It would be a game to match wits with Raj Ahten, one he did not want to play. Luck had not favored him. Most of his warriors had been slaughtered. He’d paid for every small victory. His soldiers had slain more than two thousand nomen. He had unhorsed most of the Wolf Lord’s army, and had managed to slay or drive off a number of frowth giants—while a dozen more of the creatures had perished in that insane fire. Dozens of Raj Ahten’s legendary Invincibles had followed Borenson’s men into the woods, and the Invincibles were now so full of arrows that their corpses looked as prickly as hedgehogs.

Yet Borenson had not won a clear victory, despite heavy enemy losses. Raj Ahten had quit hunting Borenson’s men when they got deep into the woods, fearing an ambush. In part, Borenson had hoped that Raj Ahten would brave the woods, where his own men, he felt sure, would have the advantage.

But Borenson also wanted Raj Ahten to fear that ambush, needed Raj Ahten to believe that the woods were full of men. King Orden had often said that even a man with great endowments of wit could be outsmarted, for “Even the wisest man’s plots are only as good as his information.”

So it was that Borenson rode up to the gates of Castle Sylvarresta, reined his horse in at the moat. Smiling.

On the charred wall above the ruined gate towers, one of Raj Ahten’s soldiers waved his own lance overhead three times, an acceptance of Borenson’s request for truce, then waved at him, beckoning him to ride into the castle. The drawbridge was down, its gears and chains melted. One side of the drawbridge was so charred it had a hole in it large enough to let a man ride through.

Borenson stayed where he was, not wanting to deliver messages in private, and shouted, “I’m in no mood for a swim, not in this armor. Raj Ahten, I bear a message for you! Will you face me, or must you hide behind these walls?”

It seemed madness to accuse the Wolf Lord of cowardice, but Borenson had long ago decided that sanity was no virtue in an insane world.

In twenty seconds, when he heard no response, Borenson shouted again. “Raj Ahten, in the South they call you the Wolf Lord, but my lord says you are no wolf, that you are born of a common whippet, and that you have not the natural affections of a man, but instead are given to fondling bitches. What say you?”

Suddenly, atop the wall, stood Raj Ahten, shining like the sun, the white owl’s wings sweeping wide from his black helm. He gazed down, imperious, unperturbed by the insults.

“Serve me,” he said softly, so seductively that Borenson almost found himself leaping from his horse, to fall on one knee.