“I want to attack,” the captain said. His face said he was in agony. It was all taking too long. “We need the ridge top, or we should retire to the last ridge.” Indeed, they were going downhill—the terrain descended in a series of gentle and steep ridges like ocean waves, all the way to the Albin River six miles away. “But we can do this, right here.”

“This, too, we share,” Ser Tapio said. “I agree.”

The woods were open. The rear of the long column was badly hampered by the marsh and bog around the old beaver ponds, but thousands of animals crashing through the woods make their own road, and it was not as hard at the back as at the front.

“Your people are already on the flanks?”

“Mostly to the west. I will go there. Send me a hundred knights when I wind my horn three times.” Ser Tapio smiled. “You have far more knights than I.”

“Done,” Ser Gabriel said, and they clasped hands. The Faery Knight waved one arm, and bells seemed to ring, and all his knights simply rode away. They were as fast as swallows changing directions—and then they were gone.

“Ser Bescanon—take thirty lances and hold them in reserve for Ser Tapio.” Ser Gabriel’s eyes registered his acceptance of the order and moved on.

The ridge to their front was full of horns. Around them their small army poured from column into line. The company troops did it well, despite the trees—they simply flowed into place. New men were slapped on the back or pushed. There were enough veterans—just—to get the line formed. Ser Milus’s white banda was almost half newcomers, and the red banda not much better. Only Gelfred’s green banda was all veterans.

Cully saw the captain still scribbling. There was fighting off to the left—well away to the left. Horns.

“I think we’ve found their whole force,” the captain said. “I’m sending Sauce for our reserves.”

He was smiling.

Cully hated that smile. “Reserves?” he asked.

The captain smiled that nasty smile. “Haven’t you wondered where my brother’s been, all this time?” he asked.

Cully began to cheer up.

They heard the hollow axe sounds all morning, from the west and south. Hartmut flinched every time the sound came clear. All he could imagine was a long line of forts running all the way across his path—

Before noon, the Dead Tree Qwethnethogs and the scouts of the Huran caught a band of axemen and destroyed them.

After that, there was no holding the army, and it flooded forward into the low hills, up each ridge on its steep face, and then a shallower descent. Hartmut didn’t know the country, but he knew the general lay of the land.

He was concerned at how quickly a few miles of wilderness swallowed their whole force. By how open the woods proved to be.