“Gonna rain for sure,” Tom Lantorn said at his side. “Look—woods is full o’ men.”

It was true. There were men with axes and shovels all along the road’s edge.

By the time the sun was well up, they halted in a clearing that had firepits already dug. The Ticondaga road continued off to the north, towards Big Rock Lake. But a new road was opening, headed back north and east.

There was firewood stacked by each pit—good hardwood twigs and branches, carefully broken up and neatly piled. Men swung down, pages collected the horses, and women appeared out of the forest.

Sukey was there with twenty baggage wagons. “Don’t get fresh,” she said to Cuddy. “They ain’t our girls, they’re farm girls. Got me?”

The farm girls cooked—an enormous breakfast of fatback and eggs and spiced tea, a company favourite since Morea.

Cuddy paused at Wilful’s fire. “We’re fightin’ today,” he said.

Wilful ate the excellent eggs and nodded. “Guess so.” Good food was a traditional sign of a dust-up ahead.

Cuddy nodded. “Don’t forget to duck,” he said. He moved on down the line, checking fires.

A little behind him came the captain and Sauce and Ser Bescanon.

“Just a little trick to save some time,” he said at every fire. “I thought you’d all be pleased if we could just win, and be done.”

Men would laugh, and women, too.

“I thought we all needed out of the swamp,” he said at one fire.

“I needed a morning ride,” he laughed at another.

“I brought my falcon—didn’t you bring yours?” he said to Wilful Murder.

“I’m looking for the Loathly Lady,” he cracked to Tippit, who shook his head.

All the while, they could hear the axes sounding in the woods.

North and East of Gilson’s Hole
Thorn and Ser Hartmut

Hartmut had made a model. He’d crawled through muck once and sent other men during each of the attacks and he had a fair idea of the full extent of the entrenchments covering the maze of pathways around and through the Hole.

“This is the centre of their defence,” Hartmut said. His audience included two daemon-mothers, as he’d called them, and all his own captains, and Thorn. One old wyvern—Sylch, the leader of one of the wings of wyverns—attended, but paid no attention, instead picking constantly at something between the spread talons of its right foot. The two useful warlords of the Huran were present, Black Blanket and Shag-an-ho, both keen men who he could almost like.

And Orley.

Orley held too much ops. It was clear that something had been done to him, and it made men shy of him. He now had black antlers growing from his head. He didn’t even seem to know.

Hartmut tried to ignore whatever was wrong with Orley. He spoke directly to Thorn.