“Count Thraxton is a sorcerer of no small power.” Guildenstern knew every officer within earshot was listening for all he was worth. He didn’t want any of his subordinates thinking the attack on Rising Rock would prove a walkover, just in case it turned out not to be.

“Oh, no doubt,” Doubting George said. “But we gain on the northerners in wizardry, so we do, and the Braggart’s spells have already gone awry a time or two in this war. I wouldn’t fall over dead with surprise if it happened again.”

Was he really as guileless as he seemed? Could anyone really be that guileless? Or is he laying traps beneath my feet? Guildenstern wondered. Had he been Doubting George’s second-in-command, that was what he would have done. He took another swig of brandy. He trusted what he carried in his flask. That was more than he could say of the men who served under him.

But I’m advancing, he thought. As long as I’m advancing, as long as I drive the traitors before me, no one can cast me down.

A haze of dust hovered over his army, as it did over any army marching on roads that had never been corduroyed. Because of the red-tinged dust, Guildenstern couldn’t see quite so far as he might have liked, but he could see far enough. The ordinary soldiers weren’t out to betray him. He was… pretty sure of that.

Regiments of crossbowmen made up the biggest part of the army. Save that they wore King Avram’s gray, many of them hardly looked like soldiers at all. They looked like what they were: butchers and bakers and chandeliermakers, tailors and toilers and fullers and boilers, grocers and farmers, woodsmen and goodsmen. Not for nothing did false King Geoffrey and the rest of the northern bluebloods sneer at King Avram’s backers as a rabble of shopkeepers in arms.