Winter grimaced, but truthfully it wasn’t a bad call. If the Deslandai really were going to launch an assault on this quarter of the field, it would be better to be behind the farm’s walls and fences. And if they get guns placed in there, we’d have a hell of a time staying on the ridge.

“I take it things didn’t go as planned,” she said.

“No, sir. He got to the fence line and one of the barns, but the enemy has got the main house. He’s tried two charges, but they can’t get across the courtyard.” Cyte gestured downslope. “And there’s more of them coming, sir.”

Winter looked and saw that she was right. The columns she’d seen forming earlier were advancing, at a measured pace. At least four battalions, plus cavalry and guns. If we’re dug in here, we’ve got a chance of turning them back. She looked over the layout of the farm, rapidly considering. “Cyte, go back to Altoff. He knows you’re with me now. Tell him he’d better listen or I’ll have his hide. I need his guns down here, as quick as he can.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Jane!”

“Sir?” Jane’s tone was acid, and it sent needles through Winter’s heart, but she ignored the feeling.

“Pick your best rider. Have her take Edgar and go back up along the ridge. Find Janus and tell him we’re going to need help over here, sooner rather than later.”

“Right.” A little of Jane’s anger seemed to dissolve. “Jennie! Up here!”

Winter turned back to the farm as Jane dealt with that. The area enclosed by the fence was roughly square, with a barn at the two right-hand corners and the farmhouse in the far left. The yard between, where the chickens had been, was now sown with a new crop of blue-uniformed bodies. Musketry rattled from behind the scanty cover of the fence, and muzzle flashes blazed from every window of the house and around the edges of the farther barn.

When Jane turned back to her, she was ready. “Take four companies and find Sevran. Tell him to wait ten minutes, then try the yard again. I’m going to take the other four and swing around the left, and we’ll hit them from both sides at once.”

Jane looked dubiously as the corpse-strewn yard. “I—”

“Don’t fucking argue,” Winter said. “You say ‘Yes, sir’ and then you damned well do it.”

There was a dangerous light in Jane’s green eyes. “Yes, sir,” she said.

As she turned away, Winter felt her throat go thick. Is this how I lose her? Screaming at her on some battlefield? She swallowed hard and looked away.

*   *   *