“We’re going to fight the Wild with Wild things inside our own ranks, and on their ground.” Sauce looked at him. “Everything I know about war, I learned from you, Jehan, Cully and Tom, and everything tells me this is the wrong place. In a swamp? In the woods?”

He looked at her and nodded.

“Yes,” he said.

She frowned. “Suddenly, you are the Queen’s Captain,” she said. “I thought we were a free company. On adventure. Making our fortunes. Not making you King.”

“King?” He laughed. “Oh, Sauce, I promise you I do not want to be King of Alba.”

That relieved her. “Or King of the North?” she asked.

“Nor that.” He smiled.

She still thought the smile was too charming and too false.

“What are you after, then?” she asked.

“After the battle,” he said. “There’s so many angles now, I can’t remember them all. Let’s win the battle. Then—we’ll have a command meeting.”

This made her smile. “Unless we’re dead.”

“Right, in which case the meeting is off.” He smiled back, and for a moment, they were who they had once been.

Before he left, the captain spent another hour closeted with Mag. Neither of them shared what had been discussed.

At sunset, the white banda marched into camp from the east, along the same set of low ridges over which Bad Tom and his Hillmen had disappeared. They were on foot and all their wagons were gone—left on the other side of the river to the east.

The celebration was muted, and nearly ruined by the last-light assault of a mixed force of creatures of the Wild. But darkness did not help them negotiate the traps; superior night vision was of little use in seeing stakes dug in days before, and a pair of torsion engines dropped baskets of rocks on the beaten zone.

No Head watched it all from the westernmost tower with a bottle in one hand and a stylus in the other.

Half an hour later he reported to Sauce and Ser John, on the forward wall overlooking the Hole.

“Gelfred says they’re well around us, and working up to an attack on the back of the camp.” No Head opened his wax slate. “I have a whole forest of suggestions and additions to the current scheme.”

Sauce looked smug.

Within ten minutes the whole camp was standing to arms. The farmers were drawn up well back from the walls, with improvised weapons to hand. There were archers in the towers and men-at-arms lining all four sides of the camp wall.

Just at moonrise there was a cacophony of horns. Mag was sewing away, making mess kettle bags for the new kettles at a great rate.

On the wall, Ser Bescanon sounded a horn.

Mag bit off her thread, took up a small piece of char and snapped her fingers. The char burnt to ash.