Sir Guelf Mortimer felt he was doing a good imitation of a brooding falcon as the pedal car rumbled into the Hermiston station and orderlies rushed forward to take the badly wounded away. The brooding was keeping his chatty squires away from him, at least. He hoped they were still smarting from his tongue-lashing.

“Off and down, off and down, clear the line!” someone shouted.

No word from the Ascended Masters, he thought. Was it because I was always with the Odell crowd, or that they don’t have any word for me?

Odo was clinging to him as they jumped off the pedal cab. The boy was shaking and had bruises under his eyes, emphasized by the light of the flaring torches that supplemented the alcohol lanterns; the sun was nearly down, though the western horizon was still eye-hurting crimson. As soon as the Gervais men were clear a party came running up with loaded stretchers.

On another siding, reinforcements were jumping down off a train of eastbound horse-drawn rail wagons and falling into ranks, their three-quarter armor incongruously clean and their eyes wide as they stared about at the filthy blood-splashed scarecrow figures, the limping walking wounded and the grisly shapes on the stretchers. Corvallans, from the Benny the Beaver image on their breastplates; their knockdown pikes or crossbows were still slung over their backs as they formed up and marched away.

“OK, Odo. Tonight you will camp with us. But tomorrow you and Father Stanyon are taking Terry home for burial. I don’t want you slipping out of that.”

And in this heat, we’ll have to get a well-sealed coffin.

His heart ached for the boy as he shook his head, dark greasy hair clinging to his skin, tear tracks down the dirty cheeks, mouth gapping as he yawned so wide Guelf wondered if he’d crack the jaw joint. And while disobedience couldn’t be tolerated, at least he’d done it from an excess of spirit.

“Let’s go find Father Stanyon,” he said firmly, suppressing his own wide yawn.

“Charlmain! You and Brandon get the men bivouacked and set up sentries. I don’t care how safe you feel; we’ve left a lot of angry enemies behind. They thought they were going to swallow us down and they didn’t and they’ll be feeling cheated.”

The squires knuckled their foreheads and went in search of Sir Thierry’s provosts and directions to the campgrounds. Guelf found Stanyon a block away, after pushing his way through streets that were a mass of troops and horses and vehicles almost to the edge of the castle moat; the little town was so insignificant it didn’t even have a wall, and the few locals were like chips on a torrent. One of the warehouses was being used as a field hospital. As he walked into its lantern-lit dimness there was a heavy smell of spoiled blood from the bandages heaped in corners, heat, sweat, pain and disinfectant. Healers from half a dozen of the allied powers were sorting and doing emergency surgery on a set of bloodstained tables. A line of volunteers stood ready to lie down next to the injured and provide transfusions.