Oak grinned. “You ask the right questions, Bjarni King,” he said. “And the answer is as many as we can. Also the eòghann run out to scavenge as many spent ones as they can from the field, when it’s safe. Food can be foraged at a pinch and you can fight barefoot or even bare-arsed if you must, but a cloth yard arrow needs well-seasoned straight-grained wood for the shaft, good flight feathers from a goose and glue and thread for fletching, horn for the nock and fine hard steel for the bodkin, and all put together with skill in the making. Fashioning arrows is one of the tasks we do in the Black Months, when the farm work is less. It’s part of the Chief’s Portion.”

“The scot, you’d say,” Rudi amplified. “The tax.”

“And nobody skimps the work, when their lives and families might rest on it,” Oak said. He turned his face to Rudi. “And another four thousand archers in the forts in the Cascades, the ones who can fight but aren’t up to much hard marching for one reason or another. The enemy’s withdrawn some men from overmountain and the Bend country, but not all of them.”

Soberly, he met Rudi’s eyes. “This is all we have, High King. If we lose it the Clan dies.”

Rudi nodded, equally grave; all that was a fifth of the Clan’s total population, and a much higher share of its adults.

“I know. It’s still our best chance. Our archers and the Association’s knights are the biggest edges that we have, and sure, I intend to wring every scrap of advantage from both that I can.”

Then he took up a skewer of the wether’s flesh, biting off a chunk. The tender meat was juicy-pink in the center and Judy Barstow’s sauce, tangy with garlic and sage and peppers, was crusted on the seared outer surface. It would have been finer still for marinating a while, but it was better than ample for a war-camp.

“See you, Oak,” he said, gesturing with the remainder of the kebab, “I’ve read your reports on the fighting you did in the mountains west of Bend while I was gone on the Quest. You beat them handily, but don’t judge all that they can do by what happened when they had no choice but to charge you on your own ground in the passes. Or by the poor and pitiful performance of hungry frightened plainsmen clumping in high-heeled rawhide boots through a strange snowbound forest.”

Oak nodded. “From first to last the CUT’s horse-archers were a pain in the arse at Pendleton,” he said. “Much more so when we were forced to retreat, and they had room to maneuver fast. They’re hard trouble in any sort of open country, and that is a fact. That’s how my father died.”