Shopkeepers in arms they were. A rabble? In the first year of the war, perhaps they had been. No more. They’d never lacked for courage. Now they had discipline as well. The crossbow was an easy weapon to learn, and could slay at long range. That they were here, deep in the Province of Franklin whose lord had declared for Geoffrey, spoke for itself.

A fair number of the heads under those identical gray hats were blond, not dark. Serfs-former serfs, rather-had been free to bear arms or take on any other citizen’s duties in most of the southron provinces for a couple of generations. That accounted for some of the blonds in the ranks. Others had fled from their northern overlords. Avram’s orders were to ask no questions of such men, but to turn them into soldiers if they said they wanted to fight.

Even through the dust the marching army raised, the sun sparkled off serried ranks of steel spearheads. Archers were hideously vulnerable if cavalry-or even footsoldiers with pikes and mailshirts-got in among them. Posting pikemen of one’s own in front of them forestalled such disasters.

General Guildenstern’s smile turned as amiable as it ever did when he surveyed the spearmen. Far fewer blonds served among them. They were real soldiers-professionals, not conscripts or zealots. If you told a man who carried a pike to do something, he went out and did it. He didn’t ask why, or argue if he didn’t care for the answer.

The sun also gleamed from the iron-shod horns of the unicorn cavalry. Guildenstern sighed. The riders he commanded were far better at their trade than they had been in the early days of Geoffrey’s attempted usurpation. They still had trouble matching their northern foes, for whom riding unicorns was a way of life, not a trade.

And, of course, unicorns bred best in the north. “I wonder why,” General Guildenstern murmured.