She would not dismount until her tent was set up. Her tent would not be set up until the rest of the camp was in order. The troops could look up from their own camp tasks at any time, and see her, still in the saddle, still out in the weather, for as long as it took for all of them to have their shelters put together.

Wonderful discoveries, these little dome-shaped, felt-lined tents. The wind just went around them; they never blew over, or collapsed, and instead of needing rigid tent-poles, you only needed to find a willow-grove, and cut eight of the flexible branches to thread through the eight channels sewn into the tents. You wouldn’t even damage the trees; willows actually responded well to being cut back, and the Company had passed groves they’d trimmed in the past, whose trees were more luxuriant than before they’d been cut.

The hard part, especially in midwinter, was pounding the eight tent stakes into the rock-hard ground to pin the tents in place. Without those eight stakes, the tents could and had blown away, like down puffs on the wind. That was what took time, lots of time, and each pair of troopers was sweating long before the stakes were secure.

And meanwhile, the Captain got to sit on her horse and look impressive, while in reality she wanted to thump every one of her troopers who looked up at her for taking even a half-breath to do so, forcing her to be out in the cold that much longer. She’d rather have been pounding stakes herself; she used to help with setup, before she realized that helping could be construed as a sign of favoritism. Then she set up her own tent, before her own orderlies told her in distress that it wasn’t “appropriate.”

So she sat, like a guardian-statue, turning into a giant icicle, a sodden pile of wet leather, or a well-broiled piece of jerky, as the season determined.

The sun just touched the horizon, glaring an angry red beneath the low-hanging clouds. No snow—yet. It was on the way; Kero knew snow-scent when she caught it.

A wonderful aroma of roasting meat wafted on the icy breeze, making her mouth water and her stomach growl. In that much, at least, being Captain had its privileges. When she finally could crawl down off Hellsbane’s back, her tent would be waiting, warmed by a clever charcoal brazier no larger than a dish, and her dinner would be sitting beside it. She sniffed again, and identified the scent as pork.