Hasos accepted it with a certain air of wariness. “What’s this?”

“Tchazzar’s writ giving me ultimate authority over all of Soolabax’s troops and military resources for the duration of the war.”

Hasos’s eyes shifted back and forth as he skimmed the first few lines. His aristocratic features turned a gratifying mottled red. “This is outrageous! Preposterous!”

“If you read the whole document, you’ll come to the part where His Majesty says it’s no reflection on you. It’s just that the previous arrangement, where you and I each led our own troops, was keeping us from getting things done.”

Hasos took a long breath. “If your scouts hadn’t stumbled across Tchazzar in the wild, if they hadn’t done him some sort of service-”

“Then maybe I couldn’t have persuaded him that a clear chain of command is better,” said Aoth. “But it is what it is. If you want to argue about the wisdom of His Majesty’s decisions, you know the road to Luthcheq. If not, I expect your full support.”

Hasos took another breath, and some of the red faded from his cheeks and brow. “I know how to obey a royal decree. I just don’t know why you felt you had to bother. What decisions are left to make? The enemy’s outside the walls, and we’re in. Now it’s just a matter of waiting them out.”

Hasos relished the trappings of war. He often wore a breastplate and lugged a shield around even when there was no reason for it. But Aoth wondered if the nobleman had ever actually experienced a siege. If he had, he might not have been so blithe about subjecting his own town to the protracted misery such an action often entailed. For certainly Soolabax, its streets jammed with fugitives and livestock from the surrounding farmlands, was a prime candidate for starvation and disease.

“That’s not how we’re going to play it,” said Aoth. “We griffon riders can pass in and out of the city as we please.” Well, give or take arrows flying up from below, but there were ways of contending with that. “I have troops camped outside the city, and Tchazzar himself is bringing more up from the south. Put it all together, and it means we can smash these fools who think they have us trapped. Our men outside the walls will be the hammer, and the town and its garrison will be the anvil.”

Hasos shook his head. “The risk is too great. We’ll lose too many.”

“Not if we do it right. Besides, Tchazzar doesn’t want to stay on the defensive. He doesn’t want to fend off the Great Bone Wyrm now, let it go at that, and have to do it all over again in a couple of years. The plan is to push north and make Threskel a part of Chessenta again. If I were you, I’d pack my kit.”

The giants had killed or driven back the dragonborn who’d dared to confront them on Black Ash Plain. The fighting had all moved inside Tymanther, in the fertile fields and patches of woodland south of Djerad Thymar.

A bat rider had spotted one of the raiding parties slaughtering people, pigs, and cattle. By good luck or ill, the scout had then found Medrash’s patrol within easy reach of the foe. As the paladin studied the terrain ahead for some sign of the enemy, he ran over Khouryn’s training in his mind. Even though his people considered him an expert warrior, he’d had to go through the exercises with everyone else because he’d never fought with a lance on horseback either. In fact, he still hadn’t-not in a real combat, not with his life on the line.

He wished Khouryn were there, but the dwarf was busy schooling other fighters. He tried to comfort himself with the thought that Torm the True was always with him.

But that reflection came with a measure of shame. Because he knew he’d failed the god of heroes repeatedly, even if others didn’t see it that way. His efforts to catch the Green Hand murderers had destroyed the alliance between Chessenta and Tymanther. And, commanding the first company that Clan Daardendrien fielded against the giants, he’d led his kinsfolk to disaster.

He had to do better this time. Had to. Even if the giants were not capable of actually conquering Tymanther-and that no longer seemed like such a preposterous possibility-somebody had to prove that it wasn’t only adherents of the Platinum Cadre who could defeat them. Otherwise, in their desperation, more and more of his people would embrace the cult’s vile, dragon-loving creed, corrupting themselves in the process.

“Look!” a rider said, pointing.

Medrash turned his head. A white dog lay half hidden in the grass with the rear part of its body more or less smashed flat. Somehow it was still alive, whimpering, its chest expanding and contracting rapidly.

“Put the poor beast out of its misery,” Medrash said. A rider dismounted, kneeled beside the dog, stroked its head and murmured to it for a moment, then slipped a knife between its ribs.

Medrash surveyed his comrades and saw the same mixture of determination and doubt he felt within himself. As leader, it was his responsibility to do something about the latter.

“All right,” he said, infusing his voice with the power to encourage and persuade that was one of the Loyal Fury’s gifts to his champions, “we’re obviously close, so let’s get ready. Let’s go give the brutes a surprise. Keep your heads, remember your lessons, and we’ll crush them.”

Some of the riders nodded or growled their agreement. Then they all pulled their lances from the tubular sheaths the saddlers had added to their tack. They placed the weapons on the rests, angling them upward for the time being. Inwardly, Medrash winced to see how clumsily some warriors still handled the long spears. But he didn’t let it show in his outward demeanor.

They walked their horses to the top of a rise. The gentle slope on the other side led down to a cluster of low huts adjacent to a cherry orchard. The trees were just beginning to flower.

The bodies of dragonborn lay scattered and in some cases dismembered on the ground. One corpse dangled from a wall, pinned there by an enormous flint axe. Each twice as tall as the average Tymantheran, hairless, gray-skinned ash giants were roasting an ox on a spit. Evidently too hungry to wait till their supper cooked, others yanked and gobbled handfuls of raw meat from a fallen plow horse.

Even before the current highly successful invasion, they’d always possessed their share of cunning. So it didn’t surprise Medrash that they had a sentry posted. The huge barbarian bellowed something in his own guttural language. His fellows oriented on the patrol, then moved to take up their weapons.

They were doing so reasonably quickly too, but not with frantic haste. Probably because they knew how dragonborn cavalry customarily fought. They dismounted, made sure their mounts would be there when they needed them again, then advanced on foot.

Medrash grinned and shouted, “Walk!” The patrol started their horses forward, slowly for the first few paces.

Some of the giants faltered and stared.

“Trot!” Medrash called. The riders in turn spoke to their steeds, or touched them with their spurs, and the animals accelerated.

A couple of giants were still frozen in surprise. Others were scrambling to get ready. One bawled, “Shangbok!”

Medrash wondered if that was somebody’s name. “Canter!” he yelled. Once again the riders urged their horses to go faster. “Lances!” Two and three at a time, the weapons swung down to parallel the ground.

By then the enemy was close enough for Medrash to clearly discern the sunken, pitch-black eyes in their long, gaunt faces. Then suddenly one horse, evidently realizing its rider had no intention of veering off, panicked. It turned of its own volition, and in so doing, plunged toward the steed and rider on its right.

Medrash flinched in anticipation of the impending collision. But somehow the rider who still had control swung around the other and drove on.