“Should we summon Uncle Wolf for you, my Prince?” the gun captain asked.

  Ptosphes shook his head. “No. Just let me sit down and catch my wind.”

  He lowered himself on to an upended powder barrel and was about to light his pipe when he remembered what he was sitting on. The gunners and sentries, he noticed, had returned to their work as soon as they knew he needed no help.

  Good men, and more than ever a pity that they had to stand here and face certain death even if most of them were like him, a bit long in the tooth. At least they were the last good men he’d be leading to their doom. No more battles like Tenabra, to haunt him during the long winter nights. Kalvan and Rylla wouldn’t be so lucky, and Kalvan at least liked such work even less than Ptosphes. Kalvan would just have to endure Rylla’s tongue on the subject, as Ptosphes had endured Demia’s.

  Ptosphes chuckled, as he thought of Rylla’s mother for the first time in nearly a moon. Rylla had much of her mother in her, both the strengths and the tongue and temper. Ptosphes remembered Demia asking (at the top of her lungs) whether he hated war too much to hold even the little Princedom of Hostigos.

  Well, she’d been right in a way. He would have lost even that to Gormoth of Nestor, for not wanting to fight the battles of Styphon’s House, if the gods hadn’t sent Kalvan. Why, then, had those same gods turned their faces away when he needed their help most? What had he or Kalvan done to earn their wrath?

  Great Dralm, I ask nothing for myself. Let your wrath fall on me, and spare Kalvan, Rylla, and my granddaughter Demia.

  Ptosphes’s breath came more easily now, and he badly wanted that pipe. He rose and was turning toward the stairs when he saw a horseman riding uphill toward the castle. He wore armor but no helmet, and a sash with Prince Phrames’s colors. Probably one of Phrames’s loyal Beshtans.

  “Ahoooo! Prince Ptosphes! Prince Phrames has sent me back to warn you. The Styphoni are on the march once more. Their scouts are barely a candle from Hostigos Town!”

  “Thank you, and carry my thanks to Prince Phrames.” So the siege begins even sooner than we expected.

  The trooper made no move to turn his mount. Ptosphes glared down at him. “No, you can’t come into the castle. Your Prince and your Great King need you more than I do.”

  “Prince–”

  “Now, Dralm-damn you, turn that horse around and get it moving! If you’re not gone before I count to ten you’ll be the first casualty of the siege of Tarr-Hostigos.”

  Ptosphes drew his pistol but his roar had already startled the horse into movement. It wheeled, nearly losing its footing on the steep slope, then broke into a canter. By the time Ptosphes had counted to five, it was out of pistol range. The Beshtan was still looking back at the castle. Ptosphes hoped he would turn around and look where he was going before he rode into a ditch.

  Once his pipe was drawing well, Ptosphes walked around the walls to where he had a good view to the southeast. That was the likely direction for the Grand Host, or at least where he hoped most to see them. Anyplace else would mean they had a too-godless-good chance of cutting off at least Kalvan’s rearguard.

  The southeast was empty of smoke clouds, and so were all the other directions. Were the Styphoni advancing along roads where there was nothing left that even a fanatical believer would consider worth burning? Or was the vanguard mercenaries, who would be thinking of having roofs over their heads and food in their bellies during the siege?

  Tarr-Hostigos should have a bit of time before its walls had to be manned and kept manned until the Styphoni stormed them. Plenty of time, for what Ptosphes intended.

  He pointed the stem of his pipe at the nearest sentry. “Take a message to Captain-General Harmakros. Summon everyone in the castle except the sentries to the outer courtyard.”

  “Every–?” the man began, then broke off at Ptosphes’s look. “Everyone. Captain-General Harmakros. Yes, my Prince.”

  The soldier hurried off, as if he wanted to open the distance between himself and his Prince before Ptosphes showed any more signs of madness.

  Ptosphes followed at a more leisurely pace.

  III

  By the time the garrison was gathered in the outer courtyard, the sun was high overhead. Even the twenty-foot walls cast short shadows. Ptosphes sweated in his armor, wishing the laggards would hurry and resting his hand on the hilt of his sword.

  It was a newly forged Kalvan-style rapier, balanced for fighting on foot but quite long enough for his purposes now. The Great Sword of Hostigos, which he’d belted on the day he was proclaimed Prince, was on its way westward with Kalvan and Rylla. His grandson would need that Sword some day, when he ruled a realm so huge that Old Hostigos would barely rank as a respectable Princedom.

  If the gods are merciful.

  Ptosphes saw no more men joining the crowd. He drew the sword and raised it overhead in both hands. Sunlight blazed from the sted.

  “Men of Hostigos. You all know why you are here. You all were told, when you offered to hold Tarr-Hostigos until our Great King and his family might reach safety. Every one of you has already earned honor in the eyes of Dralm Allfather, Galzar Wolfshead, and the other true gods, the gratitude of your Prince and Great King, and the goodwill of your comrades.

  “Styphon’s Grand Host is approaching faster than we thought. Within a candle, two at most, this castle will be surrounded by the mightiest army in the history of the Great Kingdoms. For every one of us, there will be a hundred of the enemy. When they camp, a mouse won’t be getting out of this castle.

  “Any man who wants to leave can still do so. I’ll say nothing against him nor let anyone else say a word. He’ll have to hurry, to catch up with our rearguard before nightfall, but there’s an open road for any who want to take it.’’ He pointed toward the castle gate with his sword.

  “For those who stay—you all know what kind of quarter Styphon’s dogs gave us at Ardros. The lucky ones will have a quick death. The rest will have an appointment with Roxthar’s Unholy Investigation.”

  A few hollow laughs sounded from the ranks; most faces were set and pale. All knew what had happened to the Hostigi prisoners after Ardros Field; few had not lost kin or friends in that butchery. Most of the prisoners not slaughtered outright were in the hands of the Investigation, doubtless envying their dead comrades.

  Ptosphes lowered his sword and strode to the door of the woodshed on one side of the courtyard. Then he drew a line with the sword’s point, through the dirt and straw covering the flagstones of the courtyard, from the woodshed to the blacksmith’s forge on the other side. He then took a deep breath, sheathed his sword, and turned to face his men.

  “All who want to stay—cross over this line and join me. Those who want to die somewhere else—stay where you are!”

  Silence. Ptosphes could hear the stamping of horses from the stables on the far side of the courtyard. An unnaturally complete silence to be hanging over five hundred men. No one coughed, no one shuffled his feet. Ptosphes could have sworn some had ceased to breathe.

  A thickset man in battered armor pushed his way from the rear into the open. Ptosphes tried not to stare too hard. It was Vurth.

  Vurth, the peasant who’d been Kalvan’s first host in this land, who owed his life and his family’s to Kalvan’s fighting skill. Who’d sent word of the Nostori raiders to Tarr-Hostigos, so that Rylla could lead out the cavalry who cut off the raiders and found Kalvan.

  Vurth, a peasant who might really be called Dralm’s first chosen tool for bringing about everything which had happened since that spring night almost four years ago. Ptosphes wondered briefly what Patriarch Xentos would have to say about the theological propriety of that notion—if presiding over the squabbles of the League of Dralm in far-off Agrys City left him any time for such matters.

  Much good may that do Xentos in the eyes of the gods, when the League sends only words of condolence instead of soldiers and muskets to those who fight its battles against Styphon.

  Ptosphes examined the gray-haired peasant. His clothes and face were caked with mud and powder smoke, one shoulder was bandaged, and he limped. He wore the breastplate of some Harphaxi nobleman, once etched and gilded, now hacked and tarnished, over his homespun smock. On his head was a battered morion helmet, on his feet cavalry boots from two different corpses. He still carried the cavalryman’s musketoon he’d acquired the night of Kalvan’s coming, and both it and the powder flask at his belt were clean.

  “First Prince, Captain-General Harmakros, people,” Vurth began. “This isn’t really a Council, so maybe I don’t have the right to start off, as if I was Speaker for the Peasants like Phosg, Dralm keep him. I think I’ve a right to be heard, though.”

  Ptosphes would have cut down anyone who disagreed. The men saw this, and Vurth went on.

  “Prince, most of us here either can’t run, don’t want to run, or don’t have anywhere to run to. My farm has burned, my wife is dead, and one son too. The other son’s off with King Kalvan, in the Royal Dragoons, and my son-in-law Xykos is Captain of Queen Rylla’s Lifeguards. Dralm keep all the daughters who ran off with mercenaries.

  “Styphon’s taken or chased off everything I had except my life. All I want to do with what’s left of it is kill Styphon’s dogs until they kill me. I’m too old to go climbing trees or hide in caves like a thief, even for that. I’d rather sit here and kill the bastards in comfort!”

  Vurth shouldered his musketoon and stepped forward across the line before anyone could cheer.

  Ptosphes felt his eyes burn and quickly blinked back the threatening tears. He stepped up beside Vurth and put his arm around the peasant’s shoulders. Any land that bore men like this would be barren ground indeed for Styphon’s House. Such men could be killed; they could not be frightened.

  Harmakros’s voice cut through the new silence.

  “Lift that litter, you fools! You don’t have to stay yourselves!”

  The bearers’ reply was nearly inaudible and totally disrespectful. They had the Captain-General across the line before Ptosphes stopped grinning.

  Another man stepped out, then two more, then five, then a band of ten, then a band too numerous to count, and after that it was a steady stream. Ptosphes saw one gray-haired man telling a club footed boy no more than ten to stand where he was, then step out. The boy looked sullenly after his grandfather until he was sure the man couldn’t see him, then slipped across the line.

  Ptosphes turned his back on the men. He didn’t want them to see his face until he could command it as a captain and a Prince ought to. By the time he turned around, the space on the other side of the line was empty.

  Ptosphes ran his eyes over the garrison, with the care of a man trained at the quick counting of large masses of men. There’d been just over five hundred before. No doubt a few had slipped off, perhaps as many as a man could count on his fingers and toes. Call it four hundred and eighty left behind, quite enough to do all the work Styphon’s Grand Host would allow.

  Ptosphes was fumbling for words of thanks when a sentry on the keep shouted. “Prince Ptosphes! Enemy scouts in Hostigos Town! On the east side, cavalry with two guns.”

  Guns up with the scouts meant they had orders to fight instead of hit and run. Who would have such orders? Perhaps the Zarthani Knights…

  Ptosphes swallowed; the lump in his throat twitched but remained where it was. “What colors?” he managed to shout.

  “King Demistophon’s and a mercenary company’s. Looks like a rearing white horse on a blue field.”

  The lump shrank. Mercenaries wouldn’t burn a town they expected to provide them with dry beds and hot food, unless they had other orders. Such orders might not be obeyed, either, unless the man who gave them was watching.

  With Grandbutcher Soton not up yet and Phidestros himself a mercenary, there might be no such man here. If Soton arrived after the Grand Host’s advance guard had settled in—well, making mercenaries in another king’s pay burn their own shelter and food was a task Ptosphes wouldn’t wish even on Soton.

  IV

  Grand Captain-General Phidestros of Hos-Harphax felt his guts twist as the vanguard of his Iron Band rode by a burning farmhouse. A child lay on the steps, skull split.

  In the farmyard itself, three of Roxthar’s Holy Investigators were “questioning” a Hostigi woman, no doubt the child’s mother. The Investigators wore hooded white robes with a red sun-wheel over the breast. The robes were well stained with mud and blood, some of the blood long dry.

  “They can fight women and children well enough!” growled Grand Captain Kyblannos, commander of the Iron Band. “Where were Styphon’s swine when we charged Kalvan’s artillery at Ardros Field!”

  Phidestros leaned out of his saddle to grip his friend’s hand before he could draw a pistol and do something foolish. Not that half the Iron Band and Phidestros himself didn’t feel the same…

  Phidestros shut his ears against the woman’s screams. Why in the name of every god couldn’t the Styphoni at least find more private places to torture and maim? It was Roxthar, of course—Roxthar, with the fanatic’s blindness to the opinions of others and total sense of his own Tightness. He’d still better learn discretion, before half the Royal Army of Harphax and more than half the mercenaries started hunting Investigators instead of Hostigi.

  Phidestros led veterans, men accustomed to danger, wounds, and death, for themselves and for others. He didn’t lead butchers who reveled in killing like weasels among turkey chicks!

  Curse and blast the Holy Investigation and all its works! They were dragging honorable soldiers down into the same kind of sty they enjoyed, without doing Styphon’s House on Earth all that much good. These priests seemed to forget too easily what soldiers learned young if they wished to grow old: men made desperate by fear will fight to the last.

  Phidestros twisted his head and flexed his shoulders as much as his armor would allow, to ease the tautness. He should be the happiest man in the Great Kingdoms, yet he felt more fear of the future than he had ever felt of Kalvan.

  Kalvan was not invincible. Ardros Field proved that. The greatest victory since Erasthames the Great defeated the Ruthani Confederation at Sestra more than four centuries ago, and won by a man who three years ago was lucky to count two hundred soldiers following his banner! A victory so great that the Grand Host had already released some of its mercenaries and set others to garrisoning captured castles. Five thousand of the best were hard on the heels of the fleeing Royal Army of Hos-Hostigos.

  Phidestros knew he should be riding with those men, instead of playing steward to Archpriest Roxthar and his Investigators. Let Grand Master Soton invest Tarr-Hostigos while Phidestros pressed the pursuit until Kalvan was no more! As long as Kalvan was alive, he might rise again. A man who could conjure a Great Kingdom out of not much more than the gods’ own air was no ordinary foe.

  But try telling that to anyone else, including Grand Master Soton, who ought to know better! Phidestros could not understand why Soton deferred so much to Roxthar. The Grand Master was not only the highest-ranking soldier of Styphon’s House, he was an Archpriest in his own right, the Investigator’s equal in priestly rank.

  A mystery, and one that demanded an answer soon. Otherwise they’d never run that wily fox Kalvan to earth before he found another burrow.

  It would not be an answer easily come by, either. Undue curiosity about the affairs of the Investigation was a short road to a charge of “heresy.”

  The Iron Band started down the last slope into Hostigos Town, laid out on its alternating hills and dales. In the distance, Phidestros saw the Kettlepot Mountains and Hostigos Gap, with Tarr-Hostigos perched atop two formidable mountains to the right of the Gap.

  The first mountain held the main castle with its great keep surrounded by walls and gun towers. The second and higher peak held a tower with its own walls.

  Removing Tarr-Hostigos from the path of the Grand Host was not going to be as simple as taking a splinter from a child’s foot, regardless of what Roxthar thought. If Phidestros had his choice, he would leave a detachment to blockade the castle and let starvation do the rest.

  But he was merely a Grand Captain-General, in a war run by priests. Also a Captain-General who answered to a Great King who’d mortgaged everything but his concubines’ shifts (if they had any) to Styphon’s House!

  It was time to send the priests back to their temples and the counselors back to their castles so the soldiers could go on with finishing off Kalvan.

  As they rode down toward Hostigos Town, Phidestros was pleased to see only two columns of smoke rising from it. There’d be dry beds at least for the next quarter-moon.

  A rider galloped up, shouting for Phidestros. From his silvered armor and black-caparisoned horse with a silver sun-wheel on each quarter, he was a Knight of the Holy Lance.

  “Hail, Grand Captain-General Phidestros! I am Commander Rythar of the Holy Lance, with a message from Grand Master Soton.”

  “Greetings, Commander Rythar. What is your master’s pleasure?”

  “The Grand Master requests your presence upon yonder hill.”

  The Commander raised his visor and pointed to a nearby hill. A Blade of sixty Knights stood in attendance on the diminutive figure of the Grand Master, whose blackened armor made a stark contrast to their polished finery.

  Phidestros nodded to Kyblannos. The Grand Captain told off sixty of the Iron Band and placed them around his Captain-General until Phidestros felt like a babe in its nurse’s arms. He held his peace; Kyblannos would be like a she-wolf with one cub toward his old captain until the day he died.

  It took a few moments for the horses of Phidestros’s party to get used to rough ground again, after several candles on the smooth paving of Kalvan’s Great King’s Highway. Kalvan is a hard man not to respect, even in defeat, was Phidestros’s thought. Many saw the wisdom of such roads. None were built, until Kalvan came.