The Savages mass atop a hill several miles from their camp’s perimeter. Laython and his taskers herd them like cattle from astride their hulking horses, constant jets of steam pouring from their nostrils.

“Spread out!” Laython barks at them, revving his mount and knocking several Savages over as he rides straight through their tightly bundled ranks. “Form a skirmish line! It don’t have to be pretty, just spread the fuck out!”

Laython’s armor is black leather and obviously custom-made for his massive, near-seven-foot frame. It appears to be dozens upon dozens of pieces, like scales, tightly laced together from neck to toe. The clublike mace he wields has been fashioned from black wood to match his armor.

Evie plants herself at the crest of the hilltop and lets the others fan out around her. As the Savages form their jumbled skirmish line, Evie watches several small groups carrying what look like giant octagonal wheels. They load them onto the twenty-foot trebuchets spaced far apart on the line. Each section of the octagons are hollow, with a door just large enough to stuff a full-grown man or woman inside if they were to curl into a ball. Evie watches as their bearers open each of the small doors and leave them that way.

Many of the Savages who are then forced into the human cubbyholes and shut inside belong to the group of elderly and infirm whom Evie identified at the Revel.

Among them, Evie spots the Professor, lazily grasping a short sword with more patina on its blade than steel. No doubt it’ll shatter upon first impact. The entire left side of the Professor’s face is swollen and purple with bright veins of red. She wonders briefly and idly if they beat him out of spite or necessity.

As he tucks himself without complaint into one of the octagon compartments, Evie feels a hollow pang of regret deep in her gut. She’d wanted and hoped for the chance to ask him if anything he’d said to her the night before was the truth.

Not that she could’ve trusted the answer, of course.

Evie has chosen a short single-bladed ax whose haft is crowned with a wickedly edged, rust-covered spike. The underside of the ax head is sharply curved to a deep hook at the end; it’s designed to grip the top of shields and tear them down, exposing the shield bearer to a lethal blow. Evie meticulously sharpened every edge, wrapping the rough wood of the haft in cattle cord to help secure her battlefield grip on the weapon.