Lady Almspend leaned in. “There’s messages from the west-an army of the Wild in the highlands north of Lissen Carak and another coming down the Cohocton-”
“Please don’t think I’ve forgotten them. I just can’t fight them all right now.” The Red Knight had had no sleep for two nights and his eyes were red-rimmed and angry, although his tone remained mild. “As far as I can see, right now everything depends on the Emperor making it past Dorling before the sorcerer cuts the road. Then he has to choose to come towards us so that the sorcerer is merely chewing on his rearguard. You all remember that road-the sink holes, the deep woods.”
“The wyverns,” Ser Michael said.
“Exactly. And the same fords where the Sossag beat Hector.”
Kenneth Dhu bridled. “Hector Lachlan was no beaten!” he hissed.
Gabriel passed a hand over his eyes and rubbed his cheeks. “Fair enough. Where all the Hillmen were killed in a glorious stand.”
“Ye’re mockin’ us!” said Kenneth Dhu.
The captain glared at him. “May I continue?” he asked.
The younger man subsided.
“We do not want to fight this battle on that road. If we fight at Dorling we might have another kind of ally. If we fight at Albinkirk…” He looked around. “Well, that’s always been my plan and Ser John Crayford’s. To bring the sorcerer to battle in the fields around Albinkirk. We do not want to go fight him in the Wild. But-if the Emperor gets caught up at Dorling, then that’s where the fight will be, and those last forty leagues through the hills will be very difficult. The faster we move tomorrow and the next day, the more options we will have on Friday. That’s all I can say. So-I’m for bed. I’d like to leave at first light.”
They all groaned-even the Queen. But Desiderata rose and smiled radiantly at all of them.
“My captain’s words are my own orders,” she said. “Let us to bed.”
They rose, and bowed. The captain kissed her hand, and then the tent was empty save for a few-Gelfred, who waited to speak to his captain; Sukey, who wanted orders about the morning; and Blanche, who slipped back after seeing to her mistress-to try to speak to Sukey and return her gown.
Gabriel caught sight of her pale face and called Toby to him. “Do not allow Lady Blanche to leave-I wish to speak to her.”
Toby made a face.
The captain spent five minutes with Gelfred as they planned-minutely-the best route for the morrow.
“Weather?” the captain asked.
“With God’s grace, it should be splendid, or so my weather signs tell me.” Gelfred smiled.
“Good-we need some luck,” the captain said.
“Fortune is not God. It is God’s grace that maketh the sun to shine.” Gelfred spoke low and very firmly.
The captain nodded heavily.
“Under God’s grace perhaps we can move a little faster. I’d like you to ask God’s grace to include thunderstorms over the southern Adnacrags, too.” He smiled, trying to coax a smile out of Gelfred.
Gelfred just looked at him-a mild enough rebuke. “I can see the whole of the day,” he allowed. “You are tired, my lord.”
“I am that. Beautiful job on the ambush, Gelfred. You are a craftsman.” He forced himself to smile through the fatigue, to work the magic that bound people to him in hard times.
Gelfred beamed. “They are, for the most part, merely animals,” he said. “Except the wardens.”
Gabriel nodded. Gelfred touched his elbow lightly and drifted off into the dark, his black clothing already invisible, and Gabriel had time to think that Gelfred was getting as little sleep as he and perhaps less, and never seemed to show temper.
Sukey came up. Toby gave him a tisane and he drank it.
“First light,” he said.
“Might as well roust ’em now,” she said. “They’re that tired, Cap’n.”
“Yes. Get your girls cooking now so they have a big meal. Then let the girls sleep on the wagons.”
“Only got six wagons, Cap’n. Rest is ahead-”
“We’ll catch them tomorrow-Gelfred knows where they are. Yes, Sukey, this is going to be hard as hell come to earth. Just keep moving.”
“Always the girls get the short end, Cap’n.” She shrugged.
“Five silver pennies per woman, paid at next pay parade.” He looked up, his eyelids so heavy he couldn’t really look at her. “Best I can do.”
“Fair. Girls have missed sleep for less,” Sukey said. “Best get some yersel’. Want someone to warm your bed?”
Gabriel had enough energy left to laugh. “No,” he said. “Or yes, but no. I need sleep.”
Sukey tittered. “I thought you had the Queen’s girl all sewn up. Too prissy?”
The captain shook his head. “I did something wrong,” he admitted. I had a command meeting over her hidden body, he thought sleepily.
Sukey came closer. “Tom says it helps him sleep,” she said.
“I’m not proposing to share you with Tom,” he said, and regretted it. Her face closed, and she exhaled.
“Sorry, Sukey, that was crude.” He was off in his timing-another evening she’d have laughed, perhaps if Tom was there.
Too tired.
“Never you mind,” she said. “We’ll be ready at first light.” She walked off into the darkness.
“Lady Blanche walked away a few minutes ago,” Toby reported primly. “Nell tried to reason with her…”
“Never mind,” the captain said. “I’m unfit for human company. I think…”
“He just fell asleep while talking,” Toby said to Nell. They had to fetch Robin and Diccon and two other big men to pick the captain up and carry him to his camp bed, and when there he muttered once or twice, and said, “Amicia,” out loud.
All of them looked at each other.
Robin, still senior squire after two battles and anxious for knighthood, shook his head. “Bed,” he said.
In a minute, the camp was silent, except for the sigh of the wind and the movement of the rings of sentries.
North of Dorling-Ser Hartmut
The ground sucked at his horse and when he walked to rest the great beast, the ground sucked at his sabatons.
Ser Hartmut had never been anywhere that he hated quite so much as the Wild south of Ticondaga. And his anger grew with each day of chaotic movement, until on the third day after the fall of the great fortress, he forced his tired, wet horse back along the column-really, more like a storm front-to find the shambling stone-cut monster that was his ally.
Hartmut didn’t have subtlety in him. “Is this really the shortest way to Dorling?” he asked.
Thorn was blessedly free of the presence of his dark master. Hartmut would have told anyone-or even fought to the death to prove-that he was afraid of no man and no creature, but he hated being in the presence of the mocking black sprite that was Thorn’s tutor. The thing’s habit of taking the shape of children seemed to mock the whole conduct of war. It was almost worse when he couldn’t see the Satanic thing. Now that he knew, he could always sense…
Thorn stopped and leaned on the massive spear shaft that was his new staff.
“Ser Hartmut, I am as dismayed by our pace as you are. New events have driven us to different courses.”
Hartmut chewed his words as carefully as he could. He missed De La Marche-for all the man’s soft piety, he had been an excellent foil and a pleasant companion. He would have handled this better. He was seldom prone to anger.
The loss of De La Marche-and of both his good squires-had reduced the company of his peers-even near peers-to Kevin Orley, who was quite mad, Cristan de Badefol, who was coarse and vulgar and a braggart, and a dozen like them. Of his own knights, only Ser Louis Soutain was anything close to a gentleman.
But he chewed his words as well as he might. “I have not been informed of any different courses. I think that we would be better served by sharing our knowledge.”