Ser Hartmut shook his head. “No. Send something else. These are soldiers, Lord Sorcerer. If you leave them alone, they’ll get you, one way or another. They are cunning and they have thousands of years of experience behind them. I am your only tool against them—your boglins won’t even take up time dying.”

“So you insist,” Thorn said.

“I do. And so much for your vaunted siege train.” Ser Hartmut finished his water and rose.

He was knocked flat by the concussion, and suddenly the world seemed to swim before his eyes.

Men boiled out of the enemy camp like bees from an overturned apiary, and smoke rose, and dust so thick that they could see nothing.

As the dust began to clear, it was obvious that the enemy had formed all his cavalry at the head of his camp and the infantry was busy—on something. There was fire.

“A small token of my efficacy,” Thorn said. “Five hundred weight of rock hurled farther than a man can ride in fifty days.” He shrugged.

“You threw a huge rock into their camp?” Ser Hartmut asked. “Well—look at them now. All formed for an attack. They know their business. Never fought imperials, but one hears things.” He nodded. He motioned to his own men, and Capot appeared in an old arming jacket, smoking a Huran pipe.

“Double the guard. And keep a double watch at all times, with cranequins spanned and ready. Are my orders clear?” Ser Hartmut was warming to the situation. A dire challenge.

He looked up the hill again. “Tomorrow, I’d like to try their works,” he said.

“With your soldiers?” Thorn asked.

“With your bugs,” Ser Hartmut said.

In the morning, Ser Hartmut marshalled the northern army as best he could, in three thick lines that covered the first slope of the green grass of the hills. The first line, according to his notions, was composed of fodder—boglins and sprites and the little rat-like things with enormous teeth that seemed like lightning-fast dogs. In the second line he put all the men except his knights—willing or unwilling—the Huran and the tame Sossag and the other Outwallers who had come for loot, for fame, or for fear. In the third line, he placed all of Orley’s warband, and the great black stone trolls. His own lances were nowhere to be seen.

Despite which, it was a truly fearsome host.

Thorn reached into the aethereal and produced not one, but two great stones that fell amongst the defenders’ works, shattering two days’ work and collapsing one whole front wall of the earthwork that held the right flank of the imperial army closest to the road.

Ser Hartmut released his first line and they went up the great ridge, flowing over the uneven ground like brown oil, the light of the first truly sunny day in a week reflecting from their rigid heads and wing cases.