“I told you once, I’ll do my best. I meant it,” Andrew said.

“Good.” Hesmucet turned and nodded to his scryer. The man broke the mystical attunement between the two crystal balls. The one in front of Hesmucet became no more than an inert sphere of glass; Andrew the Smith’s image vanished from it. Hesmucet gave himself the luxury of cursing for a minute or so, but then got up to leave the scryers’ tent.

“What will you do now, sir?” the scryer asked him.

It wasn’t really any of the man’s business. Still, Hesmucet judged him unlikely to go over to the traitors with the answer. He probably wouldn’t even gossip; by the nature of their work, scryers had to be discreet. And the truth wasn’t all that complicated, anyhow. “I’m going to keep right on hammering away at Joseph the Gamecock, that’s what,” Hesmucet said. “As long as Andrew or somebody keeps Ned of the Forest busy, Joseph hasn’t got enough unicorn-riders attached to his own army to harm the glideway coming up here from Rising Rock, especially when I keep squeezing and prodding his army. So that’s what I’m going to do. You hit something long enough and hard enough and sooner or later it’ll break.”

“All right, sir. That sounds like it makes sense.” The scryer was a lieutenant by courtesy, as most mages were officers by courtesy. Having officer’s rank let him order common soldiers around, which was often convenient. What he knew about sound strategy, however, would likely have fit inside a thimble without straining things. But he was a freeborn Detinan, and reckoned his opinion as good as anyone else’s, including that of the general commanding.

“I’m so glad you approve.” Hesmucet intended it for sarcasm. The scryer took it as a compliment. He beamed at Hesmucet as the commanding general left the tent.

Once back in his own pavilion, Hesmucet summoned Doubting George, Fighting Joseph, and James the Bird’s Eye. He told his wing commanders what had happened to the luckless Sam the Sturgeon. “He had Ned outnumbered three to one, and he lost the fornicating battle?” Fighting Joseph burst out, his always ruddy face darkening further with anger. “That’s disgraceful, nothing else but.”

“It certainly is, and who would know better?” Doubting George murmured.

A considerable silence followed. At Viziersville, in the west, Fighting Joseph’s men had outnumbered those of Duke Edward of Arlington somewhere close to three to one, but Duke Edward’s Army of Southern Parthenia had won a resounding victory over the southrons nonetheless. Fighting Joseph turned red all over again, this time perhaps from embarrassment-although, from all Hesmucet had seen, he seemed nearly immune to that emotion.

At last, James the Bird’s Eye broke the silence with a sensible question: “What do we do now, sir?”

Hesmucet gave him the same sort of answer he’d given the scryer: “We’ll try to keep Ned busy over by the Great River, and we’ll keep Joseph’s unicorn-riders close to home so they can’t go after the glideway.”

James gravely considered that. In due course, he nodded. “Makes sense to me, sir,” he said. “We’ve come a long way doing what we’ve been doing. If we keep doing it and hit hard, we ought to end up in Marthasville before too long.”

“We’d better,” Lieutenant General George said. “There are grumblings down south about how long this fight is taking and how many men we’re spending to make it. I have friends who send me the news bulletins. I’m sure the rest of you have friends like that, too. What I’m not so sure of is whether they’re really friends.”

“Bloodsucking ghouls is what they are,” Fighting Joseph said. “They haven’t the ballocks to fight themselves, and so they pass their time by making the men who do fight doubt themselves.”

“It’s more complicated than that, I fear,” Doubting George said.

Fighting Joseph, by his expression, plainly didn’t believe it for a moment. Hesmucet did. He knew how weary the south was of the war against false King Geoffrey, and of its cost in both silver and blood. Victory would make that cost seem worthwhile. As long as the north held Marthasville, as long as Joseph the Gamecock’s army remained intact and in the field, the south saw no victory. If the farmers and burghers got sick of sending their sons and husbands and brothers off to die for what they saw as no good purpose, King Avram would have to recognize his rebellious cousin as his fellow sovereign. Hesmucet aimed to do everything he could to keep that from happening.

“Let’s take a crack at Cedar Hill, then,” he said. “Once we drive the traitors away from it, we’ll be in position to move against Commissioner Mountain.”

“Good enough,” James the Bird’s Eye said. Now Fighting Joseph agreed without hesitation. Whatever else you could say about the man, he wasn’t shy about going into a fight.

The only one showing any doubts was George. “It had better be good enough,” he said. “We’ll just have to do our best to make it good enough.”

When morning came, Hesmucet assembled his force and moved it west. He expected Joseph the Gamecock’s men to have solid entrenchments on the forward slopes of Cedar Hill, and so they did. In spite of a pounding from his siege engines, their lines held firm. Both sides got less use not only from engines but also from crossbows than they would have in better weather; an awful lot of bowstrings were wet. Hesmucet’s men slogged on, cleaning out one trench after another.

Toward midday, Hesmucet glanced up to one of the higher crags of Cedar Hill. There looking down at him-there looking down at his whole host-stood half a dozen northern officers in blue. They observed the men moving against them with the detachment of so many instructors at the military collegium at Annasville.

Rage ripped through Hesmucet. Unlike those cool, detached traitors, he took war personally. He spotted Brigadier Brannan, Doubting George’s commander of siege engines, who’d just wrestled some of his catapults forward. “Brannan!” he called, and pointed up toward the knot of northerners. “Can you smash a couple of those bastards for me?”

Brigadier Brannan studied the enemy officers. “A long shot, especially uphill,” he said, “but I’ve got a chance. Want me to try?”

“Yes, by the Thunderer’s balls!” Hesmucet exclaimed.

“All right.” Brannan called orders to his crew. They tightened the skeins and set a thirty-pound stone in the trough. Brannan himself squeezed the trigger. The catapult bucked and jerked and clacked. Away flew the round stone, almost faster than the eye could follow it.

“Look out!” Joseph the Gamecock shouted as the southrons’ catapult sent a stone flying toward the knot of officers he headed. Spry for a man of his years, he wasted not a heartbeat taking his own advice: he dove behind a boulder. Someone else dove on top of him. Other northerners scattered in all directions.

Joseph listened for the thud of the stone slamming into muddy dirt. Even skipping along the ground, it could be deadly dangerous. He’d heard of a foolish sergeant who’d tried to stop a rolling catapult ball with his foot-and lost the foot as a result.

The stone smacked down, alarmingly close to Joseph the Gamecock. But the sound it made wasn’t the heavy thud of rock hitting mud. It was a wetter noise, a solid smack that made the general commanding the Army of Franklin wince and curse. The southrons had aimed that stone too well. Someone in his retinue had gone down under it.

“Let me up, gods damn it,” Joseph growled to whoever had landed on him. When the officer didn’t move fast enough to suit him, Joseph lashed out with an elbow. That did the trick.

Scrambling to his feet, Joseph looked around. There stood Roast-Beef William, and there were a couple of junior officers, also upright and unscathed. But Leonidas the Priest sprawled on the ground, and plainly would never get up again. He still twitched, but that was only because his body hadn’t yet realized he was dead. When a thirty-pound flying stone hit a man square in the chest, he was unlikely to get up again. Blood soaked into the red dirt, reddening it further. Leonidas’ blood was even redder than the crimson vestments he wore.