“Maneuver where, sir?” she said. “Given the size of the fortress and the garrison, even dug in we’d need a sizable force here to keep them in check. That would make us substantially smaller than the field marshal’s army, and he’ll have the advantage that we’ll be tied to the siege. If he gets too close to the fortress, he could combine with the garrison and crush us.”

“Di Pfalen outnumbered us,” one of the royal colonels said, with a touch of condescension in his voice. “And we’ve whipped him twice now. This Jindenau will fare no better.”

Janus has whipped him, Winter thought. My soldiers and I have whipped him, marched through hell and mud to turn up on the enemy flank and beat three battalions to give the cavalry a shot at his rear. Where were you? Up on the hills, watching the artillery do the work?

It was unfair, she realized. Men had fought all along the line, though casualties had admittedly been light among the troops nearest the Girls’ Own, where the Hamveltai line had given way. On the other side, where di Pfalen had led his initial attack, only desperate fighting had kept him from pushing the defenders off their hilltops, and those troops had retreated in good order when the rest of the line collapsed. It was largely thanks to the rearguard action of these disciplined Hamveltai regulars that di Pfalen had an army left at all.

But it hurt Winter to watch the way the men all around the circle nodded, with solemn pomposity. Another Royal, a big man with heavy sideburns and a neat mustache, said, “Don’t worry. The general will find a way.”

None of them were in Khandar, Winter realized. Fitz Warus, now commanding the Colonials, was conspicuous by his absence; she guessed he was down organizing the construction of the trenches. Give-Em-Hell was off with his heavy cavalry, who’d taken serious losses in their hell-for-leather ride. The Preacher and Colonel d’Ivoire were back in Vordan.

None of these men had seen Janus when his back was truly to a wall, as Winter had, the night of Adrecht’s mutiny and then again in the Desoltai temple. They thought that there would always be another scheme, another gambit, that his calm facade came from deep-down certainty that he would come out on top. Winter knew different. She’d seen Janus run out of tricks, trapped under a statue and facing certain death at the hands of the Penitent Damned Jen Alhundt. His calm had never wavered. When the day comes that he throws the dice once too often, you won’t see it on his face.