“But—but you can’t just leave—” the headman said, as Arcolin lifted the reins and his horse took a step backward.

“My orders from the Cortes Vonja Council are to keep on the move until we drive brigands away,” Arcolin said. “Now they’ve got meat and know we’re in the area, they’ll be away from here. And your two who were in league with them are dead. Go back to work.” He backed his horse another three steps and spoke to Burek and the men. “Come now; we have work to do. Let these farmers do theirs.” He turned his horse in a showy spin and rode off, not looking back until he was sure they were out of earshot. Then he saw the farmers still standing in the road, the other two apparently haranguing the headman.

“That went well, sir,” said one of the five marching alongside.

“I wonder what he’s going to tell his brigand contact,” Arcolin said. “The next one, I mean. What a whey-faced little wiggler he is, too. I’m afraid that village is in for trouble, unless those two force a new selection.” He looked at the sky. The dawn’s limpid blue had faded to a harder sheen. West, wisps of cloud like wing feathers appeared high up. Sweat tickled his scalp under his helmet.

“Rain later today or tomorrow,” he said. “Good thing it wasn’t last night.”

“Do you really think they stole the headman’s bull?” Burek asked.

“No,” Arcolin said. “I think the headman’s bull doesn’t exist. We came through the village—did you see any bull yesterday?”

“Could’ve been out with the cows.”

“Could have. Except we passed cows with a cowherd and two dogs: no bull. I make it a practice to look in the pens in villages we pass, in case we’re accused of stealing livestock. The headman’s house—second on the left—had a stone-walled pigpen. Sow and litter of piglets on one side; a boar on the other. A fenced pen for cows, but no bull. Most of these villages share a bull between two or three of them. There was a bull in that first village we passed yesterday.”

Burek shook his head. “I’ve been with two other companies, and I never knew a captain to notice more than whether the village had enough to feed us. I’d heard the Duke’s Company was different.”

“The Duke always said you couldn’t tell which information was important until you needed it,” Arcolin said. “And we spent years down here, you know. I had time to learn.”

“I will learn,” Burek said.

Not, Arcolin noted, I’d like to learn, or I want to learn, or Teach me, but I will learn. He hadn’t had such a promising junior captain since Ferrault. He wondered suddenly if this was how Kieri had felt after hiring him. He remembered saying almost exactly the same thing, the first time Kieri explained why he’d done something.

“I’m sure you will,” he said to Burek. “Now, tell me what you notice about the fields we pass.”