“Would he?” Sabrino said. The crystallomancer nodded. With a sigh, Sabrino got to his feet. “The next interesting question is, would I speak to him?” He didn’t scandalize the young mage any further, but got up and followed him off to his tent.

It had been cold inside the mess tent. As soon as Sabrino poked his head out the flap, the Unkerlanter winter stabbed icy knives into the marrow of his bones. This wouldn ‘t have bothered me so much when I was half my age, either, he thought bitterly.

Dragons crouched in the snow, chained to the iron spikes that kept them from flying off and doing something stupid on their own. Dragon handlers moved among them, keeping them fed. This wasn’t a proper dragon farm, not the way the manuals back in Algarve said one should be organized. It was the best worn, overtaxed men could do. Ever since Cottbus failed to fall in the first winter of the campaign against Unkerlant, the whole war in the west had been one improvisation after another, each seeming more desperate than the last.

The crystallomancer ducked into his own tent. With a sigh of relief, Sabrino followed. A brazier in there warmed the air all the way up to frigid. A certain pungency in the air said the brazier was burning behemoth dung rather than charcoal: one more improvisation.

Sabrino sat down on what had probably been some Unkerlanter peasant’s milking stool and peered into the crystal. Brigadier Blosio’s image looked out at him. Sabrino took some consolation in noting that Blosio looked miserably cold, too. “Reporting as ordered, sir,” he said. “What do you need from my wing?”

“You know how our drive for Herborn has cut off a good many Unkerlanter soldiers,” Blosio said, as if doubting Sabrino knew any such thing.

“Aye, sir,” Sabrino answered stolidly. “Still a good many in front of us, too. We just tore up some behemoths trying to come through a peasant village and smash in the head of our column.”