The first wave of boglins hit their new defences just after first light. It wasn’t really an attack or even a probe—the boglins had a hard time with the marsh and the ditch at the base of the ridge was worse, already filled with swamp water. They milled about and threw sling stones—a new trick—and made skittering noises.

Then they began to move off into the newly forested land west of the Hole.

By then, the camp—well back from the barriers, between the old village and the old fort—was awake.

Sauce took a pair of lances to the top of the first wall of earth and Mag came up behind her.

Without any drama, she pointed a finger at the ground to the north and there was a flare of heat—the sort of shimmer that warm rock can give on a hot summer day.

Mag smiled. “I have sewing to finish,” she said. She went back to camp.

Young Phillip—one of her Morean knights—looked a little pale.

Sauce made a face. “I used to think Tom was the scariest of the bunch,” she said.

She walked off to look at her pickets.

She had to walk a long way. Given two full days and some farm labour, Ser John had managed a small miracle of construction. The low ridge—not so low in places, either—that hemmed in the Hole on the south and west was now crowned with a long, winding earthworks well-reinforced with lumber, and in front of it the trees were cleared to stumps for almost a hundred paces—right down to the marsh—and then piled beyond in a tangle of spruce and maple.

Closed redoubts watched the ends, with trenches. On the west side, the ridge ran to the very edge of the creek that helped define the position. On the east side, the ridge petered out into a deep, wide bog. Behind her there was the higher ground with the old fort. They didn’t have the manpower to hold it—but it would take a determined assault willing to take heavy losses to get round the east end and past the redoubt—and the covered, secret surprise.

She knew the smell of roast boglin and it was heavy in the air. She wrinkled her nose and exchanged salutes with the armoured men in the south redoubt. They’d clearly stood to arms, and now looked sheepish and bored.

“Plenty of fighting later,” she said. “Christ, only a fool looks forward to it.”

She peered out over the wall. Someone out there was alive—a very accurate sling stone buzzed past her head.

“Fuck me,” she muttered. But she was on display, and she enjoyed the salutes. They never got old. She grinned. “Don’t get hit,” she said. “That’s an order.”

A generation of very young Jarsay knights grinned back at her. She’d been, to all intents, the primus pilus for three weeks. Everyone knew her.

“Don’t stand there like gowps,” she snapped. “Get a couple of archers behind a mantlet and scour the killing ground. You know the drill.”