The cohort moved on, the injured horse tied to the first wagon. Arcolin glanced at Burek, now on a stocky roan. He had the inward expression of a man arguing with himself. Arcolin cleared his throat, and Burek looked up. “We’re not going to make it two villages down the road today,” he said. “We lost two sunhands to that bit of excitement.”

“I’m sorry,” Burek said. “My horse—”

“It wasn’t your horse,” Arcolin said. “We needed to clear that lookout point. Is that the first horse you ever bought yourself?”

“Yes. Well, I bought them both at the same time.” He patted the roan’s neck.

“Our surgeon’s experienced. If he says the horse will live, the horse will live.”

Burek took a long breath. “I believe him, but—horses don’t have choices.”

“I’m not sure,” Arcolin said. “We train them, yes, and we expect them to go where we direct, but they come with minds, and they choose to trust us or not.” He kept scanning the road, the land to either side, checking the scouts for signals. Burek looked aside now, obviously doing the same.

“Where will we camp, then?” he asked.

“We have a reason to be slow,” Arcolin said. “We got one of their spies; they would have more than one. If they go looking for their man, and find all that blood, they may think we have wounded. I think we’ll camp before we reach the next village.”

“Less than a day’s march?”

Arcolin smiled. “We’ll find a nice obvious fallow field. Send a party down to get water, have them talk about wounded men. We should cut their trail there; if they aren’t using the stream for hidden access, I’ll be very surprised. Look at the sky.”

Burek looked up. Clouds had thickened, the early feather-clouds followed by a thicker layer moving from the west. “Rain by morning,” he said.

“And they won’t expect us to move,” Arcolin said. “We make camp early, a good strong barrier, then put the men to rest. Come dark and the rain—well, we’ll see what word we get from those we send down to the stream.”

By midday, the sun was hidden behind the gathering clouds; the light dimmed and haze blurred the line of woods. The ground rose a little to their right, a low hump, and the road curved a little to the left. “The stream turns here,” Arcolin said. “There used to be a wide flattish area—there—” He pointed. “More than one company camped there, years past. You can still see the outline of a ditch.”

A damp gust came from the west, bringing out all the smells of the land. Arcolin turned in the saddle. “The old campground,” he said to Stammel. “Rain’s coming; we’ll stop here and set up before it starts.” He raised his arm; the scouts raised theirs; he signaled them to stay in place for the time being.

By the time the first wisps of rain touched the canvas, the camp was completed: a line of fresh stakes in the old ditch, whose perimeter was too large for one cohort to defend otherwise, an inner perimeter of brush, the jacks trench, the enclosure for the animals. Arcolin had a shelter rigged up for Burek’s horse, poles roofed with brush. The water party returned from the stream to report a beaten trail, hoofmarks and bootmarks both, on both sides.