He sent a steady stream of mounted messengers back to Albinkirk.

Morning wore on, and still the Moreans came in—more than two thousand already.

“Time to go,” Sauce said.

Ser John shook his head. His mind was made up, now. He knew what he was about. “Not as long as we can cover these poor bastards, Sauce. Two days or three, and we’ll have saved enough to make an army.” He pointed at a file of Morean women who’d stolen horses in the rout and ridden for two days. “That woman says they were saved by what they called ‘the rearguard.’ So out there somewhere is a formed body, still fighting.”

“An army of wretched men who ran away?” she asked with contempt. “And a handful dying…”

“Sooner or later, everyone runs, even you.” Ser John made a face. “They lost everything. That makes them very dangerous. And every day that the sorcerer doesn’t come down this road is a day we get more of them. And then…” He paused. “There’s your Ser Milus. Where is he?”

Sauce chewed on the end of her hair. “That’s a very good question,” she said. “Two hundred lances, and they wasn’t in the rout. Where are they?”

The second full day at the Hole, and the insects were the worst they’d ever been—clouds of mosquitoes and some black flies rising like an evil miasma off the swamp water. From the north, no news. More refugees, and a steady trickle of desperate routiers, looking for salvation beyond hope and finding it in Sauce’s hard-eyed pickets.

At noon, a single rider came in from the west, moving at a dead gallop with three riderless horses behind him.

“Galahad D’Acon, as I live and breathe,” Ser John said, offering the boy a glass of the diminishing store of red wine.

The young man took the wine, drank it straight off, and sat rather suddenly. “The Queen is one day short of Albinkirk. She’ll reach it tonight,” he said. “She’s raised the Royal Standard at Sixth Bridge, and the Red Knight’s got five hundred lances. He says, he asks all your intelligence and all your guidance.”

Sauce leaned in. “He didn’t say, get your arse back to Albinkirk?”

Galahad managed not to smile. “He said that as a veteran captain, Ser John doubtless had his reasons, and would he be so kind as to communicate them. The Queen adds she has made you Count John of Albinkirk.” D’Acon reached into his belt pouch and took forth a chain, which he deftly put over the older man’s head.

Ser John was struck dumb. A life of the comparative indifference of princes had not prepared him for any kind of promotion.

“Go to bed, son,” Ser Ricar said to the young man, “and we’ll send a rider—”