"Aye!" Shutz knew his cue, and put his leathery lungs into it. The sergeants and hetmen, not to mention the sprinkling of hedge-knights who'd joined his banner out of hope of self-enrichment, joined in enthusiastically.

"To your men, then, and let them know," Otto said, allowing himself to relax slightly. "I will make an inspection round in the next hour, and give you your disposition before we advance, an hour before sunset."

Night fell heavy on the castle walls, illuminated by the slow lightning of the field cannon and the echoing thunder, and the moans of the victims, growing weaker now. Olga stared from a darkened window casement, following the action around the base of the gatehouse, picked out in the livid green of night vision goggles. "The stupid, stupid bastards," she hissed.

Behind her, Earl Oliver cleared his throat. The distant sounds of preparations, banging and scraping and swearing, carried through the door from the grand hall. "As long as the Pervert's troops think we're heavily invested, and unable to move…"

"But the waste! Lightning Child strike him blind." Olga was not prone to fits of unreasoning rage. Bright, hot, anger was no stranger; but it passed rapidly, and she knew better than to let it rule her. But what the king had done outside the barred gate of the moat house was something else. It's a deliberate provocation, she told herself. He doesn't want or expect our surrender, so he thinks to unhinge us. And he was certainly trying hard. No one sane would have used noble prisoners as he had done outside the gatehouse, forgoing all hope of ransom and calling down eternal blood feud from their surviving relatives.

"Carl will deal with him tomorrow, I am sure," Oliver declared, although whether he was being patronizing towards her age and status, or merely ironically detached, Olga was unsure. "Tonight we have other work."

"Indeed." Olga lowered her goggles and switched them off, blinking at the twilight.

"Meanwhile, Earl Riordan sent his compliments, and would like to know what additional resources you need to move the duke, and when you'll be ready."

Since when is he employing you as a messenger boy? Olga stepped aside from the window and turned to face him. "I've got a corpsman and two soldiers, one to do the portage and one secondary bodyguard; between them they're a stretcher team. That's plenty until we get to the crossover point. What I then need is for Grieffen or whoever's in Central Ops to arrange to have a secure ambulance waiting for us in Concord at zero four hundred hours, and I need their mobile number so I can guide them in when we cross over." She patted her belt. "I've got a GPS unit and a phone. We'll travel with everyone else as far as the drop zone then continue on a little further before we go back to the United States." It wasn't the entire truth-and not just because she didn't trust the Baron. Oliver was trustworthy after his own fashion; but his loyalty was to his conception of the Clan, not to Olga's faction. He didn't have any need to know the details, and Olga wasn't inclined to take even the remotest of risks with the duke's personal security.

"Do you want me to arrange the ambulance?" he asked attentively.

That did it: He was questioning her competence. "No!" she snapped. "I'll do it myself. The sooner I see him in a hospital bed the happier I'll be." Moving an acute stroke patient was risky enough without trying to do it in the dark, possibly under fire, and without benefit of any specialized medication more sophisticated than a couple of aspirin; the only reason even to consider it was out there in the dark and the chaos before the gatehouse, broken on the wheel.

"So will we all," he said piously, turning to leave.

The hours passed quickly, in a frenzy of preparations for the evacuation. Not everyone was to leave; someone had to light the keep, fill the helmets visibly watching over it, and fire the occasional volley to convince the besieging forces that the palace wasn't an empty prize. But eight in every ten men and women would be world-walking out of the Hjalmar Palace before dawn, stealing away like thieves in the night once the hastily printed and laminated knotwork cards arrived. Almost everyone-Olga, the duke, and the wounded excepted-would return, with the early morning sun at their backs, half a mile behind the pretender's encampment. Trapped between the machine guns on the battlements and the rifles and recoilless rockets of the mobile force, the royalists would have scant time to regret their misplaced allegiance; their best strategy ought to be to melt back into the trees again. But from the lack of movement in the enemy camp it looked as if they'd swallowed the bait: While they clearly knew of the world-walker's ability, it seemed that they had not fully understood its tactical significance. That, or their commander was getting greedy.

Olga took a couple of hours to catch a nap, on a cot at the end of Angbard's bed. She awakened in near-darkness as a hand touched her shoulder. She grasped a wrist almost before she opened her eyes. "What time?…"

"Midnight plus four minutes, milady." The soldier-a stocky woman called Irma, one of Helmut's lance and the daughter of an earl, if Olga remembered her rightly-straightened up. "Martyn and I are your detail, along with Gerd"-the corpsman-"to take his grace to safety, is that right?"

"Yes," Olga said tersely. She rubbed her eyes and sat up, shook her head to clear the cobwebs, and yawned. "You have a stretcher, yes? And suitable clothes."

"A stretcher, aye," Gerd called softly from the far side of the four-poster bed. "He still sleeps, milady," he added, forestalling her next question.

Irma grimaced. "I hate stretchers." She stepped back, to leave Olga some space. "On the subject of suitable clothes-we are going to America, to meet an ambulance, at dead of night, I was told? But this other world, I've never been there before. So I don't know what's a suitable disguise for sneaking around there…"

"Don't worry about that aspect of things, we've got transport." I hope. Olga sat up creakily. "Here's the plan. We're going to cross over with everyone else. Have the cards arrived yet?" Irma shook her head. "Well. When they arrive-it's a new world. This site is undeveloped farmland. Our agents have laid on trucks, and they'll drive Captain Hjorth and his force to the drop-off point for the counterattack. We'll be taking a car into Irongate, which is near as makes no difference sitting on the south side of Concord, and where there's a doppelgangered building in this world. Then we make two more transfers, crossing back at zero five hundred, and I'll phone for an ambulance. I've got GPS, so we should be picked up within half an hour. Our main challenges are: keeping his grace comfortable, avoiding attention from the locals, and not killing ourselves by world-walking too much. Is that clear?"

"Yes, milady. Makes things easier." Irma shook her head. "Four crossings in four hours-that's harsh."

"Yes. That's why for the first crossing we'll all be going piggyback on whichever members of your lance draw the short straws. And for the second crossing, Gerd will carry his grace and Martyn will carry you. On the third crossing, you can take the duke. The fourth will be the hardest, but that way, only one of us risks breaking our head."

"Do you think we should ditch our field gear?"

Olga thought for a moment. "If it's not too much to carry, I think we should hang onto it until we're ready to make the final transit. But once we hit Concord"-she paused-"we can't be wearing armor or carrying long arms. What clothing did you find for us?"

"Nothing for sure, milady, we must see if it fits-but the baron's family maintained a wardrobe with some American clothing, and it has not been looted yet. I hope," she added under her breath.