One of Leudast's troopers said, "I wish we were riding a ley-line caravan up to the new front. Then we'd get there rested. The way things are, we're already halfway down the road to being dead." He flung a spadeful of snow over this shoulder, then stooped to get another one.

A few minutes later, the company emerged from the trench it had dug through a great drift. Leudast was awash in sweat, his lungs on fire, regardless of the frigid air he breathed. When he could see more than snow piled up in front of him, he started to laugh. There a few hundred yards to one side of the road lay a wrecked caravan, its lead car a burnt-out, blasted ruin- the Algarvians had planted an egg along the ley line, and its burst of sorcerous energy had done everything the redheads could have wanted. "Still want to go the easy way, Werbel?"

"No, thanks, Sergeant," the trooper answered at once. "Maybe this isn't so bad after all."

Leudast nodded. He wasn't laughing any more. The steersmen on that ley-line caravan were surely dead. So were dozens of Unkerlanter troopers: bodies lay stacked like cordwood by the ruined caravan. And more dozens, maybe hundreds, of men were hurt. The Algarvians had gained less by winning some skirmishes.

When the regiment encamped for the night in the ruins of an abandoned peasant village, Lieutenant Recared said, "There are some stretches of ley line that are safe. Our mages keep clearing more every day, too."

"I suppose they find out if the ley lines are clear by sending caravans on them," Leudast said sourly. "This one wasn't."