Thorn listened to the benighted children cackle and thought, He has, somewhere, lost a battle. And he means to betray me. He is not God, nor yet Satan.

I can do this. Very well.

“We must march to Dorling,” Thorn said to Ser Hartmut. “As soon as we can.”

Ser Hartmut chuckled darkly. “Perhaps when all the women are dead and the fires are out, you’ll get this—horde—to move again. My experience is that most creatures, and not just men, take what they can and return home. Most creatures do not see war as a means to an end. It is merely an end.”

Indeed, over the next day, almost as many creatures of the Wild left his army as joined it. New creatures and bands of men came in every day—Outwallers, bandits, cave trolls, small tribes of boglins under their shamans and many of the bigger creatures, too—a whole flight of wyverns Thorn had never seen before, from far to the north, and a new, strong band of wardens, big, heavily built saurians from north of the Squash Country—hereditary enemies of Mogon’s and her ilk.

Many of the northern Huran who had come as volunteers left; some in disgust, and some merely because they had good loot, or a captive to adopt or torment.

Despite the shifting, Thorn’s host was immense, and the loot of Ticondaga could not hold them long. Nor feed them. Hartmut’s men and the sailors made a camp and fortified it, ate from their own stores and refused to share with any but Orley’s warband.

Orley’s warband were now so well armed and armoured that they appeared a regiment of dark knights with scars and tattoos and deerskin surcoats. Most had heavy bills, or axes, and some carried crossbows as well. Kevin Orley was already a name. Men flocked to his banner now, and he called himself the Earl of Westwall. The armoured fist of the Orleys now floated over the smoking ruins of Ticondaga.

Ser Hartmut was a good teacher in the ways of war, and Thorn listened to him as he planned. Then he ordered his horde to break up—to feed off a larger swathe of the Adnacrags and to inflict more terror and more damage.

“Meet me under the Ings of the Wolf’s Head in five days,” he said, his voice like the growl and roar of summer thunder. “And we will take Dorling and feast again.”