Mary Vogeler, née Havel, laughed beside him. “What do you think the odds are they’ll take any prisoners?”

“Fucking zip, honey,” he said. “But they’ll collect every single horse, you betcha.”

“Ah . . . Colonel . . . Iron Bear?” the Yakima scout asked.

Mary answered him. “We spent some time with the Oglala last year. A good deal happened. I’m Zintkazawin, for example. Yellow Bird.”

She touched the wheat-blond hair that rested in a tight, complex fighting braid at the back of her neck below her light helmet; the ribbon that ran through it helped secure the patch over her missing eye. The other was a bright cornflower blue, in a face that was smoothly regular in a chiseled Nordic way.

“Rudi . . . High King Artos . . . is Strong Raven. It’s a considerable honor to be taken in by the Lakota,” she added sincerely.

Tom Yallup looked after the Sioux war party. “They really are some serious’skins,” he said again.

“Tell me,” Ingolf said. “I spent the first four years after I left home fighting them, and I never, ever want to have to do that again. It’s a lot more fun having them on my side.”

He turned and beckoned. Major Will Kohler came up beside him and drew rein.

“Yah hey, Colonel?” he said, in a heavier version of Ingolf’s rasping, singsong Richlander accent.

“Let’s get our Cheeseheads ready,” he said. “We’ll be moving out in about twenty minutes.”

There were still three hundred and sixty of the First Richland Volunteer Cavalry alive and fit for duty, after the long trip from the Kickapoo through the Midwest and the Dominions with Rudi and the rest of them. Their round shields were painted brown, with an orange wedge, the national colors of the Free Republic of Richland.

Like the Sioux contingent they were a symbol, in this case of the alliance against the Prophet between Montival and the League of Des Moines that encompassed the Midwest realms and their various Bossmen. They were also all volunteers, wild young men of the Farmer and Sheriff classes for the most part. Major Kohler had been the chief arms instructor for the Vogeler family Sheriffdom in Readstown; he was the oldest man in the regiment at forty, and he was a big part of why they’d shaken down very well. The other was the educational value of hard experience.

Educational for the ones that lived, Ingolf thought grimly. There were four hundred thirty of them when we left. But they’re not complaining.