Nita Qwan stepped forward and bent his knee to the great duchess, whose axe still slowly dripped gore.

“I declare you and yours free of my holds forever, owing none but the duty of hearth and home and hospitality,” Mogon intoned. “This is a great deed you have done.”

Ta-se-ho spoke up boldly. “We’ll take our reward in food, Duchess. Ten days we’ve lain cold and followed this band over every lake and mountain.”

Mogon reached to her belt. “Here—eat mine own.” She flung him a deerskin pouch of marvellous work, porcupine quill and gold beads together. Then she turned, and one of her people flung her great cloak of feathers—heron, and bluejay, and eagle—over her shoulders and she motioned to Harmodius.

“Today, we have won a petty victory. Now we see what we see.”

And when they had joined the Faery Knight, his long lance of crystal all besmattered with gore, Harmodius asked, “Where is the enemy? Will we pursue?”

The Faery Knight frowned. “Mogon let a few of her own people live. The ressst,” he said, “are dinner.” Harmodius flinched, and the Faery Knight showed his fangs.

“Thisss isss the Wild,” he said. “The losssersss don’t walk away. They’re food.”

Chapter Sixteen

North of Dorling—Ser Hartmut

The army of the Wild came out of the woods behind the Ings of the Wolf like dark water pooling in low ground, and saw the Emperor’s army drawn up on the high ground opposite them, above the Inn itself, covering their camp.

Ser Hartmut gathered a dozen of his best lances and Ser Kevin and rode out along the edge of the long grass to reconnoitre. Minutes later, they retreated into the shadows of the woods with two men and six horses dead, and the screams of the Emperor’s Vardariotes pursued them like laughter.

Ser Hartmut had a brief conference with Thorn and then filled the grass with boglins and other creatures as they came up. The Vardariotes and their psiloi conceded the ground slowly at first, but when one end of the psiloi line was over-run by boglins and eaten, the whole line gave way and the lower fields were quickly cleared.

Ser Hartmut’s sailors and Guerlain Capot’s brigans began to dig a fortified camp on the first good rise, as close to the Emperor’s lines as they dared.

Ser Louis came up, red in the face from a hard pursuit against the elusive Vardariotes. He’d lost no men, but caught no easterners.

“Your face would curdle milk, cousin,” he said, as his squire took his great helm.