“At least five thousand men and a lot of equipment, if you gave me a year,” he said. “Not counting the ones you’d need to besiege the castles around here, or at least solidly invest them. Maybe two years to do a thorough job. Ten, twenty thousand and even more gear if you wanted it done quick and dirty. You’d need good troops you could trust to get out there in small units and get stuck in whenever they could, not just go through the motions when someone higher up was looking. And some engineers to build roads and fortified posts, plus labor. And it’d cost you, money and blood both. That’s natural ambush country, looks like.”

Maugis nodded quietly. They walked on through the town, the baron nodding response to bows and curtsies and salutes; nobody was going to interrupt him, of course. Grimmond-on-the-Wold had something like eight hundred folk in peacetime and many more now. That was big for a village, but not a place that had wholly made up its mind to be a town either, and certainly not even the smallest city.

“I could raid from those hills and tie down that many troops or more,” Maugis said. “I could make trying to move supplies through this country . . . anywhere between here and the Snake River . . . a nightmare of endless harassment. Ambush convoys, kill foraging parties, cut off patrols, burn outposts.”

He turned and gestured to the town and the lands beyond. “I know that this doesn’t look like much to a traveled man,” he said.

“Actually it looks pretty good,” Ingolf said sincerely. “Mary and I were just now saying that we envied you. Well, would envy you if it were peacetime.”

Maugis smiled; it was an oddly charming expression, and made his rather ugly face handsome for a moment.

“Thank you,” he said. “This is my . . . my world, if you know what I mean. My own particular world.”

Ingolf dredged his memory for a word he’d heard; his family were mostly Deutsch if you went back far enough, along with a slew of other things including a lot of Norski. They had preserved a few bits and pieces of that heritage, and not just recipes for bratwurst.

“Heimat,” he said. “An old word. Your heimat is . . . your little country, the first homeland of the heart. The place where your roots are.”

Maugis nodded quickly. “Exactly. I’ve enjoyed my times at Court in Todenangst and Portland, the university in Forest Grove, visits to Walla Walla, tournaments and meetings of the Peers, theatre and concerts, but this place is my home. All of it, and the people are my people.”