“Sign ’em up,” Sauce said. Both men proved to be farm labourers—men who owned nothing and were almost slaves.

“How’d we get all this farm labour?” she asked Ser John.

Ser John was watching the sky. They had four towers going up, all holding new-built torsion machines. He was wondering where the wyverns were. “The Captain of Albinkirk offered a year’s remission of all taxes for ten days’ digging,” he said.

Sauce grinned. “That Captain of Albinkirk, he’s one smart man.”

A little after two in the afternoon, and the mess kettles were on for dinner. A convoy rolled in from Albinkirk—forty wagons full of food and munitions. Sheaves of new arrows, already on spacers in linen bags, and new tinned-iron kettles. Some new brass kettles made in Genua.

“Miss me?” the captain said, and Sauce threw her arms around him and kissed him. Some of the newer members of the company and some of the knights with Ser Ricar were appalled. Others cheered.

She leaned back to look at him. “You look like you got the cream.”

He laughed. “We’ll see,” he said. “The cream may yet get me. In the meantime…”

He spent two hours with them, outlining the new alliance, quelling their fears of having a Wild ally, and riding along the two ridges south and west of the Hole and one high beech-tree-covered ridge north and west of the little stream.

When he was done, he bowed in the saddle to Ser John. “You’ve done it. It’s beautiful.”

Ser John was hesitant. “I was only going to be here until today—tomorrow at the outside.”

The captain nodded, his eyes on the distant Green Hills. “I expect we’ll fight tomorrow, but the real fight will be the day after.” He kept watching the hills. “I may have this all wrong. The sorcerer can still just go north into the woods and come at us on the old Ticondaga road or across West Kanata.”

Sauce raised an eyebrow. “But?”

“But he has much greater supply problems than we do,” the captain said with his breezy confidence.

“A million monsters…”

“They still have to eat. And no supply train, no wagons, nothing.” The captain was watching the woods. “He can go around—but will he have an army at the end?”

Ser John whistled. “You give me joy,” he said.

The captain shook his head. “He could still decide to march into Morea. Then—” He sighed. “Then it’s all for nothing, and we start making stuff up.” He looked down at the first ridge, below them. “Every attack by boglins makes me happy. Bad Tom ought to reach you at sunset.”

Sauce started. Ser John raised both eyebrows.