Now, if they could just get the becky accepted…

"Well, all right," said the miller. "But just this once! If I'm not satisfied, you won't get any more flour from me."

It was a sign of progress, Fruehauf thought, that the miller obviously wasn't considering the fact that if it chose to do so, the Hangman Regiment could march into his mill house, seize all his flour-and, for that matter, burn it down and kill him and his family in the bargain. Whatever reservations the local inhabitants still had about Higgins and his soldiers, at least they were no longer considered bandits.

Thorsten Engler looked around the room and whistled softly. "Well, it's certainly an improvement over the tent, Colonel. The men might start calling you 'Sultan,' though."

"Very funny." Jeff Higgins waved at one of the unoccupied seats in the salon. He'd appropriated the largest such room in the castle to serve as his headquarters. Conveniently, it had a bedroom attached. But Jeff had the door closed. Truth be told, the bedroom was even more luxurious than the salon. He hadn't chosen these rooms for that reason, but protestations of innocence would be received with the skepticism usually bestowed upon such claims.

The real reason Jeff had selected these quarters was visible in the salon itself. Every single officer of the regiment was present at this meeting, from company level up. That meant fitting into the room one colonel, two majors, ten captains and two first lieutenants. The lieutenants served Jeff as adjutants, which was polite military-speak for gofers.

They all had places to sit, too. Comfortable ones.

"Okay, guys," Jeff began, with his usual lack of formality. He ran the regiment in a manner that bore as much resemblance to his days as the dungeon master of role-playing games as it did to anything a traditional military man would have considered proper behavior for a commanding officer.