“May I strongly suggest we turn back east and march as quickly as we may to Dorling?” he said. “And where in all the names of hell is your master?”

Thorn could not shrug, but the stone sticks of his limbs rattled and the helixes that powered his great arms and legs slipped and clicked. “He has other concerns besides us,” he said.

Hartmut’s eyes narrowed. “Pass this message on, Lord Sorcerer. I am here on a mission for my prince. For all the vast numbers of things that slither and hop and fly, I’ll note that my knights and my sailors seem to bear the brunt of the actual fighting, and from this I deduce that my services remain vital. Unless you and your master wish to continue without us, I strongly recommend we have a council, choose an objective, march east and defeat the Emperor before he joins with all the other forces gathering out there, according to your own intelligence, sir.” Hartmut’s voice rose as he went on—iron filled it. “Do I make myself clear?”

Thorn’s eyes were not stone. They held no anger—only what appeared to be immense weariness. “I will pass your message when my master returns,” he allowed. “As to your services—this is now the mightiest host of the Wild gathered in many years—indeed, in centuries, here, or so all my arts tell me. Perhaps my master will feel he can be rid of you. Perhaps he will choose to be rid of you himself.”

Hartmut snorted. “Yes, all your creepers and slithers will hold up so well against a charge of knights. And which of you has the experience to make a plan of campaign—aye, or alter one?” He snorted again. He bowed sketchily, and walked back to his own camp, where two of his pages had slung a sort of hammock between two dry trees over the bog.

Gilles, one of the more senior sailors, bowed and handed him wine silently.

Hartmut sipped the wine. “I think our captains are fools,” he said.

Gilles’s shock showed in his face.

Hartmut laughed, a sour laugh. “I have to talk to someone, Gilles.”

Later, in the rainy dark, Ash manifested very fitfully and agreed to allow Hartmut and Thorn to turn east against Dorling.

“I can’t even find the bitch,” Ash shouted into the darkness. “Who is she?” But then he seemed to make a full recovery and became an attractive young woman with a strange concavity—a horrible one—in her back.

“If we go to Dorling, perhaps I can force my recalcitrant kin into the light. If he fights to protect his own, I’m justified in eating him, and if he won’t…” Ash made an odd sound.