The one in the lead was Mark Vogeler, his nephew and aide-de-camp. The boy would be eighteen about Christmas, but he was tall and well built for his age; still gawky but when and if he got his full growth he’d look a lot like his uncle, except that his hair was the color of corn tassels and that his snub-nosed face was considerably less battered. The mail shirt and helmet he wore, his shete, tomahawk, the quiver over his back and the laminated recurve bow in its saddle scabbard on his horse, were all of the highest quality and they’d been new that spring.

But they’d seen use since. The long trip from Readstown and several stiff fights had knocked a lot of the puppylike piss and vinegar out of the eldest son of Edward Vogeler; he was no longer quite the brash youngster who’d virtually blackmailed his kin into letting him come along to the war. The grin was still wide and white in his dark-tanned face below the mop of summer-faded hair.

“Reporting, Colonel Vogeler,” he said, saluting and handing over a folded sheaf of papers. With a bow that showed how quickly he’d picked up local custom: “My lord Tucannon.”

The other newcomer was in worn buckskins deliberately stained and mottled in shades of brown and sage-green to make them better camouflage. He was a short brown-skinned man in his thirties with black braided hair and high cheekbones, definitely Indian or mostly so. He bowed as well but remained silent afterwards, squatting with his reins tucked through his belt and munching on a handful of the apricots someone passed him.

“Ah,” Ingolf said, flipping quickly through the papers covered in small, neat handwriting and hand-drawn maps. “Yup, Lady Mary’s report. About three hundred fifty men, Boise light cavalry, regulars, all horse-archers, with a battery of four springalds along with them. Damn, horse artillery. I hate those things.”

Everyone in hearing nodded, including the men-at-arms. Plate would turn most arrows, unless they came from a powerful bow and hit just right. Springalds were like giant crossbows on wheeled carriages, but they threw four-foot bolts powered by an entire set of leaf-springs from the rear suspension of a light truck. They had three times the range of a bow and they’d punch through knight’s armor as if it were made from old tin cans. A good crew could fire nearly as fast as a crossbow, with two men heaving on the cocking levers from behind the steel shield that protected them from arrows.

“They’re advancing in squadron columns—”

Which meant forty or fifty men each.