“Or at least Horse Heaven is my choice,” Rudi said, seeing the lay of those long swells in his mind. “The enemy, the dirty dogs, will have a plan of their own, the which is a reason why we call them the enemy. It’s nicely varied terrain, not too closed in to maneuver freely or use our heavy cavalry, and not so open there’s no element of surprise or choice of ground. They might try to go north of there, up the Yakima, but that would trap them in a cul-de-sac and the Free Cities are too strong to storm with an army still on their flank.”

“It’s rich land, if they’re hungry,” Oak said. To Bjarni: “A great valley, closely tilled—watered by channels from the river, one fortified village and walled town after another, field after field. Densely peopled with strong yeomen, and they good farmers and stubborn fighters both.”

“Rich land but with all that’s edible behind walls,” Rudi said. “Or it will be after my orders are carried out. Taking the Yakima would only make sense in a slow campaign aimed at steady conquest of one bit at a time, but now that the League of Des Moines and the Dominions are marching up their backsides they don’t have that luxury.”

“You think that will make them give you a fight where and when you want it?” Bjarni said. “Letting your enemy set the terms of battle is halfway to a battle lost. If they have good war-captains, they’ll know that.”

Rudi nodded. “They’ll go for our main field army, the beating of which is their only hope of any real victory now. Castles and walled cities can slow and frustrate an invader, but it’s only in concert with an army that they can defeat him. That’s the bait I’ll dangle before them, snatching it away again and again by taking positions too strong to attack as I fall back.”

He smiled. There was something he’d read once . . . and the Sword prompted him. He said something in another language. When the two men looked at him questioningly, he went on:

“In our tongue . . . Those skilled at making the enemy move do so by creating a situation to which he must conform; they entice him with something he is certain to take, and with lures of ostensible profit they await him in strength.”

“That’s sensible,” Bjarni said.

“Sun Tzu generally is, the wit and keen insight of the man.”

“I’ve read him, Dad was big on his Art of War,” Fred noted soberly. “The thing is, Martin read him too. He’s an evil treacherous shit but he’s not stupid.”