The woodcutters extending the road shuddered, and some had to control trembling and actual terror as the boglins passed, or when a pair of fell hastenoch clomped by, their squid-like mouths writhing horribly.
Many flinched when a troop of Outwallers ran along the new road for a few hundred yards-all moving in their endless war-lope, a near-silent flash of red paint and jingle of silver hawk’s bells in the light rain.
Noon came. The scouts of all races pushed out, and the men dismounted, and the pages took the horses.
Nell held a hand for the Faery Knight’s stag. It didn’t even have reins.
“Go with the nissse young woman,” Ser Tapio said. He smiled at her, showing his fangs. He rolled neatly off his saddle, a stunning display of acrobatics.
“Show-off,” Ser Gabriel said. He dismounted with an ordinary turn and slide on his breastplate.
Morgon Mortirmir appeared from the white banda, and Toby passed him forward. Toby was the captain’s field chamberlain-he decided who got into the inner circle and who could wait. Mortirmir looked excited.
“My lord,” he said. He grinned, and stared openly at the Faery Knight, and the beautiful-horrifying-irk woman in brazen armour who stood at his shoulder.
“Oh!” she said. She put a brass hand to Morgon’s cheek. “The power!”
“Handsss off, Lilith!” Ser Tapio said. There was some laughter from the irks.
“Yes?” the captain asked. He had a garlic sausage in his mouth and another in his hand.
“My lord.” Morgon shrugged. “It’s difficult to know where to begin… I’ve solved the horse plague.”
Toby’s face suggested he was regretting allowing the young man to interrupt the captain’s lunch.
“Really?” Ser Gabriel asked.
“Yes. It was under my nose all along. Brutally simple.” He shrugged. “In fact, I was right from the first-all a problem of magnification. You see-”
“Morgon.” The captain’s eyes were kind. “I’m about to face a major battle. I need to prepare. You have the ability to stop the horse plague?”
“Instantly.”
“Bravo. Share it with me and every other hermeticist.” He smiled softly. “Then leave me alone, please.”
Morgon looked shame-faced. Nonetheless, both men’s faces became slack for a few seconds.
The captain returned first. “You really do learn something every day,” he said. “Tapio?”
Again he vanished into his palace, and Toby fetched water-the captain always returned from the aethereal hungry and thirsty.
The Faery Knight shook his head.
“Interesssting,” he said. “Leave it to men to make sssomething of nothing. Sssomething horrible.”
“I don’t really see men as to blame for all the ills of the world.” Ser Gabriel shook his head. “But come-let’s right them, e’er we quarrel about them.”
Ser Tapio smiled. “You are a wight after my own heart,” he said.
The rain fell steadily-not a heavy storm, but a long, soaking spring day. The air was cold enough the men’s breath could be seen and that of horses, and bears, and other things. When they started again, they soon passed the last of the road, a hundred men all cutting together.
A young, bearded man loped from the woodcutters and stood in the captain’s way.
“Sorry-my lord, but my da and a whole lot of our folk-they went south, like, and we’ve lost ’em.” The young man shook his head. “Da said somewhat of cutting the path back to we. An’ I said-”
“Gelfred?” the captain said. “Lad, we’ll do our best to find your da. You and yours are the furthest forward. Keep cutting! The Prince of Occitan is somewhere behind us. I need this path to be his signpost. What’s your name?”
“Will, my lord.”
“Will, keep your people together and keep cutting.” He glanced up-he and the Faery Knight exchanged a look.
“The Unicorn is almost due north,” the Faery Knight said. “I don’t need to see it, to see it.” He smiled and showed his fangs.
The captain turned back to young Will. “Turn the path south now, Will. You’ll be safe enough behind us, then.”
“Aye, my lord. But find me da?” the young man asked.
Will Starling, tall and stark in forester green, clapped the man on the shoulder. “We’ll find him,” he said.
As soon as the column turned south, the way became much more difficult. It took them an hour to pass south of a single overgrown beaver meadow, and only when they emerged back into a country of big trees and open spaces did Cully realize they were now riding south. The rain was lighter.
There was a long peal of thunder in the south. Then another.
Then Gelfred burst out of cover to the front. He waved both arms to the east and south.
The captain reined in, pulled out his ivory slate and wrote quickly.
Horns blew to the front.
Ser Tapio paused his stag.
Gelfred cantered up. “Just past the edge of the ridge-thousands of them.”
“How far-exactly?” the captain snapped.
“Long bowshot,” Gelfred said. He was spanning his crossbow as he turned his horse.
The captain sat back in his saddle. His eyes went three places-to Ser Michael, by his side; to Gelfred; and then, for a longer time, to Ser Tapio.
“Ganfroy!” he said, without further consultation. “Sound ‘form your front.’” He paused and listened to the flawless call. “Sound ‘change horses.’”
Ser Michael turned and began to pick his way rapidly to the north. Ser Milus was doing the same to the south, after he’d mounted his new charger.
“I want to attack,” the captain said. His face said he was in agony. It was all taking too long. “We need the ridge top, or we should retire to the last ridge.” Indeed, they were going downhill-the terrain descended in a series of gentle and steep ridges like ocean waves, all the way to the Albin River six miles away. “But we can do this, right here.”
“This, too, we share,” Ser Tapio said. “I agree.”
The woods were open. The rear of the long column was badly hampered by the marsh and bog around the old beaver ponds, but thousands of animals crashing through the woods make their own road, and it was not as hard at the back as at the front.
“Your people are already on the flanks?”
“Mostly to the west. I will go there. Send me a hundred knights when I wind my horn three times.” Ser Tapio smiled. “You have far more knights than I.”
“Done,” Ser Gabriel said, and they clasped hands. The Faery Knight waved one arm, and bells seemed to ring, and all his knights simply rode away. They were as fast as swallows changing directions-and then they were gone.
“Ser Bescanon-take thirty lances and hold them in reserve for Ser Tapio.” Ser Gabriel’s eyes registered his acceptance of the order and moved on.
The ridge to their front was full of horns. Around them their small army poured from column into line. The company troops did it well, despite the trees-they simply flowed into place. New men were slapped on the back or pushed. There were enough veterans-just-to get the line formed. Ser Milus’s white banda was almost half newcomers, and the red banda not much better. Only Gelfred’s green banda was all veterans.
Cully saw the captain still scribbling. There was fighting off to the left-well away to the left. Horns.
“I think we’ve found their whole force,” the captain said. “I’m sending Sauce for our reserves.”
He was smiling.
Cully hated that smile. “Reserves?” he asked.
The captain smiled that nasty smile. “Haven’t you wondered where my brother’s been, all this time?” he asked.
Cully began to cheer up.