“Well shot!” Ormerod said. “By the gods, well shot!”

A moment later, he discovered he might have been wiser not to draw notice to himself. Buzzing like an angry wasp, a crossbow quarrel zipped past his head and buried itself in a tree trunk. It would have buried itself in his flesh, too. He knew that all too well. He usually tried not to think about it. But when the Soulstealer’s cloak brushed by him, he couldn’t pretend he didn’t feel the breeze of its passage.

Brave as if they fought for a cause Ormerod held dear, the southrons tried to charge across the river and get in among his men. But quick, fierce archery slew some, wounded more, and drove them all back to the southern bank. They started fighting as dragoons then, dismounting to give battle on foot.

Ormerod grinned. “They won’t advance that way,” he said. Since his job was to hold them south of the River of Death, he’d done exactly what he was supposed to.

Earl James of Broadpath felt like kicking someone, or perhaps several someones. The pox-ridden cretins who’d designed and created the chaotic jungle of glideways in the northern provinces of Detina would do in a pinch. No, he wouldn’t have minded pinching them at all, preferably with red-hot pincers.

Everything had been tolerable till he’d brought his army over the Veldt River from Palmetto Province into Peachtree. He’d thought he would get to Marthasville soon afterwards, and down to Fa Layette soon after that. His scryers had told Count Thraxton as much.

Coming into the town of Julia, though, on the Peachtree side of the Veldt, had begun his education into just how complicated glideways could be. An indigo-uniformed officer awaited him at the glideway port there. The fellow saluted and said, “Very good to see you here so soon, your Excellency. You must have made splendid time come up here from southern Parthenia.”

“Not splendid, but good enough,” James agreed, more than a little smugly.

“Excellent,” the officer said. He wore a broad smile, but not one of the sort that prompted Earl James to trust him. He’d seen that kind of smile on the faces of rivergalley gamblers and unicorn thieves. It didn’t match whatever was going on behind the fellow’s eyes.

When the officer didn’t say anything more right away, James of Broadpath asked him, “Why did you call me out onto the pier here? I would sooner have headed straight east towards Marthasville with my army.”

“I’m sure you would, sir,” the officer said, his nod as false as his smile. “And as soon as your army transfers from these carpets to those waiting to take them to Marthasville, so you shall.”

“As soon as my army does what?” James dug a finger into his ear, as if wondering whether he’d heard correctly.

“As soon as it transfers, sir,” the other officer said again. No, James’ ears hadn’t betrayed him.

That didn’t mean he understood what the other fellow was saying, or why he was saying it. “What’s wrong with the carpets we’re on?” he asked. “We’ve come this far on ’em. I don’t see much point in changing for the couple of hundred miles from here to Marthasville.”

“There is a point, I’m afraid,” the officer said. “You’ve come this far on the Northern Glideway. The route east is over the Peachtree Glideway.” Earl James’ bushy eyebrows rose. The other officer, a captain supercilious enough to be a general, condescended to explain: “They use different sorcerous systems, sir. A carpet that will travel with ease on the one will not, cannot, move a finger’s breadth on the other.”

As northern noblemen went, James of Broadpath had a mild temper. But he felt that temper fraying now. “What idiot made that arrangement?” he growled, wondering how much time this unexpected difficulty would cost him. However much it was, he couldn’t afford it.

“It isn’t like that, General,” the local captain insisted. “By the Thunderer’s prick, sir, it isn’t.” For once, he seemed sincere. “The fellows who made the Northern Glideway had the low bid for that stretch of the route, and the fellows who created the Peachtree Glideway came in with the low bid there. The two outfits worked with different sets of mages who favored different sets of sorcery. Simple as that.”

“Simple?” Earl James turned the word into a curse. “If things were simple, I wouldn’t have to change glideways here. They all ought to run on the same system.”

“They don’t even bother with that down in the south, sir.” The officer’s shrug said that, if even the gold-grubbing merchants of the southern provinces who backed King Avram couldn’t see the point to standardizing glideways, it wasn’t worth doing.

James thought otherwise. “If they all ran on the same system, Captain, I wouldn’t have to move my men off these carpets and onto the new ones. That sounds mighty fine to me.”

“Nothing to be done about it,” the local fellow said with another shrug. “Do I hear rightly that your men’ll be heading south from Marthasville?”

“What if you do?” James asked suspiciously. This fellow was without a doubt a son of a bitch, but that probably didn’t make him a southron spy. Probably.

“Well, your Excellency, if you’ll be going by way of the Northern Provinces and Western Ocean Glideway, you’ll have to change again once you get into Marthasville,” the captain said.

“What?” James of Broadpath’s bellow made heads whip toward him all over the glideway port. Curses cascaded from him.

“It can’t be helped, your Excellency,” the other officer said. That was bound to be true, but did nothing to improve James’ temper.

When he gave the necessary orders, his subordinates cursed as loudly and foully as he had. Brigadier Bell said, “We’ve come round three sides of a square, seems like. We might have done better just to march it.”

Reluctantly, Earl James shook his head. “No, I didn’t think so,” he replied. “Say what you will about glideways, but they’re faster, a lot faster, than shank’s mare.”

“I suppose so,” Bell agreed. “But I hate even to seem as if I’m moving away from the enemy when what I really want to do is close with him.” His right hand folded into a fist. His left hand twitched, as if it wanted to make a fist, too. But, hanging on the end of his ruined arm, it was all but useless.

“You’ll have your chance,” James assured him. The eager smile Bell gave in answer briefly banished the eternal pain from his face.

But when James’ army, having disembarked from the carpets that had brought them to Julia, made its way over to the far side of the glideway port and the carpets that were to take them on to Marthasville, the general wondered if he’d spoken too soon. Not nearly enough carpets waited on the Peachtree Glideway’s route toward Marthasville. “Where are the rest of them?” James demanded of the local captain. “I can’t fit my force onto what you’ve got here.”

“This is just about all the gliding stock on the Peachtree line, sir,” that worthy said. “We’ve got so many men fighting, we’re hard pressed to do anything else.”

“How am I supposed to fight if I can’t get to the battlefield?” James demanded.

“Oh, you will, sir-eventually,” the captain said. “How much difference does it make whether you fight tomorrow or the next day, though?”

“My friend” -James freighted the word with heavy irony- “it might make all the difference in the world.”

“It might,” the other officer said. “On the other hand, it might not mean anything at all. More often than not, it won’t.”

James was tempted, mightily tempted, to argue that with him. The only reason he desisted was the pointlessness of it. “What do you expect me to do, then?” he asked. “Take half my army to Marthasville, send the carpets back, and wait for the other half to catch up?”

“Sir, the only other choice you have is leaving all your army here in Julia,” the local officer told him. “If you want to do that, I don’t see how I can stop you, but I don’t suppose you’ll make Count Thraxton very happy.”