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“The trouble is, those bastards who fight for Avram the Just” —he turned the nickname into a sneer— “have mages, too.”
    “Ours are better,” Ormerod said stoutly.
    “No doubt, or our hopes would already be shattered,” Florizel said. “But they have more. Many little weights in one pan will balance a few big ones in the other. That leaves it to the fellows who go out and hack one another for a living.”
    “King Avram’s got more soldiers, too,” Lieutenant Gremio said.
    Ormerod and Florizel both pursed their lips and looked away from him, as if he’d broken wind at a fancy banquet. It wasn’t so much that Gremio was wrong—he was right. But saying it out loud, bringing it out in the open where people had to notice it was there . . . The warriors who fought under King Geoffrey’s banner rarely did that, as it led to gloomy contemplations.
    To avoid such gloomy contemplations, Ormerod asked, “Colonel, where are we stopping tonight?”
    “Rising Rock,” Florizel answered, which gave rise to other gloomy contemplations. “And take a good look around while you’re there, too.”
    “Why’s that?” Ormerod asked.
    Lieutenant Gremio was quicker on the uptake. “Because we’re not bloody likely to see it again any time soon, that’s why,” he said.
    “Oh.” One mournful word expressed an ocean of Ormerod’s frustration.
    “He’s right.” Florizel sounded no more delighted than Ormerod felt. “We’ll be some of the last men into Rising Rock, too, and it looks like we’ll be some of the last ones out as well.” Out meant retreating to the northwest. Colonel Florizel pointed in that direction. Sure enough, Ormerod could see the dust men and unicorns by the thousands raised as they marched along the road through the gap between Sentry Peak and Proselytizers’ Rise, the gap that led up into Peachtree Province.
    Closer, Rising Rock itself looked deceptively normal. The sun played up the blood-red of the painted spires on the Lion God’s temples, and glinted from the silver lightning bolts atop the Thunderer’s shrines. Ormerod sighed. The southrons worshiped the same gods he did, but they would send the local priests into exile for speaking out against the perverse belief that serfs were as good as true Detinans.
    No sooner had that thought crossed Ormerod’s mind than he saw a blond young man in ragged pantaloons—no tunic at all, and no shoes, either—making his way east with a bundle at the end of a stick on his shoulder. The serf was moving against the flow of soldiers on the road, toward the advancing southrons.
    “Runaway!” Ormerod shouted, and pointed at him. He was amazed nobody’d pointed and shouted at the serf before he did.
    The blond young man ran for the cover of the trees that grew close to the road. He dropped his bundle so he could run faster. Ormerod cursed; he couldn’t send men after the runaway without disrupting the company’s march.
    Then he stopped cursing and pointed again. “Shoot him!” he yelled.
    Some of his men hadn’t bothered waiting for the order. They were already cocking their crossbows and setting bolts in them. Triggers snapped. Bowstrings thrummed. Quarrels hissed through the air. With a meaty thunk! , one of them caught the fleeing serf in the small of the back. He shrieked and fell on his face.
    Ormerod trotted after him. The serf kept trying to crawl toward the woods. He wasn’t going to make it. Ormerod saw that right away. If a crossbow quarrel didn’t hit a bone, it could punch right through a man. By the trail of blood the serf was leaving, the bolt that hit him had done just that.
    Drawing a knife from the sheath on his belt, Ormerod stooped beside the blond man. The fellow stared at him out of eyes wide with hate and pain. “I’ll cut your throat for you, if you want, and put you out of your pain,” Ormerod said. He did what needed doing with runaways, but he wasn’t deliberately cruel about it.
    “Red Lady curse you,”