He still didn’t remember to salute. Hesmucet would have been merciless with most men who stayed so ignorant of military courtesy. The license he allowed Major Alva measured how much the mage impressed him. “I want you to do your best to learn if the traitors are planning any great magical stroke against us,” Hesmucet said.

“Well, I’ll try,” Alva answered. Hesmucet’s arms remained across his chest. He drummed his fingers on his sleeves. “I’ll try, sir,” Alva said. “You do understand, though, that their spells may cloak whatever they’re up to?”

“Won’t that cloaking tell you something in and of itself?” Hesmucet asked.

“It may… sir.” Little by little, Alva got the idea. “It may, but it may not, too. One of the things wizards do is, they make cloaking spells that don’t cloak anything. People who run into those spells have to probe them, because they may be hiding something important.”

“I am familiar with the idea of deception, yes,” Hesmucet said.

“Oh, good.” Major Alva’s tone plainly implied that a lot of the officers he dealt with weren’t. “When do you want this magecraft performed, sir?”

“Immediately,” Hesmucet told him. “Sooner would be nice.”

“How could I perform it sooner than immediately?” Alva blinked, then sent Hesmucet an accusing stare. Officers who weren’t perfectly literal-minded seemed outside his ken, too.

“Be thankful you’re not working for Doubting George,” Hesmucet said. “He’d drive you straight around the bend, he would.”

“Why is that, sir?” Alva asked.

“Never mind,” Hesmucet answered. “If I’m standing here explaining, you can’t go to work immediately, and that’s what I want you to do.”

“Yes, sir,” Alva said resignedly. “I can’t perform the spells immediately, you know. They will take some time.”

“Yes, yes,” Hesmucet said. “I do understand that. If it weren’t for time, everything would happen at once, and we’d all be very confused.”

Major Alva gave him a curious look. But the wizard decided not to ask any questions, which was a wise decision. He did salute on leaving. That was wise, too. And he hurried away, which was also a good idea. When he came back-not quite immediately, but close enough to keep Hesmucet from complaining-he wore a troubled expression. “The masking spells are extraordinarily deep, extraordinarily thick,” he complained. “I’m not sure I got through all of them.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Hesmucet said. “What are they hiding?”

“I’m not sure,” Alva answered. “I’m not sure they’re hiding anything. But I’m not sure they’re not, either.”

“What are we supposed to be doing about that?” Hesmucet asked.

“I don’t know, sir,” Alva replied. “You’re the commanding general.”

Hesmucet grunted. After some thought, he said, “All we can do is go on. If they throw sorcery at us, we’ll do our best to throw it back. And we’ll lick them any which way. By the gods, we will.”

Firepots kept bursting inside Marthasville, spreading destruction farther with each passing day. North of the city, southron soldiers began moving toward the west and south, aiming at completing the ring around it. With all the glideways leading into the place in southron hands, only wagons could bring in victuals through the narrowing gap in the enemy’s lines. Roast-Beef William knew all too well that wagons could not keep the Army of Franklin fed, no matter how badly its numbers had shrunk because of the recent string of lost battles.

When he said as much to Bell, the general commanding gave him a cold stare. “If your men had held at Jonestown, Lieutenant General, we would still hold a glideway with which to bring in necessities,” Bell said.

“I am sorry, sir.” Roast-Beef William did his best to hold on to his temper. “With my little force, I was a boy trying to do a man’s job. We must have been outnumbered three or four to one. No one could have held against those odds.”

“So you say now,” Bell snapped. “What it looks like to me is that your soldiers were too afraid to come out of their entrenchments and give the southrons a proper fight.”

That did it. “You may criticize me all you please,” William said, “but, sooner than criticizing the courage of my men-who are, I remind you, also your men-you would do better to look in the mirror. You were the one who sent me north to Jonestown, sure the southrons would have only a small force in the neighborhood. Your judgment there proved as wrong as most of your other judgments since taking command of this army. Sir.”

Lieutenant General Bell flushed. “You are insubordinate.”

And you are incompetent. But if Roast-Beef William said that, he would be insubordinate. A dogged sense of duty kept him from doing anything likely to get him removed from command of his wing, though escape from the Army of Franklin looked more inviting with every passing day. Without false modesty, he was sure whoever replaced him would do worse. He didn’t know how much he could help the army in its present agony, but he didn’t want to hurt it.

He said, “I told you several days ago that I did not think we could hold Marthasville. Nothing has happened since to make me change my mind. Did your correspondence with General Hesmucet bear any fruit?”

Bell flushed again. “None whatsoever,” he growled. “He does not fear the gods. He is blind to shame. He has proved himself a liar of the purest ray serene.”

He will not do what I wanted him to do: that was what Bell had to mean. Roast-Beef William had no great trouble making the translation. “That being so, sir, what’s now to be done?” he asked.

Bell’s head went back and forth, back and forth, like that of a caged animal. “I don’t know, gods damn it. I just don’t know.”

The comparison to a caged animal, unfortunately, was all too apt. “Will you lose Marthasville, sir, or will you lose Marthasville and your army?” William inquired. “That’s the only choice you have left.”

“I can’t leave Marthasville,” Bell moaned. “I don’t dare leave Marthasville. What will King Geoffrey say if I do?”

“What will the king say if you don’t?” William returned. “What will he say if you’re trapped here with your army?”

“Go away,” Bell said. “This is not a choice I have to make on the instant, and I do not intend to.”

“Yes, sir,” Roast-Beef William replied, polite again. “But don’t take too long-there, I beg you on bended knee. If the manacles close around us, I don’t think we can break free of them.”

“Go away,” Bell said again, and William went.

Men marched to and fro through the streets of Marthasville. Roast-Beef William looked on the activity as he would have looked on the thrashings of a man about to die of smallpox: they seemed dramatic, but in fact meant nothing. The man would die; the city would fall. William didn’t know when and he didn’t know how, not yet. Of the thing itself he had no doubts whatever.

He rode back to his own headquarters, which he kept as far from that of Lieutenant General Bell as he could. He still hadn’t forgiven Bell for sending him up to Jonestown without enough men to do the job required of him. Bell had thought he could not only hold the southrons but drive them back. But Hesmucet’s army had proved larger and stronger than Bell imagined.

I was the one who had to pay the price for his mistake, Roast-Beef William thought as he dismounted from his unicorn. I had to pay for it, and I got blamed for it. Otherwise, he would have had to blame himself, and it’s plain he’s not very good at that.

A couple of wizards in long blue robes came out of the house William was using and hurried up the street in the direction from which he’d come. “Where away so fast?” William called after them.

One of the mages condescended to turn around. He answered, “Lieutenant General Bell has summoned us, sir. He aims to strike yet another blow against the gods-damned southrons.”