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  To his credit, the duke had never shown the least resentment against James for proving himself correct. “Do always bear in mind,” Edward said now, “that Thraxton will do as he will do, and that he makes all the vital decisions for his army himself.” He was still driving home that same point.

  “Rest assured, sir, I shall never forget it,” James of Broadpath replied. “But I also know that we here in the west have learned more about how to fight a war than they know in the east. Let me get my men there and I will show Count Thraxton and everyone else how it’s done.” He bowed to Duke Edward. “After all, I’ve studied under the finest schoolmaster.”

  Courteous and modest as always, Edward murmured, “You do me too much honor, your Excellency,” while returning the bow. He went on, “As I told you, I shall forward your request to King Geoffrey with my favorable endorsement. I do not promise that that will guarantee his approval, of course.”

  “Of course,” James said. Even more than Count Thraxton, King Geoffrey was a law unto himself. Maybe that was why he left Thraxton in command in the east: one kindred spirit recognizing another.

  “Even so, however,” Duke Edward continued, “you might do well to keep your men ready to move to a glideway at a moment’s notice.”

  “Yes, sir!” James said. The duke bowed again, this time in dismissal. More pleased with himself than he’d expected to be, Earl James left his commander’s pavilion.

  On the way back to his own, he met Brigadier Bell, who commanded a division of his army. With his flowing beard and fierce, proud features, Bell had been called the Lion God enfleshed. These days, he looked more like a suffering god; he’d had his left arm smashed and ruined two days before the charge up that ill-omened hill by Essoville. The wound still tormented him. The shrunken pupils of his eyes showed how much laudanum he used to hold the pain at bay.

  “Will we go, your Excellency?” he asked James. Wounded or not, drugged or not, he was always ready-always eager-to go toward battle.

  “Duke Edward will endorse the proposal and pass it on to the king,” James said. “The decision is Geoffrey’s, but the duke thinks he will approve.” Bell whooped. James asked him, “General, can you fight?”

  “I can’t hold a shield, but what of it?” Bell replied gaily. “So long as I am smiting the foe, the foe can’t very well smite me.”

  “Stout fellow,” James of Broadpath said. He made as if to pat Bell on the shoulder, but arrested the motion, not wanting to cause the man more pain. Bell was like a falcon: take the hood off him at the right time, fly him at the enemy, and he’d always come back with blood on his claws. And if King Geoffrey uses me as I useBell… well, fair enough, James thought. It is the duty I owe the kingdom. A moment later, he had another thought: Duke Edward would approve.

  * * *

  Ned of the Forest preferred camping out with his unicorn-riders to going into Rising Rock to sup with Count Thraxton. Ned had nothing in particular against Rising Rock, or against any other town. He’d served on the burghers’ council in Luxor before Avram became king, and he liked the luxuries only town living afforded. But supping with Thraxton was another business altogether.

  “You ever go to a dinner where you wished you had yourself a taster on account of you wonder if the fellow who invited you put something nasty in the food?” he asked one of his regimental commanders.

  To his surprise, Colonel Biffle nodded. “Happened once, sir. The fellow who invited me was afraid one of the other gents there was too friendly with his wife. If he’d wanted to poison him, he might’ve botched things and poisoned some other folks, too-me, for instance.” Ned had trouble imagining anyone wanting to poison Biffle, who was as good-natured a man as had ever been born.

  Thraxton, on the other hand… “The serf who nursed our army commander, Colonel, must’ve been a wench with sour milk.”

  Biffle laughed, a big, comfortable laugh from a big, comfortable man. “I expect you can handle him, Brigadier,” he said. He was a viscount and Ned a man of no birth, but he deferred to the commander of unicorns as if it were the other way round. Most men did.

  But Ned’s shrug was anything but satisfied. “I shouldn’t have to try and handle him, Colonel,” he said. “Guildenstern and the gods-accursed southrons should be the ones who have to handle him. I tell you, I spoke frankly to him this evening, and I’d take oath he tried to magic me afterwards.”

  At that, Colonel Biffle’s round, pleasant face did take on a look of alarm. “Are you sure you’re hale, sir? Whatever else you may say about him, Thraxton’s a formidable wizard.”

  “Not formidable enough,” Ned answered. “Miserable old he-witch has had a whole pile of chances to kick Avram’s men right in the slats. Has he done it? I’ll tell you what he’s done-we’re going to have to clear out of Rising Rock, on account of he didn’t see Guildenstern coming till he was almost here.”

  “We really are going to have to leave, sir?” Biffle asked unhappily.

  “No doubt about it. Not even a tiny piece of doubt,” Ned said, more unhappily still. “If we stay where we’re at, the southrons’ll run roughshod over us in spite of the great and famous Count Thraxton the Braggart’s mighty sorcery. They’ve got cursed near twice the men we do-of course they’d run roughshod over us. Then they’d bag the whole stinking army, and Rising Rock, too. This way, they just get Rising Rock. Happy day! And once we’re done running, Thraxton’ll make it sound like a victory to King Geoffrey. He always does.” He spat on the ground in disgust.

  “What can we do if they run us on into Peachtree Province?” Biffle asked.

  “Hit back some kind of way, Colonel. That’s all I can tell you,” Ned replied. “You want to know how, you’ll have to ask Thraxton the Braggart. It’ll be a fine thing, him commanding the Army of Franklin when it’s really the army that got run clean out of Franklin.” He spat again.

  Colonel Biffle wandered off, shaking his head. Ned of the Forest didn’t wander. He stalked. He’d eaten his fill with Thraxton, but he checked the cookpots from which his riders ate to make sure the cooks were doing their job. Count Thraxton, no doubt, would have turned up his nose at the food-but then, Count Thraxton turned up his nose at just about everything and everyone. This was what Ned ate most of the time. Not least because he ate it most of the time, it wasn’t bad.

  His troopers, those of them still awake, tended their unicorns, currying the white, white hair or picking pebbles out from between their hooves and the iron shoes they wore or doctoring small hurts. Ned nodded approval. “Way to go, boys,” he called. “Take care of your animals and they’ll take care of you.”

  “That’s right, General,” one of the riders answered. “That’s just right.”

  “You bet it is.” Ned nodded again, emphatically this time, and the rider grinned at having his commander agree with him. Ned grinned, too. What a liar I’m getting to be, he thought. Oh, he took good care of his unicorns when he wasn’t riding one of them into a fight, too. But when he did take saber in hand… He tried to remember how many unicorns he’d had killed out from under him since he went to war for King Geoffrey. Eighteen? Nineteen? Something like that. The generals who were known for their mounts-Duke Edward of Arlington, for instance-didn’t take their beasts into battle.

  Ned shrugged. He didn’t care about any one unicorn nearly so much as he cared about licking the southrons. He could always get himself another mount. If King Avram prevailed, he couldn’t very well get himself another kingdom.

  There was his pavilion, and there were the serfs who took care of the cavalry’s baggage wagons and the asses and unicorns that hauled them. The big blond men-some of them bigger and stronger than Ned, who was a big, strong man himself-gathered round the general. They were all his retainers-not quite his serfs, since he had no patent of nobility, but he looked out for them and they looked out for him.

  They all carried knives. Had they wanted to mob him and melt off into the countryside or run away to the southrons afterwards, they could have
. They didn’t. By all appearances, it never entered their minds. One reason for that, perhaps, was that Ned never let it seem as if it entered his mind, either.

  He ruffled the pale hair of the biggest and strongest serf. “Well, Darry, what do you hear?” Folk with dark hair often ran their mouths as if serfs had no more notion of what was going on than did horses or unicorns. Ned had taken advantage of that a good many times. His drivers and hostlers made pretty fair informal spies.

  This time, though, Darry answered, “Is it true we’ve got to skedaddle out of Rising Rock? Don’t want to believe it, but it’s what people say.”

  “They say it on account of it’s true, and may the gods fry Thraxton the Braggart for making it true,” Ned answered. His serfs already knew what he thought of his commander. They chuckled and nudged one another, vastly amused to hear one dark-haired lord pour scorn on another.

  A sly blond named Arris asked, “How will we keep Franklin if we can’t stay in Rising Rock?”

  “That’s a good question,” Ned answered. “Drop me in the seven hells if I know. Drop Thraxton in the seven hells if he knows, either. And drop him past the seven hells if the thought ever got into his tiny little mind before he let Guildenstern flank him out of this place.” That set the serfs nudging and chuckling again.

  Arris asked, “But how will we get our farms, boss, if those gods-hated southrons keep pushing us back?”

  In the days when the war was young-days that seemed a thousand years gone now-Ned had promised to take the bonds from all the serfs who served him through the fighting, and to set them up as yeomen with land of their own. Free blond farmers weren’t common in the northern provinces of Detina, but they weren’t unknown, either, especially in the wild northeast from which Ned himself had sprung.

  Now he shrugged. “One way or another, boys, you’ll get yourselves farms. If I can’t give ’em to you, you’ll have ’em from the southrons. King Avram says so, doesn’t he? And if King Avram says something, it must be so, isn’t that right?”

  Just as the serfs might have mobbed him and fled, they might have said yes to that and put their hope in the southron king rather than in Ned. But they didn’t. They cursed Avram as fiercely as any other northern man in indigo pantaloons might have done. Ned laughed to hear them, laughed and ruffled their yellow hair and punched them in the shoulder, as a man will do among other men he likes well.

  “If you people haven’t given up on King Geoffrey, I don’t reckon I can, either,” Ned said. He nodded to Darry. “Saddle me a unicorn. I’m going to ride out and see exactly where the southrons are at.” He tossed his head in fine contempt. “It’s not like anybody’ll know unless I go out and see for myself, I’ll tell you that for a fact. Thraxton’s the best stinking wizard in the world, right up to the time somebody really needs his magic. Then he flunks.”

  “Yes, Lord Ned,” Darry said. “I’ll get you a beast.” As Ned ducked into his pavilion, Darry and the other serfs spoke in low voices full of awe. Ned chuckled to himself. The blonds, back in the days before the Detinans came from overseas, had worshiped a pack of milksop godlets that couldn’t hold night demons at bay. They still walked in fear after the sun went down. Ned, now, Ned feared no night demons. With the Lion God and the Thunderer and the Hunt Lady and all the rest on his side, any demon that tried clamping its jaws on him would find it had made a bad mistake.

  Outside the pavilion, one of the serfs said, “Ned, he could go up against a night demon without any gods behind him, and he’d still rip its guts out.”

  “Of course he would,” another serf answered. “He’s Ned.”

  Ned grinned as he tested the edge of his saber with his thumb. The blade would do. And he wasn’t so sure the blonds were wrong, either. Fortunately, he didn’t have to find out. He knew the strong gods, and they knew him.

  When he went out again, the unicorn awaited him. He would have been astonished had it been otherwise. Handing him the reins, Darry said, “You make sure you come back safe now, boss.” Real anxiety filled his voice. If Ned didn’t come back safe, how many northern officers were likely to honor his pledges to the men who served him? Would Count Thraxton, for instance? Ned laughed at the idea, though Darry wouldn’t have found it funny.

  None of Ned’s pickets challenged him when he rode east toward the enemy. None of them knew he’d gone by. He didn’t think of himself as a mage. Soldiers who did think of themselves so usually made him bristle-Thraxton sprang to mind. But he was Ned of the Forest. However he got it, he had a knack for pulling shadow and quiet around himself like a mask. Few could penetrate it unless he chose to let them.

  Owls hooted. Somewhere off toward Sentry Peak, a wildcat yowled. Mosquitoes buzzed and bit. Ned slapped and cursed. He might cloak himself from the minds of men. Mosquitoes had no minds, not to speak of. They didn’t care who he was. They probably bit Thraxton with just as much abandon. Or maybe not, Ned thought scornfully. Why should they like sour wine any more than people do? That made him want to laugh and curse at the same time.

  The moon, low in the east, came out from behind a pale, puffy cloud and spilled ghostly light over the fields. Forests remained black and impenetrable, even close by the road. Maybe night demons really did den in them. If so, none came forth to try conclusions with Ned. Confident in his own strength, he rode on.

  Ahead in the distance, lights twinkled like fireflies: the campfires of Guildenstern’s army, King Avram’s army, the army of invaders. “Why can’t they just leave us alone?” Ned muttered under his breath. “We weren’t doing them any harm. We weren’t about to do them any harm.”

  But the southrons were pushing close to Rising Rock, close to driving King Geoffrey’s men out of Franklin altogether. To force them back, to make sure Geoffrey’s kingdom stayed a kingdom, someone would have to strike them a blow. Ned of the Forest shook his head in frustrated fury. Count Thraxton wasn’t going to do it. Count Thraxton was going to tuck his tail between his legs and skedaddle up into Peachtree Province.

  “And he’s a great general? He’s a great mage?” Ned of the Forest shook his head again, this time dismissing the idea out of hand. Thraxton bragged a fine brag, but the proof of those lay in living up to them. Had Thraxton done that even once, the southrons could never have come so far.

  Ned rode through open woods toward the campfires. The fires lay even closer to Rising Rock than he’d thought they would. He shook his fist at them. He’d grown rich and important hunting down runaway serfs and hauling them back to their liege lords. If Avram broke the feudal bonds that held serfs to their lords’ estates, how would he stay rich? He would he stay important? He saw no way-and so he fought.

  He was musing thus-dark thoughts in dark night-when a sudden sharp challenge rang out from ahead: “Halt! Who comes?”

  “A friend,” Ned answered, reining in in surprise. He usually came and went as he chose, with no one the wiser. Maybe his dark mood had let his protection falter-or maybe the nervous sentry had a mage close by. Putting an officer’s snap in his voice, Ned asked, “What regiment is this?”

  “Twenty-seventh, of the third division.” That came at once, followed a couple of heartbeats later by a grudging, “Sir.”

  It told Ned what he needed to know. The southrons, merchants and bookkeepers in their very souls, numbered their regiments. King Geoffrey’s were known by their commanders’ names. The “friend” ahead was an enemy. Ned said, “I am going to ride on down a little ways and find a better crossing for the stream ahead.”

  He steered his unicorn into deeper shadows, and then away. The southron sentry didn’t shoot. As Ned headed back to his own encampment, he cursed under his breath. He’d found out what he needed to know, but he didn’t much care for it.

  II

  “Come on, boys,” General George boomed. “You’ll never catch up with the traitors if you don’t move faster than that.”

  “Why didn’t you turn traitor, the way Duke Edward did?” one of the crossbowmen in gray returned. “Yo
u’re from Parthenia, just like him. And if you were fighting on the other side, whoever’d be leading us now wouldn’t march us so stinking hard.”

  “Oh, I doubt that,” George said, and all the soldiers who heard him laughed. He knew they called him Doubting George. He didn’t mind. They could have called him plenty worse-one brigadier in King Avram’s army was known, though not to his face, as Old Bowels. George went on, “Any officer worth his pantaloons would push you hard now, because we’re going to run Count Thraxton clean out of this province.”

  “You don’t think he’ll fight us, sir?” asked another crossbowman, this one a yellow-haired fellow whose liege lord was probably still looking for him.

  “I hope he does, by the gods,” George answered. He’d had some serfs on his own family lands in Parthenia, but holding Detina together under the rightful king came first for him. “If he doesn’t run away himself, we’ll run him out, and we’ll smash up his army while we’re doing it.”

  “What about Thraxton’s magic, General?” a soldier asked him: another blond likely to have come out of the north. He sounded a little nervous. Serfs, even escaped serfs, often had reason to be nervous about northern nobles’ magecraft.

  But George just laughed-a deep, rolling chortle that made everyone who could hear him look his way. “I doubt you’ve got much to worry about,” he said, which made the crossbowmen and pikemen close by laugh again, too. “If Thraxton’s magic were half as good as he brags it is, those bastards in blue would be down in the Five Lakes country by now, instead of us pushing on them. Besides, it’s not like we haven’t got mages of our own.”