Agnira—there ’re going to be some objections to that, and for sure— And there were; a storm of them. People began shouting and waving their hands to get his attention, for all the world like a crowd of unruly children. Lerryn simply let the hotheads have their say, then held up his hand again.

“It’s not our kind of fight,” he told them, his eyes moving from face to face so that in the end, every one of them would have been willing to swear that the Captain talked to him, directly. “We aren’t trained, any of us, in the kind of line fighting there’s going to be. Most of us are runty little bastards,” he continued, with a rueful grin that included himself with them. “We couldn’t take on a big man in a shoulder-to-shoulder situation, not when we’ve built careers and training on speed and agility. We couldn’t use our short-swords or horse-bows, and those little round target shields would be damned useless against maces and axes. We can’t do any damn good with unfamiliar weapons, afoot, against heavy infantry. And if you all really think about that, and are honest, you’ll agree with me.”

There was more muttering, and some vehement head-shaking, but not much. Lerryn’s words made sense even to the most belligerent among them.

The Captain spread his hands in a gesture that said wordlessly, Look, I don’t like this any more than you do, but we all know the facts when we see them. “We’ve done our job,” he said. “No one can fault us—we’re the ones who tracked them, and we’re the ones who harried them and trapped them here in the first place. It’s time for the others to do their job, and now we have to get out of the way so they can do it without interference. Hmm?” He tilted his head slightly to one side; there was more muttering—Shallan, predictably, was one of the mutter ers—but it quickly died away.

“Don’t think we’re getting off easy,” he said, “I’m deploying half of you as outriders to make sure nobody gets away. If there’s a breakout, you’ll be fighting—and you outriders are as important as the front liners. More. That’s the place where we’ll have a good shot at taking prisoners. We don’t want anyone to escape to take word back to—wherever.”

Tactfully not saying what everyone is thinking. Kero’s lip twitched. We can say it, but because he’s Captain, he can’t. Not till it’s proved. That “wherever” is Karse, and if they get back with word of this, the Karsites may send a bigger force before we’re ready for it.