That was true. Maybe another glimpse of the demon would encourage them to stay away.

I got the men into a ragged line, advanced to the edge of the wood. Narayan and Sindhu sneaked ahead. I wanted warning if the southerners were inclined to fight. I'd back off.

They fled again. Narayan said they killed those officers who tried to rally them.

"Fortune smiles," I recall murmuring. I'd have to take a closer look at this demon Kina. She must have some reputation. I wondered why I'd never heard of her.

I withdrew to the captured encampment. We'd come into a lot of useful material. "Ram, get the rest of the band. Have them bring the stakes from the embankment. Narayan, think about which men are least deserving of receiving arms." There would be enough to go around now, almost.

Arms would be a trust and honor to be earned.

The change was dramatic. You'd have thought it was another Ghoja triumph. Even those who hadn't participated gained confidence. I saw it everywhere. These men had a new feeling of self-worth. They were proud to be part of a desperate enterprise and they gave me my due place in it. I walked through the camp dropping hints that soon they would be part of something with power.

That had to be nurtured, and continually fertilized with suspicion and distrust of everyone outside the band.

It takes time to forge a hammer. More time than I would get, probably. It takes years, even decades, to create a force like the Black Company, which had been carried forward on the crest of a wave of tradition.

Here I was trying to magic up a Golden Hammer, something gaudy but with no real substance, deadly only to the ignorant and unprepared.

It was time for a ceremony alienating them from the rest of the world. Time for a blood rite that would bind them to one another and me.