“Your Grace, the river convoy is already very large. Ser Ranald suggests that the advance guard take the tide and go.” She looked down at Master Pye, who was watching the apprentices test the cradle for stress. “And begs you release the good prior.”

The queen nodded. “My very thought, Lady Almspend. Ah! Lady Lachlan.”

She went back to her officers. She paused to kiss her son’s head, and then turned to the city officers. “My lords and ladies. I am determined that we will all march today. Tell me of the cost?”

Prior Wishart pointed at the barges. “There is a real risk of defeat in detail,” he said. “Even as it is, we have to fear that our enemy will attempt to divide us, Ser Gavin north of the river and we south of it, and defeat us, first one and then another. Any division in our forces makes us weak.”

“Weaker still if we arrive too late and find Lissen Carak fallen,” she said. “Gentles all, I find this to be very like the fight of two years ago; indeed, it is almost as if the former contest were a rehearsal. But this time we are better prepared: better wagons, better training. Let us march.” She looked at Becca Lochlan. “Where is the Count of the Borders?” she asked.

“Your Grace, he marched west two days ago,” she said. “On the Market Road.”

“Then he will be at Lissen Carak, or near enough,” the queen said. “Surely his force will cover us.”

Wishart shrugged. “Your Grace, anything we do has risk. It is all . . . fortune. And the will of God.”

She nodded sharply. “I trust in the will of God,” she said. “The advance guard will march immediately. All the wagons will go now, empty; I expect them to make Lorica tonight and sixth bridge tomorrow.”

Her logistics plan was simple; but the details were complex, as details always were. She was sending the wagons overland, empty, so that they would be at seventh bridge when the riverboats came up and needed to be carried, with all the goods, past the cataracts. Beside the royal guard and the Order, she was out of crack troops; the chivalry was already in the north with Count Gareth and her brother, Prince Tancred. The militias had been summoned; now they had to assemble. Some had only just arrived home from the last effort, and not since the summer of the great battle in the north, thirty and more years ago, could anyone remember the militia being summoned twice in a summer.

“We will have our most valuable assets strung out on the river and road, and no one to defend them,” Ser Gerald said.