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  “Rank must be served,” Thraxton declared. “Were it not for matters pertaining to rank, would we have a quarrel with King Avram’s so-called justice?” He turned the last word into a sneer. “By your rank, your Excellency, you deserve to command the wing Leonidas the Priest does not.”

  Dan of Rabbit Hill said, “It’s all right, James. I don’t mind-I know things will be in good hands with you.”

  Earl James bowed to him. “Thank you very much, your Excellency. That’s gracious of you.” He nodded to Thraxton. “If you’re going to give me this, your Grace, I’ll do my best with it. Baron Dan’s men are your right wing-have I got that much straight?”

  “Not just the right wing-the whole right side of my army,” Count Thraxton replied. “I look forward to seeing what a man from the famous Army of Southern Parthenia can do here among us easterners.” In another tone of voice, that would have been a graceful compliment. As things were, he implied he didn’t expect much at all from James of Broadpath.

  “I’ll do my best,” was all James said. No matter how well his beard concealed his expression from the outside world, he didn’t sound very happy. That suited Thraxton fine. He reckoned happiness overrated. Since he was rarely happy himself, he found little reason for anyone else to be.

  “Let us examine the map,” he said. Happy or not, he had every intention of hurling his army at the southrons again as soon as it grew light.

  But Ned of the Forest said, “Hold on. You just hold on there, by all the gods. You’re supposed to be a mage along with being a general. Isn’t that so, Count Thraxton, sir?”

  “I am a mage,” Thraxton said coldly. “And your point is…?”

  “I’m coming to that, never you fear,” Ned said. “My point is, when we were up in Rising Rock you bragged this enormous brag about what all we were going to do-what all you were going to do-to the stinking southrons. What I want to know is, what’s General Thraxton’s brag worth? Can you do what you said you’d do, or is it all just wind and air?” He stared a challenge at Count Thraxton.

  Thraxton stared back. He heartily wished Ned of the Forest dead. But wishes had nothing to do with magecraft, no matter what benighted serfs might think. Picking his words with care, Thraxton said, “I have been incanting all through the battle. Without my cantrips, we should be in far worse state today than we are.”

  “So you say,” Ned jeered. “So you say. It’d be all the better for proof, that’s all I’ve got to tell you.”

  Leonidas the Priest said, “You must remember, the southrons have mages in their service, too, mages who wickedly seek to thwart Count Thraxton in everything he undertakes.”

  “Isn’t he better than any of those fellows?” Ned rounded on Thraxton. “Aren’t you better than any of those fellows? You say you are. Can you prove it?”

  “I can prove it. I will prove it,” Thraxton replied. “By this time tomorrow, neither you nor Earl James nor anyone else will be able to doubt what I can do.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Are you answered?”

  “Ask me tomorrow this time,” Ned of the Forest said. “I’ll be able to tell you then. Meanwhile, I’m going back to my men.” With a mocking bow, he swept out of the farmhouse.

  “Never a dull moment here, is there?” James of Broadpath remarked.

  “Not hardly,” Baron Dan said, a remark almost uncouth enough to have come from Ned.

  “Perhaps we should rest now, and beseech the Lion God to show us the way to victory come the morning,” Leonidas the Priest said. “If he is gracious, he will send us dreams to show the direction in which we should go.”

  “I know the direction in which we should go,” Thraxton said. “I intend to take us there.” He pointed toward the southeast. “The direction in which we should go is straight toward Rising Rock.”

  “Well said.” Dan of Rabbit Hill nodded. Leonidas looked aggrieved because Thraxton wasn’t giving the Lion God enough reverence, but Thraxton cared very little how Leonidas looked.

  “Let me have a look at the map,” James of Broadpath said. “Dan, if you’d be so kind as to walk over here with me and tell me what the southrons might be up to that doesn’t show up on the sheet here, I’d be in your debt.”

  “I’d be glad to do that, sir,” Baron Dan replied.

  Leonidas the Priest got to his feet. He didn’t go over to the map. Instead, he said, “I shall pray for the success of our arms,” and left the farmhouse. That struck Count Thraxton as being very much in character for him.

  Then another thought crossed his mind: and what of me? He shrugged. He was what he was, and he didn’t intend to change. And one of the things he was, was a mage. He had done a good deal of incanting this first day of the fight, but it had been incanting of a general sort, incanting almost any mage, even a bungling southron, might have tried. A bungling southron would not have done it so well, he thought. He knew his own worth. No one else gave him proper credit-to his way of thinking, no one else had ever given him proper credit, not even King Geoffrey-but he knew his own worth.

  And he realized he’d not been using his own worth as he should. He was a master mage, not a journeyman, and he’d been wasting his energy, wasting his talent, on tasks a journeyman could do. Any mage could torment the other army’s soldiers. What he needed to do-and it struck him with the force of a levinbolt from the Thunderer-was torment the other army’s commander.

  General Guildenstern would be warded, of course. The southrons would have wizards protecting him from just such an assault. But if I cannot overcome those little wretches, if I cannot either beat them or deceive them, what good am I? Thraxton asked himself.

  Decision crystallized. “Gentlemen, you must excuse me,” he told Dan of Rabbit Hill and Earl James. “I have plans of my own to shape.”

  The two officers looked up from the map in surprise. Whatever they saw on Count Thraxton’s face must have convinced them, for they saluted and left the farmhouse. Thraxton pulled out first one grimoire, then another, and then yet another. He sat by the hearth and pondered, pausing only to put more wood on the fire every so often to keep the flames bright enough to read by.

  What made him realize dawn had come was having to feed the fire less often. As the light grew, so did the sounds of battle from the south. He put down the grimoires and began to cast his spell. A runner came in with a message. Without missing a single pass, without missing a word of his chant, Thraxton seared the fellow with a glance. The runner gulped and fled. Whoever had sent him would just have to solve his own problems.

  Thraxton’s spell reached out for his opposite number in King Avram’s army. Strike for the head, and the body dies, he thought. But General Guildenstern was well defended, better even than Thraxton had expected. One after another, counterspells grappled with his cantrip, like so many children’s arms trying to push aside the arm of one strong man.

  Driving on despite them took all the power Thraxton had. A lesser man, a less stubborn man, would have given up, thinking the spell beyond his power. But Count Thraxton persevered. This time, he thought, this time, by all the gods, I shall drive it home to the hilt.

  And he did. For once, the spell did not go awry, as had happened before. For once, it did not rebound to smite his own soldiers, as had happened before. For once, Count Thraxton lived up to a brag as fully as any man might ever hope to do. He cried out in something as close to delight as his sour spirit could hold, and in full and altogether unalloyed triumph.

  * * *

  As Count Thraxton and his generals hashed over the first day’s battle that evening in a farmhouse close by the River of Death, so General Guildenstern and his generals spent that same night doing the same thing in another farmhouse, a widow’s miserable little hut made of logs, only a very few miles to the south.

  “Well, boys, we’re in a scrap, no two ways about it,” Guildenstern said. He swigged from a bottle of brandy. “Ahhh! That’s good, by the gods. We’re in a scrap,” he repeated, hardly noticing he’d already said it once. �
��We are, we are. But we can still lick ’em, and we will.”

  He clenched the hilt of his sword as if it were a traitor’s neck. When Thraxton’s attack went in, he’d had to do some real fighting himself. He knew there were men who questioned his generalship-he had plenty of them right here in the farmhouse with him. But no man ever born could have questioned his courage.

  He looked around at the assembled military wisdom-he hoped it was wisdom, at any rate. “All right. Here we are, not quite where we wanted to be when we set out from Rising Rock. But we aren’t lost yet. Anybody who says we are is a gods-damned quitter, and welcome to go home. Question is, what will that Thraxton son of a bitch try and do to us when the fighting picks up in the morning?”

  Lieutenant General George shook his head. “No, sir. That’s only part of the question.”

  Guildenstern glared at him. Gods damn you, too, Doubting George, he thought. George had warned him Thraxton wasn’t retreating so fast as he’d thought himself. And George had had the nerve to be right, too. General Guildenstern did his best not to remember that as he growled, “What’s the other part?”

  “Why, what we can try to do to him, of course,” George answered.

  George’s Parthenian accent made it seem as if Thraxton the Braggart had an officer of his own at this council of war. But no one, not even Guildenstern, could challenge his loyalty to King Avram. And he wasn’t wrong here, either. “Fair enough,” Guildenstern said. “What can we do to that Thraxton bastard?”

  “I would strengthen the right,” George answered around an enormous yawn. That yawn made Guildenstern yawn in turn, and went in progression from one officer to the next till they’d all shown how weary they were. Guildenstern had a cot to call his own. Doubting George-who yawned again-was perched on a three-legged milking stool. The rest of the generals either stood up or sat cross-legged on the rammed-earth floor.

  “Of course you would strengthen the right, sir,” Brigadier Alexander said. “You are the right.”

  “And if the traitors get through me or around me, everything goes straight to the seven hells,” Doubting George replied. “Ned of the Forest took a whack at it this afternoon, and the bastard almost ended up sitting on our route back to Rising Rock. If he hadn’t bumped into some of our boys coming forward, that would have been a lot worse than it was.”

  “If you think the fighting wasn’t heavy in the center, too, you can think again, sir,” Brigadier Thom said.

  Doubting George yawned once more. “I would strengthen the right,” he repeated. His eyes slid shut. Guildenstern wondered why he didn’t fall off his stool.

  A couple of brigadiers started to snore, one lying on the ground, the other leaning up against the log wall of the widow’s hut. General Guildenstern took another pull at the brandy. It might not have made him think better, but it made him feel better. Right now, that would do.

  It also made him sleepy. He yawned and stretched out on the cot. Some of his subordinates had higher social rank than he did, but he held the highest military rank. In wartime, that was what counted, not who was a count. The commander got the cot.

  Before General Guildenstern could fall asleep, Doubting George stirred from his restless doze. “I would strengthen the right,” he said for the third time. He wasn’t looking for an answer. Guildenstern doubted he was even fully awake. But he said what was on his mind, awake or not.

  He’s probably not even wrong, Guildenstern thought-no small mark of approval when contemplating the views of his second-in-command. If he needs help, or if I see the chance, I will strengthen the right.

  He yawned again, rolled over, and fell asleep. The next thing he knew, morning was leaking through the narrow windows in the log hut. He muttered a prayer of greeting to the sun god, then noticed he had a headache. His hand reached out and unerringly found the brandy flask. He took a swig. “Ahh!” he said-not quite a prayer of greeting, but close enough.

  With a little restorative in him, he noticed the delicious smell filling the little farmhouse. A blond steward was frying ham and eggs in a well-buttered pan over the fire in the fireplace. A couple of brigadiers already had their tin plates out, waiting for the bounty that was to come. Guildenstern wasted no time in grabbing his own. As he’d got the cot, so he would get the first helping.

  “Where’s Doubting George?” he asked, noticing Brigadier Thom perched on the milking stool. “He’ll miss breakfast.”

  “He went back to his wing, sir,” Thom answered. “A runner came in right at first light and said the fighting over there had started up again.”

  “Curse the traitors,” Guildenstern said as the steward ladled ham and eggs onto his plate. “They’re an iron-arsed bunch of bastards indeed, if they won’t even let a man get a little food inside him before he goes back into battle.” He started shoveling food into his own face. “By the gods, that’s good. Poor old George doesn’t know what he’s missing.”

  Another runner came in just as Guildenstern was finishing. “Sir, there’s fighting all along the line,” he said. “And Thraxton the Braggart’s got men from the Army of Southern Parthenia fighting alongside his own, sir. We’ve captured some.”

  That produced exclamations from every officer still inside the log hut. Guildenstern’s was loudest and most profane. “No wonder the gods-damned son of a bitch had the bastards to hit us with,” he said once the stream of curses had died to a trickle. “Well, we’ll whip ’em any which way.”

  He got up, jammed his hat down low on his head so the wide brim helped shield his eyes from the light-which seemed uncommonly bright and fierce this morning-and went outside. Sure enough, the din of combat had begun again, not far to the north of the widow’s house. His own men were yelling King Avram’s name and cheering, while the traitors roared like lions.

  Colonel Phineas hurried up to him. “Sir, the northerners are seeking to work some large and desperate sorcery,” the mage said.

  “Are they?” Guildenstern said, and the wizard nodded. With a shrug, Guildenstern went on, “Well, it’s your job to see they don’t do it. Why else are you here, by the gods, if not for that?”

  Phineas saluted. “We shall do everything in our power, sir.”

  Guildenstern shook his head. That reminded him he had a headache. He couldn’t figure out why. Maybe a slug of brandy will help, he thought, and tried one. He wasn’t so sure about the headache, but the brandy made him feel better. He shook his head again. It still hurt, but not so much. “Ahh. No, Colonel. I don’t want you to do everything in your power.” He put a mocking whine in the last four words. “I want you to bloody well stop them. Have you got that?”

  “Yes, sir.” The unhappy-looking mage saluted again. “We’ll do our best, sir. But the northerners seem to be pressing this with all their strength.”

  “All the more reason for you to stop them, wouldn’t you say?” Guildenstern demanded. “What are they up to, anyway? Are they probing us again?” He spoke the word with heavy-handed irony.

  Phineas’ jowls wobbled as he shook his head. “I don’t think so, sir. I think this is something else. It is something unusual, whatever it is. And it has the stamp of Count Thraxton all over it.”

  “All the more reason to stop it, then, wouldn’t you say?” Guildenstern asked.

  “All the more reason to, yes, sir,” Colonel Phineas agreed. “But stopping Thraxton the Braggart is not so easy as stopping an ordinary man.”

  “Oh, foof!” Guildenstern said. “Half the time, Thraxton’s spells come down on the heads of his own men, not on ours.”

  “Yes, sir, that is true.” Phineas still looked thoroughly grim. “But Thraxton’s failures have come through his own errors, not because we thwarted him. He is not very careful, he is not very lucky-but he is very strong.”

  “I don’t care what he is,” Guildenstern rasped. He poked Colonel Phineas’ protruding belly with his forefinger. The finger sank unpleasantly far into flesh; Guildenstern jerked it away. “What I care about, sirrah, is tha
t we have more mages than the traitors do. If you aren’t so strong as the Braggart, then you had better work together. A dozen little men can drag down one big one.”

  “We are doing our best,” Phineas repeated.

  “Go on, little man,” General Guildenstern said contemptuously. “Go on. Go away. I have a battle to fight.”

  Clucking like a mother hen with a missing chick, the mage hurried away. Guildenstern resisted the urge to apply his boot to Phineas’ backside. It probably would have sunk in even farther than his finger had.

  And he was right when he told the wizard he had a battle to fight. Colonel Phineas hadn’t been the only man waiting for him, just the first of an endless stream. Runners dashed up to report northern attacks on the right against Doubting George on Merkle’s Hill, against Brigadier Thom’s soldiers on the far left, and against the center, where Guildenstern and Brigadier Alexander still held sway.

  Guildenstern didn’t need to be told about enemy assaults on the center. He was there, and could see them for himself. The traitors flung great stones and firepots at the loyal soldiers in front. His own engines responded in kind, and he had more of them than Thraxton the Braggart did. Thraxton might have got soldiers from the Army of Southern Parthenia, but he hadn’t got any engines to go with them. Had he got some engines, life would have been even more difficult for Guildenstern’s soldiers.

  Every so often, Phineas would send a messenger. All the mage’s messengers said the same thing: “We’re still grappling with Count Thraxton.”

  After a while, Guildenstern got sick of hearing them. “I’m still trying to fight my battle here,” he growled.

  As morning wore along toward noon, his sense of confidence began to grow. “By the gods, we are going to throw the cursed traitors back,” he said to Brigadier Alexander. “They can’t lick us. No way in the seven hells can they lick us.”

  “I hope you’re right, sir,” Alexander replied. “I think you may be right. We’re holding pretty well, aren’t we?”