“We don’t.” Joseph the Gamecock was every bit as blunt. “We have been over this ground before, you know.”

“Yes, I do know, and the more I think about it, the more it pains me,” Bell replied. “Some pains, sir, laudanum does not touch.”

With a sigh, Joseph the Gamecock condescended to explain: “Consider, Lieutenant General. We have to the south of us the rough country of Rockface Rise. There are only two gaps in the rise, two places where the southrons can come at us. By all the gods, I hope they try smashing through the Vulture’s Nest or the Dog’s Path. If they do, we’ll still be killing them there this fall. I intend to send your wing to hold the Vulture’s Nest. That will give you enough bloodshed, I vow, to satisfy the most sanguinary man ever born.”

“Killing southrons is all very well,” Bell said stiffly. “Indeed, it is better than very well.”

“I should hope so-it’s what we’re here for,” Joseph the Gamecock said. “And when your wing takes its position, you will find that the serfs I’ve set to work have fortified the gap so that not even a mouse could sneak through without paying with its life-not even a mouse, I tell you.”

“That is good, in its way,” Bell said, “but only in its way. I do not care to fight in the open field as if I were besieged in a castle.”

“Our whole kingdom is besieged,” Joseph said, “and we needs must keep the enemy from entering into it.”

“We can drive them back,” Lieutenant General Bell insisted. “We can beat them in the open field.”

“You may perhaps be right,” Joseph said. “If the Army of Franklin were yours to command, you might venture the experiment. But, since King Geoffrey has seen fit to entrust it to me, I have to do what I believe to be in its best interest, and in the best interest of the kingdom. Do you understand me? Have I made myself clear enough, or shall I scratch pictures in the dirt for you with the point of my sword?”