“May the Hunt Lady flay them. May the Thunderer smite them,” Thraxton said in a voice so terrible, his informant flinched back from him as if he were the Thunderer himself. “May their torn and lightning-riven souls drop into the seven hells for torment eternal. That they should dare do such a thing in a city that is ours…”

“A city that was ours,” the fellow from Rising Rock said. Thraxton fixed-transfixed-him with a glare. He didn’t just flinch. He spun on his heel and fled from the chamber where he’d been speaking with Thraxton.

“Shall I bring him back, sir?” asked the young officer who’d escorted the refugee into Thraxton’s presence. “Do you think you can learn more from him?”

“No: only how great an idiot he is, and I already have a good notion of that,” Thraxton answered. The junior officer nodded and saluted and also left the chamber in a hurry.

Count Thraxton hardly noticed. He set an absentminded hand on the front of his uniform tunic. His stomach pained him. It often did-and all the more so when he contemplated the spectacle of General Guildenstern, a man with neither breeding nor military talent, parading through Rising Rock, through the city Thraxton himself had had to abandon.

I am the better soldier. Thraxton was as sure of that as he was that the sun was shining outside. I am the better mage. That went without saying. No general in either army could come close to matching him in magic. Then where are my triumphs? Where are my processions?

He could have had them. He should have had them. Somehow, they’d slipped through his fingers. Somehow, he’d ended up here in Fa Layette, a no-account town if ever there was one, while Guildenstern, his inferior in every way, victoriously paraded through Rising Rock.

It wasn’t his fault. It couldn’t possibly have been his fault. He was the one who deserved that parade, by the gods. And I shall have it, he thought. He always knew exactly what he was supposed to do, and he always did it, but somehow it didn’t always come off quite the way he’d expected. Since the mistakes weren’t, couldn’t have been, his, they had to belong to the officers serving under him.

Slowly, Thraxton nodded. That was bound to be it. Had any general in all the history of Detina-in all the history of the world-ever been worse served by his subordinates? Thraxton doubted it. Even now, the men who led the constituent parts of his army were not the warriors he would have wanted. Ned of the Forest? A boor, a bumpkin, a lout. Leonidas the Priest? No doubt he served the Lion God well, but he had a habit of being tardy on the battlefield. Dan of Rabbit Hill? Better than either of the others, Thraxton thought, but not good enough. Dan had a fatal character flaw: he was ambitious. Thraxton tolerated ambition only in himself.

A mage with the winged-eye badge of a scryer next to his lieutenant’s bars came in and saluted Thraxton. “May it please your Grace,” he said, “Earl James of Broadpath and his host have passed out of Croatoan and into Palmetto Province. They should go through Marthasville in a couple of days, and should reach us here the day following.”

“I thank you,” Thraxton said. The scryer saluted again and withdrew.

Alone in the chamber once more, Thraxton scowled. His stomach gave another painful twinge. Earl James’ imminent arrival pleased him not at all. What was it but King Geoffrey’s declaration that he couldn’t win the war here in the east by himself? And James of Broadpath would prate endlessly of Duke Edward, and of how things were done in the Army of Southern Parthenia. Thraxton could practically hear him already. He himself cared not a fig for Duke Edward or his precious army.

James’ men would let him meet Guildenstern on something like equal terms. “And I will meet him, and I will beat him,” Thraxton said. He knew what he had to do. Figuring out how to do it was another matter. Until James of Broadpath got here, he remained badly outnumbered. If General Guildenstern pushed matters, he could erupt into southern Peachtree Province and force Thraxton from Fa Layette as he’d forced him from Rising Rock.

Guildenstern, fortunately, was not given to pushing things. Few of the southron generals were. Had Count Thraxton been fighting for Avram, he wouldn’t have wanted to push things, either. But he couldn’t stomach Avram at all, any more than any of the northern nobles who’d backed King Geoffrey could.

He studied a map of the territory through which he’d just had to retreat. Slowly, he nodded. He might have smiled, had his face not forgotten what smiling was all about. After a little more contemplation, he nodded again and shouted for a runner.

“Sir?” the young soldier said. “Your Grace?”

“Fetch Ned of the Forest here,” Thraxton said. “Fetch him here at once.”

“Yes, sir.” The runner saluted. Even as he turned to obey, though, his eyes widened. The whole Army of Franklin had to know about the quarrel between the two generals. Thraxton shrugged. Beating the southrons, beating Guildenstern, came first. After that, he could settle accounts with the backwoods scum on his own side who failed to have a proper appreciation for his manifest brilliance.

Ned of the Forest came fast enough to give Count Thraxton no excuse to criticize him. His salute was sloppy, but it had never been neat. “What do you want with me, sir?” he asked-on the edge of military courtesy, but not over the edge.

“Come to the map with me,” Thraxton said, and Ned obeyed. Thraxton went on, “You have always claimed that your unicorn-riders can cover twice as much ground as footsoldiers, and that they can fight as well as footsoldiers once they get where they are going.”

“It’s the truth, sir,” Ned answered. “Not only just as well as footsoldiers, but just like footsoldiers, too. You can do a lot more harm to the fellows you don’t like, and do it from a lot further ways away, with crossbows than you can with sabers.”

This man knows nothing of the glory of war, Count Thraxton thought scornfully. He might as well be a potter-it is only a job, a piece of work, to him. But then Thraxton gave a mental shrug. He is the tool I have ready to hand. I can use him. I will use him. And if, in the using, I use him up… so what?

Aloud, Thraxton said, “You shall have your chance to prove it, sir. I require you to take your riders south to the line of the River of Death” -he ran a bony finger along it- “and patrol it. And, at all costs, I require you to keep General Guildenstern’s army from crossing the river and marching on Fa Layette.”

Ned frowned. “Don’t reckon I can do that, if he throws his whole army at one place. Unicorns, footsoldiers, what have you-I haven’t got the men to stand against him. Way it looks to me, this whole army hasn’t got the men for it, or why would we be waiting for the troopers from the west to get here?”

He had a point, worse luck. Count Thraxton had to backtrack, as he’d had to backtrack from Rising Rock. “Very well,” he said with poor grace. “I shall revise my command, then. Here, do this: cross over the River of Death, if that should please you, and make the southrons think you are everywhere in greater force than is in fact the truth. Delay them till Earl James reaches Fa Layette, and you shall have achieved your purpose.”

Ned of the Forest’s eyes gleamed. This time, he saluted as if he meant it. “Fair enough, sir,” he said-now he’d been given a task he liked. “I’ll run those southrons ragged. By the time I’m through, they’ll reckon everybody in our whole army is scurrying around south of the river.”

“That would be excellent,” said Thraxton, who doubted whether Ned could accomplish any such thing. True, the general of unicorn-riders had done some remarkable work down in Franklin and Cloviston, but mostly as a raider. Facing real soldiers, and facing them in large numbers, Thraxton thought him more likely to suffer an unfortunate accident.