All of them looked at each other.

Robin, still senior squire after two battles and anxious for knighthood, shook his head. “Bed,” he said.

In a minute, the camp was silent, except for the sigh of the wind and the movement of the rings of sentries.

North of Dorling—Ser Hartmut

The ground sucked at his horse and when he walked to rest the great beast, the ground sucked at his sabatons.

Ser Hartmut had never been anywhere that he hated quite so much as the Wild south of Ticondaga. And his anger grew with each day of chaotic movement, until on the third day after the fall of the great fortress, he forced his tired, wet horse back along the column—really, more like a storm front—to find the shambling stone-cut monster that was his ally.

Hartmut didn’t have subtlety in him. “Is this really the shortest way to Dorling?” he asked.

Thorn was blessedly free of the presence of his dark master. Hartmut would have told anyone—or even fought to the death to prove—that he was afraid of no man and no creature, but he hated being in the presence of the mocking black sprite that was Thorn’s tutor. The thing’s habit of taking the shape of children seemed to mock the whole conduct of war. It was almost worse when he couldn’t see the Satanic thing. Now that he knew, he could always sense…

Thorn stopped and leaned on the massive spear shaft that was his new staff.

“Ser Hartmut, I am as dismayed by our pace as you are. New events have driven us to different courses.”

Hartmut chewed his words as carefully as he could. He missed De La Marche—for all the man’s soft piety, he had been an excellent foil and a pleasant companion. He would have handled this better. He was seldom prone to anger.

The loss of De La Marche—and of both his good squires—had reduced the company of his peers—even near peers—to Kevin Orley, who was quite mad, Cristan de Badefol, who was coarse and vulgar and a braggart, and a dozen like them. Of his own knights, only Ser Louis Soutain was anything close to a gentleman.

But he chewed his words as well as he might. “I have not been informed of any different courses. I think that we would be better served by sharing our knowledge.”

Thorn, who had never relished being any man’s servant, balked. “My master,” he said with unconcealed bitterness, “wants us to have options.”

Hartmut shook his head. “That is very like wanting to be in a state of indecision, Lord Sorcerer. In this case, we cut the road at Dorling or we reap the consequence of facing a united foe.”

Thorn’s inscrutably stone face remained immobile.