Agon shrugged. It was a week-old problem. This platoon wasn’t nearly as sloppy as the Khalidorans they knew. Even as they fled from Logan’s army, they’d raided. Cenaria had lost a hundred men. The Khalidorans hadn’t lost one. The best guess Agon could make was that they were an elite unit from some Khalidoran tribe the Cenarians hadn’t encountered before. Logan felt like he was staring at a puzzle. If he didn’t solve it, his people would die. “You still want to hit them from all sides?” Agon asked.

The problem stared at Logan, mocking him. The answer didn’t come. “Yes.”

“Are you still insisting on leading the cavalry through the Wood yourself?”

Logan nodded. If he was going to ask men to brave death from some monster, he would do it himself, too.

“That’s very . . .  brave,” Agon said. He’d served nobles long enough to make a compliment speak volumes of insult.

“Enough,” Logan said, accepting his helmet from Kaldrosa. “Let’s go kill some Khalidorans.”

4

Vürdmeister Neph Dada hacked a deep, rasping, unhealthy cough. He cleared his throat noisily and spat the results into his hand. Then he tilted his hand and watched the phlegm drip to the dirt before turning his eyes to the other Vürdmeisters around his low fire. Aside from the young Borsini, who blinked incessantly, they gave no sign that he disgusted them. A man didn’t survive long enough to become a Vürdmeister on magical strength alone.

Glowing faintly, figures were laid out in military formations on the ground. “This is only an estimation of the armies’ positions,” Neph said. “Logan Gyre’s forces are in red, roughly fourteen hundred men, west of the Dark Hunter’s Wood, in Cenarian lands. Maybe two hundred Ceurans pretending to be Khalidoran are the blue, right at the edge of the Wood. Further south, in white, are five thousand of our beloved enemies the Lae’knaught. We Khalidorans haven’t fought the Lae’knaught directly since you were all still at the tit, so let me remind you that though they hate all magic, we are what they were created to destroy. Five thousand of them is more than enough to complete the job the Cenarians began at the Battle of Pavvil’s Grove, so we must tread carefully.”

In quick detail, Neph outlined what he knew of the deployment of all the forces, inventing details where it seemed appropriate, and always speaking over the Vürdmeisters’ heads, as if expecting them to understand intricacies of generalship that they had never learned. Whenever a Godking died, the massacres began. First the heirs turned on each other. Then the survivors rallied meisters and Vürdmeisters around them and began anew until only one Ursuul remained. If no one established dominance quickly, the bloodletting would spread to the meisters. Neph didn’t intend for that to happen.