Some of the hurt weren't so badly off. Bandaged or splinted, limping with a stick or with their arm round a mate's shoulders. Enough to get light duty for a few weeks. Others weren't so lucky. Dogman thought he knew one. An officer, hardly old enough for a beard, his smooth face all twisted up with white pain and shock, his leg off just above the knee, his clothes, and the stretcher, and the two men carrying him, all specked and spattered with dark blood. He was the one who'd sat on the gate, when Dogman and Threetrees had first come to Ostenhorm to join up with the Union. The one who'd looked at 'em like they were a pair of turds. He didn't sound so very clever now, squealing with every jolt of his stretcher, but it hardly made the Dogman smile. Losing a leg seemed like harsh punishment for a sneering manner.

West was down there by the path, talking to an officer with a dirty bandage round his head. Dogman couldn't hear what they were saying, but he could guess the gist. From time to time one of 'em would point up towards the hills they'd come from. A steep and nasty-looking pair, wooded mostly, with a few hard faces of bare rock showing. West turned and caught the Dogman's eye, and his face was grim as a gravedigger's. It hardly took a quick mind to see that the war weren't won quite yet.

'Shit,' muttered the Dogman, under his breath. He felt that sucking feeling in his gut. That low feeling he used to get whenever he had to scout out a new piece of ground, whenever Threetrees called for weapons, whenever there was nothing for breakfast but cold water.

Since he was chief, though, he seemed to have it pretty much all the time. Everything was his problem now. 'Nothing doing?'

West shook his head as he walked up. 'Bethod was waiting for us, and in numbers. He's dug in on those hills. Well dug in and well prepared, between us and Carleon. More than likely he was ready for this before he even crossed the border.'

'He always did like to be ready, did Bethod. No way round him?'

'Kroy's tried both the roads and had two maulings. Now Poulder's tried the hills head on and had a worse one.'

Dogman sighed. 'No way round.'

'No way that won't give Bethod a nice chance to stick the knife right into us.'

'And Bethod won't be missing no chance like that. It's what he'll be hoping for.'

'The Lord Marshal agrees. He wants you to take your men north.' West glared out at the grey whispers of other hills, further off. 'He wants you to look for a weakness. There's no way Bethod can cover the whole range.'