The scout tugged at his sleeve, and he crawled away with the rest of them, avoiding the slack-jawed perimeter guard. They made it back to the rest of his troops without further incident, and he and his officers spent the hours until midnight charting the next day’s course.

Dawn of the next day saw the Rethwellan troops poised just above the camp. It had been impossible to keep the movement of so large a group secret, but by splitting his troops in two and cutting off Ancar’s fighters from their easy escape by river, Daren had forced Ancar’s reserves to meet him instead of running to join the larger force, or escaping into the interior of Hardom.

Daren waited at the command post with Quenten, the other mages, and his under-officers; far from being even as comfortable as a tent, the site basically had only two things to recommend it. The unobstructed view, and a very tall shade tree.

“Can you tell who he is, yet?” Quenten asked in an undertone as the officers scattered off to take their places with their men.

Daren shook his head. There was a kind of sink of “bad feeling” a little to the right of center, but no one mage stood out. They were assuming that Ancar’s mages were too strong for any single one of Daren’s mages to take. They would have to wait for their one best opportunity, and all hit him at once, in order to break him.

One of Daren’s mages was effectively out of the picture; he was preventing the enemy from calling for help, at least magically. And that was all he was good for; they’d left him in trance in the Healer’s tent, and there he would stay even after this was over, recovering. Or not; there was always the possibility he might die, either from exhausting himself, or being drained or killed by the enemy mages. And if Daren’s force lost, he would almost certainly die. Mages were harder to control than captured fighters; the enemy usually did not even bother to try.

Daren gave the signal to advance, no point in a charge; mind-controlled men would not be unnerved by a charge or a battle cry. They’d simply fight until they dropped, and others took their places. Daren had given his officers careful instructions: keep the men in formation, no hero-tactics, fight as carefully as if it was all a drill. The one advantage to fighting mind-controlled men was that they were slower; it was the difference between knowing what to do and being told what to do—between learned reflex, and something that hasn’t been absorbed bone-deep yet.