Sentry Peak

V

Ned of the Forest could not have been more disgusted if he’d been invited to King Avram’s coronation.

“Why have we even got an army?” he demanded of Colonel Biffle. “What good is it if we just sit around with it and don’t use it?”

“Tell you what I heard,” Biffle said.

“Well? Go on,” Ned said. “How come General Thraxton’s being an idiot this time out?” He was willing to assume Thraxton was being an idiot, for one reason or another.

But Colonel Biffle shook his head. “It’s not Thraxton’s fault this time, Ned.” He held up a hasty hand. “I know the two of you don’t see eye to eye. Everybody knows that, I expect. But what I hear is, Thraxton’s flat-out ordered Leonidas the Priest to get up off his arse and go for the stinking southrons, and Leonidas just keeps sitting on his backside and won’t move for anything.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Ned allowed. “Leonidas has got himself plenty of holy where you ought to have smart, you know what I mean? But the southrons are figuring out we didn’t run for Stamboul or Marthasville. They’re starting to pull their own army together. If we don’t start taking bites out of their separate columns pretty soon, we lose the chance for good.”

“I know that, sir,” Biffle said. “But I can’t make Leonidas move, either.”

“Only thing that’d make Leonidas move is a good, swift kick in the backside,” Ned said scornfully. He raised a bristling black eyebrow. “I will be cursed if I don’t feel a little bit sorry for Thraxton, and that’s nothing I reckoned I’d ever say.”

“Won’t be so good if Guildenstern does pull his whole army together before we get the chance to hit it,” Colonel Biffle remarked. “He’s almost done it already.”

“Won’t be good at all,” Ned agreed. “Not at all, at all.” He and his men occupied the extreme left wing of Count Thraxton’s army, with Leonidas the Priest’s force on his immediate right. A slow grin spread over his face. “We’ll just have to make sure it doesn’t happen, that’s all. And I know how, too.”

“Do you?” Biffle asked. “What do you know that Count Thraxton doesn’t?”

“Oh, all sorts of things,” Ned answered, and his grin got wider. “But one of the things I know-and the one that really matters here-is how to get Leonidas moving irregardless of whether he wants to or not.”

“That’ll be good-if you can do it.” Biffle sounded dubious. He explained why: “I’ve seen you do things on the field that nobody’d believe if you just told the story. But how do you propose to make somebody else-somebody on your own side-move when he cursed well won’t?”

Instead of answering directly, Ned filled his lungs and let out a one-word shout: “Runners!”

As always, the young men who fought under him hurried to obey. “Lord Ned, sir!” they cried in a ragged chorus.

He pointed to one of them. “Go to Count Thraxton and tell him I am moving out to meet the enemy. Tell him I hope to have Leonidas the Priest moving with me on my right, but I’m going to attack with him or without him. Have you got that?”

“Sure do, Lord Ned,” the messenger said, and repeated it back.

“That’s fine. That’s right fine.” Ned of the Forest waved to him, and he hurried off. Ned pointed to another runner. “Now, Mort, you’re going to go to Leonidas the Priest. You tell him, I’m moving out to attack the southrons with him or without him. Tell him I hope he comes along for the ride, but I’m moving out whether he does or not. And tell him I’ve sent another runner to Count Thraxton, so Thraxton knows just exactly what I’m doing. Wouldn’t want to take Count Thraxton by surprise, no indeed.” For a moment, he sounded every bit as pious as Leonidas the Priest. “Have you got that?”

“I’ve got it, Lord Ned,” Mort replied. When he started to repeat it for the commander of unicorn-riders, he stumbled a couple of times. Ned patiently led him through it till he had it straight, then sent him off.

After dismissing the rest of the runners, Ned turned back to Colonel Biffle. “Well, sir, if that doesn’t shift Leonidas off his sacred behind, to the seven hells with me if I know what would.” Biffle clapped his hands together, as if admiring a stage performance. In a way, Ned knew he’d just delivered a performance. “What does it say about a man when you’ve got to trick him into doing what he’s supposed to do anyhow?” he asked, and answered his own question: “It says the bastard isn’t worth the paper he’s printed on, that’s what.”

“Yes, sir,” Biffle agreed. “Now-are you really going to move forward before you find out whether Leonidas will come with you?”

“You bet I am,” Ned replied without the least hesitation. Colonel Biffle looked worried. Ned set a hand on his shoulder. “Now don’t you fret about a thing, Biff. The good part of riding unicorns is that we can get out of a fight as fast and easy as we can get into one. If we run into more southrons than we can handle, and if Leonidas still hasn’t woken up, we’ll pull back again, that’s all.”

Now Biffle’s face showed relief. “That’s better, sir. That’s a hells of a lot better. We can’t lick Guildenstern all by our lonesome.”

“I wasn’t finished,” Ned said. “The other thing is, if the footsoldiers don’t follow, the Lion God won’t feast on the blood of the lamb. He’ll taste Leonidas’ blood, you see if he doesn’t.”

From any other man, that might have been a joke. Colonel Biffle didn’t act as if he thought Ned were joking, which was just as well, for Ned meant every word. Biffle said, “Don’t be hasty, sir. If the priesthood curses you, half your riders will desert.”

“Ah, but what a fine bunch of devils the other half would be,” Ned replied, now with a charming grin. “Besides, I’m hoping it won’t come to that. Let’s get mounted up, Colonel, and we’ll find out, eh?”

At his command, the trumpeters blew advance. The unicorns rode south and east over a little wooden bridge, their hooves drumming on the timbers. Looking back over his shoulder at the troopers who followed him, Ned of the Forest nodded to himself. He already had a pretty fine bunch of devils. The southrons had found that out on a number of fields. Now he intended to teach them another lesson.

“We’re going to find Guildenstern’s men,” he called to the unicorn-riders. “We’re going to find ’em, we’re going to smash through ’em, we’re going to get between them and Rising Rock, and we’re going to break their army all to flinders. How’s that sound, boys?”

The unicorn-riders whooped. They growled like wolves and roared like lions. For a heady moment, Ned felt as if they could beat Guildenstern’s army to flinders all by themselves. Steady down. He deliberately made the mental command stern. Thinking you could do more than you really could was as dangerous as not thinking you could do enough.

They hadn’t gone much more than a mile when shouts of alarm and crossbow bolts hissing through the air announced they’d found the foe-and that the foe had found them. Ned grimaced. It wasn’t an ideal place for a fight: the road ran through dense forest, in which a man couldn’t see very far. But Ned didn’t hesitate. If this was where King Avram’s men were, this was where he’d hit them.

“Dismount!” he shouted, and the trumpeters echoed his commands. “Form line of battle and forward!”

Colonel Biffle said, “Leonidas had better come after us now.” He cocked his head to one side. “Unless I’m plumb daft, we’ve run into a lot of southrons here.”

“I’d say you’re right,” Ned agreed. “Well, this here is what we came for. Ride on up the road with me a ways, Colonel, why don’t you? We’ll just see what we’ve got.” Without waiting to find out whether Biffle followed, he spurred his unicorn on.

Biffle didn’t hesitate. No man under Ned’s command hesitated when ordered to ride with him. On they went-and collided headlong with a squad of southron cavalry trotting north down the road to see what sort of force they’d just bumped into.

Ned’s saber flew into his left hand before he was consciously aware of reaching for it. Where a more prudent man would have drawn back, he howled curses and galloped toward the enemy. Their startled cries became shouts of pain when he slashed two of them out of the saddle in quick succession. His unicorn, a well-trained beast, plunged its horn into the side of another southron’s mount. The wounded animal let out a scream like a woman in torment and bucketed off, carrying its rider out of the fight.

Colonel Biffle traded swordstrokes with a southron, then slashed his shoulder to the bone. That was enough for the unicorn-riders in gray. They fled back up the road they had ridden down so confidently. But as they fled, one turned back and shot a crossbow over his shoulder.

The quarrel caught Ned of the Forest in the right upper arm. He cursed foully as blood began soaking his sleeve. It wasn’t a bad wound; he could still open and close his right hand. But he felt dizzy and weak and more than a little sick. It might not have been a bad wound, but no wound was a good one.

“You all right, Lord Ned?” Colonel Biffle asked anxiously.

“Just a scratch,” Ned answered. But his voice gave him away-he sounded woozy, even to himself. It was more than a scratch, even if the bolt had only torn a gouge in his arm rather than piercing him through and through. Angry at himself for showing weakness, he tried to make light of it: “I’m fine.”

Biffle shook his head. “You don’t look fine, sir, and you don’t sound so fine, either. Let me bind that up for you, and you take a drink of this here while I’m doing it.” Like a lot of officers, he carried a flask on his belt. He handed it to Ned.

“I don’t know…” Ned was rarely irresolute, but he hesitated here. He hardly ever drank spirits, and despised drunkards with all his soul.

“It’s medicine, sir,” Colonel Biffle said firmly as he got to work on Ned’s arm. “It’ll put the heart back in you. You need it, by the gods. You’re green around the gills. Nothing to be ashamed of-any man who gets wounded looks that way.”

“All right.” Ned yielded. “Here, you’ll have to pull the stopper out.” Colonel Biffle briefly paused in his work, took the flask from Ned, and then gave it back to him. Still unhappy, Ned raised it to his lips and took a long pull. He almost spat the mouthful out into the dirt of the roadway. After he’d choked it down, he wheezed, “Gods, that’s foul! How can you stand to drink it?”

Biffle looked affronted. “Them’s prime Franklin sipping spirits, Lord Ned. You won’t find better anywhere in Detina. Take another slug. It’ll do you good.”

“It tastes nasty enough-it must be strong medicine,” Ned said, and forced himself to drink again. Flames ran down his throat. They exploded like a firepot in his belly, spreading heat all through him. The wound still hurt, but Ned felt himself once more, or at least better able to carry on. He gave the flask back to Biffle. “Thank you, Colonel. I reckon that did some good.”

“Fine,” Biffle said. “I’ve got you just about patched here, too.”

“Thank you kindly,” Ned of the Forest repeated. Thinking of firepots made him raise his voice to a battlefield shout: “Captain Watson! Come here-I want you!”

“Coming, sir!” The officer who headed Ned’s field catapults was a fresh-faced boy who couldn’t yet have twenty summers. When he’d reported to the unicorn-riders, Ned had thought some capricious fellow over in Nonesuch was playing a joke on him.

But Viscount Watson always got the dart- and stone-throwers up to the very front of the fight, and any officer who did that had little to complain of from Ned of the Forest.

Ned pointed toward the trees not all that far away, from which the southrons were still shooting at him. “I want your engines to pound those bastards. Pound them, do you hear me? They’re here in numbers, and we’ve got to shift ’em.”

“Yes, sir!” Excitement glowed on Watson’s face. “I’ll see to it, sir. You can count on me!” He went back at a gallop, shouting for his catapult crews to hustle their deadly machines forward. Ned grinned and shook his head. Like a lot of common soldiers, Watson was young enough to imagine himself immortal as a god. Ned wished he were still that young. He knew the southrons could kill him-unless he killed them first.

So did Colonel Biffle. “Sir, they’re still pushing on us. We’re going to stop more bolts if we don’t pull back a bit.”

“Right you are,” Ned said. As he and Biffle rode back toward their own line, he saw Captain Watson and the catapult crews bringing their engines forward. In minutes, stones and darts and firepots started coming down on the southrons’ heads. Ned whooped. “That’s the way to give it to ’em!”

But the southrons had engines of their own, and punished his dismounted riders with them. And they had footsoldiers in great numbers. They kept on storming forward, ready to fight. A captain called out to Ned in some alarm: “Sir, I don’t know how long we can hold ’em unless we get some more men here.”

“Do your best, gods damn it,” Ned answered. He slammed a fist-his left fist-down on his thigh. “Where in the seven hells is that low-down, no-good son of a bitch called Leonidas the Priest? If he really has turned coward on us, we’re going to have to get out of here, and I’m cursed if I want to do it. We can lick the stinking southrons, if only we get to work and do it.”

But General Guildenstern’s men came on like a gray wave of the sea, always looking to lap around the edges of Ned’s line and roll it up. At last, he couldn’t bear it any more. He spurred his unicorn back toward the rear. If I catch Leonidas back there praying when he ought to be fighting, I will sacrifice him to the Lion God, he thought. But to the seven hells with me if I think his lion would much care to gnaw on his scrawny old carcass.

That thought-and maybe Colonel Biffle’s spirits coursing through him, too-made him laugh out loud, his own spirits almost completely restored despite the wound. And then he took off his hat and waved it and whooped out loud: up the road marched a long column of crossbowmen in indigo tunics and pantaloons (some in gray pantaloons, taken from dead southrons). Leonidas might not have been quite so fast as Ned would have liked, but he’d got his soldiers on the move.

“Come on, boys!” Ned yelled, and pointed to the south. “We’ve got plenty of southrons up there for you to kill!” When Leonidas’ troopers cheered, they sounded like roaring lions themselves. Ned rode forward with them. Going forward, going toward the fight, was what he did best.

A crossbow quarrel slashed the bushes behind which Rollant hid. He flattened himself even lower to the ground. He wished he could burrow his way down into it, like a mole or a gopher. Something-a shape in blue?-moved out there among the trees. He shot at it, then set another bolt in the groove to his crossbow and yanked back the bowstring as fast as he could. He had no idea whether he’d hit the enemy soldier. He wasn’t altogether sure there had been an enemy soldier. The only thing he was sure of was that he dared not take a chance.

Smitty crouched behind an oak not far away. “How many traitors are there, anyway?” he asked, reloading his own crossbow.

“I don’t know,” Rollant answered. “All I know is, there are too many of them, and they all seem to be coming right at us.”

This was different from the savage little skirmish his company had fought a few days before. Now all of Lieutenant General George’s soldiers were in line together-and all of them, by the racket that came from both east and west of Rollant, were being pressed hard. The traitors roared like lions when they came forward, as if to say they were the true children of the Lion God.

The sound made the hair prickle up on the back of Rollant’s neck. The Detinans had roared when they smashed the blond kingdoms of the north, too, back in the days not long after they crossed the Western Ocean and came to this land. Iron and unicorns and catapults and magic had had more to do with their triumphs than the roaring, but no blond to this day could hear it without wanting to flinch.

They won’t capture me, Rollant thought. I won’t let them capture me. If they let him live, they would haul him back to Ormerod’s estate in chains. I should have killed him. I had the chance. He shook his head. He knew he was lucky his former liege lord hadn’t killed him.

Somewhere not far away, the din rose to a peak-and then started coming from farther south than it had. Smitty and Rollant both cursed. “They’ve broken through, Thunderer blast them,” Smitty said. Then he said a worse word: “Again.”

“What do we do?” Rollant looked nervously in that direction.

“Hang on here till we’re ordered back,” Smitty answered. “What else can we do?”

Rollant shrugged. Hang on here till the traitors flank us out and roll over us, went through his mind. He couldn’t say that. An ordinary Detinan trooper might have, but he couldn’t. He didn’t think Smitty would start going on about cowardly blonds, but he wasn’t altogether sure. And he was altogether sure some of the other Detinans in the squad would go on about exactly that.

“Hold your places, men!” That was Lieutenant Griff, still in command of the company. His voice was high and anxious. Had Captain Cephas been there, the identical order from his lips would have heartened the men. After Griff gave it, plenty of Detinans started looking back toward the rear, to make sure their line of retreat remained open. Rollant wasn’t ashamed to do the same.

Great stones and firepots started landing close by. A stone that hit a tree could knock it flat, and the soldier beside it, too. “Curse the traitors!” Smitty howled. “They’ve found a road to move their engines forward.”

In country like this, engines could move forward only on roads. Hauling them through the woods was a nightmare Rollant didn’t want to contemplate. He had other things he didn’t want to contemplate, too. “Where are our engines hiding?” he asked.

“They’re back there-somewhere.” That was Sergeant Joram, pointing back toward the rear. “You wouldn’t expect the fellows who run them to come up here and mix it with the traitors, would you? They might get their fancy uniforms soiled.”

That was unfair: catapult crews fought hard. But none of them seemed close by right now, when the company needed them. And Joram’s sarcasm did more to steady the men who heard it than Lieutenant Griff’s worried command to stand fast. Why isn’t Joram an officer? Rollant wondered.

Then he cheered like a man possessed, and so did the soldiers close by, for Doubting George’s army did have some engines hidden up a tunic sleeve. Stones smashed down on the enemy soldiers pushing forward against Rollant’s company. A bolt from a dart-thrower transfixed two men at once as they ran forward. A firepot landed on them a moment later, giving them a pyre before they were quite dead.

“See how you like it!” Rollant shouted. Another crossbow quarrel tore leaves from the bushes behind which he lay.

“Don’t be stupid,” Sergeant Joram said. “Just do your job. Everybody does his job, everything will turn out fine.” He sounded calm and confident and certain. By sounding that way, he made Rollant feel guilty. Captain Cephas had had the same gift, but who could say when-or if-Cephas would return to the company?

No sooner had Rollant started reflecting on how calm he felt than a storm of crossbow bolts came, not from ahead of him, but from off to the left. The traitors gave forth with their roaring battle cry.

“Flanked!” Half a dozen men shouted the same thing at the same time. Rollant wasn’t the least bit ashamed to be one of them. He scrambled away from the bushes, trying to find a couple of trees that would protect him from the left and from the front at the same time. It wasn’t easy. It was, in fact, next to impossible-trees didn’t grow so conveniently close together.

“Fall back!” Lieutenant Griff commanded. “They’ve broken through on this line. We’ll have to try to hold them on the next one.”

The men had hesitated to obey his order to stand. They didn’t hesitate to retreat. Rollant wondered if they could hold Thraxton the Braggart’s army on the next line. He wondered if they could hold it anywhere.

More arrows tore at them from the flank as they dropped back to look for a line they could hold. Lieutenant Griff did a good job of keeping them moving and fighting at the same time. Rollant admitted as much to himself later; while the retreat was going on, he just hoped to make it to some kind of safety before Thraxton’s men overwhelmed not only the company but the whole regiment-and possibly the whole brigade.

He was part of the group Griff had ordered to keep shooting to the front no matter what happened. Having a clear sense of what to do helped him do it. He would shoot a bolt or two from whatever cover he could find, reload, and scurry back behind another tree or bush or rock to do the same thing over again. If an enemy quarrel slammed into him from the left… then the group commanded to hold off the traitors on the flank weren’t doing their job. That was their worry, not his-except indirectly, of course.

“King Avram!” he shouted as he loosed a bolt at a fellow in an indigo tunic. The northerner went down, whether hit or merely alarmed Rollant didn’t know. He hoped he’d put that bolt right between the northerner’s eyes-and he hoped it was Baron Ormerod. He knew perfectly well that that was too much to hope for. He’d had one chance at his old liege lord. How likely were the gods to give him two?

“Avram and justice!” somebody else yelled, not far away. The traitors could roar as much as they liked, but they weren’t the only soldiers on this part of the field.

When Rollant burst out of the woods and into a good-sized clearing, he blinked in surprise-and in no little alarm. How were he and his comrades supposed to take cover crossing open ground like that? Then he saw the engines lined up almost hub to hub in the clearing. They were-they had to be-the ones that had punished the northerners before things went wrong on the flank.

Rollant’s company weren’t the only men bursting into that clearing. The soldiers in northern blue didn’t just roar when they burst into it. They howled and whooped with delight and rushed at the engines. Capturing catapults was every footsoldier’s dream.

Chains clattered as they went ratcheting over five-sided gears. The dart-throwers that were like concentrated essence of crossbowmen sprayed streams of death into the men who called Grand Duke Geoffrey their king. The traitors went down as if scythed. But men among the catapult crews fell, too: and not only men, but also the unicorns that moved the engines. Some of the traitors had got close enough for their crossbows to reach their foes.

And then stones and firepots started landing among the siege engines in the clearing. Rollant cursed. Whoever was in charge of the traitors’ catapults was doing a very smart job indeed of pushing them to the forefront of the fighting.

“We’ve got to pull out!” one of Avram’s officers shouted as a stone smashed a dart-thrower flat. That made Rollant curse again, but he could see the sense of it. The engines were up against more than they could handle here. If they stayed, they would either be wrecked or overrun and lost.

Harnessing unicorns to the catapults was but the work of a moment. Off they went, those that could go. Soldiers pulling ropes hauled a couple of them away, doing the work of beasts already slain. And the crews set fire to a couple of machines too badly damaged to take away but not so wrecked that Geoffrey’s men couldn’t get some use from them.

“Form skirmish line!” Lieutenant Griff shouted. “We have to give them time to get away!”

Militarily, the order made perfect sense. In the red balance sheet of war, catapults counted for more than a battered company’s worth of footsoldiers. That made standing- actually, dropping to one knee-out in the open no less lonely for Rollant.

He muttered prayers to the Lion God and the Thunderer. And, although he didn’t pray to them, he hoped the old gods of his people were keeping an eye on him, too. Those old gods weren’t very strong, not when measured against the ones the Detinans worshiped. The blonds had seen that, again and again. But the Detinans’ gods didn’t seem to be paying much attention to Rollant right now. Maybe the deities his people had known in days gone by would remember him when the strong gods forgot.

Here came more northerners, out into the clearing. “Give them a volley!” Griff said. “Don’t shoot till you hear my orders. Load your crossbows… Aim… Shoot!”

Rollant squeezed the trigger. His crossbow bucked against his shoulder. All around him, bowstrings twanged. Quarrels hissed through the air. Several blue-clad soldiers fell. “Die, traitors!” Rollant shouted, reloading as fast as he could.

“Steady, men,” Lieutenant Griff called. He was steadier himself than Rollant had thought he could be-certainly steadier than he had been when the battle erupted. “Make every shot count,” he urged. “We can lick them.”

Did he really believe that? Rollant didn’t, not for an instant, not while the company was standing out here in the open, trying to hold back the gods only knew how many of Thraxton’s men. But Griff sounded as if he believed it, whether he did or not. And that by itself got more from the men than they would have given to a man with panic in his voice.

A couple of soldiers not far from Rollant went down, one with a bolt in the leg, the other shrieking and clutching at his belly. But then, although quarrels kept whizzing past the men in the company and digging into the dirt not far from their feet, none struck home for a startlingly long time. That was more than luck. That was… Behind Rollant, somebody said, “A mage!”

Rollant turned his head. Sure enough, a fellow in a gray robe stood busily incanting perhaps fifty yards behind the company’s skirmish line. “I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Smitty said. “A wizard who’s really good for something. Who would’ve thunk it?”

“As long as he can keep the bolts from biting, he’s worth his weight in gold,” Rollant answered. “And as long as he can keep us safe like this, we’re worth a brigade.”

“That’s the truth,” Smitty said. “Do you suppose he can keep mosquitoes from biting, too? If he could do that, he’d be worth twice his weight in gold, easy.”

Before Rollant could come up with a response to that bit of absurdity, the mage let out a harsh cry, loud even through the din of battle. Rollant looked back over his shoulder again. The wizard was staggering, as if pummeled by invisible fists. He rallied, straightened, but then grabbed at his throat. Someone might have been strangling him, except that nobody stood anywhere close by. The northern wizards had found the mage. With another groan, he fell. His feet drummed against the ground. He did not rise.

An instant later, a crossbow bolt struck home with a meaty slap. A man only a few paces from Rollant howled. Whatever immunity the company had enjoyed died with the sorcerer in gray.

A runner dashed up to Lieutenant Griff through the hail of quarrels. Griff listened and nodded. The runner pelted away. Griff called, “Fall back, men! We’ve done our duty here. The gods-damned traitors won’t take those engines. And George’s whole wing is falling back on Merkle’s Hill. We’ll make our stand on the high ground there.”

“Where’s Merkle’s Hill?” Rollant asked. Smitty only shrugged. So did Sergeant Joram. Rollant hoped Griff knew where he was going. The lieutenant was right about one thing: the catapults had escaped Thraxton’s men. Now I have to get away from them myself, Rollant thought. He didn’t run to the far edge of the clearing, but his quickstep was fine, free, and fancy. And he didn’t get there first, or anything close to it.

His company-indeed, his regiment-were not the only men retreating toward Merkle’s Hill. The traitors had treated Doubting George’s wing of General Guildenstern’s army very roughly indeed. Thraxton’s soldiers kept pushing forward, too, roaring like lions all the while.

“We have to hold them, men.” Rollant looked around, and there stood Lieutenant General George. The wing commander had his sword out; blood stained the blade. “We have to hold them,” Doubting George repeated. “If they get through us or past us, we haven’t just lost the battle. We’ve lost this whole army, because they’ll be sitting on the road back to Rising Rock. So hold fast and fight hard.”

George had a habit of telling the truth. This once, Rollant could have done without it.

“Hold fast, men!” Lieutenant General George was getting tired of saying it. He hoped his soldiers weren’t getting tired of hearing it. If they stopped holding, if they lost heart and ran, the army was ruined. He hadn’t been lying when he warned them of that. He wished he had.

Colonel Andy appeared at Doubting George’s elbow. George almost wheeled and slashed at him, but realized who he was just in time. The aide-de-camp’s gray tunic was splashed with blood; by the way Andy moved and spoke, it wasn’t his. “Well, sir,” he said now, surprisingly cheerful in view of the situation, “I think we can be pretty sure Thraxton the Braggart’s not back at Stamboul.”

“Seems a fair bet,” George agreed, dryly enough to draw a chuckle from Colonel Andy. “What we have to do now is make sure the traitors don’t get to Rising Rock.”

“Don’t you think we can lick them, sir?” Andy asked.

“I doubt it,” George said, and Andy chuckled again. George went on, “They’ve got the bit between their teeth, the way a unicorn will sometimes. My guess is, we’ll just have to ride it out and see what’s left of us at the end of the fight. The only consolation I take is, it could be worse.”

His aide-de-camp’s eyes widened. “How?”

“They could have hit us a few days ago, when we were scattered all over the gods-damned map,” George answered. “Thraxton’s pulled extra men from somewhere-for all I know, he magicked them up. He’s got more than I ever thought he could, anyway. If he’d smashed our columns one at a time instead of letting us regroup, he could have bagged us one after another. Now, at least, we’ve got a fighting chance.”

A runner, also bloodied, came panting up and waited for Doubting George to notice him. When George did, the fellow saluted and said, “Brigadier Brannan’s compliments, sir, and he wants you to know he’s massing his engines at the crest of Merkle’s Hill, just behind our last line. If the traitors come up the hill, a demon of a lot of ’em won’t go down again. That’s what Brannan says, anyhow.”

“Good.” George slapped the runner on the back. “You hustle up to Brigadier Brannan and tell him he’s doing just the right thing. Just exactly the right thing-have you got that?”

“Yes, sir.” With another salute, the youngster hurried away.

“We’re doing as well as we can, sir,” Andy said.

“Of course we are,” George said. “We’re doing as well as any army could that gets hit from the front and the flank when it doesn’t really believe there’s any trouble around at all.” He wanted to say something a good deal harsher than that about the way General Guildenstern had handled the advance from Rising Rock, but held back.

His aide-de-camp had no trouble hearing what he didn’t say. “King Avram won’t be happy once the scryers get word of what’s happened back here to the Black Palace in Georgetown.”

“Let’s hope that still matters to us after the battle’s over,” George replied.

Colonel Andy’s eyes widened. “Do you think the traitors are going to surround us and slay us all, the way we Detinans did to the blonds at the Battle of the Three Rivers back in the early days?”

“That had better not happen,” Doubting George said severely, and managed to jerk a startled laugh from Andy. George went on, “No, what I had in mind was what the king is liable to do to us once he hears how things have gone wrong. Do you think our commander will keep on commanding after this?”

“The men like General Guildenstern,” Andy answered. “He takes good care of them, and” -he lowered his voice a little- “he has all their vices, though on a grand scale.”

“He takes good care of them on the march. He takes good care of them in camp,” George said. “If he took good care of them in battle, we wouldn’t be where we are right this minute.” Where they were, right this minute, was halfway up the slope of Merkle’s Hill, and falling back toward the line near the crest. Thraxton’s men kept up their roaring, and they kept coming as if someone had lit a fire behind them. George kicked at the dirt as he trudged up the long, low slope of the hill. “This is partly my fault. I told General Guildenstern I didn’t think Thraxton had headed north, but I couldn’t make him believe me.”

“If Guildenstern wouldn’t believe you, sir, why is that your fault?” Andy asked.

“I should have made him believe me, gods damn it,” George answered. His aide-de-camp raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything. After a moment, George nodded. Nobody, up to and possibly including the Lion God and the Thunderer, could make General Guildenstern do what he didn’t feel like doing.

“Lieutenant General George! Lieutenant General George!” somebody shouted from not far away. A heartbeat later, the shouter went on, to himself this time, “Where is the miserable old son of a bitch, anyways?”

“Here!” Doubting George yelled. A runner trotted up to him. He fixed the fellow with a mild and speculative stare. “And what do you want from the miserable old son of a bitch, anyways?” The runner flushed and stammered. “Never mind, son. I’ve been called worse,” George told him. “Just speak your piece.”

“Uh, yes, sir.” The runner kept on stammering, but finally said, “Uh, sir, Brigadier Negley, uh, says to tell you he’s hard pressed, sir, and he doesn’t know how much longer he can hold on. Thraxton’s men are all over the place, sir, like syrup on pancakes.” He flushed again. “That last bit, that’s, uh, mine, sir, not Brigadier Negley’s.”

“It’s not the worst figure I’ve ever heard,” George said, which didn’t keep him from scowling. Brigadier Negley’s men held the left end of his line, the end that connected the wing he commanded to the rest of General Guildenstern’s army. “You tell Negley that he’s got to hold, that if he doesn’t hold we’re all in a lot of trouble, and him in particular. Use just those words.”

“Yes, sir.” The runner repeated them back. He saluted-much more smartly than he would have if he weren’t embarrassed; Doubting George was sure of that-and then hurried back toward the left.

“Where in the seven hells did Thraxton the Braggart come up with enough men to make an attack like this?” Colonel Andy demanded as he and George accompanied their retreating men up toward the crest of the hill.

George had more immediate worries-not least among them whether he could get the men to stop retreating once they neared the crest. But he answered, “I don’t think he pulled them out of there, Colonel. He’d have got some when the traitors’ garrison pulled out of Wesleyton before Whiskery Ambrose took it. The rest? I don’t know. Maybe Geoffrey sent soldiers from Parthenia. He’s never done that before, but maybe he did. I don’t know. Thraxton’s got ’em. I know that.”

“Yes, sir. So do I,” Colonel Andy said.

“What we really need to do,” Doubting George said, “is stop worrying about where they’re from and start worrying about how we’re going to drive them back.” He’d said that before. He’d had trouble getting anybody to listen to him. There were times when he had trouble getting himself to listen to him.

Andy asked, “If the king does sack General Guildenstern over this, who do you suppose will replace him?” Avid curiosity filled his voice.

“I’m not going to play that game,” George insisted. “Let’s worry about getting through this battle first. If we don’t do that, nothing else matters.”

Directly rebuked, his aide-de-camp had no choice but to nod. But the question, once posed, kept echoing in George’s mind. If Geoffrey had sent soldiers from the west, King Avram might pluck a general out of Parthenia to take command here in the east. Or he might promote another of the eastern generals.

Colonel Andy refused to stay squelched. He said, “Sir, it could be you.”

“Yes. It could.” Try as he would to avoid it, George found himself drawn into the quicksand of speculation. “It could, but I wouldn’t bet on it. For one thing, I’m a Parthenian, and people still wonder how loyal I am. For another, if we lose this fight, my reputation suffers along with General Guildenstern’s.”

“That’s not fair, sir,” Andy said.

“Life isn’t fair,” George answered. “If I had to put my money on any one man, I’d bet on General Bart.”

“Why?” Andy asked.

“Why? Because Bart seems to be the one man who wants to start pounding on the traitors and keep pounding till they fall over or we do,” George said. “And because King Avram thinks the world of him for taking Camphorville on the Great River earlier this summer and cutting the traitors’ realm in half.”

“He’s a man of no breeding,” Andy said. “A tanner’s son. And he drinks.”

“And General Guildenstern doesn’t?” Doubting George said. His aide-de-camp spluttered, but didn’t say anything. Andy couldn’t very well say anything, not to that. George went on, “Bart’s a solid soldier. You know it, I know it, King Avram knows it, and the northerners know it, too-to their cost. And if we can make serfs into soldiers, we can make a tanner’s son a general. We already have, as a matter of fact.”

“The northerners don’t,” Colonel Andy said.

“No?” George chuckled. “They talk about nobility, but look what they do.” He pointed to the right of his line. “Those are Ned of the Forest’s troopers taking bites out of us over there. Do you think Ned got his command on account of his blue blood?”

“Ned got his command on account of he’s a son of a bitch,” Andy answered.

“Well, that’s true enough,” George said. “But he’s a gods-damned good fighting man, too, no matter what else he is. And so is General Bart. The difference is, General Bart’s our son of a bitch.”

He broke off to look around again and see how his men were doing. The short answer was, not very well. The traitors had bent their line back into what looked like a unicornshoe on the slopes of Merkle’s Hill. If they could bend the line back on itself, if they could get around it or break through it… If they could do any of those things, then talk about who might take over command of this army would prove meaningless, for there would be no army left to command.

General George peered west. He wished he knew how the fight was going for the rest of Guildenstern’s army. Odds were it wasn’t going any too well, or the commanding general would have sent him reinforcements. He could use them, but maybe Guildenstern couldn’t afford to send anyone his way. That didn’t seem good.

And then George stopped worrying about the bigger picture and started using the sword that was supposed to be a ceremonial weapon. As had happened farther northwest, Thraxton’s troopers broke through the line in front of him. The men he commanded had to fall back or die. And he had to fight or die or end up ignominiously captured.

The thought of living off Thraxton the Braggart’s hospitality, of enduring the traitor lord’s society, was plenty to make Doubting George fight like a madman. Crossbow quarrels whistled past him. He didn’t worry about those; he couldn’t do anything about them, anyhow. The roaring northerner in front of him was a different matter. The fellow swung his shortsword as if he were carving meat. “Geoffrey!” he shouted. “Geoffrey and freedom!”

“King Avram!” George yelled back, as if his gray tunic and pantaloons weren’t enough to announce which king he served. “King Avram and one Detina!”

“To the seven hells with King Avram!” the northerner bawled. He slashed again. He was strong as a bull; George felt the blow all the way up his arm and into his shoulder. But strength was all he had going for him. He would never make a real swordsman, not without long training. And he would never get the chance to have such training. Doubting George, like most nobles, had begun swordplay while still a boy. Unlike most nobles, he’d had his skills refined by the tough, unforgiving swordmasters at Annasville while training to become an officer in Detinan service.

He sidestepped a third slash and thrust for the northerner’s throat. The force of the fellow’s own stroke had bent him half double; he had no chance of getting his own blade up in time. Blood spurted when George’s point punched through the soft, vulnerable flesh under his neck. The northerner gobbled something, but blood filled his mouth, too, and made the words meaningless. He stumbled, staggered, fell. He wouldn’t get up again.

Another one of Thraxton’s men, though, had Colonel Andy in trouble, attacking so furiously that the aide-de-camp couldn’t do much against him. George drove his own sword into the blue-clad man’s back. The fellow shrieked and threw up his hands, whereupon Andy ran him through.

“That wasn’t even slightly sporting, sir,” Andy said as the two of them went up the slope of Merkle’s Hill.

“You’re right. It wasn’t,” George replied. “Now ask me if I care. I meant to kill the son of a bitch, and I cursed well did.”

They fell in with more of their own men, and then got behind a hasty breastwork of felled trees. Crossbowmen worked a slaughter on Geoffrey’s soldiers trying to drive them back. Soldiers who could shoot from cover always had an edge on those who fought in the open. And Brigadier Brannan’s engines pounded the northerners, too.

“Hold ’em, boys!” Doubting George shouted. “The River of Death isn’t far from here. Up to us to be the rock in it, not to let the traitors by.”

The men in gray cheered. Colonel Andy set a hand on George’s arm. “Sir, you’re the rock in the River of Death.”

“Me? Nonsense,” George said. “Can’t do a thing without good soldiers.” The men cheered again. He waved his hat. “Let’s beat ’em back!” he yelled. “We can do it!”

Ned of the Forest scowled at the slopes of Merkle’s Hill. “Damn me to the seven hells if they’re making it easy for us,” he said.

“It’d be nice if they would, eh?” Colonel Biffle said. “How’s your arm, Lord Ned?”

“Not too bad,” Ned answered. After gulping Biffle’s spirits, he’d hardly thought about the wound, so he supposed they’d done their job. “We could use some magecraft to help finish off those southron bastards.”

“Don’t look at me, sir,” Biffle said. “Only magic I know is how to make some of the gals friendly, and I don’t think that’ll do us much good here. In fact, if you want to get right down to it, it’s not even magic, not rightly, anyhow.” He looked smug.

“I wasn’t expecting it from you, Biff,” Ned said. “But where’s Thraxton the Braggart? Back when we were still in Rising Rock, he bragged me as big a brag as you’d ever want to hear about how he would lick Guildenstern’s army, lick him out of Rising Rock, lick him clean out of Franklin. He’s supposed to be such an all-fired wonderful he-witch, why isn’t he doing anything?”

Colonel Biffle shrugged. “I expect he’ll get to it in his own time.”

“I expect you’re right.” Ned of the Forest growled something under his breath. “That’s how Thraxton goes about things-in his own sweet time, I mean. He’d better get around to doing ’em when they need doing. We’ll all be better off.”

“I don’t know how you can make a man move when he’s not inclined to,” Biffle said.

“I do, by the gods. You build such a hot fire underneath his backside, he can’t do anything but move.” Ned kicked at the dirt in frustration. “I did it with Leonidas. But he’s the high and mighty Count Thraxton, don’t you know.” He did his best to affect an aristocratic accent, but couldn’t get rid of his back-country rasp. “So we’ll just have to do our best, on account of Thraxton’s backside’s so far away, it’s gods-damned near fireproof. But he’d better do something, or he’ll answer to me.” He held his saber in his left hand. The blade twitched hungrily. He pointed ahead with it. “What’s the name of the high ground the southrons are holding?”

“That’s Merkle’s Hill, Lord Ned,” Colonel Biffle answered.

“We’ve got to get through it or around it some kind of way,” Ned said. “You reckon we can put enough of a scare on their general to make him turn around and skedaddle?” His grin was impudent. “You put a scare on the general, you’ve got your fight won, and it don’t hardly matter what his soldiers do.”

But Biffle said, “Those are Doubting George’s troopers.”

Ned of the Forest cursed, the heat of battle still in him. “We can lick him. We can fool him, the way we did when he was coming up from Rising Rock toward the River of Death. But I don’t reckon we can frighten him out of his pantaloons.”

“Do you want me to send the men forward again, sir?” Colonel Biffle asked. “They’ll go-I know they will-but they’ve already taken some hard licks.”

“I know they have,” Ned said. “Curse it, unicorn-riders aren’t made for big stand-up fights. We can be dragoons. We’re cursed good dragoons, by the gods. But only half the point to dragoons is the fight. The other half is getting somewheres fast so you can fight where the other bastards don’t want you to.”

“Can’t do that on Merkle’s Hill,” Colonel Biffle said positively.

He was right. Ned of the Forest wished he were wrong. But then Ned pointed with his saber again, this time toward the southeast. “We’ll just have to see if we can’t slide around behind ’em, then. If we can get a decent-sized band of soldiers on the road between them and Rising Rock, they’ll have to fall back, on account of if they don’t, they’ll never get another chance.”

“Can we do it?” Biffle asked.

“Don’t know,” Ned answered. “But I’ll tell you what I do know-I do know I’d sooner try something my own self than wait for Thraxton the gods-damned Braggart to huff and puff and blow their house down.” He raised his voice to a bellow: “Captain Watson!”

“Yes, Lord Ned?” Watson had a way of appearing wherever he was needed.

“If we try and slide some men around to the south side of this here Merkle’s Hill, can you bring some engines along?” Ned asked.

Captain Watson said, “I’ll give it my best shot, sir. Don’t quite know what kind of ground we’ll run into, but I’ll give it my best shot.”

Ned of the Forest slapped him on the back. “That’s good enough for me.” He had to bite his tongue to keep from adding, sonny boy. He was young as generals went himself, but Watson could easily have been his son. When the youngster was first assigned to him, he’d thought Watson might be somebody’s nasty joke. But the boyish captain had proved able to handle catapults-to get them where they needed to be and to fight them once they got there-better than most men Ned’s age and older.

“Let me gather up some dart-throwers and a couple of engines that will fling stones or firepots,” he said now. “I’ll be with you in half an hour.” He went off at a dead run. He almost always did. Ned, a man of prodigious energy in his own right, envied Watson his.

He turned to Biffle. “We’ll take your regiment, Colonel. Get them on their unicorns and ready to ride inside an hour.” Colonel Biffle saluted and hurried away, not quite at Watson’s headlong speed but plenty fast enough.

And Ned shouted for a runner. When he got one, he said, “Go back to the unicorn-holders. Tell all of them-no, tell all of them who aren’t in Biffle’s regiment-to tie the gods-damned beasts to whatever trees or bushes they choose, to grab their crossbows, and to get their arses forward into the fight.”

“Yes, sir,” the runner said, and he hurried off. Ned grinned after him. That was what a general was good for: to set a whole lot of men running every which way. Putting the unicorn-holders into the fight wouldn’t replace as many men as he was pulling out with Biffle’s regiment, but it would be better than nothing. And, if things went as Ned hoped, he would soon set an army’s worth of southrons running every which way.

He yelled for a scryer. At his command, the mage relayed what he aimed to do to Count Thraxton’s headquarters. Unlike Watson and Biffle and the runner, the scryer could stay where he was. Once he’d sent Ned’s message, he asked, “Shall I wait for a reply from the count, sir?”

“By the gods, no!” Ned exclaimed. “Matter of fact, put your crystal ball away and don’t look at it for a while. He can’t say I didn’t tell him what I have in mind, but I don’t want him to go telling me he won’t let me do it. He can’t very well do that if you aren’t listening for him, now can he?”

“No, sir,” the scryer answered with a grin. He wasn’t one of the northeastern yeomen who made up the bulk of Ned’s force-men much like Ned himself, with more grit than blue blood and more stubbornness than learning from a codex. He’d had to have some book learning, or he wouldn’t have known what to do with that crystal ball of his. But by now he was just as ornery as any of the unicorn-riders with whom he served.

A little more than an hour after Ned gave his orders, he led Colonel Biffle’s regiment and half a dozen engines south and east in a long loop around Merkle’s Hill. The battle there had lost none of its ferocity. If his men, or Leonidas the Priest’s, could dislodge Doubting George’s soldiers, Count Thraxton would have the smashing victory he hoped for. Well, if that happens, we’ll make it a bigger one, on account of we’ll ruin the southrons’ retreat, Ned thought.

If Thraxton got the victory, he would surely take all the credit for it. People didn’t style him the Braggart for nothing. And he had King Geoffrey’s ear. If he didn’t have Geoffrey’s ear, he wouldn’t still be in charge of an army after all the fights he’s bungled. Ned was sure that thought had crossed other men’s minds, too. But, since Thraxton did have the king’s ear, he couldn’t do much about it, and neither could anyone else.

The path the regiment followed wound through thick woods-perfect for keeping the southrons from spying them. “If we get in their rear, we’ll give them a hells of a surprise,” Ned said, anticipation in his voice.

“Yes, sir.” Colonel Biffle nodded. “Of course, that’s what the hierophant told the actress, too.” He laughed. Ned of the Forest chuckled. Young Captain Watson howled with mirth, and almost fell off his unicorn. That made Ned chuckle again. When he was Watson’s age, he would have laughed himself silly at such bits of dirt, too.

The forest opened out onto a broad clearing. There on the far side of the clearing was the road leading north toward the River of Death-and there, marching along the road, was a long column of King Avram’s gray-clad soldiers heading toward the fight. They shouted when they caught sight of Ned and the first of his troopers.

Ned shouted, too: he shouted curses. Such a splendid idea, ruined by brute fact. Or was it ruined? If he could make the southrons run away, he’d have the road and he’d have their whole army by the throat.

“Forward!” he shouted, and spurred his own unicorn toward the southron soldiers. Roaring as if the Lion God spoke through them, the riders of Colonel Biffle’s regiment followed him.

Avram’s soldiers were marching in blocks of pikemen and crossbowmen. They wouldn’t have anywhere near the time they needed to put up a proper line in front of the archers. If Ned’s men could get in among them, they would work a fearful slaughter.

If. The southrons were veterans. Ned could see as much by the way they turned from column into line, by the way their first rank dropped to their bellies and their second to one knee so the third, standing, rank could shoot over both of them. And he could see as much by the volley of bolts that tore into his men.

Unicorns fell. Men crumpled in the saddle and crashed to the ground. And the first three ranks of enemy footsoldiers moved back to the rear of the line while the next three stepped forward. They poured in a volley as devastating as the first-if anything, more devastating, because the unicorn-riders were closer and easier to hit.

Easier to hit, yes, but they couldn’t hit back. Ned cursed again. This time, though, he cursed himself, for folly. He’d been annoyed at having his ploy thwarted, and he’d gambled on putting a scare on King Avram’s men. It wasn’t the worst of gambles. Charging unicorns, their iron-shod horns and their riders’ sabers gleaming in the sun, were among the most terrifying things in the world. But King Avram sometimes led brave men, too.

How many men will I have left if they take another volley? Enough to drive the southrons off the road? Enough to hold it if I do? Neither seemed a good bet to Ned. And so he shouted, “Back! Back, gods damn it! We aren’t going to do what we came for, and there’s no point to doing anything less.” He wheeled his own unicorn back toward the forest without a qualm. Unlike some of King Geoffrey’s officers, he didn’t fight for the sake of fighting. If he couldn’t win, he saw no point to it.

As the unicorn turned, a crossbow quarrel caught it in the throat. Blood gushed, spurted, fountained-a big artery must have been cut. Ned leaned forward and thrust a finger into the wound. With it plugged, the unicorn galloped on. It even had the spirit and strength to leap over another unicorn that lay dead on the grass of the meadow.

Back under the trees, Ned pulled his finger out again. The unicorn took a couple of steps forward, then sank to the ground and finished its interrupted job of dying. Ned scrambled off. He looked around for another mount. He didn’t have to look long. More than a few unicorns had been led back to the forest without their riders.

“If we can’t do it here, we’ll have to do it at the real fight,” he told Colonel Biffle. Then he shouted, “We’re going back!” to Captain Watson.

Watson was busy bombarding the southrons with firepots and hosing them down with darts. “Do we have to leave?” he shouted back.

“Yes, gods damn it, we do have to leave,” Ned answered. “We can’t do what we came to do-fool bad luck, but no help for that. So we’ll go back and give the rest of King Avram’s bastards a hard time.”

His men rode hard. More often than not, they didn’t take their unicorns straight into battle, but fought dismounted. That let them push the pace when they were on the move. They tied their mounts beside those of the rest of Ned’s riders and hurried back to the fight on Merkle’s Hill.

“General Ned!” someone called in a battlefield bellow. “General Ned!”

“I’m here,” Ned shouted back. He advanced toward the call, sword in hand. If any southron wanted to meet him man to man, he was more than ready to oblige. The gods would judge one of them after the fight was done, and Ned didn’t intend that they should judge him for a good many years to come.

But it wasn’t a southron. It was Baron Dan of Rabbit Hill. Ned hadn’t had much to do with him since his quarrel with Count Thraxton back in Rising Rock. Dan thrust out his hand. As Ned took it, the other general saw the bandage on his right arm and exclaimed, “You’re wounded?”

“Just a scratch, and I’m a lefty anyways,” Ned replied. “What can I do for you?”

“Not so long ago, Doubting George’s men made a counterattack here, and they had some numbers while they were doing it,” Baron Dan said. “I saw some of our men most bravely holding them back, and I asked whose footsoldiers they were. The answer I got was, `We’re Ned of the Forest’s unicorn-riders.’ I salute you, sir, for their magnificent behavior.” He suited action to word.

“Thank you kindly.” Ned returned the salute. “Thank you very kindly indeed. You’re a gentleman, sir.” He did not use the word lightly, or often. Perhaps sensing as much, Dan of Rabbit Hill bowed. Ned returned that compliment, too, and said, “Now let’s whip these southron sons of bitches clean out of their boots.”

“Right you are, Lord Ned,” Dan said with a laugh. They went up the hill toward the fighting together.

“Come on, boys!” Captain Ormerod shouted. “One more good lick and those stinking southrons’ll run like rabbits.”

At his side, Lieutenant Gremio said, “In the courts back in Karlsburg, sir, I would object to a statement such as that on the grounds of insufficient evidence to support it. The southrons not having run up to this point in time, why should they commence now?”

“Because we’re going to hit them that one good lick, that’s why,” Ormerod answered in a voice everyone around him could hear. For Gremio’s ear alone, he went on in quieter tones: “And because I want the men to fight like mad bastards, and I don’t care a fart about evidence. Have you got that?”

“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant said. In thoughtful tones, he said, “This does make a certain amount of practical sense, I admit.”

“And to the seven hells with practical sense, too.” Ormerod started toward the west, where the sun was sinking. “By the gods, we’d better drive King Avram’s men off this hill before nightfall. Otherwise, they’ll have time to get their reinforcements into place tonight, and the battle will be that much harder tomorrow.”

“True enough.” But Gremio neither sounded nor looked worried. If anything, he looked sly. “I hear tell we have reinforcements coming, too.”

“Where from?” Ormerod demanded. “And what’s the evidence for that, Master Barrister, sir?”

“Oh, it’s hearsay,” Gremio said. “No doubt about it, it’s hearsay: I heard Colonel Florizel talking about it with another officer in the brigade.”

That was hearsay, sure enough. But it was hearsay at a high level, which made it seem promising to Ormerod. One obvious problem still bothered him, though. “Where in the seven hells would these reinforcements come from?” he repeated. He paused a moment to turn out the pockets of his pantaloons. “I haven’t got any on me, that’s sure.”

Gremio smiled the dutiful smile of a junior officer who had to acknowledge a senior officer’s joke. Then he said, “I heard-I can’t prove it, mind-they’d be coming from Parthenia Province.”

“By the gods, that’d be fine if it was so,” Ormerod said. “About time King Geoffrey figured out that what happens over here in the east is important, too. The war’s bigger than just the fight to keep the southrons away from Nonesuch.”

Before the war, he’d cared little about the east. Karlsburg lay on the Western Ocean, and his estate was just a few miles outside the oldest city in Palmetto Province. Had Colonel Florizel’s regiment gone into the Army of Southern Parthenia rather than the Army of Franklin, he probably still wouldn’t care very much about the east. But his horizons had broadened since.

“King Avram!” shouted the southron soldiers in front of Florizel’s regiment. “King Avram and justice!”

“King Avram and thievery,” Ormerod muttered under his breath. He turned to Gremio. “Where in the seven hells is the justice if that scrawny little toad who calls himself king in Georgetown wants to take my serfs away from me without my leave? Answer me that.”

“Can’t do it,” Gremio said solemnly.

“Of course you can’t,” Ormerod said. “Those serfs have been on that land ever since we conquered it. He’s got no business interfering with me, none at all.” He raised his voice to a battlefield roar: “Come on! Let’s give those southrons some of their justice!”

Crossbow quarrels whistled past him as he led his company forward. But his men were shooting, too. Cries from ahead said they’d hit some of the enemy soldiers. And then, sooner than he’d expected, his men were in among the southrons. The whole fight in these woods had been like that. The trees and bushes were so thick, they hid things till too late, and made the battle more a series of bushwhackings and ambushes than a proper standup fight.

The men in gray cried out in dismay and surprise-they hadn’t thought the northerners could bring so many men to bear on them so quickly. Some of them threw down their crossbows and shortswords and threw up their hands. Some retreated up the slope of Merkle’s Hill. And some, even taken at a disadvantage, stood and fought.

Some of the men who wouldn’t retreat and wouldn’t surrender had yellow beards and golden hair under their hats. “King Avram!” one of them shouted, hurling himself at Captain Ormerod.

For a moment, Ormerod wondered if he’d run into Rollant again. But no-he’d never seen this blond before. “You’ll get what you deserve, runaway,” he snarled, and thrust at the enemy soldier’s chest.

The blond was no swordsman: he almost spitted himself on Ormerod’s blade. Only at the last instant did he beat it aside with his own. His answering slash was fierce but unskilled. Ormerod parried, thrust again. This time, he felt the yielding resistance of flesh as the sword slid into the blond’s belly. He twisted the blade as he drew it out, to make sure the wound would kill. The serf shrieked like a lost soul. Captain Ormerod hoped he was.

“May the gods give you what you deserve,” Ormerod panted as the runaway sagged to the ground. He raised his voice again: “Push them!”

But as the men in blue tried to advance, a barrage of flying boulders and firepots smashed into the ground. And the southrons had a couple of their accursed repeating crossbows stationed among the trees where they could rake the more open ground in front of them. Some of Ormerod’s men shot back at the engines, but they were out of range for hand-held weapons. The advance faltered.

“I don’t think we can do it, Captain,” Lieutenant Gremio said.

Baron Ormerod wondered whether they could do it, too. Enough engines in front of footsoldiers would simply shred them before they could close. But he said, “I’m going forward. Stay behind if you haven’t got the nerve to come with me.” He brandished his sword and trotted toward the catapults.

His men followed. Gremio came with the rest. He was cursing under his breath, but Ormerod didn’t mind that. As long as he followed, he was welcome to think whatever he liked.

Soldiers in blue fell, one after another. Some lay unmoving. Some thrashed and writhed and shrieked. A few tried to crawl back in the direction from which they’d come. The rest of the company slogged on.

Every so often, a soldier would pause to shoot and reload: bolts hissed past Ormerod from behind as the bigger, heavier ones from the repeating crossbows hummed by him-some much too close-from the front. He’d heard of officers shot in the back during charges like this. A man would take out his hatred and say it was an accident-if it ever came to light, which it probably wouldn’t.

Gray-clad troopers around the siege engines began falling. Ormerod’s soldiers had finally fought their way into range. As more quarrels reached the engines, they shot less often and less effectively. At last, their crewmen scurried back into the woods to keep from getting killed.

Roaring with fierce glee, Ormerod’s men swarmed over the engines, smashing and slashing them with spades and shortswords. “Let’s see Avram’s sons of bitches pound us with these now!” Ormerod shouted.

“I think we would have done better to save them, so our own artificers could turn them against the southrons,” Lieutenant Gremio said.

In a narrow sense, he was probably right. Ormerod cared nothing about narrow senses. He said, “Let the boys have their fun, Lieutenant. Look at the price they paid to earn it.” The ground in front of the engines was covered with fallen soldiers.

The southrons did not give the survivors long to enjoy their little triumph. The men who’d served the engines weren’t the only soldiers in gray on that part of Merkle’s Hill. Pikemen and crossbowmen assailed Captain Ormerod’s company in such numbers, he had to order them to fall back.

They lost more men retreating to about the place from which they’d begun the attack on the engines. Ormerod wondered if the assault had been worth it. He shrugged and made the best of it: “We hurt them.”

“And they hurt us, too,” Gremio said.

Ormerod would have bet that his lieutenant would say something like that. “We can’t do these little tricks without losses,” he replied.

Gremio was ready to argue. He always was-what barrister wasn’t? “But does what we gained justify the losses?” he asked.

“I don’t know how to weigh that.” Ormerod looked at the sky again. The sun was low, very low. He cursed. “I do know we’re not going to run the miserable southrons off this hill today. I know that’s not good, too.”

“No, it isn’t.” Gremio didn’t argue that. Ormerod wished he would have. Instead, the lieutenant went on, “You can bet they’ll have more men in their lines tomorrow than they have today. You can’t bet on it with us. You can only hope.”

“I do hope,” Ormerod said. “Parthenia Province, you tell me?” He waited for Gremio to nod, then twisted his fingers into a gesture invoking the Lion God. “That’d be very fine indeed. So it would. So it would. Here’s hoping it’s true.”

“Colonel Florizel thought so,” Gremio observed.

“Maybe he knows more now than when you heard from him.” Ormerod looked around. “Have you seen him lately? I haven’t.”

A trooper said, “Captain, he’s wounded. He went down with a bolt in the leg a couple of hours ago.”

“No wonder I haven’t seen him,” Ormerod said. “Is it a bad wound?” A bolt in the leg could prove anything from a little gash to a killer. At Pottstown Pier, General Sidney, one of King Geoffrey’s best officers, had tried to stay in the saddle with a crossbow quarrel in the thigh and had quietly bled to death before anybody, including himself, realized how badly he was hurt. But the trooper only shrugged- he didn’t know. Ormerod muttered a curse.

Gremio said, “That means Major Thersites is in charge of the regiment. I don’t much care for him.”

“Don’t let him hear that,” Ormerod warned. Truth was, he didn’t care much for Major Thersites, either. Thersites grew indigo on an estate deep in the swamps outside Karlsburg. He was liege lord over a good many serfs and called himself a baron, though neither Ormerod nor anyone else in the neighborhood was sure he truly had noble blood in his veins. But he’d killed the one man who said as much out loud, and being good at killing wasn’t the worst claim to nobility in the northern provinces of Detina in and of itself.

Lieutenant Gremio said, “I know.” With fairly obvious relief, he changed the subject: “You’re not going to order us forward again before sundown?”

Ormerod shook his head. “Not me. I don’t think we can break the southrons, and I don’t see much point to anything less. Of course, if Thersites tells us to advance, then we will.”

“Oh, yes, I understand that,” Gremio said. “But I agree with you, sir. We’ve done everything we can do today, I think. We’ve driven the southrons a long way. We might have done even better if Leonidas the Priest had started his attacks when Count Thraxton first ordered him to, but we’ll never know about that, will we?”

“Leonidas is a very holy man,” Ormerod said. “Surely the Lion God favors him.”

“Surely.” But Gremio’s agreement dripped irony. “And surely the Lion God favors a good many hierophants back in Palmetto Province, too. Does that suit them to command a wing of Count Thraxton’s army?”

The answer was obvious. It was so obvious, Ormerod didn’t care to think about it. To make sure he didn’t have to think about it, he ordered pickets forward. “I don’t expect Doubting George to try anything nasty during the night, but I don’t want to get caught with my pantaloons around my ankles, either,” he said.

“Sensible, Captain.” This time, Gremio sounded as if he meant it.

Here and there, northern soldiers started campfires on the lower slopes of Merkle’s Hill. The fighting hadn’t stopped everywhere, either there or farther west: shouts and curses and the occasional clash of steel on steel still sounded in the distance. And everywhere, near and far, wounded men moaned. Ormerod said, “I hate that sound. It reminds me of everything that can go wrong.”

Gremio gave him an odd look, or so he thought in the fading light. “I didn’t think you worried about such things.”

“Well, I do,” Ormerod answered.

A voice came from out of the gloom: “You do what, Captain?” Major Thersites strode up. He wasn’t a handsome man; one of his shoulders stood higher than the other, and a sword scar on his cheek pulled his mouth into a permanent sneer. Some said he’d got the scar in a duel. According to others, he’d got it from an outraged husband. Ormerod knew which version he believed.

But Thersites had somehow ended up with a higher rank than his own, and was at the moment commanding the regiment. It behooved Ormerod to speak softly, and he did: “I do worry about the cries the wounded make, sir. If I’m not lucky, I might be making them myself one day.”

“That’s true, but a soldier shouldn’t fret about it,” Thersites said. His voice had a permanent sneer in it, too. Or maybe I’m just touchy, Ormerod thought. Then Thersites added, “You can’t be ready to run away from a little pain,” and Ormerod knew he wasn’t the one who had the problem.

Stiffly, he said, “Command me, sir, and I shall advance.”

“Tomorrow,” Thersites replied. Ormerod’s nod was stiff, too. I’ll show you, he thought.