s strong magecraft.”
Other voices, not all of them belonging to blonds, said the same thing or things that meant the same. The spell hovered over Proselytizers’ Rise like a great bird of prey. Rollant shuddered, shivered, shook. I must have been crazy to join King Avram’s army, to go up against what the traitor lords can throw. Crazy? Worse than that. I must have been stupid.
And the spell, after hovering for a few unbearable heartbeats, struck home. And the traitors atop the Rise howled like beaten dogs and fled, throwing away their weapons to run the faster.
Rollant stared up at the crest in delighted disbelief. That wasn’t, that couldn’t be, a bluff. That was real panic, and he knew exactly what had caused it. “Either our mages got a spell just right, or theirs botched one,” he said as he scrambled forward.
“Bet on theirs botching one,” Smitty said beside him. “Thraxton the Braggart’s done it before.”
“I know he has,” Rollant answered. “It only goes to show that, every now and again, the gods do make sure there’s some justice down here below.”
“Maybe,” Smitty said. “And maybe it just goes to show old Thraxton can’t count past ten without taking off his shoes.”
“Believe what you want to believe,” Rollant said. “I’ll put my faith in the gods. And I’ll put my faith in getting to the top of the Rise before you do.”
“That’s what you think.” Smitty made for the crestline as if propelled from a catapult. Rollant did his best to keep up, but found himself outdistanced. Smitty waited, grinning, at the crest of the Rise. He gave Rollant a hand and pulled him upright. Somehow, it wasn’t a race Rollant minded losing, especially when Smitty pointed west. “Will you look at those sons of bitches run? If they keep going like that, they won’t stop till they get to the ocean.”
“Good.” Rollant brought up his crossbow to his shoulder and sent a bolt after the fleeing traitors.
More and more southrons, all of them whooping with the joy of men who unexpectedly find victory in place of disaster, came up onto the top of Proselytizers’ Rise. And more and more of their officers, seeing Thraxton’s men abandoning what had been the strongest of positions and running for their lives, shouted things like, “After them! Don’t let them get away!”
Though still panting from the climb up the side of the Rise, Rollant was willing-Rollant, in fact, was eager-to go after the men who wanted to keep blonds bound to their land. And plenty of Detinans in the southrons’ army went with him. Maybe they didn’t care so much about serfdom, but they knew a won battle when they saw one, and they wanted to get as much as they could from this one.
“River of Death!” some of them shouted. “This pays you bastards back for the River of Death!”
The traitors who’d been on the crest of Proselytizers’ Rise kept right on retreating in spite of the jeers from the southrons. Maybe, as Smitty said, they really would run till they came to the Western Ocean. When Thraxton’s spells went wrong, they went spectacularly wrong. Rollant was glad this one hadn’t gone right, or he would have been running back toward Rising Rock. But some northern soldiers finally formed lines to oppose the southrons. They were, Rollant realized, the men whom Fighting Joseph had forced away from Sentry Peak the day before.
“See how thin they are, boys?” Captain Cephas called. “A couple of good volleys and they’ll melt like ice in the springtime.”
Rollant hadn’t seen much in the way of ice before fleeing down to New Eborac; snow rarely fell near Karlsburg. But he was all for making the traitors melt away. That big, burly son of a bitch waving a sword, for instance. Gods damn me if that doesn’t look like Baron Ormerod, he thought as he took aim with his crossbow. Looks just the way Ormerod did when he almost put a hole in me. Thinking thus, he aimed with extra care. He squeezed the trigger. The crossbow kicked his shoulder.
And the traitor dropped his sword, clutched his chest with both hands, and sagged to the ground. Rollant yowled in triumph. Whether it was Ormerod or not, he’d killed his man.
And Cephas had the right of it. There weren’t enough northerners to stand up to the men facing them. After a couple of volleys, the company commander and other officers yelled, “Charge!” Charge the southrons did-and the traitors broke before them.
As Rollant loped past the man he’d slain, he looked down at him and whooped. “By all the gods, it is Ormerod!” he shouted, and kicked at the corpse. He missed, but he didn’t care. “Tell me blonds can’t fight, gods damn you.” He hoped devils were doing horrible things to the baron’s spirit down in one of those seven hells the Detinans talked about.